I turn to look at her, confused.
“Dad said he asked you to come home with him, but you didn’t want to.”
We’d been near this very spot. I’d assumed he was about to ditch me, just like all my foster parents always wanted to abandon the girl who never smiled and would get into fights with her foster brothers, especially when I said no to the things they wanted to do to me.
Finding Dad and discovering I had a family and a pack in Nebraska changed everything.
It was bittersweet. When he said he had to go home to deal with pack stuff, I assumed he was leaving me behind, not that he was hinting he wanted me to go with him.
I was relieved, but I was also terrified.
“I had to hunt the guy who was killing my exes,” I say.
“Or you didn’t want to see us,” she says, staring at the creek.
Her tone doesn’t change, but I hear the hurt nonetheless.
“I was scared,” I admit quietly.
She shoots me a rapid glance. “Ofus?”
“I had a foster dad,” I admit. “Things weren’t good for a long time before Robert took me in. I was starting to wonder if maybe I would have been better living on the street than dealing with having to lock my bedroom door at night or getting in fights with foster brothers who liked to grope me when our foster parents weren’t around.”
Her green eyes flicker with wolflike fury when I mention the groping. “But?”
“Robert was the first person who cared. I couldn’t tell him that I could change into a wolf, but he really cared about me.”
“What happened to him?”
My smile is mirthless. “Robbers shot him when he went to get me milk for breakfast at a bodega one night. He was trying to protect the bodega owner's son. He died.”
And I cried. I hadn’t cried in years before then, but I hurt so badly, and I had been so angry, I could have ripped the world in two. Why did I have to find someone kind and nice, and then someone killed him for a handful of dollars?
“Did you get them?” Her jaw hardens.
I sniff. “Yeah. I got them.” I’d shifted into a wolf and tracked the robbers before ripping out their throats. Maybe killing isn’tright, but those two men deserved to die, and I have never regretted it. Not once.
She nods back, satisfied, then turns back to the creek.
She says nothing for the longest time. “You won’t lose us, so you don’t have to be scared about that. Just… come home. We all miss you.”
Before I can respond, she’s on her feet and sprinting to the guest cabin tucked behind the bunkhouse.
I watch her go, smiling slightly.
She’s more like me than I realized. Slow to trust, slower to forgive, and even slower to open up and let people in. I thought I was like that because of years spent moving from foster to foster, of being hurt and not knowing who to trust, so trusting no one. But maybe it’s a Pack Prairie thing.
An hour later, I’m still sitting by the creek when Finan walks over from the house and sets down a tray with a plate piled high with chicken pasta and a bottle of water in front of me. “Here, you missed breakfast. Aren would have killed me if you missed lunch too.”
“I wasn’t hungry.” My stomach lets out a violent rumble that Finan, nice beta that he is, pretends not to hear. “Thanks.”
For not calling me out on my bullshit, and for the food.
Finan sits beside me as I dig into the meal, inhaling half of the delicious Cajun chicken and creamy pasta dish before I turn to him. “Aren wouldn’t have killed you.”
“Maybe notactuallykilled me,” he concedes. “He asked me to watch out for you. I thought you’d come in for breakfast eventually, but it started to look like you were going to camp out all day.”
He’s half right.
