He had kissed her. Jack didn’t mean for it to go that far, but looking at Everly’s arm and seeing how red and swollen it was, hearing her say that the scratch had gotten bigger, and just looking at how awful it looked, it was upsetting in a way he couldn’t even put into words.As much as he wanted to stay there with her, he also wanted to get home. He needed to talk to his dad. He needed to get into the library and start looking through the books there. A lot of them were hundreds of years old and written in German. A few of them were in French. Some of them had to say something about what could be done when a person with DNA like Everly’s was infected by a shifter to prevent them from being transformed into a werewolf.It was nearly impossible to let go of her. She smelled so good, like strawberries and vanilla. Her hair was silky smooth, and he could hear her heart beating rapidly in her chest. It had sped up the moment he’d touched her. Bei

Nerves bubbled up in Everly’s stomach all morning. Jack knew there was something bothering her, but she was able to explain that by pretending that it was just her arm that was bothering her. Every time he looked at her like he wasn’t sure what was the matter with her, Everly would just reach over and grab her arm.Mr. Donald was lecturing for most of their history class, so that was something. It gave Everly the opportunity to think about what she was about to do without having to talk to Jack. If he had any idea that she was about to sneak out of school to go and have lunch with Slate, it wouldn’t matter to him what information the member of the Licht pack had to say to her. He could know exactly what happened to her mom, and it wouldn’t matter to Jack. There’s really nothing that Slate could say to her that would be good enough to justify the risk that she was taking.But then… if she had already been scratched by Rider, what dif

Something was wrong. Jack had gone through the line and gotten his lunch, choosing a few more items than normal in case Everly didn’t have time to go up there herself after she dropped her assignment off, but it seemed to be taking an awfully long time for her to swing by her English classroom.Something just wasn’t right about this entire scenario, and as he picked at his food, he had to wonder if she was okay.“Where is she?” Alyson asked, glancing around. “Surely, she’s okay.”“I hope so,” Jack said, also looking around. “I don’t know. It just doesn’t make any sense.”“You said she was acting weird in class?” Chase asked him. “Like weird how?”“Like… just nervous about something, I guess. I thought it was because of… the other situation.” He had to be careful what he said with Sophia sitting at their table. “You know&hellip

Jack could hear Everly crying when he closed his bedroom door. He didn’t slam it, even though he wanted to, but the loud rock music had helped him get a little bit of the anger out of his system, and he saw no point in continuing to let her know he wasn’t happy with her.He was pretty sure she’d gotten the message.Besides, even though he was hurt and angry that she’d done something so utterly stupid and dangerous, he still cared about her. He certainly didn’t want her to die.He still needed to figure out a way to keep her from turning into a horrible monster with the full moon, which was coming up in just over two weeks, so… he couldn’t stay mad at her for too long.He’d been up most of the night digging through books in the library, trying to find something in the ancient texts that would tell them what to do. He’d pulled out every book he could find that might say how to reverse what Rider had done. He&rs

When Everly woke up the next morning, she was surprised to see she had a text from Jack.“Do you need a ride to school?”She stared at it for a few moments, half wondering if he this was some sort of trick. If she said that she did need a ride, would he say, “Too bad,”?She didn’t need a ride, though, so she sent a text back saying, “No, thank you. My dad can take me.” Thankfully, there were enough bars that it sent.A minute later, the response, “K,” came through.She couldn’t blame him for being succinct.Getting up, she headed to the bathroom to take a shower, hoping the water would help wake her up a little. She’d stayed up too late looking at that book. Nothing she’d found had been too helpful. But then, she hadn’t known if she should skim or read the whole thing word for word. She’d started off skimming but then decided that wasn’t helping much, so she’