Haylee's POV
My heart breaks into a million pieces as I behold the grotesque version of my father staring back at me. Though they are sickly transfigured by the shadows, though those unnatural things are writhing through his silver hair, I can look him in the eye and see the man who taught me how to howl at the first full moon. The man who hoisted me onto his shoulders and carried me when we hiked in the forest because I was too small to tramp along with the rest of the pack runs.
“Papa,” I whisper, and the word rips itself from my throat the way I imagine flesh would.
“My sweet little moon,” he says once more, taking a step toward our circle. It is in that same gentle voice that he spoke to me when I scraped my knees as a child, wrote me letters when I slept whipped by nightmares, held me that time I cried over my first broken heart. "You look tired, sweetheart. You look like you have the weight of the world on those lovely shoulders.”
A ripple passing through my concentration at the
