Page 201 of Drown My Sorrow

Beau lays across the pillows and curls around us. I glance up, feeling the complete pack and find Kelly standing at the end of the bed.

“Please?” I whisper and hold out a hand. He crawls up, stopping to lie with his head against my belly. Gael crawls up on Keagan and collapses there, and Ezy shuts the bedroom door and curls up on Shale’s other side.

It’s a very full bed, but it works, and, for the first time in a long time, I actually feel safe.

The bonds that have been quiet and missing open slowly, unfurling like a flower. The love, relief, and happiness in each of our hearts reaches me. Now, it’s perfect.

I don’t know which alpha starts it, but he starts to purr. More rumbling sounds are added until the room is almost vibrating with low rumbles. I lay there and add my own little purr to the symphony.

And that’s how we fall asleep, barricaded in a bedroom of a house that isn’t ours on an island that hates us, exhausted, sore, but full of joy just to be together again.

Thenextday,mybody has stiffened, and the pain is unimaginable. When I’m not sleeping, I’m trying not to whimper as I’m being shuffled from the hot shower and bath back to the bed with heat bags and painkillers.

I don’t ask what happened to Typhor, I already know. He’s dead, and, to be honest, I am relieved.

But we don’t talk about anything else either. I know they are waiting for me to improve enough that we can leave. It takes another two days, but with their attentive doctoring, I manage to improve enough to attempt the plane ride off this island.

Kelly had held my hand as we looked at the two houses just before we’d left.

“Is there anything that you want or need?”

Beau and Shale had already removed most of everything, including my box of newspaper cuttings, but I’d gone inside and found the small, hidden velvet bag with my first oracle card set.

I held out the deck to Kelly.

“I painted this deck when I was nineteen, I think. Take one.”

He reaches out and takes one and turns it over. There are two women on either side of an image of him. One with dark hair, one with golden. And behind them are two versions of Raider. In gold is painted a single word: blood.

Kelly breaks out into goosebumps.

“Past. Take another.”

He reaches out and licks his lips. There is a circle divided by six. A golden sun, an ocean, a surfboard, and, on the other side, a skull, a set of brass knuckles, and a killer clown laughing. Family is written in a circle around a tiny golden shell in the middle of all those pieces.

Now I break out in goosebumps. I don’t even remember drawing those.

“Last one. Future.”

Kelly reaches out and turns the card over. I half expect to see the city or Alpha Labels, but instead, I see a sandy beach and a sunset. The word is written is glittery blue pen, and it simply reads: home.

“I believe you.” Kelly swallows hard and looks at me, his expression open and honest. “I don’t know how you do it. I don’t think I want to know, but I believe in you and your gift,” Kelly says and pulls me into a hug.

I wrap my arms around him and hang on. He believes in me. That means more than I can say.

“I shouldn’t have been so dismissive. There is so much that we don’t understand. I was such an ass to you.”

I swallow hard, trying to find the words. “Let’s go, then. There is nothing left for me here. Let’s start over.”

I think back to the cave I’ve had so many of my heats in. The times I struggled. Being afraid and terrified. The last time I saw my mother. The last time I hugged her and had family.

But, no, that’s wrong, I have family again. I’m not alone.

Kelly turns and helps me into the car. When he sees the guys who had tormented me and Nat, he pulls over and looks at me. He can feel through the bond my sudden apprehension.

“They the guys?”

I nod my head tightly.

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