Cut clean like a limb you pretend isn’t yours anymore.
One moment we were theirs, the next we were nothing.
I was nine, Freddie was eight, and Buff… Buff, he was only five. They cast us out before we even understood what living without a pack would actually mean.
At thirty, I should be over it. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. I should’ve built up enough scar tissue by now to smother that old ache that still whispers about belonging like it’s something I could ever have again. I should’ve outgrown the stupid want for a place, for a pack, for a home.
But wanting doesn’t age out. It only sinks deeper.
The snarls behind us, as threatening as they are, hit something soft and stupid in me. The part of me that still aches for a pack—a real pack. A place that isn’t temporary or conditional or cruel. Do I want to be a jerk like pretty much every member of the Eustace pack? No, I don’t. I just want to be part of something that fights for me and not against me. Which brings me back to why they are fighting us.
“What the hell did you assholes do now?”The thought tears from my mind, ricochets from each of theirs and hits me in the gut.
“When they chased us, I panicked,”Froggy wheezes in thought-speak, leaping over a twisted branch like a startled deer.
“So you decided to take out Grant’s bike? Grant—Talon’s son? Fantastic. We’re dead. Actually dead.”I dodge a tree trunk as vapor pours out my mouth against the chill from the rain.
“I just pushed it over to make a barrier between us and Attila the Hun. That dude has fists like meat tenderizers, and I’m not letting him ruin this face. And why are you shouting at me, anyway?”Froggy jerks his white muzzle toward Buff.“He’s the one who banged the alphas’ daughters! We’re running because of him!”
Froggy’s always had an attitude. He’s smaller than most wolves, has a loud mouth, loud energy—the whole package. What he lacks in size, he overcompensates for with bite. The bastard shifts faster than either of us, and he knows it.
He’s all lean lines and wired muscle. He doesn’t have brute strength like Buff and I do, but he makes up for it in speed and angles with sharp teeth, sharp elbows, sharp everything.
He bares his fangs first and asks questions… well, never.
His fur is a ridiculous snow-white with streaks of gray. It makes him look breakable until you watch him go for someone’s Achilles tendon like a damn landmine with opinions.
He’s twitchy, unpredictable, trigger-happy, and pure adrenaline on legs.
Sometimes his restless energy gets under my skin and makes me twitch too, but I’d trust that jittery little bastard with my life.
“Fuck, Freddy, I told you it was dark! I couldn’t tell which one was which! The alphas are twins, you know. It’s like the daughters are twins too. Thorne’s oldest and Talon’s youngest look so similar,”Buff says.“It’s not like they were wearing damn name tags!”
“Christ,”I growl.“You couldn’t keep it in your pants for one night?”
“There weretwoof them!”Buff whines.
Only Buff would think Fiona and Veronica look similar. And okay, from the tits down, he’s got a point.
But Fiona is Thorne’s eldest daughter. She’s twenty-five, and somehow looks younger than Veronica, Talon’s youngest at twenty-three.
And yet Buff swears he got “confused.”
Confused? Please.
Because—and forgive me, but fuck me with a piñata stick—one is a brunette and the other is a goddamn blonde. Fiona has eyes the color of amethyst; Veronica’s are straight-up molten amber.
There is nothing similar about them.
Except, apparently, the tits—Buff’s only reliable identification method.
Branches whip at my arms as we tear through the undergrowth, and my lungs burn like I’m inhaling the fire we’ve left behind. My heart is pumping so fast, I can taste iron. Behind us, the scent of bloodlust, rage, and bruised egos close in as the alphas’ hunters advance on us. It all burns hotter than the fireball Froggy created.
We’ve survived a lot by being smart when it counted, fast when it mattered, or just stupidly lucky.
But this?
This is the kind of shit even luck looks at and says,yeah, you’re on your own, buddy.
