Page 300 of Pucking Feral: Part Two

Fair.

But omegas don't mark alphas. It isn't done.

Then again, Plague bit Whiskey, and nothing about this pack has ever been done the way it's supposed to.

The wound isn't healing just yet. It isn't the type of mark an alpha gives an omega, the type that turns a pretty silver over a few hours. This will be a normal scar, like the ones they gave each other.

This will also be my favorite scar.

There's something else, too, besides her vines and my thorns grafting her pure soul onto whatever fucked up shell is left of me. Four other presences, faint but unmistakable. One is fainter than the others, barely a shadow, the one whose mark hasn't been left on her yet, but who lives inside her ribcage all the same.

I've belonged to groups before. Alliances. Arrangements. Things held together by necessity and dissolved when necessity ended. Packs of strays.

This is eternal.

And fucking terrifying.

Ivy shivers and I pull her tighter against my chest, wrapping both arms around her and tucking her head under my chin because I don't know what the fuck else to do but keep her warm and hope to all the gods above and below that she doesn't want to talk about all this.

I'll make a mess of it. I can't formulate a single cohesive thought. She's hollowed me out and crawled inside what's left, and what's left isn't much.

She burrows deeper against me, her lingering purr quieting to a low, happy hum. I barely hear it over the crackle of the fire and the river just beyond it, but I feel it in my bones.

"Val?" she whispers.

Oh, fuck.

Here it goes.

Another conversation I don't know how to have, and I'm going to have it anyway because I'll do anything she wants from now until the end of fucking time.

My carved-out heart on a silver platter, if she likes.

"What?" I ask warily, even though I shouldn't.

She tips her head back, and both her hands come up and cup my face.

"The night isn't over yet." Her lips curve. "You still owe me dinner."

Chapter 62

Ivy

The server at the diner’s eyes go as wide as the plates in her hands when we push through the door.

Can't exactly blame her.

We washed up in the river before the fire went out, but "washed up" is kind of generous. My hair is a fucking mess, we're covered in scrapes and bruises, and my change of clothes from the duffel bag—a wrinkled thermal and joggers—are already damp again from the walk here because it started raining.

Just our luck.

Which is why we're laughing so hard we're fighting back tears. Valek slipped on an oil slick in the wet parking lot and the unnecessarily graceful alpha nearly fell on his ass.

He looks even worse than I do. He's wearing a plain black tee he pulled from an honest-to-gods emergency cache he'd stashed in a waterproof bag in the forest, not far from the river. The bag also contained a knife, a burner phone, a thick roll of cash stuffed in a beer can, a first-aid kit, and what I'm fairly sure was yet another passport.

I didn't ask.

His combat pants are still shredded at both knees, and he's scratched up everywhere from taking the brunt of the fall. His hair is plastered all over his face, and through the damp white locks, his eyes are red-rimmed.