Chapter 14
Kieran
I used to eat dinner alone. I used to know where everyone in my pack was at all times. I used to have a kitchen.
None of these things are true anymore.
It's been two days since I shifted and ran out my own back door, which is not a sentence I ever expected to apply to me, and my wolf has been howling nonstop since, which is giving me a headache on top of everything else.
Olivia is gone. I don't know where. Not the guest cabin — I checked, twice, at hours I'm not willing to admit to — and her bookbinding tools are still set up in the library with the bone folder squared to the edge the way she leaves everything, which either means she's coming back or she's left a shrine to my idiocy. Could go either way.
Stephen knows where she is. Rose knows. Bram definitely knows, because Bram knows where everyone on Shadowpine land is at all times, and when I asked him on the first day he said, "She's safe," and looked at a point six inches to the left of my face, and that was the end of that conversation.
Rose has been leaving dinner plates on my porch without knocking, which is her way of saying "I love you and you're an idiot" without using words.
Teresa rescheduled all my meetings and left a covered plate with a note that said "Eat something.
That's an order. Yes, I know I can't order you.
Eat it anyway." Stephen has been practicing his shift in the clearing every morning, in and out, his wolf a little steadier each time.
Rose reported this to me with a look on her face that dared me to comment.
I didn't.
On the morning of the third day, Amaryllis opens her eyes.
She's been on the couch for two days, eating and sleeping in roughly equal measure, getting color back. I've been on the floor next to her when I'm not out running the ridges, which accounts for most of my time. The pack has heard the howling. Nobody has brought it up. Smart pack.
"You look terrible," she says.
"Thank you."
"You smell worse. Have you been sleeping outside?"
"Intermittently."
"Have you apologized to Olivia?"
"I don't know where she is."
"That's not what I asked." She pushes herself up on the pillows and bats my hand away when I reach for her.
"Stop hovering. I'm not dying. I was never dying.
I was depleted, which is a completely different thing, and which would not have happened at all if you'd let me finish one sentence in your office three weeks ago. "
I take a deep, painful breath. I nearly killed my sister with my stubbornness. "I know."
"I don't think you do, so I'm going to spell it out, and you're going to sit there and take it, because you owe me that and also because I'm your older sister."
"By four minutes."
"Four very formative minutes. Now shut up.
" She holds up three fingers. "Three healers.
Me, Peyton, Gemma. Linked together, sharing the energy drain so no single healer bears the full load.
That's what 'if the three of us' meant. Nobody burns out, nobody collapses.
I had a safe plan and you slammed the door on it.
So I did it alone, and yes, I pushed too hard, and I'll take my scolding for that.
But you forced me underground, and underground is where people get hurt.
" She fixes me with a stare. "You didn't cause what happened to Mom. But you caused what happened to me."
I don't have anything to say to that, because it's true, and she knows it's true, and sitting on the floor being right is apparently not enough for her because she keeps going.
"And Olivia didn't know. She didn't know, and Stephen didn't know. I lied to everyone. So whatever you said to her while you were busy demolishing the kitchen—"
"I accused her of being in on it. Of lying to me. Of helping you hide it." I pause. "While she was kneeling in broken glass telling me you were breathing."
"Of course you did." She gives me the look she's been giving me since we were nine — the one that says I love you and you are exhausting.
"Kieran. That woman walked into your power.
Dishes were flying and glass was everywhere and nobody else in that room moved, and she crawled through it and grabbed your face.
And you accused her of lying and ran away. "
"I didn't run away. I made a strategic exit."
"On all fours. With your tail out."
"My tail was not—" I stop, because she's almost smiling, and I've missed that smile for two days, and arguing about my tail is not a productive use of this conversation. "Fine. I ran away."
"Go find her and fix it."
I nod grimly, determination swelling up inside me. "I'm planning to."
"Today. Not tomorrow, not after you've thought about it for a week behind one of your walls. Today."
"Today."
"Good." She settles back into the pillows. "Also, Peyton and Gemma and I will start the linked healing work on Stephen next week. Not a request."
"Fine."
"Fine? Just fine? No argument? No 'this meeting is over'?"
"The last time I said 'this meeting is over' you nearly died on my kitchen floor, so I'm retiring the phrase."
She reaches out and puts her hand on the back of my head, the way our mother used to, and for one second her face goes soft.
Then it goes right back to business. "Go shower.
You are genuinely offensive to the nose right now, and if you go anywhere near that woman smelling like this she will not take you back, and I won't blame her. "
"Your support is overwhelming."
"I support you completely. I just don't trust your execution. There's a difference. Go."
I go.
Standing in the hallway, smelling like the forest and failure, I take stock.
I have a mate to find and an apology to deliver and no real skill set for either.
But the first thing that comes to mind isn't Olivia.
It's Rose. Bouncing on her toes, asking about a dance.
Stephen, jaw set, shaking, telling me she deserves a life.
Olivia on the couch, weeks ago, telling me that caging people makes them bolt.
She was right. She's been right about all of it.
The tri-pack dance is tonight.
Rose is in the greenhouse, sulking.
"The dance tonight," I say. "You're going. Stephen is going with you. Bram is your escort, and that's non-negotiable."
She stares at me. A hushbell seedling trembles in her grip.
"I'm sorry?"
"You heard me."
"I did hear you, but my brain rejected it. Say it again."
"You're going to the dance tonight. With Stephen and Bram."
"Did Amaryllis drug you?"
“Do you want me to change my mind?”
"I'm going to the dance!" She announces this to the seedling first, and then to the greenhouse at large, and then she throws her arms around me, dirt and all, and squeezes with a force that surprises me from a girl her size. "I don't have anything to wear. Oh my God, I don't have anything to wear—"
"I'll handle it."
She pulls back and narrows her eyes. "You'll handle my dress."
"I'll handle your dress."
"You have terrible taste."
"Amaryllis and Peyton and Gemma will handle your dress,” I concede. “If it were me, I’d send you in a nun’s habit.”
The joy on her face flickers, and she gives me a look much older than seventeen. "You're going to have about fifty people there undercover watching me, aren't you?"
"Maybe.” I shrug.
She narrows her eyes at me, but then her smile bursts through. “I’m going to the dance!” she shrieks, spinning in a circle.
With a grin, I leave the greenhouse.
I call Peyton, who calls Gemma, who apparently calls half the pack, because by the time I get to Cedar Run there are four women at the only dress shop on Main Street with opinions so strong they could be classified as weapons.
I stand in the corner and approve what they tell me to approve and pay for three dresses because they couldn't agree and Rose should have options.
The second thing takes longer, and I do it alone.
The library's second-floor hallway has a room at the end that's been storage since before I was Alpha — old furniture, broken equipment, things nobody cared enough to move or throw away.
I clear it out myself. Desks and broken chairs down the back stairs for three hours, and the physical work is the first thing that's shut my wolf up in two days, so I take my time about it.
Then I sweep the floor and wash the windows and stand in the doorway.
Good room. South-facing windows, natural light all day, big enough for a workbench along the wall and shelves for supplies. The doorframe is wide enough for the big press. The floorboards are old oak, and they've been hiding under junk for a decade.
I'm not going to move her tools, because moving a bookbinder's tools without permission is a killing offense, and I've committed enough crimes this week. But I can make the room ready, and I can put one thing in it.
I carry the herbal — the big illuminated one she's been washing and resewing for weeks, the one she called a crime scene because of the packing tape — and set it carefully on a table away from direct sunlight, and I put a note on top of it.
The note takes me four drafts. Every version sounds like either a legal filing or a hostage negotiation. Finally I settle on:
Your room. Stay and fill it.
I stare at the note. I think about a woman at a farmer's market, correcting my manners in front of my own pack.
Civilized people say please, she told me, and I looked at her denim-blue eyes and thought, who is this lunatic, and my wolf said, that one, forever, and I've been fighting about it ever since.
I pick up the pen and add one more word.
Please.
— K
Bram finds me outside the library.
"She's at the Cedar Run Motel," he says, his tone apologetic. "She has been since she left. Right now she's at the Late Shift Grill, back booth."
"Thanks."
I shower first, because I am starting to get offended by my own funk, and then I drive to town.