Ravensong Page 4

  But none of that mattered. Not anymore.

  I was forced to know them, whether I wanted to or not. I’d lost my mind when I’d agreed to follow Joe and his brothers.

  Kelly was the quiet one, always watching. He wasn’t as big as Carter and probably never would be. Not like Joe, who I thought was going to grow and grow and grow. It was rare, but when Kelly smiled, it was small and quiet with a bare hint of teeth. He was smarter than the rest of us combined, always calculating, taking things in and processing them before the rest of us could. His wolf was gray, with splotches of black and white on his face and shoulders.

  Carter was all brute force, less talk, more action. He snapped and snarked, bitching about anything and everything. When he wasn’t driving, he’d kick up his boots on the dash, sinking down low in his seat, the collar of his jacket flipped up around his neck and brushing against his ears. He weaponized his words, using them to inflict as much pain as possible. But he also used them as a distraction, deflecting as best he could. He wanted to be seen as cool and aloof, but he was too young and inexperienced to make it work. His wolf resembled his brother’s, dark gray, but with black and white on his hind legs.

  Joe was… a seventeen-year-old Alpha. It didn’t make for the best combination. That much power after that much trauma and being so young wasn’t something I wished on anyone. I understood him more than the others, only because I knew what he was going through. Maybe not the same—magic and lycanthropy weren’t even in the same ballpark—but there was a kinship that I tried desperately to ignore. His wolf was white as snow.

  They moved together, Carter and Kelly circling around Joe whether or not they realized it. They deferred to him, mostly, even as they gave him shit. He was their Alpha, and they needed him.

  They were all so different, these lost boys.

  But they did have one thing in common.

  All three were assholes who didn’t know when to shut the fuck up. And I was stuck with them.

  “—and I don’t know why you think we should keep doing this,” Carter said one night a few weeks after we’d left. We were in Cut Bank, Montana, a little town in the middle of nowhere, not far from the Canadian border. There was a small pack near Glacier National Park that we were heading toward. A wolf we’d stumbled upon in Lewiston told us they’d recently dealt with Omegas. The wolf had trembled under Joe’s Alpha eyes, fear and reverence battling all over his face. We’d stopped for the night, and Carter had immediately started in.

  “Give it a rest,” Kelly said tiredly, frowning as he tried to find a TV channel that wasn’t hard-core porn from the eighties.

  Carter snarled at him wordlessly.

  Joe stared at the wall.

  I flexed my hands and waited.

  Carter said, “What happens when we get to this pack? Have any of you thought this through? They’ll tell us Omegas were there, but what the fuck else?” He glared at Joe. “You think they’ll know where that bastard Richard is? They won’t. No one does. He’s a ghost and he’s haunting us. We’re—”

  “He’s the Alpha,” Kelly said, eyes flashing. “If he thinks this is what we’re supposed to do, then we’re going to do it.”

  Carter laughed bitterly as he started pacing the length of the shitty hotel room. “Good little soldier. Always falling in line. You did it with Dad, and now you’re doing it with Joe. What the fuck do either of you know? Dad is dead and Joe’s a kid. Just because he was a goddamn little prince doesn’t give him the right to take us away from—”

  “That’s not fair,” Kelly said. “Just because you’re jealous that you weren’t going to be the Alpha doesn’t mean you get to take it out on the rest of us.”

  “Jealous? You think I’m jealous? Fuck you, Kelly. What the hell do you know? I was the firstborn. Joe was Daddy’s little boy. And who the fuck were you? What do you have to offer?”

  Carter knew where to cut. He knew what would make Kelly bleed. What would get a reaction. Before I could move, Kelly launched himself at his brother, claws extended, eyes orange and bright.

  Carter met his brother with fangs and fire, teeth sharpened and hair sprouting along his face as he melted into his half shift. Kelly was fast and scrappy, landing crouched on his feet after his brother backhanded him across the face. I stood, feeling the flutter of a raven’s wings, needing to do something before the goddamn cops were called and—

  “Enough.”

  A burst of red hit me in the chest. It said stop and now and alpha i am the alpha, and I stumbled at the force of it. Carter and Kelly went stock-still, eyes wide, little whimpers crawling from their throats, wounded and raw.

  Joe stood near the bed. His eyes were as furious red as Thomas’s had ever been. He hadn’t shifted, but it looked like it was a close thing. His mouth was twisted, hands in fists at his sides. I saw a trickle of blood dripping onto the dirty carpet. He must have popped claws and was digging them into his palm.

  And the sheer power emanating from him was devastating. It was wild and all-encompassing, threatening to overwhelm us all. Carter and Kelly began to tremble, eyes wide and wet.

  “Joe,” I said quietly.

  He ignored me, chest heaving.

  “Joe.”

  He turned to look at me, teeth bared.

  I said, “Stop. You have to pull it back.”

  For a moment I thought he was going to ignore me. That he’d turn back to his brothers and strip away everything from them, leaving them as docile, empty husks. Being an Alpha was an extraordinary responsibility, and if he’d wanted to, he could have forced his brothers to follow his every whim. They would be mindless drones, their free will hanging in tatters.

  I would stop him. If it came to that.

  It didn’t.

  The red in his eyes leeched away, and all that remained was a scared seventeen-year-old boy in front of me, face wet as he shook.

  “I’m,” he croaked out. “I don’t— Oh god, oh—”

  Kelly moved first. He pushed past Carter and pressed himself against Joe, rubbing his nose near Joe’s ear and into his hair. Joe’s fists were still clenched at his sides as Kelly wrapped his arms around him. He was stiff and unyielding, eyes wide and on me.

  Carter came then too. He took both his brothers in his arms, whispering quietly to them words I couldn’t make out.

  Joe never looked away from me.

  They slept that night on the floor, the floral-print comforter and pillows pulled from the bed and made into a little nest. Joe was in the middle, a brother on either side. Kelly’s head rested on his chest. Carter’s leg was thrown over the both of them.

  They slept first, exhausted from the assault on their minds.

  I sat on the bed above, watching over them.

  It was late into the night when Joe said, “Why is this happening to me?”

  I sighed. “It had to be you. It was—” I shook my head. “You’re the Alpha. It was always going to be you.”

  His eyes glittered in the dark. “He came for me. When I was little. To get at my dad.”

  “I know.”

  “You weren’t there.”

  “No.”

  “You’re here now.”

  “I am.”

  “You could have said no. And I wouldn’t have been able to force you. Not like them.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Dad wouldn’t have done that. He wouldn’t have—”

  “You aren’t your father,” I said, voice rougher than I expected.

  “I know.”

  “You are your own person.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yes.”

  “You could have said no. But you didn’t.”

  “You need to keep them safe,” I told him quietly. “This is your pack. You are their Alpha. Without them, there is no you.”

  “And what did you become? When there was no us?”

  I closed my eyes.

  He didn’t speak for a long time after that. The night stretched on around us. I
thought he was asleep when he said, “I want to go home.”

  He turned his head, face against Carter’s throat.

  I watched them until the sun rose.

  HE DREAMED, sometimes, dreamed these furious nightmares that caused him to wake up screaming for his dad, his mom, for Ox and Ox and Ox. Kelly would take his face in his hands. Carter would look helplessly at me.

  I didn’t do much of anything. We all had monsters in our dreams. Some of us had just lived with them longer.

  THE GLACIER wolves pointed us north. Their pack was small, living in a couple of cabins in the middle of the forest. The Alpha was an asshole, posturing and threatening until Joe said, “My father was Thomas Bennett. He’s gone now, and I won’t stop until those who took him from me are nothing but blood and bone.”

  Things were calmer after that.

  Omegas had come to their territory. The Alpha pointed at a pile of dirt with a wooden cross surrounded by flowers. One of her Betas, she said. The Omegas swarmed like hornets, violet eyes and slobbering maws. They’d died, most of them. The ones who had escaped had done so barely. But not before they’d taken one of her own.

  Richard hadn’t been among them.

  But there were whispers farther into Canada.

  “I knew Thomas,” the Alpha said to me before we left. Her mate fawned over the boys, plying them with bowls of soup and thick slices of bread. “He was a good man.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I knew you too. Not that we’ve ever met.”

  I didn’t look at her.

  “He knew,” she said. “What you’d gone through. What price you paid. He thought you’d come back to him one day. That you needed time and space and—”

  “I’ll wait outside,” I said abruptly. Carter looked at me, cheeks bulging, broth dripping down his chin, but I waved him away.

  The air was cool and the stars were bright.

  Fuck you, I thought as I stared up at the expanse. Fuck you.

  WE DIDN’T find Richard Collins in Calgary.

  We found feral wolves.

  They came at us, lost to their madness.

  I pitied them.

  At least until they outnumbered us and went for Joe.

  He cried out as they cut into his skin, his brothers screaming his name.

  The raven spread its wings.

  I was exhausted by the time it was over, covered in Omega blood, bodies littering the ground around me.

  Joe was propped up between Carter and Kelly, head bowed as his skin slowly knit back together. His breath rattled heavily in his chest. He said, “You saved me. You saved us.”

  I looked away.

  As he slept, I picked up the burner phone I carried. I highlighted Mark’s name and thought how easy it would be. I could press a button and his voice would be in my ear. I would say I was sorry, that I never should have let it go as far as it did. That I understood the choice he’d made so long ago.

  I texted Ox instead.

  Joe’s fine. Ran into some trouble. He’s sleeping it off. He didn’t want you to worry.

  That night I dreamed of a brown wolf with its nose pressed against my chin.

  A PHONE rang while we were in Alaska.

  We stared down at it, unsure of what do to. It’d been four months since we left Green Creek behind, and we were no closer to Richard than we’d been before.

  Joe swallowed thickly as he picked up the burner phone off the desk of yet another nameless motel in the middle of nowhere.

  I thought he was going to ignore it.

  Instead he connected the call.

  We all heard it. Every word.

  “You fucking asshole,” Ox said, and I wanted nothing more than to see his face. “You don’t get to do that to me! You hear me? You don’t. Do you even fucking care about us? Do you? If you do, if even a part of you cares about me—about us—then you need to ask yourself if this is worth it. If what you’re doing is worth it. Your family needs you. I fucking need you.”

  None of us spoke.

  “You asshole. You bastard.”

  Joe put the phone on the edge of the bed and sank to his knees. He put his chin on the bed, staring at the phone as Ox breathed.

  Kelly eventually sat next to him.

  Carter did too, all of them staring at the phone, listening to the sounds of home.

  WE DROVE along a dusty back road, flat green fields stretching out all around us. Kelly was behind the wheel. Carter was in the seat next to him, window rolled down, feet propped up on the dash. Joe was in the back with me, hand hanging out of the SUV, wind blowing between his fingers. Music played low on the radio.

  No one had spoken in hours.

  We didn’t know where we were going.

  It didn’t matter.

  I thought of running my fingers over a shaved head, thumbs tracing eyebrows and the shell of an ear. The low rumble of a predatory growl building in a strong chest. The way a tiny stone statue felt in my hand for the first time, the heft of it surprising.

  Carter made a low noise and reached to turn up the radio. He grinned at his brother. Kelly rolled his eyes, but he had a quiet smile on his face.

  The road stretched on.

  Carter started singing first. He was off-key and brash, loud when he didn’t need to be, getting more words wrong than right.

  He was alone for the first stanza.

  Kelly joined in at the refrain. His voice was sweet and warm, stronger than I would have expected. The song was older than they were. It had to come from their mother. I remembered being young, watching her flip through her record collection. She’d smiled at me peeking around the corner in the pack house. She’d beckoned me over, and when I stood by her side, she touched my shoulder briefly and said, “I love music. Sometimes it can say the things you can’t find the words for.”

  I looked over at Joe.

  He was staring at his brothers in awe, looking more alive than I’d seen him in weeks.

  Carter glanced back at him. He grinned. “You know the words. Come on. You got this.”

  I thought Joe would refuse. I thought he’d go back to staring out the window.

  Instead he sang with his brothers.

  It was quiet at first, a little wobbly. But as the song went on, he got louder and louder. They all did until they were shouting at each other, sounding happier than they’d been since the monster from their childhood had reared his head and taken their father from them.

  They sang.

  They laughed.

  They howled.

  They looked at me.

  I thought of a boy with eyes of ice telling me that he loved me, that he didn’t want to leave again but he had to, he had to, his Alpha was demanding it, and he would come back for me, Gordo, you have to believe I’ll come back for you. You are my mate, I love you, I love you, I love you.

  I couldn’t do this.

  And then Joe put his hand on mine.

  He squeezed, just once.

  “Come on, Gordo,” he said. “You know the words. You got this.”

  I sighed.

  I sang.

  We were all hungry like the woooooolf.

  We drove on and on and on.

  And in the furthest recesses of my mind, I heard it again. For the first time.

  It whispered pack and pack and pack.

  I KNEW it was coming. Every text, every phone call got harder to ignore. It was a pull toward home, a weight on our shoulders. A reminder of all that we’d left behind. I saw how much it hurt Carter and Kelly when they heard their mother had finally shifted back. How much it pulled at Joe when Ox asked questions he couldn’t answer.

  Mark never said anything.

  But then I never said anything to him either.

  It was better this way.

  Which was why I didn’t argue too much when Joe first said, “We have to ditch the phones.”

  His brothers put up a fight. It was admirable, going against their Alpha. They begged me to tell him no, to tell J
oe he was wrong. That there was a better way to go about it. But I couldn’t, because I was dreaming of wolves now, of pack. They didn’t know what I did. Hadn’t seen the way the hunters had come to Green Creek without warning, come to the house at the end of the lane to deal in death. We had been unaware. Unprepared. I had seen Richard Collins fall to his knees, the blood of his loved ones staining the ground around him. His head had tilted back and he had screamed his horror. And when the new Alpha had put his hand on his shoulder, Richard had lashed out. “You did nothing,” he snarled. “You did nothing to stop this. This is your fault. This is on you.”

  So when Joe turned to me, looking for validation, I told him he was being stupid. That Ox wouldn’t understand, and did he really want to do that to him?

  But that was all.

  “It’s the only way,” he said.

  “Are you sure?”

  Joe sighed. “Yes.”

  “Your Alpha has spoken,” I told Carter and Kelly.

  I took their phones.

  They slept badly that night.

  The moon was just a sliver when I opened the motel door and stepped out into the night.

  A dumpster sat at the edge of the parking lot.

  Joe’s phone went in first. Then Carter’s. Kelly’s.

  I held mine tightly.

  The screen was bright in the dark.

  I highlighted a name.

  Mark

  I typed out a text.

  I’m sorry.

  My thumb hovered over the Send button.

  Like the earth. Like dirt and leaves and rain—

  I didn’t send the message.

  I threw the phone in the dumpster and didn’t look back.

  spark plug electrode/little sandwiches

  I WAS eleven when Marty caught us sneaking into the garage.

  I didn’t know why I was so drawn to it. It wasn’t anything special. The garage was an old building covered in a layer of grime that looked as if it’d never be washed away. Three large doors led to bays with rusty mechanical lifts inside. The men who worked there were rough, dip tucked firmly in their cheeks, tattoos covering their arms and necks.