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“The will-o-wisps scent would usually be enough to confuse someone without heightened senses,” Garrett shouts back from further up, where he leads us gods only know where.
“Will-o-fuckin-what?” Lyle asks, his face twisting in confusion that’s so relatable, I almost laugh aloud. I’m glad he asked because I have no idea what that is either, but I wasn’t going to say shit. Honestly, I don’t care about anything Garrett has to say right now.
“Will-o-wisps are fairytale creatures said to lead travelers to mischief, sometimes even death,” Pike says, taking me by surprise. He was the last person I expected to answer. Usually, it would be Sol ready to come in with random useless facts.
As if he feels my eyes on him, he turns my way while ducking a low-hanging branch. “What? They’re in a lot of old tales, and my sister used to be obsessed with the idea of finding them when we were younger.” With a shrug, he turns away, but his words sound almost defensive.
I wonder what crawled up his ass. Actually, I don’t have to wonder, Pike hasn’t exactly had a great last few weeks, and today has been even more shitty.
“That’s not how will-o-wisps work. You can’t just find them,” Garrett snaps, and I feel a lecture coming.
“They’re said to be the work of the elements. Whether it be the gods or the spirits, they often lead those with strong ties to their destiny.”
“And what about those without strong ties?” Lyle bites back, clearly having heard the same flaw I did in his explanation.
Garrett doesn’t answer for a moment, suddenly very interested in the direction we’re headed.
“Those without strong connections rarely see them, but if they should happen across them, they may lead them astray,” he grumbles, and I know he’s annoyed about having to admit that. It doesn’t make sense why he’d care about what we think of wisps, but it clearly upset him, making me love it.
We fall into silence once again as we continue following him through the trees.
By the time we emerge into the clearing, I’m itching to find Serena. It’s not unusual. We’ve been looking out for her since we were children, but this feels different somehow. I’m restless, and anything I’m feeling is multiplied by about a million for my beast, who presses me harder to find her every second she’s gone.
Ever since that night at the library, something shifted. I can’t put my finger on it or even put it into words to describe it, but it’s there. It’s almost as if she lives under my skin. I can feel her or, right now, the lack of her. She’s my every thought. All I want is to be close to her, care for her, see her, smell her.
It’s driving me crazy.
“Hey, you good?” Sol’s hand on my shoulder catches me by surprise, and I flinch back from his touch. I’d been so lost in my thoughts that I lost track of what was happening around me. Most people have a hard time sneaking up on me, except for Rena, but to have my twin do so is strange.
Our connection as brothers and with our beasts is deep, as if we’re two parts of a whole. No matter how opposite we might be, that’s always been true. We’ve all been close for as long as I can remember, but even with the brotherhood we built with the guys, our connection is different, something we were born with.
It’s a small mercy that we cleared the trees before now, so I didn’t end up running into anything while zoned out.
“Yeah,” I mumble before pushing forward, letting his hand fall away. Without looking back, I move toward the others across the clearing, standing scattered around a stone wall. I don’t need to see his face to know he doesn’t believe me; I can feel it. Hell, I don’t even believe me, but he’s never been one for confrontation, and he knows me. He knows when to push me and when to let something go, and right now, I don’t know how much pushing I can handle.
Sol has loved Rena since we were kids. He was always the shy one out of the two of us; smaller and quieter, he generally stuck to himself. Not that I liked anyone else much either, but something about me kept people away. Rena calls it my resting bitch face, it could be that, or it could be the number of fights I got in. Either way, it worked.
Sol didn’t have that.
When we were kids, our parents all put us in sports, insistent that we needed an outlet and structure. We did pretty well in them, with the exception of Sol and Rena. From the beginning, we knew we all wanted to do the same thing and stick together. Pike picked lacrosse and somehow convinced them it was a good idea.
Serena would have done anything we asked back then to make us happy, but we didn’t realize that until later. Looking back now, I highly doubt it was a sport she ever wanted to play, though I can’t bring myself to regret it. She might not have liked it initially, but she ended up being great at it, not to mention what it did for her confidence. It’s hard not to feel good when your team dominated, even more so when most of our wins were because of her. Her size and speed were fantastic for such a rough, fast-paced sport.
I’ll never forget the first time she scored a winning goal. Something in her changed; we all saw it and worked hard to nurture that part of her, pushing her to be better and stronger, the way we always knew she could be.
But that wasn’t until middle school. Back in our first year, she struggled, and so did Sol. He didn’t like sports; he enjoyed reading, drawing, the stars, anything but sports. But our parents insisted, and with Rena there, he was willing to give it a shot. He promised our parents one season, in which he spent half of it benched, but they were fine with that. The first time he got put on the field, he lasted all of one minute before the other team’s biggest attackman slammed him hard. Sol was smaller back then, shorter than me, and just a tangle of limbs. The hit had only earned a yellow flag, and while the game continued, Rena was at his side the next second. She checked him over while we finished the play, but none of us were focused enough with Sol still on the ground, and they scored without much pushback. They’d wanted to shake us, and they did.
The refs checked Sol and somehow didn’t call a personal foul. They only helped him to the bench, and the game continued. Rena was fuming. I’d never seen her so mad in the five years we had been friends. I’ll never forget watching her take off like a shot the second the whistle blew. She made it across the field so damn fast that the attackman who took Sol down never even saw her coming before she slammed him. He went down hard and fast, earning a timeout, and she ended up getting time in the penalty box for a personal foul because the ball hadn’t even been in play yet.
She smiled for the whole three minutes she was in there, and something about her standing up for Sol and seeing her like that pushed us. We wiped the floor with that team in the end, and every game after that, we only got better and better as we found our footing as a team, and as a pack.
If Sol hadn’t been in love with her from the second he found her in Harlow’s house years ago, he sure as fuck was after that. We all knew it; it was impossible not to, but some part of me hoped he would grow out of it, move on, or find someone else.
I never wanted to have to compete with my twin over a girl. When we were younger, we used to say nothing could come between us, but if there was someone or something that could, it would be Rena, and I have the feeling I’m not the only one who realizes that.
That’s why I never wanted to even think about her like that. I knew loving her would be effortless—everything with her is, but at what cost?
Now, I’m not sure it’s something I can take back. I hadn’t intended to start a bond with her, especially not without her permission, but I can’t bring myself to regret having it. I’d meant it when I told her I loved her, even if I hadn’t wanted to. Even if I’d denied it for years, it was true, and while I still don’t know why I’d blurted it out after staying quiet for so long, I wouldn’t take it back. I couldn’t. This feeling of her being a part of me feels right, even as I fight the urge to rip my hair out of my head now that she’s missing. I know he’s upset and probably feels like I betrayed him, and in some way, I kind of did, but it’s too late to fix that, and I wouldn’t take it back even if I were given the option.
