Chapter Forty-Nine

Damon

The kid’s name was George and he became my shadow. Darwin spent a week in the infirmary healing his broken facial bones but from that day onwards everyone steered clear of me and the kid. Everyone knew I was an Enforcer and within two weeks even the warriors left me alone to do my own thing. The only people that talked to me were Enzo and George.

“So what are you going to do when you get out?” he asked me one morning during breakfast.

“Go home,” I said as I watched a new group of prisoners being escorted into the dining hall.

“Yeah I don’t have a home anymore, I’ll probably go somewhere warm, start over,” he said. I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to know, I didn’t really care.

The days had turned to weeks and I had about nine days left of my incarceration. Oracle Bloom had visited me and we had sat in Enzo’s office as she told me that my status as Enforcer and Alpha remained intact and that nothing had changed.

Axel hadn’t spoken to me in months, ever since that time I spent in the infirmary for a concussion I couldn’t remember getting. My emotions felt blunt and even empathy for the kid in front of me was hard to come by.

I also couldn’t remember the man I had killed outside of my duties, the reason I had ended up here. I tried to remember, but it was just blank and Enzo had no information to give to me. Apparently that information wasn’t in my file.

Jared still sent my care packages every week and the kid was more excited than I was to receive them. Everything else was still shit and I couldn’t sleep more than three hours during the night, so my time was spent working out, going on runs and working overtime that wasn’t necessary.

For the last month though our hot water had been cut off and our workload had increased and now we worked sixteen hour days. The kid was barely hanging on and I wondered what would happen to him when I left, I doubt he’d survive the night.

“How does one become an Enforcer?” he asked me.

“You don’t,” I said to him.

“Huh?”

“You’re born an Enforcer, you can’t just become one,” I said to him.

“Oh, I was born a rogue,” he said as I just stared blankly at him.

“Join a pack, wolves aren’t meant to be alone like us, wolves need a society,” I said to him.

“Packs aren’t eager to take in rogues, especially ones with a criminal record,” he said sadly.

“How long do you have left?” I asked him.

“Two weeks,” he said.

“I can give you the names of a few Alphas that’ll give you a chance,” I said to him.

“Really?” he asked me, sounding excited.

“If you survive,” I said and he looked in Darwin’s direction.

“He’s going to kill me the moment you leave isn’t he,” he said.

“Yes he is,” I said to him and stood up.

“And you don’t care,” he said as he followed me.

“It’s not my job to care about you, I kept you safe this whole time, not even sure why because you’re a pain in the ass,” I said to him.

“So why did you?” he asked me.

“I was bored,” I said to him.

“So why don’t you just let him kill me now so you can spend your last days in peace and quiet,” he said, sounding bitter.

“Move back to your own room kid, so how long you last,” I said to him and walked over to the new row of houses we were busy fixing.

I spent the next sixteen hours working in silence and solitude, I didn’t break for lunch or dinner and the anger simmered just beneath the surface as my hands bled from handling the rough concrete blocks and the splintered wood. I didn’t care and I didn’t stop until the stinging sensation made me look down and I realized that my hands were rubbed raw.

I couldn’t get rid of the empty feeling inside me and the only emotion that I knew well enough to cling to was anger and irritation. The days went by and finally two days before I got released I kicked the kid out of my room for good. I’d had enough of his talking and trying to get to know me. I didn’t want to be his friend and I didn’t want to care about him.

It was my last day in Michigan and I couldn’t muster up an ounce of excitement as I headed to the dining hall and looked around for George. He was nowhere to be found as I took my tray to my usual table and sat down to eat.

“Axel?” I asked. I’d been doing that every day for the last six months but I couldn’t even feel his presence in my mind and that just infuriated me more, not knowing if I’d lost him forever.

I finished breakfast and headed back to the boarding house to look for George since I still had twenty minutes before the workday started. I wasn’t working today since I’d be leaving at eleven am. My six months were officially over.

I headed up the stairs to the third floor and stopped in front of George’s room. The door was ajar and I closed my eyes as I smelled blood. I knew he was dead even before I opened that door. The sight that greeted me was horrific.

They had cut out his eyes and his tongue, his blood was everywhere. They had positioned him on his bed with his entrails lying on the floor in a heap next to the bed. I stood there and stared at his mangled corpse and for a second I didn’t know what to feel.

I snapped out of my daze as two warriors pushed past me into the room and started gagging at the sight of him. I walked toward him as they watched me and pulled the sheet over his body as I knelt next to him.

“Who did this, Woods?” Enzo asked from behind me.

“Darwin,” I said automatically.

“Get Darwin and take him to solitary,” Enzo said to one of the warriors.

“I left him on his own,” I said softly.

“He had no family, poor kid was all alone in this world,” Enzo said as he placed his hand on my shoulder.

“I want to bury him before I leave,” I said as I stood up.

I walked out of George’s room and grabbed a shovel from the shed outside where the tools were kept and headed to the other side of town where a small cemetery lay undisturbed. I chose a space next to a little boy’s gravestone who had died when he was three years old and started digging George’s grave.

It didn’t take long for the blisters on my hands to burst open and start bleeding again since my healing was almost non-existent with Axel’s absence. My heart was thundering in my chest and halfway through Enzo followed four warriors as they carried a plain crude coffin towards the grave I was digging.

“Let the warriors take over Woods,” Enzo said to me as I wiped the sweat off my forehead. I had already taken my shirt off as the sun beat down on me.

“No,” I said and continued to dig.

The handle of the shovel was stained with my blood and my sweat and blood mingled in the dirt as I kept digging. They watched me for another hour as I finally finished the grave and I sat down on the ground as I raised my hands to my face. I hadn’t even realized that I was crying the whole time as I wiped my hands over my face letting the dirt and blood cling to it.

“Woods,” Enzo said again as I stood up and two of the four warriors helped me get out of the hole.

The other two warriors fastened rope around the coffin and together we lowered George into his grave. Every slide of the rope dug into my hands and I winced a few times as it cut into me. The warriors started to shovel the dirt back into the hole as I watched Enzo feeling a thousand different emotions with guilt being at the forefront.

“I’ll pay for the headstone,” I said to Enzo as the warriors stamped the earth down over his grave with the shovels.

“You should go clean up, you’re already past your exit time,” he said to me.

I walked back to the boarding house slowly thinking about George and the cruel manner in which he had died. I had left him to fend for himself and it got him killed. Darwin had killed him to snub me, to show me that he could get to him. At that moment I hated myself.

“George Crane, ‘friend’, that’s what I want on his headstone,” I said to Enzo an hour later.

I had showered and packed and signed my release forms. Jared and Connor was waiting for me outside the town’s border. I had asked them to bring my truck because I wanted to drive back alone and in silence.

“Darwin will face another hearing for George’s murder,” Enzo said as I nodded and emptied the envelope with all my personal belongings. My phone, watch and my wallet fell onto the table and I should’ve felt more like myself but I didn’t.

“I hope I never see you again, Enzo,” I said as we shook hands.

“At least not here,” he said as he gave me a smile.

Jared and Connor both had tears in their eyes as they hugged me a few times and Connor took my small bag and placed it in my truck.

“It’s really good to see you,” Jared said as his eyes kept roaming over me.

“It’s good to be free from that damn collar,” I said as I inadvertently touched my neck. It felt odd when Enzo had the witch remove it, I had gotten used to the damn thing around my neck.

“Let’s go home and celebrate,” Jared said as Connor kept looking at me.

“What, Connor?” I asked him.

“Nothing,” he said as he looked away and I could tell that he wanted to ask me something but he stopped himself.

“Everybody’s waiting for you at home,” Jared said with a smile and I automatically smiled back at him but I doubted if it reached my eyes. I felt dead inside.

I objected to Jared driving with me and for once he didn’t argue. It was a long road ahead of us and we stopped only twice to refuel and I declined to eat when they stopped for food. My emotions were playing havoc inside me and I didn’t know how to deal with them.

“Axel?” I tried calling him again probably for the tenth time since I’d left Michigan behind.

There wasn’t even a stirring and I couldn’t feel him at all and gloom settled deep into my soul. I felt alone now more than ever as I turned the radio on. Thirteen hours later I pulled into the garage of the packhouse and smiled as Kat ran straight into my arms.

“I’ve missed you so much,” she cried as Archer stood just behind us and then hugged both of us as he smiled emotionally. I could smell that he had joined the clowder and the mark on Kat’s shoulder was very visible.

“I missed you too, Kat,” I said to her.

The whole clowder was waiting outside of the packhouse even though it was close to two am and they all clapped and cheered as I rounded the packhouse and welcomed me home. It was a bittersweet reunion because I still felt like somebody was missing.

The emptiness was still there even though I was home and the void wasn’t Axel that had left me. His void was a different kind of empty, one I could describe and one I knew.