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herself in the bedroom next to her aunt’s. The barn wasn’t an option, either, unless she wanted to kill the horses.
    Rylie groaned and cradled her head in her palms. She had to do something .
    If only Seth had been there for her. He’d had all kinds of creative ways to keep her restrained over the summer. Of course, it turned out that was because he was a werewolf hunter, and he killed her kind. But he hadn’t wanted to hurt her.
    She wondered what he was doing. Was he thinking about the upcoming moon, too?
    When night fell, Rylie crept past Aunt Gwyn’s room. She had already gone to sleep even though it was only eight o’clock. There was no sound coming from her room. Rylie walked out the front door and kept going.
    Her aunt’s ranch looked like it had grown out of the long grass in the middle of rolling hills and sweeping plains. Everything was made of round edges: the squash cluttering the unkempt garden, the worn wooden posts forming the fence around the pond, the bodies of the cows milling around the field.
    There were no mountains in sight. Not a single jagged edge or towering rock face. That was exactly how Rylie wanted it. She’d had more than her share of mountains over the summer.
    Once the house was a black dot on the horizon, Rylie tugged on her skirt’s laces and let it puddle on the ground, dropping her camisole on top. Bare to the sky, she shut her eyes and tilted her face back, spreading her arms wide.
    The almost-full moon poured silvery rays through her flesh. She felt like it would dissolve into her skin and bones until she was a wraith so she could drift away on the breeze. Rylie wanted to be nothing but a thought lifting amongst the stars, letting her body and the wolf trapped inside of it disappear beneath her.
    No more anger. No more violence. No more pain.
    But no matter how hard she imagined separating her soul from its vessel, Rylie was anchored to the earth by human feet and human needs and a wolfish impatience that wondered why she was wandering when she should have been resting for the hunt.
    Headlights on the road made Rylie cover her body with her arms, even though she didn’t think anyone would be able to see her at that distance. Prickles rolled from her hairline down to her spine. Why would someone drive down her desolate stretch of highway at night? Something wasn’t right.
    The car turned down her aunt’s private road… and stopped. The headlights blinked off.
    Rylie dropped to a crouch and ran down the hill. She beelined for the car, flashing through the long grass like a pale ghost. It occurred to her that her human skin was whiter than the wolf’s fur and that she would be spotted if she didn’t move fast. Hanging underneath a shadowy copse of trees to watch the driver, Rylie laid her belly to the ground.
    The passenger stepped out of the car. He was tall and smelled horrible. It wasn’t like he hadn’t showered, because she could also smell his soap and deodorant. There was something else. Something that smelled sour and wrong .
    Some deep, dark place within her recognized the stench. It made her stomach roil.
    The other door opened, and the driver came out onto the side of the road. “Put that away.” A woman’s voice.
    He turned, letting Rylie see that he was holding a rifle. She could make out a sliver of his face. He had a strong jaw and dark eyes. “I thought I heard something.”
    “You’re not shooting anybody tonight. I said, put it away.”
    A chill rolled through Rylie. She had been hoping these people might be farmers, but something about that tone said they were not. They didn’t look like they belonged in her little rural community. Both wore plain clothes in dark colors, and they looked more like soldiers than ranchers.
    “We’re being watched,” the man insisted, and Rylie didn’t dare breathe.
    “You’re imagining things. Get back in the car, Abel. What if the property owner comes out and sees us pointing guns at her cows?”
    The rifle