It’s not as loud in here as it is in the kitchen, where everyone is talking over one another with their mouths full, or in the family room, where the TV is on, blasting the madness from Times Square.

I don’t know where Ian is. He’s absent from the corner where he was posted up earlier. There are a few people chatting there; they wear sparkly hats and hold noisemakers that I sure as hell hope they don’t plan on using.

My body is trying to tell me something. Sweat seeps from me. Thick saliva spills from my lips. My left eye twitches. My ears ring. There’s a kneading behind my rib cage that slowly intensifies, an angst beating against my lungs.

I sniff. There’s a scent lurking underneath all the rest. Underneath the powerful colognes and perfumes, the liquor and hors d’oeuvres . . .

With stunning clarity, I recognize the scent, can assign it exactly. It belongs to the wolf that bit me.

“What?” Mia asks. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” I say, eyes frantically scanning the room.

They’re here. They’re in this room. At this party.

“You sure?” she asks, stepping out from behind the bar, eyebrows low.

I want to tell her it’s nothing, pretend I’m fine. But the panic, fear, anger . . . They’re strangling me. I can’t breathe.

“They’re here.”

“Who?” she asks.

And it’s something about her tone. It’s something about her expression. It’s something about her perfume. Her signature overpowering gardenia perfume.

I don’t smell it.

She’s not wearing it tonight.

I take a step back.

“Rory.”

Her boots.

I know those boots.

They’re my boots. My vintage boots. The ones I was wearing the night I was bitten. The ones I lost the night I was bitten. The night I first saw Ian again, the night he’d been with Mia . . . and she bailed early, got all weird and flustered, up and left. . . .

The same night.

“Mia,” I say, my voice low, practically a growl, “where did you get those boots?”

“I found them,” she says. She doesn’t blink. Doesn’t flinch.

“Found them where?”

She rolls her shoulders back. “Let’s go somewhere to talk.”

“It was you!” I yell at a pitch that could shatter glass.

“We can’t do this here. Just calm down. I—”

“This whole time. It was you!”

“Shh,” she says, grabbing my wrist.

She’s strong. Almost as strong as me. I break free.

“Do you really want to have this conversation here, with all these people around? Ash? Ian?”

My vision tints red. My teeth gnash together.

I’ve got her by the hair. “I don’t care. I’ll rip your fucking throat out in front of everyone. You did this to me. You did this!”

The anger I feel is otherworldly. I want to tear her head off. I want to eat it.

Someone I trusted. Someone I was close to. Someone I let in.

She’s taken things from me, and I’m going to make her suffer for it. I want gore. I want revenge. I want to snatch her eyes out of her skull, to squeeze them to jelly in my hands.