Shards of Sanity (Book 6, Forgotten Series)

Chapter Two

The atmosphere in the office was somber, Ezekiel stuck close to Luka, resting his head in his lap any moment he was able. I knew that if I had been wild still I would have done the same thing. Luke was a brother to my wolf and the animals needed the connection, the physical contact, to try and help their family through the pain they were experiencing.

I truly didn't know how to help him. I hated seeing him suffer as he was, I did, but I was barely over my own loss. It had been over ten years but I had hidden inside my wolf for nearly nine of them. That wasn't working through our pain, that was letting my wolf deal with everything. He had worked through it enough to survive, relying on his instincts to keep us going but even then the broken bond still pained him. He still missed Bethany and Catherine, just as I did. To be honest the only real reason we were with Luka was he managed to bump into Luka and proceeded to challenge him for Alpha position in the wild pack. His intent was to die.

At least that was what I got from him whenever I had probed him about it. He had been forthcoming and relayed the memories to me. I knew that if I hadn't been a wild and so used to the bits and pieces of how he communicated with me that I probably wouldn't have gotten that much out of him but as it were I understood a fair amount of what he had been trying to relay to me. He had been trying to get himself killed, which about summed up our ability to deal with what happened to our mate and daughter.

So I didn't know how I could help Luka, my wolf and I's ability to deal with our own traumas amounted to me hiding from it and my wolf being impulsively suicidal. We weren't in any place mentally to help but I knew that as Luka's Beta, I had to at least try. He had been my best friend for nearly nine years, I had to be there for him in anyway that I could be.

I sighed and I set the Hunter's paperwork down on the coffee table that I had snagged from one of the second hand shops because Luka had refused to replace any of the furniture. As it was, the grass stained chair was still a prominent seating fixture and it took me months to save up enough to refurnish the office because Luka refused to 'waste money on my tantrum'. However Ezekiel still claimed the couch and I needed a space to work on paperwork and other shit. So I had to buy it behind Luka's back. He hadn't really been impressed with that but he hadn't told me no when I brought it all into the office.

"If you want to give up on those forms I am sure Shey would do them." Luka's sigh echoed my own and I looked over at him from my spot as he looked through his own stack so paperwork, his glasses sliding down his nose slightly.

"Oh, I'm not doing them, just sorting them. Shey would kill me if I did the forms." She had a system and I wasn't going to mess with it. However I did like sorting them for her so she could just start them and go through them all rather than trying to find every little sheet that went with each form. Anything I could do to make her life easier I took, having the twins, Amelia especially, had been hard on her.

Luka gave a half little smile at that and gave an amused exhale before he glanced at me. The slightly amused expression slid off his face quickly as he noticed I was staring. "What?" The word came out sharper than I knew he meant and I narrowed my eyes before leaning back in my chair.

"You know... if you want to talk about it. I'm right here." I watched him carefully and he glanced back down at his paperwork and I knew he wanted to deny it, I could see it in his face and I narrowed my own eyes. "If you clam up on me, I will phone Mari and tell on you." I fought back a smirk as he glowered at me almost half-heartedly before letting out another heavy sigh.

"I would call you on that but I know it's not a bluff." He moved the stack of papers to the side and rubbed at his forehead before looking at me again. "What do you want me to say, Micheal?" He looked... lost. I didn't know how else to explain it. He looked lost and forlorn, unsure of his path. I felt for him, I truly did because, despite the fact I wasn't the greatest as working through my shit, I had felt like that too.