“That’s not true,” he said, voice rough. “That’s never been true. Gordo, everything I have, e
verything I am, it’s always been yours. You were just too goddamn stubborn to see that.”
“I was hurt.”
“I know.”
“And angry.”
“I know that too. And I would give almost anything to take that back. I would. I swear. To make Thomas see he was wrong. He should have fought for you more.” He closed his eyes. “I should have fought for you more.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. I didn’t.”
“I was here, Mark. I was fifteen years old, and my mother was dead. My pack was dead. My father was gone. And then you—he just… you said it was the hardest decision he ever had to make. You said it nearly killed him. But then why did he never come back? Why did he never come for me?”
Mark opened his eyes. They were orange and then blue and then violet, and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to stop it. “He wanted to,” Mark growled. “God, Gordo. He wanted to. But there was always something that kept him away. And he would send me, and there were times I thought you wanted me here, and then times where I thought you never wanted to see me again.”
“It wasn’t enough,” I snapped. “Parts of you. Pieces of you. It wasn’t fair. You couldn’t be here for days and then leave for months. I would be left here again, and you would go back to the pack, with your family. Jesus Christ, I fucking hated you for that. I fucking hated all of you for doing that to me.”
His eyes glowed. He popped his neck side to side. The veins in his thick biceps pulsed. “I know you did. And when I came back that last time and the stench on your skin was of some goddamn stranger, I was barely able to restrain myself. I wanted to fucking kill him. I wanted to knock you to the side and find whoever it was and tear him to shreds. To spill his blood. To break his bones. To make him suffer for having the goddamn audacity to think he could ever touch you. That he could even think of touching you.”
“You weren’t here,” I said, a nasty curl to my lips. I was playing with fire, and I didn’t care. “You weren’t here and he was. It had to be someone. Might as well have been him. I don’t even remember his name. But at least he wasn’t afraid to touch me. At least he wouldn’t hurt me. At least he wouldn’t fucking betray me.”
“Don’t,” Mark warned. “Gordo, don’t. Don’t make me angry. I can smell it. Your magic. It’s—”
“Fuck my magic,” I snarled at him. “Fuck the pack. Fuck my father and your father. Fuck Thomas. This is you and me. This is you and me, and fuck you if you think I’m just going to let this go. Let you go. I’m not scared of you. I never have been, and I never will be.”
He shook his head. “It’s too late. Gordo, can’t you see that? It’s too late. I—I can feel it. In my head. It was just a whisper, and it was just scraping along my skin. But now it has hooks, and it’s digging in. It’s digging in, and I can’t make it stop. Gordo, I can’t make it—”
Once, the moon had loved the sun.
Once, there was a boy who had loved a wolf.
Once, an old witch had spoken of choice, of truth and prophecy.
And it was blue, so much of it was blue, but I was tired of it. I was tired of feeling this way, of being alone, of being scared, of thinking that I couldn’t have what I wanted more than anything in this world.
And so I made my choice.
I chose the wolf.
I took three steps forward, my hands going up to Mark Bennett’s face. He flinched, eyes flaring, but it was already too late to stop it.
I kissed him. There, in the darkened room while snow fell outside.
At first he didn’t respond, and I thought I’d misunderstood. That I was too late. That the gulf between us was too wide to ever be crossed.
But then he sighed and slumped against me, his hands on my hips, the raven still clutched between his fingers. I felt the sharp press of its wooden wing against my side. He sang a song in my head of gordo love mate please love, and though it was tinged with blue and blue and blue, there was a thread of green shot right through the middle, of relief and hope. It was like I was young again and there was this boy, this tall, gangly boy sitting against a tree in summer, his feet bare in the green, green grass, and he was my shadow, following me everywhere, telling me he was trying to keep me safe from bad guys. I’d sat up on my knees and kissed him because it felt like the right thing to do. Everything about Mark Bennett had felt right, even then in the summer when we hadn’t known just how sharp teeth could be.
We weren’t young anymore.
But it still felt like we could be.
It still felt like this could be a first time.
And then it changed.