The air crackles with the faint sound of electricity and the pained cry that follows cuts through me like a knife. My fangs drop, jaw cracking as it expands to accommodate them, and claws slide out of my fingertips in response to the agony of another shifter. Doesn’t matter that he’s not my pack, the primal connection is still there. I grab onto that pain like a motherfucker, needing it to keep my wolf from surging forward.
We can’t help him either.
He’ll have sensed us nearby, know that help was seconds away and realise that he’s missed out by minutes. If that fight had lasted longer, we might have got him out too. The thought of that almost takes me out at the knees, but I shove it to the back of my mind, repeating the words in my head that I’d told Beth earlier.
We can’t save everyone.
I’ve never hated them more.
7
MORGAN
It’s a beautiful night.
Well, it would be under any other circumstances.
The sky is a dark, inky black, stars sprinkled throughout like glitter, and the moon is the brightest I’ve seen it in a long while. I’ve always loved camping outside, with the sounds of the forest surrounding me, like nature’s white noise.
Admittedly every time I’ve done it before I’ve been with Ash, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a tiny bit of apprehension as night falls. But there’s nothing except the usual sounds of a forest coming alive at night, nothing I haven’t heard a hundred times over the years, and as the hours tick by, I slowly relax into the warmth of my sleeping bag.
Try as I might, though, I struggle to appreciate any of it.
The sting of rejection, the embarrassment of having it happen in front of what looked like half the fucking club, lodges in my chest like a boulder.
So fucking stupid.
I should probably have gone home. Well, back to Ash’s, because as of tomorrow I don’t have a home. That’s too painful to think about, especially out here on my own, so I push it aside, like I have done for the past few days.
Is it healthy?
No.
Productive?
Absolutely not.
But it’s all I can manage right now.
I stare up at the sky, try to pick out the few constellations I know, and fail miserably. But I keep at it. Anything to stop me having to think about the future.
Thoughts manage to creep in anyway.
I’ll have to take Ash up on his offer. If only for a few days until I can come up with something else. It’s the last thing I want to do, but he’d kill me if I didn’t let him help when there’s literally no other option.
I don’t have the money to waste on a hotel or anything like that. And as much as I like the odd night outside, I don’t think I could handle living rough.
And yet you thought a dodgy-as-fuck motorcycle club was a good option?
My subconscious can be a real bitch sometimes.
None of that matters now.
But I need a night away from everything to lick my wounds and claw back some self-respect. So they didn’t want me? Fuck them.
Fuck all of them.
I must’ve fallen asleep,because I’m startled awake by hot breath washing over my face. It’s smells coppery and gross, and I reach up to shove whatever it is away from me before my mind catches up to what’s actually happening.
