Lydia had two wolves left, and she'd spent the full moon vomiting instead of guarding them. She gripped the edge of the sink in her cottage. Her stomach twisted again. Behind her, on the thatched-roof porch, she could hear her little Pomeranian barking at nothing. She wiped her mouth and made herself stand up straight. Four of her six wolves were still missing in a town where hunters shot wolves on sight. She could not afford to be sick. Not tonight. She pressed a cool cloth to her neck and stumbled to the garden. Two wolves waited there, hidden behind the lavender. The dark one lifted its head. Its coat looked like a night sky, scattered with tiny white specks. It whined and pushed its nose into her hand. It knew something was wrong. She knew it too. "Two," she whispered. "I still have to bring four home." Her stomach clenched hard. She dropped to her knees in the wet grass and got sick again. The Pomeranian ran circles around her, yipping. The star-flecked wolf stood over her, ears flat, guarding her the way she was supposed to guard it. That undid her. She was the mama of this pack. Tonight she couldn't even stand. A knock came at the cottage door. Sharp. Three raps. Lydia froze. Hunters knocked like that. She wiped her face, staggered up, and hushed the dog. She pushed the two wolves deeper behind the lavender bush. "Stay," she breathed. Then she went to the door with her legs shaking and her mouth still sour. Erica stood on the step. Blonde hair, wet at the ends. She held a paper bag and a thermos. She took one look at Lydia's gray face and pushed inside without waiting. "You look terrible," Erica said. She set the thermos on the table. "Ginger tea. Drink it slow." She was already moving, checking the windows, lowering her voice. "I saw a hunter truck two doors down. That's why I came now." Lydia's stomach dropped for a new reason. "How close?" "Close." Erica gripped her arm. "Sit. You're no good to the pack passed out. I sheltered two of yours in my shed. I can shelter these two tonight too. You rest and recover. Tomorrow we go after the other four together." Lydia wanted to argue. Her body wouldn't let her. She sank into the chair. The tea burned warm going down and stayed down. She breathed. "Okay," she said. "Take them. Keep them low." Erica slipped out the back with the two wolves at her heels and the Pomeranian watching from the window. Lydia leaned on the table, empty and steadier at once. Her sickness had cost her the guard tonight, and it had forced her to trust her friend with what mattered most. Tomorrow they hunted for four. Tonight, for the first time, Lydia let someone else carry the pack.

The tea did not stay down. Lydia barely made it two steps from the table before her stomach turned. She dropped to her knees and threw up on the cottage floor. The ginger tea was gone, and her belly felt wrong now, tight and hot. She pressed a hand against it. It was swelling. Hard, like a drum. She had been sick before, but never like this. Something inside her was very wrong. Erica came back through the door before Lydia could stand. She had circled back to check the shed one more time. She saw the mess on the floor and Lydia bent over it. Her face went flat. "Okay. No. We're done pretending." Erica crouched and pressed two fingers to Lydia's swollen belly. Lydia flinched. "That's not, like, normal stomach stuff. I know normal stomach stuff." She had her own bad gut and never let it slow her, but this was different. "Get up. I'm taking you in." "The wolves," Lydia said. "Four of them, still out there. I can't—" "The wolves are safe. I put four of them in my shed tonight. All four." Erica gripped her under the arm. "I found the missing ones on my way back. They're fed. They're locked in. You can't guard anything dead, Lydia." Lydia stopped fighting. Six wolves. All six, safe in Erica's shed. The knowledge loosened something in her chest. She let Erica pull her up and walk her to the car. The hospital was small and quiet, one tidy building with soft lights inside. A doctor pressed on Lydia's belly and asked her questions. How often did this happen. What had she eaten. Did the vomiting come in waves. Lydia answered between shallow breaths. Erica stood in the corner with her arms crossed, watching every move the doctor made. After a while the doctor set down his chart. "You have very bad IBS," he said. "And what we call nervous stomach. The stress makes it worse. You may also have a mild form of cyclic vomiting. It looks frightening, but it will not kill you." Lydia let out a long breath. Not poison. Not a curse. Just her own body, pushed past its limit. The doctor wrote a prescription and handed it to her. "Take these. And rest. Not just tonight. The rest of the week, if you can manage it. Your body needs to calm down." In the car, Erica handed her the paper bag from the pharmacy. "You heard him. A week." "I don't have a week," Lydia said. "You do now. All six are in my shed. They're safe." Erica started the car. "Your only job is to get better so you can take them back." Lydia held the bag against her sore belly. Her wolves were safe. Her body was not the enemy she'd feared. But she was grounded for a week, and that meant she'd have to trust Erica to keep the whole pack alive without her.

Morning came gray through the small paned windows. Lydia woke in her cottage bed, sore but steadier. The full moon had passed. That meant her wolves would turn back to human by now. She wanted to see them safe with her own eyes. She pushed the covers off and swung her feet to the floor. She stood too fast. Her stomach lurched. She dropped to her knees and threw up on the floorboards. The cramp gripped her tight. She couldn't stand. She reached for her phone and called Erica. Erica picked up on the second ring. But her voice was wrong. Thin. Breathless. "Lydia, I can't—" A gag cut her off. Lydia heard her friend heave on the other end. "I've been sick all night. Like, since the moon dropped. Can't stop." Lydia's chest went cold. Erica had a bad gut too. And after full moons the flares hit hardest. Both of them were down at once. The wolves were human again and unguarded in Erica's shed, in a town where hunters killed on sight. A fist banged the cottage door. Lydia crawled toward it, one hand on her belly. She reached up and turned the latch. The door swung in. Malia stood in the doorway. She was one of the pack, out of her wolf form now, brown hair loose and face pale. Before she said a word she bent double and threw up on the doormat. Malia had the worst stomach of them all. IBS. Gastroparesis. The vomiting that came in waves before and after every moon. "Sorry," Malia whispered. She stepped inside and dropped onto the couch. Then she slid down and got sick on the floor again. Three of them, all sick, all useless. Lydia's plan had been simple. Get up, drive to the shed, bring the pack home. Now she couldn't cross her own room without vomiting. The plan was dead. Lydia stopped fighting her body. She pressed her back to the wall and made herself think. She still had the phone in her hand. "Malia," she said. "Who's not sick? Who came back clean?" Malia wiped her mouth. "Scott. Stiles. They turned back fine." Of course. The boys clashed with Erica, but they were pack. Lydia typed with shaking thumbs. She told them where the shed was. She told them the others were down. She told them to move the four wolves left inside before daylight brought hunters walking. The reply came fast. On it. Lydia set the phone on her chest. She couldn't guard the pack today. Her body wouldn't let her. So she had handed the job to the two she trusted least to work together. That was the price of being sick when it mattered. Malia curled up on the couch. Lydia stayed on the floor beside the mess, waiting for Scott's next message. The pack's safety was out of her hands now, and in Scott and Stiles's.

Lydia waited on the floor of her cottage. Her phone stayed quiet. The boys should have reached the shed by now. She wanted a message that said the wolves were safe. Nothing came. Her stomach cramped again. She pressed her cheek to the cool floorboards and tried to breathe through it. Then tires crunched outside. One car door slammed. Only one. Lydia's heart dropped. Two boys had gone. One had come back. She dragged herself up and reached the door as it opened. Stiles stepped in. He was the human one, the boy who ran with the pack but never turned. He looked winded but clear-eyed. No car sickness. No moon fever. He took in the mess on the floor, Malia curled on the couch, Lydia gray in the doorway. "Where's Scott?" Lydia asked. "Sick." Stiles helped her sit against the wall. "He started throwing up the second you called. Couldn't even stand. So it was just me." He said it plainly, like it was no big deal. But Lydia knew what it meant. He had faced a shed full of hunters' territory alone. Her chest tightened. "The wolves. Did the hunters—" "They're fine." Stiles crouched to her level. "I got there before anyone was walking. All four were human again. Shaky, sick, but human. I moved them out before daylight." Lydia searched his face. "Where are they now?" "That's the thing." He rubbed the back of his neck. "They can't be out in the open like this. They're too weak to run if a hunter shows. So I brought them here." He went back to the car. One by one he walked them in — four young people, pale and unsteady, still fighting the moon sickness. They dropped onto the floor, the couch, wherever they could. The little cottage filled with the sound of ragged breathing. Lydia counted them. Four here. Malia. That was five of six. "Erica's two?" she asked. "Still in her shed," Stiles said. "She's home, sick, right next to them. They're safest where they are for now." He grabbed a bowl from the kitchen and set it by the sickest boy. He wet a cloth and pressed it to another's forehead. He worked without being asked, the way pack did. Lydia let out a long breath. For the first time all morning, the fear loosened. Her wolves were off the streets. The hunters had found nothing. Stiles had done alone what she could not do at all. But she looked around her tiny cottage. Five sick people. One bathroom. Little food. Barely room to lie down. She could not stand, let alone care for them. "Stiles," she said. "They're all going to get worse before they get better. And I can't move." He nodded slowly. "Then we need help. Real help." He pulled out his phone. "Someone who knows how to treat this."

By noon Lydia's own stomach settled. She could sit up. She could stand, slow and careful. The four new wolves slept across her cottage floor. She stepped over them to check on Malia, the youngest of her pack, the brown-haired girl who had collapsed here the day before. Malia was not better. She was worse. Malia threw up on the floor again. Then she cried, the way a tired child cries, with no breath left to fight it. Lydia knelt and smoothed her hair back. "Okay. Okay, sweetheart. I've got you." Lydia made a plan. Malia needed somewhere quiet, away from the others, close to the toilet. She dragged blankets and pillows into the bathroom and built a nest on the clean tile floor. She half-carried Malia inside and settled her down. Malia clutched the stuffed wolf Stiles had brought her, the soft gray toy she never let go of now. Lydia brought in the old TV with the rounded screen and turned it low. Cartoons flickered. A pair of goofy dogs bounced across the glass. Malia's eyes followed them for a moment, then closed. For a while it seemed enough. Then Malia moaned and curled tighter around the toy. This was not moon sickness. Lydia had nursed the whole pack through moon sickness before. It passed with rest. It did not make a girl sob like this hours after the others started mending. Something worse was wrong. Lydia felt it in her gut, the same way she felt a hunter near the tree line. She knelt by the nest. "Malia. I need to look at your tummy. Hold still for me." She lifted the hem of the floral sweater dress. She stopped breathing. Malia's belly was covered in bruises. Dark purple, yellow at the edges, spread across her stomach and up one side. Old bruises and new ones on top of each other. Lydia pressed one with two fingers, gentle as she could. Malia screamed and jerked away. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Lydia pulled her hand back. Her mind raced. These were not from the shift. The shift swelled you, made you sick, but it did not do this. Someone or something had struck this girl, again and again, over days. And Malia had said nothing. Lydia lowered the dress. She held Malia's hand while the girl cried herself quiet against the stuffed wolf. The cartoons kept playing. Lydia did not watch them. She had thought the danger was outside, the hunters in the town. The danger was already in her bathroom, inside one of her own. She did not know who had hurt Malia. She did not know if it would happen again. But she knew one thing now, kneeling on the cold tile. Resting for a week was over. She had to find out who had done this. Tonight.

Lydia sat on the cold tile beside the blanket nest. Night pressed against the small paned window. She had promised herself she would learn who hurt Malia tonight. She stroked the girl's hair and waited. The stuffed wolf lay crushed against Malia's chest. Lydia kept her voice soft. "Sweetheart. You can tell me. Nobody here will hurt you." For a long time Malia said nothing. The low cartoons flickered on the old TV. Then she lifted her head. Her eyes were red and swollen. "It was my brother," she whispered. "That's who hurt me." She grabbed Lydia's sleeve. "But please don't go after him." Lydia's hands went still. A heat rose through her chest, old and fierce, the banshee part of her that screamed when something was wrong. She breathed through it. She would not let Malia see her shake. "That's not okay," she said. Her voice was flat and certain. "You're staying with me." "He's my guardian, Lydia." Malia's chin trembled. "He's supposed to take care of me. He's all I have." Lydia cupped the girl's face in both hands. She looked straight into her eyes so Malia could not look away. "He doesn't get to be your guardian when he does this to you." She touched the hem of the dress, gentle, where the bruises hid. "A guardian doesn't do that. Not once. Not ever." She made her choice out loud, the way she made every choice for her pack. "You're going to come live with me." Malia searched her face. She was looking for the catch, the trick, the way adults took back what they said. Lydia held steady and let her look. "I mean it," Lydia said. "This is your home now. Every full moon. Every day between. You don't go back there." Something loosened in the girl's shoulders. The grip on Lydia's sleeve relaxed. Malia nodded once, small and tired. Then she lowered her head back onto the blanket nest. Her eyes slid toward the flickering screen. Within a minute her breathing went slow and even. She slept. Lydia pulled a blanket to the girl's chin. She sat a while longer in the dim bathroom, listening to the thatch creak in the wind above the cottage. The danger had a face now. Not a hunter at the tree line. A brother with a key to Malia's door, a man who would notice an empty bed. She stood, slow, her own sore stomach pulling tight. Four wolves still slept on her cottage floor. Now Malia stayed too. She had taken the girl in and said the words that could not be unsaid. Tomorrow the brother would come looking. Lydia pressed her palm flat against the door. She was ready for him to find her first.