“Can you describe what it is like? When you try to remember something like that?” Serepta’s voice was gentle, and Seath wondered if there was magic laced in the asking.
“It’s . . .slippery . . . like the thought slides through my fingers before I can catch it. It’sthere,but I can’t touch it. If I try, it cuts.”
Serepta clicked lightly with her tongue but said nothing.
“Do you know how you got here?” Seath asked.
“I ran away,” Lycan said, barely above a whisper. “I submit to your punishment for that, Alpha.”
Seath blinked for a moment. Taking in that Lycan had answered truthfully, despite expecting to be punished.
“There will be no punishment for running away, Lycan,” Seath told him. “I would imagine you had your reasons, but why did you run away?”
“I couldn’t stay . . . it . . .my wolf. . ..” Lycan seemed to falter over the words. Not at answering the question, but on putting together words to explain why.
Trav’s arm shot out, wrapping a comforting hand over Lycan’s shoulder as if he couldn’t help himself. Lycan’s whole body sagged with the feeling of touch.
“They hurt you?”
“Yes, Alpha.”
“Bad enough you ran,” Seath said, but it wasn’t a question.
“Yes, Alpha.”
“I’m sorry that happened, Lycan,” Seath said, now sitting next to him, and placing a hand on his arm. Lycan’s whimper at the contact of the Alpha, well, Legate, but still, showed both how touch-starved he truly was and how close his wolf lived to the surface. His whole body seemed to lean into the large hand on his leg.
He wanted to fling his face into Seath’s neck, bury himself in the Alpha’s lap and sling his slender thighs over Seath’s thick ones. Lycan’s hands fisted the sheets instead, the instant intensity of his desires making his head swim.
“Do you know who they are? The pack you left?”
Lycan stilled. “It’s one of the sharp memories—the faces, the smells—I can’t catch it . . .I can remember what they did, but not who they are.”
Seath took a breath, thinking that such a thing was really its own kind of torture. Truly, Lycan wouldn’t know if whomever hurt him was in the same room.
“Remember you must not try to think about or remember anything that hurts you, not right now, Lycan,” Seath gently reminded him, meaning any of the pain that could come from the memories he carried.
“Yes, Alpha.”
“I am the Pack Legate, not quite Alpha, Lycan.” Seath gently said, although it was hard. He liked how Lycan called him Alpha with his breathy voice. Others in the Pack had taken to calling him Alpha due to Greene’s long absences, and Greene himself had liked it. But, still, Seath worried it was too much too soon.
“Concealing their identities, no doubt,” Luke said. At least his mind was clearly on the puzzle before them. “Lycan, can you smell? Scent things? Things that aren’t your former pack?”
Lycan frowned deeply, “I can tell there is scent there, or a different scent, but it’s like my nose is numb most of the time.”
Luke hummed in his throat, “So if you were in a room, and didn’t turn around, you would know different people were in the room because you would know there were different scents, but you couldn’t identify the scents?”
“Yes. And—I would know there were . . .say four different scents, for example—like in this room with you, but the next time, I wouldn’t know it was the same scent I had met before, not more than a human could if it was distinctive. Just that there were different ones.”
“How long were you with them?” Seath asked, pleased by the long answer the omega gave him to the previous question. Lycan was intelligent and well-spoken, with a slightly accented voice Seath couldn't place.
“I know there was a timebefore,” Lycan said, “But, those are the sharpest thoughts. Those and the images and scents of them. I was kept in a dark room for the most part and time sort of . . .tilted. . ..” Lycan’s stare went far away.
Gently, Seath rubbed Lycan’s leg, bringing him back in the here and now.
“What about names?”
“I was to call Alpha “master”—no other names were said around me, or I can’t remember them. I don’t . . . I don’t have wolf hearing either . . .”
