Wolfsong (66 page)

please wait for me

please love me

i am wolf

i am Alpha

i am yours

you are

mine mine mine mine

i see you

do you see me

are you angry

are you scared

are you mad at me

you smell sad

you smell like me but sad please don’t be sad why are you sad i am here with

you and you don’t have to be

boy man wolf Alpha

please

ox
he said
ox ox

why won’t you look at me

why won’t you see me i am here with you i am

your skin tastes like salt

crying

are you crying

don’t cry

you can’t be sad

i don’t like it when you’re sad

he said
i thought

he said
his hand

he said
it was in you ox

he said
you bastard

he screamed
how could you

he screamed
how could you leave me

he is angry at me

please don’t be angry

i am here i am wolf Alpha pack mate

and i can feel it

it’s clawing at me

my wolf

it wants to bite

and kill

i am so angry now

you are angry

i am
angry

you can’t stop me

you can’t stop this

this is

i am wolf

i am

Alpha

he said
no no ox no i’m sorry

he said
that’s not how this is supposed to be

he said
i am here

i am here with you for you ox because you have always done the same to me you are candy canes and pinecones you are epic and awesome you are the only reason why i was able to get through the years i was gone i cut us off and tried to push you out of my mind but when it was late when it was dark i would think of you of coming home to you of being with you being happy being home because ox you’re my home without you i am nothing i am no one you are my love my life my pack my mate so i need you to
focus
i need you to
listen
to my heart to my voice to my breaths i am your Alpha and i can’t do this without you so you come back you come back you fucking come back to me ox

i listen

his breaths

his voice and words

his heart

and i

i am

i am

I AM OX I AM OX I AM—

shifting and

“Holy fucking shit,” I gagged as I fell to human knees. There was a hand on my back, the fingers warm against my skin, as I fought back against my churning stomach. The world was too loud around me, like I could hear every single thing in a ten-mile radius. I was assaulted by the smells of the forest.

The shift tried to push its way forward again, my claws digging into the dirt. My gums itched, and I wanted to
push
for it, I wanted it to come.

He said, “Ox.”

I growled at him.

The Alpha said, “
Ox
.”

Everything paused.

He knelt in front of me.

He took my face in his hands and tilted my head up until I could see his eyes.

They were red, a burning fire red, and they
called
to me, even now, even through the storm in my head, the wolf clawing just underneath the surface.

He said, “Listen to me.”

He said, “You’re here.

He said, “With me.”

He said, “And I will never leave you.”

I said, “I don’t believe you.”

“Do you trust me?”

Yes. Yes. Yes. I grimaced as my muscles tightened. “I can’t—”

“Ox,” he said sharply. “
Do you trust me
?”

“Yes,” I bit out. “Yes.
Yes
.”

“Then I need you to trust me now,” he said. “I am your Alpha. But you’re also mine. Ox, I bit you to save you. You’ve turned. You’re no longer human. You’re a wolf, Ox. Like me. And Carter and Kelly. Mom. Mark. You’re a wolf, okay?”

“My eyes,” I managed to say. “What color are my eyes?” Because I couldn’t help but think they were violet, that I didn’t have a pack anymore, because I was never part of the pack to begin with. Joe was the Alpha. He’d come home and he would be in charge and they’d have no place for me, they wouldn’t need—

“Red,” he said quietly. “Your eyes are red.”

“Fuck,” I breathed and everything snapped into place.

I NEVER
thought about control.

Before.

I never thought about how much it took to actually
be
a wolf. Thomas and the others had always made it look so easy.

The only time I’d ever seen anything close to a lack of control had been the night Joe had first shifted.

Years. It’d been years since that night.

So I hadn’t thought about it much.

Now it was all I could think of.

I lay in the clearing with my head in Joe’s lap, his hand in my hair, both of us unconcerned with my nudity. The grass was cool against my heated skin. I was listening to his heartbeat, taking a breath for three beats, letting it out for five.

The wolf in me still gnashed, its hackles raised, but it was calming under the touch of the Alpha.

We didn’t speak for a long time.

I didn’t know what he was thinking. I didn’t understand the smells coming off him. They were bright, these smells. Kinetic. They burned my nose. But underneath them was Joe. It was smoke and earth and rain. It was the smells I always had associated with him intensified a thousand times over. I wanted to bury myself in them, roll around in them until his scent covered me.

But the silence ended. It had to. There was too much to say.

He said, “Osmond is dead.”

I grunted, having figured as much.

“Gordo killed him. The others in our pack took care of the rest of the Omegas. The humans that were taken made it to the garage, they were safe. We found them huddled together in the back of the garage underneath one of the lifts. Gordo… did something to them. Altered their memories. They weren’t hurt by it. They just… won’t remember. This. The Omegas. Us. You. None of it. They’ll heal. They thought they were in a car accident. It was odd, really.”

Convenient. Maybe too convenient. I didn’t know just how far Gordo’s magic ran or what he’d had to do in the years since he’d been gone, but there’d be time. Later. Now I just needed to hear Joe. To be near him.

I tried to find words, any of them, to say something. But all that came out was a garble of sounds, more wolf than man. Joe’s hand stilled briefly in my hair, but then resumed, blunt fingernails scratching my scalp.

He said, “I should have known that something was wrong.”

His voice was even. Carefully restrained.

“I should have known,” he said again.

I wanted to ask how he’d found out, but—

He heard it anyway. Somehow. “You closed the bonds. For everyone. I called you. Your phone went to voice mail. I called Gordo. He didn’t answer. I went to the shop. The others followed me because they
knew
, Ox. They
knew
something was wrong.”

A slight crack in the tone. Anger spilled through, tinged with something that tasted like pain. Or sorrow. I didn’t know if there was a difference between the two.

I pressed my face into his lap, trying to stay calm.

“Gordo knew,” he said. “He followed you. Said something wasn’t sitting right. And he just… he knew. I didn’t. But he did. He—”

My hands were claws.

“You foolish man,” he whispered. “You stupid, foolish man.”

I whined at him, begging him not to push me away. Not now. Not ever.

“How could you think this would ever be okay?” he choked out. “How could you ever think…? I couldn’t get to you in time. I couldn’t—and then he was
there
, the monster from my dreams he was
there
, and his hand was
inside you
—”

He broke off as he began to shudder.

I wrapped my arms around his waist, pressing my face into his stomach.

“I couldn’t stop him in time,” Joe said, no longer even and smooth. His heartbeat had skyrocketed. He gripped my hair. He was speaking through fangs. “I couldn’t reach you in time. I had to watch you—when he… did what he did. And all I can remember, all I can remember
thinking
is how this was a dream. That it was all a dream. But it wasn’t because you’d told me once that you can’t actually feel pain in your dreams, that that’s the difference between dreaming and being awake. Ox. I wasn’t dreaming because I
felt
it. Everything. He tore into you and he tore into me and then his head was gone and you were
bleeding
.”

He hunched over me, as if trying to protect me from everything around him.

His breath was ragged in my ear.

He said, “You fucking bastard. How dare you die in front of me.”

It was then I found my voice.

Because I needed to speak.

And because he needed to hear me.

I should have said
I’m sorry.

Or
everything will be okay now.

Or
the monster is dead and I’m here and I’ll never leave you.

I didn’t say that, though. Any of it.

When I spoke, my words were muffled against him.

My voice was deeper than it’d ever been, like I was trapped somewhere between man and wolf.

I said, “I would do it again. If it meant keeping you safe.”

He inhaled sharply.

And it was the truth. I would gladly give up my life if it meant Joe would live another day. Or any of them in our pack. Because that’s what an Alpha did. Thomas had taught me that. An Alpha put his pack above all else. It was an Alpha’s job to keep his pack whole. To keep them safe. To keep them alive.

Richard Collins might have tried to come after them, even after he’d given me his word.

But that was a risk I’d had to take.

Because it meant they’d be safe.

I turned, lying on my back to stare up at him.

He looked down at me.

A single tear fell, landing on my forehead.

“I hate you,” he whispered.

I nodded, because I knew he did. For this one thing. “You would do the same. For me. And for that, I hate you too.”

He laughed wetly. “Goddamn you.”

The angle was rough when he bent over to kiss me. His back was curved as much as it could, and I raised my head slightly to meet him. It was just a graze, a brush of his lips against mine. But it felt like more than any time that had come before. There was desperation in it, and longing and hurt, so much goddamn hurt, but there was green too. So much green shot through it because we were
here
. We were both here and not even a monster could tear us apart.

HE TRACED
his fingers over the skin of my stomach where Richard’s claws had gutted me. There wasn’t a mark, the skin completely healed. There wasn’t even any pain. It was like it’d happened to someone else.

I wondered then if all my scars were gone, the marks that made up the map of my life. If they’d all healed too. The thin line on the back of my neck where I’d caught it going through a barbed-wire fence when I was six. The small divot from chicken pox on my cheek when I was nine. The mark on my right forearm from when my daddy had been drunk and had thought it’d be funny to toss a brick at me to catch. That one had gotten me six stitches and an apology.

I couldn’t look. I didn’t know how I’d feel to see them gone.

I was more myself now. The wolf was pushed back. I thought it was because Joe was near. I could feel all the others, more than I’d ever felt before. Two days ago, they’d been there, but the edges had been blurred. Now, they were all crystal clear. They were waiting for us. We’d get there. Soon.

Joe said, “I turned you because I couldn’t let you go.” It was the first time he’d spoken in almost an hour.

I sighed. “I know.”

“Are you angry?”

“No. I’m not angry at being a wolf.”

“But you’re angry.”

“No.”

“Ox.”

“Not really. I don’t know. I can’t tell what’s my anger and what’s yours. It’s like… it’s going through me and—”

“Feedback loop,” he said.

“I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s a circuit. A circle. Completed between you and me. Everything I feel is everything you feel.”

I nodded slowly. “Is it always going to be like this? It’s….”

“Overwhelming?”

“Yeah.”

“No, it won’t,” he said. “You’re newly turned. Everything is dialed up. Once you get the hang of it, you can control it better.”

I thought that sounded right, but it didn’t help me now. “So we’re both angry, then.”

He snorted, hands pressing harder against my stomach. “Nah. It’s just me right now. I’m pissed off.”

“At me.”

“Damn fucking right I am.”

“Oh.”

“Why?”

I didn’t play dumb. I didn’t think I’d be able to anymore. “Because if there was a chance he wouldn’t hurt you, then I had to take it. And the others. The humans. I couldn’t… I couldn’t leave them, Joe. I just couldn’t.”

“You should have told me.”

“Kinda makes the whole heroic thing moot if I tell everyone about it.”

The breath he let out then was more of a sob than anything else, but we waited until he was okay again.

“You can’t do that again,” he said finally.

“If it means—”

“Ox. No more secrets.”

I squinted up at him. “Is that because you can read me now like this?”

He snorted. “I could always read you, Ox. We’re… I just could. You’re Ox.”

“You’re Joe.”

“Right,” he said.

I looked up at the stars. “Do they know?”

“Who.”

“Alpha Hughes. The others. Back East.”

“No. I told Robbie to wait.”

“Until?”

“You.”

“Why?”

“We’re a team, Ox. You and I. I can’t do this without you. And you shouldn’t have to do this without me. Not anymore.”