Heartsong (Green Creek 3)

Someone was running next to me. A large blond man, a wicked grin on his face.

He said, “You think you’re faster than I am?”

I laughed. “I know I am.”

“Oh, you’re in for it now. You think you got this, Fontaine? I’m not going to go easy because you’ve got my brother wrapped around your finger. I’ll—”

I screamed in horror when he burst into a cloud of dust. It sprayed my face, and I—

I ran into the house I shared with Ezra.

It was empty.

No one was home.

I shut the door behind me, slumping against it.

Outside, something prowled back and forth on the porch.

Its claws clicked against the wood.

It snorted air out its nose.

And then it howled.

The house shook around me, the door vibrating against my back.

The song

(wolfsong)

was long and loud, and my bones quaked at the sound of it. I said, “No, please, please don’t do this, please don’t do this. Who are you? Who are you!”

The howl faded into nothing.

The house creaked and settled around me.

“I’m Robbie Fontaine,” I said to no one. “I’m the second to the Alpha of all. I am home. I am loved. I have many responsibilities. I live with my friend. He is—”

And they knew it. Your Alpha. Your witch. He took it from you.

I could only scream. “Get out of my head!”

I pushed myself off the door, storming down the hallway to my room. I looked around wildly, sure someone would be waiting for me, waiting to take all of this away, to make me sound, to make me whole, to put some sense back into the world around me.

There was no one there.

“Don’t you want to know what’s real?” I said with a grating laugh. “I can give that to you.”

Backpack hanging on the closet door.

I grabbed it and opened the closet.

I stuffed it with a pair of jeans. With socks. A couple of shirts. I pulled out the panel from the back of the closet. It broke in my hands. It didn’t matter. I grabbed the secret box and upended it into my backpack, spilling its contents inside.

My mother looked up at me from her driver’s license photo lying near a wolf of stone.

“Quiet as a mouse,” I told her.