He glanced toward the door like he was looking for an escape. “Heard you say it. Crazy. You’re crazy. Talking to ghosts.”
“And Robbie? You said his name too. You remember, don’t you. The pack. The people. Do you remember everything?”
He looked like a cornered animal, eyes panicky. “No, no, no.”
“You do. Because I remember being an Omega stuck in all that violet. It wasn’t like it was as a human. It was… broken down. Base instinct. But I knew. I could hear them. I could feel them. My pack. My Alphas. My tether. Voices in my head through all that rage. I wanted to hurt them, but I loved them still.”
He rocked back and forth, hugging himself.
“When? When did you know? What did you know? Did you know about Gordo? That he was your—”
He seemed to seize, nearly falling over. He caught himself at the last moment, hands against the floor, claws digging into the dirt. “Gordo,” he growled through clenched teeth. “Gordo. Gordo. Not brother. Not brother.”
“I don’t know how to break it to you, man, but he kind of is. Half brother, at least.”
“Not brother. Witch. Don’t need him. Don’t want him. Don’t want you. Go. Go.”
“I won’t.”
He stood abruptl
y, going for the door.
“Why did you stay?”
He stopped but didn’t turn around.
My throat was raw. “If you didn’t want us, if you didn’t want a pack, then why did you stay with us? Years, Gavin. You were there for years. You can lie to yourself, but don’t think it’s working on me. You could have gone anywhere. But you knew, didn’t you? About Gordo.” I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “About me.”
He reached for the door.
“I’ll follow you.”
He paused again.
I didn’t know what else to do. I needed him to hear me, to understand. I needed to understand. “I don’t know where you’ll go, but I’ll follow you.”
He leaned his forehead against the door, panting. “You can’t. You can’t.”
“I don’t care.”
“You can’t.”
“Because your father is out there.”
He nodded against the door, hands in fists at his sides.
I stood, staying where I was so I didn’t spook him. “We can leave. The both of us. We’ll go back to the truck. If it hasn’t been damaged, we can drive out of here. Gavin, we can go home.” The words tasted like ash, a burning dream of all that I’d left behind.
And he said, “I have no home.”
I grunted as if gut-punched.
But he stepped away from the door.
He dropped the shorts, stepping out of them and leaving them where they fell. He inhaled deeply, and I barely made a sound when he shifted into the timber wolf.
He shook his head, ears against his skull.