Chapter 38 Mo
Mo
It’s been three days since my heat broke, and my body still hums with the memories. Archer’s hands on my skin, the sound Elias made when he came, Silas holding me afterward, his arms locked tight, like I might dissolve if he let go.
Mornings belong to the lake cabin now. Coffee on the porch, mist lifting off the water, my rocks lined up along the windowsill. Everything tastes better here. The coffee. The air. Even the silence has a different texture—soft instead of heavy.
And then there’s Darius.
He still keeps his distance, mostly. But signs of him are everywhere.
I feel… Grateful.
And more than that, maybe tenderness.
The male rebuilt his dead parents’ cabin for me. He sat out my heat because he’s trying to become someone who earns things rather than takes them.
I’ve forgiven him. I didn’t realize it at first. I think I forgave him the day I walked into this cabin and saw rocks along the windowsill.
Maybe even before that. Maybe the night I watched him sitting alone on that log in the dark, shoulders hunched, looking smaller than I’d ever seen him.
Or maybe when I had the heat conversation with the guys, knowing I wanted him there even if he decided not to participate, giving me time.
I just haven’t told him yet. Today, though. I’ve been turning the words over in my mind all morning, trying to find the right ones.
I’m walking toward the main cabin with Rocky and Charly tucked into my jacket pocket. They’d been complaining all morning about missing their friends—especially that smooth black river rock Silas had found a few weeks ago that Rocky had developed a crush on.
“She doesn’t even notice me,” Rocky laments from my pocket.
“Maybe if you weren’t such a boring gray lump,” Charly shoots back.
I roll my eyes. “Both of you, shut it. You’ll get your playdate, but I need to find Darius first.”
That’s when Pam steps into my path.
Almost every interaction I’ve had with this female since my heat has involved screaming, attempted face-scratching, or the phrase “he’s mine.
” My wolf lifts her head, alert but not alarmed.
Pam’s scent is different today. Less sharp.
Less territorial. Her usual citrus tang is undercut with something sour.
Nerves.
“Blue,” she says. “Can we talk? Just for a minute.”
“About what?” I ask bluntly.
“I want to apologize. For how I’ve been acting.” She shifts her weight, eyes on the ground. “The stuff I said. The way I’ve been treating you. It isn’t fair. I think I was jealous, and I took it out on you, and I’m sorry.”
She stands there, smelling like anxiety and something that might actually be guilt.
“Okay,” I say warily, wondering where this is going. “Thanks for saying that. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry, too.”
Pam nods. “Hey, if you’re not busy, do you want to help me with the soap?”
“The soap?” I ask.
She laughs, “Darius had me buy a few bottles of peach soap for you.”
I look at her face and see a female trying to make amends. And I think about how I was just on my way to forgive Darius for worse than anything Pam has done.
Refusing would make me a hypocrite.
“Sure. Lead the way.”
She walks me toward the edge of the compound, past the last cottages, toward the tree line, a small clearing just beyond the perimeter, sheltered by pines.
Pam’s scent turns slightly, and I stop walking.
Maybe I was being paranoid. Maybe not everyone was out to get me, but my instincts have never failed me, and right now they’re saying: run. I’m about to turn away when a lone figure steps out from behind a tree.
The blood drains from my face as his features come into view. My hands go numb. My scent turns sour in a single breath, and my vision narrows until there’s nothing but him, leaning against a tree with his arms crossed.
Stuart.
He’s not smiling this time. Not playing charming. His expression is flat and hard, and those dark eyes find mine with a directness that makes my stomach lurch. He’s not pretending to be friendly. He’s not here to catch up.
I spin toward Pam. She’s already backing away, pale, refusing to meet my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Pam whispers. “He said he just wanted to talk.”
She runs. Then it’s just me and Stuart and the pines.
“Moira.” He pushes off the tree. Takes a step toward me. “You’ve been hard to find.”
“It’s Blue now,” I tell him.
“You will always be Moira to me, the feral little omega.”
I take a step back, claws pushing through my fingertips. “Don’t come near me.”
“I’m not here to hurt you.”
“You’ve already done that. I have nothing left to say to you.” I step back toward the compound. My pulse hammers so hard I feel it in my throat, and my mind is racing through my self-defence training.
“Sophie’s alive.”
I stop.
The rushing of my blood pounds in my ears, drowning out every sound in the forest.
“You’re lying.” My voice comes out raw. “That’s all you do, Stuart. You say whatever you have to to get your way.” I take another retreating step, backing into a tree.
“I’m not.” He takes another step toward me. I can feel the heat of him now. “She didn’t die, Mo,” he says into my ear. “My father crushed her throat, but the pack healer got to her in time. By the time you were sold and transported, she was breathing on her own.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“See for yourself.”
He reaches for his pocket and pulls out a phone.
He unlocks it and turns the screen toward me. I don’t want to look. Because what if it is her? And what if it’s not?
I force myself to look.
Sophie. My mouth falls open in shock.
Older. Thinner. Her hair is shorter, and there’s a scar on her neck—thick and jagged, running from ear to collarbone.
But it’s her… The shape of her face, the curve of her mouth, those eyes that always looked at the world as if it might still be kind.
She’s standing in front of a building, wearing a blue sweater, squinting against the sun. Tired. But standing. Breathing.
Alive.
My knees buckle. I grab the tree trunk and hold on, bark biting into my palm. My hands won’t stop shaking. The whole world won’t stop shaking.
“Everyone knew she was alive?”
“Everyone except you.”
Everyone in my old pack knew my sister survived. They watched me get dragged to a cell. Watched me get sold. Watched me get loaded into a transport and shipped to a stranger. And nobody told me Sophie was alive. They let me believe I’d watched her die. Let me carry that for three years.
“If it makes you feel any better, my father commanded everyone not to say anything to you.”
“Where is she?” My voice doesn’t sound like mine.
Stuart pockets the phone. “She’s with the pack. She thinks you’re dead, Mo.”
She thinks I’m dead.
My sister is alive and has spent three years believing I’m gone. Three years of grief, while I’ve been in the woods talking to a stick and a rock.
“Why?” The word rips out of me. “Why would you tell her that?”
His expression doesn’t shift. “The head alpha thought it was better that way. For both of you.”
“Better?” My voice climbs. “How is letting someone believe their sister is dead better?”
“Sophie was fragile after her accident. He decided it would be kinder to let her think you died trying to escape than to know you’d been sold.”
I stare at him.
Stuart takes another step forward, and I back into a tree. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to bring you home. To bring you to her.”
“Bring me to her?” A laugh tears out of me, jagged and wrong. “You think I’m going anywhere with you?”
“She misses you. She cries for you.”
My chest cracks open. The image of Sophie weeping for me is more than I can hold.
“I am not your property.”
His jaw tightens. “Things have changed, Mo. The pack is different. I’m different.”
“Bullshit.”
“I know you don’t believe me. I don’t blame you.” A pause. “But Sophie needs you. She’s not well.”
Ice floods my veins. “What do you mean, not well?”
“She’s sick. The healers have been doing what they can, but…” He trails off.
I want to hit him. I want to shift and tear his throat out. I want to run back to the cabin, lock the door, and never come out.
But Sophie is alive. And she’s sick. And she thinks I’m dead.
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” I ask. “How do I know this isn’t just some trick to get me to come back?”
“You don’t.” His eyes hold mine. “But are you willing to take that chance? Stay here all safe and comfortable, wrapped up in your new pack, while Sophie gets worse every day, thinking you’re in the ground?”
If there’s even a sliver of a chance she’s alive, I have to go. I have to see her. I have to know.
But I don’t trust Stuart.
“If I go,” I say, slow and deliberate, “I go on my terms. I tell the pack where I’m going. I bring someone with me.”
“No.” His voice hardens. “Just you. The pack will not welcome strangers.”
“Then bring her here.”
“Mo.” He softens his tone, and somehow that’s worse. “She doesn’t have much time. And this pack has a history with ours. Darius would never let you leave.”
“What?”
“The healers say days—maybe less. I have a car waiting. We can be there by tomorrow morning. She’ll wake up, and you’ll be there. Think about what that would mean to her.”
I close my eyes. Sophie’s face. The scar. The way she looked tired even in a photograph. I think about her crying for me. Believing I’m dead. Getting sicker, waiting to die, not knowing I’m out here—alive and breathing and so goddamn close.
This is probably a trap. Almost definitely. Stuart is not only a liar and a predator, but also the son of the man who destroyed my life. But if there’s even a one percent chance Sophie is alive in that compound, I have to see her—I have to save her.
“Give me two minutes. Then we’ll leave.”
I turn, ready to sprint toward the compound, when Stuart grabs my arm.
“I knew you’d be difficult.”
Males step out of the trees on all sides. Four, five, six of them, all wearing the scent of Stuart’s pack. They form a circle around me, cutting off any escape route back to the compound.
My wolf surges forward, claws bursting through my fingertips. I lunge at the nearest male, raking across his chest. He curses in pain as I pivot, teeth bared, looking for an opening.
“There she is,” Stuart laughs, making no move to help his packmate. “Still feral after all this time. Some things never change, do they, Moira?”
I snarl and leap toward another male, but two others grab me from behind. Strong hands lock around my wrists, twisting until pain shoots up my arms. I kick backward, connecting with someone’s knee. A crack and a grunt tell me I hit my mark.
“Hold her still,” Stuart says, his voice bored, like this is all going according to plan. “She’s always been more trouble than she’s worth.”
I thrash against their grip. Stupid. So stupid to trust, even for a second.
The males tighten their hold, fingers digging into my flesh. One yanks my head back by my hair, exposing my throat. The vulnerable position sends panic coursing through me. Too similar to the position they’d forced Sophie into before crushing her windpipe.
Sophie. Had any of it been true?
One of the males pulls out a syringe filled with clear liquid, and I go feral. I kick, bite, scream, but there are just too many of them. Then, I feel a prick on my skin.
“Don’t worry,” Stuart says, “We’ll take good care of you.”
“What did you—” My tongue feels thick, words slurring as the world tilts sideways.
Stuart’s face swims above me, his features blurring. “Just something to make the journey easier.”
My knees buckle. My hand goes to my pocket, fingers closing around Charly and Rocky one last time. As the darkness rushes up to meet me, I pull them out and let them fall into the grass.
Then everything goes black.