Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-three
COLBY
Three days later, Colby woke alone. After a first moment of fear, he remembered—Tristan had insisted Colby stay in bed when he got up for school, said there was no need for both of them to be up at dawn.
Once Tristan had shaved and brushed his teeth, ready to go, he’d let Colby draw him down for a kiss.
“You’ll be okay,” Colby said, because the tension in Tristan was unmistakable.
Tristan nodded. “Yeah,” he said. Then his lips twisted. “Kinda feel like a jerk saying this to you, but I don’t—it’s the first time I’ve left the ranch since it happened.”
“I get it,” Colby said. He didn’t offer a well-meaning platitude about it getting easier because he knew they weren’t always true. “One foot in front of the other. And if you need to come home early, that’s not failure.” He wasn’t sure he believed it, but he hoped Tristan would.
Tristan kissed him again, then stood up. “Yeah,” he said, sounding like he was holding onto that hope.
He lingered a moment longer, thumb brushing lightly along Colby’s jaw. “I hate that I won’t be able to text you,” he admitted. “We need to get you a phone.”
Colby blinked. The idea felt strange. Another piece of normal he hadn’t realized he was missing. A phone meant someone might check in, just to say hi or tell a joke, or send a photo of a goat stuck in something it shouldn’t be. It meant no longer being isolated.
“So that you can text me about thermodynamics?” Colby asked, aiming for dry but falling a little short in his excitement at the prospect of change, of something that was his.
Tristan’s eyes sparkled. “You have no idea how many things I’m going to want to share with you during the day. Also, the second law is bullshit.”
“Pretty sure you’re not allowed to say that in engineering school.”
“Sue me.” Tristan kissed him one more time, quick and warm, and Colby let himself lean into it.
* * *
When Colby finally dragged himself out of bed, the room smelled like Tristan—clean cotton and citrus soap—and that helped, made him feel less alone. Still, the quiet of the house seemed too quiet for a minute. He paused, listening, and the fact there was nothing to hear somehow didn’t reassure him.
Annoyed with himself for being scared of shadows—shadows were fine; it was what hid in them that wasn’t—he took a quick shower.
Without Tristan’s presence, there were landmines everywhere.
When he reached for the bodywash, it took a while before he could make himself wash behind his ears.
Nico had always checked there, like it proved something.
He didn’t want to do it. Not now, when he didn’t have to. But he did it anyway, because he wanted to be clean.
He made himself towel off before climbing into his borrowed clothes. He was here, not there. And that was easier to remember when he walked into the kitchen and found a sticky note on the counter reading Don’t let Chaos talk you into anything. Back this afternoon. T xxx.
A smile tugged at his mouth—but then something prickled at the edge of his awareness.
Like a sound he couldn’t quite hear, or a scent he couldn’t capture.
Gone before he could chase it. He shook himself once, hard, and pressed the heel of his hand to his sternum, where something deep in his chest wouldn’t settle.
He didn’t see much of the pack that morning, except Riley, who offered a quiet greeting on his way through the kitchen with a stack of books, and Dave, who passed him a pair of work gloves and nodded toward the outbuilding they’d started clearing out the day before.
“We’ve got other stuff to do right now, but if you can get more of this done, that’d be good.”
Colby and Tristan had been drafted the previous day, working alongside Christian and Dave. Christian had ignored Colby the entire time, but at least he hadn’t been actively hostile.
“It’s for Karl,” Tristan had informed Colby when they took a break for a drink. “He and Christian are renovating the place so he can move out of the bunkhouse he shares with Jason and Riley and finally get some sleep.”
Colby raised his eyebrows inquiringly as he took another long, welcome swig from the water bottle.
Tristan leaned in to him, eyes dancing with mischief. “Apparently, Jason is really, really loud, and Karl doesn’t have the heart to tell him to keep it down because Jason would be so mortified, he’d probably never have sex again.” Tristan took a drink from his own bottle. “He’s kind of a softie.”
“Karl is?” Big, dark, dangerous Karl, who looked like he knew thirty-seven ways to kill a man with a toothpick?
And then Colby thought of the way he’d quietly kept taking Colby on patrol, teaching him the territory, teaching him the pack’s ways, and yeah—Karl was, if not a softie, generous and kind.
Clearing out years of accumulated junk from the outbuilding was oddly satisfying. Colby hadn’t realized how much time had passed when the sound of footsteps brought him to the door.
Jesse stood there, a sandwich on a plate in one hand and a water bottle in the other.
Colby hadn’t seen much of Jesse since the pack had gone to Cale’s compound. When he had been around, he’d been quiet and pale.
“Jason made extras, and since you missed lunch, I got volunteered,” Jesse said, handing him the water bottle.
Colby blinked at it in surprise. “Oh. Thanks.”
Jesse shot him a sideways glance. “Don’t get used to it. Ain’t exactly good at being an errand boy.” He passed over the sandwich as if it were part of a hostage negotiation.
Colby took it gratefully, feeling a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“Tell anyone, and I’ll deny everything,” Jesse added.
He didn’t linger, just nodded once and wandered back toward the house, shoulders hunched a little tighter than usual.
Colby watched him go, warmth in his chest that had nothing to do with the sun. But when he turned back toward the outbuilding, something in the shadows of the woods caught his attention. Not movement, not exactly. Just the sense that something had changed out there.
However long he looked, he couldn’t see anything. Still, the feeling lingered. A thread of unease, for no reason.
* * *
Late afternoon, and he was sitting on the front porch, waiting for Tristan. He was brushing dust off his jeans and still finding bits of cobweb in his hair when he heard a car coming up the driveway.
He stood instinctively, his heart giving a quick lurch before he caught himself. It wasn’t fear, exactly—just the old panic response trying to reroute itself into something new. Into hope.
Tristan stepped out of the car, his backpack in one hand, his face lighting up when he saw Colby.
“You survived,” Colby called, aiming for light-hearted but hearing the softness in his own voice.
“Only just,” Tristan said. “Sam practically hugged me to death when I stuck my head into the diner.”
Colby grinned and met him halfway, returning the kiss Tristan pressed to his lips like it was the most natural thing in the world. Which maybe, now, it was.
“How were things here?” Tristan asked as they walked toward the house.
“Productive. Jesse didn’t eat my lunch. Oh, but Chaos tried to eat the extension cord.”
Tristan snorted. “Of course she did.”
Colby didn’t say what he was thinking—that he was proud of Tristan. And that his return felt like something locking into place inside Colby’s chest. He didn’t have to, because Tristan laced their fingers together like he already knew.
* * *
That night, Colby waited again on the back porch for Karl.
The night air was cool against his skin, but he didn’t mind.
He liked the stillness, the way the porch light pooled on the ground and caught the occasional drifting moth.
He liked the anticipation, too—the steady kind, not the kind laced with dread.
But still, he found himself checking the line of the trees more than once, scanning shadows without a reason for it.
Karl arrived right on time, as always. He didn’t say anything about the work Colby had done that day, or the fact that Karl had let him take the lead on one circuit the previous night, when Colby had picked up a fox’s trail at the exact same moment he had.
When they returned from patrol and Karl shifted back, he stretched, shook out his limbs, and gave Colby a long, unreadable look. Then he said, simply, “You’re starting to fit in.”
Colby blinked. His throat tightened in a way he didn’t expect. He didn’t know what to say at first, because this wasn’t a throwaway comment. Not from Karl. He didn’t waste words.
“Yeah?” he asked, his voice low.
“Yeah,” Karl said. And in that one syllable was acknowledgment, and maybe even approval.
Colby let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Karl nodded once, like he understood, and disappeared into the dark.
* * *
The rest of the week settled into a kind of rhythm. Not effortless, but good. Tristan came home at the end of each day, tired and smiling. Colby stopped avoiding pack mealtimes. And Karl kept showing up each evening, silent and steady as ever.
Two mornings later, Colby poured coffee, slathered some toast with butter, and sat on the back porch to eat it.
Chaos appeared within minutes, bleating indignantly like she was offended Colby wasn’t sharing. Mayhem trotted after her, more interested in Colby’s bootlaces than breakfast.
“Don’t even think about it,” he warned them both, but his voice was fond. When Chaos shoved her head under his arm like a dog demanding a hug, he let her.
Maybe Christian was right about the goats. Maybe they were jerks. But they were Tristan’s jerks, and Colby loved them.
* * *
That evening, on patrol, something in the air shifted.
Colby lifted his head, nose twitching. It wasn’t as definite as a scent. It was way more nebulous, more of an awareness. Something…
Karl came to a halt ahead of him, ears pricked, body coiled. They stood still for a long minute, testing the breeze. No strange smells, only the usual sounds of local prey, moving through the trees.
Eventually Karl gave a low huff and turned back, but Colby saw tension in his body that hadn’t been there before.
Back at the house, Karl paused in the shadows by the porch and said, “I’ll brief Matt. Could’ve been nothing. Could’ve been someone watching.”
Colby nodded once, jaw tight. “Yeah.”
He’d let himself forget that Nico—that he might be out there. And now, it was like someone was tugging on a thread inside him, one that he couldn’t find a way to cut.
* * *
On the fourth day of Tristan being back at school, Jason stopped by where he was hammering a brace into the ground. Colby was grateful for the work. It let him focus on something other than shadows and who might be lurking in them.
“Looks like you know what you’re doing around this stuff,” Jason said, somewhat vaguely. “You work construction too, like Christian?”
Colby paused to wipe the sweat off—the sun was damn hot for the time of year. “Not construction, but yeah, did a lot of this sort of thing in the Army. If it broke, we were the ones patching it up.”
Jason nodded, looking somewhere in the vicinity of Colby’s borrowed tool belt rather than his face. “That’s good. Useful.” He shifted awkwardly, like he wasn’t sure what to say next, then gave a short nod. “Well. Nice job, anyway.”
He walked off briskly, as if he was embarrassed.
Maybe Jason didn’t know how to talk to him, but he’d tried. And that was what mattered.