Page 41

ROWAN

Crux

Come home.

Did Skye give you this number?

Crux

Come.

I’m still at work.

Crux

Do it.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, worry starting to percolate in my blood.

Is it an emergency? Is Skye ok?

Crux

Just come home after your shift.

Home.

Did he mean to tell me it was my home or was he just not thinking so deeply? Was it an invitation? A welcome?

Coming back to the Heller house after work felt, well, not really strange exactly. Unfamiliar, maybe. I walked through the front door and to my complete surprise, the Heller pack were sitting at the table, as if waiting for me.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Have I screwed up somehow? What is this?”

“An intervention,” Crux quipped with a smirk. He received a nudge from Halo.

“Tell us about Indigo,” she said. “We want to know what she was like.”

“Oh.”

“Why don’t we move this conversation to the den, where it’s more comfortable?” Halo suggested as she rose gracefully from her seat.

“We made snacks,” Skye said, pride lighting up her face. She abandoned us and picked up the tray from the dining table. The four of them headed for the living room. I followed.

The den had plenty of sitting room, with two full three-seater couches that were so stuffed a person sank into them.

Two matching love seats flanked the couches, and several armchairs stood vigil in this furniture monument.

It was all in service of the hearth, and of the big screen television.

The coffee table was roomy enough for plenty of snacks and drinks.

Everyone claimed seats without a second thought, probably their usual spots.

I chanced a seat in one of the armchairs.

I sat forward, elbows on my thighs and squeezing my hands as I gazed at this unified pack.

“Can I ask a question, first?” I prodded gently.

“Sure,” Skye said.

I looked at them all in turn, briefly studying each of them. “How did you become a pack? You don’t seem like you’d normally fit together.”

Of course, I expected them all to rally around Skye, a pack congregating around their omega. Instead, Halo and Severen looked at Crux.

“You’re not wrong,” Halo said. “Many packs have an interwoven romantic, or at least sexual subtext. Even if I wasn’t exclusively into women, these two are more like brothers than lovers. Big brother,” she pointed at Severen. “Little brother,” she gestured to Crux.

“The three of us grew up on the same street,” Severen expanded.

“Shitty homelife,” Crux added. “When we were kids, Halo and Sev would hang out with me. Keep me distracted. Have me over for lunch or dinner, help with homework. Shit like that.”

“We promised that if none of us had found packs by the time we were twenty-one, we’d form our own pack together,” Severen said.

“Severen presented as an alpha first,” Halo said. “Then Crux. Naturally we expected I would present as an omega, but instead I was an alpha.”

“Obviously I’d be a shitty pack lead,” Crux said. “Halo was just as qualified to be lead as Sev, but wasn’t interested, and since Severen presented first, it made sense for him to accept the role.”

“Big brother,” Halo said again with a small smile. “We were a pack for about two years.” Her smile turned warm and she reached out, threading her fingers through Skye’s silky hair. “Then I met Skye and everything came together.”

Slowly, I nodded, rubbing my palms together almost as a way to self-soothe, to get myself in order.

“Makes sense. Explains a lot, actually.” I took a deep breath, steeling myself for a trip down memory lane, or maybe an interrogation. I wasn’t sure which one I wanted less. “So. Fair’s fair. What do you want to know?”

“How did you two meet?” Skye asked, dipping a cracker into her helping of spinach dip, then popping it into her mouth.

“A marathon, actually. We were both running in a fundraiser to cure cancer. We met just before the run, and smelled one another of course. We spent the whole run just outracing each other, seeing if the other could keep pace.”

“She was athletic?” Halo asked.

“Yeah. She loved tennis, weirdly. And she was very competitive for an omega. She was on the track team in school, long jump. Every time we got a chance, we’d go down to the beach and play volleyball. We did mountain climbing together, camping…”

“That explains how her heart is so healthy,” Severen said.

“I’ve seen the photos,” Skye said. I sensed her perfume shift a little, as well as her body, like she was withering slightly. “I must pale in comparison,” she said with a hollow, self-deprecating giggle.

“No,” I said, firmly. “I know you’re not Indigo,” I said, sharing with them what I had told Severen earlier.

“I never imagined you were. Not for a second.” I pushed a smile on my face.

“She would have really liked you, though.” I cast a look at all four of them in turn. “She would have liked all of you.”

“What did she smell like?” Halo asked.

A gentle warmth spread through me at the memory of her scent, a scent that was mine and mine alone.

“Clover.” I said softly.

If I closed my eyes I could still picture the imaginary field of red clover that I envisioned laying in for hours and never actually existed. The metaphysical alternate reality of the mind’s eye that comes with a scent match. A feeling of home and belonging and perfection that is just an idea.

“Red clover and honey.”

“Clover and cloves,” Crux mused with his sardonic half-smirk. “She from here?”

“Port Haven? Yeah, born and raised beach girl.”

“Where is she now?” Crux asked.

“Crux, that’s not appro–” Severen began, protecting my vulnerability I suppose.

“Here. Buried, I mean.” I said, cutting off Severen. “In Ashgrove Memorial.”

Crux stood from the couch, pulling his keys from his jeans pocket. “C’mon,” he said, twirling the keys on a finger. “All of you.”

We all looked at one another, sharing a dialogue of shrugs and head tilts.

Skye was the first to get up and follow, then Halo, me, and finally Severen.

Tracker fell in line next to me as we all followed Crux out of the house.

He opened the two passenger side doors to his Jeep, an invitation for us, then rounded the car, falling into the driver’s side.

“Get in,” he told us. Severen took shotgun, and the three of us, plus the dog, got in the back obediently. My stomach flipped as Crux pulled from the driveway like the world needed to make way for him and his Wrangler.

Then we were at mercy of the alpha behind the wheel.