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“I’m ready.” I dug the heels of my hands into my eyes to keep the tears from coming. It would serve nothing, and I’d already grieved long enough. “Let’s go home.”
“Feels strange, doesn’t it? To think of the pack again?” He shouldered his pack and stretched out his back.
“And without our families.” We’d been in the Valley since we were eight, both of us, the last time a drought struck the mountains. That time, Carson Valley had not been hit as hard, and the human economy had been thriving. “But my dad has no reason to leave his shop. He’s such a craftsman.”
“His art is known far and wide, but it would be really difficult for his best pieces to be delivered from the middle of nowhere.” There wasn’t exactly a paved road leading to our lands. “I’m kind of wishing we’d made a trip or two home.”
“Yeah. Think we were too stubborn?” I grabbed onto the change of topic because thinking about our loss was just too painful.
“Probably.” Levi took a step away. “If we’re going to be far enough into the mountains to find a good camping spot tonight, we need to get going.”
He was right, but my feet felt like they were stuck in the concrete they’d poured over our sweet potato bed. My throat was swelled nearly closed, and anger warred with grief. We’d actually bought that plot of land from the rancher who owned it…or at least we thought we had. When he sold the whole ranch to the developer, it turned out, the paperwork had never been put through for our purchase, and he told them we were just tenants.
Who were soon evicted.
“Do you think we’re doing the right thing?”
Levi came back to stand beside me. “What alternative do you see? We’ve lost our investment in the property, and even more when we tried to fight it, so unless we want to stay at home with our parents, we’d have an awfully hard time finding a place to live.”
“I know. And while they are glad to have us, it just feels wrong to do that long-term. We need to make our own life, and I thought we had.” Not entirely the life I’d hoped for us, but at least a good time building something.
“Let’s go, my friend.” He reached for my hand and pulled me away from where I’d been stuck. “We’ll build in a new place. The pack lands are our ancestral home, and maybe that’s where we really belong.”
“You’re right.” I let him pull me, regretting when he dropped my hand. How long had we known each other that I still wished he’d notice me as more than a friend?
Long time.
Once we were off the ranch, some of the feeling of being stuck eased, and I felt a little better. Not a lot, but that was all right. Levi and I had been hiking and camping together all of our lives, and so I felt comfortable with the idea. Maybe if I convinced myself that it was only a hike, only a camping trip, I could brave the first day or two of travel before facing the reality that everything we’d built together was ruined, and we were starting fresh.
And maybe while doing that, I could try to reach acceptance that I would not be his mate.
Chapter Two
Nova
I couldn’t stay.
Or so I had to tell myself with every step along the trail. I had to leave, to strike out and find another pack to live with because the alternative was not the future I sought. In fact, there was no future whatsoever in the Cross Creek pack.
The alpha’s insistence on keeping us in the past had led to nearly every young person and many older than that choosing to leave the pack in order to find a happier existence somewhere else. Not that we wanted to get away from our traditions, but there were numerous conveniences we yearned to adapt to our needs.
Like plumbing. Of the indoor variety. The alpha said we didn’t need it, and I suppose he was right. We certainly could survive without, but why should we want to? At least, that was the general consensus. What could it hurt to pipe water into the homes so we could bathe and wash dishes and do other useful things without having to carry buckets from the spring or one of the wells every time we wanted to make soup.
Family obligations had kept me here this long, but they no longer existed, which was why I currently stood on the ridge over the pack lands, looking down on the village where I’d spent the first twenty-five years of my life. The houses from above appeared a little run down, dilapidated even, but the thought of leaving made my throat swell with grief. Sure, it was the right choice, but that didn’t make it easy.
So many memories.
My home still stood. Empty and sad, in the first fingers of dawn’s light, almost calling to me, but there was nothing there for me. Not anymore. I’d heard of packs where the alpha matched people up with their mate, an old-fashioned tradition that would have been popular here I had no doubt, had anyone stuck around to let the alpha do it.
But there was nobody to match me with or for me to find myself here. If I stayed, I would never find my true mate. He was not here. How could he be? Nobody who stuck around here was single, at least now that I’d walked away.
Hours later, as I reached ten then eleven thousand feet, the chill closed in around me. This late in the fall, there would normally have been a thick layer of snow up here. Heck, we’d have had a foot or two of it frosting the ground at home. But with drought conditions sparking fire danger everywhere in the mountains of California, Nevada, and elsewhere, there was only a slight bit of it icing the very highest peaks above me.
Not that the lack raised the temperature of the air or the ground. The items I had packed did include most of my clothing, certainly all of the warm pieces, but it wasn’t enough to keep me from hypothermia if I slept out in the open. I decided to press on, reach the pass and hope to find a cave or other place to shelter. I had a few nights of this, and dying on the first one after waiting so long to make a move and start my new life sounded like a really bad idea.
I went back and forth from feeling good about my decision to wanting to run home and crawl back into my little house. Nostalgia made things better, and I knew that, but images of our little family gathered around the table on a night like this, laughter and the clank of silverware against plates providing music sure seemed pretty wonderful to me. Sometimes my brother would play his guitar, but we didn’t all sing. My mother tried to make us, but we thought it was silly.
I wish I’d sung.
