Chapter 9

NINE

The rising sun had just begun to filter through the forest canopy when Liam's car pulled beside the sedan in the cabin's gravel drive.

"Didn't expect to see you up so early," Liam said as he shoved open the car door.

Paris stood from where he sat on the front stoop and zipped his hoodie against the morning chill. "Couldn't sleep." It had been a fitful few hours for him, his mind never fully slowing, his heart more tangled than it had any right to be, his body wising up to the fact there was an unfairly attractive one beside it. By contrast, Mac had slept like a rock. Paris would have worried him dead if not for the steady rumble of snores. "Your brother is still asleep."

"Thank fuck." Liam rested back against the hood, hands shoved into the pockets of his parka. "We were worried about him. No one could remember the last time he'd slept."

"Can you take me to the coast? I haven't seen the water in days."

Liam took his non sequitur in stride, waving a hand toward the sound of crashing waves in the distance. "You can hear it."

Not good enough for Paris, for multiple reasons. He gave Liam the simplest, most persuasive one. "I was born and raised in YB. I looked out my window and saw water every day. I don't know how to be away from it."

"Mac will freak if he wakes and you're gone."

"I left a note." Two of them, in fact. In case he missed the one on the pillow beside his, there was another one under the edge of the kettle, next to the leftover bread. "But I don't think he'll be waking anytime soon. We only went to bed a few hours ago."

Liam cocked a brow.

Paris rolled his eyes and hoped it distracted from the blush heating his cheeks. "I was up painting, and he was working. Once we started competition yawning, it was all downhill from there."

Laughing, Liam pushed off the car. "All right, but let's make it quick."

The cabin was a short ten-minute drive to the water, owing largely to the twists and turns of the forest road. Paris didn't mind; the forest was magical in the light of day. He counted five cabins in addition to his, and an endless variety of trees, though redwoods and cypresses dominated. He also spied a knee-high patch of wildflowers in a sunny gap between the trees that he made a mental note to revisit, the meadow so unlike anything back home.

Or what was left of it. "What's it like back there? In YB?" he asked once they turned onto the coast road.

"More unstable than I've seen it since the Rift."

"You were alive for that?" Liam didn't look much older than thirty, Mac like he'd be in his early forties, but it was impossible to tell with shifters.

"I was in college," Liam said, proving Paris's point. "Mac was already a cop and the reaper for the clan."

So however old they'd been, plus thirty years, longer than Paris had been alive. He suddenly felt very, very young. And very, very in over his head.

"It's a good thing you're out. Any humans should be."

Like his best friends, who had also claimed a spot in his worried heart last night. They were the other reason he'd asked Liam to bring him out to the coast. As his unwitting accomplice found out as soon as they stepped onto the ocean cliffs, the waves pounding below. "I need to borrow your phone," Paris said, his hand out.

"You know the rules."

"Look, you and Mac have this whole network to keep us protected, to watch our backs. My friends only have me, and for years, they were the only ones who had mine. They don't have the means or money to just get out of YB. Not everyone has the privilege to flee a war zone." Paris intended to flex his privilege, to offer Jason and Kai a means out, assuming he could get his hands on his trust fund still. And assuming his friends would take the offered help, unlike every other time he'd offered in the past. But he still had to try, especially with the stakes so high now.

Liam looked back the direction of the cabin, up and down the deserted beach, at the crashing waves below, before finally turning his knowing gaze back to Paris. "That's why we came out here, isn't it? So Mac wouldn't hear you."

"In part, though I really did need to see the water."

"Fuck," Liam said as he slapped the phone into his hand. "He's got his hands full with you."

Paris didn't think too hard on what Liam meant, instead turning on his heel and punching in Kai's number.

"Hello?" his friend answered.

"Kai, it's me, Paris."

"Paris—fuck," he cursed, voice lowered. If Paris had to guess, his friends had fallen asleep cuddled together, as was their way. The snick of a closing door, Kai's voice back to normal volume when he spoke again, confirmed as much. "We've been worried."

"I'm fine. Are you and Jason?—"

"We're good, but Paris, there's something I need to tell you."

By the appropriately somber tone of his words, Paris knew where this was going. He spared Kai the trouble. "My father's dead, I know."

"I'm sorry."

"It's weird." He spoke freely with his friend who knew as much about him and his circumstances, about the abuse his father had regularly doled out, as anyone. "I appreciate it, because I know you mean that condolence for me, not because he's actually gone, but ... I'm not sorry, Kai. I don't know where I go from here, what it means to be the only one of my family left..." The heir, another thread that had kept him awake, a convo he needed to have with Mac and Liam. But it didn't change the basic premise, the underlying relief he felt, the same kind of calm he got from staring out at the wide expanse of the ocean. "I'm not sorry he's gone. I'm not sorry that we're all safer for it."

"Are you?" Kai asked. "Safe? Wherever you are..."

He glanced over his shoulder, catching sight of Liam strategically positioned to watch his back. "I'm safe, and I want you and Jason to be too."

"We'll be fine. I'm keeping an ear out at the club, and I get paid middle of the month. Jason was talking about some job too. We'll get enough money to get out before the seventeenth if we need to."

"I can send you money now."

"Thank you, but we'll manage."

As he'd expected. And he apparently didn't have time to argue either, Liam making a wrap it up gesture. Another car was pulling into the lot where theirs was parked, and them being seen out here probably defeated the point of being in hiding. "Fuck, I need to go. Listen, if you or Jason need me, I'm in Calera. About a mile past the ocean road motel, there's a road that leads up the hill, away from the beach and into the forest. We're the last cabin on the road. If you need backup, if you need anything, you come to me."

"You do too much for us." Kai's voice was as gentle and earnest as he was. He really was the best of them.

"I wish you'd let me do more. Love you both."

"Love you too."

He hung up and returned the phone to Liam. "Thank you. That was important to me. They're important to me. I needed to make that call."

"You're welcome. Now let's go before my brother sends out a search party."

One last, longing stare at the water, one giant inhale of salty ocean air, then Paris turned on his heel and followed Liam back to the car so he could get back to the forest and the soul waiting for him there.