That I will.
Chapter 4
Kieran
My mind wanders as I methodically pack my bags, the supplies I need coming to hand easily: several changes of outfit since I’ll be shifting quite a bit, a few credit cards, a small cell phone, and of course, the contact information for every pack with madness. My father has already sent a trio of warriors to Pack Amethyst—that was something he did almost as soon as he gave up on hunting down and killing Pax—but the rest are going to be up to me.
And Aurora.
It hurts to think of her. Like a chill to the system, almost as if a ghost is passing through me. Seeing her today, realizing up close how much she’s changed, how many years have passed, I felt an unfamiliar hollowness empty me out.
My wolf nearly raged out of me at the sight of her. It was all I could do to sit there and not react, and Iknewshe’d be coming. I basically had to empty my mind out completely and focus all my energy on not reacting just to survive the damned meeting.
Zipping up the pack, I stare around at my spartan room. I’ve tried to make it feel like a home over the years, but everything just feels… wrong. So I recently gave away all my decor: the vintage pinup posters, old shifter relics, hunting trophies andframed canvas abstract art prints. Now, the white walls are mocking me.
They remind me of how not-sparse Aurora’s bedroom was growing up. The one and only time I saw it was during a group project we had in middle school. There were four of us: me, a girl named Sarah, and Benny, the class clown. We all took turns hosting, up until it was Aurora’s turn.
I’d jumped in to offer my place again, but she cut me off before I could. “We’ll just go to Gran’s,” she said, shrugging. “That’s where I spend most of my time, anyway, since the orphanage sucks.”
There was nothing I could say to that—she was right. And when we got to her bedroom at Carrie’s house, all I could do was marvel at how muchlifethere was inside.
Rocks she had collected from the riverbanks and polished smooth. Woven tapestries picked up from the artist down the road, all of them depicting wolves in various states of hunting and fighting. Knick knacks, odds and ends, pieces of artwork she’d made, ceramics and stuffed animals and Halloween decorations. All of it different, none of it matching, but somehow it just fit.
I’ve never been able to do that like she could.
Picking up my light pack, which is designed to stay with me when I shift into my wolf, I strap it diagonally across my body and head toward my father’s house next door.
The whole time, I think of her and that scent that haunts me: lilac and honey, sweet and feminine at the same time.
I feel the pain in my chest before I see her, the sharpness of it like a shock to my system. It’s been six months, and the reminder of what I did, the choice I made, sends me reeling all over again. But I grit my teeth and bear it, reminding myself why I did it—why it had to be done. Because I know in the end I’d do it all over again without hesitation.
It isn’t until I round the corner of the secondhand store that I see her. She’s standing in front of a rack of used T-shirts, her hands hovering over the hangers, staring up into the distance with a frown. I’m sure she feels it too: that knife to the chest, carving things out like a Jack-O-Lantern getting cut up in time for Halloween.
All I want to do is to go to her, explain myself, tell her everything. But nothing I can say will really work. I can’t justify my choices, and the truth is, I’ll never choose her. Because I don’t want her to be my mate.
This is how it has to be, I remind myself, turning around and walking away. This is for the best. If it hurts me, well, that’s better than the alternative.
Better than being tied to Aurora Blackburn.
That was the first time that I nearly ran into her after that fateful day, but it wasn’t the last. There were others before yesterday in the outskirts.
At my cousin’s birthday party, knowing she was just a few houses down.
Hearing her laugh from half a mile away and shifting into my wolf, forcing him to run away, his howl of anguish echoing for miles.
Each time, I had to talk myself out of approaching her. Now I don’t even have to do that much. The truth is, when I saw her today, despite all the pain, I was glad that I rejected our bond.
Because she still hasn’t shifted. She’s still an outcast, barely a member of the pack, incapable of being my mate. So nothing has changed.
I walk into my father’s house without knocking, using the side door that comes out onto the driveway. It’s a modest home, at least for an alpha—my father has never really cared much for what he views as “keeping up with the Joneses.”
Instead, he owns as much acreage as possible, some of it here on pack lands, most of it elsewhere. His most favored warriors go with him twice a year to hunt on that land in wolf form. He’s never invited me.
I’m not sure I would go if he did.
“Good. You’re here.” He’s standing at his kitchen island as I walk inside, and doesn’t look up from what he’s doing to greet me. “Grab me that blade over there, I need to get this joint taken apart.”
There’s a rack of venison on his butcher block kitchen island. He’s half frozen it and is sawing through the ribs with an electric knife. Grabbing the serrated blade he’s motioning to, I lean back against the fridge and watch him quietly.
