Chapter 24: Skyler - Pack of Mine

My body snuggles into Tristan’s warm back and I tug him closer to me. The smell of his sweet skin makes me want to crawl inside of him and die there.

I savor the feeling of a human body against me, realizing I’ve never done this before. The girls I brought home would never want to cuddle and they’d always rush out the door crying.

My whole life, no one has really appreciated me, not even myself. My violent tendencies always got the best of me and begged me for more. I was never able to slow down and smell the roses, or whatever that saying is.

I’ve spent the last five nights in Tristan’s bed, attempting to fill an Octavia-sized hole in my chest with a cute blonde boy. It works sometimes, but not always.

We watch the TV for updates on her condition and where they’re keeping her, but they don’t say much.

I ache for her, my body craves her here again. I would do anything to have her back home, her intoxicating smell filling the room and her pretty green eyes shining under the lights again.

My restlessness drags me out of bed and I spark up a square, pacing around the room. I don’t want to wake Tristan up, so I throw on a pair of my shorts and creep into the living room.

The news channel is on 24/7 but it’s muted sometimes so we can try to sleep. I grab the remote and slightly turn up the volume, blowing smoke into the air and plopping onto the leather sectional behind me.

“BREAKING NEWS: PSYCH PATIENT ON THE LOOSE” blares through the screen and the cigarette falls out of my mouth and onto the floor.

Octavia… What did they do to you?

A picture of her flashes on the screen. Dark circles hang under her bloodshot eyes and her hair looks like a rat’s nest. Her skin is covered in scratch marks, some are still bloody. Tears are suspended on her cheeks, her face frozen in terror.

You only shed tears for me, Kitten.

My heart explodes like a nuclear bomb in my chest and I feel the possessive rage creeping back up my spinal cord. I stomp out my smoke, currently burning a hole in the rug and throw on a nearby sweatshirt, pulling the hood over my head.

Attempting to soothe my apparent soulmate from across town, I try to send her telepathic messages.

What? If fucking fate is real, maybe magic is, too.

I’ll bring you home, Octavia.

My Mustang’s keys rest on the kitchen island and I snatch them up, rushing out of the front door with a manhunt on my mind. The engine revs loudly and I slam my foot on the gas, kicking up dirt and smoke into the air. Burnt rubber makes my nose itch and I crinkle it at the intensity of the smell.

I’m coming, I’m coming for you.

I shoot a silent prayer up to God that she can hear me and speed dangerously fast into the city. My thoughts race as quickly as the tires beneath me, and I zoom past other cars on the road. Horns blare all around as I zip in and out of lanes, pedal to the floor.

I have no idea where to look, but I figure Silver Lake Hospital will give me a good head start.

I almost forgot that I’m a wolf. I can track a scent for miles.

My car hops the curb into the parking lot and I slam on the brakes, the scent of smoking tires assaulting my nostrils again. I barely throw the car in park before slamming the door shut behind me and running straight into the trees behind the building.

I can smell her familiar amber and frankincense just barely, but a path illuminates in front of me and I chase it like a GPS.

This is it, this is the high. The hunt for prey, the thrill of the chase.

I attempt to shake off a transformation, but I feel it coming on purely out of excitement. My skin itches, the fur poking through my clothes. My teeth pull down and I drop to all fours.

Fuck, at least I can run faster.

My bones break, but I don’t feel the pain. I only hear my own heartbeat and my body morphs from human to animal in a matter of seconds – my fastest transformation to date. I leave my shredded clothes in the dirt and sniff the air deeply, finding her scent again.

The trees whiz past me as I zig-zag through them, a single target on my mind. My paws thump into the ground, in time with my racing heart. Drool drips out of my lips and flies into the air surrounding me.

I’m coming for you.

Her scent grows stronger and stronger, I know I’m close now. I slow down to a walking pace and sniff the air again, pinpointing exactly which direction she’s running.

I turn right and bingo! That perfect, addictive scent I’ve adored since we first met draws me in.

My body goes numb as I sprint and follow her light footprints in the dirt, she’s so close now, she has to be right around the corner-

“Skyler?”

I come to a screeching halt and slide through the dirt, attempting to stop my speed. Mud covers my legs and paws and I pant heavily.

Dear God.

Her skinny body shivers in the cold air, a hospital gown barely covering her goosebump-covered skin. Her face is sunken in like a living skeleton. The scratches covering her arms and chest are worse, some actively bleeding into her gown.

I attempt to approach her, but with each step I take, she takes three steps backwards. Terror floods her eyes and it’s the only time I’ve wished she wasn’t afraid of me. She pulls out a gun from behind her torso and points it at me, her hand shaking uncontrollably.

“Octavia…”

I whisper to her, but she continues to back away with each one of my footsteps.

Her green eyes flood like a lake and she shuts them tightly, tears dripping down her cheeks now. I push forward still, slowly creeping closer to her.

“Stop right there, or I’ll shoot.”

Her voice shakes as much as her hands do.

She backs into a tree trunk and her eyes widen as she realizes she can’t walk away anymore without turning around. I stop pushing forward into her space and sit on my hind legs, about ten feet from her.

“Octavia, put the gun down and let’s talk.”

She shakes her head violently and shuts her eyes, aiming the barrel straight into my forehead.

A woman tortured by her own mind. Valentine would get it.

“You’ll just manipulate me. You’ll… you’ll just bring me back to the basement and make me kill myself trying to fix you…” Her head turns like she can’t watch what she’s about to do.

While her eyes are squeezed shut, I inch closer to take advantage of the few seconds I have, stepping as quietly as I can through the mud.

She sobs, the gun shaking uncontrollably in her hands. I can see the pain take over her body and now I know exactly how she feels. Her heart breaks in front of me, and I empathize harder than I ever have before.

I just need a chance to tell her that I understand.

“I refuse to die for you, to die for your cause…” She opens her eyes and faces me again, breathing heavily. Terror reeks from her pores and breath, making my nostrils burn.

I stare down the barrel of the gun and don’t say a word.

Fucking fine. If this is what she wants, if this is what she truly desires…

I will die for her.

The realization hits me – my entire life I’ve destroyed lives, killed innocent people, and ruined their futures.

I owe a debt to the universe. If that’s my death, so be it. I stand before my God, my Goddess, the only person I could ever worship.

Octavia, I would die for you.

Before I can muster the courage to speak, she mumbles a few words I can barely understand and her grip tightens on the trigger.

Fuck. I love you, Kitten. I’m sorry.

The gun fires and the sound deafens my sensitive ears, a ringing taking over now. I squint and brace for the impact, but I don’t feel anything.

I look around and no blood drips from me, nothing hurts.

What?

My eyes lock on Octavia, her hands still shaking. The gun smokes and drops out of her hands, but her eyes look at something other than me.

I trace where she’s staring and spot a yellow wolf bleeding into the dirt to the left of me.

“Tristan!” My heart sinks into my stomach.

I pounce over to him and inspect where he was shot, anxiously trying to get an idea of how bad it is. There’s so much blood that I can hardly see where it’s coming out of. My tongue licks at his fur and he winces.

“Tristan, why the fuck did you do that?”

I lick him intensely and find the wound, pushing my paw into it, attempting to slow the bleeding.

“I said…” His words are so faint, he’s losing too much blood.

Fuck. This is so bad.

Valentine sprints up behind me and nudges his snout into him, trying to keep him awake.

“…that I would do anything for you…” He coughs and wheezes the words out, his blue wolf eyes shutting.

Octavia screams and runs in the other direction.

“Do not let her leave!”

I bark at Valentine, the sound of police sirens growing closer by the second. My focus jolts back to the wolf beneath me.

“Tristan…”

Blood pours out around my paw and I slowly morph from wolf to human, watching my much smaller hand try to plug the hole in his shoulder.

I strain my entire body to pick his heavy weight up off the dirt, throwing him over my shoulders and he winces again.

“I’m going to save you, I promise.”

My brain harnesses some kind of superhuman strength and I sprint with him on my back towards my car in the parking lot. I’m not nearly as fast in human form, but my bare feet dig into the ground and lunge me forward step by step as fast as I can.

When I reach the parking lot, his pulse grows weaker and weaker in my ears and I know I’m running out of time. I throw a large rock into the bushes away from me, attempting to distract the many police vehicles away from my car.

They fall for it and shout at each other, pointing into the treeline opposite to me.

“We’re going home, everything is gonna be okay.”

I quickly open my car door and toss his wolf body into the back, slamming the door shut and jumping in the driver’s seat. He wheezes and coughs blood onto the leather, his heartbeat in my ears slowing by the second.

My tires squeal off the pavement and we go flying down the road, cars whizzing by again and honking at me. I quickly glance in the back to check on him and he doesn’t seem to be breathing. The deep red fluid keeping him alive pools on the seat and drips onto the floor mats.

“Stay with me, Tristan!” I put my hand behind me and shake his body, but he doesn’t reply.

FUCK!

No one else can die for me. I don’t deserve this, this kind of grand gesture from the brother I’ve used and abused, treated like a piece of trash the entire time I’ve known him.

He deserves better than someone like me.

When we finally reach the house, I drift the car into the gravel driveway and snatch him out of the seat as fast as humanly possible, carrying his lifeless wolf body through the front door and sliding him on the marble kitchen island.

My mind races and I frantically look through the medicine cabinet for the skin glue and pour half the bottle onto his wound, hoping to keep the blood inside him while I do CPR.

I flip his body onto his backside and push into his chest repeatedly, opening his snout and blowing mere human lungfuls of air into him.

“Tristan, you can’t fucking die.”

I push as hard as I can into his chest, tears running down my cheeks and landing on his red, bloodied fur.

His body jolts around with each movement and his eyes show no sign of life, just rocking around the table with every compression.

I blow into his mouth a few more times, giving it my all.

No one else can die for me, please.

I pant and put my hands on my hips, completely out of breath and running low on adrenaline, staring at his empty wolf vessel on the countertop.

Fuck. FUCK!

The demon in my head shows me an image of his body buried in my backyard full of my other mistakes, his corpse rotting alongside everyone else I’ve fucked over.

No…

My feet kick into the cabinets around me and I throw everything off the kitchen counters, screaming and cursing at God. The intensity of rage I feel bubbles up inside me unlike it ever has before and I transform back into fucking wolf.

I sprint around the living room, destroying everything in sight and my body transforms back into human, then back to wolf rapidly. My screams rip paint off the walls as my entire body breaks repeatedly, over and over again.

My eyes shut and I see the shovel waiting for me at my childhood home, the six-foot grave sucking in Tristan’s bloody body.

NO!

I feel my bones cracking, my joints sliding around and my skin crawling with agony. The furniture around me rips and shreds as I run through it – feathers flying everywhere from pillows and glass shattering from side tables.

Tears spill from my eyes as I slow down to lie on the floor, stuck constantly transitioning between two forms.

He died for me.

My little brother, my perfect, sweet and caring little brother fucking died for me.

When he said he’d do anything, this isn’t what I thought he meant.

My transformation finally finishes and my naked human body aches in the fetal position. Every inch of my body burns with guilt as it consumes me like a raging wildfire.

“Tristan…” His name sneaks out of my mouth like a prayer.

Fucking Christ, I’m horrible.

I’ve ignored, bullied, abused and now killed the one person that’s been consistently kind to me, even when I didn’t deserve it – especially when I didn’t deserve it.

He’s taken the scraps I’ve given him over the years and turned them into a literal dying obsession for me, and I just let it happen. I walked all over him however I pleased, feeling like God.

And now he’s dead, and I can’t fix fucking anything, not even myself.

I hear a wet cough behind me and a voice comes from the dark marble countertop.

“Jeez, Skyler, you’re so dramatic,” Tristan wheezes out and coughs again, his wolf form cracking and now his human body shivers on the island, covered in blood and dirt.

I shoot up from the floor and approach him. He’s pale, even more than usual and his blue eyes are filled with tears.

I rest my hand on his cheek and smile, sniffling my nose. “And you’re so fucking stupid.”

By some grace of God or Satan, Tristan Walker was spared. I’ll be in debt to the Universe forever.

“I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”

“For what?” He coughs and tries to sit up, but I push him back into the countertop.

Yeah, for what, Skyler? How do you apologize for the last couple of years of your life?

“For everything, Tristan. For…” Words are nearly impossible. “For being the worst.”

“You’re not too shabby.”

Somehow, he finds a way to smile through everything. I wish I could steal some of his positive energy and inject it into my veins like a drug.

Purity – a high I’ll never feel like he does, no matter how hard I chase it.

But I’ll be damned if I don’t try.