“I’ll get the first aid kit,” I tell him as I help him hobble to the bed of the truck. I can see he has claw marks on his side and a pretty gnarly gash out of his thigh. “He got you good, huh?”
“He came out of nowhere,” Sawyer hisses as he adjusts himself, trying to find a comfortable position. “He was masking his scent somehow.”
As wolf shifters, we heal faster than humans. But it does not mean we are immune to pain or injury. Sawyer will be hurting for a couple of days, and there will be faint scars from the claw marks.
“I noticed that last week. I don’t know how he’s doing it.” The son of a bitch masking his scent is another reason I think this rogue is getting outside help. But that creates another question. Who would help a rogue wolf terrorize a female shifter?
It takes me forty-five minutes to get Sawyer stitched up. It wasn’t necessary, but it will help his wounds heal faster and smoother. This isn’t the first time we’ve had to do this. Each of us in the past five years has taken turns sewing and bandaging the other. We both have more scars than either of us can count. Luckily my dark tattoos do an excellent job of covering them. Sawyer, on the other hand, is pale and has no tattoos to cover the raised pink lines that mar his body.
Every time I do this, a pang of guilt fills my chest. He shouldn’t be doing this. He has no reason to do so, other than the fact he’s my friend. I’m the one who has a vendetta against rogue wolves, and I’m the one who drug him into this. He always wanted to go to the police academy, and I selfishly stole that from him. This is not how either of us saw our future.
“Sawyer—”
“Dude, don’t start.” He turns his head to look at me, and I can see the annoyance written on his face. “Every time I get hurt, we have this discussion, and frankly, I’m sick of. If I didn’t want to be doing what we’re doing, I wouldn’t be. It’s as simple as that. So, shut your face and get me a beer from the cooler—I deserve it.”
“Yes, you do.” I clap him on his shoulder as I walk to the cab of the truck.
Sawyer has always been better than me, a better friend, a better son, and a better person all around. He would do anything for the people he cares about.
I would like to say the same for myself, but I haven’t seen my family in five years. I have no idea what they’re even up to these days. Remington, my younger sister, is going on twenty-one and should be in college if that’s the path she chose. My brothers, Ranger and Ransom, are twenty-four, and God knows what they’re doing with their lives. The last time I was with the twins, they were chasing tail and making complete assholes of themselves.
Sawyer makes an effort to call and check in with his mom once a week. Whereas I can’t be bothered to send more than a postcard home to let my family know I’m alive.
I return with his beer, Sawyer has put on a pair of basketball shorts, and a loose hoodie. Being shifters, we go through a mass amount of clothing because we hardly have the time to carefully remove and fold our clothes before shifting.
“Thank God,” I laugh. “I was getting sick of staring at your naked ass,” I joke as I hand him the chilled can.
“No one said you had to stare at it.” He shrugs and pops the tab, taking greedy gulps of the amber liquid. “Ahh, just what the doctor ordered.”
We sit on the open bed of the truck in comfortable silence. The mountain pass we are on is remote, not a single car has driven by. I try not to think about how, with us just sitting here the rogue is getting farther away. But I know he’ll turn up again sooner than later, and if we’re lucky, Avery was able to see where he was headed.
“Do you want to talk about what this week is?” Sawyer finally asks after a while, and I can tell how he runs a hand through his already tousled blond hair he’s nervous asking the question. He knows from experience I don’t react well to people asking me about Grey. But today, I find myself wanting to answer him.
“She would have been twenty-one this Saturday,” I say after a long pause. “And just like every year when her birthday rolls around, or it’s a holiday, my brain plays the what-if game. What if she was still alive? What if we had completed the mating ceremony? What if we were living in the house I would have built for her on the lake?”
“I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through,” he says. Like mine, his eyes still scan the surrounding area, in case we get lucky enough to have the rogue wolf come walking by. “To find your mate so young and then lose her so young is unimaginable. But you know Grey wouldn’t have wanted you to suffer like you are. Get off the cross, dude, you have a whole life in front of you, and your head is stuck in the past.”
He makes it seem simple, but Sawyer doesn’t understand how not only am I in constant emotional pain, but so is my wolf. He misses and longs for his mate too. Male shifters crave the peace and calmness a female brings them. It centers then and makes them stronger. But to have barely known peace and have it ripped away like it was, I don’t know if I will ever recover.
“It’s not fair I get to keep on living after she died. I wish I had been with her the night they were attacked.”
“I don’t,” Sawyer says, shaking his head.
