He sighed. “Only you wouldn’t accept gratitude after getting your hand cut off.”
“We have bigger things to worry about now. We can talk about it later, when I come off my inevitable meltdown.”
“He’ll wait on you hand and foot,” Joe said. “Or maybe just foot, now.”
We turned slowly to look at him.
He blinked at us. “Too soon?” He nodded. “Yeah. Too soon. Sorry, Gordo.”
Ox took a step forward.
The circle of the Omegas broke. They amassed in front of him. Some were half-shifted. Most were wolves. There had to be at least sixty of them. All their eyes were violet. It was more than Richard Collins ever had.
Oxnard Matheson said, “I called you. And you came. I have made mistakes in the past. I cut myself off from all of you. I closed that door, even though you needed me. I have no right to ask anything of you, but in the end, I must. There are people here. Hunters. They have come into Bennett territory uninvited. And they have come to take away everything I hold dear. They already have two of my pack, and I will not accept that. If you help me, if you stand with me, then I promise you, I will do everything in my power to bring you back. To put your minds back together, no matter how long it might take. You are the forgotten. The lost. But if we survive today, I will find a way to bring you home.”
The Omega wolves tilted their heads back and howled for their Alpha. The sound rolled over us, causing me to shake down to my bones.
It was loud and angry.
Feral and harsh.
I hoped Elijah and her hunters heard it too.
THEY WERE waiting for us when we arrived back at the house at the end of the lane. The sky was nearly cloudless, a cold, clear blue. The sun was bright. And the moon was full and pale, but visible. I remembered the story Abel had told me about her love.
Rico was standing on his own, eyes wide as he watched us approach. He was muttering something I couldn’t hear.
Jessie was next to him, tapping the crowbar on her shoulder, eyes narrowed.
Robbie stood at the bottom of the stairs next to Kelly, who was wringing his hands. He looked as if he didn’t know whether he wanted to step in front of Kelly and snarl, or pull him back into the house. He did neither. Instead he said, “That’s a lot of Omegas.”
Elizabeth went to them first, shifting as she approached the house. Jessie reached down to a pack at her feet, pulled out a robe, and tossed it down the stairs. Elizabeth caught it midshift and wrapped it around her shoulders as the wolf melted away.
“What happened?” Kelly demanded. “We felt—I don’t know what it was. But it was awful. It was like someone died, but—”
“Gordo?” Rico asked. “Why are you holding your arm like that? Did you break it?”
“Not exactly,” I muttered.
“Gordo saved Ox,” Elizabeth said. “He was hurt, but it’ll be okay.”
“I don’t understand,” Robbie said, sounding confused. “It was like—”
I held up my arm.
Silence.
Then:
“What the fuck,” Rico squeaked.
“Who did that?” Jessie growled. “And please tell me they’re already dead.”
“How is it healed already?” Robbie demanded, eyes flashing.
Kelly came first, Kelly who had stood in the doorway of a dilapidated motel in the middle of nowhere, watching me shave my head, and told me I had to do it to him next, had to make him look like me. I thought he’d been my pack first, before Joe and Carter, because of that. His hands hand been gentle when they pressed against my shoulders, and he hadn’t fidgeted when I’d done the same to him. I remembered how prickly his scalp had felt when I’d run my fingers over it after I’d finished. He’d still been a child then, a grieving child far away from home.
That child was gone now.