What The Alpha Lost

(Amara's POV) "He's not alone anymore." Three words. I'd diagnosed terminal illness with a steadier voice than Maya used to say them. "Okay," I said. "Who." "Does it matter who?" "Maya." "It matters that you breathe first. You're doing the thing where you go very calm and very scary, like you're about to deliver a diagnosis instead of having a feeling." "I'm having a feeling. This is what I feel like. Who." She pulled onto the main road before she answered, like she needed both hands and her full attention somewhere other than my face. "Valerie Cross." The name landed like a slap I'd been expecting and still didn't manage to brace for. "Valerie," I repeated. "As in the Valerie who poured a drink on my head at Lydia's bonfire and called it an accident? That Valerie?" "That Valerie." "Valerie who told the entire junior class I slept with Mr. Doyle for a grade?" "The one and only." "That doesn't make sense. Damon hated her. He used to call her" "I know what he used to call

(Damon's POV) "You're not listening to me." "I'm listening." "You're not. Your face does this thing when you're not listening. It goes sort of slack, like a dog that heard a word it recognized but not the sentence around it." "That's oddly specific." "I've had two years to study it." Valerie dropped onto the couch beside me, tucking her legs underneath her, close enough that her perfume crowded out every other smell in the room. "I was saying the bonfire's tomorrow. Lydia wants us there early, apparently there's some kind of homecoming thing." "What homecoming thing?" "I don't know, some pack healer's daughter finally finished her fancy city degree. Everyone's very excited." She rolled her eyes in a way that was supposed to look bored and instead looked like something sharper underneath. "Anyway. Early. Seven." I didn't answer right away. Something had gone tight behind my sternum, a sensation I didn't have a name for yet, like a held breath I hadn't noticed I was holding. "Da

(Amara's POV) I didn't sleep. I lay in my childhood bed, staring at the same ceiling I'd memorized at sixteen, and replayed it on a loop until the words lost their shape. No one. Two syllables, and somehow they'd undone five years of careful, deliberate healing in under a second. Around three in the morning I gave up pretending and went downstairs for water I didn't actually want, just an excuse to move. Maya was still on the couch, she'd insisted on staying over, claiming she didn't trust me alone on my first night back, which we both knew was really about not trusting Damon to stay away. "You're awake," she said, not opening her eyes. "How can you tell?" "You walk differently when you're not sleeping. Heavier. Like your feet are mad at the floor." She sat up, haired a purple-streaked disaster, and patted the cushion beside her. "Come here." I sat. She pulled a blanket over both of us without asking. "I keep hearing it," I said. "'No one.' Over and over." "I know." "I don't

(Amara's POV) My mother's healing circle had somehow evolved, in five years, from six women trading tea and gossip into a full pack gathering with a potluck table and a bonfire that rivaled the one from my homecoming. I didn't want to go. I'd gone anyway, because hiding felt like exactly the thing Valerie wanted me to do. "You look like you're preparing for battle," Maya said, eyeing the dish in my hands. "It's a potluck, Amara, not a war council." "I brought a casserole." "You brought a casserole like it's a weapon." "Maybe it is. My mother's recipe. The secret ingredient is spite." Maya laughed, and for about forty minutes it actually worked, I talked to people I hadn't seen in years, let myself enjoy the fire and the noise and the particular comfort of being surrounded by a pack that, mostly, still seemed glad I'd come home. "Your mom's circle has gotten huge," I said, watching a dozen women trade plates and gossip near the dessert table. "This used to be, what, six people an

(Damon's POV) I didn't plan to shift. My body made the decision before I did, the way it had been doing more and more lately, my bones rearranging in a rush of heat the second my feet cleared the edge of the tree line, like my wolf had been waiting all night for exactly this excuse. Then I was running. Not toward anything. Away from the dying fire, from the words still sitting rancid in my mouth, from the particular silence that settles into a clearing after you've said something you can't take back. My paws tore up soft ground. Pine needles, ferns, the dark ribbon of the creek, all of it blurring past, meaningless. I love Valerie, my own voice echoed back at me, mocking, hollow. Liar, something else answered, lower, older, a voice I'd been trying not to listen to for two years. I ran until the burn in my lungs drowned out both of them. I don't know how far I'd go when the scent hit me. Not a trail. Not some faded echo carried on the wind from half a mile off. Fresh. Close. Unm