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Thomas.
Thomas, Thomas, Thomas, because he was Alpha.
He was packpackpack.
The floor opened up beneath me and I—
I opened my eyes.
I was in my room.
My shoulder throbbed.
The bed next to me was empty.
I blinked, slow and sure.
The bedroom door was open.
The house was dark.
The light outside the window was weak, the snow still falling.
That undercurrent was still there, garbled and strange. It felt familiar, it felt like mine, it felt like PackLoveMateHome, but it was twisting, it was twisting, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.
The door, Aileen had said.
I have to open the door.
I didn’t—
A creak of a floorboard from somewhere inside the house.
“Mark?” I whispered as I rose from the bed. I found a pair of sweats on the floor and quickly threw them on. “Mark, is that—”
I wasn’t dreaming. I couldn’t be dreaming. Not again.
If that had even been a dream.
I moved through the house. Everything seemed to be in its place. Nothing had moved.
Mark stood in the kitchen. His back was to me. He was nude, and his head was bowed. In his right hand he held the wooden raven.
“Mark?” I asked. “What’s—”
He said, “Gordo,” but it came out sounding harder than I’d ever heard him speak my name before. Animalistic. Meaner, filled with—
No. No, oh god, please no—
“You need to run,” he said, his shoulders shaking. “I can’t—I can’t fight it. It’s—”
There was a sharp crack as the wooden raven splintered. One of the wings fell to the floor.
The shift came over him slowly. Thick black claws grew at the tips of his fingers and toes. The muscles under his skin began to ripple. Chestnut-brown hair sprouted over his shaved head.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. Not now. Not after we’d come this far. Not when I wore his mark just as sure as he bore mine. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t—
I took a step back.
