Page 54 of Rivers and Roads

He shrugged. “I don’t normally take it with me when I shift. I tried a couple times and kept losing it. Not worth the pain in the ass waiting for Misha to find it.”

I rolled my eyes as I led him back to the spot I had been standing. “Why are you planning on shifting right now?”

He raised a brow at me like I should know the answer. “Because you’re standing out here by yourself angsting, and I know the best way to get your head out of your ass is to let your wolf free for a bit.”

I laughed softly, and normally he was right, but in that moment, I wanted to keep my voice. “Would you take a walk with me instead?”

His face showed his surprise almost as heavy as I felt it in the pack bond, but he wasn’t about to deny me. “Don’t let me embarrass myself.”

“I won’t,” I told him. Every now and again he prompted me to joke about his blindness—and I might one day, but not yet. What the humans had done was still too fresh, and now watching Zane struggle through his own recovery, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to take it lightly.

Kor found the back of my arm, then I led him to the cleared path Zane and I had been taking down to the creek. He said nothing for a while as I moved him around the occasional dip in the forest floor, but I could feel the tension building. “I hear water.”

“There’s a creek ahead,” I told him. I could see it now, a few hundred feet away, and it was flowing a little heavier than it had been in the last few days. “The night after we got here, I found Zane fishing with his claws.”

That startled a laugh out of Kor, and it carried with us until we reached the clearing. I led him to a small collection of boulders, and he felt out a flat space before settling down. “How big is it?”

“Six feet wide. Deeper right now than it has been, but it only went up to his thighs when he jumped in,” I told him. I stared up at the sky, then I leaned back on the rock next to him and folded my arms. “He was starting to come back to himself at that point.” And I was going into heat—the moment that changed everything. “That all kind of feels like a dream now.”

Kor waited to see if I was finished, and when he noticed I was, he let out a soft breath. “You know I don’t want to do this, right? The last fucking thing in the world I want to do is leave.”

“I know,” I told him. I wasn’t strong enough to voice how I was feeling, so I let it slip through the bond and after a second, his lips quirked into a sad smile.

“I’m not rejecting you.”

I hated how pathetic I felt, but I couldn’t help it. Kor and I had never been separated—not by choice. “But you don’t want me with you.”

“I do,” he said. “If it wasn’t for Zane, I’d have packed a bag for your sorry ass.”

I winced, but it was a logic leap I should have taken. “He’d probably be fine without me.”

“Would you say that about Misha?” he countered.

I scoffed. “That’s not the fuckin’ same, Kor, and you know it. You two are bonded.”

“And you two will be. I give it three hours in Corland before you’ve got a bite. And don’t,” he said when I opened my mouth to argue, “try and deny it. You should have bonded in your heat.”

“I shouldn’t have had a fucking heat in the first place,” I growled. I was still reeling from the fact that in spite of my eyes going back to blue, something inside me still felt…altered. “It’s not totally gone.”

“I know,” he confessed, and I stiffened at how obvious I was. “It’s your scent. It’s…different. I don’t know how to describe it. I thought maybe it was your feelings for Zane, but it’s more than that.”

Passing a hand down my face, I shifted higher up onto the rock and drew my leg up toward my chest, resting my arm around it. “I feel different, and I think…it might be permanent. I won’t regret that fucking serum because it meant we got Zane back, but fat lot of good it did when that information didn’t help anyone else.”

“It helped everyone else,” Kor said, his voice almost a low growl. “This is just the beginning. They can’t keep those Wolves forever, and if they’re really altering them into weapons, they won’t be able to use them and deny their involvement at the same time.”

“And if they try?” I asked.

“Rescue plans are in place,” Kor said. “I’m not going into hiding so I can sit on my ass like some passive fuck and let other people do work for me. I’m going to be working underground.”

Once again, I felt the keen loss of him, even with him sitting close enough that I could hear his heartbeat. “I hate this. I fucking hate this so much. We were supposed to have peace.”

“I know, and it kills me that I can’t promise it’ll work. We could end up worse than where we started. But it’s worth the risk,” he said. “Tell me you understand that.”

“I do.” Because of course I did. I had never been a Wolf with delusions about what life would be like when war ended. I was willing to fight until my dying breath, but I had never been able to envision a world in which we won.

“Zane needs you, and you need him,” Kor said. “You will always be my pack, Orion. You will always be my brother. But he’s supposed to be your mate, and you deserve to be loved the way he loves you.”

My heart ached, and my arms felt empty suddenly with Zane so far away. But it wasn’t going to be forever. Hell, it was hardly going to be more than a few minutes. “You know I think I love him just as much?”

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