Her head turned towards the master bedroom where Mark sat huddled in the bed with his back to the wall. His attention was a million miles away. I sniffed. They hadn’t had a mating link, but Cheyenne’s loss was an unbearable pain, nonetheless.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before forcing my feet to move. The kids scampered aside as I approached the little ball of fur slumped in the centre of their circle. Edward hadn’t shifted back to his human form. He seemed trapped inside a nightmare of his own making. Probably reliving the moment when Cheyenne was killed in front of him. I knew I had been. The only thing that saved me from the same fate when I woke screaming and covered in sweat was the comforting beat of the mating link.
Unsure how I could really help, and feeling like this was all my fault, I knelt down in front of Edward and scooped him up in my arms. He didn’t react. His body was cold like he was giving up on life.
“His link to the pack is fragile,” Yolanda had told me. “We can hold on to Mark, but Edward is still too young to understand.”
Tired of grief and anguish, I wracked my brain for a way to help. The biggest loss I’d had in my short lifetime was Lex. At first, I survived it because of Basil, Betty, and Andrei. And then I returned to the Reserve and took comfort from the shared experiences of those who were also grieving. If Edward was cutting himself off from the pack link, he would be isolated and feeling so alone. Carrying the dead weight in my arms, I walked quietly to the master bedroom.
Mark didn’t stir. His yellow eyes cast a sickly shadow over his pale skin. The curtains were drawn, and the room was steeped in the sour taste of grief. I understood the apathy. That first month, all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and sleep. I wanted to forget the world was turning and lose myself in mindlessness. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the luxury. At the time, I had resented the burden that I felt had been given to me unfairly. But as time went on, I realised it was a blessing.
I just wasn’t sure it would work in this instance. Everybody grieved differently. If he were single, I would have just left Mark alone to his own devices for a while. But he wasn’t. So I walked over to the window and drew the curtains back to let in the morning light. Given that he didn’t move, I assumed he was okay with it. Next, I pushed open the shutters so that there was some fresh air circulating. An unusual berry, cinnamon, and apple scent floated in on the breeze. I smiled inwardly. The flowers Lex had created for me were blooming.
“Mark,” I said. He didn’t react. “Edward needs you right now. I know it’s hard, but can you please snap out of it for a bit?”
He literally did not move a muscle. His chest barely went up and down as he breathed. Frowning, I threw an invisibility circle around the room. Spectators crowded at the door. Being pack meant a lot of nosy buggers always up in your business.
They had grumbled when they turned up at the house Max built for me to snoop and I’d slammed the door in their faces. The last thing I needed was for Max to catch wind of the fact that I eased myself onto another man’s bed.
What got me was that I was very aware of it. The mating link hissed inside me like it was made of static electricity. Goose bumps whispered over my skin. Were it not for Edward’s body curled in my lap, I would have leaped off the bed. Not wanting to risk too much contact, I settled Edward down in between Mark’s bent legs, grabbed his clammy hand, and placed it on his son’s back.
Biting my lip, I dragged the Ley sight around me and sifted the layers of rosy-pink away until I could see the pack link web that was connected to Mark and Edward. The problem became evident. Caught in their own emotions, the pack had inadvertently reached out to Mark after Cheyenne died. But while Durin was still possessed and the Reserve was in danger, their connection had become a jumble of intertwining threads that looped around him like a noose. He was literally choking in their grief too.
Conversely, the webbed links to Edward all seemed to have been severed. They hung floating in the aura around him like loose sails. The cauterised tips of the link were the same colour as Mark’s aura. It looked like when he’d noticed what was happening, Mark had removed his son from the pack link on purpose. Now they were both suffering.
“Laila,” I asked, my eyes still steeped in the Ley sight, “can you please contact Yolanda on the mirror?”
I heard a shuffling sound as Laila made the connection using the small round mirror beside the door. Laila filled Yolanda in, and then I was giving the alpha female of the pack an order without realising it.
“Can you cut the connection to Mark, please?”
“He’s unstable,” Yolanda said, “he might go rogue if we don’t hold him.”
I waved a hand in a displaying gesture. “What do you think this is? Rogue and fugue. It’s different ends of the spectrum but both as detrimental. He needs to be reset.”
“Do you want me to come?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Yes, please.”
There was a chance that when the connection ceased, Mark would fly into a
