I stared at it for a long moment, something shifting in my chest.
"You'd tell me I'm being stupid, wouldn't you?" A wet laugh bubbled up, mixing with the tears still tracking down my face. "You always said I worried too much. Said I needed to stop thinking and just feel things." I reached out, touched the fallen blossom with trembling fingers. "You were twelve and you were smarter than me. Still are, probably, wherever you ended up." The laugh turned into something closer to a hiccup, caught between grief and something lighter.
I could almost see him rolling his eyes, that way he did when I was being dramatic. Could almost hear him telling me to get up, stop crying, go kiss the pretty girl already.
You're such a disaster, Rem. But you're my disaster. Now go be happy, okay? One of us should be.
"Pack." I tested the word, felt it settle into my bones alongside all the other truths I'd been carrying. "I've got a pack now, Luc. An Omega who sees through all my bullshit and two Alphas who've somehow decided I'm worth keeping around." A shaky breath, another laugh that was more tears than humor. "I'm going to try. For them. For me." I pressed my palm flat against the weathered stone, feeling the solidity of it, the permanence. "For you." The promise hung in the morning air, as real as the carved letters beneath my hand.
The cemetery was still quiet when I finally stood, my knees aching from kneeling so long, my jeans soaked through with mud and morning dew. I didn't brush myself off. Didn't try to hide the evidence of where I'd been, what I'd done.
"Thursday." I told the headstone, backing away slowly, reluctant to turn my back even though I knew he wasn't really there. "I'm going back to her on Thursday. All of us, together. First real dinner as a pack." I managed a smile, watery but genuine. "I'll play her that song I've been writing. The one about the bayou witch who steals hearts." A pause, the smile turning wry. "I think you'd like it. It's got a good bridge. You alwaysliked bridges." My hand lifted in a half-wave, the kind of stupid gesture you make when you're talking to someone who can't see you anymore.
I made it to my motorcycle before the grief caught up with me again, bent me double over the handlebars with the force of it. I let it come this time—didn't try to swallow it down or smile past it or pretend everything was fine. Just stood there in the empty parking lot of a two-hundred-year-old cemetery and cried for my brother, for the life he never got to live, for all the years I'd spent punishing myself for a moment of teenage selfishness.
When it finally passed, I felt lighter. Not healed—that wasn't how grief worked, I'd learned that the hard way—but lighter. Like I'd set down a burden I'd been carrying so long I'd forgotten it wasn't part of me.
My phone buzzed. Harper, this time.
Harper: Checking in. You okay?
I stared at the message for a long moment, thumb hovering over the keyboard. The old Remy would have sent back something flippant, some joke to deflect the concern, to keep the walls up and the masks in place.
Instead, I typed:Rough morning. Visited my brother's grave. But I'm okay. Better than okay, maybe.
The response came almost immediately.
Harper: You mentioned brothers before, but I didn't know you'd lost one. I'm sorry.
Then, a moment later:
Harper: You don't have to talk about it if you're not ready. But I'm here when you are.
Something cracked open in my chest again, but this time it didn't hurt. This time it felt like breathing after too long underwater, like sunlight after the storm.
Remy: Thursday?
Harper: Thursday.
I slid my phone back in my pocket, swung a leg over my bike, and turned toward home. The road stretched out ahead of me, still muddy from the storm, still littered with debris and fallen branches.
But for the first time in twelve years, I wasn't running from something.
I was running toward it.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Harper
Wednesday morning, I pulled up to Artemis's property line to find Remy's motorcycle already parked under the big cypress and Silas's truck beside it. Neither of them looked surprised to see me.
"Let me guess." Remy leaned against his bike, arms crossed, that lazy smile not quite reaching his eyes. "You woke up thinking about how exposed her eastern boundary is too."
"Northern tree line." I cut the engine and climbed out, scanning the perimeter by habit. "No clear sightlines. Anyone could approach through there without being seen from the cabin."
Silas just grunted, already studying the same stretch of woods I'd been thinking about. He had a machete strapped to his belt and mud on his boots like he'd been walking the area since before dawn. None of us had planned this. None of us had called the others. We'd just shown up, all three of us, on a Wednesday morning when we weren't supposed to see heruntil tomorrow, because the thought of her out here alone with Crescent Holdings circling had kept us awake.
"We should walk the whole property." Silas's voice was rough, the most words I'd heard him string together outside of Artemis's presence. "Mark the boundaries. See what they've been doing while she was trapped with us during the storm."
