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thought he was asleep when he said, “I want to go home.”
He turned his head, face against Carter’s throat.
I watched them until the sun rose.
HE DREAMED, sometimes, dreamed these furious nightmares that caused him to wake up screaming for his dad, his mom, for Ox and Ox and Ox. Kelly would take his face in his hands. Carter would look helplessly at me.
I didn’t do much of anything. We all had monsters in our dreams. Some of us had just lived with them longer.
THE GLACIER wolves pointed us north. Their pack was small, living in a couple of cabins in the middle of the forest. The Alpha was an asshole, posturing and threatening until Joe said, “My father was Thomas Bennett. He’s gone now, and I won’t stop until those who took him from me are nothing but blood and bone.”
Things were calmer after that.
Omegas had come to their territory. The Alpha pointed at a pile of dirt with a wooden cross surrounded by flowers. One of her Betas, she said. The Omegas swarmed like hornets, violet eyes and slobbering maws. They’d died, most of them. The ones who had escaped had done so barely. But not before they’d taken one of her own.
Richard hadn’t been among them.
But there were whispers farther into Canada.
“I knew Thomas,” the Alpha said to me before we left. Her mate fawned over the boys, plying them with bowls of soup and thick slices of bread. “He was a good man.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I knew you too. Not that we’ve ever met.”
I didn’t look at her.
“He knew,” she said. “What you’d gone through. What price you paid. He thought you’d come back to him one day. That you needed time and space and—”
“I’ll wait outside,” I said abruptly. Carter looked at me, cheeks bulging, broth dripping down his chin, but I waved him away.
The air was cool and the stars were bright.
Fuck you, I thought as I stared up at the expanse. Fuck you.
WE DIDN’T find Richard Collins in Calgary.
We found feral wolves.
They came at us, lost to their madness.
I pitied them.
At least until they outnumbered us and went for Joe.
He cried out as they cut into his skin, his brothers screaming his name.
The raven spread its wings.
I was exhausted by the time it was over, covered in Omega blood, bodies littering the ground around me.
Joe was propped up between Carter and Kelly, head bowed as his skin slowly knit back together. His breath rattled heavily in his chest. He said, “You saved me. You saved us.”
I looked away.
As he slept, I picked up the burner phone I carried. I highlighted Mark’s name and thought how easy it would be. I could press a button and his voice would be in my ear. I would say I was sorry, that I never should have let it go as far as it did. That I understood the choice he’d made so long ago.
I texted Ox instead.
