Page 17 of Dark

It took a second to realize the table had fallen silent. That I’d dropped my fork. That maybe I’d spoken a little too loudly.

Brody and Cal exchanged a look. I lowered my eyes, skin crawling as Ben studied me over the platter of coleslaw.

August, now having the undivided attention of the table, seized his moment. “She had a huge bruise—”

“That’s enough.” And while Ben’s reprimand was directed at my brother, I had the distinct feeling it was really intended for me.

After we were dismissed, I escaped to the bunkroom. A wrapped present waited on my bed, plain blue paper with my name scrawled on a slip of a tag in shaky old-man cursive.

A queasy feeling formed in my stomach, the same one that had come on Christmas morning when Sofia found me hiding in the closet and dragged me, all but clawing at the walls to get away, down to the family room where for the first time I could remember, there was a stack of presents waiting for me.

It was stupid, because you would think after so many years of sleeping in the laundry rooms of people who didn’t want me, and coming home from school wondering if there was a chance there might be Tater tots or maybe even chicken nuggets for dinner only to find my social worker’s car in the driveway and my clothes in a trash bag on the front porch, a stack of presents would have made me happy. But in a world where nothing was permanent, hope was like swallowing a mouthful of crushed glass.

And no matter how many times Ben and Sofia insisted August and I were staying for good, eventually they were going to figure out why no one else had wanted me. And why I always went to bed early on the nights it was my turn to change the trash bag.

The package from Ben’s father was rectangular, flat and clinked suspiciously like drawing pencils. Picking it up, I moved it over to the dresser and set it down carefully as if it were a bomb.

Stretched out on his bed tossing a football, Dallas snorted. “Just open it, freak.”

West threw a pillow at him. “Shut up.”

Stomach in knots, I stripped out of my clothes and shoved a pillow over my eyes, ignoring them both.

Hayden Crowe.

I didn’t sleep the rest of the night.

4

Ethan

EVERY TIME SOMEONE IN MY FAMILY told me to stay away from Hayden Crowe, I knew what they really meant.

Because you’re fucking poison.

Yeah. Message received.

My loft was nine hundred square feet of hardwood floors, minimalist furnishing, and an entire wall of windows with a wide balcony that faced out west over the Texas Hill Country at sunset. Most of the space in the main room was taken up by a white leather sectional and a reclaimed Russian oak coffee table centered over a Moroccan high-pile wool rug. A galley kitchen with stainless-steel appliances complimented the eat-in bar behind the sink. An open doorway led to the bedroom where a platform bed was covered in a dark-gray plush duvet.

Not that Hayden noticed any of it. Reeling from the effects of the rising moon, she stormed past me up the stairs and locked herself in the bathroom while I stacked up the pile of sketchbooks strewn over the coffee table, tossed yesterday’s empty Sprite bottles in the trash, and checked the meat supply in my freezer.

Good thing, too, because sure enough, it was barely an hour later when a scream and a snarl nearly made me throw my laptop, Zoolander-style. A small black wolf stood in the doorway to my bedroom, pale violet eyes flicking between the shuttered windows and the door.

“Nice try, but it’s bulletproof glass.” Pausing Game of Thrones, I rubbed my eyes. This wasn’t my first rodeo. Ben insisted every one of us have a safe room capable of containing a feral wolf. “And in case you’re wondering, I don’t care how cute your ears are, I’m not holding an ice pack on your head while you bite me.”

She growled. Yeah, totally understood that one. Smirking, I headed over to the refrigerator.

“Okay. We don’t have to be friends. But that door is locked, and only one of us has opposable thumbs.”

That earned me another growl. I pulled out the defrosted hamburger I’d been planning to grill with August on Saturday. She whined.

“Oh, so that’s how it’s gonna be, huh?”

Half an hour and a pound of raw chuck later, which of course Hayden made me toss to her in bites in exchange for not eating my couch, because we both knew we were playing her sick little game here, she padded over to the refrigerator. Parking her butt in front of it, she shot me a withering look over one shoulder.

“You’re gonna have to ask nicely.”

She bared her teeth in the wolf equivalent of, I can smell you’ve got chocolate in there, bitch. I rolled my eyes.