Ollie Vance - Book Two: Ashes and Smoke

Chapter Six

Only twice in my life have I been left speechless and immobile by something—first was when Dad died and the second was when Mom followed two years later.

Jesse was the more volatile one, taking out his anguish at anything and everything he could get his hands on. He once hopped on an ATV and drove around the patch of forest behind our property and took out  a handful of large trees. He claimed he did it with a chainsaw but when I looked at them a few days later, the cuts weren’t clean. The trees looked like they snapped off but the ATV didn’t look damaged so God knows what he did but I didn’t want to ask.

Maybe it was to balance out Jesse’s more aggressive nature that I got the habit of falling completely silent and impossibly still whenever I was hit by a blow I just couldn’t recover from quickly.

That probably explained why I said and did nothing for God knows how long, curled in bed in Tristan’s room, hugging my knees to my chest and staring at the pale blue gray paint on the wall and the oil painting of a nomadic ship out on a stormy sea.

It was a dark scene and it fit perfectly with just how lost and turbulent I felt inside.

Finally, Tristan’s face loomed over me and my gaze refocused until I could see him clearly.

“I brought you food,” he said, setting down a small tray on the bed. “It’s seven in the morning and you haven’t eaten anything since they... you know.”

I looked up at him and saw his expression strain.

“Since Remus kidnapped me,” I supplied stonily, not recognizing my own voice. “Since he decided he wanted something more from me than just leverage. Since he decided to kill Jack and his pack as if they were bothersome pests.”

My voice quivered at the mention of Jack’s name and a lump formed in my throat.

I swallowed it painfully and looked away.

“Ollie, you have to eat and get some rest,” Tristan said patiently. “You’re in shock and definitely traumatized but you have to fight back.”

“Fight back how exactly, Tristan?” I demanded angrily, finally finding some strength in me to pull from. “Same way you did when Remus was slaughtering the werewolves? Or should I say the same way you didn’t?”

He flinched as if I had slapped him but he only looked defiant. “If I had given in to punishing Remus, I can assure you more deaths than what you saw tonight.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “If tonight is any indication of what’s in store for the rest when Remus takes over, then I would rather you take a stand and stop him in any way possible before more people get hurt. You shouldn’t have agreed with him. I don’t care what the cost is but that monster can’t possibly rule.”

“Even if the cost is your life?” he asked quietly.

Tears sprang in my eyes and I quickly blinked them away. “Would you choose one life over a hundred or a thousand? If you fought back, maybe Remus could’ve been stopped—and maybe Jack and his pack would’ve lived too.”

“Don’t take too much credit for it,” he said with a sigh. “Jack and his pack had their own agenda. They wouldn’t have forgiven me if I took that chance away from them.”

I blinked at him in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

Tristan grasped his knees with his hands, thinking about it for a minute. “Jack came from a much larger wolf pack who were once enslaved by Remus to do his dirty work when he was still serving the demon lord he killed to rise to power. When they broke away from his command, many of them were killed including the parents and grandparents of Jack’s generation. They split up into smaller groups and stayed under the radar. Jack wanted to save you and also avenge their pack. We had plans to take Remus out tonight but we didn’t count on him taking your blood.”