Chapter 16. The Box

Wyatt’s POV

The Circuit was supposed to be the hard part.

The Night Circuit is older than the college. Three times a semester, the packs that founded Cadston walk a nine-mile loop through the reserve after dark: the main trail through the trees for anyone who wants to run it on four legs, and the outer trail along the ridge, wide and lantern-lit, for humans, guests, the injured, the old, and anyone who’d rather not shift. Nobody has to come. Almost everybody does. At the end, there’s a bonfire in the clearing where it starts, and hot cider, and somebody’s grandmother’s chili, and two hundred people pretending they’re not watching who walked in with whom.

Two hundred wolves had gathered in the reserve that night. The main trail disappeared between the trees, while the outer path curved along the ridge, wide enough for the humans, the injured, and those who couldn’t shift.

I walked the outer trail.

Nobody had ever walked the outer trail with the Pendant h