I said, “Don’t do this. Take me. Leave them alone. I’ll go with you.”
His smile faded. “So quick to sacrifice yourself?”
“Just take me.” Another step forward. “I’ll go quietly. Wherever you want.”
“You’ll kill me, you’ll go with me, which is it? You’re confusing the situation, Ox. How fickle the will of men.”
I struggled to take a breath.
“Thirty seconds, Oxnard. And I have no use for a human aside from getting me what I want. You just won’t do.”
And another step and there she was. I could see her. In the living room. There were other men with her. Omegas, all of them. Their eyes were violet-bright, and my mother… oh god, my mother was on her knees, facing me. Gag in her mouth. Tears on her cheeks. She saw me and her eyes widened and she leaned toward me, and one of the Omegas grabbed her hair, snapping her neck back and—
“Kill you,” I said hoarsely. “All of you. Every one of you. I swear it. I swear on all I have.”
They laughed.
Osmond’s Betas were kneeling on either side of her, blood spilling from wounds that hadn’t closed. Wouldn’t close.
“Fifteen seconds,” Richard said.
I said, “I don’t have my phone I don’t have it I don’t have it I swear I don’t,” and I couldn’t breathe because this was MOM and JOE and THOMAS and he was making me choose, he was making me decide between them.
He said, “Kill the Betas,” and before I could even take another step, two Omegas stepped forward and grabbed the heads of the kneeling wolves. A quick snap of the wrists and there was a crack and pop of bone and tissue and they fell to the floor, legs jerking and hands shifting to claws. Their heads had been twisted so far around that the skin had torn and blood spilled. There would be no coming back from that. No healing. The Omegas stood above them and waited for them to die. It didn’t take long.
“I’m serious, Ox,” Richard said quietly. “There are things I need. Things that must be done before I can leave here. I will do anything to take what’s mine, what’s owed to me. Can’t you see that? Ox, she’s scared. This is your mother. You’re not mated to Joe. Not yet. You can find another. There will be a nice boy or girl for you down the road, but you can never have another mother, Ox. She’s your only one. Please don’t make me hurt her. I would feel so bad about that. I would. I really would.”
And I knew that. I did. I did. She was my one and only. The only one I’d ever have.
“I’ll go back and get them,” I said. “I promise. I’ll get them and bring them back.”
Richard sighed. “Ox. Ox. Ox. That’s not how this goes.” He sounded so disappointed. He walked toward my mother.
I looked at her, and I was seven again. Or six. Or five and I was looking at my mommy, asking her what I should do, begging for her to tell me just what the fuck I should do because it was all violet and blue and all I could see was red.
And my mother looked back at me. With those dark eyes. She was no longer crying. Her face was wet, as were her eyes, but tears no longer fell. There was fire and steel buried in a cold resolve and she just looked at me and I knew. I knew what she was doing.
She was being brave and stupid and I hated her.
I hated her for it.
Because she was making the choice for me.
She was saying good-bye.
I said, “No. No, no, no.” And took a step toward her.
The Omegas snarled.
Richard was a few steps away.
And her eyes flickered behind me to the door I’d come in. The door she was telling me to leave through when she moved.
“Mom.”
She nodded.
Richard said, “This is touching. Last chance, Ox.”
I croaked, “Mom.”
She smiled around the gag. A bright and shining smile that was the most awful thing I’d ever seen.
And then she moved.
It was grace. It was beauty. Fluid, like water and smoke. She coiled down and then rose up quicker than I’d ever seen her move before. Her head snapped back, smashing into the Omega behind her. His nose broke as he cried out and I took a stumbling step backward because if I moved quick enough, if I stepped out of the house and out of the magic that choked me, then I could call for my pack and they would save us, save her, and we would never have to be alone again.
Except Richard’s hand curved into black claws.
His raised his arm in the air.
I remembered the night of my sixteenth birthday when we’d danced in the kitchen.
The way she had smiled at me.
The soap bubble on my ear.
How she had laughed.
And as I pushed through the door to sing my family home, the hand of the beast came down across her throat.
The floor was wet, after. Around her.
The sound she made was wet.
Her eyes were wet. Her lips.
And her throat. Her throat.
Her throat.
And she started to fall and I pushed the door open and the magic held and it pulled and I screamed out my song of loss and horror and pushed through it.
When I came out on the other side, there was a hole in my chest where a bond had broken, and I knew. I knew, I knew, I knew.
And I sang then. I crawled on my hands and knees and sang.
I sang a song for my mother, heart shattered and soul-deep.
They knew. My pack. As soon as my song hit their ears, they knew.
Their answering howls were rage and fury and despair.
And I crawled toward them, calling back, begging for them to take away this pain. Begging for this to be a dream. A nightmare. But I had read that there was no actual pain in dreams. I remembered that through the haze of magic and darkness. I remembered that. And this couldn’t be a dream, then, because all I could feel was pain. It rolled over my whole body until I was gagging with it.
Joe reached me first as a wolf, shreds of clothes he hadn’t bothered to discard hanging off him. He pressed up against me and shuddered along with me, whining deeply as he rubbed his nose over me. He shifted and growled, “Ox, Ox. Please. Please just look at me. Please. Where is it? Why do you smell like blood? Did he hurt you? Please don’t be hurt. Please tell me what’s wrong. You can’t be hurt. You just can’t. You can’t ever be hurt.” And his hands ran over me, trying to find any injury.
Wolves flew by us, toward the house.
The sun was setting behind the mountains.
Joe took my face in his hands and kissed my forehead, my cheeks, my chin.
He said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Like it was his fault. Like he had done this.
And for a moment, an awesomely terrible moment, I thought he had. I thought all of them had. The Bennetts. Because if they’d never come back, if I’d never met them, never heard them speak or seen their secrets unfold before me, my mom would still be with me. We’d be sadder. We’d be quieter. We’d be lonelier.
But we would be.
And the moment passed.
It passed because I had been given a choice. Between her and them.
And I’d chosen.
The air was warm and birds were singing and Joe’s hands were smooth, but I felt none of it. I heard none of it.
There were no tears on my face.
I didn’t cry because my father had told me men didn’t cry.