Jason followed the direction of my gaze. He started to lift a hand to his neck and then caught himself. A faint blush crept across his cheeks.
Awkward silence filled the room, and when Jason’s phone went off, I felt almost relieved, as though I had been saved by the bell.
He pulled out his cell and glanced at the screen. “I have to get this,” he muttered, striding from the room.
A second later, I heard his steps on the stairs.
I turned to Serena and stared.
A slightly embarrassed look flashed across her face. “What?” she said defensively, then added, “He was checking on me. It’s not a big deal. He just comes over sometimes.”
I crossed the room and sat in the chair Jason had vacated. “Jason Sheffield has been coming over? On his own? To check on you? And it’s not a big deal?”
Serena frowned. “You don’t have to sound completely shocked.”
“I’m not . . . that’s not . . .” I bit my lip. “I know Jason can be really sweet. Sometimes. But he usually hides it and you’re—”
“A werewolf?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah,” I said, feeling guilty even as the admission left my mouth. The fact that Serena was infected didn’t matter to me, but as much as Jason’s feelings on werewolves were changing, I wasn’t sure it was possible for him to do a complete 180 in a few weeks.
“To be fair,” Serena said, “I think I’m sort of a last resort. I think Jason’s just . . . I dunno . . . lonely.” She tugged at a loose thread on the bottom of her oversized gray cardigan. “You and Kyle have been kind of wrapped up in each other.” I started to object, but she rushed on. “Which is totally understandable, but it’s not like Jason has many people he can talk to about stuff that happened in Colorado or what he’s going through now. And I think it’s kind of hard for him . . . seeing the two of you together.”
I felt my cheeks flush. Before the breakout, Jason had kissed me—and said he loved me—but every time I had tried to bring it up, to make sure we were okay, he dodged the subject.
Maybe I should have tried harder, but not talking about it seemed easier. Safer. Even though the more we didn’t talk about it, the harder being around each other became. When the two of us were in the same room with Kyle, the awkwardness was almost suffocating.
“I know I’ve been spending a lot of time with Kyle,” I said. “It’s just that we have so much to figure out. . . .”
“Like whether or not he should go back to the pack.”
I nodded. “We talked about it more last night. About how we could do the long-distance thing. Kyle said it’s not really that different from one of us going away to college.”
“Except college is, like, four years, and a pack is a lifetime commitment.” Concern darkened her eyes. “And that’s something you would want? That you would both want?”
“I want Kyle,” I said, “and I want him to be happy.” But it wasn’t something I really wanted to talk about, not with Trey’s words fresh in my mind. “So Trey and your dad are okay with Jason coming over?” I asked, shifting the conversation a degree to the left. “After everything that happened? You’re okay with him coming over?”
“I wouldn’t say Dad and Trey are exactly okay with it. I mean, Jason did try to beat Trey to a pulp, and he stood by while a group of extremists torched our house.” Serena pulled in a deep breath and glanced down at her hands as she wrapped the thread from her sweater around her finger. “But he risked his life to help get me out of Thornhill. And given that I apparently tried to kill him, I’d say we’re probably even.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” I reached over and took the thread before she could cut off her circulation. “You didn’t know what you were doing.” Serena had been completely out of it when she attacked Jason—so out of it that she couldn’t recall that night at all. She only remembered the detention block in scattered fragments; it was like a puzzle with half the pieces missing.
“Yeah, well . . . it doesn’t change the fact that I did it.” She raised her gaze to mine. “Trey told you we’re leaving?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
Serena glanced out the window. “It’s like they keep taking everything. The Trackers . . . the LSRB . . . Thornhill . . . I’m not even a threat anymore. If they wanted to take me back, I wouldn’t even be able to defend myself.”
I didn’t believe that.
Serena had saved my life during the breakout. She had been able to shift just enough of her body to maul the warden and leave her infected with lupine syndrome. According to the news, Sinclair was being held under guard in a transition house—a place where the newly infected were sent to wait out the virus’s thirty-day incubation period—while the government tried to piece together how a breakout at Thornhill could have happened. Once they were done with her, she would be shipped off to a camp where she would be just another inmate. As powerless as the wolves who had been in her care. Poetic justice.
“You saved my life back in Thornhill,” I said. “You’re not helpless.”
Serena let out a soft, skeptical snort and held up her hand. The muscles under her skin slowly began to twitch and each twitch was accompanied by the sound of a breaking bone. It wasn’t the harsh snap of a rib or femur; it was a small, delicate sound—like the noise a wishbone made. Sweat broke out on her face and the tendons in her arm bulged like steel cables. Bit by bit, her hand transformed into something long and clawed.
But she couldn’t hold it.
Serena’s breath quickened as she let her arm fall back to her side. When I glanced down, her hand looked completely human.
She closed her eyes. “That’s it. No progress since the night of the escape. I can shift my hand and then . . .”
“Nothing.”
She nodded.
Sinclair’s cure may not have truly worked, but it had changed Serena. For the briefest of seconds, I wondered if the warden would have eventually been able to achieve her goal, but I quickly pushed that thought aside. It didn’t matter. No cure was worth the price Sinclair had been willing to pay.
“It’s strange,” said Serena, “for the first year or two after Trey and I got infected, I spent so much time wishing I could go back to being normal. But this? This feels like something’s been carved out of me. It’s like I’m hollow inside.”