AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sorry this one's a little shorter than usual, it's a segue chapter. Also: all you reviewers are fabulous and I love you. Not even kidding. It's love.

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"Ryan, this is Jacob," I said. "Jacob, this is Ryan…my—fiancée."

I choked a little on the word, but I made it through. Jacob raised his eyebrows at me and I smiled blandly back at him, forcing myself to reach across and take Ryan's hand. I could see him smiling smugly at me out of the corner of my eye, and I dug my nails into the back of his hand to remind him that this was not what he wanted and not what he was going to get—and kept smiling.

"Ryan Glass," my fake fiancée said, reaching across to shake Jacob's hand. "Nice to meet you."

"Jacob Black," he said, still looking dubious. Jacob knew me—he knew what my type was (Sam) and who my type was not (bland, blond British guys wearing polo shirts). "Um, congratulations."

Jacob wasn't the most subtle guy in the world, but he wasn't going to come out and accuse me of not being in love with the guy whose hand I was holding. As far as I knew, no on had ever faked an imprinting before, so how could he know? Ryan sure wasn't going to say anything. And just because we weren't staring soulfully into each others' eyes didn't mean we couldn't potentially be in love. I doubted any future love of mine would involve much besotted staring—I'd already been that route once, it wouldn't go the same way ever again. If you're too busy staring at the guy, you can't see things coming. Like horrible devastating life-altering heartbreak.

I glowered at Jacob and pulled Ryan closer, fake love through proximity. "Jacob," I said to distract him. "When is Sam getting here?"

"Sam?" Ryan inquired politely. His world was getting a little crowded, and the club was running out of guest rooms.

Behind us, I saw Spencer look up, paying close attention to the name that he'd heard twice now but still had no context. He and Jacob were the only people in the room who had an idea of where that name fit into my life—a wedge stuck in the center of me like in a growing tree to drive it apart.

"You know," I said vaguely, hyperaware that Spencer was listening. "Sam. I told you about Sam. He's just flying up, is all." Spencer smiled ruefully, shook his head, and went back to cleaning the bar. "Did you try to call him again?" I asked Jacob, worrying at the question, worried at the thought of seeing the person I'd run away from. I'd flown from him and he was flying after me. Not fair.

"I've called him five times," Jacob said resignedly—he thought I was annoying, but he also knew that this was mostly his fault. "He's on the flight already, he has his phone turned off. Maybe we can catch him on his layover."

"All right, when is his layover?"

"I don't know."

"Well, why don't you find the hell out?"

Jacob looked uncomfortable. Usually, he could deal with me easily and to spare, but this was different. He was dealing with me on top of several other things—new surroundings, jet lag, and the fact that the London werewolves were considerably less welcoming of a full-grown shapeshifter-wolf male than they were of an attractive breeding-age female. One of the first questions that Ryan had asked him was whether he was imprinted, and had seemed a little put out when Jacob had said no. I guess since there was really only one of me, everyone was a rival, and Jacob wasn't one he could control. He seemed to have a problem with that.

"Okay," Jacob said uneasily. "I'll try. You should try too, though, you should call home. Your mom is freaking out that she hasn't heard from you."

Ahh. The Mom card. I guess that's what I got for being bossy. As I glared at him, David came up beside Ryan and said, "Lots of cloudcover today, Ryan. Here's the forecast," and handed him a folded sheet of newspaper.

I was about to say something snarky like "thanks for the forecast," but then I got it. "Right," I said. "Cloudcover. Vampires."

Ryan kissed me on the forehead and I almost slugged him—I barely contained myself. One did not slug one's fiancée. It was not considered polite. "That's right, hon. The weather is a problem for us here."

"Oh believe me, we sympathize," Jacob informed him immediately, reacting to Ryan's condescending tone. "We're from Washington."

"I don't know where that is," Ryan said breezily.

"Funny, that doesn't surprise me," Jacob growled.

Seriously. Was it even possible for two men to be in a room together without eventually challenging each other to a duel? "Jacob," I said through my teeth. "Why don't we go—unpack." I had to get them away from each other, which unfortunately meant that I had to end up with one or the other of them—but I'd been dealing with Ryan for days now, I was going to take a shot at dealing with Jacob instead.

When I grabbed Jacob and dragged him out of the room, though, I had to admit I was fully prepared for some bloodshed. Jacob and I were those kind of people who were always going to clash, always, like two rams butting heads over and over, knocking their brains loose, knocking themselves silly. If either of us had been weak in any way, or stupid, we would have gotten along so much better.

Surprisingly, we didn't actually kill each other. We were too busy with our current problems to do that, especially the one where Sam was flying to London and I wanted him to go away. By the time we'd finished calling home to get Sam's flight information, and slogged through the obligatory hours of convincing everyone that I was fine and healthy and yes, coming back someday (maybe), we had of course missed Sam's connecting flight completely. This made me punch a wall.

Ryan poked his head in the guest room after I did this, no doubt trying to figure out what the sudden smashing sound had been. He saw me with my arm halfway in the wall and raised his eyebrows. "Leah—is everything okay?"

"Yes," I said blackly, pulling my fist out of the wall. "Everything's fine. Sorry about your wall."

"It's fine," he dismissed with a wave of his hand. "I wanted to come see you two anyway."

"Oh yeah?" Jacob said suspiciously. "About what?"

"Sun's almost down," Ryan said. "We were going to head off hunting soon, I just wanted to see if either of you wanted to join us."

"Join you?" I echoed. I had to admit, I was curious—they were the kind that shifted only under the full moon, I hadn't seen them as wolves yet. Then again, there was something about the way Ryan said the word hunting.

"Yeah," Ryan told me. "Best three days of the month, Leah. It'll be lots of fun—we'll run around London some, kill some humans. You should come."

"Excuse me?" I repeated. "Kill some—humans?"