Chapter 27 #2
"Marcus. Jonesy. DeShawn. Tommy." Each name felt like a stone in my mouth, heavy and precious, names I'd carried alone for too long.
"Best men I ever knew. We went through hell together—training, deployment, things I can't talk about.
" My jaw tightened until my teeth ached.
"Then one bad mission. Bad intel. Ambush.
" The words came out clipped, military-brief, because anything more would break me.
"Silas—" Remy's voice was soft, almost a warning, like he wasn't sure I should keep going. His hand twitched toward me, then stopped.
"I was the only one who made it out." My hands had gone white-knuckled on the fishing rod, the plastic creaking under the pressure.
"Three days through hostile territory, carrying their dog tags and wondering why I was still breathing when they weren't." I could still feel the weight of those tags against my chest, four sets of metal that had burned like brands.
I didn't know why I was telling him this.
I'd told Artemis because she'd asked, because her stillness had pulled it out of me.
But Remy—I barely knew him. We'd circled each other for weeks, two Alphas competing for the same Omega, and now here I was spilling my guts on his houseboat like we were old friends.
He didn't say anything. Just reached into the cooler, pulled out two beers, and handed me one without a word. I took it. Our fingers brushed, and I caught his scent again—raw now, grief-sharp and real. The same way he'd probably smelled at his brother's grave.
We drank without talking, watching the sun sink toward the tree line. The bayou turned gold, then orange, then deep purple. Somewhere in the distance, an owl called.
"Harper leads." I said it like a fact, because it was one. No question, no hesitation. The words felt right in my mouth, a truth I'd known since the storm.
"Yeah." The word came easy from him, true and certain, no performance in it. He set down his beer and turned to face me properly. "He does." He nodded slowly, like he was confirming something to himself, the last light catching the gold in his eyes.
"Good." I took another drink, the beer cold against my palm, condensation dripping down my wrist. "Wouldn't follow someone who didn't know how to lead." I'd followed bad leaders before—men who got people killed through ego or incompetence. Never again. Harper wasn't like that.
"You follow him because you trust him?" Remy asked, fingers drumming against his thigh in that restless way of his, amber eyes curious in the fading light.
"I follow him because he earned it." I set down my beer on the arm of the chair, staring out at the darkening water where the first stars were starting to reflect like scattered diamonds.
"He sees us. All of us. Not just her—us too.
What we need. What we're afraid of." A pause, the words harder to say, scraping against something tender in my chest. "That's rare.
" Men like Harper didn't come along often.
I'd learned to recognize them—and to hold on when I found one.
Remy was quiet for a moment, processing that, his fingers finally still on his thigh.
Then: "We're really doing this, aren't we?
Pack. All four of us." His voice was softer now, stripped of performance, real in a way I was starting to crave from him.
He turned to look at me, and in the dying light his face was open, vulnerable, nothing like the charming mask he wore for everyone else.
I thought about Artemis, about the way she looked at all three of us like we mattered.
About Harper, steady and sure, leading without demanding.
About Remy, hiding his broken pieces behind a smile but letting them show anyway.
I reached over and clapped a hand on his shoulder—brief, solid.
The most physical contact we'd ever had.
"Yeah." My voice came out rough but sure, the word settling into my chest like it belonged there. I squeezed his shoulder once before letting go, feeling the warmth of him through his shirt. "We are."
His line jerked hard, bending the rod nearly double, and he scrambled to reel it in—a catfish, maybe three pounds, fighting hard against the pull.
I grabbed the net without being asked, moving in sync with him like we'd done this a hundred times, scooping the fish out as he brought it alongside the boat.
"Nice one." I held it up, examining the whiskers, the dark speckled skin, water dripping from its tail onto the deck. Solid fish. Good eating. "You cook?"
"Cajun style." He grinned, and for once it reached his eyes, crinkling the corners, transforming his whole face into something bright and warm.
He held up the fish like a trophy, water still dripping from its whiskers.
"You staying for dinner?" The invitation was casual, but I heard the hope underneath—the same hope I'd heard in my own voice when I'd shown up on his dock with a six-pack and no real excuse.
I looked at the fish, then at him, then at the stars just starting to appear above the cypress trees, diamond-bright against the darkening sky. "Yeah." I almost smiled, feeling the unfamiliar pull of it at the corners of my mouth. My face had nearly forgotten how. "I'm staying."
We cleaned the fish together, working side by side in comfortable silence. His scent had settled into warmth and steadiness, mixing with mine in that unconscious way that meant pack. Brotherhood.
By the time we sat down to eat—catfish fried crispy, cold beer, the houseboat rocking gently beneath us—I realized I couldn't remember the last time stillness had felt this easy.
"Remy." I tested his name, feeling how it fit in my mouth, rolling off my tongue like something I wanted to say again. No longer just a label for a rival but something warmer. Something that felt like the beginning of family.
"Yeah?" He looked up from his plate, fork halfway to his mouth, fireflies starting to blink in the darkness around us.
"You're not a disappointment." I kept eating, not looking at him, because this was hard enough to say without watching his reaction.
The catfish was good—crispy skin, tender flesh, spiced just right.
"You're exactly what this pack needs." The pretty one.
The one who made people laugh. The one who saw through everyone else's masks because he wore one himself.
The one who'd lost a brother and kept going anyway, even when the grief threatened to swallow him whole.
The silence stretched, heavy and fragile, and I could feel his eyes on me. When he finally spoke, his voice was thick, roughened by emotion he wasn't bothering to hide.
"Back at you, Silas." He raised his beer, the bottle catching the last of the light, amber glass glowing like honey. His voice was thick, but his smile was real—no performance, no armor, just Remy. "Back at you."
We clinked bottles, the sound small and perfect in the darkness. The bayou hummed around us, alive with night sounds—frogs and insects and the distant splash of something hunting—and for the first time in years, I didn't feel alone.