“Hear you picked up my shifts at the diner, Riley,” he said determinedly.
Riley glanced up, shock all over his face, and Tristan tried to remember the last time he’d spoken to him when he hadn’t had to. He couldn’t.
“Thanks for that,” he added. “Bad enough it all happened, without Sam having to struggle.”
Riley nodded. “Yeah,” he said, and then looked at Jason as if he didn’t know what to do. Well, that was a first. Usually, Riley was as cocky as they came. Or at least, that’s what Tristan had thought.
“I hope you got some cupcakes out of the deal,” Tristan said, knowing how heavy-handed he was being, but trying to make some sort of connection with the guy sitting across from him. Because if Jason had forgiven him, Tristan had no right to bear a grudge.
Riley’s eyes suddenly lit with humor. “With Jason baking about five times as many as usual, she was begging anyone who walked past to take one,” he said.
The conversation died, but Tristan was hopeful it was a start. And the happiness in Jason’s eyes when he looked at Tristan confirmed he’d done the right thing.
Conversation flowed around him, easy and familiar. Tristan smiled and answered when spoken to, but he felt distant from it all, like he was only half there.
He loved his pack, more than anything. He’d just never before understood how it must be to be on theoutsideof it. Christian’s joke had been full of unintentional, casual cruelty. And the thing that kept his cheeks warm with shame was the knowledge that if it weren’tColbyout there, if it weren’t for the fact Tristan had been a prisoner himself not so long ago, he wouldn’t have noticed. He’d probably have laughed with everyone else.
No, that wasn’t fair. They weren’t cruel. They just believed that Colby was here under Cale’s orders. And God knew, he couldn’t blame them for their reaction to Colby after the hurt Cale’s pack had inflicted on them. Yet something inside him remained unsettled.
He found himself staring out the window, toward the barn. Colby was out there, alone. And it felt like part of Tristan hadn’t made it all the way back. Like he’d left some piece of himself out in that cold stall, waiting too.
COLBY
The stall had been waiting for him again. So was the quiet. He had time to think—too much of it.
When Urban had finished with him, he’d handed Colby off to the dark-haired vet, Karl. Apparently a shifter of few words, he’d simply nodded and shown Colby to a bathroom, following Urban’s instructions.
He’d planted himself outside the door, silent. Not a word about the bathroom window, though they both knew Colby could probably squeeze through it if he really tried. Which told Colby, louder than words, that he wouldn’t make it five paces.
After his shower, Karl escorted him to the kitchen, where another member of Urban’s pack was busy at the stove.
“Need something I can take with me,” Karl said.
The shifter turned around, and when he saw Colby, he froze, his face filled with fear. That wasn’t a reaction Colby was used to, but then he realized—he was part of Cale’s pack, and from all he’d heard, they’d managed some serious damage against Urban’s during that fight.
He hunched his shoulders, drawing himself in the way he’d learned, trying to look small and forgettable. Invisible, if he could manage it. But he suspected, from the way the shifter looked to Karl, it was only Karl’s presence that reassured him enough to leave the stove and cross to the fridge.
“Thanks, Jason,” Karl said, taking the container he was offered and snagging a couple of bottles of water, which he then turned and gave to Colby. “Don’t want you thinking just because I’ve got my hands full, you can make a break for it,” he said. “I’d hate for you to make a fatal mistake like that.”
Colby had been right the instant he’d clocked this guy. He was way more lethal than most of Cale’s pack. Any of them would have postured and threatened to get their message across, and it still wouldn’t have been this chilling.
Back in the stall and alone again, Colby opened one of the bottles and drank, grateful for the simple relief of water easing his dry throat.
Urban’s words were still circling in his head.Thereisa wolf in there. Colby wasn’t so sure. He could still shift, yeah, but his wolf had been quiet for so long.
Sometimes, late at night, it would stir—just a flicker of life—and then Nico would say something, or do something, and it would vanish again. Curl in on itself like a wounded animal.
A shadow. That’s all it was now.
Maybe it was still in there, buried under everything, but he didn’t know if it remembered how to trust him. He wasn’t sure it should. And the truth was, he’d gotten used to that silence, to the emptiness where his wolf used to be.
Now… now he needed it. Needed its strength and its courage, but it wasn’t there for him. Just like he hadn’t been there for it. It knew only instinct—to fight or flee—not the price Nico would make them pay for it. But it knew Colby hadn’t listened. That heletNico hurt them both.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Nothing changed. Still silence, like a forest after a kill.
A horse snorted in the neighboring stall, and he pushed down the longing and the guilt and the sorrow deep inside him, setting the container next to the plate of muffins on the floor. He couldn’t remember when he’d last eaten, but he wasn’t hungry. Instead, he sat on the straw bale, a bit of comfort that seemed to have been overlooked, and folded in on himself, tucking his knees in close, like he could make himself so small no one—not even memory—could find him.
