Now things made sense. This was her crusade. I should’ve seen it coming. We’d talked just before I quit the Order, and Andrea had argued against my quitting. She wanted me to stay and fight with her to change the Order for the better from within. I told her that even if I tried to change the Order, I couldn’t. I wasn’t a knight. My opinion carried no weight. But Andrea was a knight, a decorated veteran. She saw it as her chance to make her mark.

Andrea took a small sip of her coffee and coughed. “Damn, Kate, I know you’re pissed but did you have to put motor oil into my drink?”

“That was the lousiest joke I’ve ever heard you make. Stop stalling. What happened?”

She glanced up and I almost did a double take. Her eyes were hollow and bitter.

“I had one of the best Order advocates in the South. He thought there was a chance we could make a difference. There are others like me in the Order. The not-quite-pure human. I wanted to make their lives better. He advised me to separate myself from the shapeshifters, so I wrote you that letter. I was going to bring Grendel back too, but we had to leave in a hurry, so I just took him with me and went to Wolf Trap.”

Wolf Trap, Virginia. The Order’s national headquarters. Everyone knowing Andrea was a beastkin. It must’ve been pure hell.

Andrea rubbed the rim of her cup, as if trying to remove some dirt only she could see. If she rubbed it any harder, she’d make a hole in it.

“We spent a month preparing twenty-four-seven, gathering documents, pulling all of my records. My advocate spoke for three hours at the hearing and made a very passionate, logical argument in my favor. We had charts, we had statistics, we had my service decorations on display. We had everything.”