Tears wouldn’t come, even though I would’ve welcomed them. Instead, everything felt numb. Though, maybe I ought to appreciate that. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t feel numb later. I wouldn’t feel numb about this at all.
The alcohol worked its way through my system. An entire bottle of whiskey in less than half an hour is enough to get anyone drunk, even a foolish, self-destructive werewolf with the metabolism of an alpha.
I closed my eyes and passed out.
Mercifully, I didn’t dream at all.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN || HARRIS
Isat on a bench on Main Street, staring at nothing. A few of the residents gave me strange looks as they passed, but no one approached me. After a while—I wasn’t sure how long—rain started to fall.
I didn’t move.
The world felt wrong. Tilted. Like someone had taken reality and shaken it hard enough that nothing fit together properly anymore.
I have to put my pack first. There’s nothing here for you.
Reed’s voice played on a loop in my head, flat and certain. Like he’d been thinking it all along and finally worked up the nerve to say it out loud.
This was a mistake.
I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, as if that might somehow blot everything out.
This didn’t make sense. Last night we’d fought a monster together. We’d saved Sally. We’d fallen asleep tangled around each other, his warmth solid and real against me. I’d woken up alone this morning, but I’d figured—
No. Apparently, I’d figured wrong.
The rain picked up steam, becoming cold and steady. It soaked through my clothes.
I knew I should get up. I should find shelter and figure out what the hell I was supposed to do next.
But the enormity of it pinned me in place. Leaving Crescent Springs and the pack, who’d just accepted me as one of their own. And even more unthinkable—leaving Reed.
Then what? Would I go back to Los Angeles? To my empty apartment? To a job I didn’t even want anymore?
Would I go back to a life that had felt hollow and pointless long before I had even met Reed?
I sat there until the rain was coming down hard enough that I couldn’t tell if my face was wet from the weather or from something else.
Then, finally, feeling disconnected from my own body, I stood up without fully deciding to and started walking.
I didn’t have a plan. I just moved, one foot in front of the other, down the main street of Crescent Springs. Past the bookstore and bakery. Past Sally’s restaurant, dark and closed up, a sign taped on the door that I didn’t bother reading.
I ended up at the everything building.
According to the sign, Dr. Langley’s office was on the first floor. The lights were on. Reed had said she was a friend to the pack.
I stood outside the door, rain dripping off my jacket and pooling at my feet. Then I knocked.
Footsteps. The door opened.
Dr. Langley took one look at my face and her expression shifted—concern, sharp and immediate. “You must be Harris.”
I had the wild urge to laugh. It was a good guess. But then, the town probably didn’t get many visitors in the off-season, and in a place this small, I was sure that word got around quick.
Mutely, I nodded.
“What’s happened? Where’s Reed?”
