Livingstone snapped his teeth at Gavin. “Whyyyy?”
And Gavin said, “You’re. My father.”
The beast reared back, nostrils flaring.
“No,” Carter said, taking a step forward. “You can’t—”
Livingstone jerked his head toward Carter. He roared, his remaining eye flashing in warning.
“Here!” Gavin shouted. “Here! I. Will go!”
Livingstone looked back down at him. And extended his hand, claws flashing in the sunlight.
Gavin took it without hesitation.
“Joe!” Carter cried. “You have to stop him. You can’t let him—”
“No,” Gavin snarled at him, eyes violet. “Stay. Back. Don’t want. This. Don’t want. Pack. Don’t want. Brother. Don’t want. You. Child. You are. A child. I am not. Like you. I am not. Pack.”
And his heart never stuttered.
But he lied. Because he was pack. They were faint, the threads that stretched from him toward us, and just as we began to pull on them, just as we began to tug them, to sing to him, to remind him where he belonged. Gavin broke them.
Carter sounded as if he’d been punched, bending over and gagging.
The others were distracted.
They didn’t see what I saw.
The look on Gavin’s face, brief though it was.
It was heartbreak, real and devastating.
And then it was gone.
Livingstone roared again, and I covered my ears.
By the time my head cleared, Gavin and Livingstone were running. They didn’t stop when they hit the wall. Livingstone leaped up and over it, and Gavin clawed his way to the top and jumped to the other side.
He never looked back.
They were gone.
Carter took a step forward, hand raised, fingers trembling.
And when he turned toward us, gone was the bravado, gone was the man I’d come to know. In his place stood a lost boy, eyes wide and wet, lip trembling.
“Mom,” he croaked as a tear spilled down his cheek, chest hitching. And ah, god, there was so much blue pouring off him, I thought it would drown us all. “He… left. Mom? Why—why did he go? Why did he leave? I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”
Elizabeth went to her son, holding him close as Carter broke apart, shoulders shaking. She whispered in his ear, telling him it would be all right, that it would be all right, my love, I promise you. I promise you. I promise you.
There were cries of joy as the people of the compound poured through the gates, whatever magic had held them in the trees now gone. The kids screamed for their parents, eyes clear but confused. Tony’s mother and father swept him up, each of them kissing his cheeks, his chin, his forehead as he babbled at them, telling them he’d been asleep for a long time and had the strangest of dreams, but he was awake now, and why were they crying? Why were they sad?
Brodie looked lost and unsure, but Ox was there, crouched before him, hands on his shoulders. Brodie’s face crumpled as he collapsed into Ox, sobbing against his chest.
Elizabeth led Carter away from the rest of us, his head bowed, hands in fists at his sides.
Kelly watched them leave. “What are we going to do?” he whispered to me.