I played with a quarter during the meeting. I flipped it over and over again, trying to call heads or tails. I did this because Sam's words were overwhelming. I'd missed so much. So I distracted myself by wondering if I could use the canvas to predict the future, an effort that had so far been fruitless. Heads, I thought. Flip. Catch. Tails. I frowned. Tails, I thought. Flip. Catch. Heads. Heads, I thought. Flip. Frustrated, I reached for the canvas around the coin, pinning it down in space. It floated, frozen in the air at my light touch. The meeting fell silent. I looked up. Everyone was staring at me. The coin fell, clattering onto the floor.

"Sorry." I pocketed the coin.

"You see?" Paul said, pointing at me. "That's what I'm saying. She's a game changer."

"Making a coin float is not a game changer," Sam said, rolling his eyes.

"You know what I mean. The other stuff. She turned three leeches into gravel and brought Jared back from the dead. That's a game changer. Oh shit, sorry Leah." Leah stood and marched across the room. She was out the door before Paul could even finish his lame apology, slamming it behind her with so much force that the wood split, leaving a long, angry crack down the middle. The following silence was deafening.

"I can fix that after," I offered.

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose, taking a quiet moment to recover. "Our problems are more complicated now. Crimson's project is still running. The protests are getting bigger, but Crimson is showing no signs of stopping construction."

"Yeah, but that's a human problem," Paul said, waving his hand. "We just kill the bloodsuckers. We haven't seen any since the last four, and if more come back, Kim could probably have that covered on her own."

"There may be more bloodsuckers at Crimson. They might just be biding their time, planning a strategy of attack."

"Yeah that's what I'm saying," Paul said. "If they send a leech army or something, we can just sic Kim on them. And can't Kim just like, shut down the whole drilling thing too?"

"How would I do that?" I asked.

"Um with your creepy witch magic?" The duh was silent, but heavily implied. Sam thumped his head back against the wall, eyes trained on the ceiling. His hands shook, but only for a moment. I huffed a sigh and went to fix the door.

Paul's plan was delivered with what struck me as a lot of confidence from someone who'd fled town just a few weeks ago. I wondered if Sam regretted asking me to track Paul down. In spite of all of Paul's annoying suggestions, I did not. For one, Paul wasn't in great shape when we found him. He'd been wracked by guilt at the thought that he'd left the others behind to die, and when he heard that we had survived the attack, he was relieved to tears. So touching.

Second, it was fun. A few days after I'd returned, Sam called a meeting. He asked me if I could track Paul down. Jared protested, but I just nodded slowly, composing my face in an expression that I hoped resembled sage wisdom, and I insisted that I needed relics, objects of great importance to Paul and Rachel, in order to find a link to the locations of their souls. Then, I'd sat in the woods, holding Rachel's old ballet slippers in one hand and Paul's Xbox console in the other, humming a low note for a few minutes before announcing that the pair was in Tulsa and providing their current GPS coordinates. After a good moment of open-mouthed shock, Jacob announced he had enough energy for a long run. Sure enough, he found them sleeping in their car behind a billboard not far from the location I'd provided. Jacob used his Beta-level powers to order Paul to drive home, and then he joined them for their road trip, glaring at his pack mate and his older sister in the rearview mirror for the entire trip.

Secretly, I'd known they were in Tulsa before my performance. Earlier that day, I'd discovered that all I had to do was picture their faces on the canvas to see where they were, but I had to admit that the theatrics were fun.

As for how I could go about shutting down a drilling project, I had no idea. Also I wasn't really sure I wanted to. As much as I wanted to help, I was wary of the canvas now, not for where it had led me, but for where it had left everyone else. When I'd woken on the beach that night, drenched in seawater and dehydrated to the point of delirium, I worried I was too late. When I found Jared that night, broken and dying, I thought that pushing my power that far, killing the vampires and then healing him, would send me deep, down to the other side of the canvas. I knew I might die, or at the very least, tumble back into the world of the raven and the whale, and maybe never find my way back again. I was willing to do it to save him. I didn't hesitate, but as I leaned over him, looking into his eyes and touching his face, I whispered goodbye, just in case. I don't know if he heard me.

I didn't die. For a terrifying moment, I felt myself slip down into the canvas, but not so far that I couldn't pull myself out again. The struggle left me drained, too exhausted to address the burning ruin behind me or to even raise my head and call for help. Cold and trembling and fully spent, I lay down beside Jared, who was unconscious but breathing, willing his body heat to warm me. Sam found us a few minutes later. Quil, Leah, and Jacob came next. Jacob circled his burning home. Quil, Leah, and Sam stared at me as if I were a ghost as I tried to explain to them what had happened through chattering teeth. They kept their distance for a while, as if they were too afraid to get close enough to touch, but eventually helped. Sam ran home to get his truck. Leah lay down next to my other side. Quil wept. Jared slept.

From the moment Jared woke up, I knew I had to be careful with the canvas. I couldn't risk slipping away again. I owed him that much and far more.

I'd grown used to his staring. It confused me when I first met him, but the longer I spent with him, the more comfortable I felt. And once I'd joined the pack and stared at myself through his eyes, I understood and accepted it completely. His staring was different now. Just as consistent, but now tinged with fear. He used to look at me as if I were the center of his world. Now there was a desperation in his eyes, as if his entire world lay on the verge of crumbling away.

Every night we slept in Jared's room. For some reason he didn't have a dresser anymore. I wondered what had happened to it, but didn't ask. I imagined him, enraged by my sudden absence, phasing and smashing it to pieces. A few nights ago, I noticed him watching me after we'd turned out the lights, putting so much effort into keeping his eyes open that I almost laughed at him.

"Go to sleep," I whispered. I reached a trembling hand out to stroke his hair. He usually cut it every three weeks, but it was long enough to fall into his eyes now.

"You first," he mumbled, taking my hand from his hair and pulling it down, tucking it against his chest where it was warm. I didn't think much of it and fell asleep a few minutes later, but then I noticed that he did it every night, waiting for me to fall asleep before he even let himself shut his eyes. No wonder he always looked so tired.

We were never apart. I felt his eyes on me as ate and slept, felt him listening to my footsteps to and from the bathroom. Sam didn't ask Jared to patrol as it seemed I no longer had the ability to join. I hadn't been able to phase since I'd gotten back. I always felt too cold. Too drained. So we sat in Jared's room or basement, walked on the beach, occasionally ate at the diner, and pretended that the protests weren't happening. That Crimson wasn't bulldozing our land unopposed. That Jacob and Billy weren't homeless, staying with Sue after losing a lifetime of belongings. That Seth wasn't dead.

I wanted to fix everything, to walk onto the Crimson construction sites, chase off the contractors, and repair the land. Raise the Black's house from the ashes. Raise Seth from the dead. Instead I played it safe with the canvas, limiting myself to coin tricks and door repairs. I didn't tell the others why.

We were frozen. Sam was losing confidence in his leadership decisions and was now too afraid to make a call. The others were losing motivation and low on energy. For weeks we'd been waiting, watching for some unspoken signal. I may have been imagining it, but I felt like their eyes were on me. I didn't know how I felt about it. Months ago, that observation would have made me feel elated, validated as a true member of the pack, but it didn't affect me as much now. I no longer questioned my position in the pack. Even though I couldn't phase anymore, I finally knew I belonged here. Maybe because for the first time, I saw myself as a member of the tribe.

Jared needed time to feel ok again. I understood that, but he didn't seem to calm with time, and his constant watching made anxious. It was a weight on me, and even though it was a weight I felt I'd earned, I needed time alone to think. To heal. So that night when he was in the bathroom, I silenced my phone and texted Sam.

Me: I think it would be good for Jared if he could patrol again.

I held my breath, willing him to respond.

Sam: ?

Sam: He can come back whenever he wants.

Me: I didn't say he wanted to, I said it would be good for him.

Sam: He'll know you asked as soon as he phases.

Me: I know.

I stared at the phone screen, waiting for Sam's reply. I wasn't sure whether he would take my side. He usually sympathized with Jared. All Jared had to say was, what if it were Emily? And Sam was convinced.

Sam: I'll have him run tomorrow noon to 6.

Me: Thank you.

On the other side of the room, Jared's phone buzzed. He checked it when he came back into the room, after his customary poorly concealed sigh of relief that I was in fact still in his bed as I had been five minutes ago. He frowned at the little screen.

"What's wrong?" I finally asked, even though I knew.

"Sam wants me to run tomorrow," he said. He looked back at me with that frantic edge to his stare.

"Probably about time, right?" I asked.

"Will you be ok?"

"Yeah," I said. "Of course. Are-will you?"

"Yeah, definitely." He didn't sound sure, but I wasn't sure whether he was trying to convince me or himself.

The next day I kissed him goodbye at noon. He looked scared.

"It's just a few hours," I said. He nodded, gave a nervous wave, and disappeared into the trees. Moments later, I flinched at the sound of his low, mournful howl. He must have just learned the reason Sam asked him to return. I stared at the spot where he'd vanished for a long time, expecting him to come running back through the trees. He didn't come. I stood longer, frozen and completely at a loss for what to do with my alone time. I walked to the beach. I saw Leah there, sitting on the pebbles.

"I didn't know you smoked," I said. Leah looked up at me with red-rimmed eyes.

"I just started." She coughed a few times, then swore, and put out her cigarette on a rock.

"Throw rocks with me," I said. Leah obliged. I couldn't throw them as far as I used to. Leah beat me for distance every time.

"It's starting for me," Leah said.

"What?"

"Your powers." She tossed another rock a few feet in the air and it split in two before it landed. I blinked at her, shocked. She shrugged. "It started after Seth died. I started having those little blackouts. Or visions. Whatever you call them. I started seeing the canvas. I can use it now. Just like you."

I froze, struggling to find my breath. After the shock faded, I nodded. "I guess that makes sense."

Leah scoffed. "Sense!? Nothing about it makes sense."

"I think the power... I think we discover the canvas when we're angry."

"Anger makes us wolves."

"No it's-" I shook my head, trying to find the words to explain. "It's a different kind of anger. The kind of anger that comes from feeling helpless. Or hopeless."

Leah's face crumpled and she let out a single, soft cry. It was so sudden, I just watched her for a moment as she started to shake, shocked, before tears welled in my own eyes. I realized that as close as I felt we were, until now, I'd never seen her cry. I wrapped my arms around her. We stood still for a long time, I listened to her cries and the waves.

"When are we going to make them pay?" She asked me, her voice thick and clotted with tears.

"They're already dead."

"Death's not a punishment for their kind." I shivered, remembering that I'd said that myself long ago. "I want to take something they care about. Starting with their project."

"How?"

"Any way we can."

I tightened my arms around her, then felt them slacken. "I'm sorry, Leah. I want to help. Really. But I don't know if I can."

Leah pulled away, shrugging off my arms to glare at me. I shivered, instantly cold from the sudden loss of her warmth. "What happened to you?"

"I'm honestly not sure," I said. "I think I kind of got stuck in a dream." I didn't think it was a dream, but I couldn't think of a better way to explain it.

"Well that dream made you soft." I flinched but didn't answer. "The Kim I knew would never back down from a fight. You would've never let anyone tell you you're not capable, not even yourself."

"It's not me I'm scared for," I said. Then I shook my head. "Or maybe it is, I don't know. But mostly, it's Jared."

"Jared needs to learn how to take care of himself."

"What was he like when I was gone?" Leah didn't answer. She didn't really have to, and I wasn't sure I wanted to know the details. I sniffed. "I think I broke him. I can't risk doing that again. I'm sorry."

Leah glared at me until she started to shake. "Fine," she said, standing up. "I'll do it myself then."

"Leah?" I scrambled to my feet to follow her. "Leah, wait. Wait." I grabbed her shoulder. She could have shaken me off, but she turned around to face me instead.

"I was going to ask you to teach me," she said. "But if you won't help me, that's fine. I'll figure it out on my own."

"Please don't-"

"What? What are you going to say? That it's dangerous? I know that." She ground her teeth and turned to scowl at the water. "I get it. You can't take risks because if something happens to you, Jared will fall apart. Fine. But don't try to stop me. No one will care if something happens to me."

"I'll care," I said. "And what about your mom?"

"Leave my mom out of this," she snapped. "And you're one to talk. I know you've been avoiding yours." I flinched. Leah deflated a little. "Sorry."

I had been avoiding my mom. Jared wasn't the only one who had taken my disappearance hard. Actually my mom seemed to have taken it worse. I couldn't think of a defense for myself so I said, "you need to think about yourself too."

Leah rolled her eyes without a trace of humor. "I'm going to do this. With or without your help."

I shook my head. "Nothing can bring Seth back."

She stared at me for a long time. Some of the fire left her eyes revealing a depth of sadness in its place. I wondered how much of it was new, and how much had been there this whole time, hidden behind her endless anger and grit.

"I know." Leah's voice was broken and small. She looked up at the trees, shaking her head, fresh tears leaking from her eyes. She swiped them away, as if she was annoyed that they'd appeared in the first place. "Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something. Maybe I'm supposed to do everything alone." This time I didn't stop her as she left. I just gazed out at the water, feeling cold from the pit of my stomach to my fingertips. I knew all too well what it felt like to think you had to do everything yourself. It hurt to see Leah thinking like that. I was tired of thinking like that.

A wolf protects her pack. The transformer's words echoed in my mind. That was my duty. I knew that. And still, I was failing. So much had happened while I'd been gone. I'd done so much damage and for the most part, damage control was failing. I kicked a rock, frustrated. How was it possible to have literal superpowers and to feel so powerless at the same time? I felt the canvas, taunting me as it always did in the corners of my vision.

All I wanted was to protect my pack, but it was more than just my duty. More than my burden. The pack protects each other. I felt something like a heat within me. A faint tremor. A ghost of the wolf that once lived inside of me. She was out of reach, but that didn't mean she was gone.

The thought of fixing everything had been so colossal, so overwhelming that I'd been too afraid to try to fix anything at all. But I wasn't in this fight alone. And I didn't have to fix everything at once. I was allowed to start small.

I walked through the woods, following a familiar path less than a mile before I reached the smoky ruin. The Blacks' house. I stared at the charred wood for a few minutes deliberating before I carefully raised the canvas and draped it over the remains of the structure.

I worked in small sections, stopping myself between every few feet of repairs, assessing my body temperature, my energy levels, my position on the canvas. The sun was setting by the time I had pieced together the last window, fusing shards of glass together until even the cracks were no longer visible in the dim twilight. When I finished, I stepped back to admire my work. I was cold to the point of shaking, and there was a sheen of sweat over every inch of my skin, but the relief of having accomplished something tangible had eased the tightness in my chest. My next breath came easy.

I heard a car pull up behind me. It was Jared. I couldn't read his expression as he stepped out of his truck. I froze. What should I say? How could I explain? I didn't have time. He walked right up to me and wrapped his arms around me, holding me tight, kissing my hair, and, as always, chasing the cold away.

"You've been busy," he said, and he smiled when he looked at the house. "It looks great."

"Thanks." In that moment in his arms, I remembered how things were before everything had fallen apart, and somehow, I could picture putting the pieces back together again. We would start small. We would go slow. And most importantly, we would do it together.

"Let's get you warm."

I melted in his arms, then turned and straightened up press my lips to his.

Then next night, I stalled in the yard outside mom's house, slapping mosquitos while I stared at the lit windows. My house, I reminded myself. I lived there too, even though I hadn't been inside in so long. I took a deep breath to steel myself, then walked through the front door.

"Mom?" I called out. She didn't answer, but I found her in the living room. She was staring at the TV, which wasn't even on. She looked up at me as I walked in, but she didn't say anything. Her expression betrayed no emotion at all. "Um… I'm home?" I announced shakily. My voice was so high it sounded like a question. I looked at her, mouth open as I tried to come up with better words. She regarded me for another moment, expression flat and unchanging, before she returned her gaze the blank TV screen. I started to cry.

After what felt like hours but was probably only minutes, she stood up, cautiously walked over, and hugged me. "I'm sorry," I whispered into her shoulder. She was silent for a long time.

"I thought you were gone for good." I could hear the tears in her voice, which only made mine flow faster.

"I'm so sorry," I said again. I would never be able to say it enough.

"What happened to you?" I'd been hearing that question a lot. And I was so accustomed to answering with a lie, honesty took a few moments of mental rehearsal.

"I became a werewolf."

Mom backed up holding me at arm's length. Her expression was grim. "That's not funny Kim."

"I know," I said. Mom opened her mouth but closed it again. Something about my expression must have stopped her. "Great-great grandpa's stories weren't just nonsense. They were real. I've known for a while, almost since we moved here. Jared's a werewolf too. So are Quil, Sam, Jacob, Embry, Leah, and Paul. Seth was one too. Uncle Quil and Aunt Tina know. They knew from the start. I became one over spring break Junior year. I…" my voice broke. I almost stopped speaking, but I found my courage. "I was in a bad place. Something bad happened and- and I got so angry. And then bad things kept happening." I trailed off, shaking my head as if that would clear it. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I'm sorry for lying to you." I rubbed away tears so I could look into her eyes. They were so wide I could see the whites all the way around. "I'm ok," I said, smiling through my tears. "I'm going to be ok. I'm going to get help now, and you should too. We have family here. It's ok for us to lean on them when we need to. They want to help us. Just like we would want to help them if they needed us."

Her wide eyes brimmed with tears. "I wanted to help you too, Kim. You wouldn't let me." I pulled her close and held her tight, burning from guilt. "No more secrets?"

"No more secrets," I promised. We held each other for so long the knot in my throat began to loosen.

For some reason, as we stood locked in each other's arms, I pictured Jacob's house as I began to piece the smoldering wreck together, bit by bit. The distance between my mom and I that had widened and widened over the last few years was finally beginning to narrow, and if we kept working at it, eventually even the cracks would fade.

A/N: One more chapter to go! I'm not crying, you're crying! I'm just... sweating. Out of my eyes. Thank you all for reading and sharing your thoughts on this story! I appreciate you all!