Ethereal | Twilight |

020

Quil Altera was shifting, his body caught in that uneasy, half-wild threshold between boy and something else, and Sam, in a decision that grated like sand along bone, had singled out Sora to watch him — bypassing Jared, bypassing Paul, as though Sora's imprint on Jacob somehow braided him into closeness with either of them. As if proximity to one meant loyalty to all.

The assumption rankled, leaving a bitter metallic taste at the back of Sora's throat. Embry, who hovered closer to Jacob like a satellite caught in his pull, hadn't mustered the nerve to approach Sora himself; instead, Jared had delivered the message, casual and offhand, like tossing a stone into a quiet pond. Embry had decided it was "better" that Sora handled it — citing his own strained history with Leah as some kind of rationale.

The mere invocation of her name sent a flare of heat searing up Sora's chest, his exhale slicing sharp through his nostrils, the breath metallic, teeth gritted so tightly the muscle in his jaw thrummed. It wasn't just the comparison — it was the cowardice of it, the way they all shifted their burdens toward him, the way they mistook his silence for consent.

If he were to help Quil with his shift, to linger close, to hover during the raw, unraveling days where skin pulled wrong and bones betrayed their shape, it would've become a problem. The kind Jacob Black would charge into without warning, jaw locked and chest puffed, too sure of what didn't belong near his friends. Sora wasn't interested in shouldering that weight, not now, not ever.

He had enough to crawl through, enough demons stacked behind his ribs like rot, and he didn't give a single fuck about Quil Altera, not enough to stalk him through his agonies just because Sam decided it made sense. There was no loyalty to be honored, no tie between them beyond shared silence and proximity. And yet, Sam, in the middle of a late patrol, alone beneath the blank sky, bled into Sora's thoughts with the brutish push only an Alpha could manage, no request, no warning, just sudden pressure at the back of his skull and then: intrusion.

The mindlink tore through him like teeth into silk, snagging, shredding, uninvited.

It was the first time in weeks that Sora had felt the presence of the others breach the threshold of his mind. Weeks spent carving out solitude, constructing walls brick by brick to keep them out. He had refused to shift in their presence, avoided patrols, buried himself in the thin spaces between dreams and waking just to escape the collective hum. And now, all at once, it fractured.

The quiet he'd hoarded like stolen warmth was gone. Every thought that wasn't his own came flooding in, echoes of snarled arguments, clipped laughter, the aching confusion stitched between bodies trying to hold themselves together. The last fourteen days unfurled inside his skull in a sequence of images and fragments he didn't ask to see: Paul's voice echoing in someone else's memory, Embry's breath hitching in a night run, the uncomfortable lurch of Quil's heartbeat as his skin began to betray him. Sora felt it all, unfiltered, unsummoned.

It made his stomach turn. It made his teeth grind. There was nothing he hated more than being forced to witness, forced to feel, dragged back into the collective noise of the pack like he was something they could summon at will, like his mind wasn't his own. It crawled along the seams of his ribs, into his molars, across the backs of his eyes. His pulse was steady, but something deeper wasn't, some muscle that lived under the muscles, some part of him still animal enough to snarl at being touched.

Sam couldn't keep it to himself either, couldn't force his mind to drift elsewhere or clamp down on his thoughts to spare Sora the slow bleed of revelation. The mindlink was merciless like that, thoughts slipping through like water through cupped hands, impossible to dam up once the shift opened the floodgates. Apparently, Paul Lahote had been sinking himself into parties, into rooms dense with cigarette smoke and sweat-slick laughter, into the arms of women, only women, not a single man to echo what had once flickered between them. That detail struck Sora like a blow to the ribs, sharp and bruising, lodging in his chest like a thorn.