A/N: I know, I know. I've been away for almost an entire year. The first year of college really knocked me off my feet in a way I wasn't expecting. But the summer has brought the writing bug back, and my heart has brought me back to this story because...well, because. Because I'm strangely attached to these characters and I couldn't seem to shake them. I hope there are still some of you out there with an interest in reading. Hopefully, if all goes well, I will keep my interest in writing.

Carnivorous, adj. Addicted to the cruelty of devouring the timorous vegetarian, his heirs and assigns.

–Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

chapter five

Aurora chased an enigma through the labyrinth of her sleep-fogged brain, and unexpectedly stumbled across the biting clarity of wakefulness. Reality hit her in the chest with the force of a physical blow, and she leaned heavily against the headboard as the past and the present penetrated her consciousness. A few deep breaths, and she pushed that knowledge away for later inspection, turning all her focus on swinging her feet over the edge of the bed. She flattened one foot at a time into the bare floor, left, then right, and was relieved at the dull ache that flared in her ankle. Even if she couldn't deliberately direct the flow of healing energies in her body, she nonetheless convalesced at rate that would shock most doctors.

Somewhere, a guitar string was struck.

Memory jolted to the surface, reminding Rory of why she had slipped into awareness in the first place. A few more discordant notes followed, ringing mutedly in the hallway. She settled the remainder of her weight over her toes and staggered to the door, shaking off the aftermath of the deep, dreamless sleep of the dead and the exhausted. Her feet slid soundlessly over the icy hardwood of the hallway, never daring to stay in one place too long, drawn forward by her own private siren song. Narrowing down the source of the sound, she passed several doors before sidling up to the edge of the one opposite the stairs. She held her breath and peered around the doorframe, intent on catching a glimpse without being seen herself, and met with Dillion's silently laughing blue eyes. He sat on the edge of a bed—his bed, she assumed—dressed in old, threadbare khaki cargo shorts and a plain white shirt, dark hair fondly tousled by sleep, his eyes astonishingly bright and alert and—most alarming of all—focused on her.

So much for covert. She couldn't simply inch away from the door and pretend nothing had happened, and she couldn't will herself to disappear—though she felt small enough at that moment to actually be invisible. Her only option was to own up to her sneaking and move all the way into the doorway.

"Hello," she attempted to say casually, but it emerged more timorous than she imagined it would. She couldn't for the life of her decipher why the simple act of speaking had suddenly become an uphill battle. As self-conscious as she was, she had never been particularly intimidated by boys. In fact, they made her less nervous than teenage girls; their motives were easier to identify and understand, and they made for simple, uncomplicated friendships—heck, she'd even dated one or two of them. She wasn't entirely comfortable with admitting why Dillion was an exception to all those boys yet, but her shyness around him had little to do with her head and much to do with the fluttering of her pulse.

"Mornin'," he greeted her smoothly, only frustrating her further. How did this come so easily to him?

"So," she attempted to recover her composure, "is this your morning ritual?" She gestured vaguely at the acoustic guitar resting across his thighs. "Rouse the household with rock'n'roll?"

He flashed her what she was already terming his "wolf-ish" smile, the one which revealed miles of preternaturally white enamel and alarmingly sharp canines. "If I really wanted to wake anyone, I would have plugged in the amp," he said, and the laughter had migrated from his eyes to his voice. "Come in." He patted the empty space next to him at the edge of the bed, and she couldn't dredge up any reason to refuse.

It only took a matter of seconds to cross the distance, but it could have been a century in Rory's mind. Suspended in the uneasy space between door and bed, every detail was strangely sharp, emblazoned on her cornea as if sealing this moment in her memory forever. The whole room was decorated in shades of blue, like being submerged suddenly into an underwater world, which only contributed to Rory's suspicion that she was in over her head: sapphire paint on the walls, denim comforter, steel blue lampshade on the dresser, ultramarine rug struggling vainly to conceal the exposed floor. A teal blanket folded in the corner was the only lingering sign that Ulf had slept there. Though one had to wonder where exactly Ulf had found space to stretch out since two amps, an electric guitar, and an assortment of cases claimed the majority of space in the room. There were posters on the wall: the Rolling Stones, Muddy Waters, the Beatles, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix. On the floor was a broken-spined copy of Whitman's Leaves of Grass and emerging from under the bed was the corner of Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. All of this made for a confusing puzzle of information, and at the same time a straightforward snapshot of the life of Dillion O'Connell.

Rory cast a hesitant glance at the side of his face as she settled herself carefully beside him, but Dillion was too preoccupied to notice her nerves. He patiently plucked a few more strings, satisfying himself with instrument's tuning. Rory watched his fingers, long and nimble, and she identified the source of the callouses she'd been so acutely aware of last night. She allowed the last note to die before attempting to speak again. "I assume you play?" she said as innocently as possible. Stupid question, she thought, riding a growing wave of humiliation.

The way his eyebrows rose sent an unspoken message that he considered her words a challenge. Without turning his eyes away from her, Dillion unexpectedly plunged into the opening chords of Creedence Clearwater Revival's Bad Moon Rising. He hummed the first few notes before joining his voice to the song:

"I see the bad moon arising
I see trouble on the way
I see earthquakes and lightnin'
I see bad times today."

The smirk that never abandoned his mouth or his eyes said that he understood the irony of the song, and he enjoyed every moment of it.

"Don't go around tonight,
Well, it's bound to take your life
There's a bad moon on the rise."

His hands ceased moving, his palm falling against the strings to stifle the music before the song had reached its conclusion. He was looking at her, and in the depths of the arctic ice of his eyes she caught a fleeting glimpse of something elusive, unexpected: hesitation. Dillion was waiting, waiting apprehensively on her approval, and Rory felt the stirrings of sympathy for that anxiety she knew so well. Dillion deserved something better than the standard 'wow' or 'that was good', something that could wash away any doubt he might have in himself.

"This is what you do, then." She ran a finger reverently along the neck of the guitar. "You're the next werewolf rock star."

She was rewarded by a short bark of laughter. "I'm not that delusional. This is just a hobby. What I really want to be is a pediatrician." He wrinkled his nose. "Not that sounds any less ridiculous when you stick 'werewolf' in front of it."

"Alright, you're the next werewolf pediatrician-slash-closet-rock star." She frowned. "That's not quite as catchy, though. I think I prefer rock star."

"You're right, of course," he said with his lopsided smile. "It is catchy—catchy but not all that practical. I'll make a far better pediatrician."

Rory was feeling confident enough to lift her chin and raise her eyes to Dillion's. Her dirty dishwater blonde hair was cut in a chin-length bob, parted to the left so that at any given moment her hair usually fell forward to mask her blue eye. But just now, looking up at him, it had fallen away from her face, revealing a strikingly mismatched pair of irises. To most people, the juxtaposition of her brown eye and her blue eye was a disorienting sight that often made it difficult to bear Aurora's direct gaze—but Dillion O'Connell hardly counted as an average person. The werewolf was distracted by the motion, all conversational niceties flowing out of his mind as he was astounded by the uncommon, unconventional beauty of his soulmate. Distantly, his brain conjured up the memory of a Siberian Husky.

"So," she attempted a fluent segue with mixed results, "do you know any songs that don't mention the moon?"

He blinked, caught slightly off-guard by the inquiry. "Well, those happen to be my specialty, but yes, I do know other kinds of songs."

"May I hear one?" She tried to sound hopeful without bordering on begging.

There was a faint flush of rose in his pale cheeks, too indistinct to actually term a blush. "I'm not used to having an audience," he protested as politely as he could. "Besides, I've already entertained you with one song. It's your turn to impress me with your musical genius."

Rory reluctantly accepted the guitar he offered with an almost inaudible protest, settling it across her lap, and set her lips in a grimace. "Oh, you're in for a treat. Lucky for you, music was my worst class in high school." Strange to say 'was'. They would both be heading to college in the fall. What did that mean to this blossoming relationship? That wasn't a question she was prepared to answer.

To cover her mental hesitation, she strummed all the strings in one swoop of her hand, glancing sideways at Dillion with an almost-smile. She plucked another combination of strings, resulting in a cringe-worthy twang. "You're a natural, kid," he declared with as straight a face as he could manage. She made a dismissive sound, rolling her eyes at him. "All you need is a somewhat competent teacher." He scooted the few inches of separation she had retained between them, his thigh aligning parallel with hers. "May I?" His arms slid past her sides before she could coordinate her rebellious muscles into a consenting nod. He reached to cup each of her hands in his, guiding them along the body of the guitar. His chest pressed lightly into her back. She promptly forgot how to breathe. "Here, try this one: place a finger here and press one here and brush your hand here..." Together they coaxed a legitimate note from the instrument. "And voila."

He was staring into her eyes, smiling his slightly comical praise at her. She was too dazed to look away, and because their height difference was virtually nonexistent when sitting, her most direct line of vision was exactly eye-level. She was caught in the vortex of Dillion's watery blue eyes, sinking, drowning, free-falling deeper into something that she wouldn't dare to name. She saw him—but not seeing in the physical sense. She saw emotions like colors, read thoughts like words on a page, watched memories like abbreviated films. But he was still so distant from her, veiled and hazy behind a few layers that had yet to be striped away. Something tightened in her chest, wrenching her forward. Oddly enough, it hadn't occurred to her to be remotely afraid.

Dillion sensed it too, their minds edging closer like raindrops merging on a pane of glass. A little further, a little closer, and he would know every intimate detail, be immersed in her just as she would be in him. He felt a disquieting stab of panic. Dillion didn't lie to anyone if he could avoid it, and there were some things in his mind that for them to drawn involuntarily out him would seem too much like a deception. There were certain things he had to find the courage to say before this connection was complete, irreversible. He fought for the words: I don't deserve this. I killed two shapeshifters last night. I killed them–I didn't let Ulf touch them. He's so young and innocent and...and good. I couldn't let him carry something like that on his soul. Not Ulf, he's better than that. So I killed them. To protect you...because—because, as crazy as this sounds, I love you. But the only part that reached his lips was, "I love you."

The guitar slipped from Rory's limp fingers. Dillion caught it before she could even blink, disentangled himself from the knot of limbs they had formed, and set it delicately aside. "Wow." He rocked back a little, running a hand through his hair with an unsteady laugh that was meant to break the tension between them. "That didn't come out at all like I expected. I mean, we haven't even had an official date yet, or anything else remotely normal." He shook his head, the last of their link vanishing, air rushing in to fill the spaces between them. "Here, I've got a deal for you. I'm going to invite you downstairs for breakfast, and I'm going to whip up something for us to eat, and we'll both forget I ever said that, okay?"

Rory nodded dumbly, but a bit childishly she crossed her fingers where they lay in her lap. She was all too agreeable to breakfast, but she didn't intend on forgetting anything.

°°°

For a nocturnal creature, Dillion was remarkably a morning person. His brother and sister, however, were much more consistent with Aurora's perception of werewolves, leaning heavily on the kitchen table with bleary eyes. They had only roused themselves at this unholy hour to say their farewells to Rory.

Casey levered herself up on her elbows as the witch entered the room on Dillion's heels and attempted a bright smile with miserable results. "Sleep well, Rory?"

"Mmm," Rory hesitated at her unexpected welcome, "yes, surprisingly well." Dillion pulled out the chair beside his sister at the table and waved the witch into it with a half-bow. Rory accepted the grandiose gesture with a small, embarrassed smile which she cast at the other two occupants of the table. "And I have Ulf to thank for that. It was incredibly sweet of you to lend me your room."

The youngest O'Connell flushed and took a sudden interest in the patterns on the place mat in front of him. "It was nothing. Any somewhat-decent person would have done the same."

Casey smirked and delivered a swift kick to Ulf's kneecap under the cover of the table. Her younger brother barely suppressed his instinct to growl in pain and outrage. Dillion, who observed the exchange from his vantage point across the kitchen, prudently concealed his own smile behind the open refrigerator door.

"Slim pickings today," the dark-haired boy observed to no one in particular, shifting the attention of the room from the mortified teen at the table. "What would you say to me frying up some bacon?"

Her one visible brown eye going wide, Rory leaned forward in her seat so that she could peer around Dillion's shoulder into the depths of the refrigerator. Piled on the shelves were a few steaks, a slab of pork, and some chicken breasts. She blanched. "I'm…a vegetarian," she barely managed past the lump in her throat.

"A what?" demanded Ulf, his embarrassment forgotten as he stared unabashedly at the older girl.

"A vegetarian, idiot," Casey hissed acridly. "It means she doesn't eat meat."

"I know what it means," her younger brother shot back with a snarl that bared his teeth.

"Then don't ask stupid questions," Casey reprimanded with a roll of her eyes.

Dillion's polite cough cut decisively through the hostility building between his siblings with well-practiced efficiency. "That certainly changes things," he said simply. "What about…eggs?" Rory nodded her approval, and he rewarded her with the appearance of his single dimple. "Eggs it is." He scrambled around in the back recesses of the shelves and brought forth a styrofoam container which he placed on the counter, and then bent down to retrieve a pan from a cabinet beneath the sink.

Rory, afraid she might have been caught staring, turned her eyes back to the younger teens at the table, only to be struck with the realization that she had nothing at all to say. She was silently cursing herself for not being more proficient at small talk when a knock on the front door precluded any need for her to speak.

Dillion set aside the egg he had been about to crack and raised one dark brow at the pair of redheads at the table. They regarded him with equally blank expressions. With a sigh, he turned off the stove and stepped away. "No one jump to their feet," he said with artificial benevolence. "Big brother to the rescue."

°°°

Werewolves made Keller uneasy. Not for any shallow reason people might suggest with their oh-so-clever dog and cat jokes. No, the distrust ran deeper than that. With any other species, you had some inkling of where their loyalties might lie, though there was inevitably an exception or two. Vampires were solitary creatures, loyal to themselves first, and any other allegiance was secondary and easily abandoned in favor of the first. Witches had an almost unswerving, single-minded obedience to their Elders, and now the Witch Child. Shapeshifters had an ancient allegiance to the First House—unless, of course, a dragon came along.

Werewolves had the greatest capacity for blind, passionate, and often violent loyalty of all Night World creatures—but they also happened to be a wildcard. Werewolves were inherently social animals, and they held themselves to the strict code of pack, but who they chose to consider pack varied outrageously.

In years long past, werewolf pups had been stolen from their mothers and sold for small fortunes to power-hungry witches and vampires. They made the perfect soldiers for their collectors' private armies, strong and ruthless and completely selfless. The pups were raised in the households of their captors, pampered and praised and deceived to foster a love for their masters until they were old enough to send into battle. Many an innocently faithful werewolf had died in the service of a feudal vampire lord without ever realizing they were merely glorified slaves, expendable if expensive flesh. And the image of the werewolf had never recovered from those forgotten days; they'd been slaves so long it was almost a relief to be considered second-class citizens. The only thing that had changed in recent times was that the werewolves, having realized the value of their own devotion, now sold themselves to the highest bidder.

The majority of werewolves these days were little better than common mercenaries, and placing your trust in one would cost you a pretty penny, if not your life.

Silas had insisted on parking his car quite a way up the gravel road from the O'Connell house, obstinately convinced that any hint of his presence would put the werewolves on edge. Consequently, Keller and Galen were forced to walk by themselves some distance in silence, Keller scrutinizing their surroundings while Galen was absorbed in his own thoughts. But as the two-story home loomed a hundred feet or so in front of them, Galen skidded to a halt, grabbing his soulmate's elbow to swing her around to face him.

"Keller..."At that moment his eyes were forest-dark and pleading for understanding. "I've been thinking, and perhaps I should do the talking?"

Her pride wasn't as wounded as it might have been had Winnie or Nissa said the same thing. Besides, he was still asking her permission, and he had a valid point. Keller had an uncanny ability to say the wrong thing at the wrong time, but Galen was a diplomat, born and raised. She offered him an almost-gentle smile in hopes of erasing the unease on his face. "Might as well," she allowed. "I don't mind, as long as I still call the shots at the end of the day."

"Always, Boss," he agreed solemnly as he leaned in to steal a quick, thankful kiss. Then he released her and led the way up the steps to the front porch. Keller followed at her own easy pace, cautiously skirting an alarmingly rotten board, and by the time she reached him Galen had already knocked on the door. It was still some time before there was any discernable movement inside, though, and the pair exchanged anxious glances. Keller tapped her toe distractedly.

Then the entrance swung open, and a figure loomed up, nearly filling the entire frame. Stunned, Keller took an unconscious step backwards as she flicked her eye over the werewolf in a swift appraisal. Even steady Galen paled in comparison to the sheer bulk of him, excessively tall and broad but composed entirely of lean muscle. Dark hair and pale skin—the hallmark of someone who spent the majority of their time out-of-doors under the cover of the night—but her gaze snagged on those pale eyes, unguarded and expectant, and the brilliance of his welcoming smile, easy and unassuming.

Alright, she concluded silently. So he's all brawn and no brains. He doesn't look like he'd have the sense to swat a mosquito.

"What can I do you folks for?" the boy—no older than her, Keller estimated—drawled in his charming accent. "You must have gotten pretty turned around to end up at our door."

"Oh, we're not lost," Galen recovered his own rattled composure with bumbling charisma. "As long as this is the O'Connell house, that is."

"Sure is," the werewolf offered with what appeared suspiciously like reluctance. He swung an arm around his neck and rubbed back and forth there absentmindedly. "Though that's certainly a new one. I'm sorry if I seem rude—it's just we don't get many visitors out this way. If you don't mind, I'd like to know your business before I invite you inside."

"Of course," Galen demurred graciously. "We were only wondering if we could speak with Liam for a few minutes?"

The teenager favored them with another one of those carefree grins that seemed to be engineered to convince others that he was completely harmless. Keller was beginning to have her doubts. "I'm afraid no one gets to him without going through me first." His tone was agreeably light and friendly, bordering on joking, but there was a seriousness about it lurking in the edges of his voice that raised the hackles on the back of the shapeshifter's neck. "If you wouldn't mind being more specific?"

The golden-haired prince hesitated, unsure of how much to give away, before settling on an approximation of the truth. "We were hoping Liam could help us with a problem of ours. There's a missing girl—uh, a witch, actually—and we—"

The smile never wavered on that handsome face, but somewhere a barricade slammed down in those watery eyes, turning them to ice. Keller shot her soulmate one of those looks only the two of them understood; this one said: Careful. This doggie has teeth. The werewolf cut smoothly and sweetly through Galen's voice, "I'm sorry. I'm afraid there's some long-standing disagreement between the witches and ourselves. I could tell Liam, but I don't think he take too kindly to the idea. You'd best be on your way."

He moved to close the door in Galen's gaping face, but Keller's patience for his sugary act had run out. She jammed her foot in the rapidly disappearing opening and leaned in close, her nose only coming to the middle of that large chest. "Listen, fleabag. I don't deal with guard dogs. I want to talk to Liam. Now."

"Easy, miss," he soothed, looking down on the top of her head. "There's no need to sling around words like that. Don't forget whose territory you're standing in."

"Don't threaten me," she hissed between her teeth, astoundingly feline. "You don't know what you're doing. That girl—"

"I know exactly what I'm doing." He nudged her boot with the toe of his tennis shoe. "I'm closing my front door. Now, if you wouldn't mind moving your foot—before I take off something you might miss…"

Galen's hand wrapped around her upper arm, but Keller stumbled back of her own accord. The whole porch seemed to quake as the door was slammed with undeniable firmness. Whirling around in a cloud of dark hair, Keller grabbed the boy beside her by the wrist and began half-dragging, half-marching him in the direction of the car. Her vision was foggy with barely-leashed rage.

"That's it," she snarled. "We're going back to tell Silas he can find his own daughter. I had a bad feeling about this from the beginning, but now I know why. No more traipsing around in the woods, and absolutely no more werewolves. We're headed to Baton Rouge come tomorrow."

"I don't think that's why you had a bad feeling." Galen's voice was soft, thoughtful, but he made no effort to slow their progress.

"Why, then?" Surprisingly, it wasn't the least bit sarcastic. Sharp, yes, but mostly just tired. His fingers wrapping around hers were taking the sharp edges off her anger, leaving behind a weary frustration.

"Aurora's in trouble. Real trouble. You couldn't leave someone behind like that."

"I could, and I will," she gritted. "It's not my fault that some witch spooked at the first sight of blood, that she was stupid enough to bolt off into the woods in the middle of the night. She's not my responsibility."

"But it's not that simple, is it? If she were just some witch, the Council wouldn't be involved. And the Council is your responsibility. You won't leave, Keller, because you're better than that."

Keller dug in her heels, bring them both to a dizzying halt. She half-turned to stare at the fair-haired teen, her gray eyes narrowed with agitation. There were parts of that statement she could argue with and parts that she couldn't. She was sworn to something bigger than herself, and she wasn't going to shirk on her duty to the Daybreakers. "I'm not staying for the witch," she reminded Galen sullenly.

"I know," he said conciliatorily, but he couldn't completely suppress the slight smirk hovering around the corners of his mouth.

"And no more werewolves."

"Absolutely," he agreed. "We'll manage fine without them."

The frown faded off her face to reveal a slightly perplexed turn to her lips. Keller loosened her death grip on Galen and slid her fingers through his, before beginning to thread her way back to Silas. "You shouldn't always be right," she grumbled to no one in particular.

"I'm not," he protested faintly. "You would have come to the same conclusion yourself eventually—we may just have been in Baton Rouge by that time, is all."

Sometimes his naïve faith in her infinite goodness petrified her. She was just one person, just as liable to make mistakes as the next, though hers often had more catastrophic results than average. It was difficult enough to know that all his fragile hopes were resting on her without wrestling, as she had the past few days, with the hopes of all his shapeshifter people weighing on her too. Galen was so simple, but he made her life so complicated.

She didn't voice any of her concerns, though, just shook her head and said, "Let's go tell Silas the werewolves are a bust, shall we? I'll bet Alma will be pleased with the outcome, that old witch."

°°°

Dillion could hardly see through the blackness crowding his vision. He leaned heavily on the door, back pressed to the solid strength of the wood for support, as he tried to gain some control over the unsteady rhythm of his breathing.

They had come to his door. He had left them an unmistakable warning, and they had still come to his home, come so close to her. Rage and terror struggled equally in his murky brain. Who were they that they would ignore so blatant a sign? Were they that powerful? Had he really driven them off this time?

The wolf inside him howled in protest. They had entered his territory. They had challenged his dominance. They had threatened his pack, his mate. The primal part of his persona was drowning his attempts at rational thought.

He should get out, he knew. Go for a run, shed this skin and let the wolf chase its frustrations through the underbrush. But he couldn't leave her, not when they were so close, not when there was danger on every side. He had to get a hold of himself.

A shudder threw him against the door with dreadful force. Blinding anger funneled him with reckless speed into the change, and his piercing fear prevented him from putting on the brakes. He barely managed to shove his favorite shirt over his head before his fingers turned to claws. Body bent, limbs twisting, sinews snapping and tightening, he surrendered himself to the wolf.