Three days had passed since the massive celebration at the Broken Valley Pack, and I still hadn't told anyone about the apparent 'curse.'

I wanted to share the foreboding news with someone at least fifty times a day. But every time I opened my mouth to inform Dylan, Sophia, or even Raegan of their Alpha's impending doom, I couldn't find the words. I mean, what was I supposed to say? So, I think Alpha Nolan is cursed. No, I don't know anything else. Sorry.

I needed to speak to Angelina, the young witch that had let it slip that she sensed a curse on Nolan in the first place. But I had a sinking feeling that I wouldn't be seeing the beautiful prodigy again until I delivered their coven's talisman back to her mother...

And we were having no luck on that end either.

As soon as we returned from the Broken Valley Pack, we leapt into action. Sophia took to the internet and one-hundred year old books to learn more about magical talismans and the capabilities they possessed. Dylan spent his days and nights investigating the borders, intent on discovering the Golden Walker's patrol schedule in case we needed to sneak into their territory.

Nolan and I, on the other hand, worked together to ensure that no force would be necessary in retrieving the talisman.

He tried calling Alpha Sehan, but the rival Alpha consistently 'missed' Nolan's calls. At first, Sehan's assistant picked up the phone and promised a call back shortly, but, eventually, even she stopped answering. Nolan and I weren't surprised, given my cold conversation with Sehan at the party.

When contacting Sehan failed, Nolan asked me to reach out to my father and brother. I pretended not to be hurt when, either by chance or on purpose, my family never picked up. I was too ashamed to leave a voicemail.

We hunched around Nolan's desk for hours at a time, conjuring up a dozen plans for retrieving the talisman. I sketched a map of the Golden Walkers' pack house, highlighting the various places where the old ring could be hidden or on display. I had a gut feeling that the ring remained nestled in Sehan's own bedroom, in that damned jewelry box where I'd seen it years before.

At one point, after countless hours of plotting, I groaned and threw my head back in defeat. "What if we just ask Sehan for the talisman?"

"You think he would just hand over an immensely powerful object to his least favorite pack?" Nolan smirked up at me, from where he had been studying some of Sophia's notes about talismans.

I plopped down on a nearby armchair and threw a pillow at the top of his head.

At least all of this plotting and planning offered me the opportunity to monitor Nolan, day and night, for any signs of a 'curse.' I watched him like a hawk during the first few days. Every time the male sighed, my attention snapped to him to ensure that unseen force wasn't suffocating him to death. If Nolan spent any time training with Raegan or Dylan, I joined the men under the ruse that I wanted to learn from their techniques, just in case the fighting might trigger the curse.

But Nolan was perfect. No, not perfect. He was healthy, strong, and certainly not suffering from some unseen curse! I came to the conclusion that Angelina must have been wrong.

While our research may not have led to many successes, I did discover one thing in my time spent alone with Nolan... I liked him. I actually liked him.

I discovered that he loved reading, offering to pick up any book that Sophia didn't want to research in her studies on talismen. He preferred doing work in quiet solitude, although he never protested when I asked him a question or wanted to take a break from our planning. Nolan cared about his pack--immensely. So much so that he sacrificed key elements of his own life for their happiness. And gods, he was funny!

We never mentioned the evening on the balcony with Dominic, and he didn't hold any grudge against me for it. Nolan kept Dominic in the loop through nightly phone-calls, and I could hardly trace any animosity in his voice during their conversations.

Where was the cold, callous Alpha that I'd come to know in my months at the Black Lupis Pack?

On the fourth day after the Broken Valley party, I lounged on a loveseat in Nolan's office with a book cracked open on my lap. My eyes scanned through the pages, but I didn't register the words. My mind was elsewhere. Nolan sat quietly at his desk, a pair of reading glasses adorning the bridge of his nose as he wrote a letter to Alpha Sehan.

"You know," I ventured, "I've been thinking about how to get in contact with the Golden Walkers."

Nolan grunted in a distracted reply, never once looking up from his letter. I rolled my eyes, but continued nonetheless, "I could call Lizzie."

"Lizzie?" Nolan looked up, dark brows furrowed. He stopped writing, now paying full attention to me.

I sat up on the loveseat, although my fingers fidgeted with the tassels of a decorative pillow, "Yeah, she is... er, she was my best friend. We might have better luck getting in contact with her. At least, I know she's almost always got her phone on her."

"Do you think she could get us in contact with Sehan?"

I nodded, "She came from a respected family, even Sehan would listen to her."

My Alpha stood from his desk, suddenly intrigued by the prospects of a conversation with Lizzie. He nodded toward his cellphone, which sat beside me on the couch, on hand in case I needed to play a game of CandyCrush in the middle of our work. "Let's go for it... We have nothing more to lose."

I gulped, picked up his phone, and began dialing the ten digits that I knew by memory. I pressed the little green button, my heart now pounding inside of my chest, and held the phone up to my ear.

Ring. Ring. Another ring... I almost gave up, and then--

"Hello?"

I gasped at the sound of my best friend's voice. The girl that I'd known since we waddled around in diapers, now sounded foreign on the other side of the phone. Tears pricked my eyes, and I couldn't help but smile, "Hey, Lizzie... It's Charlie."

Nolan lurched forward, eyebrows raised as if he could hardly believe that we'd gotten through. He quickly moved around to the front of his desk, only a few feet away from where I now stood. We locked eyes in anticipation, but Lizzie had gone quiet on the other side of the line.

I could still hear her breathing, but she said nothing. I bit my lip, "Lizzie? You there?"

"Yeah, I'm here..." She practically whispered the words into the speaker.

"H-how are you?" My voice cracked, and Nolan reached out as if to comfort me, but his hand stopped short.

The line went quiet again, but Lizzie eventually replied, "I'm fine... I'm not supposed to be talking with you, Charlie."

She whispered her last words so quietly that I almost couldn't make them out. "What? Why?"

"Alpha Sehan says you've been lying... That we shouldn't trust anything you say." Judging by the tone of Lizzie's voice, she must have believed him.

"What?" I began shaking my head, even though she couldn't see the movement. "No, no, no. Lizzie, he has no idea what he's talking about. He--"

She cut me off, "Did you or did you not lie to his face at Savannah's birthday party the other night?"

I paused, and instinctively looked up toward Nolan for advice. I knew he could hear every word on the other line, but he offered no help. He pursed his lips and shrugged his massive shoulders, as if leaving the decision up to me. Do I lie to my best friend?

Finally, I let out a long breath. "I did lie to him."

"Exactly."

"--But I did it for my own safety! And the safety of others! Please, this is so much bigger than he is making it seem..." I rushed my words, pleading for Lizzie to hear my case.

"Listen, Charlie. I don't care... Alpha Sehan said that we shouldn't trust you, and I'm going to listen to him." Lizzie's words hit me like a ton of bricks, and there was no swallowing the thick lump that had formed in my throat.

She continued, "I don't know... Maybe things would have been different if you had called, or texted, or treated me not like a piece of shit! But you did."

"Lizzie, please!" I managed through trembling lips, but she cut me off again.

"No, it's too late. Goodbye, Charlie." The line went dead.

I kept the phone up to my ear for several seconds after the conversation ended, inwardly praying that she would pick up the phone and call me back. That we would yell at eachother, but eventually work things out. Because that is what always happened... But Lizzie didn't call back.

"I'm so sorry, Charlie," Nolan murmured, reaching out with a shockingly gentle hand to take his phone out of my grip. He slipped the device into the back pocket of his jeans, but he did not turn away from me. Instead, he held his palms out in front of him, arms extended-- a silent invitation.

And, to my own surprise, I reached out for him. My arms wrapped around Nolan's solid abdomen, just as the first of my tears started to fall. The weight of his arms crushed me against his chest, almost like his body could somehow absorb mine. Almost like he could somehow absorb my pain. I lost track of the time spent with my face buried in the little crevice between his chest muscles, his t-shirt soaking up every tear while his hands stroked my dark hair.

It wasn't the effortless, joyful embrace that I'd experienced with Dominic on the night of the balcony. But it helped to take away the pain of a lifelong friendship that had shattered right before my eyes.