Chapter 31
Wyatt
There’s no such thing as a good graveyard, but at least this one has a sense of humor. Maybe it’s the tiny windmills spinning above every other headstone. Maybe it’s the patchwork of cheap solar lights and plastic flamingos, or the persistent geese that treat the whole cemetery like a rest stop.
But mostly it’s the inscription on the granite slab I’ve come to see:
CHRISTOPHER B. WHITLOCK
Son, Brother, Wolf.
“Still faster than you, dipshit.”
I stand there for a while, hood up, my hands jammed into my pockets, staring at the words I picked out on the world’s worst day.
It’s raining—not dramatically, not even consistently, just enough to be irritating and ruin any chance at dignity if you try to wipe your nose.
I don’t have flowers. I do have a bottle of off-brand root beer from the gas station, which I figure is what he’d prefer anyway.
“Hey, Chris.” I keep my voice low. It’s early enough that the only witnesses are a pair of bored crows and a guy in the next row over who’s trying to light a cigarette in the drizzle, but it still feels like a place that should be quiet.
“It’s me. Again. No big news, unless you count total emotional annihilation as news.
Which, knowing you, you probably would.”
The words hang there, damp and stupid. I can’t look directly at the headstone, so I focus on the space just above it and the way the rain beads on the curved granite and then runs down like tears on a cartoon face.
“I know I should be here more.” I immediately regret it. “But, like, what would we even talk about? You were always better at the heavy stuff. I’m just here to… I don’t know, check in? Ask for advice? Not that you ever gave me any when you were alive.”
That’s a lie, but it feels better than the truth.
I uncap the root beer and pour a little out over the grass. It fizzes, hissing against the wet moss, and I imagine Chris laughing at me for being sentimental. I can hear him, even now: “Get a grip, Wyatt. If you’re gonna cry, at least do it with style.”
I crouch and rest my elbows on my thighs. The air smells like ozone and mud. I want to tell him everything, but I don’t know where to start. So I just talk.
“Ranier thinks he’s going to start a revolution with the Council. Bastion wants to run away on his motorcycle, or at least he did before this year’s Omega Selection Day. As for me? I let the best omega I’ve ever met walk out because I was too scared to fight for her.”
The rain picks up, drumming on my shoulders. I let it.
“And then there’s the blog. You’d love this part.
Turns out I’m an influencer, Chris. A real mover and shaker.
So much so that someone—probably Charlotte—hacked Royals Anonymous to ruin Everhart Pack for good.
All because I couldn’t let go of being the guy who knows everything about everyone and says nothing. Classic, right?”
I want to laugh, but the lump in my throat is the size of a brick.
“I don’t know what you want from me.” My voice is softer now. “I don’t even know what I want from me. Everyone around me was right. I’m just spinning my wheels. Wasting time until something explodes. Well, good news. Everything exploded.”
A gust of wind rattles the plastic flowers on the next grave over. The crows take off, screaming. I watch them go, then look back at Chris’s headstone.
“I keep waiting for you to tell me what to do,” I admit. “I keep thinking, if you were here, you’d have some plan, or a joke, or a way to make it all make sense. But you’re not here. And nobody’s coming to fix it.”
I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone. I thumb over to Royals Anonymous and scroll, watching the numbers go up on the last post. The whole city is obsessed with us. With Emery and her downfall. With me.
“It’s all noise, Chris. And it’s all mine.”
For a second, I think I hear him—just a flicker of memory, a ghost-echo in the rain. “So shut it off, idiot,” he’d say. “Just shut it off and go do something real.”
I stare at the phone. The battery is at three percent. A clear sign if I’ve ever seen one.
My hands don’t even shake as I delete every single post and meme I’ve ever posted. I delete the blog account right before my phone battery dies.
A weight is lifted from me as the screen goes dark. I smile up at Chris’s headstone. “Thank you, brother.”
I walk over to the river lining the cemetery. The water is brown, restless, and too shallow for secrets but deep enough for this. I wind up and hurl my phone as far as I can.
It arcs, tumbles, splashes. Gone.
I watch the ripples until they fade. Then I turn back to the headstone.
“Guess that’s it.”
No more hiding. No more running. If I fuck this up, at least I’ll know it’s my own fault.
I head back through the cemetery, lighter than when I arrived. As I reach the street, I feel for my phone before remembering it’s gone. No way to call, no way to text. The future is terrifyingly, exhilaratingly blank.
I start walking.
Time to find out what happens when I stop living like a punchline and start living for real.
The nice thing about showing up unannounced at your ex’s place is that it forces everyone to be honest. The downside is, sometimes the honesty is a slow, grinding kind—the kind that makes you wish you’d stayed home and read the comments section instead.
Charlotte’s house is the same kind of old as every house in this district: white-painted brick, four steps up from the sidewalk, with a postage-stamp yard and a tree that’s mostly dead.
The storm door is propped open by a stack of mail she’s never bothered to pick up.
I guess if you torch your reputation in every Council circle, bills don’t seem as urgent.
I ring the bell, mostly for the pleasure of hearing it echo through the thin walls. Charlotte answers faster than I expect. I guess the spy cams she set up are still working.
“Wyatt Whitlock,” she says, voice slick as butter and twice as likely to clog an artery. “Here to grovel, or just audit my recycling bin for incriminating evidence?”
She looks good. Or, more accurately, she looks curated. There’s no sign of surprise, only the faintest flick of her eyebrow.
“Neither.” I step past her. “I wanted to see if you got what you wanted.”
Charlotte invites me inside. I follow. She closes the door and then leans against it, arms folded, like she intends to keep me here against my will. “You mean destroying the Everhart pack? Oh, sweetie, that was just the icing.”
Her living room is immaculate. Every pillow is fluffed and every bookshelf organized by some private logic. There are no pictures of us. Or of anyone, for that matter. I take the guest chair, the one I always hated, and let the silence bloom.
“I don’t think you care about the icing,” I say. “I think you just wanted out.”
Charlotte sighs like I’m a fool who’s just figured out something remedial.
“Of course I wanted out. You think I liked being window dressing at fundraisers? Getting introduced as ‘the omega’ even when I was headlining the event?” Her eyes cut to me, sharp.
“It’s the same reason you run that blog, you know.
To feel like you exist outside of the script. ”
I nod, because she’s not wrong. Even if I’m changing that as of today.
“I just don’t get why you had to take everyone else down with you. Bastion’s still cleaning up your mess from before. You could have just… left.”
Charlotte smiles, sharp and white. “You never did understand me, Wyatt. If I’d just left, they would’ve replaced me by the end of the week. Probably with someone like Emery. You think I’m going to let my whole life’s work be erased by a press release?”
“No,” I admit. “But you didn’t have to nuke the world on your way out.”
She shrugs. “That’s where you and I differ. You always think there’s a way to walk away without casualties. I know better.”
Emery was the casualty today. And Bastion. And Ranier. Charlotte has no idea what she’s talking about.
Quiet settles between us like dust while I decide if it’s worth arguing her point.
Charlotte tilts her head. “Is this the part where you threaten me? Or beg me to retract all the posts?”
I shake my head. “No. They’re already gone, as is Royals Anonymous. I just wanted to see if you’re done.” It occurs to me that I never really actually accused her. I came here to see if she had done this, but she admitted it fully without recourse.
Charlotte laughs, a quick, brittle sound. “Done? I’ve been done since the day you and Bastion picked me up from that Council house. But you keep coming back, like a dog that never learns.”
She’s right about that, too.
I ask the one question that remains. “So why did you leak the draft? The one about Emery. What did you get out of that?”
Charlotte tilts her head, like she’s genuinely puzzled. “You mean, besides the chaos? I was just… accelerating the inevitable.”
Charlotte will never let go. This is affirmed with every word she speaks. Which is a shame, because there will always be a part of me that loved the girl she was when we were younger.
“Congratulations. You won.”
She gives a little bow, hair falling in a perfect curtain over her cheek. “Thank you.”
I look at her, really look, and realize I don’t feel anything. Not anger, not hurt, not even nostalgia. Just a weird, hollow pity, like seeing a mean kid at the playground who’s finally run out of people to bully.
I stand. “We’re done, then.”
Charlotte blocks the door with one hand, eyes narrowed. “That easy, huh? No threats, no promises?”
I meet her gaze. “Just… don’t come after us again. If you do, I’ll stop pretending we’re not the same and I’ll torch everything you’ve ever cared about. And believe me, I know what you care about.”
Charlotte considers, then moves her hand. Maybe this was what she wanted. The drama. “Fair enough.”
I’m almost out the door when she calls after me.
“You’re a coward, Whitlock,” she says, but there’s no heat in it. “Always were.”
I shrug. “Better than being a ghost.”
As I walk away, I realize I’m smiling. Not because I won, but because—for the first time in a long while—I don’t owe Charlotte a damn thing.
The sky is clearing as I hit the street. There’s a sense of weightlessness, of gravity gone optional. I almost want to call Bastion and tell him it’s done, but my phone is at the bottom of a river.
Instead, I head home. To whatever comes next. To my pack, if they’ll have me. To Emery, if I can ever figure out how to apologize.
The future is no longer a punchline. It’s simply a beginning… if we can put Everhart Pack back together.