gaze as it roves over me. I try not to fidget or show any sign of weakness or discomfort. If I do, it’ll invite trouble, and that’s the last thing I need so close to the ceremony. I’ll need to come up with a plan, figure out what I’m going to do about my place here. But right now, I just need to bury my mother and come to terms with the fact that she’s no longer here.
Seamus, the mountain-sized beta pretending to give a shit about my mother and my loss, gives me a nod that tells me it’s time. Pulling in a fortifying breath, I stand up slowly, walking to the head of my mother’s coffin. I stand there, numb, lost, and not nearly ready to say goodbye.
Grief tightens my throat as I reach out and place my palms on the smooth shiny wood of her coffin, a hint of red in it that would have made her smile. I lean down and kiss the top of the box that will encase her until the dirt and the plants claim her for their own. My chest tightens as I step back, and then I watch as they lower her into the ground where I can’t follow.
Cold anguish washes through me. My breath feels labored, my limbs exhausted, but the loss I’m drowning in still doesn’t prick my eyes. I exhale through the pain, robotically moving over to the pile of dirt and palming the shovel that’s been speared into the side of it. I stomp it all the way into the soil and lift out a small mound, waiting until her coffin rests solidly at the bottom of the hole the omegas dug earlier.
When the straps are pulled up, I sprinkle my dirt into the earthen tomb, wishing I could crawl in and be buried right alongside her. The dark soil spoils the pure white of the flowers, but it feels like a fitting metaphor for what my life is now.
The shovel is gently taken from my hands, and one by one, the pack lines up to help cover my mother and say their final goodbyes. I step to the side of the procession, but I can’t ignore the feeling like something inside me is dying with each shovelful of dirt dropped on top of her.
Tilting my head back, I look up at the darkening sky. The vastness of it settles over me, and I try to feel less caged in, less trapped by my pain and my circumstances, but a large body steps next to mine, his heat and intention impossible to ignore. I don’t need the senses of a wolf to know who it is.
I look up to find hair as dark as pitch, skin the color of warm oak, and twisted black eyes. Burke is stacked like a house with enough muscle and brains to hold tight to the reins of the Twin Rivers pack. He’s gorgeous, he knows it, and he likes to act as though his looks and status entitle him to certain things. He doesn’t understand in the slightest that when you’re cruel and corrupt on the inside, it taints what people see on the outside. I like to call it the Gaston complex.
“You’re going to be okay,” he tells me, as though I’m some distraught mess in desperate need of his half-assed consoling.
“I know,” I reply simply, offering a weak smile to someone who pats me on the back as they walk by.
My throat grows tighter as the grave quickly fills up, and all I want to do is wander into the woods I’ve spent my whole childhood in and get lost for a while. To be away from calculating eyes and the crowding grief.
“You’ll have your wolf soon, and all of this will feel more bearable,” Burke declares, as though he even cares or thinks the loss of my mother is something that can be replaced by a pet.
Shame instantly fills me for that thought. The wolf spirit that chooses us is not a pet, I inwardly chastise myself. I subtly move to put a few more inches of distance between me and my alpha. But he steps closer, as though my retreat is an invitation and not an expression of discomfort. I feel his hand land against the small of my back, and the ends of my long hair brush across his arm. He leans down, crowding my space, and as much as I want to pull away from