Embers of Winter (Venusverse #4)

Chapter 1

Wren

I’m supposed to be packing. Instead, I found that stupid sweater, and now it is like the world is collapsing on top of me again. The sweater Felix bought me overseas for our second anniversary. Merino wool. Expensive. Comfortable. Meaningless. Like everything Felix and I had.

I throw the sweater across the room with a grunt. If only it were something that could shatter against the wall or break into a thousand pieces. But it is not. I don’t get that satisfaction.

My hair falls into my face, irritating me even more, so I pull it back into a messy, loose bun, just in time for Dex to appear in the doorway, one brow cocked and her brown eyes darting toward the sweater on the floor.

“Are you alright?” she asks with a worried frown. She’s been watching me like a hawk ever since…well, since the breakup. Since I came home in the middle of the night two days afterward, eyes red and cheeks still wet with tears, apologizing for relapsing. For disappointing her.

Dex has kept an eye on me like a good friend would, but from the moment I got the call about my mother and told her I’m leaving for Silverpine to deal with the house, she’s become ten times more attentive, basically living up my ass.

“Mhmm,” I mutter, grabbing some more clothes to shove in my travel bag. It shouldn’t take long. Two, three days max. I’ll be in and out.

It’ll be fine.

Dex leans against the door. “Want me to burn it?”

I snort. “Sell it or something.”

“I wish I could go through the apartment for you and pick out all the traces of him to discard them,” she says, her voice a mix of anger and sadness. “I’m sorry. I know how much this sucks, believe me.”

With a sigh, I stop packing and look at her. Yeah, I wish that were possible, too.

After over three years of dating, there are bound to be painful little reminders of him scattered across my place, and I’ll definitely keep finding them for a long time. He basically lived here. He even had a fucking key…

Now, I’ll have to relive those memories again and again, while he’s out there enjoying his life and doing who knows what with another alpha.

Stop thinking like that. He’s not your omega. Not anymore.

Never was.

“Wouldn’t mind if you bought me a new bed while I’m gone,” I add with a bitter chuckle, glancing at it briefly. I’ve slept on the living room couch for the past two months, unable to put my head down here ever since…

My thoughts evaporate as white-hot rage floods me again. Memories flash through my mind as quick, feverish snapshots. A muffled moan in a voice I don’t recognize, filtering out into the hallway. A long stretch of skin, damp with sweat and exertion…

I shake my head, desperate to erase them. I still can’t believe he fucking did that to me. In my damn bed! At my place!

Clenching my jaw until my teeth hurt, I look away only to see Dex coming up to me. She puts her hand on my shoulder and presses her lips together in that well-meaning way that tells me I won’t like what she’s about to say.

“I really don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go there right now, Wren.”

I pull away and shake my head, frustration building up inside me.

If not now, when? I’m already up to my neck in phone calls from the estate agent.

I can hardly sleep on that damned couch for thoughts of the house, of her things, just sitting there, waiting for me.

I don’t need any distractions, and that’s what this is: a giant, looming distraction, a cloud hanging over me when I need to be focusing on other things.

Like now. Like when I should get myself together and try to stay clean. When all I want to do is give up and use again until none of this matters.

“I don’t think it would be the worst thing for you to wai—” Dex continues, but I cut her off.

“I have to.”

“No, you don’t.”

Words stick in my throat as I try to respond, so I just huff in frustration and shake my head, stepping away from her to pack a few more warm socks.

I haven’t been up there in the mountains in so long, but I still remember how harsh the winters are. Hopefully, the weather isn’t too bad. My car should be fine, and these clothes should be enough.

Her uneasy sigh pulls my attention. It doesn’t suit her to worry like this. But of course, it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t make the lives of everyone around me worse.

“At least push it back. Let me check with my work to see if there’s any time I can take off in the coming weeks, then we go there together and—”

“I’m fine. I’m going,” I say sharply, while I still can.

Dex’s brows furrow and the corners of her mouth pull downward as she searches my gaze.

She must not like what she sees, because she sighs and her shoulders slump a little.

She pushes her short, freshly-dyed blue hair out of her face before making a grimace of resignation.

I’m going, and she can’t change my mind.

I know I’m acting like an asshole, so once my bag’s packed, I step toward her. “I need to do this. It won’t be more than a few days. Besides, going there will be good for me, don’t you think?” I smirk at her. “What is there to get high on? Snow? Pinecones?”

She slaps me over the shoulder. “You’re an idiot.” She might be smiling, but there’s still worry in her eyes.

It’s clear to me what she must be thinking, so I force out more reassurance, even though it drains me.

It’s nobody’s fault but mine for being the kind of person who has to assure people around them like this.

A failure kind of person. “I swear I’ll come right back, no matter what happens there.

No matter how—” How shit I feel. No matter what revolting feelings and memories that place will bring out. “No matter what. I promise.”

Dex locks me in a tight, warm hug.

“I’m sorry I can’t be there with you,” she says, but her voice is drowned out by the smell of her perfume. It faintly reminds me of Felix’s scent. A mix of soft wisteria and caramel. That scent used to be one of comfort and safety.

“Then maybe you should’ve taken care of me like a proper alpha!”

I fight against the suffocating, excruciating hurt by screwing my eyes shut and slowly exhaling through my nose.

Dex isn’t even aware that the stupid fragrance she sprayed on herself this morning without a care in the world would throw me back into that memory. Of him standing there, shouting at me, the room filled with Felix’s and that bastard’s pheromones.

She can’t understand, as a beta, so I try not to pull away too quickly when the intense disgust rises in my throat. Instead, I put on a smile that feels like it weighs a thousand pounds, like I’ll collapse under the weight of it. But it’s a smile, and it makes her feel better, at least I hope.

“It’ll take about half a day to drive there, and I shouldn’t stay for more than two days. I don’t know how the signal is gonna be. Probably crap. Always was. I’ll message you if anything changes.”

Nodding, Dex squeezes my arms briefly, like she’s convincing herself to let me go and fend for myself, before moving to the side.

“Bring me a souvenir, would you? A Silverpine magnet or something.”

I smirk back at her from the doorway, accompanied by a loud snortle. “Yeah. Right.”

There’s a deep, cold pit in my stomach. I don’t want to go. I want to stay here, in this secure and familiar space, lying on the couch, feeling sad for myself. I want to eat crap and slowly gain mental strength to get on with my life, but there is no running away from this. Not anymore.

I knew it would catch up with me eventually. That one day, I was going to be forced to go back to that place and face it.

On the way to the car, I put my hood up and sink into the comfort of my oversized clothes that partially hide me from the world. I look down at my hand holding the car key when I stand by the door to open it, my bony fingers trembling already.

There are so many goddamn memories waiting for me…

but I’ve done this before. I went through it, the real thing, and survived.

Just as I got sober before and kept myself clean for almost four years.

I can blame Felix and what he did for the relapse, but at the end of the day, it was me who made the choice to use.

Just like it’s going to be only me who will go through the whole mess of getting my footing and my life back on track again.

The worst part of it—the part so shameful I can only face it in sideways glances—is that I only used him as an excuse.

Some ugly, dark aspect of me was almost happy.

As I stood there, my life falling apart, my lover tearing my heart out of my chest, that howling, starving side of me rejoiced at the justification to throw it all away.

‘No one can blame you for finding comfort in drugs now,’ it said.

Shaking my head, I clench every muscle in my body for a few seconds to stop thinking about that.

It’s been two months already. I…I can do this. I’ve done it many times before.

If I’ve managed not to crash till now, I can manage this. It’s what I have to do to put it all behind me, once and for all.

The drive toward the mountains is surprisingly relaxing. My stomach feels like it’s going to turn upside down, and my hands shake, but only for the first few miles. As the city lights disappear behind me and I get onto the highway, a strange calmness envelops me.

Not that I’m excited or anything. I promised myself never to return to that mountain, and I’ve kept that promise since I ran away at seventeen.

I suppose my mother’s death is reason enough to make an exception.

It’ll be good, I tell myself…to see the house empty, to really accept that she isn’t on this earth anymore.

That way, maybe I can move on. It won’t give me back what I’ve lost or make me not a junkie, but that’s life—fundamentally unfair.

It grants nothing without taking something else in return.