Page 142 of Unforgivable

"That's pretty," he coos mockingly.

"She calls you 'jerk.'"

He frowns. "As long as my female loves me, I don't give a rat's ass what other females think."

He does care, though, I can tell. Rhet and Thjis haven't told me much about their birthpack, but I know shit's messed up there. They're violent, often tangling with human groups over territory, drugs, human weapons, that sort of shit. We barely have any humans living up here, so we forget they exist after a while.

How does growing up in that environment affect the alphason? Goddess, Daan is a spoiled little shit in comparison.

"So, think you can keep up?" Carmichael gives me his smirk again. I want, really badly, to wipe it clean off. When he shifts, I have to struggle to hide the surprise. He's a huge fucking beast. Dark, mottled gray along his back with patches of lighter brown on his belly and the underside of his jaw. He must be close to four feet at the top of his back. His head is nearly level with my face, and the muscle on him is impressive.

I shift into my much smaller wolf. I'm not an alpha-beast, but when my wolf turns to look at Carmichael, the twitch in his tail betrays him. Apparently, the paws are more playful than the feet.

With a low bark, I take off. He's faster, but this is my home, and I know this land. With my advantage, I start to run around all of the fun 'toys' my wolf enjoys. For example, Carmichael bounds into the stream, not knowing that I'm skipping over the deeper water. I laugh to myself as he falls in, leaping out quickly, but not before getting dunked nearly up to his neck.

Or the dead, fallen trees taken out last year in a torrential thunderstorm that feature logs to leap to and from. He's too big for most of the limbs, so he sits there, watching me with a doleful look on his face. Too bad, fatty.

I leap off the final obstacle and race towards the last little surprise. When I jump off the cliff, I hear a yelp of surprise behind me. Carmichael skids to a halt at the top, looking over with a growl when he sees me only five feet down on the broad path that winds down the thirty-foot high drop. He picks his way delicately down, huffing every once in a while in annoyance.

When we shift back at the edge of my parent's land, I'm incredibly disappointed to see his grin.

"It reminds me of the games my beta, Rique, and I used to play," he says enthusiastically.

"You're annoying," I huff out.

He barks a laugh, clapping me on the back. I push his hand off my shoulder slowly. My family's house is dark and quiet. Too quiet. There's always something making noise. My dad's snores, the generator for the refrigeration, the whirling of fans, water dripping from the leaky faucet that Thjis fixed for them three times because they're too cheap to just buy a new one.

"Where is everyone?" Carmichael asks grimly.

"I don't fucking know," I whisper.

"Ezra," he grabs my shoulder when I start to run towards the house. "Caution, male. Diosa," he curses under his breath.

"Let's do a perimeter, then approach the house. Together," he amends. "I don't like this shit. Would they have a place to go?" he asks me lowly as we start to circle the house, looking for any signs of life.

"Into the woods, deeper," I tell him. "My gramps has a couple of hidey-holes for the end of the world, but they're caves and literal holes." I look into the shed, seeing that some of the tools are missing. "I can't believe that they would flee, though." I can't picture Mom agreeing to leave the comforts of home.

"Alright, let's check out the house. If it's packed up, then they left willingly." He doesn't say anything further, but I get it. What if the house is ransacked? Worse, what if nothing is out of place? Would Alpha Jax have arrested my family for something I did?

The back door is unlocked, as usual. Carmichael enters first, slipping inside in a way that belies his size.

"Everything's off," he mutters, flipping the light switch on the wall a few times.

"If they bugged out," I tell him, "then they would have shut off the water and electricity." I hurry into the kitchen. It's not easy to see everything, even with my wolf's eyes, but the kitchen is cleaned out. All of the food is gone; the fridge is entirely bare. I open the pantry cupboard to find only some bowls and mom's electric mixer that she never uses.

"Everything's gone," I confirmed to Carmichael.

"You younglings are ridiculous! I could patent the stupidity and sell it on the web-line to other stupid wolves!"

My shoulders slump, but in relief, "hi, Gramps."

"Ezra-pup!" Gramps limps into the room. His arthritis must be acting up, a sure sign he's been working too much. "Wondering who could be poking around an empty house. Sure as shooting' it's my idiot grandson."

"Carmichael, this is my gramps, Elias. Gramps, this is Carmichael Gris, Rhet's cousin."

"Sure is a big one, huh?" Gramps pokes Carmichael right in the chest, blinking at him with rheumy eyes. I'm just glad Gramps didn't poke Carmichael anywhere else that's big because we're just standing here in the nude in my mother's kitchen. I wouldn't put it past the old geezer.

"Where is everyone, Gramps? Did they bug-out, or is this some sort of weird vacation?"

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