The nightmare still had its fingers dug into Zoë’s mind and she knew it. She froze, panting and with the foul taste of vomit in her mouth, and tried to reconstruct what had happened. She encountered only the dream itself, a nightmare reflected in Tyler’s eyes, and the arms holding her even now.

Arms she knew. A smell she knew. Still pinning together fragments of understanding, she looked around wildly and found her mother on one side, biting her nails obsessively, and Andrea and Kishar holding hands tightly on the other side.

Then she saw who held her: bronze, tousled hair a little above his shoulders; a smooth, shirtless chest hard with muscle, and forest-green eyes she immediately knew.

Lucien had held her before. Carried her to her bed, tucked her in. Held her in other ways, too? She couldn’t remember. She was afraid of remembering. The fear that gripped her was as strong as her fear of Tyler and what he could do.

Lucien’s green eyes were fixed on Tyler as he held her supportively. She struggled briefly and then once again froze as Tyler said, “Now. Grab the women, puppies.”

Only then did she realize that the werewolves stood all around Tyler. Somehow, while he stood out from the landscape, they blended in. But they moved now, not particularly quickly but with the inexorability of icebergs, closing in on the adult women.

As Zoë looked at Tyler again, he licked the blood streaming down his arm off his palm, grinning at her. At first, she couldn’t look away from the neat slashes in his forearms. As she stared, they began to heal, visibly knitting together.

Then he casually picked up the knife from the ground beside him, reversing his grip as Kishar and Andrea shouted when the werewolves pulled them apart. Sarah swore like Zoë had never heard before, and it was too much for her. She began struggling again, trying and failing to escape the arms holding her.

“Zoë, Zoë,” muttered Lucien, his voice strained and his arms tightening. “Calm down and I’ll—”

Tyler’s smile faded. “Danui, help Zoë out.”

His face pale but set, Danui darted over to Zoë and Lucien. Zoë, her ears full of her mother’s panic, didn’t entirely process what happened, but a few seconds later, Lucien no longer held her. Ignoring his cry, she stumbled to where one of the werewolves impassively held her wildly struggling mother.

“Mom, Mom, it’s all right,” Zoë panted. “Please. Let her go, please!” But Sarah’s eyes were wild and terrified, as if she was still caught in a nightmare like Zoë had been, and the werewolf holding her seemed half-asleep.

Tyler said to Lucien, “Not going to change for me, eh? But you’re not like Ainsel. You know exactly what you are. You know what I am, too.”

“Night Master,” said Lucien, his voice cool.

“Here,” said Tyler, much closer to Zoë now. “Sarah.”

Her daughter’s attempts to calm her had been fruitless, but as soon as Tyler said her name, Sarah calmed down. She gazed over her daughter’s shoulder, her face going slack as he spoke.

“Sarah, you’ve been very frightened about Zoë, haven’t you? But she’s safe now. And I’ll keep her safe, I promise. But you have to help me out. You’ve got some time off work for a while. Stay home and keep an eye on her. I’ll get everything else sorted out, and then, when I say so, life can go back to normal.”

Sarah’s eyes widened. She focused on Zoë and smiled, tremulously. The werewolf released her as she pulled away and embraced her daughter. “It’ll be all right now.”

The reassurance turned Zoë’s bones to lead. Slowly, she hugged her mother back as Tyler ‘calmed’ Kishar and Andrea in much the same way: telling them a story about safety and trust, and ending with, “As for Ainsel… better off forgetting her, don’t you think? Everybody makes mistakes, but as long as I’m here, there’s no harm done.”

After a moment, Sarah stroked Zoë’s hair away from her brow and released her, giving her another smile. “Let’s just see what happens, shall we?”

Her words made Zoë shiver. She turned away and saw Kishar and Andrea also freed of their captors and holding hands. Neither of them smiled like Sarah, but they weren’t fighting back, either. It bothered Zoë just as much.

The werewolves had moved toward Lucien, still restrained by Danui, as if drawn by a magnet. From the way their nostrils flared and their eyes widened, his very presence energized them. Although she could see the lines of muscles in his arms and bare chest, he seemed somehow frail compared to the sturdy werewolves. But Lucien paid absolutely no attention to them, dividing his attention between Tyler and Zoë herself.

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“You turned into a boy,” she whispered, staring at him.

Tyler stepped to her side and caught her wrist as she tried to back away. “Didn’t you know? They do that, just like the wolves.” He grinned. “Naughty of him not to tell you.”

“Zoë,” said Lucien, his voice low and intense. “I didn’t want to hurt or frighten you. That was all—”

“Good job, ace,” said Tyler, cheerfully. As Zoë tugged helplessly on her wrist, he lifted it to his mouth and kissed the soft skin on the inside, as if not thinking much about it. The sensation paralyzed her until he dropped her hand and freed her. Then she backed up a meter, rubbing her wrist nervously. His blood was smeared across the back of her hand.

“Oh, you didn’t like that?” asked Tyler, suddenly delighted, and Zoë looked up to see that Lucien’s worried, anxious expression had transformed into anger. “Damn, it’s a pity it has to be like this. It’d be so delicious to… well, nevermind. Hey, Bradley. Do your thing.”

Bradley, the Bradley from school, who spent more time with computers than people and who had always disliked Ainsel, that Bradley emerged from the trees, spinning an elongated crystal between his fingers. Curling his lip, he inspected Lucien from his bare feet and pale green loose trousers, up his bare chest and all the way up to the top of his head. Then he shuffled closer and placed the crystal under Lucien’s chin.

Lucien, held securely by Danui, still managed to knock Bradley’s legs out from under him with a sweeping kick. Then, using Bradley’s falling body as leverage, he kicked further up, twisting himself over and behind Danui with a wet, dull snap. When his feet touched the ground lightly behind Danui, Lucien’s arm hung brokenly, but that didn’t stop him from kicking another werewolf hard in the chest.

Instantly, every one of the werewolves moved, leaping toward him, some of them even transforming to wolves as they did. It happened very quickly, a blur of motion that fur and fangs emerged from. Lucien went down beneath the pile, a unexpected laugh on his face.

“Don’t fucking kill him,” shouted Tyler. “I swear, if you ruin this too—”

Danui looked down at the pile of werewolves pinning Lucien down. When he tilted his head to one side in silent communication, they rolled off him, so everybody could see the human-shaped unicorn spread-eagled on the ground. His green eyes were bright and his fierce grin in Tyler’s direction seemed taunting.

Zoë twisted her hands together. She’d become increasingly aware that whatever Tyler had planned for her, nobody was, at this point, physicall stopping her from running away. Part of her really wanted to do so now, especially as she saw that foreign expression on that unexpected face with the familiar, beautiful eyes.

Instead, she shook herself and marched over to Tyler. Her voice shook as she said, “Let him go.”

“Bradley, my man, get on with it,” said Tyler lazily before looking down at Zoë. “Nah, babe. Ask for anything else, though, and I’ll see what I can do.”

Bradley once again placed the crystal under Lucien’s neck, as if measuring something. Then he pulled it away and stood up again. “All right. This will take some time to make, you realize.”

“You’ve got about a day,” said Tyler, still looking down at Zoë. “Don’t disappoint me.”

Bradley muttered something under his breath, tucked the crystal away and stalked off into the woods again.

“What are you going to do with him?” Zoë demanded.

“Aww, babe, you’re tired,” said Tyler. “I don’t want to upset you. How about we talk about it later?”

Angrily, Zoë hugged herself. “You’re insane! You don’t think I’m already upset?”

“Zoë,” Tyler said softly, watching her closely. His voice was the same sweet, friendly tone he used to calm her mother, but it only made her mind itch.

She put her hands up to her head as if she could block out the feeling. “Stop it. Stop it! This is all awful and you’re awful and I hate you.”

“Wonderful,” he said in the same soft voice, before raising it. “Zoë is tired. Take her home, ladies, and take good care of her.”

“Yes, let’s go home,” said Sarah in her brightest voice. “I bet you want a shower, Zoë. Oh, did I mention? Kishar and Andrea will be staying with us for a while, just for a few days, while all this messy business gets sorted out.”

Zoë stared at her mother, and then at Ainsel’s foster mothers as they joined Sarah, wearing nearly identical empty smiles. It was too much. Lucien had rescued her and she’d been so happy—but that was hollow now. Everything was hollow: her mother’s smile, so familiar and horrifying; Tyler’s friendship and sudden attraction to her; maybe even the whole world.

She’d lost. She hadn’t even had a real chance to fight back, but she’d wanted to, and she’d lost before she even understood what was happening. Tyler had Lucien, he had her mother, and Ainsel was still gone. And Zoë was still exhausted, underneath the adrenalin and fear.

When her mother took her hand and led her from the forest, she couldn’t bring herself to resist. She couldn’t even figure out why she ought to. She wished Tyler had mind-controlled her like he’d done the others. It had been… pleasant, when he’d tried the first time. Fluffy. If he had done his evil magic on her, she’d be doing the exact same thing, but she’d probably be happy about it.

Instead she wished she was dead. Her mother guided her inside the house, chattering with Kishar and Andrea about some craft project she was going to dig up, and passively, Zoë did as she was told: eating a quick sandwich and then climbing in the shower.

She barely felt the spray of hot water against her skin, and only force of habit guided her through the process of washing herself. She felt heavy and slow and useless. The memory of how Tyler hadn’t even restrained her dragged at her thoughts. Whatever he was doing, she simply wasn’t a threat to his plans. She’d been tricked and lied to and magically manipulated, and now she had nobody she could trust.

Her chest hurt and her gut clenched. She wanted everything to go back to how it had been, when Tyler had still been her friend and Ainsel hadn’t been seemingly erased from the world. The wanting of it ached so much that crying seemed unavoidable… but she tried and tried, and no tears came. Instead, the hurt of it grew and grew until it seemed to swallow her. The whole world had gone dreadfully, inescapably wrong. The future terrified her. And she was so tired. All she could think to do was to follow the instructions of Tyler and her mother, and go to bed.

So she did.