“Oh my god,” Elizabeth said, because she understood first.
ONCE, WHEN it was just the two of us at the house, she’d decided it was time to play Dinah Shore again. Joe and the others had been gone for almost two years.
She put the old record on, and while the singer crooned about being lonely, she looked at me and asked me to dance.
“I don’t know how,” I said, trying not to blush.
“Nonsense,” she said. “Everyone can if they can count.”
She took my hand.
She moved slowly with me as she counted out the steps, my hand dwarfing hers. She moved us in a circle, the song repeating over and over again.
When she no longer needed to count, when I felt the song seep into my bones, she said, “We stayed behind because we had to.”
I stuttered in my step, but caught myself before it got out of control. She smiled quietly at me as I counted under my breath.
Then, “Did we?”
We moved and swayed.
She said, “We did. They didn’t want to leave us, Ox. None of them. Joe. Gordo. Carter and Kelly. Thomas. Your mother. None of them wanted to leave.”
“They did, though. All of them.”
“Sometimes,” she said as we spun lazily, “the choices are taken out of our hands. Sometimes, we don’t want to leave, even though we feel we must.”
“He didn’t have—”
“You think him selfish,” she said. “And you may be right. But never forget that everything he does, he also does for you. And there will come a time when you will see him again. It’ll be up to you what happens next.”
“I’m angry,” I admitted. “So angry.”
“I know,” she said, squeezing my hands. “It’s why we’re dancing. I find it hard to be angry when I’m dancing. There’s just something about it that doesn’t foster rage.”
“Do you think…?”
“What, Ox?”
“Do you think he’ll come back?”
She said, “Yes, I do. He’ll always come back for you.”
And we danced.
And danced.
And danced.
“OH MY god,” Elizabeth Bennett said.
“What is it?” Rico asked, voice higher than normal. “Is it the bad guys? Is it the bad wolves—”
“No,” Mark said. “It’s not. It’s an Alpha. It’s—”
Robbie’s hand dropped onto my shoulder, claws piercing through my work shirt and dimpling my skin. It grounded me, made me realize I wasn’t dreaming, that I was awake, since I couldn’t feel pain in a dream. There was pain. Sharp pain that was mostly bearable.
“Ox,” Tanner said in a low voice. “What do we do? What do we—”