Page 64 of Feral
CORVIN
Despite what I’d said to the Alpha General, it wasn’t as easy to leave my home as I thought. All our Pack firsts had happened in this house. I wanted our cubs to be born here. But in the end, they were just things, and my real home was not a place, but the four people in front of me.
We had to leave on the ATV, at least until we got to a nearby town, where we could get a hire car. But this meant we could only take as much as we could carry. Unlike Kitten, whose memories fit in a small metal box, ours were spread all across our house. Framed photographs of us as a pack, ticket stubs from the first concert we saw together. The table where I made love to Darius for the first time.
The hardest thing was dragging Darius from his nest. He was so close to term that all he wanted to do was nest and prepare, and I was dragging him into unknown territory with a bunch of witches we didn’t know. Normally, he was the most level-headed of us all, but some things were ruled by instinct, not logic.
My own instincts rebelled at the idea of leaving safe territory to go anywhere near an unknown—and probably pretty powerful—group of paranormals. But the urge to protect my Pack overruled everything.
“Let’s go, D,” I said softly. He’d wrapped up one of the soft throws into a garbage bag to keep the scent in, and had it pressed close to his body. Kitten was still out the front, watching the horizon, and I wondered if I should call her in here to try some of that Omega soothing. But Darius just nodded, clenching his jaw and heading toward the stairs. At the bottom, a small pile of duffle bags encapsulated our entire life.
Beckett hung up the phone and looked up at Darius. “You okay?”
Darius nodded, adding his bag to the pile. “Your mom?”
Beckett’s mom had never remarried or gotten a Pack. She was alone, and it worried us all in emergencies. We’d offered to move her into the Packhouse once, and while she was grateful, it had been a resounding hell no.
“She got on the first bus out of here. They’re doing a run around the town, collecting people, and then they shouldn’t be far behind us. I put all the kids who hadn’t been collected on that bus too. My mom will keep them in line, and I need to be here with you guys.” Beckett’s mom had been a teacher as well. He picked up a few of the duffles. “There's a car waiting for us in the town; I’ve organized to swap it for the ATV. We’ll just have to get a new one when we come back.”
It wouldn’t matter really. If the mountain burned like Kitten was convinced it would, there’d be no reason to have an ATV anymore. Besides, we’d need a car for the cubs.
I nodded. “Let’s go then.”
Cooper was standing behind Kitten, who was looking at the trees in the distance like she was having a silent conversation with them. Her face was pinched with worry, and when a gust of wind blew at her dark hair, I knew why.
She looked over at us. “Wind is picking up. We need to go.”
We all loaded into the ATV, with the bags tied onto the back. It was actually considered a UTV, but we’d been calling them ATV’s for so long that it stuck.
Then we left, leaving it all behind. All we could do was pray to the Goddess that it would be there when we got back.
Something told me that this was goodbye though.
The guywe were buying the car off had rolled up with a look on his face that said he was ready to screw us, but by the time Beckett and I had uncurled ourselves to our full height, his face had changed pretty damn quick.
We’d left Cooper, Darius and Kitten on the edge of town, because a pregnant man might have been too much for the townies. The trade had been quick—the SUV was actually not bad—and we were on our way to Moonburst. If I hadn’t already known it was a witch colony, the name alone would have given it away.
Soon enough, we’d caught up to the De Léon Pack—probably because they had so many small children, which meant six million toilet breaks. According to Beckett, behind us was the first busload of Maxton residents. Kitten also mentioned that Gatlin and the Huxley-Grey Pack had intended to stay and defend the property, but Naja had convinced them it was better to leave, so they were just coming down off the mountain now.
Kitten was taking the whole thing surprisingly well, but then again, this wasn’t her first upheaval. She’d already left her home and started somewhere new. It was Darius who was worrying me the most. He seemed forlorn and listless.
Kitten and Cooper sat in the back with him, and even I felt zen with the amount of Omega happy pheromones Kitten was throwing out. But they didn’t seem to be working on our other Omega. I had no platitudes that would help either, so silence reigned throughout the car.
After a little while, Kitten fell asleep against Darius’s shoulder, and he nodded off as well, his head resting on hers. They looked peaceful together, these two beings who were worth sacrificing everything for. I would lay down my life for either of them in a heartbeat.
“Did Murphy say anything about how she went at Ol’ Sam’s?” Beckett asked softly, and I shook my head.
“No, but her mother has gone to the Goddess. In quite a brutal way, if what she said in passing was true. Murdered,” I whispered back.
Cooper sucked in a sharp breath. “The old Alpha General? Her father?”
I shrugged. Without knowing the details, I couldn’t confirm anything. I felt so bad for my Kitten. Not having the answers would drive her mad. I’d just have to keep her so busy that she wouldn’t have time to dwell on the past.
It was nearly midnight when our convoy finally arrived in Moonburst, Montana. The streets were barely lit, and from what I could see, it looked almost abandoned. Shopfronts were boarded up, driveways empty. It had a stillness about it that screamed ghost town.
“Kinda creepy,” Coop muttered, as we drove through to the only lit up building in the town.
Parking out the front of a little cottage, I could see three people standing on the porch. One was Loren, and I recognized him immediately. I’d talked to him a few times when he lived in Maxton, and I liked the guy. I’d been sad when we thought he’d died during the coup.
