Casey almost turned back when the door closed behind him and Adam’s heartbeat and scent were abruptly cut off.

Then Declan, standing down in the parking lot, raised a hand. He wasn’t shouting, wasn’t even waving. He just stood there letting Casey see where he was, and Casey remembered his homesickness, his grief, and the blank space where his first life had been.

Declan was his brother, and Casey had to know what was going on in the pack he’d come from. He had to know why his parents and brothers had died, why he’d been kept captive. He had to know what was happening to everyone they’d left behind. He had to help if he could.

He walked down to where Declan stood, beside a gray rental car that could have come from the same lot as the Nissan he and Adam had been driving around in for weeks. Casey opened the door to dump his stuff in the backseat and jerked back from the scent that rolled out; he actually started to turn away, his body making the decision to run before his brain had processed anything. But Declan was still standing on the other side of the car, looking confused and worried, and Casey hesitated.

It wasn’t a bad smell, or a threatening one, just strange. It was half-familiar; it was Declan’s concentrated scent in a car he’d been driving around in for days at least, maybe longer. It was just... not the way a car should smell when he got into it with an alpha. It wasn’t the car that he practically lived in with Adam; the back seat wasn’t full of accumulated gifts and supplies and clothes they didn’t wear anymore. Adam’s scent was nowhere near.

Casey shook his head at himself. He’d decided to do this; in a way he’d been considering it for days, maybe weeks, even though he couldn’t have said so until Declan asked him to come. As soon as Declan asked it had felt inevitable, like another fragment of memory clicking into place, like his old name or his brothers’ names. Ever since he’d seen Declan standing at the edge of a field waiting for him, part of him had known what Declan was waiting for.

Casey dropped his stuff in the backseat and threw himself into the front seat. Adam’s dad’s notebook, hidden under his coat, jabbed into his chest as he moved, and he arranged his seatbelt around it as subtly as he could. Declan was getting settled beside him, and then he started the car without further hesitation, maneuvering out of the parking space. Casey kept his eyes down, not looking back toward the hotel or the car he and Adam had arrived in.

“Thanks for doing this,” Declan said, jerking Casey out of his thoughts. He was smiling, looking a little shy and hopeful, and Casey couldn’t help smiling back. No matter what was going on with the pack, Declan was his brother, the one who’d looked after him and braided his hair when he was small.

“I’m glad to help,” Casey said. “I lived with the Niemi midwives ever since the pack took me in, so I’ve had more training than most, one way or another.”

“You never, uh,” Declan frowned, keeping his eyes on the road. “No one... adopted you? You didn’t have another family? You were so little.”

“Not officially,” Casey said, shrugging. “But it just meant I was kind of everyone’s kid, so I wasn’t neglected or lonely. It was the Alpha who found me, and he was as much of a dad as I could handle having—his kids definitely adopted me as their little brother. And Pappa Otso, he was the senior midwife when I came there, and he had charge of me, especially the first year.”

“Pappa, huh,” Declan muttered. “So the omegas there, they were like you.”

“I mean,” Casey said, struggling to find words for something he’d honestly never had to explain to anyone before. He was probably going to be explaining it a lot in the next few days, so he might as well practice on Declan while they were alone.

“They’re like me in that somebody sat them down when they were a kid and asked them, ‘Are you a boy or a girl? Your parents made a guess when you were born, but you know yourself better than anyone else can, and it’s okay to say so if your parents’ guess wasn’t quite right.’ The Niemis, and the Brysons, are especially careful about making sure. So it’s not like—they didn’t tell me I was a boy, they just gave me the chance to say so.”

Declan didn’t say anything to that, but the silence felt thoughtful, not angry or disapproving. Casey waited to see if Declan was done with this topic or if he would ask something else; he mentally considered some of the arguments Callie had had to make when she came out as an alpha.

He was not, he decided, going to bring up Callie unless she seemed especially relevant. One thing at a time.

“But how,” Declan said, several miles down the road from when Casey had finished speaking. “How do you know... it just seems so complicated.”

“It isn’t, really,” Casey said. “Lots of omegas stick to whatever gender their parents guessed to begin with and never really think about it that much. But the ones who don’t feel right in it, they can say so, like... like saying you’ve got a stone in your shoe, or you don’t like some food everyone else in the pack loves. It’s pretty obvious, from the inside, as long as you know it’s a thing that happens, and that you can say so.”

“But,” Declan was frowning all over again. “But from the outside, from... how does anybody else...”

“You listen to people,” Casey said firmly. “You don’t guess, or at least accept that you might be guessing wrong and listen when you’re corrected. You call people by the name and pronoun they tell you to call them by. That’s really pretty simple.”

Declan tilted his head and said, “I guess, when you put it like that.” He flashed a cautious smile in Casey’s direction. “Casey. If I mess up, it’s just habit. I don’t mean to... to not listen to you.”

Casey smiled cautiously back. “I’ll glare at you until you get it right, if you say it wrong.”

Declan laughed, sounding a little startled, but said, “Well, better a glare than that knee you were about to give me the other night.”

“Hey, brothers are supposed to tussle, right?” Casey said, his smile widening. He felt himself unbend a little, relaxing into his seat. The car was warming up, and Declan was strangely easy to talk to; there was a certain rhythm to his speech, an almost-accent, that felt right to Casey’s ears. “I’m overdue for a lot of that. And I’m the littlest, so I’d have to fight dirty, wouldn’t I?”

Declan shook his head, but he was still smiling. Another silence fell while Casey tried not to stare at Declan. He could feel Declan keeping his eyes on the road with a determined effort.

“What,” Declan said, at the same time Casey finally said, “Can you—” and they both broke off to smile at each other, nervous and pleased at the same time.

Declan waved a hand, yielding to Casey, and Casey tried again. “Can you tell me something you remember about... about our family? I only have little fragments, and hardly anything about Da or the boys.”

“Oh,” Declan said, his smile fading. “I’m not much of a storyteller.”

Casey shook his head. “Not even a story, just... tell me about them?”

Declan nodded slowly, obviously struggling to think of what to tell. “We were, all five of us, born at Thunder Moon—that’s—”

“July?” Casey said. The moons could slip around a little, depending, but he could look it up now, find his actual birthdate. “That’s... the pack put my birthday on the day I was found, at the end of August. Was I six?”

“Yeah, that’s not too far off,” Declan agreed. “There were two years between me and Conor, and two years between Aden and you, but the three of them came one year after another, all in a row. They were always lumped together a little, and you and me were always a little separate, on the ends. But all five of us would celebrate, the day before the Thunder Moon—an extra special dinner, and little presents, and Mama and Da would take us out to run, all together, all five of us, even though usually the kids stayed by the fire and only the adults went out under the moon. That was...”

Declan swallowed hard, and Casey’s stomach tightened.

“It was just after that, that you—you all—”

Moon, Declan had just turned twelve when he had to decide between his family and his pack, and then felt responsible for everything that happened after. Casey squeezed his shoulder, and Declan smiled briefly, a reflexive twitch of his mouth.

They were silent again for a while. Casey was starting to feel drowsy, the darkness outside deepening, and he realized he hadn’t asked Declan how far they were going tonight, or at all. They didn’t seem to be headed for the freeway, and he wondered if they were taking highways and backroads all the way.

Declan turned the car onto a dirt road, and Casey picked his head up. “What...”

Declan flashed him a little smile, looking fond and almost proud this time. “Well, you gave me three days’ warning, so I figured we might as well hope for the best, and everybody wants to meet you. We move around anyway, so...”

Casey sat up straight, feeling electrified and looking from Declan to the view outside, searching for some sign of their destination. They hadn’t been driving more than half an hour; it was staggering, somehow, to think that his birth pack had been so close all along.

“What’s our name?” Casey asked, abruptly realizing he didn’t know. “The pack name, I mean, what are we?”

Declan shrugged. “We’re just... the pack, I guess. Mactires, we call ourselves sometimes, if there’s need of a name to give an outsider—because among ourselves we don’t call the Alpha Alpha, we call him the Mactire.”

“The wolf,” Casey said, feeling jolted by recognition, and a feeling that made him want to be very small, and very quiet. “That’s what it means—Mactire. Wolf.”

Declan looked over at him, frowning a little in new worry. “Yeah, pup, that’s—don’t be nervous, okay? He’s the one who sent me to find you. He’s going to be so glad you’re coming home.”

Something about the way Declan said it struck Casey as it hadn’t before, and he realized that he’d said this to Adam, but not, in so many words, to Declan. “You know I’m—I’m just visiting, Declan. I’ve got Adam waiting for me, I’ve got a life. This is just a visit.”

Something flickered through Declan’s eyes, but his worried expression eased into gentleness. “Yeah, Casey. But you’ll have a chance to get to know us, like you should have all along, huh?”

That wasn’t quite what Casey wanted Declan to have said, but it wasn’t wrong, and he couldn’t think how to argue with it—and then his eye suddenly caught the odd contours of the field they were approaching, and he could only stare.

Snow was heaped up in piles like igloos, a dozen of them scattered not-quite-randomly through the space. One was larger than the others, and a few cars were parked in the semi-shelter of a line of trees beyond them.

“Welcome,” Declan said with a little smile, and pulled his car up as close as he could get to the nearest igloo-shape.

People came rushing out before he’d even turned off the car, and Casey’s heart started beating faster. None of them would replace the parents and brothers he’d lost, but still—they were his family. He’d see himself in them, the way he did in Declan, the way he saw family ties echo through faces and scents and voices and mannerisms all through the Niemi pack and all the packs connected with them.

Casey hurried out of the car—though he just as quickly hurried to Declan’s side when Declan got out, because that was a lot of people to meet all at once. It was a lot of scents, almost familiar, and he realized that the scents carried more than he would have expected on the cold air. Every person’s scent was like a shout, instead of the scrubbed-clean polite modulation he was used to.

No one actually shouted out loud. They hardly made a sound. They all wore dark clothing, which made them stand out against the snow but would have let them fade into the shadows if they were any further away. Some were smiling; most just looked curious. A couple of small children tried to rush up and were pulled back, hoisted into their mothers’ arms or tucked behind their skirts.

Then one alpha stepped forward, the others parting to let him through.

Suddenly there might have been only one person waiting for them, only one scent rising on the cold air. Casey couldn’t look away from him, couldn’t make a sound. His hand closed on something and he held on as if his life depended on it.

The Mactire was smiling, and Casey could see that it was a small, gentle curve of his lips. It only felt like he was baring his teeth. He walked right up to them without hesitation, reaching out as he got near.

“Casey,” the Mactire said.

It should have been a relief not to have to correct him, but it felt like a stranger knowing his secrets, having a leash on him. The Mactire curled a hand around the back of Casey’s neck, pulling him in. Casey was frozen with the certainty that he was about to be kissed, but the Mactire only rubbed his cheek against Casey’s, one side and then the other. Scent-marking. Casey almost couldn’t breathe for the thickness of the alpha scent, the weight of the Mactire’s attention.

Then the Mactire turned his focus to Declan, grabbing him by the nape and rubbing cheeks in just the same way, shaking him a little by that grip. Casey felt the shake through his own hand, and looked down to find he had a white-knuckle grip on Declan’s sleeve.

“I know who you want to see,” the Mactire said, and his voice was fond and knowing, his smile bright, but Casey couldn’t make himself let go of Declan’s sleeve. “Come on, let’s get back inside. Casey, welcome, don’t worry about learning everyone’s names at once, huh? You’ll get them eventually. Come on.”

Casey looked back toward the car, weirdly desperate for a reason to delay even though it was cold outside and he had come here to meet these people. “My stuff...”

“Declan will bring it for you,” the Mactire said, reaching down and plucking Casey’s hand from Declan’s sleeve as though he wasn’t holding on at all. Casey didn’t know what made him let go—the Mactire hadn’t even pulled that hard—but suddenly his arm was tucked through the Mactire’s and he was being led toward the largest igloo-shape, and inside. Everyone else let them go by, turning to follow after them.

There were only a few people left inside, and one of them turned sharply toward the door as they entered: a young woman, maybe a few years younger than Casey. Her sleek dark hair was in some kind of complicated braid wound around her head, and she wore a soft gray sweater and a long black skirt. Her eyes, even in the low light inside, were very blue—a darker shade than Casey’s, like the color of the sky after the sun set, just before it turned black.

Her mouth tightened as she saw who had come in. She looked past Casey and then deliberately went back to what she was doing, slicing bread and piling it in a basket.

Casey dragged his gaze away from her and looked around the room. From the inside it was obviously a tent—covered with snow for insulation and concealment, no doubt. The domed space was maybe twenty feet across, and there were blankets and cushions and small items scattered around, bits of sewing or knitting or carving, which people had obviously set down when they went to greet the arrivals.

People returned to their places, filling up the space. Casey sat where the Mactire pointed him, on a cushion near the center of the room. The crowd of unfamiliar bodies, scents, heartbeats, voices, all blurred into an impression of closeness, of pack, but none of it clicked into place the way Declan had. None of it felt like home.

Declan came in before Casey had been sitting long, with a waft of cold clear air that cleared a little of the dazed fog from Casey’s head. He was carrying all of Casey’s stuff and a knapsack of his own, and his eyes touched on Casey first, with an encouraging smile, and then darted away.

Casey followed the direction of Declan’s gaze, already knowing. The young woman was distributing platters of meat and cheese and baskets of bread. She didn’t look in Declan’s direction, but Casey thought there was something different in her posture from when he’d first seen her, as if she knew who was watching her. As if it meant something to her that Declan was there.

Casey looked back, to find Declan heading toward him, smiling wider now. He set down Casey’s kit and duffle bag and said, “Here, come on, I should at least introduce you to Maura.”

Casey looked for the Mactire, but he was moving around among the others of the pack, clasping shoulders, murmuring here and there. His presence still filled the entire space, but Casey could breathe a little. He took Declan’s hand, let himself be pulled to his feet and steered over to Maura.

She did look up when they got near, just when they were close enough that Casey could pick her scent out of the warm mix of pack-scents. She was an omega, adult but unmated. Casey didn’t know her well enough to read moods in her scent, and in any case there were too many scents, too layered and accumulated, to track anything from moment to moment.

She was smiling, and her heartbeat was steady. It was only Casey’s suspicion, from the narrow look she’d given him and the careful way she hadn’t looked at Declan, that she disliked Casey almost as much as she liked Declan, and didn’t want Declan to know either half of that.

“Maura,” Declan said. “This is my baby brother, Casey.” It sounded almost smooth this time, like Declan hadn’t had to read the words off a mental cue card. “Casey, Maura’s the closest we have to a midwife in the pack—she had some training with Nana. Maura, Casey’s a midwife too, he said he’d be happy to help.”

Maura’s smile widened to something that Casey could interpret without a doubt as You’re not needed here, thank you very much. “How kind. I expect you’ll be bunking in with me, too?”

“Uh,” Casey said, looking to Declan.

Declan’s hopeful smile had faded a little. “Wouldn’t be proper for an omega to sleep anywhere else, Maura.”

“Of course,” Maura agreed, her smile brightening still further, to You’d better sleep with one eye open, outsider. “Excuse me, I have to—” She turned away without finishing the sentence.

Declan looked uneasy, but said only, “She’s had a lot to do, getting ready.”

“Of course,” Casey said, knowing his part in this dance perfectly well. “I wouldn’t want to put anyone out, Dec, I can sleep—”

Declan shook his head. “It’s all right. It’ll be fine.” But he looked over at Maura with an anxious expression before he focused again on Casey. “Anyway, we should eat! Take your coat off, make yourself at home.”

Casey was abruptly aware of how warm it was inside the tent, closely packed with bodies—werewolf bodies, running hot. He took his coat off carefully, keeping the plastic-bagged notebook hidden inside. It shouldn’t have been a problem if anyone did see it—but he should have just stuck it in his bag, too. He sat down on his coat for a cushion, and Declan came back to him with two plates of food balanced on one arm, two full cups held in the other hand.

Casey reached up to take the cups from him, taking an eager sip of one; he was a little startled to realize it was only water, with that particularly blank flavor that meant it was probably snowmelt. He had instinctively assumed there would be beer or mead or something special, to welcome a guest.

But where would you brew beer, when you lived in a bunch of tents? Where would you keep bees, and store honey, to make mead?

Casey looked around as he ate, searching for signs of what the pack’s life was like. There were fewer than forty people gathered in the tent. They really did all look alike, with similar shades of fair skin, dark hair ranging from almost-black to chestnut, and light eyes. Only two had hair gone silver, and both of those were men—one missing an eye, the other shivering in the warmth of the tent and being helped to eat and drink.

In the light inside the tent, Casey realized that it wasn’t just that everyone wore dark colors—everyone wore black and gray. The Mactire was all in black; the children wore the lightest gray. Casey felt almost painfully conspicuous in his blue jeans and plum henley; even his brown leather boots seemed strangely bright. At least his coat was a dark blue, its fleecy white lining hidden inside.

There were barely a dozen children—and only one woman was visibly pregnant. She had three or four kids clustered around her. Her expression, when Casey happened to catch her eye, definitely did not say, Thank the Moon we’ve found a midwife in time.

There were a handful of men who didn’t seem to have a mate nearby, who all stole glances at Maura, but there didn’t seem to be any teenagers of either gender flirting with each other or gazing longingly at unattached adults. Including the Mactire? Maura seemed to take the role of senior female, which was a strange position for an unmated omega to occupy when she didn’t seem to be the daughter or sister of the Mactire and clearly wasn’t his mate.

Something was off. A lot of things were off, so many that Casey couldn’t pin down the specifics. It would take time; he would need to get to know them better, get someone to trust him at least a little. Maura, moving everywhere among the pack, speaking to everyone, smiling and being smiled at, probably would have been ideal.

Too bad Maura was the last person who was going to trust him.

The evening passed in an overwarm, drowsy blur. With his belly full, tucked against Declan’s side, and with the Mactire’s attention not falling on him too intensely or for too long, Casey was able to feel almost comfortable. There was singing, and storytelling, and conversation, all easing naturally into each other.

It all felt familiar but just a little bit strange. The jokes weren’t quite where he expected them to be, the words and tunes of the songs just barely off. The stories felt like something he ought to know by heart but contained jarring notes.

Someone told the story of the first werewolves, but in it the human parents weren’t poor or dead—they were selfish and cruel. The three children were a brother and two sisters, instead of two brothers and a sister. The story lingered a long time on the wolves’ hunts, and on the blood sacrifices the children made, stretching the familiar story into an ominous shape. It made everything feel like a dream, reality twisted slightly out of place.

Stepping back out into the night air felt like waking up from more than just a post-dinner daze. Casey had his coat back on, notebook once again tucked against his ribs, his duffle bag and midwife’s kit in his hands. He left his scarlet hat and scarf tucked into his pockets.

Casey followed Maura along a well-trodden path through the snow to another snow-heaped tent, this one set a little apart from the largest grouping, on the other side of all of them from the big tent. The omegas were housed on the edge of the camp, with the mated couples and families between them and all the unmated alphas. That made sense; there was no reason it should make him itch.

He had plenty of other things to feel itchy about, anyway. Maura had dropped the effort to appear pleased to meet him once they were shut in a tent alone together.

There was a second bed already made up, just a low cot on the opposite side of the tent from the one that was obviously Maura’s. It had a pillow and blankets and seemed comfortable enough. Maura had a box where a nightstand would go and a chest at the foot of her bed, but everything was put away within them. Casey didn’t know if she usually displayed more, or if it had all been hidden away in preparation for having to share her space.

Maybe that was all it was, anyway. Casey wouldn’t have wanted to share space with some long-lost relative of an alpha he had a crush on, who was going to be taking up all of that alpha’s attention.

So, hey, there’s at least one person in the pack who will be happy to see me leave.

That... felt more important than it should. Casey decided not to think about that right now. “So, you and Declan,” he tried instead. “You...”

Maura did look at him then, exactly long enough to hiss, “Shut up.”

Casey did, taken aback. That was... awfully emphatic.

He tuned his senses to listen beyond the tent, to try to sense anyone who would be close enough to overhear them, but the tent was well-sealed and the muffling snow deadened sound. Casey could make out a vague murmur of voices from one of the nearest tents, but almost nothing beyond that, not even traffic on the road.

Figuring he might as well push a little harder in the name of diagnosing exactly why Maura disliked him, he said, “Why?”

Maura stared at him for a moment like she couldn’t decide if he was actually this stupid, and then said, slowly and distinctly, “Because nothing is decided. I will of course be happy with the mate the Mactire chooses for me. Whoever that is.”

It was Casey’s turn to stare. That was—

Another reason Maura might take against him popped into his brain fully formed. He should have thought of it earlier, should have thought of it instantly. He hesitated a half-second, wondering if he should ask, if he should wait, lead up to it somehow... But having thought of it, he couldn’t not ask.

Still, he tried to come at it a little sideways. “Maura, did anyone ever sit you down when you were a kid and ask you if you were a boy or a girl?”

Maura turned sharply away from him, and Casey had the queasy feeling that he’d hit dead on target this time. “No,” Maura said. “Why should anyone ask that? I’m an omega.”

Casey swallowed and sat down on his cot, struggling to think of an answer that wouldn’t put Maura’s back up more, and wouldn’t presuppose an answer.

“They should have asked you for the same reason they asked me,” Casey said finally, making Maura look at him again, mouth open already to argue. Casey went on, keeping his voice low and steady and his eyes fixed on Maura’s. “Because asking lets you know that there’s a question, and that you’re the only one who can answer it.”

Maura stared at him for a second and then turned away again, rummaging in the chest at the end of her bed. Casey forced himself not to leap to conclusions. Maura hadn’t told him she was anything other than what she presented herself as. Casey couldn’t assume that Maura was something else just because he had turned out to be, and just because she seemed unhappy about her limited choices.

“Nonsense,” Maura finally muttered. “I’m going to sleep.”

“Good night, then,” Casey said. Maura got into bed and turned to face away from Casey, and Casey emptied his pockets onto the surface of his cot before he changed into sleeping clothes. The omegas’ tent was snug enough to be comfortable, but not nearly as warm as the big tent, and he didn’t doubt it would get chilly overnight.

He tucked his things away, his coat laid over his bags near the head of his bed, everything within reach. All that was left on the cot was the plastic-wrapped notebook and his phone. Casey brought both of them under the covers with him—it already felt strange not having the corners of the notebook jabbing him in the ribs.

He dragged the covers up over his head and turned his phone on, watching it start up and trying to think of what to say. Would Adam even be able to answer? Was he driving right now, or on a plane, or sleeping?

Casey felt a strange certainty that Adam was staring at his phone right now. It wasn’t hard to predict, but... the certainty just sat there, along with all the other certainties of the past few hours, equally unexaminable.

As soon as he could open a text message—he had to find where he’d saved Adam’s number to do it, because he’d never actually had reason to text Adam before—he tapped out, It’s weird going to sleep without you.

Now that he had a little quiet to think, it was strange to be anywhere without Adam—to be among strangers without him. He missed Adam with a sudden painful fierceness, so that it spread retroactively over all the hours he’d spent too dazed to think, too excited to meet Declan to notice who wasn’t with him. There were suddenly a thousand things he wanted to tell Adam, except he couldn’t think how to tell any of it at all. He just wanted Adam to have been there, at his side, to share a raised eyebrow or a skeptical noise or a whispered word.

Adam hadn’t responded yet—wasn’t even typing—and for just a second Casey felt very, very alone.

And then he felt something else—not an emotion, but an actual sensation. A tiny pain blossomed in his abdomen, a cramp that eased almost before he noticed it: but he did notice it. And he knew what it meant, a certainty more perfect than any of them yet.

He wasn’t alone after all.

Oh, he thought. Hello.

His phone buzzed in his hands, and for a floating second he thought it was going to be a reply to that thought, from the tiny stranger who had just put down roots inside him.

It was, in fact, a text message from Adam.

Very weird. I don’t like it at all.

Casey smiled, feeling breathless and close to tears just from the phantom of Adam’s voice speaking those words in his mind. Another text came in before he could even think about replying.

How is it there?

Casey bit his lip as answers rose up in his head. The only other omega in the pack hates me. I’m scared of the Mactire, but not in a normal way, in a weird way, and he hasn’t done anything scary at all so I have no idea why. It’s weird and I want to come home now.

I’m pregnant.

None of those would get him anything but Adam demanding his location and rushing to his side, making a big loud fuss and ruining any chance Casey had to get through to Maura, or to find out what else was going on with the pack.

Also, all of them were ridiculously premature to speak of yet—especially the last, which was probably true but also, as he well knew, immensely precarious. Nothing would be remotely certain for weeks yet, and that probably applied to everything going on outside his own skin just as well.

Too soon to tell, he finally replied. But I promise I don’t plan on staying longer than I need to. I miss you.

Adam’s response was almost instantaneous this time. I love you. Call if you want me, anytime.

Tears did come to Casey’s eyes then, blurring his vision before they spilled. I love you, he replied. I promise.

Casey woke up to a strange unsettled feeling. A little light was showing where the snow wasn’t piled so thickly at the top of the tent, and he could hear strange sounds outside. He looked over toward Maura’s bed, but not only was Maura gone, so was the bed. The chest and box were still there, stacked one on top of the other.

Casey jumped out of bed and hurried to dress, tucking his phone and the notebook safely inside his coat. He darted outside and stopped short.

The rest of the tents were already gone, and so was the car he and Declan had arrived in. One truck remained, being loaded up, and as Casey stood there, the Mactire approached, flanked by Declan looking apologetic, and a couple of other alphas looking almost bored.

Declan, who had been wearing blue jeans and a brown coat with brown boots yesterday, was all in gray now.

“Ah, you’re finally up!” The Mactire called out, as he got close. “Put those clothes in your bag and shift, it’s almost time to leave. Declan will put your things on the truck for you.”

Casey stared. He remembered the questions he’d wanted to ask Declan, before he even knew Declan’s name: Did we travel shifted? How did we take our stuff with us?

He had his answer now.

“Come on!” The Mactire reached for Casey’s shoulder, and Casey didn’t resist the urge to sidestep this time. The Mactire held his hands up in not-really-apology. “It’s moving day, Casey, the whole pack can’t wait for you.”

“I want to go,” Casey said, looking past the Mactire with an effort, to Declan, who was suddenly looking a lot more apologetic. “I want to go home. Now. Or just leave me, I’ll call someone to pick me up.”

He reached for his phone, and without any sense of transition his wrist was suddenly held in an iron grip. The Mactire plucked his phone from his pocket with the other hand.

Casey’s heart raced, his vision going bright and his hearing ratcheting up as the adrenaline hit. This was the other shoe dropping and, fuck, he had been wrong about how far it had to fall. He had, maybe, been very, very wrong, and yet he somehow wasn’t surprised. He’d felt this coming from the moment he met the Mactire, from the first time he heard Declan say that name.

“You don’t need this,” the Mactire said, waving Casey’s phone. His other hand kept that merciless grip on Casey’s wrist. “And you are home, or you will be once we get there. Now shift.”

Casey felt the power of the Mactire’s attention, his command, but it didn’t hit him the way it had last night. He didn’t know why—because he was angry? Because he knew it wasn’t himself alone who he had to stand up for now?—but all that mattered was that he could say, “No. I can’t.”

The Mactire looked startled for a second, and his gaze dropped unsubtly to Casey’s midsection. Casey felt himself blush, even though there was nothing to be ashamed of. The Mactire had no right to imply that he knew what Casey meant, but he had even less right to say a single fucking word about how Casey got this way.

“Fine,” the Mactire said, releasing Casey’s wrist all at once. “On two legs, then. But you’d better keep up.”

Before Casey could argue further, three wolves, all of whom looked to weigh more than he did, crowded around him, urging him toward the pack assembling at the far end of the field. Casey gritted his teeth and started to run.