[Hyacinth]Slate opens the trunk which flies open. Inside, curled up amongst the jumper cables and spare tires is Bash, who blinks up into the sunlight at the both of us, his eyes wide with shock, his mouth open as if he were about to start yelling for help. He was in the middle of tapping on the trunk door, lying on his back with his feet and clawed fingertips in the air.“Finally!” he stretches and his claws retract as he reaches his arms out to be picked up. “I was thinking you’d never find me!”“WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN HERE!!!?” I try not to scream but I’m not sure right now if I should be happy or angry. “Do you know how much trouble you are in right now?”“But Mama,” his little lip begins to tremble as I pull him out of the trunk. His arms squeeze my neck into a tight hold as if he is afraid I might disappear. “I promised you. I need to keep you safe.”“Your Mama is just frightened, little wolf. She thought some bad people had gotten you or something very bad had happened to you.

[Hyacinth] After grabbing a quick snack in town, we begin our arduous journey up the tall mountain. After eating a couple of cookies and staring at the trees for about twenty minutes, Bash passes out from too much sugar and far too much excitement. I put the address I received from Nurse Stevens as the current location of her father. It is going to be a long drive, up and down the mountainside taking close to an hour. Doc Stevens lives deep in the Ben Lomond forest, surrounded by coastal redwoods, high above the ocean in a house looking out to the sea. It should take us another 40 minutes to get there, or at least what the GPS is signifying as we make our way up along the twisty mountain roads. “Have you ever been here before?” Slate turns on the car radio as we make our way past some fallen trees from an early fall storm. “To the ocean?” “Not for a very long time,” I admit, “My mom preferred to vacation in the mountains. She loved the ice and snow and adored skiing. Considering s

[Slate]Family. If you are a lucky wolf, you will be surrounded by those you love, others who cherish and protect you, who you can cherish and protect in turn. Packs are like large families, the alpha serving as the patriarch who keeps all of his wolves safe. But having a pack, leading a pack, is not the same as having a family. Not really. Family is having someone to wake up next to in the morning, having arguments, and making love. Family is sharing moments like these with your children, moments when things seemed perfect and easy that you can hold in your heart when things become hard.I remember my father and mother taking me to the boardwalk when I was just a pup, only a few years older than Bash. We had so much fun riding the rollercoaster and eating cotton candy and those weird freeze-dried ice cream dots that were such a craze when I was a kid. Afterwards, we’d spend the night at the hotel overlooking the water and I’d watch the surfers ride the waves. It is one of my fondes

[Ashlynd] “Explain, in detail, what happened.”The crone before me is hunched over her lab equipment in a warehouse we had outfitted for her on the edge of pack territory. It cost quite a bit of money to keep her location secret and quite a bit more money to have her lab properly outfitted. Modern witches don’t cackle over a cauldron under the full moon. Modern witches are scientific spellcasters. They observe the world, collect data, and use that data to create a new type of magic, one based on logic and reason. This might seem contrary to what most people understand, but the only real reason our people have survived near annihilation is the fact that we are good at noticing patterns and hiding in plain sight.True witches are chemists, biologists, and physicists. We discovered how the planets move and how seasons turn. We noticed how some plants work best when grown in particular soil, and the elemental parts of all living things, and how to manipulate them. Without witches, moder

[Hyacinth]It was hard waiting for Slate to return. So Bash and I tried to keep ourselves entertained and busy. First, we cleaned the entire house. Bash even put away all of his toys that were strewn all over the house. I moved things in my bedroom, including making space in my dresser drawers for him and placing a new toothbrush in the bathroom in the cup next to mine. I wanted something pretty and lacy to wear for him, but nothing I owned was fancy in that way. So instead I picked my silky pajama top, leaving the bottoms in the drawer. Smiling, I thought of how it would feel to have his hands sliding around on the silk cloth. By the time we were done, there was still no sign of Slate, so Bash and I worked hard to make a special dinner and dessert to welcome him home. We settled on lasagna, a family favorite, with a salad. I pulled out a nice bottle of wine to celebrate along with a bottle of sparkling apple juice for Bash. I sent Bash outside and sent a quick text to Drew asking