Chapter 23: Chapter 22

If you want to learn what someone

fears losing, watch what they

photograph

-Unknown

Orion follows me into my room.

I had forgotten the appearance and layout of it from being away for so long.

The bed laid the way I had left it- covers overturned and hanging on the side.

Some clothes still on the floor.

Papers and other wrappers from breakfast bars scattered around.

That’s not what grabs Orion’s attention though.

He walks forward to the wall at the far end of the room. I walk to stand with him, taking in the hundreds of faces that decorated the surface.

He surprises me by shifting. I don’t say a word as I watch his skin merge from flesh.

“Who?”

My hand automatically connects to the wall, tracing the different images. Each person. Each face.

“This is my pack.”

Those grey eyes light up in surprise.

No one entered my room. I knew that from the bed staying in its disordered state and the floor remaining dirty. Sandra knew better than to come in and clean.

Whenever someone did come in through, they never asked about my wall.

I always thought it made them uncomfortable to look at my dream. My dream that I had so plainly laid out before everyone.

This was my pack.

“I know all these faces.”

I point to each one, listing them out by name.

Orion is staring intensely at the people I point out as if this is a test and he is trying to memorize the names I have labeled to the individuals.

“I know each of their stories.”

I turn to face Orion. He stands bare before me. I take in the dirt that stains his skin. The wildness that clings to him.

“Come on.” He moves with me into the bathroom.

I turn the water to the tub on.

“Do you want bubbles?”

His face lights up, telling me his unspoken answer.

Soon the bath is ready and I am peeling off my shirt to step in. Without question, he mimics my example.

It reminds me so much of when we were in the pack. How we cleaned each other- taking off the blood and dirt that stained our fur.

Now the reverse had occurred.

I could tell the touch we exchanged was not intimate- the wolf was too deeply embedded in him. It was touches of comfort and affection. Not desire and want.

I don’t even know if Orion knew of such a feeling.

If he had a name to place to the sensations that ran within him whenever skin grazed against skin.

Another excuse to escape into fur – to avoid the contact of me. Avoid the foreign feeling that it brought. It was something unnatural and strange.

Change was always hard to accept when your life had been lived on a single slate of black. Color was hard to see when you overshadowed the other shades.

“Your brother...”

I pause in washing his hair. He looks back, soap dripping down the side of his face. I quickly wipe it away before it reaches his eyes.

Orion has his neck turned around to watch me as I reply, “Leo?”

He nods, “his scent...”

I sigh and lift the nozzle to start washing the soap from his hair.

“You noticed.”

He does not say anything and instead waits for me to explain more to him.

“What did you smell?” I whisper my question.

I wait for Orion to answer. His eyes are closed as I pull his head back and take away the suds from his hair. The feeling of scratching his scalp and the comfort it brings makes him pause to take in the sensation before he responds.

“Sadness. And a burning smell. It hurt my nose.”

I nod at his answer. “It’s hard to explain.” Part of me didn’t want to explain. I felt it was Leo’s story. His own personal pain. Something private for him alone to know and others to watch.

I lean towards Orion, “I’m trusting you with this.”

Orion’s grey eyes turn hard. Steel sharpening at my sentence, “I know.”

I chew on my lip, wondering where to even start.

“When Leo was small he had a friend. I remember some of it. All I can recall though is that they were inseparable. Him and that girl. From the moment he saw her he stuck to her. And I remember...” My hands still on Orion’s back as the past comes back to me, “I remember everyone saying how obvious it was.”

Orion’s back is tense as I continue, “how obvious it was that they were mates.”

“She died when Leo was twelve. An accident. And Leo...he was never the same after that. The burning sensation you smell is something my grandmother created to help ease his wolf- she’s a healer, my grandmother... Something to keep his mind at bay. That is the chemical you smell. And the sadness...” My voice trails away at the sentence I am unable to finish.

“Were they mates?”

I pause at the question.

“I don’t know,” None of us knew the answer to it. And none of us wanted to find out.

Especially Leo.

Leo.

He had locked away the name within his mind. He never went to that side of the pack. Never set foot near the houses. Never made contact with anyone who might have known her. With anyone who wanted to remember her.

Even though her scent had long died away with her through the years that decayed into nothing- he still held that fear of knowing.

We all did.

I look at Orion. I could not imagine it. And for the first time, I see why Leo was so afraid.

I had always seen him as weak. Subconsciously in the back of my mind, despite my best efforts, the thought would still come up.

It came creeping into my awareness whenever I saw mother also.

I knew now the hard truth to my ignorance.

They were the ones who hid behind their made up shields, who smiled at the world and made you wonder what they had to smile about. They were the ones who breathed in shattered glass. The brave souls because even through the pain of bleeding lungs, they still raised their lips in defiance to the odds. They didn’t let the red choke them.

Looking at Orion, I wonder if I had created my own shield against the world.

Maybe it was my blunt cruelness. Maybe my anger to everything.

But their shields had been sculpted in such a way that they were allowed to hide within the shadows. I reflected back to the times when mother would be gone. For days at a time- with father walking around wearing hollow eyes and Sandra hushing me when I asked why she never came out. Then mom would emerge again, smiling and bright like the blinding sun- and the question would leave my mind until the next time she shut herself off to leave me in eternal night.

Orion’s eyes are closed as he takes in the warmth of the water. I smile at him, letting some affection show now that he was looking away.

“I can’t imagine it.” Orion speaks my words back to me. I watch his chest rise and fall with the water lapping around his waist. The glory of skin exposing itself to my conscious mind to dwell on for later.

“Neither can I.” We stay silent, each lost in our own thoughts. But it’s a comfortable silence.

I lean my head back, closing my eyes with Orion as I hear the water slosh from him turning around. I feel his legs skim close to mine. The feeling has me shivering and moving so that they are placed on the side of mine. We both are still. Letting the liquid wash away the dirt from our skin.

The fading brown reminds me of all the times blood had been washed from the same surface. All the times my pain had leaked and been exposed for others to see.

Red. Red haunted me.

Drops of red that would forever stain my skin. Like mom, I had my own war paint I carried.

“I like your mother,” Orion whispers. I open my eyes and look at him, meeting grey eyes as he examines me. A heat spreads across as I let his gaze roam up and back down to the edge of the water.

“She’ll let you paint if you want.”

Orion shakes his head. “Some things people are meant to just look at- not do.”

His words grate against my mind. I don’t like them. I don’t like the very thought of thinking there was something out there you could not accomplish.

“You can do whatever you want Orion.”

His gaze flickers up to connect with mine. A hint of a smile lifts the corners of his lips.

“Anything?”

I nod, sitting up now, prepared to motivate him in any way.

My speech falls from my mouth though, as Orion moves closer. Water splashes to the side, spilling over the top and falling to the floor. Waves of chaos created from his movement.

I still. My earlier thoughts of Orion not having any desire towards me quickly disappear as he leans his head towards me.

I lean with him, an eager breathlessness invading me. But at the last second, he moves to the side, his mouth falling not on my lips, but the corner of them where skin connects to cheek.

He quickly stands, causing me to slip and lose my balance and fall back into the water.

“Or-,”

My words are cut short as he steps out of the tub and shifts.

“Don-,” none of my sentences were able to be completed. And before I could stop him he shook himself off, wet fur and all- creating a bigger mess for me to clean up after.