“Ah. I see.”
I looked at them. “You think this will work?”
“If you want it to,” Aileen said. “There’s only so much we can do, Robbie. Magic isn’t… it’s not the be-all and end-all. It’s not wish fulfillment. It can be a dangerous thing depending on the user.”
“Livingstone?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. I don’t know how he’s done it, but he’s turned ghost.”
“Gordo says we need to be together in order for us to beat him.”
Aileen and Patrice exchanged a look that I couldn’t decipher. “He’s right.”
“Do you think it’ll be enough?”
Patrice sighed. “It has ta be. He won’t stop. He’s wolf now. And he’s tasted blood.”
“How?” I asked helplessly. “How the hell did he survive the bite? It should have killed him.”
“It should have,” Aileen agreed. “But it didn’t. And we can either waste time speculating, or we can actually do something about it. Look, Robbie, I’m not going to lie to you and say this will be easy tonight, or whatever we’ll face come tomorrow. Ox is special. The fact that he has remained as he is, the Alpha to the Omegas, even after the destruction of Livingstone’s magic, is a testament to that. But he cannot do this alone. Neither can the Alpha of all. I may not be a wolf, but I know the importance of pack. They need you as much as you need them.”
I looked out at the others. Ox lay as a black wolf at the other edge of the clearing, watching his pack run. Joe was beside him, resting his head on Ox’s back. Chris and Tanner and Rico were wrestling while Jessie and Bambi rolled their eyes, Dominique sitting next to them, eyes flickering between Beta orange and Omega violet. Gordo sat with his back against a tree, Mark’s head in his lap.
Elizabeth nosed Carter as Kelly yipped, tugging on his tail. I thought he was going to snap at the both of them, but he sagged, giving in. He howled, and it was tinged with blue, though he began to chase after his brother.
“We’re not whole,” I said. “Not yet.”
“Gavin.”
I looked at Patrice. “He’s part of this.”
He rubbed his jaw. “I didn’t—” He shook his head. “Bennett pack. Just when I tink I have you figured out.”
“We need to find him.”
Aileen patted my knee. “We will.”
I wished I could believe her. And not just for Carter. For all of us.
I turned my thoughts to better things. “How’s Brodie?”
“As well as can be expected,” Aileen said. “He’s hurting, of course. But your little friend Tony refuses to let him sleep anywhere else but in his room.”
“He’ll be safe with Tony and his parents,” Patrice said. “We’ll make sure of it.”
“We’re heading back in the morning,” Aileen said. “We just came out here for—”
“For me.”
She shrugged. “You weren’t ready before.”
“Am I now?”
“Are you?”
I looked back at this pack of mine. This ridiculous, wonderful pack. At the way they moved in the moonlight, the way they sang together, the way they loved each other with their whole hearts.
I had known that love once, or so I’d been told.