Nothing seems wrong until it is far too late.
It's a late evening in summer, the air just starting to nip at her with the cold teeth of fall, and she is walking home from a cheer practise run far too late. Her feet drag tiredly across the ground, her body aching from the punishment it has been put through. Her eyes are fixed on the pavement and the steady rhythm of her feet carrying her home; her mind is far away, worrying at what her parents will say about her late arrival.
She runs straight into him before she even notices he is standing on the sidewalk. They both almost topple over from the impact, stumbling apart and blinking in surprise.
"What-" he begins to ask, at the same time as she says, "I'm so sorry!" and then he stops abruptly, staring at her.
Addison stares back, confused. He looks familiar, in a way, even though she knows she's never seen him at school or even around Seabrook. "Hi," she says dumbly, because there's something in his eyes that says he's confused too, and maybe that means they should stop and talk.
She's wrong. The moment her face softens, his grows tense, his eyes darting away from her and his shoulders hunched. "Sorry," he mutters, just loud enough for her to hear, and then he turns tail and walks away from her as fast as he can, back the way he came.
Addison stares after him, a thousand questions on her lips and only the empty air left to ask them to.
In the corner of her eye, a flash of blue catches her attention. A stone, caught in the cracks of the pavement – no, a necklace, an ornate carving hung on a string of soft leather. It glows slightly in the half-light of the evening, illuminating the ugly grey of the sidewalk with a soft blue.
Zoey would love it, she thinks idly, as she reaches to pick it up, gathering the string in her fingers. The little girl loves things that glow, like most of the zombies do, and it's pretty too. If Addison gave it io her, she'd probably put it on and never take it off. She wonders where she could get one.
"Hey," she calls as she straightens, the stone dangling from her fingers. "I think you dropped somethi-"
The street is empty, all the way down to where it meets the main thoroughfare, the boy lost to the night like he was nothing but a shadow, or a figment of her imagination.
If you imagined him, you wouldn't have the necklace.
Maybe he will come back for it, she muses, and contemplates leaving it here on the sidewalk, so that he knows where he can find it. Unless someone else picks it up. Maybe she should take it with her, just in case. I'm sure he'll find me, she thinks as she gathers it properly into her hand. If she tells herself that she's not secretly pleased that he might never come back, she's lying.
She turns for home, her fingers closing over the stone. She could swear it feels warm against her palm, and that she can hear a hum emanating from its depths, some ancient song that seems familiar and yet completely foreign at the same time.
Her head aches at the sound of it; closing her eyes, she rubs the fingers of her free hand against her forehead, trying to ease the sudden pain, trying to find a reason for a headache that comes so quicky.
When she opens them, it is dark, and she is standing in a forest, the stars blocked out by the overreaching branches of the trees.
"What the-" she squeezes out, her breath caught in her throat. The necklace slips from her hand; as it hits the ground, turning over and over in the soft peat of the forest floor, the world darkens, the colour draining from her vision. "I – what-"
"It really is her," a hard voice says from somewhere in the trees, cold as iron and sharp as a knife.
"I told you I saw her. Why would I lie?"
"You've imagined weirder things before."
"Hello?" Addison calls, peering into the shadows. Are the trees talking to her? It can't be possible; but then neither is the flat grey of her vision, the swirling shadows or the sudden fatigue that is setting into her bones even though she hasn't moved.
"You should pick up the moonstone," the first voice says, and a pair of yellow eyes emerge from the tree line, framed by a sharp face and a head of wild curls. A boy follows at her shoulder, his face familiar – because just a moment ago she'd watched him walk away, and then she'd picked up his necklace, and then she'd-
And then what?
"Where am I?" she gasps, backpedalling as they advance to maintain the distance between them. "Who are-" Her foot catches on the root of a tree, clumsy and blind in the dark, and she falls, the air in her lungs all escaping at once when she hits the ground. She sucks in another breath and tries to remember what came next.
Nothing comes to mind.
"You're in the forest," the boy says, a hand on the girl's arm to make her still. "You walked here. Don't you remember?"
"No, I-" The forest is several miles out of town, the road from her quiet suburb long and rarely used and sealed in cracked asphalt that would carry no footprints. How had she walked all that way? And why would she-
The boy. She'd seen him on the street before she blacked out. Her eyes widen in horror, her body twisting as she scrambles backwards until she hits the thick trunk of a tree, staring at him like she might see the truth if only she looks long enough.
"What did you do to me?" she gasps, out of breath all of a sudden. "Who are you? Why – what did you do?"
Beside him, the girl with the strange eyes huffs and shakes off his grip. "I told you this was a bad idea," she snaps, scowling deeply.
The boy pushes her away, crouching so that he can look Addison in the eye. In the dirt, his fingers gently pry the necklace out of the dirt. Her eyes are instantly drawn to its soft blue glow, the only colour she can see in the whole, dark forest.
"My name is Wyatt," he says softly, offering her a weak smile that she doesn't return. "That's Willa. We don't want to hurt you."
Willa scoffs. Wyatt shoots her a pointed look, but her eyes have turned away, roaming the abstract shapes of the trees like she's already bored.
"We're here to help you," Wyatt says, his eyes returning to Addison. They shine with an earnest honesty it is hard not to trust as he offers her the strange necklace in an open palm. "This is for you."
"I want to go home, Wyatt," she tells him, shying away from the bright allure of the stone in his hands. She can't take her eyes off of it, not even to follow his movements as he creeps a little closer.
"You are home," Willa snaps behind him, impatient and unreadable. Wyatt's eyes narrow, but don't turn.
"It will all make sense if you take the stone," he says instead, a little more insistent than before. "Then you can decide what you want to do."
"Decide – what?" She gapes at him, searching for understanding. "I need to go home, my parents-"
"Don't worry about your family now," Willa says. "You've got bigger problems than being home in time for Mummy to tuck you in. You need to-"
"Willa," Wyatt snaps. Even his raised voice is soft and kind, compared to the ice and cold iron of the girl that looms over him, the lines of her body tense with impatience.
Comforting, that's what he is. Earnest and careful and sympathetic, except that he has probably kidnapped her and she should probably be more worried about that than she is.
She can't take her eyes off that necklace, though.
He notices her staring at it, leans forward so that it is within her grasp. "Do you want it?" he asks. "It's yours, you know. It's always been yours."
"Who's confusing her now?" Willa hisses somewhere in the background, but it is not loud enough to break the spell. Addison reaches for the stone before she realises she is doing it, transfixed; inside her, something says this is right, this is what you want now, her heart beating like a jackhammer inside her ribcage.
The moment that her fingers touch its cool surface, and the warmth of his rough skin surrounding it, her world explodes into colour, the trees suddenly coming into clear, sharp focus around her.
Alarmed, she snatches her hand away again, and the world falls with it, plunging her back into darkness. "What – what's happening?" she stutters.
"Here," Wyatt says and then, before she can refuse, wraps a hand around hers and turns it palm-up, tipping the stone into her grip.
The colours rush in again, the green and brown of the trees, the soft brown of his eyes and the yellow of his shirt, the pale white of her skin, stark in the blue moonlight that washes everything out. Colours she's never seen before, dancing in and out of the branches as the trees move; and noises too, where before the forest had seemed deathly silent.
She sits there, stunned, and gawks at the world around her that is so far removed from the one she knows, with no idea how she got there or where she'd come from in the first place.
No. She knew where she came from. She came from home. Or was she going home? Confused, she shakes her head, like she can shake the wall out of her mind and remember. What was she worried about? Her parents…or Zed…or Wyatt, who she's only just met?
She can't remember. She can't remember a thing.
Does that bother her?
"Put the moonstone on, and it will all make sense," Wyatt coaxes. There's something sad in his eyes, a remorse she can't place.
When she ties the stone around her neck, it doesn't seem so important anymore. Neither does the night, or…or…or…
"Who am I?" she asks, looking from Wyatt, to Willa, and back again.
Above her, Willa smiles with a mouth full of sharp teeth. "You're the Great Alpha," she replies. "Aren't you?"
Wyatt looks sad as he stands, dusting himself off to avoid her eyes. She can't think of a reason why he should be sad. "I think so," she replies as she gets to her own feet, looking around with bright eyes. "Why am I…here?"
Willa steps forward, her fists clenched and her eyes triumphant. "Because you know where the moonstone is hidden," she says.
Addison pauses, searching her memory. It's like walking in a cloud, lost in an empty fog, until suddenly she finds something not recent, but bleached with time. In the real world, her body turns unbidden in the direction of the sea – and Seabrook, its lights glowing bright in the eastern sky.
"I know where it is," she says, her eyes flashing yellow and her memories empty except for the vision of a large stone trapped underground and the tug in her chest that says this way.
ooo
On their last day of school, at the start of the rest of their lives, Wyatt walks her home.
It's not unusual for him to walk her to her door, hand in hand – she lives on the edge of town, and he lives just outside of it, past her house and out into the woods – but it feels different on this day. His fingers are tense in hers, colder than usual, and his brow is pinched in worry even as he smiles and asks her how her day was and listens intently to her answer.
"I have to tell you something," he says as they cross the road into her street, and she's been expecting it for so long that she isn't even surprised when the words come out of his mouth.
"Okay," she says slowly, squeezing his hand in the illusion of comfort. "What is it?"
He stops in the middle of the street, drawing her to a halt in front of him. The tarmac is warm beneath their feet, the sun beating at her back. It reflects in his eyes in flecks of gold, warm and welcoming – and yet he looks at her with a pain she can't understand.
"I'm going to New York," he blurts, all in one breath. "With Willa. I'm not staying."
"What?" She rocks back on her heels and drops his hand, her mouth hanging half-open in shock. "But we agreed – what about all the stuff we talked about? You said-"
"Things have changed," he explains, scrambling to provide answers to the questions that clamour at the forefront of her mind. "I was talking to Willa last week, and – well, New York has a better program, you know, and we can afford it, and…and she's my sister, I don't want her to feel like she just has to go off alone or stay here forever…"
He watches her with wide eyes as she digests this, standing helpless in the street with his hands hanging limp at his sides like he knows everything he could possibly say will not be enough. Addison stares back - in anger, in horror, in desperation, hoping still that he might just be joking.
"I thought we were going to stay together," she whispers, and swallows down the first tears before they can fall. "We had a whole plan, and you're just…leaving? Just like that?"
"It doesn't have to be like that," he says, reaching for her hand. She shies away, out of his reach, leaving his fingers outstretched in the empty space between them. Pain paints itself across his face. "We can still be together. We have the whole summer before college starts, and I'll call you every day, and-"
"You didn't even ask me," she says over the top of him, because she doesn't have to listen to know that it's not going to work. They can spend all the time they want together this summer; if he goes to New York, so far from her and from little Seabrook and the state university she's already agreed to attend, she will never get him back.
It's in his eyes, his gaze that can't quite meet hers, in his shuffling feet and his weak excuses, this snap decision he's been holding from her for days now. If he leaves Seabrook, not even she will be enough to pull him back.
She should be angry – and she is, in a certain kind of way. There is no anger in her voice though, when she asks, "Why didn't you tell me you weren't happy staying here?" She is only curious, looking for some way of understanding what he's doing, so that she can just put it behind her when she is ready.
"I thought I was," he replies helplessly. Even he doesn't know what he's doing, she thinks, but she doesn't voice the thought. "But Willa…I'm sorry, Addison. I didn't mean for it to be like this."
She takes a deep breath that doesn't quite reach the bottom of her lungs. When she lets it out, she feels just as breathless as before. "It's okay," she tells him anyway. "If this is what you want, then…"
"It is." He's quick to answer, but still, he seems uncertain. It makes her tired just watching the conflict chasing its own tail through his eyes; she can't even bring herself to ask if he is sure, or to beg him not to give up on them so easily. She just wants to go home, just wants it to be the end of summer already, so that she can go to college alone and forget about him and not have to sit here for weeks and weeks and know he is still just up the road like he has been their whole lives.
"Well," she huffs in a breath, stuffing her hands in her pockets. "I guess this is goodbye then."
"It doesn't have to be," he tells her again, but she's already shaking her head. No matter what he says, it feels like an ending. She doesn't want to prolong it.
"I'll see you around, Wyatt," she says, like he's a stranger she's passing on the sidewalk, and turns towards home.
"Addison-" he calls one last time, but she is already gone, and she doesn't look back.
He doesn't chase after her.
That, more than anything else, makes it an ending.
ooo
They learn to fight in a bend in the river, pushing against the lazy current and each other, their mouths filling with water each time they are too slow, or not grounded properly, or take too big a leap and miss their targets.
As they grow, they leave the river for the soft sand banks, and then for the ever-changing mountain terrain, but the memory of the water remains. It stays with them like a phantom pain, burning at their throats and aching in their chests when they stumble and fall in the wilderness, when a deer leaps unscathed from the valley, never to return.
They think she's never known the sharp granite and loam of the river water, because they always let her win.
They're wrong.
"Again," he says as she rises from the water, her hair dripping with silt and sand. She coughs the river of her lungs and spits it back into its basin, wading onto the sand bank where he stands waiting.
"Isn't that enough for today?" she asks, pushing her hair out of her eyes. Her moonstone glows at the nape of her neck, its power trickling through her aching limbs, but even that cannot combat the fatigue that settles in her bones, arguing loudly against buffet of the river current.
Wyatt straightens, sluicing water from his skin. He looks good in the summer sun, his skin darkened by the long hours spent out in its warmth, the markings on his arms gleaming deep purple and vibrant yellow, washed clean by the river. The moonstone turns his eyes to gold even as he relaxes, its old and ancient power staring back at her as she averts her eyes and pretends she wasn't looking at him so intently.
"I thought you wanted to practise, Alpha," he taunts, but only lightly; he is tired too, even if he would push himself past breaking point without even needing to be asked, for her.
"We've been here for hours," she argues, wading through the water towards the shore. "I can't even feel my legs anymore."
"It was your idea to do this in the river," he reminds her, but he follows her out of the water anyway, throwing himself down on the bank beside her.
Addison scoffs, wringing out her hair. "Well I'm not good enough to practise anywhere else," she points out.
"You're not that bad," Wyatt insists. "You're just…a little bit behind, that's all."
For a long moment, Addison is silent; tense, like she's reticent to speak her mind (you can always talk to me, he tells her constantly, I can keep a secret, but still, she doesn't quite believe him).
"The Great Alpha is a natural at everything," she says eventually, bitter, but carefully so, aware that there could be listening ears lurking in the forest.
Wyatt laughs. "Is that in the prophecy, or did someone just make that up? I don't remember that being in the prophecy."
"I think it's implied," she replies, her fingers running idly through the sand they sit upon.
"Do you ever think the prophecy is wrong?" she blurts out, and then snaps her mouth shut and twists to examine the woods around them, fearful that someone might have heard her.
Wyatt doesn't move, leaning against his knees with his head turned to watch her in calm indifference.
"No," he answers simply, bringing her attention back to him. "Do you?"
"Yes," she scoffs. "How long has it been since there was a prophecy fulfilled? How long has it been since anyone has seen the moonstone? I'm supposed to find something that's been missing for a thousand years, but I can't even win one sparring match?"
"You make a pretty good Alpha, at least," he reasons, a smile playing on his lips despite himself.
She shakes her head. "Willa makes a good Beta, you mean."
His smile disappears. "I'll say what I mean," he tells her, and his eyes blaze with a light so intense that she forgets to argue with him any further.
"It just seems impossible sometimes," she mumbles instead. "Like I'll never be able to find it. Or like I missed it somehow, years ago, when the elders started getting sick."
He hums, non-committal, and stares down at the ever-shifting pattern of the sand, mulling it over. She's left with nothing to do but watch him in the silence that follows; she has spent her whole life trying to figure out the missing piece to this puzzle, and she is long since out of ideas to try and solve it.
She watches him breathing instead, the rise and fall of his chest steady and calm, recovered already from their time in the river. His markings draw her eye, the ink stretching and moving with her skin. She would count them but she knows them all by heart already, memorised over the years as they have gradually appeared, in tandem with her own.
She doesn't look down at her own arms. It makes her skin crawn to see the marks there, long slashes of purple cutting across her forearms, her shoulders, even her hands. Unearned, in her opinion; by the grace of her moonstone, filled with more power than any of the others her age could ever dream of, or by sheer good luck at the right times. Not by her own skill or cunning. Not if she is honest with herself.
"Addison," Wyatt says suddenly, breaking her from her reverie as he shifts in his seat. "I-"
Whatever he is about to say is interrupted by a long, rolling boom of sound, loud enough to shake the trees and send ripples across the surface of the river. She feels it right down in her chest, deep and angry like a storm overhead, and sits up very straight, turning towards the noise.
"What was that?" she asks when it has passed, her voice no more than a whisper.
Slowly, Wyatt stands, offering her a hand to help her to her feet. Somewhere in the forest, the pack howls, but they don't call back; instead, Wyatt grabs her hand and pulls her forwards, through the trees and up a sharp, rocky incline. From the top they can see the forest, stretching out before them, and a glimpse of the sea between the mountains, and on the edge of that…
The smoke, rising in a tall plume from the centre of the human settlement.
She feels sick, looking at it, wondering if it is a fire and if it will spread to the forest, if it would be able to burn everything from the ocean to the den. Her stomach turns and her chest constricts, and then – and then she coughs, loud and aggressive and raw in her throat and the bottom of her lungs, sucking all the breath out of her without giving her room to take a new one.
She realises then, as Wyatt turns and stares at her with wide, frightened eyes and a moonstone that flashes a sickly yellow, that it isn't the misfortune of the humans that is making her feel sick.
"Wyatt," she gasps, far too late, and as her legs slip out from under her, the whole world goes black.
ooo
The woods are cold and dark, bleached of colour in the moonlight and painted in shades of grey that blur around her as she runs. She's following her feet, following a shadow, following a tug in her chest that she can't understand, but has to obey. The faster she goes, the sharper her teeth as she snarls at the creatures that lurk in the night, the more she is caught in the thrill of being alive.
The shadow pulls her up short, an arm thrown around her waist as she weaves between the large boulders that litter the hollow valley. She slips and then rights herself, her reflexes faster than her thoughts ever can be, and twists in his grip. His back hits the rock hard enough to make him grunt. Her hand curls around his shoulder.
"Easy," he mutters into the skin of her neck, and she realises that she is gasping for a breath she won't take, her heart pounding so hard it's going to break her ribs. She squeezes her eyes shut and focuses on him; his heart, steady against the frantic rhythm of hers, and the heat that rolls off his skin.
"Why did you stop?" she asks. All the way to the mountains, they'd agreed, far enough to exhaust the itch that lies under her skin and digs its claws down into her bones, demanding that she go, that she run, that she scream at the stars and watch the mountains tremble in fear before she travels on and on into forever.
(What is forever? Nothing is forever, he'd said as he took her hand, let alone the call of the wild.)
"Because I wanted to," he replies and grins like he is some wicked, wild thing she will never tame, even though he is pinned between her and the rock.
Because I wanted you, but this isn't some quiet corner of the den, or the orderly streets of her old home, far away, where he is sweeter than sugar and lazy in the sunshine. This is the empty wild, and they are alone; his muscles tense, his eyes glowing molten gold, blinding in their intensity.
A shiver runs down her spine as she looks into them, drawn on and on by their light with no way out, his fingers sliding under her shirt and across her bare skin, taking every inch that will bring her closer to him.
She leans into his lips before he can pull her to him, putting him out of his misery. His mouth is warm, and he kisses her like he will drown if he doesn't, like he is a bonfire and she is the wood that keeps him alive.
She wonders, somewhere in the back of her mind, if she should be afraid of the fire, or if it is meant to burn her up and leave her in the ashes of his passing. She's not sure if he is fate or fortune, or if this is never meant to happen at all.
"Stay," he gasps against her lips, like she was thinking of leaving, like in the blink of an eye she could be a whisper, or a shadow, or a pile of bones on the floor. "Stay here, with me. Forever."
Her heart sings. Her stomach churns. "Nothing is forever," she reminds him and presses her teeth to the hollow of his neck to silence him.
Why are you afraid? her mind asks for him. You know you won't leave.
And she won't, it's true. She won't even go to the mountains, now that they are here, now that his claws are digging into her skin and her breath is lost somewhere in his lungs. That is how it is meant to be, even if he is a bonfire and she is carved from dry wood and wilted leaves, even if something is not the way it is supposed to be.
"Stay," he says again when she allows him a breath, a moment. "Not forever. Just stay with me."
She should take care in answering. She's taken care in thinking about it these past months; she's been weighing her options since the first day she saw him, since she put that moonstone on and followed him into the woods. The first time she kissed him, sat by the river in the rain on a very bad day, she'd been wondering if it was a good idea, if this was the life she was meant to lead. She was still wondering when he'd pulled her from the den that evening, so many weeks later that anyone but him would think she'd already made the choice.
Well. Willa knew. Willa wouldn't trust Addison until she heard the promise come straight from her mouth, and Addison wouldn't say anything to Willa that she doesn't absolutely mean.
Willa would also tell her she thinks too much. And she'd be right, however condescending she'd be when she said it.
"I'll stay," she says, and ignored the way her chest tightens at the finality of it, the closing of so many doors behind her. "Of course I'll stay. I always will. Forever."
Nothing is forever.
He doesn't search for the certainty in her voice. She hopes he never will.
ooo
She chases the shadows through the woods, cold and grey, over the river and into the valley. The shadow reaches for her but she doesn't feel his touch. The mountains beckon, the moonstone begs, and she doesn't stop until the red light of dawn splits the sky in two and she realises she has wandered very far from home.
"Wyatt?" she cries to the mountain peaks she can't see, shrouded in morning fog.
Don't look back, the mountains say in return, and open a way forwards for her. There is no way back, only stone and forest and the dark of the fading night, outshone by the dawn.
She goes on, as far as she can, as far as her bones will allow. Behind her, her fire flickers out, unable to be seen for the trees. Maybe they are cursed to wander, restless and hopelessly lost, forever. Maybe forever is only until their bodies are covered by the next winter's snow.
ooo
The ground shakes and the school splits in two, and like the answer to a prayer she'd never sent, the light of the moonstone pulls them down and down and down into the ground.
The tunnel is hewn by hand and hundreds of years old, filled with fallen rock and rotting wood. We should turn back, someone says as the world rocks beneath their feet. She pushes past them, pushes onwards like there is nothing left behind her and salvation lies ahead, like if she stops to look behind, she loses everything she's ever loved.
When she reaches the end of the road, she arrives alone.
Why did you forsake them? the moonstone asks, humming softly beneath her fingers. It fills her veins with crackling electricity, with power she's never felt before. For a moment, she thinks she can do anything.
Dimly, she is aware of the boom of falling rocks behind her, the ragged breaths of the trapped and the silence that fills the space that is left. "They were dying anyway," she says out loud. Her voice echoes off the strange, smooth walls of the room, too small to fill up the space. She doesn't know how to feel about that. She tells herself she feels nothing at all.
Wicked, wild thing, the crack of the roof says, louder than any protest she could voice. This is not what you were supposed to be.
I will make it all right, the moonstone replies, and she is so blinded by its light that she almost doesn't feel the roof caving in.