Page 30 of Reaper's Pack

“Gunnar.” Knox’s tone left no room for more excuses. He had given me enough rope, but if I carried on further, I’d hang myself. Clearing my throat, I ripped my piece of cooked pork flesh in half, bringing the smaller bit to my mouth—where it stayed, just about touching my lips but never passing through. Not even its tantalizing scent could tempt me; my throat had been constricted and my mouth painfully dry since yesterday. No food could fix that. Not the pain in my chest nor the throb in my head.

“She goes into the city when she leaves,” I said tersely. When I finally met my alpha’s black gaze, I faltered, literally unable to refuse him any more than I already had. “Her first stop is a… school.”

Porcelain clattered across the kitchen; even with his back to us, Declan was an open book, his fist around a white mug, his free hand jabbing at the buttons on the new coffee maker. He didn’t approve of this, none of it, and that hadn’t mattered to me yesterday.

It did today.

I had no fucking clue as to why.

But it was driving me insane.

“A human school?” Knox asked, leaning back just enough to cross his burly arms. When I nodded, he arched his scarred brow. “Like the one from that television show?”

“No. The humans were younger. Much younger.” Little round-faced cherubs, some bright-eyed, others shuffling along and weighed down by sleep, all escorted onto the grounds by their parents. I had never considered fathering pups of my own, but watching her watch them had stirred something strange in me. Unwelcome. Heartfelt.

Yearning.

Not my finest moment, to be certain.

“Did she leave the celestial plane?”

“No. She stayed hidden.” Just as I had stayed hidden, always downwind from her, utilizing bushes and buildings and cars to my advantage throughout the morning. At first, I’d hidden because I knew I had to, but as time dragged on and it all unfolded, I did so because it was painfully obvious I had intruded on a private moment, something I both longed to fix for her and had no desire to become involved with.

Hazel had arrived at the school, a small kindergarten facility—according to the sign—in the downtown core, nothing more than a single-story house surrounded by a chain-link fence. Juvenile, soft colors splashed the walls. Flowers bloomed in well-kept boxes beneath windows and along pathways. Metal structures suggested the little ones were let out to play at some point, but our reaper lingered by the front door, standing on the big, two-toned circle at the entrance, waiting. Initially, I hadn’t understood what the fuck she was even doing there—and then, from my little hiding spot, I watched her come alive with the arrival of the children. Her whole gloomy demeanor brightened, her smile so wide that it hurt me.

“And what did she do?” Knox asked. I shook my head and dropped my bacon back onto my plate, the mound of food nowhere near as appetizing as past meals.

“She just… watched them.” With that painfully stretched smile, she hovered in the celestial plane, watching as they trudged to the school. Some of the parents waited at the gate. Others walked their young in, hand in hand. The yard filled with chatter, the surge sudden and chaotic. Hazel took them all in almost frantically, as if not wanting to miss a thing, laughing at the childish antics that had made me roll my eyes—reaching out for unbuttoned jackets and unlaced shoes, her hand sliding through the child.

Almost like she wanted to fix them.

“And then?”

I said nothing, throat like sandpaper, unable to meet my alpha’s eye.

“Gunnar.”

“And then…” Fuck, I’d never forget it, the way her expression crumpled as the yard cleared, her chin wobbling, her arms limp at her side. “And then she cried.”

Declan whirled around, panic and rage ripping through our pack bond. “What?”

“She cried,” I said. Not that I needed to repeat anything—Declan had heard me. Knox too. But I had no intention of clarifying or adding any extra detail. They didn’t need to know that Hazel’s knees gave out, that she didn’t exactly sob, but the tears fell and fell and fell, splattering to the ground yet not one leaving a mark on the cement.

Distress pulsed along our bond now, from me and from Declan, and I tried—and failed—to rein my feelings back in as Knox glanced between us with a heavy sigh.

But I couldn’t help it.

I’d hated watching her cry. Every physical whisper of sorrow across her features, from her crinkled brow to her trembling hands, touched me, made me palpably upset—so much so that I’d had to fight my instincts to pad straight to her side, exposing myself, and do whatever I had in my fucking power to make it all better.

While I still wasn’t completely certain, I’d suspected for weeks now that the connection between us three and Hazel went deeper than that of a reaper and hellhound pack. We hadn’t discussed it, but there could very well be an element of fate at play here; the urge to comfort someone outside of my pack had never struck me so fiercely before.

I didn’t know what to make of that.

And there was nothing I despised more than to be out of control—physically, mentally, and, now, for the first time, emotionally.

Knox pushed his bowl away, elbows on the island as he said, “Did she stay at the school?”

“No, once the children went inside, she walked for a little while through the city,” I told him, still feeling like I was collapsing in on myself like a dying star, Hazel’s teary face refusing to leave my mind’s eye. “She ended up at a food court inside a, er, mall, where she sat and watched the humans.” Her focus on them had been almost unnerving, studying them with the same intensity that I and the others did when we watched humans on television. “And then…” Fuck. “And then she cried again, then she came back here.”

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