I called the number.
It rang once.
An automated message.
Disconnected.
No longer in service.
It was okay, I told myself. It was okay because these were burners. The phones. They’d just gotten a new one. Joe had forgotten to get me the new number. Like he always did.
I just had to wait.
I set my phone down, pulled Joe’s comforter up onto my chest. It didn’t smell like him. Nothing did in his room. Not anymore.
But that was okay.
Because I just had to wait.
the second year/song of war
IT WAS partway through the second year that the Omegas came.
They weren’t prepared for us.
JESSIE SAID, “Hey, Ox.”
We were at the garage. Tanner, Chris, Rico, and me. Robbie was there too, having decided he was bored enough that he wanted to learn his way around. It was slow going because he was absolutely terrible when it came to cars, so much so that I barely trusted him to do an oil change by himself.
But he tried.
I learned a lot about him. He was a year younger than I was. His mom had been killed in a turf war between rival packs when he was just a kid. His father lived in Detroit, a human that he only saw every now and then, given he didn’t want anything to do with pack life after the death of his wife. But they were two separate people, and their paths had no real reason to cross. It saddened him, sometimes, but he didn’t want to do anything about it. He didn’t have a mate. He’d had a boyfriend once, a long time ago, and a girlfriend later, but he wasn’t focused on that. He had a job to do.
He confused me. It wasn’t a good thing.
“Why are you still here?” I’d asked him.
He’d just shrugged and looked away. “I’m told to be.”
I didn’t believe him. Not anymore. Not when I’d overheard him on the phone, talking with those faceless people in the East, saying he didn’t want to be replaced, that he was fine out here with us, that he wanted to stay. Nothing had happened since he’d been here and he wanted to make sure it stayed that way.
He made it sound as if it was just a job when he spoke to us.
He was lying, but I didn’t think it was a bad thing.
Still, there was only so much a person could do to watch over us before boredom set in.
So he came to the shop.
He didn’t need to be paid, given he was already making an unknown amount just for being in Green Creek.
We just made sure to keep it off the books.
It was good, though. Having someone else to talk to.
I could feel it building, just like it had with Tanner, Chris, and Rico. The need to bind him to us. To make him a part of who we were. It didn’t happen right away, because he’d come in a stranger at a time when trust wasn’t given out very easily. I’d known the guys from the shop for years. They were my friends.
He wasn’t.