It was the last week of the summer vacation. I was at my wit’s end. On the one hand, I was hopeful that Jules would be back any day. On the other, I hadn’t had a postcard from him for a while and I knew in my gut if he didn’t get back before the start of the school term, I was going to have to face the fact that the Blaines had left the pack. It happened from time to time. Not just with Jules’s brothers. Sometimes whole families packed up and left with little or no notice. Usually, it was from what my mother called “a difference in opinion” between the family and Dalton. I wracked my brain trying to think if I’d noticed anything unusual between Dalton and the Blaines in the days and weeks before they left. I couldn’t think of a thing. The Blaines were both betas. They were as beta as beta could ever be. I couldn’t imagine a circumstance that would cause them to question Dalton, never mind disagree with him.

I considered trying to ask Dalton if he knew when Jules would be back again. The last time I asked, he’d shrugged and seemed a little annoyed by the question. I headed down the hill to the pack house but when I got there, I noticed that none of the omegas were on the grass under the cottonwood tree, and the double doors at the entrance were firmly shut. I decided it was best to leave it be.

By the end of the day, I was sitting on our porch, staring aimlessly up at the jagged blue outline of the mountain behind Mrs. O’Malley’s when she peeked her head out of her door.

“Yoooo, boy,” she called across the way. “Look alive. The wind’s about to change.”

I leaped to my feet and leaned over the balustrade, peering up and down the hill to see if she was right. Sure enough, I saw it. It was so far in the distance, it looked like little more than a rusty red dot, but I saw a vehicle approaching.

“Jules is baaaaack!” I yelled to no one in particular.

People started making their way out of their houses. We all gathered outside the Blaines’ place. Even Dalton and the omegas left their posts to form part of the welcome committee. When the van pulled up, we surrounded it, all of us scrambling to get our hands on the Blaines. I pushed through the crowd and got to Jules first. I almost knocked him clean over. He nearly went down but recovered his balance quickly. He threw his arms around me, and I lifted his feet off the ground and swung him around, making a high-pitched sound that embarrassed me when I thought of it later.