“I told you a lot of things.”
“I know.”
“We’re not talking about me.”
“Maybe we should.”
“Ox.”
“You do this, you know. Deflect.” He opened his eyes. They were human. “I don’t know why.”
I scowled at him. “I know what you’re doing. This whole Zen Alpha bullshit doesn’t work on me. I’m not one of your wolves, Ox, so knock it off.”
He smiled quietly. “You got me. But then, I’m your tether. I don’t want you to—how did you put it? Degrade.”
“Kiddo, I’ll kick your wolfy ass into next week, so help me god. Mark my words.”
He laughed. It was a good sound. A strong sound. Warmth bloomed in my chest at pleasing my Alpha again, and I ignored it.
He waved me on. “You were saying?”
“Those Omegas. The ones before. They aren’t the same. They weren’t as far gone. The longer a wolf doesn’t have a tether, the more feral they’ll be. It’s not a quick process, Ox. And it’s not easy. Losing your mind never is.”
“Do you remember her? The barefooted woman. Marie.”
Oh, I did. She’d been beautiful, except for the crazy in her eyes. She’d been before Richard. A precursor. “She was on her way. Not as bad as the others, but she would have gotten there. They all do. In the end.”
He watched me close. “You’ve seen it. Before.”
I nodded.
“Who?”
“I didn’t know his name. My father wouldn’t tell me. He came to stay with us. His pack had been wiped out. Hunters. I was just a kid. Abel tried to help him. Tried to help him find a new tether, something to latch on to. But it didn’t work. He was lost in his grief. His Alpha was dead. His mate was dead. His pack had been destroyed. He had nothing left.” I looked down at the scar in the desktop. “Nothing worked. It was—he was slowly losing his mind. Have you ever seen that up close, Ox? It starts in the eyes. They grow… vacant. More and more vacant. Like a light is fading. You can see they understand what’s happening to them. There’s a knowledge there. An understanding. But they can’t do anything to stop it. Eventually he lost himself to his wolf. He was completely feral.”
“What happened to him?”
“The only thing that could be done.”
“He was put down.”
I shrugged. “Abel did it. Said it was the least he could do. My father made me watch.”
“Jesus.”
That didn’t even begin to cover it. “It was necessary. To see what needed to be done. It was a mercy, in the end.” I thought of the wolf in the alley of a forgotten Montana town, silver through the head.
“You were just a kid.”
“So were you with all the shit you went through. And look at you now.”
He wasn’t amused by that. “The others, then.”
The ones who had found their way to Green Creek. “What about them?”
“We gave them to the gruff man.”
“Philip Pappas.”