she got her fingers that close to his mouth.
She squeezed her thighs together against a sudden deep ache low in her body.
“I usually grab a couple of different bars from the boxes the kitchen puts out. That’s from yesterday. Flavor the day before was peach with dark chocolate, another day it was dried cherries and walnuts.”
“Will you bring me more?” she said on a wave of wild joy in this moment with her golden wolf . . . and felt her spine lock. As an adult, she’d made it a point to never ask Renault for anything—it had only ever meant humiliation. Only for Jitterbug had she broken her rule, taken the abuse. But Alexei wasn’t Renault.
He said, “If you promise to eat them.” A dark look. “No granola bars if you’re determined to stay a skin-and-bones lioness.”
Memory glared at him. “I’m eating this, aren’t I?” She took a big bite for good measure. “And why do you keep comparing me to a lioness? I’m Psy.”
“You have the ornery temper and mental roar of a she-lion,” Alexei said with a mock wince that earned him another glare. What he didn’t add was that she had the heart of some big, wild creature, too; Memory was a survivor, a fighter, and he liked being around her, aggravation and all.
His fingers flexed on the steering wheel on a sudden wave of guilt. How could he grin on today of all days? Brodie had been fucking executed a year ago today. Twelve months without his brother and his sister-in-law. Three hundred and sixty-five days since the second-to-last remaining member of his direct paternal line went rogue.
Grandfather. Father. Brother.
Hell of a family history.
Then the E who kept on derailing his thoughts poked him in the biceps again. His wolf growled, wondering if it really should bite her. Just a nip to warn her not to aggravate peaceful wolves. “What?”
“You went into a dark place,” was the stark answer. “It’s not good for you.”
“Empaths,” he muttered instead of snapping at her, because snapping at her for sensing his emotions would be like her yelling at him for scenting her fear or pleasure. “Can’t even let a man brood in peace.”
But Memory, as he’d already learned, had a steel core to her; she wasn’t about to be distracted. “What’s wrong?”
Alexei’s jaw grew hard, as hard as he wished his fucking heart would become. He was ready with a flip answer when he glanced at her and saw that she was holding herself very still, her eyes staring out the rain-splattered windshield with fierce concentration. Though he was no empath, he knew that she expected to be rebuffed, expected to be treated as if she didn’t matter.
Fuck that.
“My brother died a year ago today.” His blood boiled, his skin hot. “The bastard’s in the ground and I can’t fucking kick his ass for being gone.” He couldn’t even bring himself to visit the place where he’d buried Brodie. No marker, no headstone, as was the SnowDancer way, wolves simply returning to the land that was their heart.
Some chose to be scattered on the winds, others to rest forever beneath ancient trees.
Alexei had chosen an outlook above a breathtaking drop Brodie would’ve loved to rappel down while Etta watched proudly and took photos. Brodie had always shown off for his mate, like a young boy trying to impress a girl. The two of them had been inseparable despite the fact Etta was as calm as Brodie was wild.
Packmates who’d visited the couple’s resting spot in spring had told him that tiny flowers had bloomed in the grass. It didn’t matter. Alexei knew Brodie wasn’t really there in that beautiful place; he hadn’t been there since the day he went rogue. Hawke had executed a broken shell, not Alexei’s fearless big brother.
And Etta . . . she’d gasped out her wish to be buried with Brodie with her last bloody breath, well aware that her mate would be executed. The pack had no other option. Not when he’d attacked his beloved Etta. Her family had accepted both her choice and Alexei’s suggestion of burial site, but she wasn’t there, either. Her sweet spirit was long gone.
“It hurts all the time when you lose someone, doesn’t it?” Aged pain in Memory’s quiet voice. “It gets old, the pain, but it never stops.”
Alexei thought of a tiny girl watching her mother’s brutal murder, only to find herself in the hands of the murderer. No time to mourn as she fought to