SKIN (WATTYS UNDISCOVERED GEM)

Chapter Seventeen: You Need Me Less Than I Need You

A/N

I just want to say thank you for this amazing ride of writing this book, thank you for being so supportive and putting up with the first horrible chapters and just staying with me even though I'd just ignore this book for weeks, thank you so so much.

*CRIES VIOLENTLY*

And as for one last thing I wish to say to you all, what I've learned most from this book- is one, I learned more about myself by writing down and putting life into these characters than I ever have before, and- as it goes, you never know what the real meaning of the book is...until you finish.

"Let's admit, without apology, what we do to each other."

-Richard Siken, Detail of Fire

Lennox Armstrong has never attended a funeral.

He hasn't ever been pushed into a black tuxedo, with a black tie tightly wound around his neck, or a handkerchief folded neatly in his suit's chest pocket. His hair has never been prodded at, gelled and slicked back, and his face has never been completely shaven like it was on the first morning of November.

The Wake was just shaking hands, thanking them for coming, all while trying to ignore the open casket in his living room. Giles has been nursing a bottle of lukewarm whiskey for the past four days, eyes swollen from nights of no sleep.

Lennox has been spending most of his time locked up in his own human form, Quin's last words echoing in his mind.

He isn't a monster.

He may not be one, but he's not ever going to test that hypothesis.

The cuffs on his dress-shirt are too tight, straining against his wrist every time he reaches into his pocket to play with the loose threads of fabric inside. It's all just a distraction, the way his lips fold together into a tight line, and how his eyes stay focused on anything but the people he speaks to. The Alpha is doing anything to divert himself from the inevitable that's waiting in his living room in the form of a cold, dead body with a heavy casket.

When he lifts her up, it isn't the weight of the casket that makes his heart heavy, but maybe the fact that there are freezing tears stuck to his freckled cheeks. He's never known loss like this. When Quin's own mate had died, he had simply shifted- torn through the terrain of the surrounding forest, lost in his own grief only to come home a week later.

Now, it's different.

He's stuck. His hands are cemented to the brass rods that hold the huge mass up and everyone he seems to know, old or young, pack or human, are laying down roses on her closed tomb.

Funny, Quin didn't even like roses- pansies were what she had walked down the aisle with, tended to in her gardens, and asked for every birthday. He thinks bitterly that if they truly deserved to be at her funeral, they'd think a little and remember her blatant obsession with the flower.

Giles is on his other side, -they're both at the front of her casket- and he sniffs, not because the November air is below freezing, but because he's trying to think of how life will be now that his aunt is gone. Quin was the glue to family, for both of them.

Giles was hardly eight when his parents were both gone, and he had been passed around for weeks, from distant relative to distant relative, until Great Aunt Quin showed with her dimpled smile and soft brown eyes.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

It's been murmured through the entire service, but Lennox didn't realize who it was coming from until he heard himself whisper it, his voice tasted like chalk.