I stayed close to home on Saturday and Sunday except for a walk down to the wharves. On Saturday afternoon, I spent a few hours on the roof with Harper who strutted around, upset that I’d neglected him lately. Normally, spending time with him relaxed me but nothing could ease my mind now.

Roland texted me on Friday night and again on Saturday to see if I wanted to do something with him and Peter. Both times I replied that I wasn’t feeling well yet. I knew I was a coward and it wasn’t fair to my friends, but I still didn’t know how to tell to them and see our friendship end.

On Monday, Roland and Peter ambushed me in the parking lot after school. “All right, Sara, what is up with you?” Roland demanded after they pulled me out of earshot of everyone else. “And don’t give me that crap about being sick because you’ve hardly been sick a day in your life.”

“I –”

“Is it us?” Peter asked with some hesitation. “Are you freaked out about… you know… what we are? We’re still friends, right?”

“Of course we’re still friends.” I saw doubt on their faces and realized I had been so caught up in my own misery that I hadn’t seen how my sudden reticence affected my friends. While I was trying to gain the courage to tell them the truth, they were worried that I didn’t want to be around them anymore because they were werewolves.

“That doesn’t bother me. It’s…” I bit my lip as and looked down to hide the dread in my eyes. How can I tell them?

Peter moved closer. “You alright?”

I started to nod but I shook my head instead. I couldn’t count how many times someone had asked me if I was okay since last Friday and I always said yes but the truth was, I was far from okay. In the last week my world had changed so much that I felt like I had stepped into someone else’s life without a script. I didn’t know how to think or act anymore.

“Come on,” Roland touched my arm and pointed to his old red pickup. “Let’s get out of here.”

None of us spoke as we piled into the cab of his small Chevy truck. Roland pulled out of the parking lot and headed north. I didn’t pay much attention to where we were headed. I stared at my hands most of the way and tried to find the words to tell them my awful secret when we got to our destination.

The truck slowed and I looked up to find that we were at the old Signal Point lighthouse. The lighthouse had been decommissioned years ago and it used to be a favorite teenage hangout a few years ago. They still threw the occasional party up here because the police didn’t bother with it for the most part. The sight of the peeling white tower surrounded by the faded white picket fence brought back a lot of good memories but did little to ease the weight on my chest.

Roland opened his door. “You want to go inside?”

The wind was surprisingly calm up here today so I said, “Let’s go sit on the bluff.”

We strolled through the grass until we neared the edge of the bluff. The three of us sat in a circle, obscured from the rest of the world by the tall grass. Overhead the blue sky was dotted with small white clouds and below us the surf broke against the rocks in a familiar rhythm. In this peaceful setting it was almost hard to believe that bad things could happen.

“Nikolas came to see me last Monday.”

“What the hell did he want?” There was no mistaking the dislike in Peter’s tone and I cringed inwardly. Would he feel the same way about me soon?

“He told me some things that kind of freaked me out. I’m not sure how to tell you about it.” I looked from Peter to Roland and saw the mingled curiosity and concern on their faces. ‘This is really hard so let me finish before you say anything. Okay?”

They both nodded. I took a deep breath and started at the point where I came home and found him waiting in front of the bookstore. I told them how he had tracked Roland’s license plate and how he’d asked about my parents and told me he had known my mother. When I told them that Mohiri can sense each other and Nikolas had recognized me as one as soon as we met, Roland made a small sound but didn’t say anything. He did not speak until I said that Nikolas told me I should be with the Mohiri.

“What did you tell him?” He asked in a tight voice.

I clutched my hands together. “I told him I belong here with you guys and Nate.”

“Good.”

“I thought… that since you guys hate the Mohiri you wouldn’t want anything to do with me when you found out I was one of them.”

“Is that what you were upset about all week?” The hurt in Roland’s eyes made my own sting. “You honestly think that we would do something like that.”

“No – I don’t know. After what Brendan and Maxwell said about them and you two didn’t hide how you felt about Nikolas – what was I supposed to think?”

Roland let out a long breath. “We don’t like the Mohiri but we don’t consider them our enemy. And you being one of them doesn’t change who you are.”

“I guess I was just so upset that I didn’t think of it that way.”

“So your mom was one of them?” Peter shook his head. “All this time we were friends with a Mohiri and never knew it.”

Roland could not hold back his smirk. “I bet he wasn’t happy when you told him you’d rather stay with a bunch of werewolves.”

I remembered Nikolas’s expression when I told him I didn’t want to go. “He wasn’t.”