Chapter 28

28

T he world was completely silent when Remy turned off the engine. The headlights cut off, plunging us into inky darkness. The dirt road we had been driving down dead ended at a cliff. Remy parked us near the edge, and I watched the sky, absolutely transfixed by the wonder in front of me.

The sky was a riot of lime greens and milky whites. The light dipped and swayed across the sky, touching stars before slipping away. Tinges of pink and purple hugged the outer edges, the colors moving in a seamless, sensual dance through the galaxy.

“Oh, my God,” I breathed. I leaned forward in my seat, jaw open as I watched the northern lights play out in front of us.

“Pretty amazing, right?” Remy asked, his tone almost reverent. “You can see them sometimes in Blackwater, but nothing like here. Dante says they’re even better in Alaska, though.”

“How can this possibly get better?” I murmured, awe struck by the beauty in front of me. The colors twisted and writhed to the sounds of a song I couldn’t hear.

“This is one of my favorite spots,” he admitted after a beat of silence. “I come out here when I need to think or process something.”

I leaned back in my seat to look at him, the view of Remy’s face in the shadows of moonlight was just as breathtaking as the riot of colors dancing in the sky. His jaw was set in a hard line, a weariness around his eyes that I had noticed earlier when he was talking to Dante.

“The missing wolves?” I prompted, wanting to ease his burden.

He exhaled through his nose, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Yeah. It started out as lone wolves and drifters going missing a couple weeks ago. Now pack members are starting to turn up missing. All female.”

“You think someone is taking them?” I asked quietly, horrified at the idea. “But why?”

He let out a frustrated growl. “Who the hell knows? Especially now. Everyone knows that women are needed now more than ever.”

“The declining birth rate,” I muttered, knowing all too well the general need of women didn’t actually extend far beyond their uterus and reproductive organs.

“It’s making the packs testy,” he said bitterly. “Some packs are talking about setting up stronger border patrols and not allowing anyone to pass through.”

“This is happening all over?” I asked, frowning. Based on what mom had told me and I overheard earlier from Remy, I had assumed it was just Blackwater.

He nodded. “A lot of northern packs are noticing it, especially the more urban populated ones. Twelve missing shifters across the northern packs might not seem like much, but when they’re all females...”

“And there’s no clue what happened to them?”

He shook his head again before leaning back and dropping it against the headrest. His Adam’s apple worked as he swallowed, the tendons and lines of his throat moving in tandem. “It just doesn’t make sense. But we need to figure out what the hell is going on, fast.”

I reached out across the cab of the truck, finding his hand with mine. “You will.”

He returned a weak smile. “I hope so. I might have to go back home for a little while to help my dad and the pack sort stuff out.”

My stomach clenched uncomfortably at the idea of him being miles and miles away. I cleared my throat. “Who would watch out for us at GPA if you’re gone?”

“Rhodes,” he answered easily. “He’s my beta, and despite the fact that he acts like an idiot sometimes, he’s the most loyal guy I know. He might act stupid, but he’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. He would keep everyone safe.”

“How long would you be gone for?”

His eyes cut to me, his expression unreadable. “A week. Maybe more.”

Inside my chest, my wolf was pitching a fit. She wasn’t happy with this news any more than I was.

“You could come with me,” he suggested softly.

I jerked my gaze to his, expecting to see he was teasing, but Remy was completely serious.

He glanced down at where I still held his hand. “I mean, you could come with me if you want to.”

I closed my eyes on a sigh, shaking my head slowly with a wry chuckle. “Am I really going to be that girl?”

“That girl?” he echoed, confusion lacing his voice.

I looked at him with a grimace. “Yeah. The girl who’s clingy and can’t let her boyfriend out of her sight—”

“Boyfriend?” he cut in. A small smirk started to pull at the corner of his mouth. His dark eyes warmed considerably, the air in the cab of the SUV heating.

I opened my mouth, moving my lips as no sound came out. Why had I used that word? It just sort of came out, but it felt right leaving my lips.

I cleared my throat. “I didn’t mean—”

Remy reached across the darkness and pressed his finger to my lips. “It’s fine. I liked it when you said that.”

I blushed under his scrutiny, squirming on the seat. This moment felt too intense, too intimate. I was entirely too aware of the way my breathing had become ragged and the way I could feel the pulse in the fingertip pressed against my lips.

His fingertip moved from my lips, tracing down the line of my throat. “I don’t like the idea of being away from you, either.”

“Really?” I breathed, my voice barely a whisper.

He tucked a loose piece of hair behind my ear. “Really. I know it’s only been a day, barely, but the idea of you being so far away is like hell. With all this shit going on, you’re the only thing that makes sense right now.”

I leaned my palm against his hand, coming up to cover his wrist with my hand. I couldn’t even circle my fingers around his arm. Every part of him radiated power, even his wrists, thick with muscles and tendons that I felt flexing under my touch.

“Will it always be like this?” I asked softly, still trying to wrap my head around the multitude of emotions coursing through my body. “This constant need to always be near each other?”

He smiled wryly. “According to my parents, yes.”

My eyes rounded. “You told your parents about this? About us?”

He nodded slowly, trying to gauge if that upset me or not. “I had a feeling they might be able to give me some insight into this.”

“Oh,” I replied, kind of dumbstruck.

“You didn’t tell your mom?” He posed the question casually, but there was a note of something else there. Uncertainty, maybe?

“I didn’t,” I answered. I looked away, back to the riot of colors in the sky. “I don’t even know what to say. I mean, I barely understand it. And I know my mom—she’ll worry.”

Remy hesitated. “Because of me?”

My gaze snapped to him. “No!” I said vehemently. “Not because of you at all. Because of me. Because she risked everything to save me a couple weeks ago. In the span of a month, my life has completely changed. I know she’s worried about me. We’ve never been apart for more than a few hours until I came to Granite Peak. She always tried her best to protect me, and I don’t want her to worry.”

I hadn’t realized I started crying until Remy was wiping a stray tear away with the pad of his thumb.

“You said omegas were kept separate from other pack members,” he started slowly. “You had your own house?”

I snorted and pulled away from him. “A house. Yeah, if you could call it that. It was this old building that was basically falling down.”

“You lived there your whole life?” he frowned, turning in his seat to fully face me. “Why didn’t the pack help take care of it?”

“Because the omega house and shifters in it were only worth one thing to the pack,” I muttered bitterly.

Remy waited, staying still and quiet as he let me process my emotions. He wouldn’t push me to reveal more than I was ready to, but I was getting tired of keeping the Long Mesa pack’s dirty secrets.

“The upper pack members would come to the house,” I said, my voice low and wooden. I stared straight ahead. I might be able to share part of my life with Remy, but I couldn’t do it while I looked at him.

I couldn’t see the inevitable looks of pity and disgust.

“I didn’t understand what was going on for the longest time. My mom did a good job of shielding me from everything. I didn’t understand the noises I heard behind closed doors when I was playing in the hallway. Or the smells when the doors opened. I didn’t... I didn’t understand why the omegas were always so afraid when there was a knock on the front door. I didn’t understand why the sheets always had blood on them.”

I heard Remy suck in a sharp breath.

“I came home from school early one day,” I continued, my mind transporting me back to that day when I learned the truth. “I was ten, I think. The heat was so bad, and the air conditioner was broken again, so they let us out at lunch time.”

I dropped my head back onto the headrest, letting my eyes slide closed as I relived one of the worst moments of my life.

“I could hear these... noises as soon as I got to the second floor. The house wasn’t that big, only three bedrooms on the top floor. My mom and I shared the room at the back of the house. I had left my book there and wanted to get it. I figured I could finish my book before I worked on homework.”

Hot tears slipped out from under my lids, rolling slowly down my cheeks. My skin felt like ice, the heat from my tears scalding streams down the slope of my face.

I drew in a shaky breath and clenched my hands into fists on my lap. “I didn’t knock, I just opened the door. It took a minute. I didn’t understand exactly what was going on. My mom was on the bed, on her back. She was crying. And this... man was on top of her. They were both naked. I still didn’t get what was happening until my mom yelled or something. Whatever he was doing was hurting her. I just... reacted. I threw my backpack at him.”

Swallowing, I remembered the absolute fear in my body at that moment. Fear, and rage. “He turned and saw me in the doorway. My mom yelled at me to leave, but he backhanded her and told her to shut up. He got off the bed and grabbed me by the arm. It was so... surreal . I knew my arm hurt, but all I could notice was that this guy was naked and how gross it was.”

Squeezing my eyes shut tighter, I tried to control the sudden shaking of my body. “He threw me into the hallway. Literally picked me up by my arm and threw me across the hall. Then he slammed the door and locked it. I could hear my mom crying, sometimes screaming. I kept banging on the door for what felt like hours. Finally, it went quiet. The door opened and the man came out... and he smiled at me. Fucking smiled . Then he walked by me like nothing happened.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Remy hissed. I didn’t have to look at him to see the waves of fury rolling off of him.

“That’s when I knew,” I finished, letting my eyes open and coming back to the present. My eyes focused on a particularly vibrant lime green ribbon in the sky. “That’s when I knew what being an omega in our pack was. That’s when I knew what my future would be.”

I heard the door open a second before a frigid gust of wind tore through the interior of the car. My already frigid body barely noticed the extra cold. The door slammed shut as fast as it had opened, violently rocking the entire SUV for several seconds.

My eyes tracked Remy as he stalked around the front of the vehicle and came to my door, ripping it open.

I turned to look at him, surprised and a little wary, but I froze when I saw the look of complete devastation on his pale face. I gasped, undoing my seat buckle and turning to swing my legs over the edge of the seat to reach for him.

He beat me to it, reaching for my face with shaking hands. With exquisite gentleness, he framed my face and leaned his forehead into mine. My hands came up, grabbing part of his shirt behind his biceps. His entire body was trembling.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, his voice breaking on the apology. “I am so fucking sorry you went through that.” His thumbs smoothed across the wet skin under my eyes, ghosting along the angles of my cheeks.

After a beat, Remy moved even closer, banding his strong arms around me in a crushing hug. I wound my arms around his neck, parting my knees to pull him closer to my body.

His lips found the soft stretch of skin where my neck sloped into my shoulder. They pressed there for a second, his arms going impossibly tight around me, anchoring me to his body with everything he had.

“I swear,” he whispered fiercely, “you’ll never go back there. And they will pay for what they did to you and your mom and any other person they violated.”

My entire life I had felt pieces of my heart crack and break off. My heart had become a brittle thing with jagged edges. I had seen things that carved holes in my soul and left me emotionally destroyed.

But that moment, I felt something in my heart knit back together, a small stitch that reattached a discarded piece of my soul. Something I thought I lost, now reclaimed.