“We don’t know. There’s never been anyone quite like Ox. You certainly thought so when you first came here. You kissed him once.”
“I did what?”
Kelly laughed. “Yeah. I wasn’t here for it. It was when we were out in the world.”
“But he has Joe!”
“Didn’t stop you.”
“Oh my god,” I said faintly. “I’m going to be straight-up murdered. That’s what’s going on, right? You are taking me out in the middle of the woods to kill me.”
“Nah,” Kelly said. “We’d just do that at the house. Easier to clean up that way.”
That didn’t make me feel any better. “You sound as if you’ve done that before.”
“We have,” he said grimly.
I blinked in surprise. “Who?”
“It was bad. Before Ox was the Alpha of the Omegas, he… was lied to.”
I didn’t want to know. I said, “Who?”
Kelly looked at me. His eyes were bright. He wasn’t a wolf, but he made a good human. I didn’t know how to tell him that or even why I thought I should. It would remind him of all that he’d lost because of me. “Michelle Hughes,” Kelly said.
I closed my eyes.
“Before we knew about the infection, before we knew how it spread, Omegas were coming here. Drawn like Green Creek was a beacon. We didn’t know why at first. But almost on schedule, one would come every couple of weeks. They were lost. Vacant. Driven by instinct.”
“Why did they come here?”
“Part of it was Ox. But a bigger part, we think, was Gordo. Magic has a signature, a fingerprint. But it’s born of blood, and Gordo is his father’s son. And since it was Livingstone who infected the wolves to turn them Omega, they were drawn to Gordo’s magic. They hated it, but they couldn’t stop even if they wanted to. Most of them tried to come after him.”
I opened my eyes. “Who did they kill?”
“Michelle sent a man named Pappas here—”
“Pappas?”
“You after you.”
“What?”
“A man named Osmond was Michelle’s second-in-command. He betrayed everyone for the beast. Then you were Michelle’s second. After you came here and stayed, Pappas took over.”
My head hurt again. “I don’t know Pappas.”
“He’s dead. One of the hunters Michelle sent to Green Creek.”
“Michelle wouldn’t have her own second killed—”
“He was infected too,” Kelly said. “Robbie, she’s not….”
“She’s not what?” I asked, trying to keep the anger from my voice.
“She’s not a good person,” Kelly said. He looked defiant. “I don’t know what you think or what she’s told you, but—”
“You don’t know her. Not like I do. Not like—”