Embracing Sky (Shifters of Greymercy #9)

Chapter 1

SKY

Current Day

I ran.

I ran, blinded by tears, sobbing brokenly into the quietness of the woods. My heart was in tatters, shredded by my own twin’s vicious words, each and every one laced with poison.

Our babies were a terrible mistake.

Our babies never should’ve existed.

I’m glad they’re dead. Glad they’re dead. Glad they’re dead.

DEAD. DEAD. DEAD.

“FUCK!”

I screamed. The sound was rife with anguish, clawing up my throat like the wolf inside of me. He screamed too, thrashing wildly inside my mind. Our soul had just been shattered, our one last bond severed by River’s cruelty.

Or was it kindness? I didn’t even fucking know anymore.

God, he was right. I was such a fuck-up.

Dead. That’s where I belonged. Six feet under, with the babies I never got to meet. Never even got to touch. My head spun, dizzy with the booze in my system, but god, it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough.

I didn’t know how I made it home.

I was just relieved that Jem’s Kia wasn’t in the drive when I got there. Thank god. I couldn’t bear to let the sweet Omega see me like this.

My hands shook almost violently as I tried to stick the house key into the keyhole. I had to use both hands and lean against the doorframe to hold myself steady enough to make it inside.

As the door burst open, I stumbled in on a soft sob, my wet sneakers squeaking and slipping over tile. I looked around the small kitchen of the house Jem had insisted I call “home” and shook my head.

I tried…

I tried for Jem.

I tried for Fletcher and Adam, my bosses at Bixby’s Diner.

I tried so hard, and it wasn’t enough. Wasn’t ever enough. I was too much.

It didn’t matter anymore, though. Nothing mattered. I wasn’t going to ruin anyone else’s lives.

I went down the hall, to the room I’d called my own for the past several months, and grabbed one of my notebooks.

The ones I’d been writing my stories in.

For a moment, I just stared at the black and white composition cover, holding all of my secrets hostage.

I never let anyone read what was written in these pages, but I guess it didn’t matter anymore.

Nothing mattered.

My eyes blurring with tears, I ripped out a clean page towards the back and grabbed a pen off the top of my desk.

My thoughts swam like fish in a bowl, if the fish were dead and upside down and the bowl was a toilet, flushing them down, down, down.

I scribbled a note to Jem. One last goodbye.

I’m sorry I’m such a fuck-up. I won’t be here to burden you anymore. I hope your life can get back to normal now that I’m gone.

Tears dotted the page, smearing the ink. I swiped my arm over my face and twisted away, unable to breathe all of a sudden.

Tossing the notebook on my bed, I turned and fled my room, leaving it all behind. I put the note on the kitchen table, in plain sight. Then I grabbed several bottles of alcohol from the alcohol cabinet and stuffed them into my bag. The glass bottles clinked together.

The sound was inviting. I wanted nothing more than to get utterly trashed and then just…walk into traffic or something. I wasn’t sure yet, how I would do it, but I didn’t plan to be alive tomorrow morning.

Fuck this cruel world.

Taking one last look around Jem’s place, I swallowed the emotions knotting tight in my throat, placed my keys on the goodbye letter, and escaped out into the cold.

The bitter February air bit at my tear-stained cheeks as I headed out of town. I wasn’t sure where I was going—just away, out of here, away from the noise and everyone and everything.

My shoes crunched over packed ice and snow. My breaths came in jerky, uneven bursts as I tried to calm my rioting heartbeat, but River’s voice was on repeat in my head, his words like a whip, each one more painful than the last.

As snow fell heavily all around me, I thought about the old water tower I visited sometimes, where I sat and thought about life and wrote my stories in solitude. A fall from that height would surely be deadly. I could just end it all and be done.

No more River. No more babies. No more Sky DuPree.

Tears slipped down my cheeks, my heart clenching. My inner-wolf whimpered and tried to comfort me, but I shoved him away—then changed my mind and yanked his fur over my skin, shifting from man to wolf as swiftly as I could in my drunken state.

Dizzy and ungrounded, I pinned my ears and ran through the woods until the only sound I could hear was the thump-whoosh of my pulse and my harsh, panting breaths.

When I reached the slope and the clearing where the wooden water tower sat, I shifted back. I stumbled towards it. It was old and rickety, having long-since been abandoned for a nicer, newer model.

Just like me.

Sobbing openly now, I climbed the rungs of the ladder until my shoes hit the wooden planks up top. I let my bag drop to the floor, the bottles of booze clinking together as it landed with a thump.

My heart pounding, fear a thorny vine in my chest wrapping around it, I looked out over the railing to the woods beyond…and the cold, hard ground directly below.

My throat knotted.

Soon.

Soon, I wouldn’t be anyone’s problem anymore…