Page 128 of The Badger in His Burrow

Gregory Crane had been hit on the back of the head while coveringtheseroses. The Distant Drums—the purple ones with gold centers that I’d admired when I first arrived. This was where he’d been when they hit him, where he’d fallen, unconscious or groggy, before they dragged him to his death.

No wonder Elliot hadn’t been able to finish covering the roses.

“I can do them later,” I told him, rubbing his back. “If you want me to.”

He nodded against the side of my neck.

“This is where they attacked him,” he said, then, the words barely audible, even to my wolf-shifter ears. His fingernails rasped a little against the smooth fabric of my parka, unable to make fists in the stiff-slick fabric. “Right here,” he repeated. “By his favorite roses.” His voice shook as he spoke.

I didn’t say anything—not only did I not know what to say, but I didn’t think he wanted me to. This wasn’t about me.

His whole body shuddered, and I couldn’t tell how much was grief, how much horror, and how much cold—since he had been sitting outside in a t-shirt and flannel for I didn’t know how long in sub-freezing temperatures. “They dragged him into the house,” he whispered. “Down the hall and into the office, where there were exposed beams.” There were a few of them in the living room, as well, but the ceiling was higher, vaulted, the far wall all windows. I hadn’t been in Gregory’s office—Elliot kept the door closed. I assumed they must have been more accessible than the ones in the living room.

I wondered how they knew where they were going. If one of them had scoped it out while the others snuck up on Gregory or if any of them had been in the house before for some reason. Not that it really mattered.

Elliot shuddered again, and when he spoke, his voice was thick with tears, shaking and fractured. “Th-they put the belt over the beam and p-put him in it. Let him su-suffocate.” I held him tighter, and he buried his face against my neck, the sobs coming again, heavy and broken.

My chest ached for him—I had no idea what this kind of loss felt like, and I didn’t particularly ever want to find out. But holding him as he sobbed, while I could do nothing to ease the pain of his grief, was torture. I wasn’t about to complain, but as I knelt on the cold ground where, a year before, Elliot’s father had bled into the dirt in his last hours of life, I realized that what I felt for Elliot was more than care, more than affection, more than lust.

I loved him.

His heartache cracked my chest, his grief clenched in my stomach, and the sobs that shook him tightened my lungs. I would have given anything, in that moment, to take it from him, entirely if I could have. I wished his pain my own—not to be shared, but carried.

But grief and pain do not work that way, and so I held him, wishing I had more power than I actually did to change the world.

Once I gotElliot settled inside on the couch with a glass of whiskey and manged to put some frozen pizzas—vegan for me, of course—in the oven, I put on my gloves and parka and went back outside in the dark to finish bundling the remaining few roses.

It had gotten colder, the temperature dropping quickly once the sun set, and my fingers and nose were numb by the time I managed to figure out how to bundle together the burlap andtwine, which of course I had to take my gloves off to tie. A quick check of the timer on my watch told me that there were only a couple minutes left on the pizzas, so I pulled off my boots and hurried into the kitchen to make sure they didn’t burn.

I was sure Elliot probably wanted something other than cheap frozen pizza, but I didn’t know what, he wasn’t talking, and if I was going to handle both dinner and the roses, I didn’t have time for anything more complicated.

He deserved better, but I didn’t have better in me. And I was what he got.

I sighed, checked, then removed the pizzas from the oven. Mine was a little burnt, but that’s what I deserved for having smaller pizzas and not paying attention to what was happening in the kitchen. I cut Elliot’s first, loaded up a plate with half of it—even though I was pretty sure he was just going to pick at it—and carried it out to where he’d curled up on the couch, staring without seeing at the football game I’d turned on.

“Elliot.”

He blinked, slowly, then looked up at me.

I handed him the plate. “You need to eat something.”

He opened his mouth.

“I know you’re not hungry,” I interrupted him. “But please try anyway.”

He closed his mouth, swallowed, then nodded, accepting the plate of pizza. I glanced at the side table and noticed that he hadn’t finished the whiskey, either.

“You want something else to drink?”

He shrugged.

I went back to the kitchen and got him a glass of ice water, which I set beside the undrunk whiskey. Before I left the room, I bent and kissed his forehead.

I felt a hand grab one of my belt loops when I turned away.

“Seth?”

I turned back to him. “Yeah?”

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