“Why are you important? Or why will we need you?”
“Yes.”
“We hurt, Ox,” he said. “Just like you. We may not understand your pain, but we feel it just the same. Everyone hurts differently. And when a pack member passes, especially when it’s the Alpha, there is this great hole that opens up like a chasm and we’re desperate to fill it. To make it disappear. Or at the very least to forget about it. Just for a little while. Whether it is to hide away in the forest at night—”
“Or to find the one that caused it in the first place,” I said.
He smiled quietly. “I told him not to, you know. Joe. I told him he was making a mistake.”
“Did he listen?”
“I’d like to think he did.”
“Not well enough.”
“It can be hard to hear what you don’t want to when you’re desperate and all you know is anger.”
“But it’s easier when we’re with each other. That’s what pack is supposed to be.”
Mark nodded. “Which is why we’ll both need you. And I hope you’ll need us. Because we’re here too, Ox. I promise you. We won’t leave you behind.”
I wanted to believe him.
I LEFT them in the woods.
Mark shifted and curled around Elizabeth. Carter and Kelly whimpered as I moved, but found solace with the rest of their pack. They knew where I was going. They thought they were going to give us the privacy we needed.
But they didn’t know what I was going to ask for.
Because I’d made up my mind.
My mother whispered, I’ll do right by you.
Thomas whispered, You protected your own. I am so very proud of you.
I thought maybe they walked with me through the forest, but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know if I could tell the difference between memories and ghosts.
The threads between us were gone.
But my mother’s hand brushed against my ear, and I felt Thomas squeeze my shoulder.
I wasn’t dreaming because I hurt.
Joe was still in the office, sitting in his father’s chair, a faraway look in his eyes as he stared off into nothing. It was hard to believe that only a week had gone by since we went on our first date, that flare of bright and awkward hope that had been bursting in my stomach. It was hard to think about how he’d sat at our kitchen table, wearing his bow tie, talking to my mother like he could believe nothing else in the world but what he was asking for. Like I was something he could be proud of.
He didn’t look at me. But he knew I was there.
I tried to find the right words to say what it was I felt.
I said, “I want you to give me the bite.”
And Joe said, “No.”
The room was quiet after that for a long time.
Finally, I said, “It’s my choice, Joe.”
“I know,” he said, looking at me, eyes clearing even as I watched.