Brothersong (Green Creek #4) - T.J. Klune Page 0,61
throat, claws digging in. Blood ran in rivulets down his neck and bare chest, striping his skin. His eyes were clear, and his hand flexed briefly, the blood trails thicker.
“No,” Livingstone snarled. “No. You can’t. Alpha. I am your Alpha. You cannot die. I won’t let you.”
“Then let him go.”
Livingstone’s red eye grew brighter. “Bennett. Always. Kill them. Kill them all.”
“Leave you,” Gavin said, and I gasped as the grip around me loosened. “Even you can’t keep me from dying. You’ll be alone. You’ll have nothing. You’ll have no one. Let. Him. Go.”
Livingstone roared again. He turned his head toward me, jaws snapping, fangs inches from my face. “You can’t have him.”
“I’m going to kill you,” I promised him through gritted teeth. “When you least expect it, I’m going to kill you for everything you’ve—”
“Carter! Shut up.”
Livingstone shook me hard, my head snapping back and forth. The back of my skull knocked against the cave wall, and I was floating away. It was getting harder to breathe, but it seemed unimportant. I knew only the ringing in my ears. I said, “We heard them. The songs. Wolves. Ravens. The heart, always the heart. It means we’re coming home. They’re strong, and nothing else matters when we hear them. Kill me. It won’t matter. Because in the end, our songs will always be heard.”
“Don’t!” Gavin cried, and I didn’t want him to see this, didn’t want him to see what his father would do to me. For all his bravado, for his prickly exterior, he was still my shadow, still the timber wolf who followed me even when I told him not to. He was there, always there, and when he wasn’t, when he was gone, when he’d left with his father, I understood how a heart could crack so cleanly in two without even a whisper of warning. He’d been stuck as a wolf until I was about to die. He’d shifted for me.
I said, “Hey,” and “It’s okay” and “Look away. Please look away.”
The stench of his blood grew thicker as he demanded Livingstone let me go.
And then I was flying.
It was darkness, and then I was outside again, the air snapping cold against my skin. I screamed when I hit a tree and my back broke. The tree cracked, the wood splintering as it fell over. I landed on top of it, my body made up of useless limbs. I slid off into the snow. I couldn’t come back from this. It was too much. It was too big. Bones could heal, but I couldn’t feel my legs.
I looked up at the sky through the canopy. The clouds had parted above me, and through the gray, I saw blue, blue, blue.
“I am because I am,” I whispered.
“Carter? Carter!”
I screamed again when something in my back shifted back into place, and suddenly I could feel everything. I was on fire, my skin blackened and charred. I writhed on the ground, my arms and legs skittering in the snow. I rode the wave of pain, struggling to catch my breath.
And then he was there above me, wearing a halo of blue sky. “Get up. You have to get up. Carter. Carter.”
He grabbed my arm and pulled, and I cried out as the world tilted around me, the colors bleeding together in streaks of gray and white and blue. I was up on my feet, my arm around his neck, his cheek scraping against mine like a kiss.
He said, “Shift.”
He said, “You have to shift.”
He said, “It’s the only way. Shift, turn wolf.”
He said, “Now, now, now.”
I tilted my head back and I—
am wolf
i am wolf
hurts it hurts it hurts it
gavin
gavin
gavin
saying run
telling me to run
can’t
can’t leave
can’t leave you
he says you have to
he says you’ll die
he says he’ll kill you
come with me
come away
we’ll run
just the two of us
we’ll run far
why
why won’t you believe me
why won’t you do this for me
he says sometimes
he says sometimes we can’t have what we want
no
no
no
i won’t stop
i can never stop
i am bennett
i am wolf
i am
he says run i’ll follow just run
yes yes yes
run we’ll run
and i do
i run
good wolf
i am good fast wolf
where are you
where are you
where are
I SHIFTED AS THE cabin came into view. My back hurt, my front hurt, everything hurt, and I fell to my hands and knees, gagging, a thin line of spittle hanging from my lip before dropping into the snow. I was so fucking cold, my teeth chattering, and my eyelids were stuck, gummy and heavy.