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him?”
    “Four—no, five years?” Eden narrowed her eyes and tried to remember. Jay had arrived in town a few years after she’d come back from college, replacing the old Chief of Police at his retirement. “I haven’t known him well for that whole time, but he’s in my dad’s diner pretty much every day.”
    “You trust him.”
    It wasn’t a question, but Eden still answered it without hesitation. “With my life.”
    “Okay.” Lorelei looked away. “I don’t want to have to worry about his friends, but…it’s exactly the way the alphas in Memphis took over, you know? None of them were strong enough to stand alone, so they banded together. I don’t think I can help being a little nervous.”
    A different sort of pressure built inside Eden. An ache just below her breastbone, one that blossomed in reaction to Lorelei’s slumped shoulders and tired eyes. She took a step forward, then another, watching Lorelei for any sign that the woman was about to retreat.
    She started to raise her arm, but froze when she caught the slight stiffening in the other woman’s shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she said softly, letting her arm fall back to her side. The pressure became pain, glass shards in her throat, and she had to force each word out carefully. “If there’s anything I can do to make it easier for you and your friends, tell me. I’ll tell Jay to keep his friends away from the farm for a while, if that’s easier.”
    “No,” Lorelei said forcefully. “I just wanted you to know. So you could understand. But we’ll all deal with it, I promise.”
    She wanted to snarl that none of them should have to deal with anything right now. But if Eden pressed the issue, Lorelei might not be as ready to confess to other worries and fears. “Okay,” she said instead, trying to silence her newly awakened wolf’s agitation. “What about the others? Are there any in particular who need to be given some space?”
    “Mae. Without question.”
    The one who’d been stalked. Eden rubbed a hand over her arm as a chill shivered through her. “The man who hurt her. He was one of the ones who came here last night?”
    “He was.” Lorelei turned back to the box and began unpacking the rest of it, then continued matter-of-factly. “Don’t worry. He’s dead now.”
    The pressure intensified into a nagging tickle, and Eden scratched at her arm, wondering how the inside of her skin could itch. “Does she need attention? I have a friend in the next town over, someone with counseling training.”
    “That’s nice of you to think of, but I don’t think it would help. There’s so much—” Lorelei’s voice cracked, and she swallowed hard. “There’s a lot she couldn’t talk about. The worst things, in some ways.”
    The memory rose in spite of Eden’s best efforts to hold it at bay, vivid in the way it replayed itself in her nightmares. Zack, seventeen and shirtless, with the height of a man but the build of an underfed teen. She could still smell the rain, hear the thunder that accompanied each flash of lightning.
    She would never forget the sight of him, shirtless and bleeding, his back torn up by his father’s belt but already healing. The rain washed away the blood, and by morning there was no proof of the way Albus Green beat the hell out of his kid. No marks, no witnesses.
    No one but her. Gawkish, terrified Eden, nine years old and rendered mute by the promise he’d extracted from her so many years ago she couldn’t remember not having made it. The defining rule of her childhood, the Green Rule. Don’t tell anyone.
    Eden’s arm itched. Burned. She dug her fingers into her skin, the metallic scent of blood a welcome distraction from the nightmares. “I understand,” she told Lorelei in a voice that didn’t sound like hers. Too distant. Too calm.
    Lorelei’s hand settled over hers. “You’re bleeding.”
    Pull yourself together, Eden. She gathered every scrap of willpower she’d ever called hers and