by A. K. Morgen
“You know him?” Ronan asked.
“Yes,” Dace said, clearing his throat. “He should remember me.”
“Do you honestly believe he’ll be able to help?” Gage asked. He hadn’t said anything since he offered me his arm, choosing instead to listen quietly.
When I glanced up at him, he smiled at me, his expression sad. I think he knew why I was leaving. Chelle probably did too. I was grateful neither of them let it slip though. They loved Dace too much to risk anyone losing faith in him now.
“I don’t know, but we have to try.”
Everyone fell silent again.
“I’m going with you.” Chelle squared her shoulders, trying to look brave.
I loved her for offering to come with me. I didn’t want to leave by myself any more than Dace wanted me to go. Being cut off from him, and my dad, and Buka, wasn’t going to be easy. Having Chelle with me would help, but I couldn’t protect her.
“You can’t,” I whispered to her. “I can’t protect you if you come with me.”
“Am I any safer here?” she asked. She glanced around the room. “Are any of us safer here?”
No one said anything, the events of the last few weeks weighing heavily on everyone’s minds. The flowers, the murdered wolf, the fire…. Until Sköll and Hati died, no one was truly safe anywhere.
“She’s right,” Dace said, lifting his head to look at Gage.
Gage scowled back at him. “You can’t possibly be considering letting them leave, man.”
“I don’t have a choice.” Dace raked a hand through his hair, then rubbed his forehead. He frowned. “They’re not going to attack from the sidelines forever. When they come looking for Chelle, wouldn’t you prefer she be somewhere else?”
“And if they follow the girls?” Gage demanded, not that easily swayed. “What then? I’m not sending Chelle out there as bait.”
“Then we follow them. No matter where they go, we’ll keep them safe.” Steel wove through Dace’s words, the intensity of his promise pulling a shiver from deep within me.
“Dammit,” Gage swore softly. His leg bounced as if he were too keyed up to keep himself still. “This is a bad idea.”
“Do you have another idea? Do any of you?” Dace asked. He looked at everyone but me, waiting for someone to present a better option. When no one did, he nodded once. “That’s what I thought. We don’t have another choice here. It sucks, but it is what it is. Arionna has to go, and Chelle needs to go with her.”
“What about my sister?” Chelle shifted on the couch, her gaze wary.
“Do you want to tell her what’s happening?” Dace asked.
Chelle didn’t hesitate before she shook her head.
“Then she stays here,” he decided. “The shifters will keep protecting her and Mandy. Ronan can help.”
“No, I can’t.”
Everyone looked at Ronan when he spoke, though no one said anything.
He looked at Dace and then at me. “I’m going with them.”
Shocked silence enveloped the room.
Out of everyone involved in this messed up situation, I didn’t think anyone expected him to be the one to offer to go with us. After my conversation with him days ago though, I wasn’t really surprised by his offer. He knew better than anyone how Dace felt.
But there was no way Ronan could go with me when Dace needed him here.
“No,” I said. “Dace needs you here.”
I need him with you.
Dace, you need him here. He can help you. He can help protect you.
Dace smiled sadly again. I don’t need his protection. You do.
“I think we’d all feel better if Ronan went with you girls.” Professor Edwards gave me an apologetic shrug.
“Please,” Dace said.
I wanted to argue. I desperately wanted to tell him there was no way in hell I would allow him to stay here without Ronan when Ronan might be the only one who could help him fight Sköll and Hati, but I couldn’t tell him that. Not with that please hanging in the air around me, and not with his anguished expression and bright, pain filled green eyes threatening to break my heart completely. If he needed Ronan to go with me… If that’s what kept him here, fighting, then I didn’t have a choice.
“Fine,” I sighed. “Ronan will come with us.”
he hands on the clock above my desk crept toward midnight, each little tick pounding through me like a drum. I paced the confines of my room, running my hands over the purple bedspread, picking up the picture of my mom and me from my desk, letting the ribbon of Dace’s Snowlympics medal slip through my fingers… trying to memorize every second of being in this room with him.
A week ago, I thought we were imprisoned here, shut away with nothing to do but worry and stress and argue with each other. I didn’t feel that way anymore. I felt… winded. Unable to swallow the lump in my throat or ease the painful pressure in my chest. My whole body ached, as if the mere thought of leaving Dace behind tore through something vital inside me. A weird sense of déjà vu threatened to break the levee holding back my tears every time my gaze landed on the pile of clothing on my bed.
For the second time in a matter of months, I prepared to leave behind everything I knew.
When I left Smyrna after Mom died, I didn’t think I’d find comfort in Beebe. I didn’t think I would ever get over the grief of leaving my childhood home. I was so certain no other place would ever mean as much to me, but that wasn’t true. When I left Smyrna, all I really left were memories and my mom’s grave. This time, I had to leave my heart.
“You’ll take care of him, won’t you?” I asked, spinning to face my dad.
He stood in the doorway, watching my endless circuits around the room. His glasses didn’t hide the moisture gathering in his eyes.
My bottom lip quivered at the sight.
“Oh, Ari,” he said, holding his arms out to me.
I scurried to him as quickly as I could, flinging myself into his arms.
He wrapped me up in a big bear hug.
“I can’t do this,” I whispered, rubbing my face against his shirt like I used to do when I was a little girl. Every time I fell off my bike or got picked last for kickball, I ran to my dad for comfort, and he’d always been there. Even after he moved away, all I had to do was tell him I needed him, and he dropped what he was doing to be there for me.
Why hadn’t I appreciated that more before now?
“You can do this,” Dad said, hooking a finger under my chin to tip my head up. His lips turned down at the corners, his smile grave. Even so, pride shone brightly in his eyes. “It will be hard and you’ll cry, but you’ll do this because that’s the brave girl you are.”
“I don’t want to go.” I wanted to stay right here with my dad and Dace, destiny and fate and all that crap be damned. Walking away from Dace wasn’t how this was supposed to work. We were supposed to help each other, not hurt each other.
Why did things always have to go so wrong for us?
“I know, hon, but Dace needs you to go. He needs you to be safe.” Dad swiped a tear from beneath my eye. “That boy would do anything for you, so you’ve got to do this for him. For both of you.”
Dace’s bloody body flashed through my mind, the chain around his neck digging into his flesh.
I whimpered like a pathetic, little girl.
Dad tucked my head against his chest again, patting my back.
“Come with me, Dad. Please.” We’d already decided he would stay, but I couldn’t stop the plea from tumbling out. Everyone thought I was strong and brave for making this decision, but I wasn’t. I felt like a coward, and just like the little girl who fell off her bike learning to ride, I needed my daddy to help bandage me up again. Except… he couldn’t bandage me up this time, could he?
I was ripping my own heart out of my chest, and my dad couldn’t kiss that wound better or make the pain go away. All he could do was what he’d already promised to do: help make sure I had something to come back to
when all this was over.
“I wish I could, baby, but you know I have to stay here.”
I did know. If Sköll or Hati followed us, I wouldn’t be able to protect him anymore than I could protect Chelle. I still didn’t want to go without him though. I wanted to be selfish.
“We’ll be okay here, Ari,” Dad said.
“Promise me.” I pulled away to look at him. “Promise me you’ll both stay safe.”
He smiled at me again, his eyes crinkling behind his glasses. “I promise.”
My dad and Dace would be safe. I’d go to this Dr. Michel and he’d have information we could use. Dace would kill Sköll and Hati without breaking a sweat, and that nightmare version of him would remain exactly that: a nightmare. Rainbows and puppies all the way.
There was nothing but faith left to keep me moving forward.
My legs trembled beneath me, but I took a deep breath and nodded.
I gave my dad another hard squeeze and then stepped back. Sobs caught in my throat, but I refused to let myself give in to them.
Pack your things, I coached myself. And under the cover of darkness, go. Slip away before Sköll and Hati even know you’re going. You can do this. For Dace, you will do this.
I turned back to my suitcase, my vision blurring. I folded my clothes by rote, not really caring what I took with me. Not until I came to one of Dace’s t-shirts which I’d claimed while in the hospital, anyway. I had washed the shirt days ago, but it still smelled like him.
My shoulders shook.
I couldn’t leave without telling him goodbye.
“Can you…?” I swallowed hard, clutching his shirt to my chest. I didn’t turn around though. I didn’t want to see pity in my dad’s eyes. “Can you send Dace up here?” I whispered.
“Yeah,” he said. “I can do that.” He paused. “I love you, Ari.”
“I love you too, Dad.”
The grave expression on Dace’s face when he walked through my bedroom door a few minutes later killed me. His eyes were dim, his face pale and sallow. Pain seemed permanently etched across his beautiful features. It tore at me as I sat on the edge of my bed, my hands buried in my lap to hide the way they shook.
Dace stood across from me, not speaking. I didn’t say anything either, unsure where to begin.
How could I say goodbye to a living, breathing piece of me?
I didn’t know, so I stared at him instead.
I didn’t need to see him to remember every feature of his face, but I wanted to look anyway. I needed to see the way tenderness shone in his emerald eyes when he looked at me, and the way golden strands of his hair brushed across his forehead and curled wildly around the nape of his neck. I wanted the sharp planes and angles of his face burned into my memory like a brand, seared there so I never forgot why I left.
Geri sat silently in his corner. I wasn’t sure the wolf understood why I had decided to leave them now, but, like Dace, he didn’t fight me. He watched me from inside, his face blurring with Dace’s until, once again, they were one and the same. They were snowy-white gray streaked fur surrounding burning, vivid emerald. My beautiful boys. One fully human, the other fully wolf… and both so much a part of me I couldn’t stop the tears rolling down my cheeks this time.
Like always, as soon as Dace saw me crying, he came to me, helpless to do anything other than try to offer comfort. He drew me to my feet with warm hands before enveloping me in his arms. His heart beat steady beneath my ear.
I burrowed into his hold, pressed so tightly to him not even air moved between us. My body shook and trembled in his arms. I searched for a way to explain everything running through me. To tell him how my chest ached and my throat felt swollen closed. To describe how grief choked me, and regret burned me. To share the little light of hope still flickering in the dark. That small flame did nothing to hold the deep shadows at bay, but it still wavered bravely, burning bright against the black backdrop of fear and grief.
I didn’t know how to say any of that, though. I wasn’t eloquent like Dace was. I couldn’t speak in poetry, or strum songs into his skin with my fingertips. I gave him all I could instead. I let all of my jumbled emotions fill me, and then I opened my mind wide to him, allowing him to see everything I couldn’t put to words, to feel everything I couldn’t describe or explain. I said goodbye the same way we said hello so many months before: without a single word passing my lips.
“I want you to promise me something,” he demanded, his voice hoarse and ragged when I slumped against him, exhausted.
Sorrow etched every line of his face, and I knew this moment would be branded into my memory alongside all the others. This one would haunt me like so much else. And this one would hurt more.
“Anything,” I mouthed soundlessly, unable to force my throat to work.
He pressed his forehead to mine. “Don’t hate yourself for any of this,” he whispered, emotion swirling through his eyes. “I’m not worth it.”
My heart bled.
I choked on tears and grief and all the things I didn’t know how to say to him. On goodbye and be safe and I still love you.
“I love you,” he whispered fiercely. He rained kisses across my face, soaking up my tears with his lips and the pads of his thumbs. “Forever.” He squeezed me tighter for a moment and then just like that… he was gone, Geri’s mournful howl whispering through the empty space he left behind.
ace’s Jeep wasn’t in the driveway when Dad helped me drag my suitcase down the stairs and out to Ronan’s Mustang an hour later. I didn’t know where Dace went, and I couldn’t feel him in my mind anymore. The walls Dace pulled down to say goodbye were rebuilt, brick by damning brick. I think he meant the walls to make this easier for me, but they didn’t.
Once again, all the spaces reserved for him and Geri were empty. Tears flowed through the holes left behind, but not a single one fell from my eyes this time.
I stood silently, waiting while Dad loaded my suitcase into the trunk. I felt Ronan’s gaze on me, but I couldn’t look at him. I didn’t want to see that blank expression on his face, the one that now mirrored my own. I stared instead at the ground, the cracked pavement beneath my feet distorted by shadows and unshed tears.
The air shifted around me, a familiar scent floating on the cool wind.
I lifted my head, peering through the darkness at the line of trees on the far side of the road. My sight wasn’t anywhere near as sharp as Dace’s, and I squinted, trying to make sense of the thick shadows slipping one by one from beneath the trees.
Buka? I asked.
She stepped into the light ahead of the pack.
Dad stirred uneasily.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ronan shake his head at my dad, letting him know the wolves weren’t a danger to me.
The pack halted beneath a streetlamp across the road, settling back on their haunches. Buka crossed the road toward me; her thoughts slipping into my mind in that still new-to-me wolf way. No words. No images. Just instant understanding.
She stopped in front of me, tilting her head to look up at me.
“Oh, Buka,” I whispered, crouching as best I could to throw my arms around her neck.
Despite the danger, she came to say goodbye to me. They had all come to see me off.
Silent sobs shook my body as I clung to Buka, my face buried in her silky fur.
She laid her head on my shoulder, offering comfort as if she’d done the same a thousand times. She didn’t care that I was broken, no longer able to shift. She didn’t care that being here now put her at risk. I was her friend, and she knew I needed her tonight.
“I’m going to miss you so much,” I cried into her fur.
She chuffed, her breath stirring wisps of my hair, and then she stepped back to look at me again.
I wiped tears from my face, looking into her bright, yellow eyes. Eyes so much like Geri and Dace’s, shining with intelligence and sadness.
“Promise me you’ll stay safe,” I demanded, seeking th
e same promise my dad gave me. My heart would break in two if Buka were injured. If any of the wolves were.
I glanced over her shoulder at the rest of the pack, repeating my demand.
Kalei answered for the pack, dipping her head in a regal nod. Her vow to keep them safe sounded firm and confident. Her demand that I stay safe seemed equally as firm. She was so much like Dace, so much an alpha.
I stood in awe of her.
“I promise,” I whispered.
She dipped her head again, then wished me luck in that wordless, wolfish way.
Buka issued a single, short bark.
Fuki rose to his feet at the sound and loped across the road toward us. Last time I saw him, he still looked like a baby, so much smaller than any of the other wolves. But he’d grown since then. He hovered on the edge of gangly teenager now, all legs and awkward grace. His face was thinner, his coat thicker.
He stopped in front of me, more subdued than I’d ever seen him.
“He’s gotten so big,” I said to Buka, reaching out to scratch his head.
Usually, he yipped and danced like an endless bundle of energy. Tonight, he sat quietly at my side, his twitching tail the only sign of his childlike restlessness.
I raked my gaze slowly across the rest of the pack, taking a moment to memorize each of them from ancient-seeming Aki to Lykaois, the young warrior who charged at me in the woods so long ago. All stared back at me, saying goodbye with such sad formality I wanted to weep. These were my pack mates, my adopted family. I didn’t want to leave them here anymore than I wanted to leave Dace.
My gaze landed on Buka again.
Her request cracked my heart wide open.
She wanted me to take Fuki.
“I can’t take your baby,” I whispered, my bottom lip quivering again.
She watched me with sad eyes, her thoughts flowing into me one by one. They were a story. Her story.
Once upon a time, she had raised another den with her mate. They roamed the forest together, defending their kin. Then the hunters came. They killed her mate and her kin, leaving her on her own with no home or family and Fuki growing in her belly. Other packs chased her away. They had no place for one like her, a beta with none to guide and no mate to help provide for the pup growing in her belly.
