Chapter 55
KARMA
I still had to let off steam every day.
The feel of my fists hitting the worn leather bag we’d set up in the back forest released a tension deep in my chest. And giving it up would be giving up a part of me, a coping mechanism I’d used for so long it was deeply rooted in my being.
But I didn’t need the bloodshed, anymore.
Not the coppery scent of it or the glide of it on my fingers.
I didn’t crave the screams or grunts of someone succumbing to my aura.
Those feral instincts were nothing but a faint hum beneath the surface, something that wouldn’t rise in a peaceful place like this. How could I want to murder someone when the only people around were my packmates and omega? They were all safe, and my soul… it was soothed.
Better soothed when I was able to snag a few hours of Crescent cuddles.
Sin had been so fucking possessive the last few days, and he didn’t let me join unless I snatched her when he wasn’t paying attention. The only reason I’d get time with her was because she’d soothe Sin and insist she wanted me to stay.
He’d chill, right?
This intensity had to be temporary.
Either that, or we’d have to use the alpha hook on him after all.
I hadn’t given much thought to the sigma stuff the rest of the pack had been looking into. Omega, sigma, didn’t matter. Sin was just Sin to me, but even I had to admit in the two weeks since we’d arrived at the cabin, he’d been acting more and more, uh… alpha?
That wasn’t quite right.
Duh, because he was a sigma.
But none of us knew what to expect from a sigma, and all I wanted was some fucking cuddles.
Wiping sweat from my brow, I stared up at the sky. Cloudless today, with a little nip in the air. My inhales didn’t bring the musty, damp air of underground, and, but for my panting, the silence… was truly silent. No distant screams. Only birds.
Real birds.
We should get a bird feeder.
Sometimes things out here triggered vague hints of memory, and that was one. That barn, the one I’d drawn for Crescent with the mountain and the sunset, was situated by a house, I thought. Same kind of wood our cabin was built from, which was why I remembered it.
And the house had a bird feeder.
That’s about where my memories ended, but I’d drawn it all out.
House, some bits smudged in graphite because I couldn’t parse out details, and that bird feeder, with—oddly enough—a barn owl perched on the edge.
Pretty sure the owl should be in—you know—the barn, but my brain insisted on drawing it on that feeder every time I sketched.
I’d finished another sketch of that house from my memories last night—I’d give it to her, like I’d given her all the others. I loved how she grinned over the constant little gifted drawings, and it felt right to show her my little snippets of memory from before.
Today, I had an important set of three sketches for her, too. I’d been agonizing over them since we got here. Had to make sure they were perfect before I showed them to her.
I’d planned to give her my originals, which I’d drawn in Anarchy, but they’d been kind of… well, bloodstained. Very stained.
So I’d copied them onto fresh paper, and it took a while to get them right again.
I’d finally felt ready this morning, but of course, when I tried to approach her she’d been wrapped in a Sin burrito and he’d barked a command for me to turn around and fuck off.
The command’s talons weren’t gripping me anymore, so it was time for another try.
I stepped inside to the sound of Crescent’s cheery tone filtering quietly out from the room she’d claimed as her nest. “Can I have hash browns?”
“Coming right up,” came Sin’s response.
I grinned. Perfect timing.
I crept across the cabin and slipped into the bathroom right next to the nest. Steam filled the room and Phantom was naked, scrubbing, and covered in soap, but when he tried to question me, I pressed my finger to my lips.
He got it.
We were all trying desperately to get our allotted Crescent time.
By the time I heard Sin’s footsteps pad out into the kitchen, Phantom had turned off the shower and was frantically drying himself off. I didn’t wait for him.
I was down the hall and closing myself into Crescent’s sunroom in seconds, immediately smacked in the face by the strongest hit of desert eclipse I’d ever experienced in my life.
Damn.
My head spun a bit.
Crescent lit up when she saw me, only her eyes and nose peeking out from her blanket cocoon. She was quick to fling one of the blankets aside, welcoming me to cuddle up against her pyjama-clad body.
“Come on!” she whispered urgently.
I practically dove into the nest.
Phantom was not as lucky. As the room’s doorknob began to turn, I heard Sin’s voice call out sharply. “Phantom.”
Perfect. I got Crescent all to myself. At least until the hash browns were cooked. We just had to make sure we kept talking in whispers.
“Brought you a gift.” I reached my hand into my deep sweatpants pocket and pulled out the pieces of sketchbook paper.
I separated one from the others and pushed it her way first. It was the newest house sketch.
She immediately grinned and pointed out the owl. “Is that kind of owl something I could see here?”
I shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe. It’s a barn owl, I think they’re common?”
She whipped out her new phone, excitedly pulling up the search bar.
Our internet took a solid thirty seconds to load the search for ‘barn owls,’ and then when she tapped on an article titled Barn Owls - Everything You Need To Know, there was a slow spinning circle in the centre of the webpage as it loaded.
Eventually it popped up, and according to the geographic range, we were in luck.
“If you ever see one, you have to come get me,” she made me promise.
I put my hand over my heart. “I swear. We’ll see it together, Moonlight. Do you want to see the real gift now?”
Her grin widened. “There’s more?”
I grabbed the other three sketchbook pages, thumbing through them to check them one final time.
The corners were folded, but not harshly, and the paper had a slight wave to it. I’d carried them around a while, making tweaks, wanting to make sure the sketches were perfect.
“Yeah. These… uh…” I stared at them for a moment, a tightness in my chest as I wondered if maybe, this was a terrible idea.
I shoved them into her hands before I could back out.
She looked down at the first one and gasped.
It seemed like it was a good thing until a tear leaked down her cheek, and then I cursed. “Fuck, I’ll—”
My attempt to retrieve the art resulted in a feral little growl, and my omega frantically pushing herself back away from me. I blinked down the place she’d just been—which she was now about a foot back from.
Then back up at my omega with tear-shined eyes and an angry little pout.
Our bond was an eruption of hormones, and anything Crescent felt was a siren call to Sin, meaning I had about zero-point-five seconds before he burst in, hunting for my head.
“Do you… like them?” I asked.
It felt like a stupid question, but she’d cried. And then defended them with one of the most intense sounds I’d ever heard from her. But I was having trouble getting past the tears.
“They’re mine,” she whispered. “Forever. And they look exactly perfect.”
I slumped in relief.
As predicted, Sin slammed into the room. “What the hell is going on here?”
Crescent immediately lifted the sketches, struggling to hold all three in her hands to show them off, but I didn’t dare try and help.
They were all keys.
Not just any, but ones from her nest. Ones she’d had to give up—and her favourite ones of all, that still lived on her large keyring.
I’d memorized the curves and notches, drawing them out to be near-perfect representations. The library keys. The contraband room key. And the rut cage keys, both to the cage where Sin had claimed her, and the one she’d saved us from.
My racing heart calmed as I watched Sin scan the art, his annoyed expression softening. I don’t think he wanted to be hostile—he wouldn’t admit it, but we all knew his hormones were wrecking him right now.
“They’re pretty,” he admitted quietly. Sin crawled into the nest, leaning in to run his fingers down one of the pencil lines.
Of course, he didn’t get growled at for doing it.
God, I wanted sigma privileges.
I curled closer to Crescent, emotions feeling a little raw, tucking her head to my chest. Sin kissed her nose, then looked up at me assessingly.
“I’m not bringing you hash browns,” he stated. “But you can stay.”
Yes!
And by Sin’s grace, I absolutely did.
For a time, it was perfect. I don’t know how long passed, but all of a sudden he let out a snarl, and dragged Crescent away from me.
I froze, glancing between them. But there were hormones in the air.
A lot of them.
But this definitely explained a hell of a lot of the last week, because this was desert eclipse like it had never been.
The heat that had just hit their nest was definitely Sin’s.