FOUR HOURS EARLIER

No one was immortal.

That lesson, Liam had learned time and time again since the day he’d been born. Before, as he was fondly referring to his life prior to all of this, the concept had been muted, tucked away in such a manner that he didn’t dwell on it for too long. People passed peacefully in their old age, after living their lives fully, back then. Over time, there’d been the odd tragedy to disrupt that childish illusion of death: May’s older brother getting himself killed in a drunk driving accident, and one suicide of a young woman that had seemingly come out of nowhere to hear his parents speak of it.

But nothing, nothing had taught him how wrong he’d been to think that death would never catch him, could never affect the people he cared about, than the past four years.

He’d stared death in the face, felt the cold fingers of its grip on the back of his neck, shadowing him far too many times to count. Liam had seen the life bleed out of people and werewolves alike- cold-blooded murders, drug overdoses, starvation- even hypothermia. He knew more than most people how scarily fragile life was, how quickly it could disappear.

No one was infallible.

It had been a more difficult idea to grasp. There were some people that Liam trusted completely- what kid could ever think that their parents might not be right? But as with the idea of death, every innocent, naïve ideal came tumbling down eventually. The farther Liam ventured into the unknown, into the shadows hovering at the edge of society, the more he was forced to acknowledge this too.

When the stakes were high, people would choose sides, and if they didn’t brace themselves for that eventuality, they’d end up in the crossfire. Sometimes, that happened anyway.

Knowing that he’d sacrificed himself to allow Stephanie to save that boy that she cared about, only to realize that she hadn’t spared him another glance, had been one in a long line of disappointments. When he’d eventually, finally, caught up with his parents again, it had been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Somewhere along the line the stress, the grief- life had worn his beautiful, confident mother into the ground. She was tired, so very tired, content to sit back and relinquish her leadership. Liam supposed that losing him, her only son, had had a hand in that. His father was a ghost of a man, no longer defined lines and strength personified. The struggle had ground them into the dirt until he couldn’t recognize them next to the glorified images of them Liam had in his head. After all this time, feeling this deep chasm between himself and his parents, his parents, brought the time that had passed slamming home.

Three years. Three years of his life he had fought and pushed and torn through just to realize that he no longer fit in space that he left separating his parents. That struggle had only made Liam fight harder, grow brighter, while it smothered his larger-than-life parents.

No one was invariable.

People changed. Liam knew that as well as he knew himself. People grew up, grew apart and moved on. Despite that, no one, least of all Liam, had expected the transformation that Laura Armstrong had undergone in the face of losing both of her daughters and her husband. The years had aged her, yes, but there was an edge in her eyes that had not been there before- a hunger, a ruthlessness to replace the compliant passivity she had previously possessed.

She had come into her own, stepped up to the plate when Eileen and Scott Hall- Alphas by blood and by nature- could not. At first, he’d resented that. The little part of his brain that still clung to the way things used to be claimed that she didn’t have the right, but he knew better now. It didn’t hurt that Laura was often his only confidant, a true Alpha. Understanding when the need was there, strong and steadfast at the right times, invested and passionate and so human.

Not immortal, not infallible, not invariable but real. Flesh and blood and tears. That was what grounded Liam when the rags of his old life hung off his frame like ill-fitting clothes and this new life fluttered around him like an insubstantial shroud.

Yet, at times like this, lying in bed at mid-afternoon, surrounded by a silence so eerie, so absolute that he could hear the clock in the kitchen announcing every second that passed, he wondered what he was doing here. It was a solitary life, despite the hordes of people who knew his name, who knew about the smallest nuances of his life. So often, he was alone in his mind.

Sometimes, he’d find himself turning to a person that wasn’t there to share a dry comment, and remember how completely everything had changed.

He’d talk to his parents about it, but they were so often gone, footmen in an endless battle to stop people from turning against werewolves. Liam himself had grown out of being able to mesh with them. He loved them, yes, endlessly and always, and they, him, but the shine had worn out of their veneers like the gloss of a forgotten paperback.

So while they traversed the country, sowing condolences and platitudes in their wake to keep the whole situation from simmering, boiling, exploding, he was here in New York. No one really took him seriously. He was just another golden boy raised to the top of fame only to likely spin out of control like so many others before him, but they took Eileen and Scott Hall seriously. Liam understood it, really, he did. His parents could appeal to those he couldn’t, parents, grandparents: the more skeptical, less driven by energy and imagination and fanaticism.

It just meant that, more often than not, he was in this apartment on his own.

Even when he’d had nothing, he’d always had someone. Now that he had everything, everything, anyone could ever want, he had virtually no one.

The flat screen TV mounted on the wall opposite from his bed scrolled headlines across the bottom of the screen as he watched, head propped up on his arm. It had become a habit, looking for news, a snapshot of his parents somewhere, of Laura at another press conference- of the latest in a series of conflicts between wolf and human rising and falling like tides.

A curious story had developed over the past couple of weeks. More terrifying in implication than simply intriguing, Liam thought. In the depths of the Breadloaf Wilderness in Vermont, people were searching out a secret laboratory of some sort. Liam had immediately disregarded the whole thing early on. It sounded too much like a hoax based on a bad sci-fi show to take seriously. Yet the story had gained traction, and he’d been forced to really think about it.

No one really knew what it was all about, but there were theories. There were always theories. Needless to say, Liam didn’t really like the sound of any of them.

Recently, more than ever, he’d felt like the world was standing on a knife-edge over a precipice of unknown depth. Like the entire universe was holding its breath. But he just smiled and waved and took selfies with people as they asked and flocked to him because that’s all he could do. That was his contribution to downplaying the whole situation.

People like his parents were good for reassurances, dealing with more serious matters, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t important. He was there to be a face young people could relate to, a tie holding everything together for as long as it could, and he knew that.

That importance just didn’t fill the hole in his heart where the people he loved used to be.

***

There had been a strange undercurrent to the air, just prickling beneath his skin all day. He’d ignored it for the most part, attending his interview and relaxing into what had become a familiar event for him. Liam was glad that most people only really looked for surface things, didn’t delve too much into the past- and if they did he could steer the conversation in a different direction.

He had to maintain a careful balance of transparency and openness without opening the floodgates to a questionable past.

Out on the carpet on his way to a meeting with his PR rep after his interview, he’d been assaulted with noise and color and flashing. So caught up in that tornado of sensations and trying to get to the awaiting car, he’d ignored the niggling in the back of his mind.

There was an echo in the back of his mind, calling his name, but so many people were calling his name that he brushed it off.

A disturbance shuddered through the crowd behind him as he made it to the frame of the car, ducking his head to get in and shut out the noise of adoring fans. Then, one voice above all others froze him, made his heart stutter in disbelief. He turned his head slowly against the rigidity of his spine.

“Stephanie?”

Arms gripped tight in the grasp of his bodyguards, stood the most disheveled, breathtaking shadow of the past he’d ever seen. Her short, dark hair curled against her pale skin, framing wide, hazel eyes. All he saw when he looked at her was shadows, harsh angles, fear and trouble.

He was spurred into action at the thought, waving off the questioning glances of his guard and taking her arm himself, pulling her bodily toward the car as quickly as he could. Unrest quieted the crowd behind them, and Liam would later admit that his heart was indeed thundering.

He hated himself for immediately thinking that this was trouble, this was a wrench in the plan, before thinking anything else. From this would spring questions.

Herding her into the car, he shut the door behind them. Laura Armstrong would know what to do, she always knew. So that’s where he directed the driver, mind still spinning over and over for a reason he couldn’t fathom. He just knew that the knife edge the universe was tightrope walking across had just become a lot sharper, like he knew his own name.