Wolf Heart

Chapter 44

JAMES

Click. Click. Click.

Comforting pastel splashed against the walls instead of blood-stained flames. The more he watched the cheesy rom-com, the less he thought of the cracking tree. It never left in full, but if he focused on another, golden filled voice, he could drown out the white noise.

Sleep proved a different story.

His dreams painted gruesome details of the what ifs, the hows. His imagination proved his worst enemy against time's wicked wiles. He sat in darkness and his grip on life faltered with painful, smoke-inhaled breath.

No more promise. No more goals.

He picked up his datacam and no longer experienced the joy of a captured moment. He wrote words and experienced flatlining beats. His heart no longer thrummed with possibility.

In a bed not his own, he wasted to nothing.

He sighed when the next rom-com ended and he flicked to the next one on the list. Unsure of how many he had watched and repeated — better than slipping into Starcross matches; better than mulling over the past he couldn't return to no matter how much he longed for it.

Another tear slipped down his cheek as he forced himself against the pillows. Why hasn't she come up with my Medis? Time unpredicted, his heart hammered at worsening possibilities, and shots of ember panic jolted him to his feet at the oddity to the daily occurrences. Out of bed, weakness swirled in his knees, right into his lungs when he opened the door.

He put an ear against the walls. Voices downstairs stirred him into action. One hand to steady himself, he crept for the stairway. Back against his failing support, he waited and listened for information. He dared not hope for a different truth.

Fire scalded his skin.

"We searched the entire area around Roxton after the Eastpoint attack," a robotic voice said, and James tilted around the corner, where Mrs. Falae and a masked Elite stood in the foyer, arms crossed. "We couldn't find Rayan Falae."

James sank to his knees and stifled a groan at autumn's endless disappearance. An autumn he should've stayed in. An urge to punch the floor swallowed his knuckles, but he listened.

"Is there anything else?" Mrs. Falae asked, unfazed by anything the universe threw at her. "What of the reports of Insurgent smuggling operations?"

"There is," the Elite said. "I found something on the road between Eastpoint and Roxton." Crimson eyes unfeeling, frozen in calm time, a shot of envy coursed through him when he held out a small bag. James pursed his lips when Mrs. Falae searched through the bag, unable to listen to much else except the conversation on the first floor. "About that intel, the First Insurgency was using nearby routes to Kalto. Do you wish for us to send in a buster squad?"

Mrs. Falae's lack of an answer tugged him around the corner, where a broken tracker sat in her palm. The Elite waited with no sign of impatience or inconvenience. Nothing more than a statue, unaffected by the world around them. Mrs. Falae brought out her datapad with another glance at the shattered tracker.

"No," she said. "I'll do it myself after I've done basic training with the new Elite intake. What I want you and your team to do is keep eyes out between Roxton and Kalto." Her fingers wrapped around the broken tracker while steel filled her expression with nary a crack. "... my son is alive, Maror, and I want him found, but I don't want to spook him on the off chance the First Insurgency has him. Find him."

Rayan's... alive?

It swelled through his heart and brought the flaming pain to crush his chest.