Page 4 of Tangled Fates

Dad.

A sadness unlike anything I had ever experienced enveloped me, forcing me down onto the bed. I curled my legs up to my chest and held the letter against my heart, finally allowing the tears to spill forth. My chest jumped with my muffled sobs. My face wrinkled and my brow furrowed, and I clenched that letter with all my might. The paper crumbled in my hand as I rocked myself side to side, like Dad used to do whenever I’d had a nightmare as a child.

I missed my father more than I could stand.

And I had my mother to blame for that.

“Why did you do this, Mom?” I choked out.

The wail I let out was strong. So strong, in fact, that it rattled the windows around me. It reminded me of all those thunderstorms that scared the hell out of me as a child, and every time I let out a howl, the windows continued to rattle. The realization dawned upon me that those window rattles weren’t thunderstorms, but painful cries from a wolf in the pack. All of those times I thought a storm was raging outside, and it was really just one lone wolf that didn’t know how to contain their sadness any longer. It made me cry harder as I shivered against the comforter on their bed. I let out another howl as my heart shattered into stone-laden pieces and fell into my gut. And as I clung to that letter for dear life, my body slowly hovered in midair.

Before a set of hands slipped beneath my trembling body.

2

HUDSON

“Hrmmmm.”

Dean snickered. “I can hear your disapproval all the way over here, Hudson.”

I kicked myself up from the couch in the living room of Raven’s place. “You should have never let her speak to that lawyer by herself.”

He shrugged. “Colin was our Alpha, yes. But his estate doesn’t get settled with us. I figured it was a private conversation.”

“I’m with Dean on this one,” Levi said as he strolled on in through the front door, “Colin’s estate is a private matter. She needed to have that conversation.”

“So, no one’s worried about the fact that she’s done nothing but lock herself upstairs ever since we all saw Elias leave?” I asked.

“Well,” Dean said as he pushed off the wall, “she told me to leave as Alpha, not as Raven. You know I can’t disobey those kinds of orders.”

I shot him a look. “You could have still hung out on the porch or something. Now, we’ve got no clue why the hell she’s locked herself away upstairs.”

Levi slid his hands into his pockets. “I would’ve done exactly what Dean did, but I get where you’re coming from. Should someone go upstairs and check on her, at least?”

Dean’s face fell flat. “Would we do that to Colin if it were him instead of her?”

I couldn’t help but smirk. “Since you’ve fucked Raven, I’m pretty sure the two scenarios aren’t quite the same. Unless you have something to tell us about you and Colin?”

Levi blinked. “Wait, you did what?”

Dean grinned. “Hey, you kissed her, and you’re the one asking the questions. You got anything you need to tell me about you and Colin?”

“Hey!” Levi barked. “The fuck are you guys talking about!?”

Footsteps sounded above our heads, and I leapt to my feet. If Raven was finally emerging, I wanted to be ready to receive her if she needed anything. They lumbered around, almost as if they were dragging against the floor, and I had to resist everything inside of me to keep myself planted instead of soaring up those stairs.

However, when the footsteps stopped, she hadn’t appeared.

“Well, guess it’s a good time to get some air,” I said as I headed toward the front door.

I charged outside, leaping from the porch onto the cool green grass. I paced around in a circle, trying to find something to do with my nervous energy that didn’t require me shifting and running off like a bat out of hell’s corridors. I knew she wasn’t okay. I knew that whatever Elias had told her had thrown her for a loop. I smelled it in the air, her anger, her worry, and her sadness.

She had to know.

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