Chapter 15 Boone #2
I’d cleansed it best I could from a stream and packed it with the dried fungus powder stashed in my hip bag.
The puffball mushrooms had been a lucky find a few months back.
Most people just saw them as something to kick, watching them explode in a cloud of spores.
But my grandmother had taught me better.
They were food when young and firm, medicine when mature and powdery.
Drying them and crushing them had taken me back to my childhood and given me a treatment that was not only antibacterial and anti-inflammatory but also worked better than any store-bought styptic powder.
Once the bleeding stopped, I'd applied on the adhesive suture bandage, tugging the sides of the damage together, and kept going. It was no big deal.
Sounds washed over me—horses shifting their weight, the occasional soft nicker, the sounds of an engine cranking up outside.
Not a vehicle. Plow maybe. The hay beneath me crackled as I shifted my weight, reaching down to pull out a stick beneath my right ass cheek.
That was better. Quiet scurrying sounds above my head, told me deer mice had gotten up into the stable’s beams again. I’d sort that later.
So. Damn. Tired.
I’d felt drained for the last eleven months. Plagued by the kind of exhaustion that made you wonder if it was worth getting up in the morning.
Ever since Eros. The paperwork. The needles.
Nearly a year of waiting for an Omega match, of watching my pack brothers struggle against the same primal urges that clawed my insides. Nearly a year of feeling the wildness in my blood grow stronger and harder to control.
I wasn't built for waiting. None of us were. But what choice did we have?
I rubbed a hand over my face, feeling the sparse stubble that had accumulated during my time away.
Cooper used to give me grief about the way my facial hair came in, like a teen boy entering puberty.
I didn’t have a lot of body hair either.
Cooper didn’t make fun of that though. He’d discovered early on in our relationship the ease of cleaning up a glossy, hairless chest after dripping hot wax on it.
I found myself smiling with my eyes closed, Cooper’s face illuminated by candlelight formed in my mind.
I was grateful for little memories like that, ones that chased away the emptiness and anger.
My father taught me to keep the storm inside where it couldn't hurt anyone but myself. "A man who can't control his anger isn't a man at all," he'd told me once, after I'd gotten into a fight on the reservation. "He's just an animal wearing human skin."
When the animal came to the surface, I did everything to push it back down. I retreated into nature. I stripped my clothing, ran until my legs gave out, and shouted into the wind. I begged to be relieved of the burden that was becoming too heavy to bear.
Not that the Great Spirit was listening.
Or maybe I was just too tired to hear properly anymore.
I let my eyelids grow heavy as the soothing stable sounds continued around me. My breathing grew rhythmic. Sleep crept in gradually; it didn’t force me.
I was awoken by heavy footsteps hitting the stable floors.
Wyatt came into view moments later, filling the inner stall entrance with his large frame. The interior of the building was dimmer now. Long past afternoon. He stared me down, and those keen green eyes of his missed nothing, not even the blood stain.
"You look like shit," he commented.
"Missed you too," I replied, words gruff, voice still out of practice.
When I shifted to get up, Wyatt stopped me.
“Keep sitting. I’m joining you.” He moved into the stall and slid down the half wall opposite me, stretching both long legs out and crossing them at the ankles. The soles of his boots were crusted with mud and cow dung. Wyatt didn’t just sit down for casual conversation, so I waited.
For a long moment, we just sat in silence. The horses moved in their stalls. Dust particles played air hockey between us, moving back and forth when we breathed.
"Eros called yesterday," he finally said.
My heart gave a painful thump. "And?"
"And nothing." Wyatt's mouth thinned. “Just the same bullshit about their growing database and the enormous scientific feat it was to find a conclusive match.”
“Figured," I said, though seconds earlier my heart had leaped toward hope.
"It's been eleven months, Boone.” Wyatt sounded defeated, so unlike him.
"I can count.” I didn’t know what else to say.
We were all tallying up the days, the weeks, the months. Prisoners carving lines, counting down until release or execution.
Silence again, heavier this time. We'd had variations of this conversation before, but always in fragments, always with the others around. Never just the two of us, speaking plainly.
"You think it's getting worse?" I asked finally, though I already knew the answer.
Wyatt ran a hand through his dark hair, the short waves falling back into perfect place.
"Yeah," he admitted. "For all of us."
"The waiting—"
"It's not just the waiting." Wyatt cut me off, his voice low but intense. "It's the hope. It’s the hunger I can’t fucking satisfy. It was easier before Eros, easier to ignore what we were missing. I don’t want to make Cooper feel guilty again, but I’m losing my goddamn mind.”
I nodded, relief washing through me at hearing someone else articulate what I'd been feeling. "The more we hope, the worse it gets."
"Exactly." Wyatt picked up a piece of straw, rolling it between his fingers. “I don’t even believe our Omega is out there. I can’t believe, or I’m finished.”
"She exists.” My voice was firm. He needed my comfort, not my commiseration.
But the words tasted bitter and false.
"You ever think about what happens if they can't match us? If this was all for nothing?" He said it through gritted teeth, jaw clenched. He was a raw nerve right now.
"I think about it every day," I said quietly.
It’s why I keep leaving. It’s why I can’t be here for too long. I thought.
“Yeah…” Wyatt let the one word trail off.
Shit, we were so far gone.
I’d never worried before that our pack wouldn’t stand the test of time.
Now? I had doubts.