By the time Scott arrived home, he had managed to talk himself through a spectrum of distinct emotions—underlying it all was the sneaking suspicion that whatever happened next, he was going to screw it up. For all that was going so incredibly right in his life—making first line, Allison—so much else was going incredibly wrong. The sappy grin that came to his face when he thought of Allison was wiped away when he thought about his grades, Jackson, the hunters, the Alpha, his dad. Then there were the parts he didn't talk about. "I'm having trouble dealing with aggression," he'd told the coach, when what he really meant … how could he explain the dark rage that seethed inside him all the time; the fact that when he talked to people, he had to forcibly not think of them as prey, not see them covered in blood by his hand?

He couldn't explain how his own personality was the werewolf's first victim.

He dropped his sports bag since inside the door. The Lacrosse stick strapped to it clattered against the wooden floor. In the living room, the lamp was on, the only light that was. His mom was sitting on the couch, legs crossed, suspended foot jittering. She was wearing her scrubs. Her purse sat on the floor with the car keys on top. From the depth of the scent, she had been waiting there for hours, nerves frayed. For a split second he thought about ignoring her, walking up the stairs and slamming the door. He wanted to wallow by himself for awhile, to try to work through the turmoil in his head and in his gut. In truth, all of his emotions were intensified now; the human ones, even depression and fear, had become a valuable reminder of whom he needed to hang on to. But, that was his mom there, his mom who wasn't at work when she was supposed to be, who had obviously been waiting for him to come home. Squaring his shoulders, he turned in to the room. "Mom, you're home," he said, as if he had just noticed her. "Why are you home?"

"Sit down, Scott," she replied, patting the couch seat next to her. Her tone didn't brook any argument. He complied, his eyebrow quirking up in a silent question. "I got something in the mail today—"

"Oh, god. The progress report," he moaned, burying his face in his hands. Parent/teacher conferences were this week; progress reports would have been sent home for anyone who needed a heads up, or who couldn't make the conferences. He was flunking practically everything. He was certain that, if it were possible, he'd be flunking his free period. Usually he managed to keep his grades in a solid C range, at least high enough to keep everyone's attention off of him. This semester, he lived in expectation of his teachers inventing new, lower, grades to give him when even an F was too high.

"We are going to have a conversation about that, Mister," she replied, a narrowing of her eyes turning the sentence from a threat into a very dangerous promise. She drilled her gaze into him until he looked away in shame, then added, "Later." Scott started to breathe a sigh of relief, but she continued. "I got something from the lawyer."

"Lawyer?" he repeated. In sixth grade, when his parents were going through their divorce, "The Lawyer" was an invisible, but ever present participant in his life. Once the divorce became final, "The Lawyer" dropped out of sentences, out of power, out of mind. Scott hadn't realized until now how much he didn't miss hearing the title invoked. Even after all this time, the invocation brought a rush of vertigo, as if he'd just taken a step in the dark and discovered that the ground had been removed. "What about?"

"It seems—" Her voice choked. She swallowed, cleared her throat, pulled a small needle-pointed throw pillow from behind her back and examined it as if she were confused about how it had gotten there or why it had taken her this long to notice the discomfort it caused. Her mother had made the pillow, Scott recalled. It was one of the few things his mom had hung on to after his grandma died. "It seems that your father plans to file for custody of you. Full custody." Her heart was racing; the acrid scent of fear roiled from her.

Scott's brow furrowed. "Can he do that?"

His mom gave a bitter laugh. "Oh, he can do that." She ran her fingers over the needle-point pattern on the front: a butterfly with oversized blue wings.

"Why would he do that?" Scott pressed. Was that what his dad had wanted to talk about? Not that he was moving away from Beacon Hills, but that he planned to take Scott with him? Away?

She took a deep breath, let it out. "I asked myself the same question, since it's not like he put up a fight when you moved here. So I called him." Scott's eyes widened. His parents hadn't had a direct conversation since the day the final papers were signed; they'd barely been able to have one before that. "He told me," she continued, as if she couldn't believe the words that were about to come next, "that you aren't thriving here."

Scott threw his hands up in frustration. "What does that even mean?" he shouted, his voice cracking.

"It means," she replied, "that he thinks I'm a terrible mother." She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Do you think I'm a terrible mother?"

"No," Scott wailed, now on his feet, though he didn't recall standing up. "Of course not." He ran a hand through his hair, took one angry step, then another—managed only to pace in a tight circle. "He can't do this. I-I-I'm not going." He looked wildly around the room, searching for something, he didn't know what. Abruptly, he forced himself to stop, squeezed his eyes shut.

"Scott," his mom said, tone softer, reassuring. She grabbed one of his hands and held it. "We can fight this. If you want to."