Over a year since I've seen Cross. Since I've seen her. And now we have to, what? Just pretend I didn't ruin our lives? Just sit together at the Summit like one big happy family?
I watch the deer finish her drink, then she walks carefully toward the thicket she sleeps in during the day. She's thinking she'll be safe there, and any other night she probably would be. But tonight I'm ravenous and restless despite my exhaustion. I've been living on rabbits and other small game for weeks, but I'll feast tonight. And then I'll sleep.
I can't be his Second now anymore than I could back then, not functionally. We have too much history, and most of it hurts. Especially now. I don't know if Cross has even met her by now. When I left him I told him to go to her, to fix everything we had fucked up because of me. At that point, he hadn't seen her because he refused to look at her. He wouldn't look at her when he rejected her at their mating ceremony, and I doubt he saw her at the last Summit gathering after I left. A lot can happen in a year. Maybe he's met her by now and it wasn't as bad as he thought it would be, and that's the reason I'm being dragged from my self-imposed seclusion.
My stomach growls and the deer's head raises straight up from the grass she was nosing. She freezes in place, ears twitching in the silence that has returned to the night now that my stomach has tried to sabotage the hunt. It doesn't matter. I'm so close now. I'm close enough for her to hear my hunger and close enough that it will be over when I spring from this brush. I fall back into the recesses of the consciousness I share with my wolf as I do at the end of every hunt. I don't push back into the forefront until after he's taken his fill of meat. A lot of times, I'll shift back and cook a chunk of whatever's left on the carcass, but more often than not I just eat. Deer is delicious with a wolf pallet, cooked or not.
That has to be it. Nothing else would make sense. The Elders wouldn't call me back for an unknown.
My teeth tear into the deer. With every bite I swallow, I'm more sure of it.
It doesn't matter. They can call me back. I can stand before the council and witness the ceremony with the rest of the pack that I am still technically part of. I can do that and when it's over, I'll leave again. Because I can't be there when Cross claims his Luna. Even if he doesn't do it in front the pack where everyone can see and celebrate the link they form between our pack and hers, I'll still feel it.
I pause mid-swallow.
Oh, Goddess.
I'm going to feel it, anyway.
Cross and I have a bond. There's no escaping that. Not even the distance and time separating us keeps me from feeling shadows and sometimes hot, persistent flashes of his emotions.
Especially when it comes to her.
Fuck.
I allow my wolf a few more blissful moments to finish our meal, then I shift.
I have to go. I have been called and to ignore a call is to truly become rogue. I'm not a rogue. I may have pulled away from the pack because it hurts too much to be near Cross, but I'm still theirs, and they're still mine.
No, I'll go.
I'll just hate every second of it.
And then I'll come back to my solitude and wrap my misery around me like a thick shroud until it becomes too heavy to carry.
And then I'll rest.
One way or another, I'll rest.
***
She's already here. I could smell her the moment I walked through the main gate of the compound. Worse, the agitation crawling under my skin and making the beds of my nails itch doesn't belong to me. The shorter the distance is between Cross and me, the stronger his emotions affect me. Cross is almost unbearably anxious and walking the edge of true anger.
Part of me, the part of me that will always love him, yearns to go to him. To soothe him however I can. Another part of me, the part that was supposed to be his Second, the part of me that is utterly loyal to this pack, feels the pressure of needing to balance the situation. My job would be to calm him, or control the situation until he is able to calm himself. But I'm not his Second. Not anymore. And he's not Alpha. Not yet, anyway.
That's going to change soon enough, though. Tonight. Cross is going to claim Eugenia as his Luna tonight and there's nothing in the world important enough to stop it from happening. Not even me or Cross's broken heart.
“Didn't think you'd make it, Parker.”
Cross's brother's deep voice cuts through my mental anguish and abruptly drags me into the flow of pack communication. He spoke with his words, but the feeling of the words is loud in the sudden current of the feel of every member of the pack. I can't pick out the individual threads the way Cross can, but I can feel the whole of them. The feeling is a tightly woven nightmare of hope and dread and it makes me a little nauseous.
“I was called,” is my simple reply.
“Yeah,” Robbie says. “I know. But you didn't have to come. Everyone would have understood if you didn't.”
“I was called,” I repeat. “So I came. This is my pack.”
Robbie nods. “Yeah. She's here.”
