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“We don’t know what Livingstone did to me,” Kelly admitted. “Not really. It’s not so much that he trapped my wolf as much as he just… took it away.”
I couldn’t look at him.
“See?” he said after a moment. “Even a week ago, I’d have some idea of what you were thinking. Or feeling. Emotions have a scent to them. You don’t really think about it much until it’s gone.”
“Scent memory.”
“Yeah. Like that. Little reminders that open up something you haven’t thought about in years. Smoke does that for me. I don’t like the smell of smoke. It hurts.”
Before I could stop myself, I asked, “Why?”
He picked at the blanket in his lap. “My father.”
“What was his name?”
“Thomas.”
“Thomas Bennett.” TB.
“Yeah. He… died.”
“I’m sorry.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Are you?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Did I know him?” Those last four words caused my head to spin.
“No. It was before you. Years ago.” He paused like he was thinking hard. Then, “Seven years, to be exact. Seven years in a couple of weeks. Wow. I don’t…. That’s a long time. Longer than I thought.”
“How old were you?” And, “How old are you?”
His lips quirked. “Almost twenty-one then. And I’m twenty-seven now.”
Only a couple of years between us. He looked younger than that. “What does your father have to do with smoke?”
He didn’t look away when he said, “He burned. After he was killed. On a pyre in the woods. Wolves came from all over. We cried and howled. And I never forgot how the smoke smelled.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Consoling him felt fake. I made a mistake instead. “Did Michelle come here too?”
His expression hardened. “No. She wasn’t invited.”
“Why? She’s the Alpha of all. And if your family is as important as you’re all telling me, then—”
“You really don’t know, do you?”
I scoffed at him. “Just figuring that out, are you? Good for you.”
He didn’t take the bait. “My father was the Alpha of all. Like his father before him. He left Michelle in charge after Joe was hurt. When he was a kid. He brought us back here so that Joe could heal. So we all could heal.”
He… took a boy, once. A little boy. A princeling, or as close to one as we have these days. This wolf hurt the boy terribly, and it was only by the grace of the moon that he was saved.
Reality shifted yet again. I searched my memory for anything about this, anything about the history being laid out before me, but once again came up empty. “How do I not know about any of this? Why didn’t I know anything about your father?”
“We think he took everything away,” he said, meaning Ezra. Or whoever the fuck he was supposed to be. “Like my wolf. He just wiped it out. Everything having to do with us. Your time here. Everything we went through.” He gnawed on his bottom lip. “And there might even be a chance he took things from before you came. But if we don’t know about it, and you don’t, then it’s kind of pointless to even think about.”
I reached up almost unconsciously to touch the mark on my shoulder.
His gaze tracked my movement, but he didn’t say anything about it.
