Prologue

Derek won't take her. He lived there for months, but it must be different, Cora thinks, to go with someone who remembers it like he does. Not the burnt out shell before her.

"You okay?" Boyd asks as she slams the door to Derek's car harder than is strictly necessary.

"Fine." She spits the word out like it's wolfsbane.

Technically, she could have come alone, but she doesn't feel like running tonight and has no driver's license, at least not in the United States. If she's being completely honest, it's probably a good thing she isn't alone. Boyd's no stranger. Three months locked in a vault with someone forms a sort of irrevocable bond, and other than Derek he's the person in this town who feels the most like pack.

Pack. She closes her eyes. It's easy to conjure up the smell of her family, the smell that marks home, but impossible to tell if it's real (burned, six years old, but real) or a figment of her imagination. Her eyes shoot back open.

"We played in the woods," she tells him, tilting her head toward the forest that surrounds them. "Hide-and-go seek, sometimes. Trained there when we were older."

Boyd doesn't comment, only nods. Yes, it's a good thing she came with him.

"We were supposed to howl if we got lost. These woods go on for miles and miles, but our mom said as long as the woods smelled like pack, they would be able to hear us."

"Your mom. Was she-?"

"Yeah. She was the best Alpha in the world. I'm not just saying that because she was my mom either, everyone knew it."

There's a long pause, not comfortable, but natural. The bird noises are different here. The way the wind moves through the trees is familiar, but the absent tinkling of Laura's wind chimes (a sixth grade art project) is grating.

The walk to the house from where the driveway used to be is short, but she takes it slow, letting herself remember.

She used to have cousins, some human, some not, but all of them knew what a nip and a growl meant and all of them could run- fast. When you live with wolves, you run with them. That's just the way it is.

Cora's mother was powerful, protective, and endlessly gracious. Laura was raised to be her mother made over. Cora got a little more wiggle room, but she remembered worshipping the other women in her house. The week before the fire Laura and her Aunt Kelly taught her how to groom her mother's wolf, a careful ritual for formal meetings with other packs. She remembers how her hands shook as she combed through her mother's fur, not out of fear, but awe.

Her father was human, and he was always in either the kitchen or the living room, cooking or reading. On Saturday nights he gathered the littlest children and showed them how to bake as he made up stories, letting them add characters and plot points as they pleased.

In the end, though, it's not her mother or her father or even her little cousins who cause her to break. As they approach the doorway she thinks of Peter, the awkward uncle who never really fit in with the kids or the adults, and how he showed her to climb the staircase, hanging off the edge and jumping on the next person who comes through the doorway.

The urge to howl is sudden. Boyd startles, then backs away to give her space as the howling fades to a sob deep within her chest. It too is familiar, an ache she's had for six years that will never truly go away.

The moon is high in the sky when Cora speaks again.

"He was always howling."

"Your dad?"

"No, Derek. He always got lost in the woods."

The smell of smoke is just as old as the smell of her family, but it hasn't faded a bit.

"I never did."