“Yeah. But you didn’t believe him.”
“I did at first.”
“Did you?”
I closed my eyes. “I believed anything he said. He was our dad.”
“You were a pirate,” Kelly said, and there were birds in the trees. They called for us. “You had an eye patch and a plastic sword. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world.”
“You were a ninja.”
“I was. But only because Mom said it was too late for me to be a pirate too.”
“You cried.”
I opened my eyes in time to see him shrug. “I always wanted to be like you.” Then, “Dad took us.
He didn’t have a costume, but as soon as we were outside of Caswell, he looked at us in the rearview mirror and said that he was going to do something and that we absolutely could not tell Mom about it.”
My body was heavy. I could barely move my legs. “He half-shifted.”
“Yeah. Said it was his costume. His eyes were bright red, and his face was longer, and there was white hair on it. And everyone was in awe of him. Every time a door opened, they would say, ‘Oh, a little pirate, and oh, look at the ninja.’ And then they’d see him and laugh and laugh and laugh, asking him how he’d done it, how his costume looked so real. ‘Is that makeup? Is it a mask? How did you do that?’”
I hung my head. “It was the same candy. It wasn’t any different.”
“Well, yeah. But it tasted different. Better, somehow. Because it was the three of us. Together. The others, they saw him for what he was. An Alpha. Powerful. Strong. A leader unlike anyone they’d ever seen before. But to us, he was just… Dad.”
“I’m not here,” I whispered. “This isn’t real.”
Kelly stopped. His grip on my hand tightened.
He said, “I forgave him. It was hard. But I did. I was angry for so long. For leaving us like he did. For not seeing Richard Collins for what he was. For not doing more to stop him. For letting Joe get taken. For what he did to Gordo and Mark. He was a good man, but he made bad decisions. And for a son to realize that about his father, to understand he wasn’t perfect, it was—”
“Devastating. Kelly, I….”
Kelly turned to look at me. I wrapped my hand around the back of his neck, pulling him forward. I pressed my forehead against his. “Yeah,” he whispered. “It was. But sometimes we do what we think is right, even if others can’t see it. Before he died, he told me something that has always stuck with me.”
“What?” I asked, suddenly needing to know. “What did he tell you?” I pulled back, and Kelly was gone. The forest was gone. Tradition was gone.
I was in the truck. The road stretched out before me.
I looked over to the passenger side.
Not-Kelly was there, feet propped up on the dash, head back against the seat. He looked over at me, and I swore he was really there, and it was us, just the two of us, on a secret highway.
“Dad said that we must fight for the world we want. That it’s up to us to make it how we want it to be. I never forgot that.”
“I’m trying.”
He smiled quietly. “I know you are.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Fighting,” Kelly said. “You’re fighting. For me. For your pack. For him. Gavin.”
“He doesn’t want me.”
“Then why do you keep going?”