Sebastian stood in the middle of their kitchen, one hand pressed against his chest like he was trying to keep his heart from falling out. He felt it. The sudden pain from his imprint.
Despite his better judgment, he felt it was wrong.
It wasn't broken, just empty. The silence felt overly stretched, thick, and wrong, akin to the darkness that descends after a gunshot.
No longing howls from the pack lands. There was no distant pulse of Lucas at Becca's front door, where he occasionally loitered like a stray.
Just pure, deafening silence. Then his phone rang in his pocket. He immediately scooped it out and looked at the caller ID. Max, one of Lucas' packmates.
He hit the green button and put the phone against his ear.
"Hey," Sebastian said, too brightly for his liking. He cleared his throat, hand still against his chest, massaging the area where he felt the pain.
"What's up?"
Static. A too-long pause. He never liked it. It never meant well.
"Max? He—?"
"Sebastian," Max voiced out. Sebastian shut his mouth. Maximus' voice had that tone—the one he used when patrol found trespassers near the eastern ridge. "Have you seen Lucas?"
The world shifted.
"He—" Sebastian paused. His throat closed around the reason that Lucas had fed him. "He was in a pack meeting with the elder?"
On the other line, Max blinked his eyes as he looked at Lucian, who was listening beside him. "There was a pack meeting?"
Lucian shook his head and muttered, "That was yesterday."
Sebastian's knees buckled. He caught himself on the counter, sending a coffee mug crashing against the tiled floor. Shards skittered across the tile like broken bones.
Lucas lied.
He lied to his face.
Sebastian's throat went dry. He stared at the coffee stain spreading across the floor, the exact shape of Texas if he squinted.
Lucas had lied. To him. After everything.
After he promised about their little rendezvous before going to Rachelle's birthday.
The realization hit like a sucker punch, all breath and no air. He dropped his phone and moved before he could think, shoving past his siblings' startled "Seb?" out of the back door and into the morning light.
He was barefoot, but the gravel driveway barely registered. All he could think about was Lucas' voice that morning, the way he'd hesitated before saying goodbye to him, and how his hands stayed jammed in his pockets.
He had never done that. Lucas always bid him goodbye, one hand waving for him and his smile never fading. He should've known.
The forest swallowed Sebastian whole. Brambles tore at his ankles. Somewhere around the old oak tree, he tripped on a root and went down hard, palms scraping across pine needles and dirt.
Panting and screaming in pain, he rolled onto his back.
The darkened forest sky stared at him back, indifferently. No scent of a wolf, no footprint in the mud. Just the bond, stretched so thin, might as well be severed.
As if Lucas just vanished.
—
The highway roared beside him, a river of steel and exhaust, the smell of gasoline and burnt rubber thick in the air.
Lucas sat on the sun-warmed guardrail, his boots kicking absently at loose gravel.
Each passing car threw gusts of wind at him, some warm with engine heat, others cool with morning dew still clinging to their undercarriages.
A truck blew past, the wind of its wake ruffling his hair. No brake lights. No slowing down.
Figures, Lucas thought to himself, rolling the taste of diesel fumes off of his tongue. Even machines know better than to stop for strays.
He kicked a pebble, watching it skitter across the asphalt.
The sun was high now, baking the back of his neck. Sweat trickled down his spine. Somewhere in the distance, a crow cawed, the sound swallowed by the growl of engines.
His phone sat heavy in his pocket, long since powered off.
The imprint in his chest ached dully, like a bruise he couldn't stop pressing. Somewhere south, Sebastian was probably just now realizing.
Nah, there's no way. He probably wouldn't. That's how Sebastian always was anyway.
He desired Lucas but not enough to see how his relationship with Becca ached. He declared his full cooperation with the imprint but not enough to see how he broke his heart when he told Lucas he would be marrying Becca.
Sebastian had never, like, never noticed anything wrong about Lucas.
To him, Lucas was nothing but a casualty, something to throw away when they found a cure for the imprint.
A safe way to cut the bond so he and Becca could live happily without him in the picture.
Minutes ticked by when a rusted Cadillac with one red door slowed to a stop twenty feet ahead.
The window rolled down with a mechanical whine, releasing a wave of lavender and menthol car fumes.
"Boy, you look like you've been chewed up and spit out," called a voice like well-worn leather. Lucas squinted, interest piqued.
The driver peered at him through cat-eye sunglasses, her silver hair escaping a messy bun.
There was something in the way she held her cigarette, two fingers pinched near the filter, like someone who'd learned young how to make things last. "Get in."
Lucas hesitated, yet something told him to go with it.
That hesitation would never give him the result he wanted. History would just repeat itself, and he would just be back in the toxic arms of Sebastian.
"Where are you running off to?" she asked through her veneers. Lucas sighed, "No one..." He lied, "Just nothing."
The woman scoffed, put the cigarette in her mouth, inhaling the menthol taste from the cigarette, and pushed the button for the car's tiny blinkers.
"Tanesab way?"
Lucas' shoulders tensed. The old wolf territories weren't common knowledge among humans.
"Relax, pup." She smirked, tapping the ash out of the window. "My sister married a shifter. Smell the scent on you, the same as I smell the heartbreak." She jerked her chin toward the passenger seat. "Get in. I could use the company."