And the sheer power emanating from him was devastating. It was wild and all-encompassing, threatening to overwhelm us all. Carter and Kelly began to tremble, eyes wide and wet.
“Joe,” I said quietly.
He ignored me, chest heaving.
“Joe.”
He turned to look at me, teeth bared.
I said, “Stop. You have to pull it back.”
For a moment I thought he was going to ignore me. That he’d turn back to his brothers and strip away everything from them, leaving them as docile, empty husks. Being an Alpha was an extraordinary responsibility, and if he’d wanted to, he could have forced his brothers to follow his every whim. They would be mindless drones, their free will hanging in tatters.
I would stop him. If it came to that.
It didn’t.
The red in his eyes leeched away, and all that remained was a scared seventeen-year-old boy in front of me, face wet as he shook.
“I’m,” he croaked out. “I don’t— Oh god, oh—”
Kelly moved first. He pushed past Carter and pressed himself against Joe, rubbing his nose near Joe’s ear and into his hair. Joe’s fists were still clenched at his sides as Kelly wrapped his arms around him. He was stiff and unyielding, eyes wide and on me.
Carter came then too. He took both his brothers in his arms, whispering quietly to them words I couldn’t make out.
Joe never looked away from me.
They slept that night on the floor, the floral-print comforter and pillows pulled from the bed and made into a little nest. Joe was in the middle, a brother on either side. Kelly’s head rested on his chest. Carter’s leg was thrown over the both of them.
They slept first, exhausted from the assault on their minds.
I sat on the bed above, watching over them.
It was late into the night when Joe said, “Why is this happening to me?”
I sighed. “It had to be you. It was—” I shook my head. “You’re the Alpha. It was always going to be you.”
His eyes glittered in the dark. “He came for me. When I was little. To get at my dad.”
“I know.”
“You weren’t there.”
“No.”
“You’re here now.”
“I am.”
“You could have said no. And I wouldn’t have been able to force you. Not like them.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Dad wouldn’t have done that. He wouldn’t have—”
“You aren’t your father,” I said, voice rougher than I expected.
“I know.”
“You are your own person.”
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
“You could have said no. But you didn’t.”
“You need to keep them safe,” I told him quietly. “This is your pack. You are their Alpha. Without them, there is no you.”
“And what did you become? When there was no us?”
I closed my eyes.
He didn’t speak for a long time after that. The night stretched on around us. I 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.
Joe’s fine. Ran into some trouble. He’s sleeping it off. He didn’t want you to worry.
That night I dreamed of a brown wolf with its nose pressed against my chin.
A PHONE rang while we were in Alaska.
We stared down at it, unsure of what do to. It’d been four months since we left Green Creek behind, and we were no closer to Richard than we’d been before.
Joe swallowed thickly as he picked up the burner phone off the desk of yet another nameless motel in the middle of nowhere.
I thought he was going to ignore it.
Instead he connected the call.
We all heard it. Every word.
“You fucking asshole,” Ox said, and I wanted nothing more than to see his face. “You don’t get to do that to me! You hear me? You don’t. Do you even fucking care about us? Do you? If you do, if even a part of you cares about me—about us—then you need to ask yourself if this is worth it. If what you’re doing is worth it. Your family needs you. I fucking need you.”
None of us spoke.
“You asshole. You bastard.”
Joe put the phone on the edge of the bed and sank to his knees. He put his chin on the bed, staring at the phone as Ox breathed.