I feel Jay slam into my back, his arm wrapping around my waist as we fall to the side. “Stay still… and quiet,” he pants next to my ear. “I need, I need you to do that for me, bug.”
Blinking back my tears, I hold my breath as Dante is thrust forward, his face crashing into Emery’s chest, his vibrant eyes already vacant as they bore into mine.
“Olive. Can you… can you do that?”
Before I can respond, he covers as much of my body with his as he can, pinning me between Emery and himself, and that’s how we stay while the sound of gunshots ring out through my nest. It’s how we stay as I watch bullet after bullet hit two of my mates. It’s how we stay until everything goes quiet and I don’t feel Jyron’s chest rise and fall against my back anymore.
I continue carrying out his final request long after that. Long enough for the blood to stop flowing, replaced by a never-ending stream of tears until those dry up, too. Then I just lay with my mates, the silence deafening while I pray for death to take me, and I wait to follow them.
I stabthe shovel into the dirt, the point sinking into the small pile at my feet as I use my forearm to push my hair out of my face. I take a few deep breaths as I wipe the sweat from my brow then tilt my head back to squint up at the sky.
I had no idea how warm it was today.
Springtime in Minnesota can bring warmer temperatures, but it has to be somewhere in the seventies and I wasn’t really expecting that.
Then again, the house about 400 yards away has probably increased the heat index on some level.
Burning buildings probably do that.
It could also be the fever I no doubt have. That’s definitely something that could have me sweating buckets, especially while doing hard labor with infected wounds wrapped in dirty, makeshift bandages.
Thankfully, I think my body is still in shock, otherwise all of this would be much more painful, and probably a lot harder than it already is.
I close my eyes against the setting sun, momentarily wishing it would rise and take me back to two days ago, that it would cycle backwards to the end of my heat or hell, even the beginning of it. I wish that stupid ball of burning gas could rewind the last month of my life and put me back in bed with my mates when wewere arguing about visiting that shitty little cabin they wanted to rent.
The one-room shack close to the border where we could shut down and go off grid for a while.
They wanted to do something different, to go somewhere we’d never been, and they wanted it to coincide with my heat for some reason. A romantic one that I probably ruined by arguing.
But the idea of leaving our house gave me so much anxiety. It scared me. I started a fight just to keep the panic attack at bay, and they gave in because they always do.
Alwaysdid.
I’d give anything to go back to that.
Now, that very same house is burning behind me, and instead of going away somewhere with my mates, I’m burying them in unmarked graves under our favorite tree in the woods on our property.
Our initials are carved into it, and that’ll have to suffice for now but their final resting place won’t stay unmarked forever.
I’ll honor them the way they deserve and I’ll do it as soon as I’m able.
For now, I just need to make sure they’re safe and at peace.
I swipe at the tear that slips down my cheek before digging the heel of my hand into my eye so no more can follow, then quickly go back to filling in the final hole at my feet.
I smooth out the last of the dirt, flattening the surface before I drop the shovel and grab the bucket and trowel.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
That’s what they’d say back home.
It’s probably the only thing I took from that garbage they spewed at us, and it was only because I was waiting for the day they’d say that about my father.
I didn’t think I’d be saying it about my mates, nor did I think I’d be taking it so literally.
Bracing myself for the finality of the moment, I dip the trowel into the bucket, scooping out ashes from the part of our house that has already burned to almost nothing then begin spreading them over each grave one at a time.
Carefully, reverently. I pat the smoldering ash into the dirt with every ounce of love and appreciation I can muster.
