Page 5

But often, the river was only kind of lazy, cool, and wet and meandering, running clear and free through the woods and over the rocks and past the cabins that were set up on either side.

My dad still lived out there, still in that cabin out by the river, the one he’d bought when we moved out there when I was fifteen. He had never tried to get me to come out for Christmas or the Fourth of July or anything, of course. He knew what had happened to his status when I wasn’t the mate-to-be of the cyning. He knew I would not want to come back there. If he wanted to see me on a holiday, he either came to me or we met up somewhere else. I usually did Christmas with Mom, though, even though I wasn’t close with my mother or sisters these days.

I sent him a text, though, saying that I was going to rent a car and come out there, asking if there was still a bedroom at the old cabin that I could sleep in.

He called me back. I was in the car rental place, waiting in line.

“Leo!” he said. “You don’t send that kind of information in a text, sweetheart. You kids. Call someone if you’re trying to stay at their house.”

“I mean, you’re my dad,” I said. “Is it a problem?”

“No,” he said, very quickly.

“I can get a hotel room or something,” I said, but I had not really budgeted for that kind of expense.

“Sweetheart, I want you to stay, obviously,” he said. “I’m only wondering why you’re, um, coming.”

“I heard about Opal,” I said. “I want to pay my respects. I’ll stay for the funeral, and then I’ll leave. I’ll be in and out. I’m staying tonight, but I’ll drive back tomorrow afternoon.”

“Oh, okay,” he said, sounding relieved. “Yeah, you and Opal, you were… close before. I remember that. I remember her sleeping over here, the two of you each eating a large pizza all by yourselves.”

I snickered, thinking of that. We’d been, um, high, probably. Dad didn’t need to know that. “Yeah, I remember that.”

“So, it’s about her,” he said. “Not about, uh, about the cyning. Because whatever that is, Leo, you gotta realize, he just lost his wife, mother of his two kids, and they’ve been together since they were out of high school—”

“I know how long they’ve been together,” I interrupted.

“Well, you have to give him time to grieve, that’s all I’m saying.”

“I’m not coming back for him,” I said. “It’s about Opal. It’s about closure.”

“Okay,” he said. “That sounds good, actually. Healthy. I’ll see you soon, sweetie.”

“See you soon, Dad.”

I hung up the phone. Suddenly, I felt nervous about the whole thing in a way I hadn’t before. What would happen when I arrived in Riverside? I hadn’t been back in a long time. Wouldn’t I be welcome?

There were members of the pack who were relieved that things had gone down the way they had, after all. Opal was pack royalty, essentially. Marrying her to the cyning, it was the right way to do things. It was tradition. Me coming in, mating the cyning, dirtying up the bloodline, they hadn’t liked it. Bad enough that I wasn’t descended from the pack. I also wasn’t even a pureblood since my mother wasn’t a shifter.

People in small towns are often a little close-minded and prejudiced, so all of that may have been expected. But when they got Opal as the cwen of the pack, I know all of the traditionally-minded older pack members were relieved. They had been happy to be rid of me.

I got into my rental car with a pit-of-my-stomach feeling that only grew more intense as I got out on the highway and started driving south. It didn’t help that, as I got farther and farther away from the city, my wolf started to wake up, and my wolf was antsy.

I had not let her out in a long time. It had been years since I shifted. It wasn’t a full moon, so there was little chance of a shift now, not unless my father forced one. Embarrassingly, even though I was all grown up now, my father was still my alpha. The only way to break that bond would be a bite from an alpha or my father to die. Being a wolf meant that it was very difficult to be independent. The pack structure was part of your identity, and you didn’t escape it, not easily. Best you could do was what I did, ignore it.

I drove and tried to make peace with the antsy and eager animal inside me. She raced back and forth within me, whining, jumping, howling, and I tried to convince her to curl up in there, to relax.

But whatever alliance I used to have with that part of me, I did not have it anymore, and I supposed I could understand why. I had pushed her all the way down, buried her under layers of metal and pavement and stoplights and concrete and clouds of car exhaust. She had been fighting to get free for a long time, and she thought of me as her jailer, as her enemy.

I felt guilty.

I found myself trying to explain it to her. Out loud. “You know we were going into those heats,” I said to her. “You know we had the bond sickness. You know how much it hurt.”

Nothing made it better, and some of the things we tried made it worse. I had scars, bite scars, bites that hadn’t taken, that couldn’t take, because a wolf who was mated to someone else couldn’t claim another woman. Only one.

I found myself reaching in under my shirt and fingering some of them. All of them were in places I could hide.

I remembered begging him. Bite, bite, please, but somewhere no one will see. Please, please.