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I’d been waiting for her to ask.
“He’s struggling,” I admitted, even though that seemed like an understatement at this point.
“I bet he is,” Gena said softly. “I heard about his leg.”
“When you’re feeling better, you should come see him for yourself,” I suggested. “It might cheer him up.”
“Or the opposite.” Gena laughed thinly. “We hate each other, remember?”
I arched an eyebrow, not quite buying that. “Are you so sure about that?”
Gena and Kingston had history. Not quite as much as Xander and I did, but enough. She’d never admit it—brave faces, after all—but I was pretty sure he’d broken her heart.
Maybe she’d broken his as well.
“Maybe I will come by and see him, yeah,” she murmured, blushing again. “Is he blaming himself, too?”
“I think everyone is blaming themselves at this point.”
“How’s Xander?” Gena asked at the door.
“Angry.” I frowned, suddenly envious of that. I wished I could just be angry, too. Then my sinuses wouldn’t ache so much. But every time my rage flared up, it shifted to sadness too quickly, then went impotent and pathetic and limp. Xander wanted to fight the entire world to get our sons back. I just wanted to blink and find them in my arms again. I didn’t care how. “I think I’ve been pushing him away.”
“You do that, yeah. You’re kind of like a cat in that way,” Gena mused.
“A cat?” The connection fell short for me. I wasn’t feeling particular feline right now. Or frisky, for that matter.
“Yeah. You don’t want anyone to know you’re hurting, so you pretend you’re not because it makes you feel safe.” She smiled, a little smug, while I gaped at her. “Just an observation. But everyone needs a little scratch behind the ears sometimes. If you’re pushing him away, it’s never too late to pull him back.”
Chapter7
Xander
A blockade.
It was an act of war, even if not a single drop of blood was shed. There were no guns in the cars or trucks that we gathered to park across the roads that led in and out of Carter’s Creek. We set no fires. We didn’t even shift. But by noon that day, it was no longer possible for anyone in Carter’s Creek to leave, and anyone left outside of town would have to stay outside.
It gave me no pleasure, but we turned away the first few vehicles that approached us without incident. The first had been a Crown Vic with an elderly couple who claimed to be coming back from an appointment at Evergreen General. The second, a harried mother on her way out of town to buy groceries, the backseats of her minivan filled with screaming kids.
They all recognized me. When I explained why they weren’t allowed to leave or drive home, they accepted it begrudgingly but without argument.
A blockade wasn’t an act of war because it inconvenienced people. It was an act of war because of the threat behind it: give up and accept that this is your new reality until we get what we want, or try your luck and see how violently it’ll be enforced.
I didn’t expect it would come to that. Carter’s Creek was a tiny pack. Most of its members were in their fifties or older. The few young people were betas, married couples with kids. Neither were the type likely to try and start shit. The closest to an actual fight we got came from three working-class betas in a beat-up Toyota. They were headed home from the mechanic’s shop in Evergreen where they worked, they said. They weren’t happy to learn that we had no intention of letting them do so.
“Call your alpha,” I told them after they’d leveled their finest arguments and favorite curse words.
The largest of the betas barked a laugh. “What alpha? We don’t have one of those anymore.”
“You’ve got Doris Houghton,” I informed him. “Ring her up. If she cooperates, you can be home before dark.”
They stood there in silence, sizing up Dylan and me. There were three of them, two of us, but apparently, they didn’t like their odds. They probably liked the idea of bringing down the full force of Evergreen’s wrath if they decided to duke things out even less.
Grumbling, the betas got back into their car and pulled over to the side of the road. It was one of five now, all waiting to enter Carter’s Creek.
I doubted theirs would be the first call Doris had received today, but that was the point. I wanted her buried in complaints. I wanted her phone to be ringing off the hook.
If she wanted to run from the problems her son and granddaughter had caused, we couldn’t leave her with anywhere to run to. I didn’t care if every member of her pack was left stuck here on the side of the road, or back in Carter’s Creek banging down her door.
