I was the one who had let Jeremy get killed. The moment I thought that, something knotted deep inside me and I fought back the image of my oldest friend’s pale and lifeless body on the forest floor, his mate—a vampire—holding his bleeding wrist to Jeremy’s mouth, trying desperately to turn him, and all that blood… knowing with total and perfect clarity I could have stopped it. I should have stopped it.
And because I’d been the second-in-command, the strongest wolf in the pack apart from Jeremy, the power of the alpha—and the crushing responsibility of the pack—had both gone into me the moment Jeremy’s heart stopped. I could still feel that awful, unwanted rush of power, even though I’d tried to fight it. And it was all because Jeremy had trusted me and I had failed him.
I was never going to make that mistake again. Never.
“You can be a better alpha than he ever was,” Lindsey said, watching me steadily. “Sure, you’re a bit of a sarcastic edgelord sometimes, but underneath all that, you’re kinder than him. You care about other people so much, Reed.”
“Not anymore,” I snapped, glaring at her. “I can’t anymore. You know that.”
She sighed, probably exasperated with me. “Look, I love my brother, but he had his problems. He wasn’t really a great alpha. He was way too much like our father.”
At her mention of Hank Brightborn, the previous alpha before Jeremy, her expression darkened. That wasn’t surprising, given her father’s affair with her mother and subsequent refusal to treat Lindsey as his daughter had been a big part of the reason she’d left Crescent Springs at barely eighteen—immediately after his death—and never looked back.
She let out a deep breath and added, “And besides, Jeremy’s better off now, anyway.”
“He doesn’t have a pulse,” I said dully, guilt gripping my heart. “How is that better?”
She narrowed her gaze at me. With her disapproving expression and the silvery moonlight catching the mahogany skin of her bare shoulders and her short-cropped black hair, she looked almost like a displeased goddess. “He’s happily married to the love of his life. Reed, c’mon. Think about it. Who gives a shit if his heart isn’t beating anymore?”
Jeremy had been my closest friend for my entire life, but things hadn’t been right between us since he became a vampire-werewolf hybrid and ran off with Thierry, the eight-hundred-year-old vampire he was destined to love for all eternity. The one time I had been brave enough to broach the subject with him, to try apologizing, Jeremy had told me there was nothing to forgive. But I wasn’t sure I believed that. If I were him, I’d be pissed. Up until he had turned, we hadn’t even known a werewolf could become a vampire. He had found out the hard way.
“How is he?” I asked before I could stop myself. I winced the moment the words were out. I couldn’t pretend to be a tough-as-nails alpha-hole if I was sitting there asking Lindsey about my best friend’s feelings. Next, I’d be asking her to braid my hair.
“You could always call him up and ask,” she pointed out. “He’s not dead.”
“Technically, he is.”
“Don’t be a dick. The pack was wrong about vampires. You know that.”
She meant what we were all raised to believe—that vampires were all, down to the last of them, soulless and inhuman monsters—had turned out to be wrong. There was a lot more gray area than we’d originally thought. Some vampires were like that, but most of them were regular people—sometimes even pretty decent people, like Thierry—with an appetite for fresh blood.
In fact, there was even a vampire permanently living in Crescent Springs for the first time ever, an emissary of sorts from Nathaniel Bailey, the vampire king of Seattle. And Christopher—who insisted everyone call him Topher—seemed like a nice enough guy. He hadn’t caused any issues.
Yet.
Even having met Thierry and watched Jeremy come back from the dead as a vampire-werewolf hybrid, seemingly still himself, most of the pack was still pretty wary around vampires.
Lindsey rolled her eyes. “Jeremy’s happy, Reed. You know he didn’t really want to be the alpha either. It’s not a power anyone ever asks for. And if they do, they’re an idiot. But he went about everything the wrong way. You don’t have to follow in his footsteps. You shouldn’t.”
“Being alpha is fine. It’s good. I feel powerful.”
“Bullshit!” She threw her hands up in exasperation. And she was apparently not even a little self-conscious that she was entirely naked, concealed only by the tall emerald-green ferns of the forest. But we were all extremely used to nudity at this point. Her voice dropped dangerously when she added, “You hate this and we both know it. The faster you admit that and start actinglike yourself again, the easier this whole thing is going to be for everyone.”
“Right. Thanks,” I replied, a flash of anger tearing through me at her words. Why was she trying so damn hard to disarm me? No one else was. “Anyway, I’m going to keep looking. You ought to head home.”
“A missing person matters to me, Reed,” she replied flatly, either not catching the dismissal in my tone or ignoring it completely. “You know what’s in these woods.”
“If I had a dime for every time we had to find a missing hiker, I’d be a rich wolf.” I said it lightly, but when she just looked at me without saying a word, I heaved a sigh and added, “We’ll find him, okay?”
Or what’s left of him.But I didn’t say that part aloud.
“Just tell me what sections still need to be searched, and we can get done that much faster. You know I’m one of the best trackers you have.”
“I don’t actuallyhaveyou. None of us do. You’ve made that really clear. You’re not part of the pack. You’re not one of my wolves.”
She let out a long breath, as though attempting to calm herself. “Look, Reed, we both know that I’m going to keep searching either way. You might as well make it so that I don’t waste my time or yours by searching a section you’ve already covered.”
“Fine,” I growled, officially done with the conversation. I pointed off into the distance. “Take Gemini. I’ll take Cancer. Those are the last two sections to search. Then we’re done.”
