"Don't shut me out again,

" August cried, hooking his heart with her words.

"I can help you with this. Stay with me. Let's figure this out together,

" she rose from the bed to where he was frozen in the doorway, staring hard at the wood frame that had his and Greta's heights tallied throughout their early childhood.

'Graeme, 6.' The short pencil line was drawn by his mother. And just beneath it 'Greta, 6.' The lines moved further apart the older he and Greta got, with the final lines demarcating their height at 12 years old where Graeme was a full 2 inches taller than his sister. That was the year the marks stopped being recorded. The year their parents were killed.

He gripped the door frame. The **ing elders were responsible for all of this? The end of these pencil lines. The emptiness of this house. The hauntings in his memory. The loss of his parents, of his place in this pack, of the alyko. So much loss all because of them. And why? So Andreas could sit up in the highest office, the smug top dog of a neglected pack?

"I don't know, August,

" he growled,

"I really want to go take care of this right now.

" He was squeezing his eyes shut, clenching every muscle trying to restrain himself from the instinct of tearing off after those two **ing traitors right now. He already took care of Auden, and clearly it was too merciful of a death. The other two were next. Slowly. In front of the whole pack, baring their sins for all to see.

No wonder the strays responsible for his parents' deaths were never caught. No wonder all of the pieces never fit together properly. Andreas, Pearce, and Auden were behind it all! And this was why they had accumulated all of this bull** false information about the alyko—to make their story plausible! To give them warrant.

And they were still doing it—still succeeding at pulling the wool over all of these wolves' eyes. Well, not any longer.

August approached his side wordlessly, extending her arms to embrace him—one around his waist, one on his arm. A heavy huff of air escaped his lungs when he felt his tense muscles slowly relax to her touch.

"My reaction was much the same,

" she spoke softly against his bicep where her lips were brushing his skin.

"But let's do this right.

"

"What do you suggest?

" he asked, slowly releasing his grip on the doorframe.

"Samhain is just a few days away, and all the pack with be together. It would be a good time to reveal it to everyone.

"

It was perfect, actually. How often did the whole pack come together like that? They hadn't since August had been there, and it sounded like much of their events were split into the areas of Lakeside, Woodside, and Meadowside.

"And how do we prove it to them? A ring isn't going to do it,

" he turned toward her, breath slowly returning to normal, she noticed.

"What if we have Zoe… tell them?

" she suggested.

"Like a testimony. Many don't even know who she is or that she exists. That alone will strike them as odd, won't it?

"

"How do we know she would follow through with something like that?

" he scoffed at the thought of Zoe holding all of the pack's attention. She would undoubtedly get a high off of the attention, he was sure of it. But what would she say to them? For all they knew, she could tell an entirely different story—one that supports Andreas rather than condemns him. A plan like that could backfire in the worst way.

"For some reason, Zoe… cares about what I think. Maybe it is because she is so interested in this situation,

" August made a large gesture encompassing the entirety of herself.

"She feels betrayed by Andreas. He was supposed to take care of her, it sounds like. All that she did she did for his approval.

"

"I'm pretty certain she is a very innocent looking psychopath, but a psychopath nonetheless,

" he countered.

"Maybe you should talk to her,

" she suggested.

"If I talk to her, I might rip the door off of her cell,

" he growled.

"And not stop with the door.

"

"Don't you think it's strange that Andreas has even left her down there with all the truth she holds?

" she thought aloud.

"Exactly my point. She could by lying. How do we know?

" Graeme asked.

"Why would he do that?

" he began thinking in earnest now. If all of this were true, Andreas didn't imagine Zoe would say anything. If that were the case, he certainly didn't think much of her. Or he had tired of her to the extent that he couldn't even bring himself to imagine that she would be a threat.

Graeme hummed to himself in thought. Zoe had screwed up giving Greta her anti-alyko serum rather than August, and then one of them shoved her into a cell before leaving the dungeon. All Andreas had to do was leave Zoe there afterward as a convenient scapegoat for the mistake with Greta.

Fuck, it made sense. Andreas was a coward. Penelope was right. He always had someone else making the moves for him while he waited, hands clean in the shadows.

"I think… maybe…

" he started, shifting his eyes uneasily to August,

"maybe you are right and we need to retrieve Zoe from the dungeon. If she is telling the truth about all of this and Andreas decides she is a threat, he might get to her first. She definitely has more information than we could ever hope to get on our own.

"

August nodded in agreement.

"But what the hell are we going to do with her?

" he growled again. They needed her locked up, just… locked up away from where Andreas could get to her.

"There is a spare room,

" August pointed out.

"You think I'm going to let her stay here in this house with us? With you?

"

"She said something about having all of her defenses clipped or something. That she wasn't dangerous. That just her knowledge is,

" August's eyebrows dipped recalling it. What in the world did she mean?

"Well, knowledge is still something she could gain if she were here staying with us. There is no way I'm going to risk waking up in the middle of the night to see Zoe standing over our bed, scrutinizing you while you sleep like some kind of scientific stalker.

"

August's face paled at the thought, precisely because it wasn't a stretch.

"Not to mention what Greta might do to her when she finds out everything that Zoe and the elders have been up to,

" he reminded her.

"There's no way she is staying in this house.. I just don't know what else we would do with her.

"