I didn't look back at the Pack House. I couldn't.
If I turned around, if I saw the dark windows of the room where I had left him I would collapse. And if I collapsed, the curse would win.
I walked through the forest, the snow crunching under my boots. The wind had picked up, howling through the pines like a mourning choir, but I barely felt the cold. Inside me, the stolen fire of the Alpha burned with a steady, sickening warmth. It was keeping me alive. It was keeping me strong.
And every beat of my heart felt like a theft.
I reached the edge of Oakhaven an hour before dawn. The town was silent, buried under drifts of white. The streetlamps were halos of hazy orange light in the mist.
I didn't go to my apartment. I didn't go to the Coven House.
I went to the cemetery.
It was located
