1. Terra

Ihave no reason to be this upset at Zander's mating ceremony. I'm surprised at myself… and disappointed. I'm trying my best, but despite the joyful atmosphere and beautiful day, inside I feel like I'm a thunderstorm.

I don't really even have a right to feel this way. Zander and I weren't ever anything… official. Childhood friends who always had enough of a thing that we kind of thought might turn into something someday.

I can't help thinking that I could have been in Mia's place. Mia, who is currently holding Zander's hands like they're her lifeline to the world, and looking up into his eyes with a shy vulnerability that's definitely unusual for her. Normally, she's bold as brass, so seeing her be kind of reserved? It's sweet.

Zander, for his part, looks happier than I've ever seen him. He's normally a very taciturn kind of guy, even with the guys he hangs out with, and is the pack's main enforcer. I wouldn't exactly say he's a fountain of emotion.

Normally.

Not today.

Today, he's practically glowing with love. His lips keep curling in a smile, and his eyes are glued on Mia like she's the sun and the moon.

It's easy to say that I'm jealous of them. That I'm angry about the fact that Mia took something away from me.

But… damn it. They are a really cute couple.

They're fated mates, something that's treasured in our culture, something that Zander and I could never be—especially because he's fated to Mia.

And I know that despite everything I'm feeling right now, if I was standing up there, Zander wouldn't be looking at me the way that he's looking at Mia.

It makes the whole thing easier to get through, especially when the alpha tells them they're officially mated in the eyes of the pack, and Zander sweeps Mia up for the most romantic kiss I've ever seen in my entire life.

Yeah, okay, I guess it stings a little.

I applaud with everyone else. I smile. I nod. I toast with champagne as the happy couple sparkles in the late summer light. I do everything required of me to be seen as a happy member of the pack.

It's not until later, when I get back to my own little apartment behind the Oakwood Café, that I let it all fall away. And I fall apart with it.

The tears are easy. They flow like a river from the loss, that should feel like a scab, but currently feels more like a gaping wound.

I'm not mourning the fact that Zander and I should have ended up together.

I'm mourning the fact that it should be Rylan and me.

Rylan.

On a day-to-day basis, I don't let myself think of his name. I can't. Because if I think Rylan's name, then I do…

This.

My mascara is probably shot. My eyes hurt, and the sobs that rip out of my chest feel like they're pulled from the very bottom of my soul.

There is nothing on earth that hurts me as badly as thinking of Rylan James.

I'm so caught up in my indulgent sob-fest that I barely hear my phone ring. However, on the fourth round of hearing it screech at me, I pull it out of my bag.

Ember.

I pick it up after taking one steadying breath. "Hello?"

"Oh, sweetheart." Ember's voice is so kind, and I resist the urge to crumple again. "I thought I'd check in."

"I'm fine," I mumble.

Considering how thick the tears are in my throat, it comes out as "‘mfine," but Ember luckily speaks all of my dialects, ugly cry and all.

"Babe, it's okay to not be fine after that."

"Zander and I never even dated," I sniffle.

Ember, insightful as ever, snorts. "We both know that's not why you're not crying."

There's a reason this woman is my best friend. "Yeah," I sigh. "I know."

"Is it him?"

"Who else would it be?"

We never say his name. Ember knows the rules. She knows that if I say Rylan's name out loud, I'll go into a full-blown coma for weeks.

"No need to be sassy, I'm just asking," Ember laughs. Her voice is deep and resonant, and I always find a little comfort in it.

"Well. Yeah. It's him."

"I'm so sorry, babe. There's nothing to say for stuff like this, you know?"

"Yeah," I whisper hoarsely. "I know."

"Do you want me to come over?"

I look at the clock. "No, I think my mom and I are going to start on the next batch of lotion tonight."

"Oh, the rose water one?"

"Yeah," I nod. My mom and I make organic lotions, tinctures, and other cosmetics for the pack to sell. It's not nearly as important as the Jeep tours, or the cattle that they're starting to run, or even as extensive as Mia's little farm stand, but it's nice to feel like I'm contributing to the pack.

"Will you save me some?"

I laugh, the sound odd as it moves through the constricted mess of my throat and sinuses. "Of course."

"Love you, Terra."

"Love you, too."

I hang up, staring at the phone as I consider whether or not I should call her back and ask her to come over. Ember is my best friend, and she's one of the reasons that I haven't completely lost my shit here in Oakwood.

I love her like a sister. She's a nurse at the hospital, she never knew her father just like I never knew mine, and she very much occupies a similar place in the pack as I do. Meaning, we're both somehow perpetually on the edges, even though I wouldn't say either one of us is not a valued member of the pack.

It's just… we aren't central to it, either.

Now that I'm done crying about Rylan, though…

I sigh.

Might as well go over to my mom's house.

My mom livesin a little cabin, somewhat far away from the central pack housing areas. She's an oddball as well, a wolf that spends more time digging in the dirt and foraging than hunting. We have that in common, I guess.

Both my mom and I are intensely aware of the capricious place we have in the pack. I wasn't born in the Oakwood Pack like so many others. My mom was a lone wolf, which is generally seen as a pretty bad thing among shifters. Some shifters are solitary, but not wolves. Because my mom was a lone wolf for so long, many packs refused to take her in. Oakwood did, with me as a tiny pup still in her arms, but it was the tenth pack she visited.

We're both aware that in order to stay here, we need to show the pack that lone wolves aren't the bogeyman people make them out to be. It's part of why we have this little business, and part of why I cultivate a certain image in the pack. I'm always well-dressed, my makeup is done up, and I'm on several social committees.

All to make sure that my mom and I never feel like our place in the pack is at risk.

"Mom?" I call out, looking for her in the little garden plot that she tends.

"In the shed!" I hear her call back.

I meander over to the shed, where we keep all of our supplies to make the lotions and creams that we've been selling.

The shed is really a greenhouse, one that we cobbled together with a variety of abandoned windows. When the pack arrived in Oakwood, building supplies were both expensive and hard to come by. Neither my mom nor I liked the look of the plastic greenhouses that fade so quickly in the Colorado sun, so we decided to just grab any and all windows that we could find in order to build up our little space.

Having a greenhouse is pretty essential if you want to grow delicate things like herbs in an area that consistently gets a few feet of snow in the winter.

My mom's smile as I open the greenhouse door makes my heart expand, just a little. "Hi, sweetheart."

"Hi, Mom."

"How was the mating ceremony?"

She's elbows deep in mixing what looks like a little tincture; lavender, if the smell is correct. My mom wears long, flowing dresses that have been patched so many times over the years, they start to look like a garden themselves. She's also got on a floppy sun hat today, and it makes her look like a chaotic mushroom.

I love her so much, in all of her eccentricities.

Skirting her, careful not to bump into her while she's mixing, I flop onto the little wooden bench that we keep in the greenhouse. "It was fine."

"Doesn't sound like it was fine."

I squint at her. "Zander and Mia are sweet together. They held hands. They kissed. Everyone cheered. And then it was over."

"And how did you feel about that?"

This is why I didn't initially want to go see my mother today. "I felt fine."

"Terra…"

I look up at my mom. Then, just as quickly, I look away.

"Mom," I say around the thickness in my throat. "Seriously. I'm fine."

There's a shuffling sound, and my mom moves closer to me. She wraps her arms around me and pulls me close.

I'm powerless to resist her. Her patchouli and lavender smell envelops me, and I'm immediately four years old again, crying on the playground because I didn't get picked for soccer.

"It's okay to mourn the moments you should have had with him," she murmurs.

I wish I could say that it was. But the grief I have for Rylan isn't something that feels like it's going away. I've looked it up; there are twelve steps to grieving. You don't do all of them, or sometimes you do, but generally, people have to go through a process before you accept.

It's been years. Literally.

And I can't get to that place of acceptance.

"I don't need to grieve anymore," I say into my mom's shoulder. "I might go for a run if you don't need me, though. Maybe we can make the rose water products another day."

"I can manage on my own," she says softly.

"Okay. Well. I'm… I'll go," I whisper.

The sound is muffled, but she nods anyway. "Grief isn't going to just start and stop when you need it to, my love. It's something that gets brought up bright and shiny some days, and other days mutes into the background."

I gulp. I don't like talking to my mom about him because I don't want her to worry, but that's kind of a moot point now. I'm clearly upset, and she's clearly going to worry.

The tears are just flowing down my face as I press into her shoulder. "It's not ever muted, Mom," I whisper.

She stills. "Tell me more, my darling girl."

I pull back slightly so I'm looking at her face. The little line between her eyes is pinched together, the green in them muted.

I suck in a breath. "I swear I can still feel him sometimes. Like, if I'm out in the woods or doing stuff that we would have done together. I swear that he's still there."

"He's not there, though, my love," she murmurs.

I screw my eyes shut. I know the pain that's going to come. It's familiar to me, but it fucking hurts every single time.

This is the thing. Every time that I think about Rylan, every single moment where I feel like his presence is still whispering at the edges of my consciousness, this awful, hard reality comes up. This is why it doesn't feel like I'm moving on, or like I'm going through those stages of grief.

Every time I think that he's there, I have to face the truth again.

I have to realize that the man that I loved most in the world, the one that I had known would be my mate… none of that is going to happen for me. No matter how much I think that he's there, no matter how often I feel him, it's all in my head. The hard, ugly truth is something else entirely.

Rylan James is dead.