Being trapped here had just dumped gasoline on all of Logan’s selfish habits, whether he knew it or not. Or cared. The wolf pack had quickly found themselves divided into a pecking order based on whoever Logan—or both Logan and Joel, at first—had been sleeping with at the time. And they’d all wanted him to want them but couldn’t place just why.

I mean, I got the draw of the wolf pack in theory. I knew how the lines between friends and lovers blurred. When you could be both at the same time but maybe also neither, and you tried to do it all with kindness though that didn’t always work out.

It’s condescending, but I couldn’t help but feel that this level of entanglement could never be Yusuf’s jam because navigating his own feelings and explaining them to me was hard enough.

“What’s with the wolf coat?” I asked Riz, bobbing my chin to Logan.

In the beat of silence, low laughter floated over to us. Dinner was about done and a few of the guys were making rounds collecting dishes. Riz pulled from his drink. His breath smelled like the ATV exhaust.

“The first few weeks alone, after the disaster, were rough. The snowstorms lasted for days. We didn’t know how long our supplies would last. We rustled up some ATVs and solar carts and started exploring the whole hab looking for other people or a way to get back to Earth. A couple of days in, we… we found this zoo.”

I looked down at my clean plate and really didn’t want Riz to keep going.

“Research station, I guess, with animals in these glass cell things. Anyway. They were stuck there. Rabbits, a bear, giraffe. The wolf had eaten its cellmate. They were all starving. We were gonna set them free in the hab but they’d have no food out there and honestly, that seemed cruel.”

“You didn’t…” I trailed, my stomach spinning.

“I couldn’t. None of us could kill them. Logan had to. He did it fast. As kind as he could, I guess.” Riz tried to laugh, and I know he meant to break the tension with a joke if that’s what this was, but it came out weird. “Giraffe is way sweeter than you’d think.”

*   *   *

Looking back, I’m not saying that I’d crawl into the wolf pack while the Grim Reaper smoked a butt off stage right and waited for his cue, but I get it.

Let’s say I’d never met Yusuf and got mixed up in all of this by myself, with Kaori and Figueiredo chasing me across universes, into one purgatory after another. Sooner than running forever, I’d probably find some cozy place to land, swallow a bellyful of pills, and settle down for a long nap.

Yusuf made me want to fight.