Chapter 65 - Ryder
Sixty-Five
RYDER
Returning to camp without Carina feels meaningless.
Today didn’t go how it should have. Carina should be here, with me. Conan should be alive and sitting with Holly, rather than resting dead on a pyre with everyone surrounding him.
Few look up at my approach. I slide through the crowd until pausing beside Leah and Xander. Xander looks to my right, seeking the mate who’s meant to be there, but I shake my head, telling him without words what he and everyone else is smart enough to put together.
Then I step towards my friend, my packmate. The second of us lost this week. Grief feels so heavy—and I’ve barely had time to process Dad’s passing let alone Conan’s. I rest my hand over his chest, over the mark that took him from us.
“Go to the Otherworld in peace. Thank you for your service. Thank you for everything, Conan. One day, we’ll run together again.”
And then I step back so Amos, waiting nearby with a torch, can set fire to his body and pave the way to the afterlife—wherever that may be for our kind.
The burning lasts half the night, with most of us remaining until the end. Those with pups wander away over time, until eventually, only Holly, the elders, Conan’s father, Xander, and I remain.
When Marissa and Amos leads Conan’s father away, Xander goes to check on Leah. Holly disappears into the trees to be alone, but I remain until the last stick is ash.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to the empty spot, the grass burned from Conan’s death.
Right beside the other scorch marks from Dad.
Entering my cabin is worse than being at the fire, because it’s tainted so strongly of Carina.
Tainted. A negative connotation, but fuck…it’s the closest thing to the truth. Carina tainted my home with her smiles and jokes and water magick and sweet scent and then ruined everything by refusing to come back and refresh it.
The door barely shuts, cutting off the outdoors scent, when I grab the first thing I see: that fucking chair where she curled up on the first night.
The place I intended to leave her and should have.
Instead, she ended up in my nest because there was no place more right for her, and that was the beginning of the end.
It smells like her. But she’s not here.
So neither should it.
Gripping the back of the chair, I swing it at the nearest wall with enough force that the aged wood splinters and cracks. The back goes one way, the legs another, landing in a crumbling pile of my dismay and regret.
I destroyed something she used, and now it’s forever gone. I lost a piece of her that my cabin should have clung to. She’s not here, so it doesn’t matter.
I face the bed, where her scent is the most potent.
She slept in it. We slept in there. Unknowingly, I once designed it for her…
and she doesn’t want it. Bonded, there will be no other female—not that I want another.
My life begins and ends with Carina, so what’s the fucking point in having a place to rest?
Claws shed; I yank off the top pelt and toss it to the side. Then I grab the second layer and throw it into the fireplace, watching with sick pleasure as the flames start eating it. It’s too large for the small fire, which pisses me off even more.
Annoyed, I turn for the next thing, and my gaze zeroes in on my chest—and her bag of clothes beside it.
With the rage of a dozen wolves, I grab the chest and yank everything from it.
What she didn’t wear got tainted by what she did, so they all have to go.
I won’t fucking stand for them being in here.
With a growl my wolf contributes to, I slam the chest to the ground, breaking the lid and spiling everything out onto the floor.
As I’m reaching for her bag, the door flies open. Only the gust of air and the fresh scent erasing more of my mate’s makes me realize someone’s entering. I’d growl, annoyed over the interruption, except the destruction of this place consumes me.
“Ryder!” Two voices simultaneously cry out, but they’re echoed through the blood racing through my ears.
Another one shouts and then two arms band around my waist, yanking me away from the bag while smaller hands, female hands, grab it from me.
“Let me go, fuckin’ asshole!” I shove at my beta, twisting my body until getting free. “This has nothing to do with you.”
“You’re waking up the goddamn camp. This isn’t like you.”
Like me? Of course not. The me everyone knows is the man I’ve been. That man I’ve become is tainted by a rejected bond.
It’s like when Dad lost Mom to death and had to live without her. He, at least, had the knowledge they’d be reunited eventually. This feels like Carina died, except she’s alive and physically well—and will eventually be emotionally well, too. She just doesn’t want me.
Leah takes the bag away, and I snap at her for daring to keep my mate’s items from me. She doesn’t have any right to decide how I get rid of her.
“Get the fuck out. Both of you. That’s an order from your Alpha.”
Xander releases me but simply slides between me and Leah. “Respectfully, fuck you. Calm the hell down and tell us what happened instead of destroying the place.”
Leah crosses the room to tug out the half-burnt fur from the fire. She stomps on the smoldering flames with a frown before taking in the destroyed chair, the dumped clothing, and the partially torn nest.
“Oh, Ryder.”
“She’s gone. That’s all there is to it. Nothing in here is important.”
She’s gone.
She’s gone.
She’s…gone.
Carina isn’t here.
Forced to stop my rampage, the fact imbeds deeply into my mind until it’s my entire reality. Carina needs time, but time can be forever. She’s scared of her future with Sloane, and being who she is, she’ll never risk the pack’s safety.
Even to be with me.
“She’s gone,” I repeat, voice no louder than the softly flicking flames across the room. My steps stagger towards Leah, towards Carina’s clothing, towards my nest—all things that I can’t destroy because they’re all I’ll have of her.
Leah grasps my hand and pulls me into the second chair, one I once sat in while Carina ate breakfast. It, too, is a memory that has me blinking it away, staring instead at the fire my two packmates position themselves in front of. Xander remains standing while Leah kneels in view.
“She’ll come back,” she murmurs. “I feel it.”
“She won’t. You didn’t see her face.”
“And you didn’t see hers,” Xander cuts in. “In the cells, this morning…she cares for you.”
“Emotions aren’t always enough. She wants to become a High Priestess.
” Or at least claims to, not that I believe it.
“She’s terrified of her powers and claims to need her kind more than anything or anyone else—me included.
Twilight Grove only got half of what they wanted, so they’ll eventually return, and when they do, she wants to keep us out of it. ”
“That’s bullshit,” Leah exclaims, earning a glance from both Xander and me. It’s so rare Leah curses. “We’d protect her.”
“She’s scared of us losing. It’s why she came back in the first place. It’s why she agreed to come at all. She’s always done right by us.”
Even when I fucked up.
Leah shuffles forward until she’s close enough to knock against my knee. “Pouting isn’t a good look on you, Alpha. You and I both know when they come back, whether she’s here or there, you’ll fight to protect her.”
Damn right. My entire future is now limited to the barrier around the town of Banff, the closest to her I’ll get.
“It’s a hard life,” Xander murmurs. “Wanting someone who doesn’t want you.” Only because Leah’s back is to him does she not notice his stare. After a few seconds, his eyes lift to me, understanding passing between us.
“Differing species, Dad’s health, the pack’s well-being—all reasons I never intended to complete the bond.
The more time I spent around her, the more I found myself wanting her—and not because of the connection.
When I began falling for her, I knew Twilight Grove’s arrival would ruin me in ways I’d never comprehend.
When she took Dad’s Darkness, it gave me the chance to save her life.
If she stayed, there’d be nothing preventing me from hiding her.
She came back, though—because of course she did. That was the end for us.”
“Sounds like the beginning, actually.” Leah slides until she’s seated rather than on her knees. “Xander caught me up on everything that happened. Can’t believe she’s a shifter.”
“Part-shifter,” I correct. “She doesn’t appear to have the ability. It’s only the DNA.”
And some of the instincts
And the ability to apparently be a n?kak?stis.
“Her and I can hang out while you’re all running around on four legs. Finally, someone my age and not one of the elders.”
Leah glows a bit at that. I suppose it’d be difficult learning that a woman, a witch of all people, developed shifting abilities before the one born from two healthy shifters herself.
Her excitement kills me nearly as much as Carina’s absence.
She’s not only absent from my life, but those who’ve come to consider her a friend.
“But for real,” Leah’s tone flattens, “she doesn’t even want to be a High Priestess. She sounds scared and is panicking, doing what she thinks she should by hiding from all the potential futures. Give it time, and she’ll come back when she realizes it isn’t what she wants anymore.”
“The Darkness apparently talks to her.”
Xander grimaces. “It’d explain her behaviours this morning.”
“Apparently it’s begging her to kill again. Urging her to be stronger.”
“She’s already strong.” Leah rests a hand over mine. “She needs to realize she can learn to control it before it takes her over. From Xander’s story, it doesn’t sound like every Dark witch is evil.”
Archer is completely Dark yet chose his own path today by siding with us. And he isn’t the only example she gave.
“She also has a friend. Half-witch, half-vampire. They believe her vampire side reins in the Darkness, since they’re Dark creatures, but what if it’s Harlow herself choosing not to be evil?” A theory to present one day, if given the chance.
“Exactly.” Leah taps my hand before taking it back. “Once realizing she’s strong enough to control it, she’ll come back.”
“Yeah? How long do you think that’d take?”
“Forever if you don’t clean this place up.” Leah scans the room, her nose scrunching. “I wouldn’t come back if I learned my mate’s been trashing our cabin, and believe me, Ryder, I will stalk that barrier until I’m able to tell her myself, just to see you clean.”
With my mate a distance away and one of my best friends dead, it physically pains me to feel any level of happiness or amusement, but fuck me, I laugh for the first time in days.
“You’re right.” Swiping a hand over my hair, I get to my feet and start collecting my clothes to replace them in the chest. “You’re both right. Thanks.”
A heavy hand slaps me on my shoulder before he starts scooping up the scattered debris from the broken chair. “Thank us by bringing her home. Seriously, Ryder, I’ll toss myself off a mountain before putting up with your moody ass for the next fifty years.”
For the second time today, I laugh.