The Wild

Epilogue

I was just glad that the knowledge of Bennet's heritage was never fully revealed to him. As far as he was concerned, Bennet was just collateral damage from when Tyler stormed into town, and just so happened to be a good friend of mine. How Bennet had managed to survive the transformation "without a trained pack member" was beyond Tyler's dad.

Others weren't so lucky. When the "sickness" spread around Stillwater, a lot of the men fell ill, and two of the older fellows' hearts couldn't take it. The old man on the mountain, farther behind my house, was one of the victims, and the other was a farm owner's father on the Betcher estate. Mary told us all about it when we left and things calmed down.

John and Mary remained in Stillwater, tending to their shop in relative peace. They missed their baby boy, though, and substituted him for Nellie, the girl who worked at the clothing store across the Square. She came around the shop often to help Mary out, and sometimes when we'd call in to see how they were doing, Nellie would pick up instead and say that everything was going swimmingly, and that she'd have John or Mary call back as soon as possible.

Over the phone it became increasingly difficult for me to have conversations because I had, more aware than I wished, become dependent on my newfound ability to leak into other peoples' heads and know what their real thoughts were. Bennet often got annoyed with me, but Amaya was perfectly fine because she had no ties with werewolves. I couldn't read her mind even if I wanted to. It sometimes ticked Bennet off because I tested most of my studies on him.

It was how I became fully aware of the effect that confiscated Tyler's sanity. This emotion called love that went bizarrely out of control. It reeked of something acutely similar to Indian spices, heavy and flavorful—overwhelming. Anything I picked up in Bennet's head that involved Amaya was drenched in it, and it always drowned whatever else was going on in his brain. The same was with Brad and his fiancé, Nikki. The same, I regretfully detected, was beginning to manifest in Brian's head. His head was the last one that I ever wanted to lurk in, but it became hard when he spent all of his free time with me despite the fact that he wasn't even a Beta anymore. That was Rick's job.

The position of Beta was difficult for me because I didn't trust myself in believing Brian capable when we were in a "relationship". It would clog each of our senses and distract us from actually doing anything important. Bennet would have been my next option, if he hadn't been such a newbie. There was also Brad, who I couldn't even trust with a fork anymore, so he was out of the question.

Rick wasn't so bad, and he seemed to know a thing or two when it came to the guys, and he showed favor among the older pack members, so I picked him out of the ranks.

Brian was truthfully glad to step down, and that seemed to help the transition for the other pack members. It wasn't like I was a tyrant, trying to overthrow everything they knew and loved. They were expecting some abrupt, absurd changes that came from some demented girl who lived secluded and isolated until she decided to tear apart their world—but that wasn't happening on my watch. Rick was kind enough to show me the ropes, and when he wasn't explaining traditions, laws, and other cultural significances, Brian was. I wanted to make everything as natural as before.

So when the night came to a close and dawn started to rise, some of the wolves returned to the estate, the others back to their houses in town. I folded my arms over my chest from where I stood on the back deck, no longer affected by the cracking of bones and the receding of fur under flesh drawn taut. I was no longer afflicted with disgust at the sight of the beasts they became when the moon rose—the monsters in the night. The first time I was only able to pick out the one—Brad—because he was the only one I had seen in wolf form before. But it was hardly a wolf, really, more like the fabled creatures that clawed out from under a kid's bed, as if there was some bottomless pit under there making it possible for their hunched shoulders and boney limbs to fit.