Page 25 of Pack Ruin
Brand rumbled in agreement. “Before he went home, he told me that he had no choice. His little sister Tana was being forced into a mating. He had to go back to stop it.”
“What?” I gasped.
“She’s only seventeen,” Glen added. “Super shy. Innocent. Who the hell are they asking her to?—”
“Niall,” Brand spat.
Glen went still. “Tell me you’re joking.”
I pulled back from both my mates. “Who’s Niall?”
By the time Brand finished explaining, I felt sick, almost dizzy with an amorphous fear. Was I feelingFinnick’sfear? I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to focus on the bond that had felt aching and distant.
My mate mark was still burning, but the emotional pain that had begun in the cabin was worse… and it wasn’t coming from me. I knew Finnick was with another woman, was still with her, touching her. I felt rolling waves of possessiveness, an itchiness under my skin that mimicked my own mother’s fits when I was little.
Could it be…I closed my eyes and focused on the bond, that narrow band of energy that led from my chest to somewhere far to the east. But the connection wasn’t rich and full, like Brand’s, and Glen’s now.
It wasn’t like what I had with either of them. Their bonds felt almost as if part of them had parked itself inside my heart. Finnick and I hadn’t done whatever metaphysical thing it was—or more likely, a physical thing—to cement our claims.
Would I be in even more pain if we had? I remembered my mother’s agony, so much that it had driven her insane, and had my answer.
When I opened my eyes with a sigh, Glen took my hand and guided me into the shallow water of the lake’s edge. “Let’s get clean, while we hash this out. There’s something we’re not seeing.”
Brand jogged to the cabin to get us towels to dry ourselves, then returned and waited on the rocks by the shore. He told us everything that had passed between him and Finnick back atNorthern, while Glen and I washed ourselves clean in the cold water. “I didn’t put it together before, but Finnick must have had an Alpha command placed on him. When he told me about Tana’s mating, I asked for more information. He wanted to, but he wasn’t able to talk about what was happening at his home. He tried to make me promise to keep you away.”
“You told me on the trip here that Finnick said he couldn’t be the mate I deserved,” I mused aloud. “Couldn’t.Not wouldn’t.”
“Are you feeling better?” Glen asked as he pulled me back to shore, dried us both off, and wrapped a towel around himself and a blanket around me.
I sat, shaking my head. “Not great. If he doesthisoften, I’ll get worse. That’s what happened with Mama.” I tried not to let myself think about what “this” was, what exactly he was doing with someone else, far away.
“Your mom? Tell me about her.” Glen held me as we looked out at the lake, and I tried to remember everything I could about my mama.
“What do you want to hear?”
“Describe her, little flower.” Brand had a lump of wood in one hand, the size of my fist, and was shaving at it with a pocketknife.
I smiled, picturing her from one of my favorite memories, one of my earliest ones. “She was a little taller than I am now, I think. She was thin like me, but her face was rounder. She had a dimple in one cheek, right here, when she smiled. Though she didn’t smile a lot. Del was sweet on her. He used to make her caramels in the kitchen for her birthday.” I closed my eyes and pictured her face, cheeks stuffed with sticky candy, laughter in her eyes, looking down at me.
The Alpha had been out on a long hunt that year, trying for white-tailed deer. There hadn’t been any females in the group that went out, and Mama had felt better and better as the dayswent on. She’d been clear-eyed that day, the one when Del had made her birthday sweets.
I sniffed and leaned against Glen. “I think Mama wanted to be a good mother, but she couldn’t. She was stuck in a trap.” I blinked, then turned to Brand.“Finnick is, too, isn’t he? He’s being forced somehow. Made to…” My mark burned even more fiercely, and I whimpered until Glen and Brand both snuggled in close again.
Brand had carved a face in the wood, and he held it out to me.
“Is this the art you promised to tell me about?”
“It is,” he said. “I make small things. Sculptures out of stone, and carvings out of wood. This isn’t as small as the ones I usually do, though.”
Glen laughed. “He made an entire chess set for my pack one year carved out of limestone, with the Queen as Mom, the King as Dad. Mom keeps it in with the pack’s treasures, and won’t let anyone touch it.”
I held the chunk of carved wood up and gasped. My mother stared back at me, her dimple captured in the pine, curls tumbling down the sides of her face, her cheeks round and her lips full. The carving looked like it had been plucked straight from my memories.
“How, Brand? How did you…”
He wore a somber expression, and his moon-bright eyes were shuttered. “I’ve been carving a long time,” was all he said.
That wasn’t an answer. There was no way, unless…
