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“Why are you doing this?”
They turned their heads toward me, but I stared resolutely at the sky. My hands clenched, and it was getting harder to breathe.
“Doing what?” Chris asked.
“You know what.”
“Acting like nothing’s wrong, and that we’re your friends, and we missed you and wanted you to be there when we ate a deer?”
Fucking idiots. “Yes.”
“Because it’s true,” Tanner said. He moved his arm over until it brushed against mine. I didn’t pull away. “Maybe not the nothing’s wrong part, but all the rest? Totally true.”
“You should be scared of me. You are scared of me.” It wasn’t heavy, the scent of fear, and it bent more toward uneasiness, but it was still there.
“Well, yeah,” Chris said. “You tried to eat us. It hurt.” He sobered a little before sighing. “Look, man. We can either dance around this or face it head-on. And the longer we put this off, the worse off we’ll be. Did you want to hurt us?”
“I don’t remember,” I reminded them.
“Oh. Right. Do you want to hurt us now?”
I shook my head.
“See?” Tanner said. “There you go.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Why not?” Chris asked. “Because if anyone should be having a hard time with this, it should be the two of us. Not you. If anything, you should be groveling for our forgiveness. Go ahead. Grovel. A lot. We’re ready.”
My throat worked. “This is serious. You can’t treat this like—”
“We know it’s serious,” Tanner said. “It was our idea to be out here with you. Joe and Ox had nothing to do with it. We asked them for this.”
That surprised me. I thought the Alphas were trying to keep the peace, shoving us together even if they didn’t want to be here. “Rico—”
“Will come around in his own time,” Chris said. “He’s… he took it hard, man. Something about bleeding out in front of him, and dying, and all that junk. But he didn’t see what we did. He wasn’t there.”
“What did you see?” I whispered.
“Blank,” Tanner said. “You were just blank. Like no one was home.” He poked me in the arm. “It was awful. We knew then, as we know now, that it wasn’t you. It was your body, sure, but it wasn’t you. Gordo’s dad made you do this. Don’t ever forget that. And I know this is still all new to you and that we’ve had time to come to terms with it, but I don’t want you to think we were ever going to let you go. Chris and I, we had a long talk after. We decided to become the best fucking werewolves in the world so when it came time to drag your sorry ass back to Green Creek, we’d be ready.”
“We trained like a motherfucker,” Chris agreed. “I can do backflips. Which, honestly, is pretty pointless, but it looks really cool.”
I was shocked into laughter. Chris grinned at me, obviously pleased with himself.
“And no,” Tanner said, “we’re not here because of what Aileen and Patrice said. Or at least not just because of what they said. We’re here because you belong to us just as much as we belong to you. That’s what pack is, Robbie. It’s us being together. I’m not gonna lie. It’s gonna be hard. I don’t know what’s coming, but I know I’d rather have you by my side t
han not. And Chris feels the same.”
“Pretty much,” Chris said. “We didn’t…. We were pack when we were human. I thought I understood what it meant, and maybe I did. But now? It’s just… more. Like all the dials have been turned up as high as they can go. It sucked at first because everything was so fucking loud.”
“Car alarms,” Tanner mumbled. “The worst thing that’s ever happened to anyone ever. Gordo accidentally set one off at the garage.”
Chris snickered. “Tanner half-shifted and was barking at it.”
I laughed again. Tanner shoved me. “You’re both dicks.” He sat up, looking down at me. “So. We forgive you for the whole rawr-I’m-going-to-maul-you thing. And in return, you can forgive us for taking so long to rescue you like the damsel in distress you are.”
“It’s not that easy.”
