Because I had forgotten. And if everything the Alpha had told me over the phone was true, I’d been made to forget.
Why?
An even darker thought followed.
What else had I forgotten?
I told myself that Ezra and Michelle Hughes were trying to protect me. They loved me. They’d told me as much. And their heartbeats didn’t betray any lie. And maybe, just maybe, they had nothing to do with this.
I took a step back from the door. The circle faded.
What the fuck was I doing? I couldn’t go inside. If they found out, everything would be ruined. Oh, I could probably spin it away, telling them that I thought I heard something from inside, thought something dangerous was happening, but would they believe me?
“Fuck,” I whispered.
I turned away from the door.
For a moment I thought I saw a wolf standing on the dirt pathway leading toward the house.
I see you.
Oh god, I wanted to be seen. I wanted to be seen so badly.
I blinked and the wolf was gone, if it’d been there at all.
The circle burst onto the doorway as I stepped toward it again. This time I didn’t hesitate.
Circle.
Rectangle.
Octagon.
Heptagon.
Circle again.
The magic pulsed once. Twice. Three times.
The red faded.
And then the lock in the door clicked.
Last chance. Last chance to forget all this idiocy, last chance to walk away and tell Michelle and Ezra that something was wrong.
I opened the door.
The interior was like any other house in the compound.
I didn’t know why I was so surprised. It was sparsely furnished, and it smelled unlived-in and musty, as if the windows hadn’t been opened in a long time. There were no lights on, and as the door closed behind me, the entryway fell into a dull gray light that filtered in through the heavy drapes on the windows.
Off to my left was a sitting room with an unlit fireplace and a high-backed chair in front of it. The bookshelves were bare.
The sitting room opened to a kitchen that looked empty. There was no table. No stove. No microwave. No fridge. The floor was ancient linoleum, cracked and faded.
The floor creaked under my boots as I took a step away from the door.
I inhaled deeply.