Jack was waiting for me when I got home. I walked through the front door, not even bothering to sneak back in. He was sitting in the living room alone, the blue light from the TV screen washing across his tense face. It wasn’t tense with anger, though, but fear. His eyes were blown wide, and he jumped up the minute the door closed behind me. “Celeste,” he said, his voice nearly panicked. I gave him a wide-eyed stare in return. I was expecting a lecture, not this. “Jack? Did something happen?” He took a few steps toward me and grabbed my arm. His grip wasn’t too hard, but just enough that it had me uneasy. “Where were you? What happened?” He seemed to take in my disheveled hair and tear-streaked face. “I went out with Matt.” “What happened?” he demanded, his voice wavering a little. The look on his face was still one of panic rather than anger. It made my muscles instantly tense. Why was he acting like this? It was so out of character for him. “I was upset. We just went some

MattA rustle in the nearby underbrush had the three of us halting in our paths. We’d been scouring the woods for hours, looking for another rogue. There’d been talk of another one being spotted near here by a few drunk kids, and we were desperate to find it before sunrise. We couldn’t let it hang around here where it could potentially hurt someone.I looked sideways at Enzo and Nina. We were all still in our human forms, but in an instant the three of us shifted. Power moved through me, and I readied himself to fight.Nina pricked her ears toward the trees, and I

I thought maybe Matt was just late, but after an hour passed, I started to worry that something else was up. Jack eyed me as I paced near the front window.“Guess he’s not coming,” he said, sounding a bit smug. He’d come home fifteen minutes earlier, covered in mud. After a quick shower, he joined me in the living room to wait.I shot him a look but didn’t comment. Jack said it like he saw this coming, but I knew Matt wouldn’t just stand me up. Something else had to be going on. I tried his number, but his phone went right to voicemail. I sent him a few more texts but staring at my phone didn’t make any answers materialize

I hadn’t given up on my plan to get Jack and Matt together, and the minute Matt’s concussion was healed, I decided I needed to stop putting it off. He still had a couple of bruises where he’d bashed his head, and a sore arm, but he was mostly okay. It was a relief to walk out of class a few days later to find him leaning against the far wall with an easy smile on his face–headache mostly gone, and his broken bone well on the way to healing completely.No one really spared his bruises a second look, and he didn’t wear a sling. Hockey players were often getting injured, and Matt’s friends seemed to take it all in stride. He still hadn’t told me what really happened, but I planned to ask him about it when w

I had lunch with Fiona that Monday, eager to fill her in on the party and everything that happened after. Matt and I ended up just making out. He had to run out when he got a call. He wouldn’t tell me who it was, but I figured it had to do with the Peacekeepers.He made sure to promise me a rain check, though. Matt seemed as eager to have a repeat of the bathtub incident as I was.“So, I guess Matt and Jack won’t be besties again anytime soon?” Fiona surmised after I finished telling her about it. I told her everything but the stuff about the werewolves. It wasn’t my place to divulge that secret, and I doubted she’d believe me,