Heartsong (Green Creek 3)

“All I want is what belongs to me,” he says quietly. He’s only a few feet away, and I think about Kelly waiting for me back home. Kelly, Kelly, Kelly. The last thing I sent to him was a fucking heart emoji. If only I’d known what was about to happen. If I had, I would have told him I loved him. I would have told him I never loved anyone like I love him. I would have thanked him for making me whole. For giving me hope. For giving me a home. I would have told him that even if this was always going to be my ending, if given the chance, I would do it all over again. For him. For my pack.

“You’re going to help me,” Robert Livingstone says. “It’s time that I take back what is mine.”

“I won’t,” I

snarl at him. “I won’t. I won’t. I—”

I can’t breathe.

His hand is wrapped around my throat and I can’t breathe.

“You will,” he whispers, and the tattoos on his arm are moving, oh my god, they’re alive and moving, and I scream because they’re coming for me, they’re coming for me, they’re—

(grass and lake water and sunshine)

(i see you)

(i’ll never let you go)

The first symbol hits my tongue, and I’m being torn apart. It hurts like nothing ever has. It’s a shockwave that obliterates almost everything else. I don’t know how long it goes on, how long I hold out, because I’m fighting, oh Jesus, I’m fighting as hard as I can, but it’s too much, it’s too strong, and a second symbol crawls into my mouth, and it feels like dying, it feels like death, but I’m thinking about him, thinking about how he looked in sunlight, in the shadows late at night, how he laughed, how he whispered in my ear sweet words that meant nothing to anyone but us.

“Would you hear me, dear?” Robert Livingstone asks. “Would you hear me?”

And I’m laughing.

Here, at the end.

I’m laughing.

It’s choked and terrible, but I can see the moment it hits him. There’s fear on his face, though he tries to cover it up. And it only makes me laugh harder.

“I love you!” I scream into the cool morning air, a heartsong like I’ve never sung before. “Kelly! I love you! I love you! I love you!”

And then everything I am is gone.

I prowl through the trees.

Voices ahead.

My ears flatten against my skull.

I am wolf.

I growl.

“What the hell?” one of the voices says. “Did you hear that?”

“What? No, Tanner. I didn’t hear that.”

“I swear to god I heard something, Chris. What if it’s an Omega? Er. Sorry, dude. Another Omega?”

“Then we run like hell and let the wolves save us like always.”

Three of them.

Two humans.

One Omega.