“Your family is welcoming,” Avery says from her spot to my left. We had all agreed to stay for my father’s party as we practically walked in as it was starting. It was a good excuse for Sawyer to catch up with his parents and old school friends. Besides, I didn’t have the heart to drag my father and his beta, Noah, away from the party to discuss rogue business. “And this house is amazing, and oh my God, look at the view. Why would you ever leave this place?” She gestures wildly with her hands at the property I grew up on. The large wood cabin-styled house sits on under four hundred acres of heavily wooded land and has the lake right in the backyard. It’s beautiful, and still, I hate it.
“That pool is where Grey learned to swim and where we spent most of our last summer together.” I point to the large rectangle pool; a couple of small children swimming and splashing each other, having fun. “That tire swing is where Grey and Remi would take turns for hours pushing each other back and forth. And the tree stump next to it is where I would sit and pout, annoyed she wasn’t playing with me instead.” I honestly can’t believe the tire swing is still there. I would have thought my dad would have taken it down by now. “And the boat dock down there,” I continue, “is where my dad told me Grey and her parents had been killed.”
I watch as Avery looks down at the dock where several jet skis are tethered and then back at the pool where the screaming children play. “Looks a little different now, right?” I say sarcastically and hope Avery’s starting to see why being here is like being in a graveyard of what once were happy memories.
“Yes, it does. I’m sorry we had to come here. I can see how this would be tough for you,” she whispers after a small moment of silence. “Where the hell did Sawyer go?” she asks, effectively changing the tense topic of conversation. “Didn’t he say he would be right back with the good booze? Not that I’m complaining, but your parents’ alcohol selection out here is crap.”
“There are a bunch of families here.” Many of which had grown and aged in the past five years. I was a little surprised to see many of the people I went to high school with are now mated to each other and having children. There is only a small handful of kids here, but I know many of them belong to the people I grew up with. “My parents aren’t going to have the strong stuff out when it’s a family event.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” Avery grumbles.
“You were raised in a barn, weren’t you?” It’s a standing joke between us that Avery was literally raised by wolves. Her upbringing was anything less than a normal civilized life. From what she’s told us, her pack gave into their animalist nature more than most wolf shifter packs. While most try to let the human side of them lead, Avery’s pack preferred to spend a majority of their time in wolf form.
“Wolf den, actually.” She smirks as Sawyer makes his reappearance, a bottle of good whiskey in his hand. “Dude, finally, what took you so long?”
“Your dad moved the stash again, and I couldn’t find it,” Sawyer explains to me as he starts pouring some of the amble liquid into our empty wine glasses. “This girl Pruitt had to show me where your dad keeps it now.”
“Pruitt?” I ask, not recognizing the name.
“She’s a new friend of Remi’s. As far as I can tell, she’s human.” He shrugs before taking a swig of his drink. “Super hot though and there was something about her so familiar, I just couldn’t place it.”
“Gross. Human,” Avery snarls with a scrunched look on her face.
Sawyer laughs at her and teases her for her hatred for humans. Again, Avery explains her reasoning for her dislike or distrust; something about how human child protective services tried to remove her from her parents’ care when she was young. Her elementary school had called the service when they got worried about Avery’s socialization skills. Not that I think it had gotten any better since then.
As I listen to them banter back in forth, a zapping sensation runs down my spine, and my wolf nudges me to look up at the kitchen bay window. I remove my stare from the partygoers and look up and back at the house.
At first, I think the vision I see is the ghost of my dead mate, but this apparition looks different than she has in the past. Whenever I had seen my dead mate over these past fourteen years since her death, she was always the same age as when she died, forever stuck in time as a seven-year-old. But now she’s standing there all grown up and… breathing.
She stands in the window with her arms folded in front of her chest and her plump bottom lip between her teeth. Her bright green gaze is staring directly into mine with a look of surprise taking shape on her face.
Her blonde hair is just as blonde as it was when we were kids. I used to tell my mom her hair was like an angel’s because of how pale the tresses were. High cheekbones have replaced the chubby cheeks that used to sit there, making her already pouty lips more prominent.
I wouldn’t need the golden mating aura that surrounds her to recognize Grey Thorne. My mate is standing in my childhood home, just yards away from me.
My heart rips out of my chest when she disappears around the corner and out of my view, and a loud
