Isaac was a streak of silver against the flat gray of the city background, an effervescent creature of silence. His coloration was that of a normal gray wolf, with brown markings on his face and paws and tail, but he was much more beautiful than that in Moody’s eyes. When he stretched his paws forward into a leap, he became a streamlined comet, fur rippling back with the wind of his passing. Landing, muscles bunching, fur standing out in fluffy bunches along his flanks and shoulders. Propelling himself forward, landing again. A gorgeous process, a primal dance disguised as the mere act of running.

Moody could have easily outpaced him, smaller and lighter on his paws, but he hung back because he didn’t know the way to where Arlo lived.

And, okay, maybe he was also enjoying the show.

He had meant everything he said before. Now the words were out, he found it even easier to let his feelings run free and unburdened inside him. Wherever Isaac went, he would follow. And if the alpha tried to do something that wasn’t good for either of them, Moody had no intentions of just letting him do it. He would give him a whack across the muzzle, one after the other, until he managed to see reason through all the stars.

As they ran, taking alleys and backstreets, occasionally skirting around a straggling human or hiding from the beams of an approaching car, he found himself thinking of his father.

Maybe his dad needed a couple of good whacks across the muzzle, too.

When all of this is over, I’m going to come see you, Dad. Maybe I’ll bring Isaac with me.

Isaac drew to a halt, claws skittering on concrete. Moody stopped too, feeling a light ache deep in his muscles that quickly faded away. Wolves were meant for endurance, not speed, but their trip so far was nothing more than a jog to him.

Not to Isaac, though. The alpha pulled in a few ragged, panting gulps of air, then pushed onward.

This time, Moody followed closer, right at Isaac’s flank. They had most of the night left still, and he didn’t plan to let any time slip by unused. Isaac running himself ragged would take longer to recover than if he simply allowed himself a break or two.

And now that he’d thought about it, Moody was very, very aware of the seconds ticking by as they ran. Their last chance, their means to escape, growing smaller and smaller. The window would fall shut at dawn and he hoped to be on the other side when that happened.

They ran on, crossing a street at one point. They took the crosswalk without waiting for the light to change, since no cars were coming. In fact, Moody couldn’t hear any cars at all. Aside from a dog barking faintly in the distance, and the scuttering of a rat in the dumpster along the wall of the alleyway, there were no signs of life anywhere. They could have been the last two people on earth, isolated as they were by the hour.

Isolated, and free.

For the first time, Moody thought he could understand how the members of Lethal Freedom were feeling. Their pack had been all about a lack of rules and living as they wished, running and riding free with no loyalties but to their own. Now, they were robbed of all that, tied down to a fucking parking garage that wasn’t even near where most of them lived.

How things change.

Eventually, Isaac stopped again. He lowered his head and let out a little growl of warning, which might have irritated Moody up until a day ago. Now, he looked past the act of the growling and to the meaning behind the sound: be careful.

Coming up to stand at the alpha’s side, Moody peered out of the shadows of the alleyway. Not much to see, just city streets and low buildings, the same as everywhere else in this place. Then, he realized what buildings he was looking at.

Apartments.

Moody whined, a soft question which reached no further than a few feet away. A human standing on the sidewalk wouldn’t have even been able to hear him, despite the pervasive quiet.

Lowering his head, Isaac nodded. He fluffed out his fur, brushing his pelt against Moody’s. Their tails touched, entwined, before pulling apart again. This was the place. Arlo used to live in one of these buildings. With any luck, he still would.

Lifting up his nose, Moody scented the air. Concrete and metal, dampness, the thick and offensive reek of exhaust and gasoline, and a confusing brew of human scents. If Arlo had come this way recently, he couldn’t tell.

Isaac watched him, ears pricked forward with curiosity. As strong as his senses were, an omega’s skills would always be sharper than an alpha’s.

Moody shook his head, snorted softly.

Isaac nodded again, brushed his tail along Moody’s flank in a gesture of thanks. Then, he shifted back into human form, crouched in the shadows.

Moody followed suit, automatically placing one hand on Isaac’s shoulder. This natural act of touching would have astonished and offended him not very long ago, yet right now it seemed like the most ordinary thing in the world. Of course he would touch Isaac, and of course Isaac would wrap a warm arm around his waist in response. There was no reason not to.

“Which building is it?” he asked, voice hushed.

“That one.” Isaac pointed toward an apartment building on the opposite corner of the street. His pupils were dilated, his nostrils flaring. Though human, he somehow managed to still look like a wolf.

Tightening his grip on Isaac to remind him to stay under control, Moody looked over at the building pointed out to him. Here was the only thing that, to him, seemed to be better than in Pensacola. Even though these apartments were deep in the middle of the city, they were adjacent to a line of healthy, thriving trees, surrounded by shrubbery that looked like it would have been right at home on the White House lawn. Everything in Florida always seemed so swampy; here, less than an hour away, the plants were picture-perfect and benign.

The apartments themselves weren’t flat, featureless structures. Instead, they resembled long, shallow houses stacked on top of each other. Decorative eaves arched from the main structure of the roof, draped over windows and doorways.

“Wow.”

“Nice, right?” Isaac agreed. “And this is just the low-end neighborhood. You should see the fancier sections, near the parts of the bay that don’t look like shit.”

Moody smiled a little. “You can show me those if we make it out of this in one piece.”

“Deal.” Isaac smiled back at him, making him feel very warm inside. “As far as I can remember, Arlo lives on the top floor. Hell if I know the number, but I remember the location because you almost can’t find the damn door. It’s tucked around a corner. Pretty small place. He gets it cheap.”

“So, we just go up and knock. And if he answers?”

“You should be the one to knock,” Isaac suggested. “He’ll take a moment to recognize you. Jump him. Cover his mouth. Knock him out. Just don’t let him shift or make too much noise.”

Moody nodded, feeling appreciative of Isaac’s forethought. Doing this on his own would have been terrifying, to the point where he didn’t think he would have been able to do it at all. Having Isaac’s presence at his side, offering plans, providing support for this endeavor, gave him enough bravery to keep going. “And then we tie him up, go through his place to see if we can find anything incriminating.”

“Or, maybe he’ll confess when he sees us,” Isaac offered.

“Oh, sure. He’s going to have such a big change of heart while knocked out and tied up. Probably gagged, too. That always inspired me to get talking.”

Isaac gave him a playful squeeze. “I guess you’re right. We’ll have to gag him if he tries to make noise. We don’t want him making anyone call the cops. We’re clear on the plan, then?”

“Yeah. Let’s do this.”

They stood up together, emerging from the alley and crossing the street at an angle. If there had been a cop nearby needing something to do, they surely would have been reprimanded for jaywalking.

Moody grew more tense the closer they got to the building, his heart starting to skitter in his chest. The panic was nowhere near as bad as it would have been if he was on his own, however. That didn’t change. Each time he felt like he might be about to crack, to descend deeper into fear, he only had to sidle closer to Isaac so their hands could brush together as they walked. Confidence surged through him with each contact, buoying him up above the dark waters so no slimy creatures could needle him with their fangs.

They crossed up onto the sidewalk. Isaac sped up, grabbing the door to hold it open. Moody stuck his tongue out at the alpha as he entered the building, even though he felt flattered on the inside. It was a light, bouncy feeling, flattery was. He didn’t know that he’d ever felt anything like it before.

As Moody stepped inside the lobby, he caught a faint whiff of something that he hadn’t been expecting: chlorine.

“They have a pool here?”

“Out back,” Isaac confirmed, stepping away from the door and letting it shut behind him.

The lobby was fairly regular, which was almost disappointing when taking into consideration the presentation of the exterior walls. An elevator was conspicuously absent, though Moody didn’t necessarily think one was needed when there were only three floors to climb. A staircase was off to the left, while the distinctive whirring sound of washing machines came from a doorway to the right. There were several dozen mail slots along the wall near the front desk, behind which sat a doorman who clearly had better things to do than pay attention to the unfamiliar men entering his building. Leaning way back in his chair, he had his feet kicked up on the desk. His face was buried in a home décor magazine.

Trying to act natural, and probably failing Moody supposed, they shouldn’t linger in the doorway, and instead headed right for the stairs.

Just as Isaac got his foot on the bottom step, a gruff voice said, “Can I help you two?”

Moody winced, then turned around and tried to look innocent. He should have expected this, he supposed. Both of them looked a little worse for wear. Torn clothes, messy hair, scratches and sore patches devoid of hair.

Luckily, the man at the desk didn’t look as if he was the smartest person in the entire world. His face was round, his eyes beady, and his lips crumpled inward in a perpetual sneer. A pug of a man, essentially. The magazine he’d set down on the desk was not one magazine but two, the hidden, inner edition bearing pictures of women being penetrated in pretty much every orifice.

How nice.

He might not be an expert on straight sex, but he didn’t think they were doing it right. At least the participants all seemed to be having fun.

Isaac squared his shoulders and stood up straighter, the subtlest of motions that signaled he was gearing up for dominance. Moody felt yet another stirring of warmth and desire deep inside his loins. He was beginning to think they would have to have sex when all of this was over with, if just to relieve some pressure and feel closer to one another.

“We don’t need help, thanks,” Isaac said. He wasn’t quite growling, but his voice was very deep and rough. He sounded very much like someone who didn’t want to be messed with. Already, the pug-faced man looked as if he might be reconsidering his challenge. “We’re just visiting a friend.”

“Uh-huh,” the man said. “Sure you are.” He sounded uncertain, his eyes flicking this way and that. “Never seen you around before. Who’s your friend?”

“Arlo,” Moody said, jumping in. His hope was that if he also seemed knowledgeable, the man would be more willing to drop the subject.

An instant later, he realized how wrong he was. The man looked at him, his beady eyes narrowing so they seemed to disappear in the fleshy folds of his face. His jowls scrunched up, like testicles receding from the cold. “Arlo who?”

Moody wasn’t dominant. He didn’t have the intimidation factor that Isaac did, so this pug man wasn’t afraid of him. Now all the focus was on him, and he didn’t know the answer to the question. If he hesitated, even this dumb man would realize something was wrong.

Isaac stepped forward, subtly placing himself between Moody and the other man. He crossed his arms over his chest, staring down his nose with contempt. Moody couldn’t see his expression, but he could see the other man wilting under Isaac’s gaze.

“Fuck off, man. Are you serious? There’s only one Arlo. There’s no way you have no idea what I’m talking about. Why don’t you just shut up and get back to jerking it? Or do you want me to mention this to your boss?”

The man reached out, picked up his two magazines, and held them up in front of his face. “I’m not bothering anyone. Didn’t see a damn thing, didn’t talk to anyone.”

Isaac turned around and started up the stairs. Moody followed along, trying to hold back his laughter. Judging from the way the muscles in Isaac’s back trembled, he was dealing with the same problem.

They quickly climbed up to the third floor. Their laughter died, the air between them becoming much more serious. This was the part that mattered most. They couldn’t mess this up.

They emerged from the landing and stood out in the hallway. Isaac looked around for a moment, then headed off down the hall. Near the very end, the hall took an abrupt turn. There didn’t seem to be any purpose at all for this turn. Moody could only imagine there were pipes or something that necessitated the wall being built around it. And on the other side of the turn was a single apartment door. The number didn’t matter, Isaac had been right about that. Only the location.

Hanging back now, Isaac gestured for Moody to go ahead of him.

Moody took a deep breath, steeling himself. This was it. He reached out, grasped Isaac’s hand for a moment, and went over to the door to knock. He rapped his knuckles against the wood, felt the surface jostle loosely under his touch. If they needed to, he supposed they could very easily break it down.

But they weren’t going to need to, because a sharp cry of surprise could be heard coming from deep within the apartment. Arlo’s warbling voice, uncertain even in a moment when he shouldn’t have had time to overthink about anything. Every sound that followed was crisp and clear, brushstrokes painting an imagine in Moody’s mind. Shuffling and creaking as Arlo rose from his perch, an ancient piece of furniture with bad springs. A thud, a muffled grunt, a rustling sound as he ran into something and subsequently grabbed at the painful spot. A swear, then a series of stumbling footsteps that came to an end right on the other side of the door.

A spasm of panic jabbed Moody in the heart. Black spots streaked across his vision like a meteor shower.

Is there a peephole? Is there a fucking peephole? Can he see us?

He didn’t have time to look, might not have been capable of seeing properly anyway, what with the black stars cascading down right in front of his face.

Everything was too acute, too sharp, too accurate. He felt as if he had ceased to be a man and had instead become the things he was feeling and hearing. He was the pounding of his heart, the scent of fear and cheap deodorant, the clunking of a faulty lock.

And then the door opened. Arlo stood there, one hand still grasping the knob. His face blanched white as paper.

Everything crashed in on Moody all at once and he didn’t know what to do, so he did the only thing he could do and swung out a fist. His arm blurred through the air, faster than he even knew he could move, and then his knuckled collided with Arlo’s jaw.

Arlo crumpled to the ground, eyes rolling back in his head to reveal a brief flash of the whites.

Moody lurched inside the apartment, looking around rapidly. Despite the small size, the apartment really was very standard. A cozy little living room and conjoined kitchen, a nub of a hallway connecting a bathroom and a bedroom. Someone had an ongoing chess match set up on the coffee table, right next to a few cans of Monster Energy Drink. Dishes brimmed over the top of the sink in the kitchen, a few fruit flies gliding lazily back and forth between them and the treasure trove of Chinese food containers that was the trashcan.

Video game posters took up much of the wall space, along with some decent pieces of artwork depicting scenes from typical nerdy movies. Star Wars, Star Trek, and so on. What available space remained was occupied by figurines and various memorabilia from so many different franchises that Arlo’s affection for visual media could almost be followed like a timeline.

Moody hated to give labels to people, but he was strangely gratified to have this evidence to support his theory that Arlo was a geek. His oddness would earn him attention and condescending affection from the rest of his pack; when they were gone, he would turn to these worlds where he could pretend to be everything he was not.

Taking another few steps into the apartment, Moody finally spied what he’d been looking for: a phone charger, plugged into the wall. Snatching the cord in his hand, he turned and brought it over to Arlo. “Hold his wrists together,” he said.

Isaac knelt down and picked up Arlo’s arms by the wrist. The unconscious wolf’s fingers flopped limply this way and that, though the fluttering of his eyes indicated he was already on the way to regaining consciousness.

As best as he could, Moody tied Arlo’s hands together with the phone charger. Contrary to popular belief, such cords are designed not to tangle. Their flexibility could only be stretched so far. Stepping back, Moody inspected his handiwork. “It’ll do. It’s nothing compared to what they did to us, though.”

“He won’t be able to soak his way out of it, though,” Isaac growled. “I locked the door. He’ll have a hard time escaping without using his fingers.”

“Should we gag him? I’m sure there has to be a washcloth in the kitchen or something.”

Arlo stirred around, groaning quietly. His eyes still didn’t open, though his fingers tried to curl and couldn’t because of the phone cord holding them in place. His movements really made Moody feel on edge, like they should go ahead and take every precaution they could.

At the same time, it just didn’t seem right.

Shaking his head, Moody said, “We leave him the way he is. If he starts yelling or something, then we do it. If not, we just leave him be.”

“Do we at least move him away from the door?”

Moody bit his lip, considering for a moment. Then, he shook his head again. “No. It’s not like we’re trying to kidnap him or anything. Just leave him where he is. Look in the cupboards, the drawers, under the couch. See if he’s got his phone on him and if you can get into it. I’ll scope out his bedroom.”

Isaac nodded, then reached out and held his hand for a second before letting it drop. “Alright. Let’s do this. Get this show on the fucking road, huh?”

Moody smiled a little. He squeezed his hand, feeling the pressure of his nails against his palm, relishing the fading tingles of contact from where Isaac touched him. Turning around he went down the short hallway and ducked into Arlo’s bedroom.

He flipped on the light and looked around.

As always, whenever he was in someone else’s house, he felt an extreme sense of displacement. He didn’t belong here, shouldn’t have been here, standing on this person’s turf, invading their private sanctuary. Things seemed more breakable, more valuable. Moving anything seemed like a breach of contract. Touching the things which weren’t his brought a sense of vague guilt, like he had done something he shouldn’t have.

It didn’t matter that he was looking for incriminating evidence. He shouldn’t be here.

He was looking at the place where Arlo slept, where he felt safest, where he went to hide from the world that would judge him for being himself.

Arlo’s bed was right in front of him. There were gaps beneath, and he could see product boxes tucked away in there, the kind a person takes from a store when they’re in the process of moving. Arlo must have kept them around as cheap storage.

An enormous TV perched awkwardly on a stand across from the bed. Also on the stand were a number of gaming systems, ranging from boxy older models to the newest streamlined gadgets. The only other thing of note was a cell phone, the screen dark.

There were also two bookcases. One of these bookcases held novel adaptations of video games, set in a shared universe. The other held what must have been prized items, because they were all in little display cases.

Moody pulled in a breath and then let it out. He had to be as quick about this as possible, while missing absolutely nothing.

First, he went over to the bed and pulled out the storage boxes from underneath.

He was not expecting the contents, although he probably should have. This was, after all, Arlo.

Japanese manga -and some which appeared to be Vietnamese or Korean. Yet, these were no novels of ordinary anime antics. Rather, they were clearly porn. Tentacles in place of dicks, oversized female sex organs, absurd and provocative clothes that only made sense in a land of fantasy.

Rubbing his hands on his jeans, Moody stood up and headed over to the closet. It was one of those closets with two sliding doors, the kind that always tended to get stuck for no reason.

Opening the right side, he discovered a cheap dresser.

Moody started at the bottom, pulling open drawers to reveal a cluttered mess of jeans and shorts. He tore all of them out, felt in every single pocket for something that might be hidden. No luck. He then ran his fingers all along the inside of the splintery drawer, feeling for a latch or hidden compartment.

Still nothing.

Similarly, the second and third drawers were uninteresting.

The top drawer was actually two small drawers, one on the left and one on the right. Moody yanked open the right, discovered a plethora of boring white underwear.

The left drawer caught a little when Moody opened it. He paused, frowning a little as anticipatory shivers raced down his spine. He had had similar difficulties with the other drawers, though nothing like this. This was a clunky, wooden sound, rather than something soft and fabric.

He pulled out the contents of the drawer, then ran his hand along the inside. Very near the top of the inner wall of the drawer, where it was likely to catch on the framework of the dresser, was a thin wooden box.

Pulling the box away, Moody heard the distinctive sound of Velcro coming apart. And sure enough, there were Velcro strips on the back of the box.

“What the hell?” he whispered.

The box was thin and flat, though not very long. A wallet had more bulk to it, essentially.

Moody’s fingers trembled as he opened the box. He dropped the lid on the carpet, mouth opening with astonishment. His mind blanked for an instant. This couldn’t be. It was too good to be true, too coincidental to seem real. Yet, he had the box in his hand, the slick grain under his fingers, the soft weight on his palm.

Inside the box was a velvet lining, thick and plush to prevent the contents from rattling around and causing a disturbance. And the contents was a book of waterproof matches, and a tiny vial of sticky liquid that looked like gasoline or something else flammable.

“Holy fuck,” Moody whispered.

This was like a tinderbox for arsonists, a firestarter’s emergency kit.

Moody placed the lid back on the box, then set it down on top of the dresser. He had more of the closet to explore. This one bit of evidence seemed quite damning to him, though that was only because he knew deep down in his heart that Arlo was an arsonist. Anyone else could look at this and agree it was a little weird, though they wouldn’t know what to really make of it. Maybe it was for emergencies or other unforeseen scenarios in which a quick fire could make all the difference. This wasn’t enough to convince anyone of anything, in other words. He needed more.

At least he knew he was on the right track.

Briefly, he wondered how Isaac was holding up. Was Arlo still out?

He would have gone to check on the situation except for the fact that his sense of paranoia and guilt was back, urging him to complete this task as fast as he possibly could.

Moving on, he inspected the various outfits hanging on hooks around the dresser. Mostly jackets, a few pairs of dress pants, and a suit that looked as if it would not have arms or legs nearly long enough to fit Arlo. A holdover from an event in the past, perhaps a wedding or just some sort of ceremony he was expected to be proud of.

Empty pockets. Lint. He moved on.

There was a shelf that ran the length of the closer, and it was from this shelf that the hangers were hung. On top, unopened puzzles, boxes with the factory wrapping still in place, and another grocery store product box. This one had a waxy coating that signaled it came from the produce section, decorated with smiling tangerines and jovial red grapes.

Moody was partial to the purple ones, which was a thing he’d discovered was rare. No one liked fucking purple grapes. It was always green or red.

His curiosity piqued, by his own opinions if nothing else, he grabbed the box and pulled it down.

“Oh!”

He nearly dropped the damn thing, his heart skipping a beat. He couldn’t see what was inside but it was much, much heavier than it looked.

Adjusting his grip, he set the fruit box down on top of the dresser and looked inside.

Notebooks. A variety of notebooks. Some were the spiral bound notebooks found on school supply lists across the country, while others were black-and-white composition notebooks. Some were solid colors, and others were decorated with puppies and kittens and emojis.

Moody felt a chill run down his spine.

Alongside the notebooks were decorative journals, crumpled scraps of loose-leaf, folders, and a single binder stuffed to capacity.

Moody picked up one of the notebooks, a college-ruled spiral bound book which looked to have had half of its pages torn out at some point. Heart in his throat, he flipped to the first page.

At the top of the page was a date, blocked out in a child’s painstaking letters. February 23^rd, from almost two decades ago.

The entry was short, and the letters turned into an illegible scrawl at the end, presumably as the writer ran out of speed and patience. Moody didn’t need to try to read that part, didn’t need to read anything but the first sentence, which read, “Mommy told me not to but I did it anyway.”

Taking up the rest of the space on the page was an enormous frowning face, so smudged from the passing of time that it was hardly visible.

What did you do, Arlo?

He flipped through the rest of the notebook and found nothing of interest. At least, nothing he could decipher. Childhood recollections, told in the simplest of formats.

“Dear Diary, I pet a puppy today.”

“Dear Diary, it’s my birfday!”

“Today was the worstest day ever, Diary. Eric said Pokemon is for babies.”

Some of the statements made him smile, because they were so pure. In a world torn by war, with hellish crimes being committed on the daily, here were snippets of joy and innocence. Seeing pretty flowers, playing a favorite game in PE, petting a puppy, impressing his father with his shifter abilities.

Moody picked up another notebook, making sure the entries started at a later date. The writing hadn’t improved much, if at all. More simplicity. He flipped through the book faster than the last, wondering if maybe the first concerning entry had just been a fluke.

Until he reached the last page of this one.

“I did it again. But you wont tell, will you, Diary? Your my friend, even if your just paper.”

Moody picked up book after book, turning pages, flipping through entries.

Most of the earlier notebooks contained very little information. Nearly all of them were 100% innocent. At some points, Arlo would stop writing and he would fill lined pages with a child’s incompetent drawings. He liked dinosaurs, then Star Wars. He would reproduce terrible imitations of cartoon scenes, complete with speech bubbles.

In some places, he used these notebooks for homework assignments. Essays, long division, Punnett squares.

Then, at a certain point, Arlo had left the spiral notebooks behind, transitioning into exclusive use of journals and composition notebooks. He had the writing voice now of a young teenager, and Moody supposed the date backed that up.

The first journal had a very long entry. Moody read in silence, keeping his ears prick all the while for any sign of a disturbance coming from the living room.

“Hey, Diary,” Arlo had written. “This is my first real book, I guess. No more of that kid stuff. I’m a grown-up now. Dad says so. I just turned 13. I got this journal as a present cuz of how much I like to write. I said thanks and everything and I was smiling, I guess, cuz Mom complimented me on my manners. She doesn’t know why I was smiling, though.”

Here, it seemed like Arlo had paused, thinking with his pen pressed to the paper, resulting in a blob of ink. As the entries went on, these blobs of thought would become more and more common until there was a single page composed of nothing but blobs and a slash through it all.

“I guess it’s okay to tell you. No one reads this. Mom and Dad say a boy should have a place where no one else listens in on him. I guess, for me, that’s diaries. So, I smiled, because there’s lots of things I want to write about. I didn’t know how when I was just a kid. Kids are stupid. But I’m an adult now, Dad says so. So now I can tell.

“I like to play with matches. Fire is pretty. Real pretty. I like how it eats things up. I dunno how old I was when I figured that out. Maybe at Uncle Johnny’s bonfires every New Year Eve. Whatever. It doesn’t matter.

“I used to try to play with matches and sometimes Mom wouldn’t catch me for like, an hour. Not until she smelled the smoke. I was too dumb to figure out how to stop before that. And then, one day, she didn’t stop me. She didn’t know. I was outside. So, I burned some ants. I found their hole out in the backyard and I stuck a match in. It went out real quick, but they were scared and running all over. The ones inside came out and the ones outside were trying to get in. Ants don’t have brains.”

And that was the end.

Moody looked up, startled to discover that he still stood in front of the dresser and not much time had passed at all. His heart thumped hard in his chest.

This was what they had been looking for. The confession of an arsonist, talking openly about his deeds in a place where no one else could judge him.

What kid doesn’t play with matches? Moody argued with himself, trying to pretend he was a cop. This still wasn’t enough.

He kept reading, paying more attention now. The process repeated exactly the same as before. Arlo wrote about his daily life, though he skipped entries here and there, never for longer than a week. School crushes, bad grades, coming to terms with the fact that he was going to be an omega.

Regular human things, interspersed naturally with mentions of shifting.

And, very occasionally, mentions of fire. Buying matches with birthday money. Terrorizing ants and beetles, though sometimes he expressed remorse for these creatures and would only burn inanimate objects for some time afterward.

Arlo got older, started high school.

Started his first big fire.

“I don’t know what came over me,” the entry went. Many ink spots, many pauses for thought. Slow, thick letters, as if the words had heavy weight behind them. “I guess I wasn’t thinking. There was this big pile of leaves out back in the schoolyard, near the track where we run for gym. I like to run. I’m good at it. I’ve got the school record beat. Does that matter, though? I’m the one who made that record, and I beat my own record that time, too. Anyway. Rambling. Ms. Halverson says rambling isn’t good for writing essays. But this isn’t an essay?

“The pile of leaves. It was just there. And there’s been all this rain recently, so I didn’t think it would do anything but make a lot of smoke.

“I keep my matches in my pocket all the time now. I don’t know why. I just like to have them near. It makes me feel better. So, when we were coming back from PE and going inside, I lit a match and tossed it. I thought it went out because nothing happened.

“And then, like, fifteen minutes later, the principal came over the loudspeaker, telling everyone to evacuate! So we did, and there was this huge column of black smoke rising up from the back of the school. I felt so bad cuz I knew it was my fault, but I also had a boner, because wow. They evacuated school because of ME! I did that. I did something important. It was bad, but it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t know it was going to happen.”

The entry went on to reveal that not only did the pile of leaves combust, the heat actually set several nearby trees on fire, threatening to reach some electrical wires.

The evacuated students were sent home, and did not return to school for two days, to ensure that no damage had been done to the wires or anything else.

Arlo expressed remorse in a brief entry, and then did not write again for several days. Back to business as usual.

Through the years, the omega easily maintained his double life. He was able to do this quite easily, since he didn’t always start fires. Weeks and months went by without a mention of a match or a flame. Then, suddenly, from nowhere, would be a passing mention of this burned, or that set ablaze. These events rarely had consequence. Arlo was being careful.

Then, he would slip. He described these moments as accidents, or as relief. Something would burn more readily than he expected, and he would go back to being careful.

But, as time went on, as Moody poured over the journals faster and faster, he became aware of a terrible pattern. Arlo’s caution grew less severe. He at first became passionate about historical arsonists, and then seemed to deny his fate of joining them for nearly a year before apparently committing to his lifestyle.

“If I don’t do it very often, if I only do it to things no one will miss, it isn’t harmful. It’s actually helpful. Burned forests can come back stronger than before.”

The flaw in this logic was that a city was not a forest. Buildings were not trees, which grew back all the time. And Arlo was not a force of nature, a lightning strike or a heat wave. He was an errant wolf with a love of fire which he often tried to figure out, to no avail.

Then, Moody brought out a journal that had entries dated around the time the building fires began.

“I can’t help it, diary. I did another one today.”

Each confession came with a newspaper clipping, detailing the event. Arlo seemed to treat himself as the victim in these situations, explaining how he couldn’t control his desires.

“Everyone seems to be pointing fingers at Isaac. It’s not his fault. It’s not mine, either, though. I can’t help it. I can’t take the blame. Maybe he’ll have to do it for me.”

“You fucking bitch,” Moody whispered. His heart clenched hard, black tendrils of rage squeezing around the vessel. He saw red, tasted copper as his fangs filled his mouth and nipped into his own flesh.

A short time later: “They chased Isaac away. There’s no more scapegoat. I’m going to have to stop. So beautiful. I can’t. I have to.”

For nearly two years, normal entries. Arlo’s life in the pack, knowing his place as the weird one who was picked on. He listed the things he was looking forward to, the interesting things he saw at his job as a department head at Target. Nothing really seemed out of the ordinary, but Moody had spent so much time already coming to know Arlo’s writing style that he knew something was wrong. These entries all had a feeling of desperation, like he was urgently trying to pretend everything was going perfectly.

Then, the fires started again. Arlo broke.

“Lance is onto me,” he wrote. “I think I’m going to have to get rid of him.”

Chills ran down Moody’s spine. His fingers tightened on the journal. He reached to flip the page, not wanting to know what happened next, yet incapable of looking away. He was watching a train wreck, a surgery, a car crash, horrifying and visceral and inescapable.

Something touched his shoulder.

He shrieked. He couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop the shrill cry from wrenching out of his lungs. Whirling around, he smacked his hip on the dresser and fell backward onto it. Clothes on hangers caught at his pinwheeling arms as he tried to catch his balance.

“Hey, Moody! Easy! Holy shit!” Isaac’s voice, high with concern.

Blinking rapidly, Moody realized that it wasn’t the snaring grip of the hangers holding him in place. Instead, Isaac had grabbed onto him, hands around his upper back to prevent him from falling any further.

He had been so absorbed in reading that he hadn’t even noticed the alpha approaching, hadn’t heard his footsteps or smelled his scent. The touch on his shoulder had only been Isaac’s hand, but to Moody it had been the burning, ghastly claw of a monster.

Breath whooshed in and out of his lungs, uncontrollably fast. His lungs seemed to deflate like punctured balloons, no amount of air filling them. Cold, dreadful chills racked his spine, made his chest quiver. Wrapping his arms around himself, Moody tried desperately to pull himself together; it was a fight he had already lost, and he knew that because of the speckles closing in on his vision.

Isaac spoke, his voice low and soothing. Moody registered none of the words, only the sound.

All of this was too much, more than he could ever hope to deal with on his own. He tried so hard but this last fright was the straw that broke the camel’s back, a tipping point. He was an avalanche of stone, small skittering pebbles rolling down the slope, disturbing stones, boulders, great gouts of earth, all of it cascading down and down and down. Faster, faster, faster.

Fingers in his hair, a distant touch. Warmth surrounding him. Hard muscles, hard like boulders, but soft skin. Rocking, not falling.

Whispered words in his ear. “You’re okay. You’re okay.” Repeated over and over, a sighing mantra which didn’t match up with the thunderous, chaotic roar of the avalanche.

Bit by bit, Moody realized he was sitting in Isaac’s lap, leaning against his chest. The alpha was wrapped around him, holding him securely, stroking him, soothing him down from the panic attack.

Sensing him stirring around, Isaac loosened his grip just the slightest and leaned back to look into Moody’s eyes. Their noses touched.

Moody had a flash of an image, of two wolves nuzzling, there and then gone.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Isaac murmured. He kept rocking slightly, swaying back and forth. “You had just been in here a long time and I was done with the other rooms. I got worried.”

“It’s… okay,” Moody managed. His face felt wet and he scrubbed his cheek on Isaac’s shirt, wiping away the tears. He trembled, his fingers jumpy. His heart scampered at twice the speed it should have been going, still trying to outrun the monster.

“How long have you been having these panic attacks?”

“Long enough,” Moody sighed. He clutched at Isaac’s back, then pushed himself to more of an upright position. “I was just so wound up, and when you startled me, it all came out.”

“I’m so sorry. I really didn’t mean to. You know that, don’t you?” Isaac’s heart was pounding so hard in his chest that Moody could feel the reverberations.

“Of course you didn’t mean to,” Moody said. He could feel himself starting to calm down even more, and he slid one hand up to ruffle his hands through Isaac’s hair. Soft, silky blond strands slid between his fingers. “It’s okay. I promise. I’m good now.”

“Are you sure? I could call an ambulance. Or do mouth-to-mouth on you.”

“You forgot the resuscitation part.” Moody kept his fingers in Isaac’s hair, finding pockets of warmth within the thick locks.

Isaac murmured, “No, I didn’t,” and leaned down to rub his lips on Moody’s. The kiss deepened briefly and then they pulled apart again.

Moody remembered the book he’d been reading and looked around the room. His heart gave a worried thump inside his chest, and then he located the notebook on the ground where he must have dropped it. “You won’t believe what I’ve found in here, Isaac.”

“I’m sure I would, since I didn’t find anything. I even dug through his trash and nope, nothing there. Made me feel pretty damn stupid, going through all these Chinese food containers. Moody, this guy has a serious problem. His sodium levels have to be through the fucking roof.”

The joke wasn’t particularly funny, especially not since it seemed to have more than a bit of truth to it. Moody laughed anyway, and was surprised and grateful when the sound emerged from his lips in a more or less normal manner. Usually, the panic attacks took away so much of his strength away. He would be jittery, or dizzy, or jumpy for at least an hour afterwards. Food helped, if he could stomach it, but most of the time there was nothing to do for it except to just keep on keeping on and wait for it to fade out.

It’s Isaac. It has to be him. He’s helping.

“What did you find, baby?”

The word slipped out so naturally that Isaac hardly seemed to notice that he’d said it. To Moody this was the equivalent of winning the lottery. His heart swelled with joy and his hopes soared ever upwards, far beyond the realm of the physical world. Anything could happen now. Everything had potential to come true, because he was Isaac’s baby. He belonged to Isaac.

No.

He belonged with Isaac, and that was so much better.

The feeling was gone nearly as quickly as it came, tenuous and formative. He was in no situation to dwell on the meaning right now, but he knew it was important. There was an opportunity for growth here, potential for their future. It all suddenly seemed very real, and all it took was a single word for that to happen.

Pushing away from Isaac, Moody headed back over to the closet. He picked up the fallen notebook and put it back in the box, added the little Firestarter kit on stop, and brought the whole mess over to Isaac.

Isaac grunted as the heavy weight of the box thudded down on his lap. “Holy shit,” he said. “What the hell is all this? Was he writing a goddamn epic?”

“He was, actually.” Moody shivered a little, his throat feeling tense and tight. These things he had read were bad enough and he didn’t even know Arlo that well. If Isaac read them, the unfortunate series of events which led up to his eventual exile from the pack he had known for all his life, it would be so much harder for him.

He was an alpha. He could take it. There was justice in these written words. And if he needed help getting back on his feet, or someone to lie down with him until he was ready to get up again, Moody knew he was going to be that person. He wanted to be that person.

“I’m not sure if you should read all of it now. But this one,” Moody held up the journal he’d read last, “is the most important. There’s everything in there that you need to know.”

Isaac looked down at the journal, which looked so small and insignificant in his hands. “The truth, in the most unlikely of forms.”

Moody said nothing. He just sat down beside Isaac and wrapped an arm around the alpha’s waist, leaning against his solid form.

Isaac flipped rapidly through the journal, pausing to read a sentence here and there that caught his eye. He stopped at about the halfway point, letting the book fall from his hands and land on top of all the rest. “He’s the arsonist. We were right. And that was just from the recent past. How much has he done throughout the rest of his miserable fucking life?”

“A lot,” Moody said. He bit his lip, wondering if he should give voice to what he was thinking.

Isaac looked at him, eyes narrowing. “What are you thinking about?”

Instead of being drained by what he’d just read, as Moody had feared, Isaac seemed furious, more than willing to go on and make things right. That was good, but maybe not so good if he let his anger get out of control. They needed Arlo alive, unharmed, or he would potentially be able to put blame on both of them when it should have been him receiving all the attention.

Speaking of Arlo…

“Where is he?” Moody asked.

“He, who?”

“Arlo! You know exactly who I’m talking about, Isaac. Don’t be short with me now, please. We’re so close.”

“He’s taken care of,” Isaac growled. Moody felt a sensation like a rush of warm air as Isaac reached out with his thoughts, trying to urge him on to a different subject. “Tell me what you were thinking.”

And now he was worried quite a bit about what Isaac might have done to Arlo. He supposed he would have heard something if there was a struggle, so he had to take Isaac at his word that things were taken care of. And he trusted Isaac, even through his worry. The alpha had gone through police investigations before. He knew not to do anything that would cast him in a suspicious light.

“I read a lot more than you. Look.” Moody dug in the pile of books, which had been so organized and were now in a clump due to his disturbing them. He held up one of the college-ruled notebooks, waving it back and forth. “He started with these when he was really young. These aren’t just records of what he’s done wrong. It’s his entire life. And he writes about how he discovers all this, and how he tried to stop, or keep it on the down-low. He’s not a monster. I think it all just spiraled out of his control to a point where he literally couldn’t do anything anymore except try to cover for the mistakes he’d made.”

Moody stopped, aware that he was winding himself up and starting to breathe a little rapidly again. Swallowing hard, he finished, “And then he had to cover up his cover, and it just kept going.”

“He killed Lance.” Isaac tensed up just saying the words, the hairs on his neck standing on end. The display wasn’t as effective as having his wolf hackles up, though the hard ridges of his muscles made up for that. “Look, he wrote all about it in this fucking thing. And he made up all this stuff about Lance’s last words and everything. And, god, he killed Percy, and Orlando.”

“Who are they?” Moody asked. There was so much he wanted to address, so many various things which needed explaining, that he wanted Isaac to understand. However, he hadn’t read as far in that last journal as Isaac had. He hadn’t known about these deaths and he needed to.

“Percy and Orlando were great guys,” Isaac said, his voice raw with hurt and anger. His hands clamped tightly into fists. “Lance’s buddies. His council, you might say. If Lance couldn’t be somewhere, one of them went instead.”

“So, Arlo got rid of them because Lance probably told them about what he suspected. Or maybe they were the ones who suggested the idea to him.” Moody’s thoughts raced and he stumbled over his words a little, trying to follow them. “And then, when they were gone, there’s really no one left who knows about him. And the pack needed someone to guide it, and since Arlo could say whatever he wanted about Lance’s last words, maybe he pretended that Lance passed ownership to him. Why did no one challenge him, though?”

“No one wanted it,” a new voice said.

Moody turned, without much surprise, to see Arlo standing in the doorway, watching them. His eyes looked sunken and hollow, and his back was bent so severely he seemed half his usual height. His wrists were still bound together.

Moody glanced at Isaac. You didn’t restrain him further when he woke up?

One of Isaac’s shoulders twitched, a miniscule motion that might have been a shrug. “Didn’t need to. We had an agreement. He doesn’t try anything funny, and I don’t smash his head against the wall. I’d say it’s an arrangement that works well enough for both of us. Don’t you agree, you fucking bastard?”

Arlo stood there, features blank despite the fury coming his direction. He shrugged a little. “Sure. I’m sunk. I can’t go on any longer. Backed myself into um, a corner. Like a mouse. What else can I do but wait for the results?”

Moody understood. At least, he thought he understood as much as anyone was ever going to be able to.

Rather than seek help, Arlo had let his obsession go on and on. He had lived his lies, covering for them, pretending innocence, getting rid of those who knew about him. And now, there was nothing else for him to do. End of the line. Time to get off the train.

Moody himself had lived a lie, creating a new name, a new identity for himself. He, too, had reached a point where he didn’t think he could continue doing so any longer. Of course, his reasons were good and Arlo’s were not, but that didn’t mean anything. The substance of their two tales were the same.

He didn’t think Arlo deserved empathy, or even sympathy. Understanding, however, was a different beast altogether. Only through understanding could true judgments be made.

“You didn’t know what else to do. If you came clean, you’d go to jail for a long time. If you didn’t, you’d just start more fires,” Moody said. “And if you started more fires, Lance would really wise up to you. So, you had to get him out of the picture.”

Arlo nodded, a guilty grimace crossing his face. “I kept thinking this is the last time. One more chance. This one will be enough. But it never was. I even thought maybe if I got rid of you for good, Isaac, I could trick myself into thinking I couldn’t light anymore fires. No scapegoat. No excuses. But I can already feel the desire inside me again. It, uh, burns. I’d be caught anyway. I guess it’s best to get it over with before I do anymore harm, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Moody said. “It is. I’m sorry, Arlo.”

And he was, though it wasn’t a sorrow that could be named, what he felt. He was just sad, worn down, ready for all of this to be over.

Arlo nodded at him, then turned to look at Isaac. “I’m sorry.”

Isaac turned his head away. “Yeah. You better be.”

“What are you, um, going to do? With me?”

“Do you have a phone?” Moody asked. He stepped slightly in front of Isaac, figuring the alpha wouldn’t try anything stupid and wanting to make sure of it anyway.

Arlo nodded his head down in the direction of his pockets. His jeans hung off his slim hips, drooping despite the belt he wore. “My cell.”

Moody came over to him and bent over, reaching to get Arlo’s phone out of his pocket. As his fingers poked into an empty fold of fabric, he suddenly remembered the phone he had seen on the TV stand.

And then hot fangs clamped down on the back of his neck, sinking deeper and deeper. Heat burst inside his neck, explosions chaining down his spine. He felt no pain, only heat and fire and the individual points of many teeth skewering his flesh. Rivulets of hot blood, flooding down to dampen his shirt.

Moody bucked up with every ounce of strength, shoving his arms out to push Arlo away. Encountering only empty air, he collapsed on the carpet on his hands and knees. For a moment, he was aware of nothing but blood, starting to trickle around to his throat, following the lines of his tendons, down to his clavicles. Scarlet welled there, then started to spill over again.

Looking up caused the first true pain to rocket through his nerves. Clenching his jaw on a cry, he looked in the direction of a bunch of snarling sounds that all rolled into one guttural threat.

Isaac had thrown himself at Arlo and knocked him down on the ground. Even though he was still in human form, he was growling, gnashing his teeth like they were fangs.

Arlo lay on the ground underneath him, also human, though Moody’s blood still wet his face and chest. His eyes were white-rimmed with terror, his chest heaving. “Don’t hurt me!” he pleaded.

“Like you didn’t hurt me?” Isaac snapped. His shoulders heaved. Rearing back, he brought his fist up and then brought it down. The sound of impact was like a hammer striking a watermelon, hollow and deep. Arlo went limp.

Isaac stood up, shaking out his reddening hand. He looked up, then pulled in a deep breath. “Shouldn’t have done that, but god, it felt good. He shouldn’t have bit you.”

“I’m okay,” Moody said. Surprisingly, he meant it. He felt better than he had in a long time, calm and relieved that all of this was over.

With Isaac standing guard over Arlo, Moody grabbed the phone off the TV stand and turned it on. The screen was password protected, of course, but he didn’t want anything hidden within. He wanted the emergency call feature.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“Hi,” Moody said. “I think we’re going to need the police over here. And maybe a paramedic, because I’m bleeding.”