Valek
The pack house is far too quiet without Ivy.
The soft padding of her bare feet, the hum she does when she's reading, the way she laughs at Whiskey's bullshit… all of it's absent, and I'm feeling it in spades.
"Dude." Whiskey's voice drifts from the living room. "You're gonna wear a groove in the floor."
I didn't even realize I was fucking pacing.
I walk into the living room and drop into the armchair.
We’re all stuck in waiting mode with Ivy gone.
Whiskey's reclaimed the couch, legs stretched over Plague's lap while the pretty alpha reads and sips his tea.
Wraith sits on the floor near the door, back against the wall, his head tipped back and partially bandaged face uncovered above the loose dark scarf around his neck.
The light above the door shines on his teeth and iridescent scars.
Perhaps he’s letting his guard down.
That makes one of us.
Or perhaps his face hurts.
"She's fine," Plague says without looking up from his book. Seems he's saying it to himself more than me. "She's with Thane."
"I know," I grumble.
"Then stop fidgeting."
I'm not fidgeting, but my thumb is pressed against the cigarette burn scar on my wrist, and I stop before he brings attention to that being a tic. The last thing I need is Whiskey worrying about my scars.
I'd rather him fucking harass me.
Whiskey rolls his head toward me. "You know what we should be doing instead of sitting here like sad puppies abandoned in a wet cardboard box?"
"Thanks for the devastating mental image," Plague mutters.
Wraith gives a soft, unhappy sound of agreement, looking up.
Whiskey sits up, dislodging his phone, which slides off his stomach and wedges between the cushions. He shoves his hand in after it and gives up immediately. Clearly a job for someone with smaller hands.
Like Ivy, my brain helpfully supplies.
My chest twinges.
Fuck, I miss her.
FUCK.
"We should be planning," Whiskey continues.
Wraith's blue eyes refocus and track to Whiskey, his head tilting.
"Planning what?" I ask, even though I'm not sure I want to know.
"Dates, bro. Dates." He spreads his hands wide in emphasis. "Thane's out there right now setting the bar. You know he's setting the fuckin' bar. You think I'm gonna let Captain Candlelight outclass me? Fuck no."
Plague closes his book slowly. "That's… alarmingly ambitious. Aren't you taking her to the rage room?"
Whiskey grins. "Fuck yeah. And she's gonna love it." His voice drops and loses the usual bluster. "She was hiding for months. I want her to scream and break shit and not worry about who hears."
He has a point. Even Plague doesn't have a comeback for that.
Wraith nods slowly. She would like that, he agrees.
Whiskey clears his throat and the volume comes right back. "Plus there's this place downtown that lets you pick your own weapon. Baseball bats, crowbars, golf clubs. They've got a fucking sledgehammer, Plague. She loves smashing shit." He glances at me. "Sorry."
"No, it's true," I say.
"What about you?" Whiskey aims a finger gun at Plague. "You got a plan?"
Plague's adjusts his book in his lap, smoothing the corner of a page.
"I have… ideas."
"Ideas." Whiskey waits. "That's it? Just ideas?"
"I'm not sharing them with you."
"Why not?"
"Because you'll ruin it."
"How would I ruin it?"
Plague gives him a flat stare.
"Okay, valid," Whiskey concedes. "But at least tell me the vibe. Are we talking fancy dinner? Museum? Planetarium shit?"
Plague's ears go pink at the last one.
Whiskey points at him. "PLANETARIUM. I knew it. You absolute fucking nerd." But he's beaming. "That's actually perfect. She's gonna love that shit."
"It's not just that," Plague says stiffly, then seems to regret opening his mouth. He takes a measured sip of tea. "There's a Jordanian restaurant near it. I know the owner. It's quiet. Good food."
"Dude, that's not fair! I'd better take her out first before you set the bar in fuckin' space. Literally. And that restaurant is sick."
Plague snorts. "Not my problem. Aren't you Italian? Take her to Olive Garden."
"Bro!" Whiskey cries. "Olive Garden isn't my fuckin' culture!"
Wraith shifts against the wall and signs across the room. That's a good plan.
"Thank you, Wraith," Plague says, now pointedly ignoring Whiskey, whose legs are still across his lap. "At least someone can be normal about it."
"I'm being so normal right now, dude! I'm being the most normal I've ever been!"
Wraith huffs a quiet laugh.
"And what about you?" Whiskey asks him.
Plague heaves a dramatic sigh of relief that he's finally being left alone.
Wraith blinks at Whiskey, then away, and shrugs. I'm not sure.
"You're taking her out, too, right?" Whiskey asks, his enthusiastic golden retriever energy already dialing up a few more notches.
I don't know. Wraith's shoulders sink and his hands move again, slower this time. I'm not… normal. I can't exactly take her out to eat.
Whiskey shifts forward on the couch. "Okay, but hear me out. There are sushi places downtown with those booth curtains. You pull the curtain, you're basically in your own room—"
Wraith's shoulders have climbed toward his ears.
"—and some of 'em even have those little buzzers where you don't gotta talk to the server at all, they just bring the food and leave it outside the curtain, and—"
Wraith's eyes drop to the floor. His scarred hands go still in his lap.
"—it's perfect, bro. Seriously. We could scope it out first if you want, I'll go in and check the vibe, make sure the curtains aren't see-through or some cheap-ass bullshit—"
"Whiskey," Plague says quietly.
Whiskey stops.
Wraith doesn't look up.
Whiskey means well. But his heart runs faster than his brain, and by the time his brain catches up, his heart has already kicked down the door and set the building on fire.
He sees a problem and he tries to fix it.
With a wrecking ball.
I already saved Wraith from being thrown into prison, and hopefully from being thrown out of the league. Looks like I have to save him from the pack's resident fucking bull in a china shop, too.
"I don't know what to do either," I find myself saying.
The other alphas' heads all turn toward me.
I clear my throat and lean back in the armchair, crossing my ankle over my knee casually even though I'm on edge now that all their eyes are on me instead of each other.
"With a date," I clarify, because Whiskey's already squinting like I've grown a second head. "With any of it. I don't exactly know how to be an omega's alpha."
Whiskey opens his mouth.
I hold up a hand. "If you say bro, I'm leaving."
"I wasn't gonna say bro."
"You were," I say, and he's looking sheepish and thoroughly caught the fuck out, so I push myself out of the armchair before he can regroup for another assault of enthusiastic pack bonding.
I fucking hate this emotional pack bullshit. It drives me crazy with my family, and now these fuckers are becoming my family, too.
Disgusting.
I go straight to the kitchen. It's dark, which suits me fine. I open the fridge and duck down to glance inside at the plethora of repulsive colorful sports drinks scattered throughout the beer on the drinks shelf.
I grab a rare bottle of plain water and crack the seal, leaning against the counter.
The cold liquid escaping the cap trickles down my palm and my wrist, running along the cluster of round burn scars I keep hidden beneath my sleeves during the day.
At night, in the dark, they're just texture. Just skin that healed wrong.
A fucking lot of me healed wrong.
The soft sound of footsteps makes the shorthairs on the back of my neck prickle. There's a shift in air pressure, the faintest creak of a floorboard that wouldn't creak under anything less than a giant.
I don't turn around.
I take a sip of water and wait.
The only other alpha in this pack who healed as wrongly as I did materializes in my peripheral vision like a shadow. Like his namesake, really.
He stops at the kitchen island a few feet away, and watches me. His scarred face is fully exposed in the light from the fridge, every sharp tooth bared in that permanent rictus grin, and the contrast between that and the softness in his blue eyes is… strange.
Shocking, maybe, if I were anyone else. If I hadn't seen what I'd seen from day fucking one on this godsforsaken planet.
Despite the rest of his face, Wraith’s eyes are even more puppy than Whiskey's. Bright and blue and warm, even with the lingering sadness there from the conversation we were just having in the living room.
But why the fuck is he looking at me like that?
Like he likes me?
"What?" I mutter warily.
He raises a hand and taps his fingers to his chin, then out. Thank you.
My jaw tightens. The scar on my temple from Ivy clobbering me with the fire extinguisher itches, but I resist the urge to touch it. That's another tic I have. That, and the fucking cigarette burns.
"You don't need to thank me, Wraith."
He shakes his head once.
Then his expression shifts.
Not much. With Wraith, the shifts are subtle. The set of his brow, the angle of his jaw, sometimes a head tilt, or the way his blue eyes narrow and soften. On a face with the skin completely gone below his eyes and nose, he shouldn't be capable of expression.
But he is.
And right now, he looks concerned.
About me.
My eye twitches.
I disagree with you, by the way, he signs.
I frown. "About what?"
That you're bad for Ivy.
I go still. My fingers grip the bottle tighter, the plastic crinkling, and I force myself to relax before I crush it and spill water all over the floor. The last thing I need right now is Plague up my ass about slipping hazards in a room full of knives.
"I didn't say that," I tell him.
You didn't have to. His eyes hold mine. I know what it looks like. When someone thinks they're the worst thing that could happen to the person they love.
I should deflect, make some dry remark or do literally anything other than stand here in this dark kitchen with a feral alpha who sees straight through me.
"I'm not good," I say under my breath instead. "Not like you."
Good is relative.
"It's really not."
Ivy doesn't think so.
"Ivy doesn't know me."
His head tilts again, teeth flashing in the light. She knows enough.
"She knows nothing, Wraith. She knows I showed up at the wrong time in the tunnel she was hiding in, then at the right time to break the right knee. That isn't knowing someone."
He watches me.
I watch him back, my eyes narrowing.
His eyes crinkle.
It's the closest thing to a smile he has. The skin around his eyes bunches and the blue warms, and despite everything that should make this expression terrifying, it's not.
It's fond.
I hate this. I fucking hate having a pack. Having emotions. Having—
He's signing again. I take a long, deep breath and watch his hands move.
Ivy is fierce, he signs. She can handle you.
The breath I just took in escapes me in a shuddering laugh. "She knocked me unconscious with a fire extinguisher," I tell him.
Exactly.
I exhale through my nose and my fingers drift to the thin scar on my temple before I can stop them.
The one she gave me. The raised line beneath my fingertips is familiar now, mapped by touch a hundred times in the dark while I tried to make sense of why I was so happy it left such a prominent scar.
Every other scar on my body was put there by someone who wanted to destroy me. This one was put there by…
My mate.
Fuck.
I turn back to the fridge to pretend to look for something else so I don't have to look at Wraith's signs anymore, but he's already gone.
Perhaps that's what I'll do on my date with Ivy, if she's expecting it from everyone else.
Perhaps I'll show her the truth about me.