“I’m okay,” I managed. “Sleeping. Sleeping eat.” Eat? That wasn’t right. “Chew. Safe.”

She whined over the phone, her sound pure wolf.

“Stay safe. Mmokay. Morning. Call morning.” I had to fight to get that much out. My eyelids were already fluttering. I dropped my phone onto the futon, collapsing back, scattering the ferrets. All I could think about was my baby sister, how scared she must be, but at least she wasn’t alone. She had Sid. Sid was scrappy. She’d watch over Zoey.

Who was going to watch over me?

Sleep dragged me down before I could think of an answer.

Chapter Eleven

Lou

It had taken me a while to go to sleep. Guilt was real crappy that way. The moment I’d realized what I’d said, I wanted to take it back. It was hurtful and it wasn’t really true. My mouth tends to disconnect from my brain when I’m tired, and the look on Declan’s face when I’d said it? It was like I’d sharpened my words into a blade and stabbed him right in the heart.

I’m not saying it was okay for Declan to be so pushy, but Trick had not-so-gently reminded me that we weren’t just dealing with normal behavior here, but the deeply ingrained pack behavior our roommate was born with. So yes, boundaries had to be set and Declan and I needed to sit down and chat about what we both wanted, blah blah blah, but I’d also been a jackass about it. Hungry and tired may have been part of the explanation, but it wasn’t much of an excuse.

Eventually exhaustion won and I crashed hard, drifting dreamlessly for a while. I’d been dreaming one of those weird mashed-up surreal dreams where I was in a supermarket in my pajamas and I’d left my list at home and a gorilla kept taking things out of my cart. I tried to explain to the gorilla that his behavior wasn’t cool, but I wasn’t getting anywhere because the gorilla only spoke German. I had resorted to a spontaneous attempt at interpretive dance when someone called for me over the loudspeaker.

I followed the sound, leaving my cart to the gorilla and walking out of the store and into a forest. It was nighttime, but there was enough light to see—a fat, silver moon dangled in the sky, casting the forest in gilded magic. The scent of evergreen trees was sharp in my nose, along with the ozone scent of an impending snow. My breath came out in puffed clouds and I wrapped my arms around myself to keep warm, annoyed that my dream self couldn’t manifest a jacket. This wasn’t pajamas and slipper weather by any stretch.

My dreams also weren’t usually quite this sharp in detail. It was like I was actually there. I looked up at the moon again, at the silvered tops of the trees. This was a pretty far cry from the gorilla in the supermarket. Had I been pulled into someone else’s dream? Could I even do that?