Page 75 of Feral
Not that they looked anything like they had before. The fire had eaten up every ounce of green, so the trees looked like charred sticks as they reached toward the sky. If I searched hard enough though, I could see the sprouts of green starting around the bottom of the trunks. Regrowth. Rebirth.
“Be careful of falling trees, Coop. I don’t trust them. They should have cleared the ones closest to the road,” Corvin grumbled.
Legion General Joshua, Raiden’s dad, had been elected by the other Legion Generals to be interim Alpha General of Maxton, and I think everyone was relieved. I’d met him once. He seemed nice. Now wasn’t the time for big Alpha fights to work out who should be in charge.
I saw someone had dropped hay and what looked like large quantities of carrots along the edge of the forest too, and something eased in my chest. They were worried about the wildlife as well, and I hadn’t realized how much that had been weighing on me until now. I’d told Courtland that’s what needed to happen, of course, but I didn’t know if he’d passed on the message to the Maxton Alpha General.
It wasn’t just the Manix whose home had been decimated.
Beckett’s hand wrapped around my thigh, and I looked up at him. “Are you okay?” he mouthed, and I nodded. I leaned into his body, not that there was much choice, since he was so huge that he took up most of the back seat. Honestly, we probably needed a bus because there was hardly any room back here for me, squished between Darius and Beckett’s giant frames. It was kind of comforting though, and being pressed between them was one of my favorite positions—though usually we were naked and one of them was inside me.
My core tightened at the thought, and four sets of eyes whipped toward me. Whoops.
Darius leaned in so his lips were beside my ear. “What are you thinking about, my love?” He gave my earlobe a teasing nip, making me shudder.
“The Stock Exchange,” I tossed back, and Beckett laughed.
“Want to see my… portfolio?” he said, waggling his eyebrows, and I wondered if I’d ever stop feeling these overwhelmingly huge emotions for each of them. Love, of course, but joy and admiration, sometimes frustration. Everything within the Pack was always so much, that I thought maybe one day I would explode with these feelings they elicited in me.
“Keep your portfolio in your pants back there. We’ve arrived,” Corvin grouched.
There was nothing but rubble left. A few low walls, but basically nothing. Except the mailbox, which was the only reason we knew we were at the right house. Sadness flooded the car, replacing the mirth that had been there only moments earlier.
We climbed out, which was kind of like watching a bunch of clowns unfold themselves from a tiny car, since Beckett had to turn his shoulder just right to squish through the seats.
For a moment, we all stood silently and looked at the wreckage. It was a home I’d only lived in for months, but for these guys, they’d been here for nearly a decade. This had been the place where their Pack had been formed.
Corvin went in first, though there wasn’t much to see. Melted metal, a few charred support beams. It was heartbreaking.
I leaned close to Cooper. “I just want to go and see the cabin. I’ll be back.”
He shook his head, not dragging his eyes from the mess in front of him. “I’ll come with you. It’s not safe out there. Besides, I don't think I can…” He waved a hand, and I understood. I nodded, and he quickly went and kissed a devastated-looking Darius, and told Beckett where we were going.
We decided to run, because it had been awhile since both Cooper had shifted and I’d really stretched myself. There were still signs of life out here—a deer leaping through the forest to escape us, rabbits who’d survived in their burrows. I even saw two damn goats just wandering around the undergrowth. All the goats had originally come wethered—which I’d had to hilariously explain to Corvin meant they had no balls—so I wasn’t worried that they would overpopulate and destroy the ecosystem. They’d just have free range now, and if the growth ever came back, maybe they’d prevent this from happening again.
It was hard to navigate the way to the cabin with most of my markers gone, but after a little looping around, I realized we’d reached it. Or where it used to be. The cabin had been built by Lorso a century ago, out of materials he’d found in the woods around him, which meant it had all gone up in flames. There was nothing left but the stone hearth, and even that had crumbled a little. The tree I’d buried Lorso under had survived though, even if it was singed at the edges. But it still stood, and something about that made me feel better, even if the home I'd been raised in was now ash.
“Are you okay?” Cooper asked, his voice rough in his Manix form. I nodded as he dragged me into his arms. I rested my cheek against his stomach, the scales hard but warm. His words were a little muffled from the fangs that now rested on his lip, and his ears twitched at the sounds around us.
“Cute ears,” I teased, and he tightened his arms around my body.
“You don’t seem to mind them when you use them like a steering wheel, while appreciating the length of my tongue between your thighs.”
Okay, so fucking them in Manix form was becoming a weird kink for me, but honestly, who knew their tongues doubled in length too? The possibilities were endless.
I grinned up at him. “Touché, Mr. Wiley.”
I looked around the site once more, committing it to memory. I would never return, this much I knew. I put one hand over the stone that marked Lorso’s grave. “I’ll be seeing you again, Old Man.”
Then I laid my past to rest right alongside him.
The guys had managed to salvage a small box of stuff from their home. Silly things had survived the fire: a single plate from the set they got as a mating gift from Cooper’s parents, a trophy from when Corvin was in high school and won a wrestling competition, a picture of the four of them when they’d gone hiking.
It wasn’t much, but it was enough. We stopped by the temporary Legion offices to give them permission to clear the land. We’d keep it, for now, not choosing to sell it back to the Maxton Manix just yet, but maybe one day.
The new Legion office was just a temporary building plonked on the cleared space where the Legion building had once stood. Surprisingly—or not so surprisingly, I guess—the cells at the bottom of the Legion building, where they’d stored all the files and paperwork they hadn’t wanted to burn, had survived. Including my father’s journals, which I had no urge to go back and read more of. Maybe I could use them to pin my mother’s death on him, but what would that achieve? Nothing but more heartache. No, I would leave the past where it belonged now.
Soon enough, we were leaving Maxton. Maybe not forever, but definitely for the foreseeable future. But we had one more stop to make before we headed home.
