Red Moon Rising

59. healing

Need I mention how long it's been since I've updated? My own healing process has been a big, long struggle, but I am very glad to give another chapter. With another soon to follow! Please be gentle and patient with me <3

XX

Chapter Song: This is the Last Time - The National

XX

Red looks at me like I'm her own child when she takes my hand in hers and squeezes my cold fingers. She doesn't speak; she doesn't have to. It's a gesture of safety, and it works. I swallow the apology that keeps forcing its way up from my throat. You act like if you say just the right thing I'm going to give up on you.

I do. I think I do. But I don't know what to do with that information, and some part of me believes I'm right to try to force Jack to back down. But he knows what he's dealing with as well as I do. And in truth, I'd be lost without him now. We're living out the worst parts of our lives with each other, and without him I think I'd crumble.

Maybe I deserve to. But Sage reminded me that it's not really about deserving at this point—even if I deserve to die after all of this, giving up is exactly what Paul wants me to do. And that fact alone makes me keep fighting. I don't know who he is or what he needs me for, what kind of curse he faces or how he plans to break it. But I get the feeling that the consequences will ripple much farther than my own little life.

"Let's go for a drive, Layla."

Jackson's fingers brush my shoulder and I look quickly up at him, but he's staring hard at Red.

"You know you shouldn't leave," she says, "not right now."

"The threat has passed for now. And they wouldn't dare attack us in public."

"That's not what I meant," she says, a little more gently. "Everyone is confused and scared. You can't just up and leave; there's work to do."

"I can't stay here."

"And why can't you?"

"I can't." He sucks in a breath, and Red's brow softens. The way they stare at each other is so familiar, a hundred words in a second of contact. It's the look two people can only share when they've known each other for a long while.

"Okay," she relents. "Please don't be gone too long. And be careful. And Layla—take a coat, darling!"

In the car, Jackson is silent as we rumble along the highway toward the interstate, woods becoming patchier the closer we get to human civilization. The trees here are still young, still a telltale sign of just how short of a time the St. Croix pack has been able to call this place home. Even the trees don't remember them quite yet.

"What's on your mind?" I ask, unprepared for if he decides to tell me the truth. But it feels like the right thing to say. I can't imagine trying to care for an entire pack right now, on top of losing a parent, mending the fallout from a curse, and running from the devil. "You don't have to answer that, if you don't want to."

He smiles a little at that and glances quickly over at me. "Everyone looks at me like I'm my father. They expected me to seamlessly take up his mantle, but I'm failing them at every turn. And I don't know how to do better."

"You're too hard on yourself."

"We've lost too many, since I've led the pack. But they keep looking at me like I can make it okay."

"You probably can't, you know."

Another dark look across the console.

"What I mean," I try again, reaching flinchingly across to touch his arm. "Is that you probably can't do it on your own. You aren't your father; he had decades to become the leader that he was. I bet he was awful at it when he started out."