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My lips curved down in a frown when I didn’t find him.

Valko tossed his shovel to the ground and strode over to me. He’d gotten back with the newest woman, and was heading out again after the eclipse, I knew.

“Hey,” I said, not bothering to adjust my frown. “Have you seen Amarok?”

“He left on a run a few hours ago. Usually heads south. Needed to get away, considering what today is.” Valko gestured in that direction, his forehead creasing slightly as he studied me. “You know what today is, right?”

“I just realized,” I said sheepishly, wrapping my arms around my abdomen. “We haven’t talked about what we’re going to do for the eclipse yet. I figured we should.”

“I’m not talking about the eclipse, Rory.”

My eyebrows wrinkled. “What are you talking about, then?”

Valko grimaced. “You’ll have to ask him yourself. If he hasn’t told you, there’s probably a reason.”

Hurt curled in my abdomen. “We don’t really talk about the painful things. Is today an anniversary for something difficult?”

“Of course it is. Do you think life was easy here, for us?” He gestured toward the forest again. “There were thousands of single wolf shifters when Serae created her curse. We were down tofiftybefore she brought the first human here from your world. The guys we lost weren’t strangers; they were our friends. Our families. Your life on Earth may have been shitty, but you’re what, twenty years old? We’ve been here, losing the people we love, for centuries.”

My throat swelled, and I whispered, “I didn’t realize.”

“Apparently.” He shook his head, turned his back to me, and went back to his shovel.

Something told me he’d ended the conversation like that because if he didn’t, he would’ve said something he might regret, and I’d never seen the shifters be purposefully cruel.

Tears stung my eyes as I slipped into the forest, heading south. I wanted to put myself somewhere that Amarok would catch my scent when he came back. Whatever bad had happened, I didn’t want him to have to deal with it alone.

Finding a thick trunk, I sat down in front of it. The trees around me were still brown and green, so I was still on the pack’s land.

I stared into the forest, forcing myself to consider everything Valko had said.

Amarok hadn’t told me about anything painful in his past. He’d told me upbeat stories of how the guys kept each other alive.

But they didn’t keep everyone alive.

They didn’t evenalmostkeep everyone alive.

They lost so many people… more than I could even imagine.

And he hadn’t told me. Not the details, at least.

Because I hadn’t been there for him.

He was there when I needed him, no matter what. If I was having a bad day, he’d pull me in for a hug. When I woke up sleepy, he made me a cup of the Evare version of coffee.

Every morning, I sat on the counter in his kitchen. He cooked me breakfast, and laughed and joked with me. He had realized I wasn’t willing to take our relationship any deeper than it already was, and hadn’t pushed me. He hadn’t brought up anything negative, or asked me for anything more than I volunteered to give.

And I hadn’t offered anything more than sharing the breakfast he cooked for us, and the day and two nights we’d shared during the last eclipse.

My throat swelled.

I had needed time to learn how to be free again… but he’d been alone during that.

The man was hurting, and I hadn’t even realized. Not when he cooked for me, or when I cut our breakfast shorter than usual so I could check in with our newest human a little earlier. Not even when he brushed a kiss to my knuckles in goodbye and didn’t linger outside the women’s den after I stepped inside.

Amarok was a good man, and unlike me, a really, really good friend.

I wasn’t willing to let him go, when he would either lose his fight with immis or pursue another woman. Both prospects were equally intolerable to me, for different reasons.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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