“Skye, what is this place?” I could hear the worry and confusion in his voice as I kept walking away.
I stopped a few feet from where the crumbling front steps would have been and simply looked.
The sky beyond the horizon was hazy with an impending sand storm. Dry lightning cracked through the sky like an ominous warning as I glanced around.
My mind could reform where walls and doors had been.
Walls that had peeling paint and reeked of the smells that seeped into the weathered wood over the years. The cracked glass of windows that never opened right. The front door with the busted lock.
I moved closer, tracing the jagged edge where the fireline had charred the foundation. Decayed pieces turned to gritty powder in my fingers.
I could see through the skeletal remains, into the backyard I had played in full of rocks and rusty nails. I would line them up like little girls did stuffed animals, arranging them in a way only my mind understood.
Rocks and rusty nails. Those were my childhood toys.
My fingers snagged on a loose board as I rubbed them across the foundation. It came free with a single tug, a splinter digging into my palm.
The flash of pain was grounding, steadying.
I dropped the board and it landed on something metal. I knelt and unearthed a crowbar from the rubble.
I tested the weight of it in my hand for a second before letting it swing downward with a satisfying crack that snapped a few of the floorboards like toothpicks.
My other hand closed over the end and I swung again like it was a baseball bat. I hit a corner of the house and debris went flying.
I swung again and the entire structure creaked as the post I’d hit dented. I hit a new spot, watching in fascination as a cloud of dust swelled up and was carried away.
Again and again. I swung harder and harder, destroying parts of the very house that had nearly destroyed me.
I pictured Maisie’s sweet face as I slammed the edge of the crowbar down onto a discarded pane of glass. Shattered fragments sprayed out, cutting my arms.
I pictured Mom’s face, pale and bruised as she crawled to the shower while I destroyed another post.
I lost count of the memories that purged themselves from the darkest parts of my mind. I swung until my arms ached from the force of it. I kept going until the crowbar fell from my numb fingers.
Remy was behind me before the first sob tore from my lips. He turned me away from the house, whispering something that couldn’t penetrate the incessant buzzing in my ears.
My friends stood in the distance, waiting and watching. Larkin and Tate were crying. Katy and Ryder looked just as heartbroken. Rhodes and Dante were doing their best to comfort them while not giving into their own emotions. Emotions they felt for me. Because they were willing to share the pain I felt to lighten my load.
I sagged against Remy, burying my face against his chest as I cried for the girl I used to be and she had endured.
After a second, he lifted me up, swinging me easily into his arms as he carried me away from my past.
46
Skye
The bump of the wheels touching down woke me up. My eyes blinked open sleepily and I found that I wasn’t in the seat I had started off in, but now in Remy’s lap with his arms serving as my seatbelt. Truthfully, his arms had less give than the federally approved belts did.
“Hey.” His warm voice rumbled out of him, creating a sweet vibration that echoed into me.
I snuggled deeper into his chest, my hands tucked under my chin.
“What time is it?” I murmured back. It was dark outside the windows and the cabin lights were still turned down low. We hadn’t left Long Mesa for hours after my little break down at the omega house.
Mom had finished separating the pack. Remy used his Alpha Command to compel them all to change. Lulu’s magic swept over them, the act silent and invisible. I hadn’t even realized she had used her magic until her legs gave out and she went down.
Dimitri had been waiting to catch her, and I heard him start cursing as a small dribble of blood seeped from her nose. She tried telling him, and all of us, that she was okay, but it was obvious the more magic she used, the more it wore on her body.
The now shifterless wolves ran out of town with one snarl from Remy. Quite a few people opted to stay in Long Mesa or go to family in nearby towns whose packs had joined Blackwater. Bria and a few others returned with us. Remy left half the men we’d brought to stay in Long Mesa just in case, and the next plane of people from Europe were being diverted to shore up the south west portion of our growing pack.
But now that Long Mesa had fallen, Blackwater controlled the western coast from California to the Arctic and as far inland as Texas. Norwood had more people still, but our numbers were steadily climbing.
I felt kind of shitty for taking a backseat for the rest of the trip. My mind was still trying to process everything that had happened.
Cassian, Allan, Marc, and Linden were all now officially a brutally distant memory. In a lot of ways, I was freer than I had ever been. But the threat of Norwood wasn’t going away. It was growing closer.
“It’s a little after midnight,” Remy told me, nuzzling the crown of my head. “How’d you sleep?”
“Good,” I admitted, still completely limp against him. For all his hard muscles, he made an excellent pillow. “Did you sleep?”
“A little,” he said, but the shadowing around his jaw and the tired look in his eyes made me think that little was basically nonexistent.
“Sorry for kind of shutting down back there,” I said, easing one hand from where I had it bent awkwardly between us. I flattened it on the hard plane of his chest. “I didn’t think it would hit me that hard.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” he replied, his brow furrowing. “That was where you lived?”
I nodded slowly, feeling flayed open and vulnerable.
Anger flashed in his eyes before it was smothered by love and concern. “I’m sorry, baby.” His finger traced the slope of my nose with heartbreaking gentleness.
“You scared us,” he admitted after a second. “Your mom was worried it was too much.”
“Where is she?” I asked, lifting my head to look around. Remy had tucked us into the back corner of the airplane, away from everyone. From this angle, I couldn’t see over the seats to where Mom was.
“She’s here.”
I glanced across the aisle, my eyes focusing and then widening when I saw Nikolai sitting there with Mom curled against his side. His arm was wrapped around her, and she looked more peaceful than I’d seen in years as she slept soundly. Even the jolt of the plane touching down hadn’t woken her up.
I blinked slowly, almost expecting them to vanish like a mirage.
“Is she okay?” I finally asked.
Nikolai glanced down at her, his expression infinitely gentle in a way I had never seen. “She will be. I think the day was as exacting on her as it was you. I’m thankful for you both to be rid of that place.”
Nikolai glared briefly at Remy, who snorted.
“Your dad thought we should just burn the whole town to the ground,” Remy explained.
“It made the most sense,” he insisted.
I smiled. “The place wasn’t the problem. The people were. And now those people are gone.”