But that was only fair. Because she was part of it. This was her home and she had died—
I was out on the front lawn, on my hands and knees, retching into the grass. The bile splashed hotly against my hand, near my thumb. I croaked out a wet moan, a string of saliva hanging from my bottom lip.
In some distant thought, I felt a ping of fear.
There was a roar, much deeper than I’d ever heard it before.
That ping became a clamoring.
I heard the breath of a large animal.
The sounds of great paws upon the earth.
He was there as I retched again.
There was the snap and creak of bone and muscle and then Joe was before me, hands frantic, rubbing down my back and arms, as he said, “Ox.”
“Joe,” I groaned, spitting away the bitterness in my mouth. “It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine—”
“I could feel it,” he said, voice cracking. “Through everything. In the house it’s hard to see because everyone feels the same way. It’s over everyone. But then you weren’t there and I couldn’t remember where you were and I felt it. It was like being stung on every part of me. I could always feel it before, but nothing like this. There has never been anything like this. Like you.”
“I don’t—”
“This must have been what he felt like. My dad. All the time. Because you’re mine—my pack. It’s… Ox. It’s so big, I don’t know what to do with it.”
And it was weird, hearing him like that again after a week of near silence. Because he sounded like he did when he was a kid, just a kid who hadn’t spoken in fifteen months and who had climbed me like a tree to demand to know what that smell was. It righted me, barely, but somehow.
He was quiet as I rocked back on my feet and tried to catch my breath. His hand was in mine, not caring that it was sweating and bile-slick.
He said, “Why did you go in there?”
I looked up at the sky. Night was overtaking day. It was orange and red and violet and black stretching above us. I saw the first hint of stars. The first slight curve of the moon.
“I had to,” I said. “I found the key and I had to.”
“You can’t go in there alone.”
“It’s my house.”
Joe’s eyes flashed. “I am your Alpha.”
And there was a tremor that rolled through me at the redness in his eyes, a need to bare my neck and obey, a whisper that grew into a storm. It yanked at the thread that connected us until I was shuddering with it, until I had to grind my teeth together just to fight it back. I closed my eyes and waited for it to be over.
It didn’t last long. Because Joe pulled it back.
He said, “Oh fuck. I’m sorry. I’m
so sorry.” His eyes were wide and he looked so impossibly young.
“Don’t do that to me,” I said hoarsely. “Ever again.”
“Ox, I. We—I didn’t mean it. Okay? I swear to you, I didn’t mean it.”
He squeezed my hand so hard I thought my bones would break.
“I know,” I said. Because I did. That wasn’t who he was. None of this was who we were. Everything was so fucked. “I know.”
He looked miserable, this seventeen-year-old kid who now had everything resting on his shoulders. But there was anger in him too, low and pulsing, and I didn’t know how to stop it. Mostly because it resembled my own.