Chapter 15 - Bryce
The next morning, I woke up feeling groggy and heavy, as if the toll of the day before had truly taken a hit. Curled up in a ball on the double bed in the guest room, Cassie at my side, I blinked up at the window, where the curtains were open. Sunlight streamed through, bright and blinding.
With a heavy heart, I dragged myself to the kitchen.
Life didn’t stop just because my heart was broken, but I knew I couldn’t stay in Honeycreek.
I had been a fool to think I could, to trust Mason once more.
I knew I should have kept my distance, but I had fallen back into a trap I had set for myself.
I had returned to Mason in body and trust—only to be left by him once again.
I wanted to have been held, to be comforted, for him to say he would never leave my side again. The wolf inside me howled for her alpha, while the other part of me was just angry and exhausted.
But it was my life.
Every time I had fallen down, it had been me to get myself back up. I had never sat around waiting for someone else to scrape me off the floor. I had always known that I couldn’t count on Mason—on anyone like him, on anyone in the pack, or even in this town, except for June.
The thought of leaving her behind gutted me, but what could I do?
Now that Mason knew for sure he had a daughter, would he come looking for me?
Part of me thought no, because he hadn’t stayed when I’d asked him to yesterday.
Maybe his running away was the biggest message I needed to see: he didn’t want to be a part of Cassie’s life, or mine.
This was my life.
I paced the kitchen, knowing I couldn’t go to Cassie unless I had a plan.
I had no car, but—Jackson was out. Part of me wondered why he hadn’t come home if he had found out that Mason knew.
Maybe Jackson didn’t know. Maybe Mason had fled and isolated, gone to the others in the pack, talked about me, laughed.
She was just the fat bitch of the town. You always need one, but you didn’t need her in your life, Mason.
In my panic, my mind conjured a thousand terrible things they would all have said.
Through the walls, I felt as though the whole pack watched me, out of sight to me, but I could feel it. I felt watched.
Turning my back on the kitchen windows, I walked back upstairs, gently waking my daughter up. I was already moving by the time she grumbled and sleepily blinked awake.
“Mommy?” she asked, her voice thick with sleep.
“I’m sorry to wake you, baby, but we have to go, okay?” I kept my voice as calm as I could. She didn’t need a panicked mom; she needed a leader. Whatever strength I had left, I maintained it for Cassie.
“Where are we going? Are we going out with the wolf man?”
“No,” I told her, giving her a weary smile.
“We’re…” I looked around for her backpack and my duffel bag.
Everything else could be left behind for now.
Just some clothes, essentials, and something to keep Cassie distracted—yeah, that was all I needed.
“We’re going on a little trip back to White Bay.
I know you’ve been… you’ve been…” My speech trailed off as I hunted the room, tossing things into her backpack, half-distracted. “You’ve been missing it, right?”
“I have, but, well, I like it here. Aunty June was teaching me how to spot constipation.”
I halted. “Spot what?”
“The stars. She said they make patterns.”
Her misspeak was a brief reprieve in a moment of confusion, and I loosened a laugh. It slowed me down, got me over to the bed to sit on the edge with her. I was trying to plan, think ahead, and comfort her, all while needing to be hurried to pack up before Mason tried to come here to speak to me.
As if he would, I thought.
But… for his own ego, I thought perhaps he might.
Shutting down that worry, I focused on my daughter’s confusion. Smoothing out the wrinkle in her brow with my thumb, I gave her a small smile that I knew didn’t look convincing enough. Cassie was sharp, always had been, and always saw through my attempts to mask the harsher parts of her life.
“Constellations,” I corrected her finally, blinking back into focus and moving around the room again. “And I know you like Aunty June, but she can come visit us, okay?”
I didn’t know if that was entirely true yet. I needed to say whatever I had to in order to get her to move with me.
“Mommy, where did the wolf man go?” Her voice was so quiet that it stopped me in my tracks while bundling some of her t-shirts into her backpack.
I froze. If this is how you hate me, then God, Bryce, hate me forever. His words from the cave sent a shudder through me. Except I couldn’t—I couldn’t let him in only to be abandoned again. I shook it off.
“He’s… he’s busy,” I answered.
I turned to Cassie again, finding her large, blue eyes widened and fixed on me. There was a sad pull to her mouth when she looked at her bag in my hands, and then at me. How could she have found peace in this place after only a week when I’d raised her in White Bay all her life?
Because a part of her knows she’s home, where her parents are.
Where her family is. I tampered down that other voice in my head, ignored the guilt of taking her away from her uncle, and her newfound aunt, and the life I had already uprooted her to come to.
More shame hit me. I had let Mason stay in her life, be around her.
I didn’t stop him from starting to bond with her, and now Cassie would go through the very thing I had feared: a father who did not want her.
I should have known better; now, my daughter would face the consequences, too.
But Mason was out of my life for good—I’d never have to see him again, see Honeycreek again, and I’d protect Cassie with my life. It was funny how I’d made those same promises the first time I had left town.
“Will he come to visit us, too, when Uncle Jackson comes? He said he would look after us.”
And he did the exact opposite, I thought bitterly, turning away from my daughter so she wouldn’t see the truth in my eyes.
“Maybe,” I said, non-committal. Tears stung my eyes, and I sniffed.
“Hey, Cassie, you want to play a game? In this backpack, I want you to pack everything you see of yours that’s green or purple, okay?
Comics, a game, clothes, and shoes. Anything you can.
When you run out of space, put it in my bag, all right? ”
Cassie stared at me as if she knew what I was doing, and the look was so like Mason’s, one of contempt, that it floored me. Over and over, I realized just how much of him in her there was. A small, scared part wondered if I was doing the wrong thing.
No, I resolved. The wrong thing would be staying and only letting Mason hurt us again.
“Sure, Mommy,” Cassie eventually said, sliding off the bed and rubbing at her sleep-heavy eyes. “But I’ll miss it here.”
“I know, baby,” I whispered. A part of me might miss it, too.
***
Less than half an hour later, I was in the car with Cassie, a couple of our bags packed and thrown in the trunk. If Jackson was truly out with a girl, then he wouldn’t miss his car, and I tried not to feel extra guilt for using it to drive away from him once again.
God, I hated Mason for this.
Once again, he was pushing me away from not just him but a life. My brother, my best friend, my daughter’s peace.
I told myself I’m just borrowing the car, trying to ease my breathing as I pulled out of the pack compound.
I wanted to search the shadows for them—for those ever-evasive wolves that melted into the woods so easily, or merged with the townfolk, always watching.
I convinced myself they’d always be waiting to say something else to me.
My knuckles were white with how hard I gripped the steering wheel as I turned onto Main Street, hoping nobody would see me. There was a turn-off for the woods up ahead. I’d cut through there, take the road through the trees, and be back on the highway and headed towards White Bay soon enough.
The damage to my former home had been awful, and I knew the wreckage wouldn’t have gotten any better with me being gone, but I could fix it up.
“We couldn’t stay in Uncle Jackson’s forever, right?
” I said aloud, hoping to swing Cassie to my side.
She was looking out of the window, her knees pulled to her chest. I noticed they were dirty, and I wondered if she and June had ventured into the woods at some point yesterday while I’d been with Mason in the cave.
If the woods felt like home to her as they had done for me the day before.
That was it, I deduced. The run through the woods.
It had loosened me up, made me think Mason was a good guy.
I’d seen him be kind, stand up for me, do things he would never have dreamed of doing in years past. But he had ruined the slowly built, new image I had of him by doing the very thing I knew he was capable of.
My heart ached at the soul-crushing rejection. Again.
Something in me tightened, and I fought back tears as I passed the museum.
I thought of June and swore a silent apology and promise to her in my head.
It wouldn’t be total silence, not like last time.
She knew the situation; she’d keep me safe from Mason if he pressed her. But it shouldn’t be her burden to bear.
It shouldn’t have been anyone’s but my own.
That was when the striking thought hit me, and I squealed on the street, pulling up at a red light I hadn’t seen.
Jackson was up ahead, completely lost in his own world, head bent to look at his phone.
He didn’t see me or his car. Cassie was too busy staring out of her own window to notice, and I didn’t alert her in fear of our escape being stalled.
I felt terrible, and I wondered if this guilt and anger combination would ever ease.
As I looked at my brother, I noticed how much tension was on his face.
Did he know that Mason knew? I couldn’t help questioning it again. And then another thought hit me, hard enough to make me gasp.
Had he stayed out the night before because he was angry with me?
He’d always told me that Mason would have needed to know one day about Cassie, that sooner or later, I’d needed to face up to that conversation, whether it came from Mason somehow finding out, or Cassie growing old enough to find out herself.
You can’t have me lie to him, Bryce, he’d said the night I left.
Please. Please, Jackson. Don’t hate him for what’s happened.
Both he and I had a part in this. If you hate him for it, then hate me too, for choosing that.
I… I love him, but I can’t be in his life.
You’ll visit us whenever you want to, just please—please.
As your sister, I’m begging you. He can never know. Not from you.
Jackson smiled sadly, helping me load my bags into the trunk of his car.
Now, his warning had caught up to me, and I’d put him right in the middle of it, forcing him to choose between his loyalty to his alpha and his sister.
Family didn’t always win over the pack, but I had begged Jackson not to make that choice.
He knew how the pack treated me, and he’d sworn to make them all better, to change them—to change Mason.
I could only hope he could still do that one day.
The light turned green, and I peeled away, passing Jackson with my breath held, but he still never looked up. If he sensed me, he didn’t show it. As I passed, I noticed bruising on his face. Beneath his eye, his jaw, and the corner of his mouth. I knew, then, that he knew that Mason had found out.
Dread crept through me at the thought of Mason hurtling for Jackson, both of them blaming one another. God, what had I done?
I floored the accelerator, trying to turn the town into a mere speck in the rearview mirror.
“Mommy, I didn’t get to say goodbye.” Cassie sniffed, looking at me. “June was going to take me to the park today.”
“I’m sorry, baby.” I smoothed down her hastily braided hair. “Maybe she can take you to the beach in White Bay.”
“I hate the beach,” she mumbled. “The sand gets everywhere.”
I couldn’t answer or do anything except hold my tears back fiercely as I nodded, keeping my eyes on the road.
Slowly, asphalt became the forest floor, and I turned onto the forest cut-through.
The dread I’d felt seeing my brother’s bruised face only deepened.
It was an uncomfortable gnawing in my gut, a pool of unease. Something was wrong.
I scanned the area as I drove faster, keeping an eye out. Was Mason there, watching me from the depths of the trees? Was he a wolf or a man?
But the shadows suddenly falling over the car were neither of those things.
One moment, I was staring at the woods, noting a sign that read the highway was a couple of miles ahead through the woods, and the next moment, an ifrit hit the windshield, shadowy palms smacking the glass as fire erupted behind it.
But it wasn’t just one. Surrounding us, more ifrit appeared, and I jerked the wheel as they all came hurtling towards me.
The last thing I heard was Cassie screaming as I lost control of the wheel, and a tree trunk was suddenly in my view. I slammed into it a moment before everything went dark.