The house was done. It seemed to have taken us forever, but also it felt like it took no time at all. I’d built the whole house with Michael and Axel. None of us had any real construction skills, but we watched a ton of YouTube and hired help for important things. It’d been a ton of work—work that I’d made even harder eleven months ago, when I’d had a dream that Tessa was back. It’d been amazing and normal and we’d had a house full of kids.
When I woke up and she still wasn’t there, I cried. I’d thought the dream was real. I’d thought she was back. And that we were happy and healthy and had the biggest family.
But it was just a dream.
She was still gone, and I was lost and alone. Still. Always. Maybe forever.
The only thing that got me out of bed that day was the hope that one day the dream would be real. Which meant I was going to need a bigger house. A much, much bigger house.
Axel and Michael bitched about the added
work for a while, but they’d stuck with me through the whole process. We camped together on the land until there was enough house for us to camp inside of it. I didn’t expect them to stay with me every day, all day—especially when the living conditions weren’t great—but they did. They understood that I couldn’t face going back to my cabin. The scent of her was everywhere in there, and I knew that one second inside it would set off a new frenzy to find her. My wolf wouldn’t understand that there was nothing left for me to do but wait.
Someone would find Tessa. Eventually. That’s what Van had said, and he was older than Michael. Much older. He had to be right.
He would be right. Believing that was the only thing keeping me going.
The day we finished the first phase of building, I sent Michael and Axel to my cabin to find Tessa’s inspiration binder. Whenever we weren’t fighting or politicking, she liked to flip through magazines and rip out images that she wanted to replicate in our home. I had Axel photocopy them and make a new binder so that it wouldn’t have her scent, and we used her dreams to design every bedroom, bathroom, every single square foot of the house.
The day we laid the last of the tile in the kitchen, Michael bowed out. There was only decorating left, and he thought I could handle that with Axel. He’d gone back to campus to start figuring out what to do with the school, and Chris and Cosette took his place. They helped me and Axel buy all the furniture.
Having Chris around was nice, but every time I looked at him and his mate, I remembered what I lost.
I didn’t want to be bitter. I was doing better than I had been when Van found me on the mountain. Letting go of the hope that today would be the day someone would find her was the scariest part of being apart from her, but I did it to save my sanity.
I closed myself off from the world—from any news or information—because I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t be trusted to fight without losing the last of my control.
For a while, that made me feel like a coward. Like I was failing her. But I’d done everything—every fucking thing—that anyone could think of.
Van gave me a purpose that day on the mountain. A goal. But now that I reached it, what was left for me to do?
It’d been a year, nine months, one week, three days, a couple handfuls of hours with no sign of Tessa.
We’d officially been apart for longer than we’d been together.
Every time I realized that, there was this empty, gnawing feeling in my stomach. I tried to ignore it. I kept moving. I kept living. I kept building, but now that was done.
Now that was done.
As I paced through the hallways, in and out of rooms, I knew there was nothing else for me to do here. No more walls to paint. No more pictures to hang. No more rooms to decorate. I was going to need a new goal—a new purpose—very soon. I couldn’t be trusted to sit still for long.
My phone’s alarm started beeping, and I pulled it out of my pocket to turn it off.
Shit. It was already afternoon, and I’d done nothing but my usual morning workout. Which meant it was time to eat.
I tried to keep busy throughout the day, but that meant I tended to forget about food, and if I forgot, then Axel usually forgot. So, I’d set alarms throughout the day to remind us.
“I’m making sandwiches,” I yelled down the hall.
There was a thunk, and then Axel appeared. “Want help?”
“Sure.”
Axel had grown his hair out. He wore it in a man bun that I liked to make fun of, but having him around was comforting. At first, he’d stayed because he said he wasn’t fully in control of his wolf, but that wasn’t true anymore. He’d had control for a long time now. Yet he still stayed with me. I wasn’t sure who was taking care of whom now.
We made a quick lunch—a few sandwiches for each of us filled with meat and cheese—and chatted about nothing in particular. There was something soothing about Axel, and I understood why Tessa was so close with her brother. He was more easygoing than Chris, with a great sense of humor. He also liked to work out, which was good. He kept me going when I probably would’ve stayed wolf and faded. And now that I had some distance from everything that happened, I felt guilty for blaming him when Tessa was first taken. I was glad we saved his life.
I just wished it hadn’t cost me Tessa.