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“No, it’s not enough,” Max says, glaring at his brother. “If she’s working with the bastard who did this to the last town, who tried to kill both of us, and who killed everyone here, we need to get her to see why it’s wrong.”
“Not by any means necessary!” Braxton challenges, taking a step closer to us.
My heart races. The smells rush over me. Smoke. Burned Flesh. Blood. Death. It’s hard to breathe. It’s hard to think. I’m panting hard, and the room is spinning.
Max’s grip on me tightens. “Yes, by any means necessary! She’s on the cusp. Don’t you get that?”
The cusp. The edge. The darkness that’s always there waiting to pull me into it. To change me into whatever it is brother and the others have become, to steal the last of my humanity.
How much easier would it be for me to let the wisps take over. I wouldn’t have to think anymore. I wouldn’t have tohurtanymore.
“Let go of her,” Braxton says, his words sound far away.
“Not until she sees the rest. Not until she sees what side she should be on.”
See more. The bodies. The death. Images of my pack flash in my mind. The sight of my mom’s eyes, void of life. The sound of my sister’s screaming. The smell of acrid smoke.
Max tries to haul me past Braxton. Braxton shoves Max and his hand slips from my arm. The brothers snarl in one another’s faces, and I fall back, not knowing what to focus on as the past and present fight with one another in my mind.
“What are you trying to do, Max?” Braxton points at me, his voice filled with rage. “Can’t you see she’s this close to breaking down?”
This close. Breaking down. He’s right. I am breaking down. All of this is too much. I can’t breathe. I can’t escape my own skin, and it’s so damn tight.
But Braxton isn’t finished. “The last time this happened she nearly let thatanimalpack member of hers kill her! What you’re doing now is only adding to her survivors guilt! She can’t handle it!”
I remember. That dark moment. The time my brother looked at me and the darkness called, whispering that I could be free if I just let him end it all.
Maybe I should have.
“What? When the hell did this happen? Why wasn’t I told?” Max shouts.
“Because you’re not always in charge! You don’t always know everything! Sometimes you’re just… wrong!”
“Don’t you dare question my authority, Braxton. I’m the leader of this team. You serve underneath me.” His words buzz through my mind. Enraged, on the edge of something different too.
“You can’t cling to that chain of command bullshit after you fuck one of your teammates, Max.”
His words shock me out of my own head.Did Braxton really just say that?I wrap my arms around myself.Is he right? How much should things change now that we’ve slept together?I don’t even know anymore because my life hasn’t exactly given me a sense of what a normal relationship is.
I suddenly realize Orson is standing behind me. “What do you see?” he whispers.
“See?” The word comes out through teeth that chatter. When did it get so cold?
“See. Tell me what you see.”
I know he’s doing something, and it’s helping, so I try to ignore the arguing of the twins and focus on Orson instead. “I see Max and Braxton, the house, the bodies–”
“What do you hear?”That’s right. I shouldn’t focus on the bodies.
I hug myself tighter. “Shouting.” Then, more slowly. “Water dripping. Floor boards creaking.”
“Smell?” he whispers, and his face is suddenly in front of me. And he has a nice face. That of a sweet surfer caught in our world of death and hardship.
“I smell smoke. Burned flesh.” No don’t think of that. “You… sandalwood, honey, no caramel. It’s nice. Comforting. Like you.”
He smiles and those brilliant mismatched eyes of his light up. “What do you feel?”
Feel?I’m not as cold. But what do I feel?My mind isn’t spinning.“The floor under my feet. The air against my skin.” I reach out and put a hand lightly on his chest. “You.”
