I said, “And then maybe I could hear your voice. I mean, totally no homo, but I think it’d be… nice.”
He was shaking.
I looked at him, thinking something was wrong.
It wasn’t.
The motherfucker was laughing at me.
I shoved him off me. “Asshole.”
He rolled over on his back, legs in the air, body wiggling as he scratched himself on the ground. Then he fell to his side, mouth open in a ferocious yawn.
“Would it be so bad?” I whispered. “Shifting back? You can’t stay this way forever. You can’t lose yourself to your wolf. You’ll forget how to find your way home.”
He turned his head away from me.
I’d pushed enough for the day. I could always try again tomorrow. We had time.
I sat up, stretching my arms above my head.
His tail thumped on the ground.
“Okay, so where did we leave off last time? Oh. Right. So, Ox and Joe decided it was time for them to mate. Which, honestly, I try not to think about because that’s my little brother, you know? And if I do think about it, it makes me want to punch Ox in the mouth because that’s my little brother. But what the fuck do I know, right? So, Ox and Joe… well. You know. Bone. And it was weird and oh so gross, because I could feel it. Oh, shut up, I didn’t mean like that. I meant I could feel it when their mate bond formed. We all could. It was like this… this light. Burning in all of us. Mom said she’s never heard of a pack having two Alphas before, but it made sense that it happened with us because of how crazy we already are. Ox is… well. He’s Ox, right? Werewolf Jesus. And then he and Joe came out of the house, and I never want to smell that on my little brother ever again. It was like he’d rolled in spunk, and Kelly and I were gagging because what the fuck? We gave him so much shit for it. That… that was a good day.”
I glanced down at him.
He was watching me with violet eyes.
“And that’s how it ended. At least the first part. There’s still Mark and Gordo to—”
His tail twitched dangerously. His body tensed.
My hand stilled. “Why do you get like that every time I bring up Gordo? I know you’re an Omega and all and you’ve probably got evil Livingstone magic in you, but it’s not his fault. You really need to get over whatever the hell is wrong with you. Gordo’s good people. I mean, yeah, he’s a dick, but so are you. You guys have more in common than you think. Sometimes you even make the same facial expressions.”
He snapped at me.
I laughed and fell back against the grass, hands behind my head. “Fine. Be that way. We don’t have to talk about it today. There’s always tomorrow.”
We stayed there, just the two of us, until the sky began to streak with red and orange.
AS I SAT BEHIND my dead father’s desk for the last time on a cold winter morning, I wondered what he would think of me.
He told me once that difficult decisions must be made with a level head. It was the only way to make sure they were right.
The house was quiet. Everyone was gone.
My father was a proud man. A strong man. There was a time when I thought he could do no wrong, that he was absolute in his power, all knowing.
But he wasn’t.
For someone such as him, an Alpha wolf from a long line of wolves, he was terribly human in the mistakes he made, the people he’d hurt, the enemies he’d trusted.
Ox.
Joe.
Gordo.
Mark.
Richard Collins.
Osmond.
Michelle Hughes.
Robert Livingstone.
He was wrong about all of them. The things he’d done.
And yet… he was still my father.
I loved him.
If I tried hard enough, if I really tried, I could almost smell him embedded in the bones of this house, in the earth of this territory that had seen so much death.
I loved him.
But I hated him too.
I thought that was what it meant to be a son: to believe in someone so much that it caused blindness to all their faults until it didn’t. Thomas Bennett wasn’t infallible. He wasn’t perfect. I could see that now.
Days ago, I was on a ledge.
Below me was a void.
I hesitated. But I thought I’d already been falling for a long time. I just hadn’t realized it.
That final step came easier than I expected it to. I’d already prepared. Drained my bank accounts. Packed my bags. Prepared to do what I thought I had to.
Which led me to this. Now.
This moment when I knew nothing would ever be the same.
I looked at the computer monitor on the desk.
I saw a version of myself staring back, one I didn’t recognize. This Carter had dead eyes and black circles underneath them. This Carter had lost weight, his cheekbones more pronounced. This Carter had bloodless skin. This Carter knew what it meant to lose something so precious and yet was about to make things worse. This Carter had taken hit after hit after hit, and for what?
This Carter was a stranger.
And yet he was me.
My hand shook as I settled it on the mouse, knowing if I didn’t do this now, I would never do it.
And that’s the point, my father whispered. You are a wolf, but you’re still human. You give all you can, and yet you still bleed. Why would you make it worse? Why would you do this to yourself? To your pack? To him?
Him.
Because it always came back to him.
I thought it always would.
Which is why when I hit the little icon on the screen to start recording, his name was the first thing from my lips.
“Kelly, I….”
And oh, the things I could say. The sheer magnitude of everything he was to me. My mother told me when I was young that I would never forget my first love. That even when all seemed dark, when all was lost, there would be the little pulsing light of memory stored deeply away.
She’d been talking about a faceless girl.
Or boy.
She hadn’t known that I’d already met my first love.
My throat was raw.
I was so very tired.
“I love you more than anything in this world. Please remember that. I know this is going to hurt, and I’m sorry. But I have to do this.”
I looked away, unable to watch this broken man speak any more than I had to.
“You see, there was this boy. And he’s the best thing that ever happened to me. He gave me the courage to stand for what I believe in, to fight for those I care about. He taught me the strength of love and brotherhood. He made me a better person.”
I tried to smile to let him know I was okay. It stretched wide on my face, foreign and harsh, before it cracked and broke.
“You, Kelly,” I said hoarsely. “Always you. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
I looked out the window. There was frost on the glass. Snow was beginning to fall. “You’re my first memory. Mom was holding you, and I wanted to take you for myself, hide you away so no one would hurt you.” It was fuzzy, the edges frayed like it’d been nothing but a dream. My mother was wearing sweats, her face free of makeup. Her skin looked soft and glowing. She was speaking quietly, but her words were lost to me, a quiet murmur that disappeared at the sight of who she held.
A tiny hand reached up, the fingers opening and closing.
And there, in the recesses of my mind, I heard her speak four words that changed everything about who I was.