Except… the last kiss we shared, the only time he had every truly kissed me, I felt something different. When he met me, he definitely hadn’t wanted me, but after I almost died and he took off, something changed in him. When he came back, he was different towards me, kinder, more understanding. Something in the way he had felt about me had shifted. Maybe it was because he felt guilty about hurting me, or maybe it was because he had learned what it was like to live without me. Or maybe something else entirely. Whatever the reason, Peter had actually started to let himself care about me. In the chaos of everything that was happening the last time I saw, his sudden appearance and the impending fight between him and Jack, I hadn’t been able to really understand what had been going on. Only in retrospect, when I looked back on everything, I realized something, and that had been the catalyst that kept me searching the trees for fifteen hours a day with lycan threatening us. Peter had tasted Jack’s bite on me, he had known that Jack had bitten me, but he didn’t come back to kill him. He had been trying to let me go. Even though everything inside him, the insistent bond in his blood, screamed that he should kill Jack, and probably me too. But he hadn’t. Instead, he planned on really letting me go, not because of his own fears or what his body demanded, but because he knew that would be what made me the happiest. The one true kiss we had ever shared had been a kiss good-bye. That just happened to be when Jack walked in, and he set off an entirely different chain of events than Peter had in mind. Maybe Peter wouldn’t have kept fighting him, though. Maybe if Jack hadn’t turned me, hadn’t broken the bond, Peter would’ve just left anyway. I can’t say for sure, but part of me believes he would have. Peter came back for me, of that I’m sure. He had tried to fight everything, but eventually, he gave into them. But when he saw that I was happier, that I had moved on with Jack, he was going to let me go and leave, once and for all. That was the direct opposite of what he was supposed to do, of what his blood told him to do, but he was going to do it for me. Underneath all of his chemicals and reservations, there had to be genuine feeling for me, otherwise he never would’ve let me be with Jack. That’s what kept me coming back out in the woods, even with the full understanding of what we were up against. I thought that Peter might really listen to me, and even if he didn’t, I had to try. It’s hard to walk
away when someone needed me. I hadn’t been able to leave Milo, and I wouldn’t give up on Peter, not when he had been willing to sacrifice so much for me. Ezra had talked very little of Peter, even though we were here for him. He wasn’t thrilled about Peter’s recent behaviors regarding me, but what little he did say about tended to be good or apologizing for his mistakes. Ezra had been alone for a very long time before he turned Peter, and that had been the first real companionship he’d had in over a century. There were times that he had considered giving to his impulses and living like the lycan, but Peter had pulled him away from that. Until Ezra met Mae just over fifty years ago, Peter had been his only reason to go on and live a civilized life. There was nothing that Ezra wouldn’t do for Peter, but I suspected that was the same for all of us. Their bond might have had more sentimentality with him, but all of us, even me and Milo, were of equal importance to him. Family meant a lot to him, even though he didn’t make a show of it the way Mae did. She was always constantly hugging and fawning over everyone, and still kept tabs on her human family. Ezra didn’t say quite as much, but he hadn’t hesitated to come out here and get Peter, even knowing it would put himself in danger. We walked through the woods in almost total silence, but I knew when we started getting closer to the lycan homeland. He walked a little faster but made sure that his steps matched mine. He looked around more, scanning for the imperceptible movement of the pack, and kept incredibly close to me, so sometimes I was almost tripping over him to get by. He was willing to risk anything for Peter, but he wasn’t didn’t feel quite the same way about me risking everything. In the hotel today before we left, he’d asked if I wanted to stay behind. I had immediately said no, but he continued recommending until I finally refused to talk about it with him anymore. We were going back to the exact area where the lycans had told us to stay away from, but that had to be where Peter was, assuming that Peter was still alive. “Shouldn’t we be calling his name or something?” I asked when the silence and the search became too much for me.
Ezra shook his head, and I ducked underneath a low-hanging branch. The one thing I could say for all these treks was that I was starting to get a lot more nimble and agile. After days of slipping in the snow and tripping over my branches, I had finally started to get my footing. I wasn’t getting as tired out as I used to, either, and I hadn’t been quite as hungry. If nothing else, this would do a good job of getting me through vampire boot camp. “I just don’t think we’re doing that much,” I insisted, keeping my words hushed. If I was too loud, he would silence me completely, but I figured that being quiet would at least give me a chance at some conversation. “We’re just wandering around the trees. How are we supposed to find Peter? You have this carefully calculated plan of where to look, but when we get here, we don’t even do anything.” “They can’t know we’re looking.” Ezra was barely loud enough to be heard over the crunch of our boots in the snow. “I get that, but Peter has to know. Or how else will we find him?” I pressed. “Smell him. Hear him. See him.” He shrugged, but then slowed, almost pausing to look at me hopefully. “Can you still… feel him?” Whenever ever I had been around Peter before, my body automatically pulled towards him. I’d walk to him without even trying. My natural inclination had been to be with him, and that would be really helpful in a search party. If we got close to him at all, then my body would just direct us to him. Since my transformation and my bond had broken with him, it didn’t seem likely that I still felt the same way. “I don’t know,” I admitted, although I tended to think that I wouldn’t be able to. If I thought about Peter or talked about him, I didn’t get all fluttery and intense anymore. That could just be because of all the changes I’ve gone through, and that my reaction is now that of a vampire’s and not a human’s, but I don’t think so. I have a bond with Jack, and I can still feel things like that for him, which means that I probably can’t for Peter anymore. “Oh well,” Ezra shrugged again and tried not to look dejected. His pace picked up again, and I scampered behind him to catch up. “We’ll find him anyway.”
We continued on in silence, Ezra scouring the area around us. We passed over the river where we had met the lycan, and that made my heart skip a bit. He glanced back at me, and I hated that he could hear my heart. It gave him a read on emotions that I’d rather keep private. I could tell that he was about to ask me if I wanted to turn back, but I just shook my head and insisted we plow ahead. Hopefully, he was better at tracking than I was, because I couldn’t even smell the lycan anymore. They smelled of sheep or horses or dogs that were never let in the house. It was the scent of animals that lived outside, which made sense, because essentially, that’s what they were. When we had come across reindeer earlier in the night, it wasn’t quite the smell as that. There was something edgier about the way lycan smelled, like livestock and… road kill. I don’t know if that’s right, but that’s the best way I can describe it. There was a crack of a branch loud enough that even a human could hear, and I whirled towards it. Ezra had moved in front of me, his posture defensive and tense. It had been about an hour since we passed the river, so we were well into their territory, and we had yet to see any animals. I inhaled deeply, hoping to get a read on what was around us, but all I could only smell the cold. Snow. Trees. Dirt. Maybe an owl… A flap of wings followed by the rustle of branches, and I saw a large owl take flight in front of the moon. Relief washed over me, but Ezra didn’t relax at all. If anything he tensed up more, but he’d obviously been able to see the same owl I had. I wanted to ask him what his deal was, but then I heard something else too. The soft crunch of footsteps in the snow, softer than hooves, softer than shoes. Barefoot. That meant it was either a bear, which didn’t really concern me, or the lycan, which did really concern me. Even in the moonlight, I could make out anything through the trees, but they were experts on being ghosts. But then I saw him, several yards ahead of us, walking towards us with his hands held up open towards us, the sign of surrender. It was the kind one, Leif, with the big brown puppy dog eyes. He was wearing the same clothes as he had been the other day, although they appeared to be even dirtier. Ezra, on the other hand, looked rather dapper for a midnight hike. He was wearing a black cashmere sweater with a thick, polo-esque collar, but in most ways, Ezra appeared to be an entirely different species than Leif.