Chapter 2: The Warning

(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 her."

"Then how..."

"I don't know how, Amara. I wasn't there for the exact moment his brain fell out of his skull. I just know it happened, and it's been happening for two years, and I should have told you sooner and I didn't, because I kept hoping it would blow up on its own before you had to find out."

"Two years." My voice came out flat. Foreign. "You've known each other for two years?"

"Not the whole two years. Maybe a year and a half, once it got serious. I told myself it wasn't my business to ruin whatever you two had going from three thousand miles away."

"We didn't have anything going. That's the whole point. I left."

"You left because you had to. That's not the same as not having anything."

I turned to the window. Rain smeared the glass into something that used to look like trees.

"How serious," I said.

"Amara"

"How serious, Maya."

"They're..." She exhaled through her teeth. "They're together. Living together, basically. Everyone assumes it's heading toward mating."

The word landed somewhere behind my ribs and stayed there, vibrating.

"Mating," I said.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. It's not your fault he's an idiot."

"I could still be sorry you had to find out in a garage."

"It's fine."

"It is extremely not fine, and you don't have to pretend it is in front of me specifically, because I have known you since we were five and I watched you eat a crayon on purpose that one time just to see what would happen."

"That was one time."

"It was formative. My point stands. You don't have to do the calm doctor voice with me."

I let out a breath that shook more than I wanted it to. "How did it start?"

"Does it matter?"

"I want to know exactly how badly I misjudged this."

Maya's hands tightened on the wheel. "She'd just gotten dumped by some guy from Riverside. Showed up to a bonfire crying, the whole dramatic performance. Damon went over to check on her. You know how he is, can't watch anyone hurting without trying to fix it."

"And it became something."

"It became something."

"How long after I left?"

"Does that actually help, knowing the timeline?"

"Yes."

"Amara."

"Yes, Maya. It helps. I need the facts. Facts I can work with. Feelings I can't do anything about yet."

She was quite a second, eyes on the road. "About six months."

Six months. I'd been six months into residency, still learning how to sleep standing up, still texting him memes at two in the morning that he sometimes answered and sometimes didn't. Six months, and he was already finding comfort in someone else's arms while I told myself distance was just a test the bond would pass.

"I sent him a message," I said quietly. "Around then. 'Happy moon, old friend.' He never answered."

"I didn't know that."

"Now you do."

We drove in silence for almost a full minute, which for Maya was practically a religious vow of silence.

"Say something," I said.

"I don't know what to say that isn't going to make you cry or make you want to commit a crime."

"Either is fine, honestly."

"She's not good for him, Amara. Everyone knows it. She's been through half the unmated males in this pack and a couple of the mated ones, depending which rumor you believe. She doesn't love him. She loves having the biggest wolf in the territory on her arm."

"That doesn't make it better."

"No. But it might make it temporary."

"Two years isn't temporary. Two years is a relationship. Two years is a whole life I wasn't in."

"You had a whole life too. A good one. Don't do the thing where his choices erase yours."

I didn't answer that, because she wasn't wrong, and because being right didn't make the ache in my chest sit down and behave.

"Can I ask you something?" I said instead.

"Always."

"Why didn't you call? Really. Not the 'I didn't want to ruin it long-distance' thing. The real reason."

Maya was quiet long enough that I knew she was deciding how honest to be.

"Because every time I almost did," she said finally, "I pictured you picking up the phone in some hospital hallway at three in the morning, completely wrecked already from a double shift, and I just, I couldn't do that to you. I kept telling myself I'd tell you in person. Where I could actually hug you after."

"That's..." I pressed the heel of my hand against one eye. "That's actually a good reason. I hate that it's a good reason."

"I know. I've had a year and a half to feel guilty about it, so believe me, I've examined it from every angle."

"Did you ever think about telling him to stop?"

"Telling Damon what to do has never once worked in the history of Damon."

A small, unwilling laugh escaped me. "Fair."

My parents' street came into view through the drizzle, the same crooked mailboxes, the same overgrown rose bushes swallowing Mrs. Patterson's whole front yard, the same blue-shuttered house at the end of the cul-de-sac that I'd pictured every single day for five years.

"Pull over," I said, two houses early.

"Amara, we're literally right there"

"Pull over, Maya. Please."

She did. Killed the engine. The rain tapped steady against the roof, filling up the silence where words should have gone.

"I need a second," I said. "Before I walk in there and have to be fine in front of my mother too."

"Take all the seconds you need."

I pressed both hands flat against my face and breathed until the shaking in my chest settled into something closer to still. Five years. I'd built an entire life out of the promise that coming back would mean something.

That he'd still be standing at the garage door the way he had the day I left, telling me to go be great and meaning come back to me underneath it.

"I waited five years," I said, mostly to myself.

Maya reached over and took my hand without a word.

"I turned down a paramedic who brought me coffee for three months straight. I turned down a resident who asked me out so many times HR had to step in. I said no to all of it because some stupid, hopeful part of me thought I was keeping something sacred."

"You were."

"Apparently he wasn't."

"Apparently not."

I wiped my face with the back of my hand and sat up straighter, because that was the only thing I knew how to do when the ground gave out, sit up straighter and keep moving.

"Okay," I said. "I'm okay. Let's go. My mom's probably already got her hand on the doorknob."

"Are you actually okay, or doctor-okay, which we both know means nothing?"

"Doctor-okay. For now. I'll be the other kind of okay later, probably at a very inconvenient time, like in the middle of dinner."

"I'll keep wine ready."

"Red or white?"

"Why not both."

She started the engine, and we pulled up to the house porch swing creaking in the wind, every window lit gold against the grey afternoon, my whole childhood waiting behind that door with absolutely no idea what I already knew.

I was halfway out of the car when my wolf stirred not at the house. Past it. Toward the trees that marked the edge of pack land, where something low and electric tugged at my ribs like a hook I thought I'd cut loose years ago.

He was close.

And for the first time since Maya said his name, I understood that knowing about Valerie and actually standing in the same territory as both of them were going to be two very different kinds of pain.