Why had I been taken from people who had clearly broken a little more every day I was gone? Why was I put into a place that felt like hell and left me there to rot?
The questions burned, sharp and senseless, and none of the answers made any kind of sense. The fire popped, sending a spray of sparks into the dark. No one spoke for a moment. Evander kept one arm around me, his thumb brushing slow circles against my hip.
Maren was the first to try again, her voice gentle. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had a night like this.”
The other couple nodded; the woman’s hands clasped tightly in her lap. The man stared into the flames like they held the answers he’d been begging for.
“It’s been ten years,” he said quietly. “Ten years since everything…. stopped.”
“Losing a child cuts any sane person in half.” Her voice trembled, but she didn’t look up.
I shifted slightly in Evander’s lap, the sweater sleeves falling over my hands. “Losing parents does too.” The admission slipped out before I could stop it. Losing everything was more than enough to break me, and I had been broken in ways they couldn’t see. In ways I didn’t know how to explain it.
I didn’t want to hurt them. I wasn’t trying to make them feel what I felt, since they didn’t evenknowwho I was. But the truth was a wound we all cared for, just carved in different places.
They lost a child. I lost the world. And now, we were sitting here, staring at the pieces, trying to figure out if any of them fit.
“What…. what did you say?” She whispered, eyes pinned my way.
Her husband turned too, his expression sharpening through the firelight, searching for things he didn’t want to see.
I looked away, back to the sparkling fire as the flames danced and smoke rose to the sky.
Maren cleared her throat softly, trying to ease the tension. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had company out here. Sorry if we’re all a little…. intense.”
The woman gave a shaky laugh, though it didn’t reach her eyes. “We’re not usually like this. It’s just…” she stopped for a second. “It’s been a long day.”
A long decade, I thought.
The man nodded, rubbing a hand over his face. “I don’t know why we keep torturing ourselves on nights like this. It’s not like he’ll appear before us in the dark on smoke and fog.” His voice cracked on the last part.
“But what if he did? What if Kasey did show up?” Evander asked, echoing my thoughts.
The woman’s eyes blinked slowly, staring into the fire instead of at us. “Don’t say things like that. Hope like that….it ruins people.”
Evander didn’t look away from them, simply pulling me closer to his chest. “Sometimes hope is the only thing that keeps people alive.”
“We hoped for so long. Too long.” The woman breathed.
The man nodded. “We searched everywhere. Every lead. Every rumor. Every shadow.” His voice dropped. “And every time it wasn’t him.”
A heavy, suffocating silence settled.
I felt Evander’s hand slide along my side, grounding me, but it didn’t stop the ache building in my chest.
“Evy didn’t. He kept searching for him.”
“What…Evy?” Instantly, all eyes were on me. Onus.
“I didn’t give up hope, Laura. I never did. Did you think so lowly of me?”
“Never.” She looked like she was about to get up from her chair and rush at us. “But….”
“Up to you, Honeybee.” The words were whispered at the top of my head, filling me with warmth that I didn’t know I needed.
“Who are you?”
Many things,I thought. Instead, what came out was something else entirely. “I’m…an Omega. Taught and trained to be the perfect being from Lockswell Boarding School. I…I’m a lost boy who was found by an Alpha who saw something in me that I thought I’d never find. I’m a broken, shattered thing that is still somehow living after everything. But most of all, I’m Kasey. Evy’s Honeybee. And I’m finally back home where I should have been all along.”
