When Graeme had finished at the council, it was already dark out. He made his way through the familiar forest but didn’t see it. All of the new information about the clandestine alyko project was running through his mind. It was so much.

He had flipped through pages and pages of research that Zosime had given him from some Norwegian physicist, not understanding any of it. But apparently once alyko were secretly tagged by a suspecting lycan, the future use of their abilities would become visible through some reaction in the transfer of energy in their environment. From the little that Graeme understood, it seemed the mechanism for identifying the tagged alyko had something to do with measuring sudden unusual entropic conversions in the alkyo’s surroundings.

Graeme had been gone from the treehouse far longer than he had planned, but the sheer amount of information available on alyko in that private library that Zosime had brought him to was overwhelming. In addition to the physics research, Zoe directed him to an area filled with firsthand accounts of malicious alyko and alyko abilities gone wrong.

What he had read in that library made his parents’ murders look like a drop in the bucket. It was as if everything he had personally understood about the alyko in his childhood was the result of some kind of sheltered fairy tale. It made what happened to his parents seem… inevitable. And shockingly merciful in comparison.

There were tales of lycan children being taken and sacrificed to the old Celtic goddesses of winter—of torturous rituals surrounding these sacrifices that aimed for the highest amount of pain inflicted on the children before they had the means of their lycan wolf counterparts to defend themselves. Of their grieving families. Of packs in chaos.

Their were tales of seduction and deceit. Of alyko from centuries past who had grasped for power at every turn. They were masters at disguising their intentions and could make enchantments to mask their true identities and to make others forget their pasts—and even their mates.

There were purportedly alyko who had even murdered their goddess-given lycan mates. And alyko who had attempted enchantments and divinations only to harm and maim and kill innocent bystanders. There were alyko who had plotted for lifetimes, waiting for their plans to come to fruition in which packs would be stolen and innocent lycans destroyed.

None of these stories squared with what Graeme had known of the alyko in his pack as a child. And it certainly seemed at complete odds with Maggie. His parents could not have been wrong about Maggie. They could not have been wrong about the alyko. Why would they have protected them and defended them if there were any truth to these stories?

And yet. And yet… Graeme couldn’t deny that there was a small corner of his heart that wished for the stories to be true. He could feel the promise of complete relief from every guilty thought that had weighed on him since his parents’ and the alyko’s murders so many years ago. If Maggie and the alyko had been behind the plot to kill his parents—if they had somehow fooled his parents into believing them kind and peaceful and loving—then justice would have been carried out. Graeme would have no reason to hold this guilt in his heart. It would be a welcome relief to be able to blame Maggie.

Graeme stopped with that thought, resting his hand against a tree and looking up into the dark leaves that danced gently overhead. No. He knew the guilt he held was right. He knew Maggie was blameless. Her gentle face and words resurfaced in his thoughts again, and he grimaced with the familiar pain that accompanied it.

“Children died here, Graeme. Alyko children. Were they to blame?” he gritted his teeth, refusing to let the tears come. He didn’t deserve to cry. What would that weakness benefit anyone?

But… were all those ‘firsthand accounts’ of the alkyo wrongdoings—going back centuries, and in so much detail—were they fabricated? Where had they come from? He had never seen them before or even heard whispers of them. If it were possible that all—or even part—of those volumes of stories had been fabricated, then there was another dangerous entity at work… one that remained unknown to him.

And that was perhaps even more terrifying. Because, as far as Graeme knew, which he was becoming quickly aware was not far, no one was tracking that entity. Those unknown individuals—in their unknown numbers—weren’t lighting up on a board somewhere for others to surveil. They were working diligently in the shadows. Plotting. Creating volumes of stories. Possibly seeking to annihilate an entire sub-species of lycans: the alyko. And if that were the case, the alyko were in need of far greater protection than he would have ever guessed.

A heavy foreboding had settled in Graeme’s chest immediately upon seeing that ominous black map. Recalling the map’s twinkling points of light, Graeme lifted his eyes to the dark sky overhead. If given a reason, would other packs exterminate their alyko members? Would the alyko who were living peaceful, private lives amongst the humans be hunted?

He couldn’t shake the feeling that this was his fault. The murders of his parents, the murders of the alyko in his pack—those were in the past. But now there was a massive global operation to mark and track every alyko in existence, and it was apparently initiated here, from his pack. Why did he imagine he could outrun this? Why had he left?

As Graeme was finally nearing the treehouse on his distracted walk through the woods, he came to an abrupt halt. Someone was sitting, unmoving, against his tree. A warning growl began in his throat and rumbled all the way down his arms and legs into the instinctive curl of his fingers and toes. Someone had gotten to his tree—near his mate—and the thought turned his growl into a vicious snarl that spread quickly through the dark surroundings.

But the figure didn’t move. After stopping to sniff the air cautiously, Graeme sprung forward toward where the person was slumped, unmoving.

“August?” he called out worriedly, sliding on his knees next to her side and grabbing first her hands before reaching to cup her cheeks.. She was wet and ice cold.