A Pack of Vows and Tears

by Olivia Wildenstein

  As though he sensed it, he stood up.

  “He’ll leave,” I said slowly. “There’s no reason for him to stay. I won’t act on the link. I don’t want to be with someone because of some chemical or magical connection.”

  “Just because it’s magical doesn’t mean it’s not real.”

  I cocked an eyebrow. “That’s exactly what it means. Magic isn’t real, Matt.”

  “We’re magical, and we’re real.” He gestured between us. “How do you explain that, huh?”

  “What would you do if you suddenly had a mate, and that girl wasn’t Amanda?”

  His features tensed. “You can’t compare us. Amanda and I, we’ve been together for a long time. As far as I can see, neither you nor August are attached, so there’s no real reason for staying away. Unless you’re holding out for Liam. In which case—”

  “I’m not.”

  He observed me a long minute before strolling to the front door. “Life’s short, Ness.” He drummed his thick fingers against the wall. “Shorter for some than for others. Just make sure you get to the end of it with more satisfaction than regrets. And yeah, I know not everyone needs a relationship or love or sex to feel happy, but avoiding it on principle is a sucky reason to stay single.” He turned the knob and drew open the door. “And I know I’ve probably overstayed my welcome and doled out too much unwanted advice, but I know August. He’s like a brother to me too, and even though he’s quiet ’bout his feelings, he broke up with Sienna the minute you walked back into his life. And if I’m not mistaken, you guys weren’t linked yet.”

  “Their breakup had nothing to do with me.”

  “If it makes you sleep better at night.”

  I wanted to tell him to butt out of my personal life.

  “Remember when I caught you guys sexting after the first trial?”

  I rolled my eyes. “We weren’t sexting.”

  He side-eyed me. “If you say so, Little Wolf.”

  “I do say so. I can show you our messages. There wasn’t anything remotely sexual about any of them.”

  “You guys have a connection.”

  “Friends. We’re just friends.”

  “Uh-huh. Anyway, gotta hit the road. Wouldn’t want my boss to fire me.”

  “Yeah. We wouldn’t want that,” I grumbled. I was feeling moody now because Matt had gotten under my skin.

  So much so that once he shut the door, whistling loudly on his way down the steps, I retrieved my phone from the kitchen counter and began scrolling through my past conversations with August. Although not sexual, the tone of our back-and-forth texts was pretty personal.

  As I scrolled up and up, our phone conversations started coming back to me, and my heart quickened. I couldn’t possibly have a crush on August, or could I?

  Ugh.

  I worshipped him as a kid, because he was so sweet with me, so attentive. It felt wrong to crush on him today. I barely knew him anymore.

  I was so wound up about this that I went for a long, long run. By the time I got home, I’d come to a conclusion that sounded extremely wise: I would stay away from him until he left town.

  27

  I hadn’t realized how nervous I was about Isobel’s surgery until I woke up on Monday so early stars still blanketed the sky. I texted August, hoping he’d silenced his phone while he slept. I’d feel awful about waking him up.

  ME: Can you text me once the surgery’s over so I can come and visit?

  His answer came barely a minute later. Yes.

  ME: Did I wake you?

  AUGUST: No.

  From the time Mom was diagnosed till the very end, I hadn’t slept through the night. I was about to ask him how he was feeling, if I could do anything, when a new text appeared on my screen.

  AUGUST: Sorry I haven’t come by this week. It’s been insanely busy at work. How are you and Jeb holding up?

  ME: We’re good. Don’t worry about us. Besides, been busy here too. Almost everyone in the pack has dropped by.

  AUGUST: Hope they’ve been bringing you good coffee.

  I bit my lip. I couldn’t tell what the tone of his message was supposed to be: humorous or bitter?

  ME: No coffee. But I have enough confections to open a bakery.

  AUGUST:

  Okay, so maybe August wasn’t bitter. Maybe he truly was concerned about the quality of our coffee.

  ME: I should probably look into the bakery idea. I need a job. Ugh. Sorry to bore you with this.

  Dot dot dots bounced on my screen.

  AUGUST: We could use some help around the warehouse. Mom was taking care of the accounting, but she won’t be doing that for a while. And Dad’s planning on taking some time off to be with her.

  I read and reread his message, strange emotions eddying through me. I needed to say no. Being around August was not a good idea. But, hell, I really wanted to say yes. The business had been my father’s, so I knew what it entailed. Although, considering the expansion, what the Watts did now probably differed from what Dad used to do.

  AUGUST: It would come with good pay of course. Anyway, think about it.

  It brought me back to one of our first conversations after my return to Boulder. He’d asked me if I wanted a job.

  ME: If I say yes, but I’m completely incompetent, do you promise not to keep me on because of guilt or pity?

  AUGUST: Where did that come from?

  ME: Just swear it to me.

  AUGUST: OK. I swear it.

  It wouldn’t have to be weird. It’s not like we’d be working side by side. From what I’d understood, August was usually on the building sites.

  AUGUST: Why are YOU up so early?

  I looked out at the glittery expanse peeking behind my drawn curtains.

  ME: Just worried.

  AUGUST: Everything’s going to be fine.

  I sighed, wishing I could be so optimistic, but life had thrown me one too many curveballs. Still, I texted: I know. There was no point in infecting others with my skepticism.

  AUGUST: Get dressed.

  ME: Why?

  AUGUST: Because I can sense your stress all the way through the phone.

  AUGUST: And wear comfortable shoes.

  I sat up in bed, fully awake now. After I washed my face and brushed my teeth, I tugged on black leggings, a black hoodie, and my sneakers, then went out to the kitchen and wrote Jeb a note in case he woke up and noticed my bed was empty. As I placed the paper on the dining table, I hesitated to text August that he didn’t have to take care of me when he should be taking care of his mom, but a message popped onto my screen.

  AUGUST: I’m downstairs.

  I tied my hair up into a quick ponytail, grabbed my phone and keys, and left quietly so as not to wake up my uncle.

  August looked pale, which was a feat considering his mixed origins. Then again, it could’ve been the effect of the light bouncing off his dashboard.

  He smiled at me, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I think we’re the two only people up in the whole of Boulder.”

  It was 4:30. My street was completely deserted, and every window we drove by was dark.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as I strapped myself in.

  “You’ll see.”

  I wasn’t the sort of person who liked to see, but I trusted August. As we drove, I played with the music, swapping his preferred jazz station with something a little more upbeat. And then I closed my eyes to rest them and drummed my fingers to the tempo of the music.

  Up and up the mountain road we went. Finally, he pulled to a stop, grabbed a pack from the backseat, slung it over his shoulder, and we got out. We walked down a wooded trail that led to the sharp ridges of the Flatirons. The sight transported me back to the first trial, but I didn’t tell August. Not even when some pebbles came loose under my feet and adrenaline spiked through my veins. I drove back my fear of the mountain raining down on me. The rockslide had been manmade—or rather eldermade—just another part of the trials.

  We ca
me to a stop a couple yards from the lip of the steep cliff. I didn’t have vertigo, but still, I didn’t look down.

  “You okay?” he asked as he unzipped his backpack.

  “Yeah. Great.”

  He kept his gaze locked on mine as he tugged a blanket out of his pack, as though he didn’t quite believe me. Could he sense my nerves through the link? He shook out the blanket and spread it onto the moon-bleached rock. “Want to tell me about it?”

  I didn’t, but at the same time I didn’t want him to pin my nervousness on anything else. So I reminded him about the race, about the landslide. His entire body stiffened. He reached down and picked up the blanket, but I stepped on it.

  “August, it’s fine. I promise. Besides, like Mom used to say, best way to chase away a bad memory is to make a new one.”

  When he still hadn’t let go of the blanket, I pried the edge out of his clenched fingers and let it flutter back to the stone floor. And then I sat, gathering my knees against me.

  “I bet the sunrise is spectacular from here,” I said, looking out at the ultraviolet darkness that stretched around us.

  It took a while for August to shake off the tension in his body, but finally, he sat beside me. “Best in Boulder.” He took a thermos out of his pack. “Here.” When I raised an eyebrow, he said, “Coffee.”

  I twisted the top open, then took a sip of the scalding, bitter beverage before handing it back. “I didn’t even think about bringing water. If I wasn’t a shifter, and I was lost in the wilderness, I’d probably not make it out alive.” I tucked my chin onto my knees. “You know, that show, Naked and Afraid?” I’d been watching a lot of TV recently. “They’d probably give me a survival rating of one-point-two.”

  August chuckled softly. “That’s very specific. And incorrect, I’m sure.”

  “Maybe I should sign us up.”

  He glanced at me from the corner of his eye. “Don’t we spend enough time naked and afraid as werewolves?”

  “In my case, yes, but what are you afraid of?”

  He passed me the thermos, gaze cast on the sky. “Helicopters.”

  “Helicopters? That’s specific. Why helicopters?”

  “Because I crashed in one.”

  My heart soared so high I felt it inside my throat. “When?”

  “Three years ago.” The darkness around us increased the shadows populating his face. “It’s the reason I came back to Boulder.”

  I waited, not wanting to press him, but the stretch of time between that last sentence and the next lasted an eternity.

  “My buddy was piloting it. I was in the backseat with two other guys from my squad when we caught enemy fire. One of them had been telling me how he planned on proposing to his girlfriend . . . ” He stopped talking, and his lids came down hard. “Anyway, I made it. None of the others did. One of the medics kept saying how lucky I was. It made me so angry because how the hell was I the lucky one? I saw all of them die, Ness. All of them.” He finally opened his eyes. They glinted. “And now I’m the one stuck with the memory every damn day.”

  I tightened my hold on my knees. I wanted to reach out to him, but then I remembered when Dad had been shot, how I’d hated the mere brush of a hand. Or the litany of sorrys. The only person I’d wanted to be around had been my mother. I’d even pushed August and Isobel away.

  “You know what I thought when I was lying in that hospital bed?” He finally looked at me. “I thought about you. Of how brave you’d been at only eleven. I was in my twenties, and a freaking mess. It took me almost a year to stop having nightmares.”

  “I wasn’t brave, August. I just shut myself off. I’m not even sure I’ve ever really turned myself back on. Not fully. A part of me died right alongside my father.”

  He blinked, but no tears slid out of his shiny eyes.

  “How did you stomach enlisting again?” I asked after a long while.

  “I thought it would help me get over what had happened.” He grabbed the thermos of coffee and took a long swallow.

  “Did it?”

  He gave me a tight smile. “Nope. Just reminded me how much I hate helicopters.”

  I smiled, even though my heart bled. “You’d think that being magical creatures would give us the upper hand on death.” I raised my face toward the absent moon. Although it hadn’t birthed werewolves, the traction of Earth’s satellite influenced our magic. “Do you still want to go back into the military?”

  He sighed. “I’m not sure what I want anymore.”

  A strange warmth pooled inside my stomach. Relief that he might not leave?

  “But I might have to.” He grabbed a loose rock and flung it through the quiet air as though he were trying to skip it on the sky.

  My kneecaps dug into my cheek. “Why?”

  He side-eyed me. “To make things . . . easier.”

  My heart sped up.

  And up . . .

  “On who?” I asked so softly I wasn’t sure my words would carry to his ears.

  “On both of us.”

  “Because of the link?”

  Nodding, he rolled onto his back, cushioning his head with his palms. I glanced at him over my shoulder, hoping he couldn’t feel all I was feeling, but I sensed he could. Hopefully, he’d chalk it up to the stress of the coming day.

  “This is your home, August. You shouldn’t have to leave it because of me.”

  His thick eyebrows slanted over his green eyes.

  “Instead of going to UCB, I could attend college in some other state. I hear New England’s nice.”

  Would the pack pay for a school that wasn’t in Boulder, or did they only foot the bill when their wolves stayed on pack territory?

  I gripped the thermos of coffee and tipped it up to my lips, then set it on the blanket and lay down next to August.

  He hadn’t opposed my decision to go to some faraway college, and my navel wasn’t pulsing with any repressed emotion on his part. Whatever I was feeling for him was one-sided.

  Could he sense my disappointment? I hoped not.

  I balled my fingers into fists, then flexed them back out, damning Matt for planting ideas inside my head and damning myself for letting them take root.

  28

  Isobel’s surgery went smoothly, so I got to see her that very afternoon.

  Although she was hooked to an EKG machine, and there were drainage tubes sticking out from underneath her powder-blue hospital gown, she was smiling and sported a way better complexion than I did. I kissed her forehead, nose prickling from the strong odor of antiseptic and infected blood, then sat in the chair August had occupied but freed up for me.

  We talked about everything and nothing: the weather, college, doctors, even her work which I was supposed to take over the following day. Greg stopped by to see her at some point. Although the pack doctor hadn’t been the one to operate on her, he’d been the one to choose the surgeon. Isobel laughed at something he told her, something I didn’t catch because of who’d just walked into the room.

  As our gazes collided, the room and all of the noise—the steady beeping of the heart monitor, Isobel’s tinkling laughter, August and Nelson’s quiet conversation—it all faded out for a moment. It had been eleven days since I’d seen Liam, but it felt like a month.

  I jerked my gaze down to my lap, and then I jerked to my feet. “I’m going to grab something to eat from the cafeteria. Does anyone want anything?”

  I was still looking at my feet when everyone answered no.

  I walked around Isobel’s bed and passed by Liam, sensing him everywhere. It was as though his alpha-ness had grown. Was that possible?

  In the hospital hallway, I took a deep breath. The myriad of chemical smells and human diseases made my nose itch and my eyes water. Blinking repeatedly, I plucked a tissue from the box on the nurse’s station to dab at the moisture.

  The cafeteria was full of visitors, and the hubbub made my head throb. I needed sleep. A lot of it. Hopefully I wouldn’t wake at the crack of daw
n tomorrow morning. I bought an overpriced ham sandwich before returning to the wing where Isobel would spend the next two nights. As I ate my sandwich, a chill swept over my arms, and not from any AC vent; I sensed a presence. An unwelcome one. Through narrowed eyes, I took in every inch of the hallway, coming to a stop on a closed door. I strode over to it and squinted through the inset glass. The room was dark. I listened for a sound—a breath, a pulse—but was met with silence. Yet my uneasiness grew. I inhaled deeply, and layered over the unpleasant reek of the medical facility was a cloying, distinctive cologne: Aidan Michaels’s.

  I turned the doorknob and barged inside, hoping the reason I smelled him but didn’t see him was because he lay dead in his hospital bed. No such luck. The bed was made with crisp, papery sheets, the adjustable overbed table wiped clean, and the blinds shut.

  This must’ve been the room he’d recovered in.

  As I turned to leave, I smacked into a large body. Heart battering, I lurched backward and flung my gaze up. Liam stared down at me, jaw set, eyes dark.

  I clapped a palm over my frantic heart. “You just gave me a heart attack.”

  His expression softened the teeniest bit. “Good thing we’re in a hospital then.”

  For a moment, neither of us spoke.

  Then, Liam asked, “How have you been?” at the same time as I asked, “Did you find the owner of the yellow car?”

  Liam pressed his lips together. “Straight to business.”

  He was right. That wasn’t very nice. “I’ve been okay. And you?” The intensity with which he observed me dampened my palms. I wiped them on my leggings.

  “I’ve been better.”

  Silence stretched between us.

  “Cole matched it to a yellow Hummer. He saw the car on a traffic light monitor.”

  Cole had hacked into the city’s traffic monitoring system?

  Why was I surprised?

  “Colorado license plates. CRK-590. Creek-owned, as I’m sure you got from the letters.” He sighed. “No apology will undo how quick I was to blame you, but I’ll say it again anyway.” He took a step toward me. “I’ll say it as many times as it takes for you to forgive me.” He tilted his face down and dropped his voice to a murmur. “I. Am. Sorry.”