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Robbie
The snow continued to fall.
Robbie wasn’t sure how long they stayed there, him holding onto Kelly as he cried. Robbie thought his own heart might be breaking too. From the house behind him he could hear someone else crying – Joe he thought - and the murmur of voices. Eventually, Kelly’s chest stopped hitching and he pulled away from Robbie. His face was streaked with tears, but he looked angry rather than sad as he stood and walked to the edge of the porch, looking out at the snow-covered trees.
“Why?” he asked, and his voice was cracked and broken. “Why would he do this to us? To me?”
Robbie swallowed the lump in his throat as he too stood and walked over to Kelly’s side. “I don’t know,” he said quietly, putting a hand onto Kelly’s back. “But we’ll find him, Kelly. I promise you we’ll find him and bring him home. We’ll find both of them.”
He realised as he said it that that was hardly a comfort. Finding Gavin would mean finding Robert Livingstone. Were they ready for that? For more hurt? More bloodshed?
Kelly shook his head, hardly seeming to have heard what Robbie had said. “He said he’d always come back for me,” he persisted. “He promised. He promised.”
“Kelly…”
“He promised me, Robbie!” Kelly swung round on his mate, his eyes flashing orange. Robbie didn’t remember ever having seen him so angry. Kelly stepped away from him and dug his phone from his pocket. “I’m going to call him. Tell him to come home.”
Robbie hated to see him hurting so much, and knew that this would not make things better. Was likely, in fact, to make them worse.
“Kelly,” he said patiently, trying to keep his voice even and reasonable. “He won’t have taken his phone. He cut us off. He won’t have taken it.”
“I can try, can’t I? I can try!” Kelly blazed, and Robbie took a step backwards, shocked at the sheer fury in his mate’s eyes. He thought that Kelly probably understood as well as he did that Carter wouldn’t have taken his phone with him, but it seemed that he would refuse to believe it until he proved it to himself. Kelly punched at his own phone angrily, glaring at Robbie as if daring him to say anything. They heard a phone ringing from inside the house.
Kelly headed back up the porch at a run despite Robbie telling him Carter will have left his phone behind, he’s not here, he can’t be, we felt him go, don’t do this to yourself, Kelly, don’t, he’s not here, he’s gone, Kelly, please. All he could do was follow his mate into the house, where he headed up the stairs to his brother’s room. Joe, his face white and tearstained, emerged from the kitchen and put out a hand to stop him, and Robbie pleaded Carter’s gone, he’s gone, Kelly, he’s left his phone behind, don’t do this Kelly, please don’t, but he ignored both of them.
Elizabeth came out of the kitchen after Joe, shaking her head. “Let him go,” she said, and it was blue, blue, blue. “He needs to see for himself that he’s really gone.” Her voice cracked on the last word, and she came to Robbie and pulled him to her. “Thank you,” she whispered into his hair, and Robbie had no idea what she was thanking him for. It didn’t matter. He let his own tears flow at last as she held him close.
Kelly
Kelly came downstairs after a while. He was exhausted and hurting and he scarcely knew what to do with himself without Carter, without his tether. They were all in the kitchen. His mother smiled sadly at him, and Robbie extended a hand, pulling him down to the seat beside him. But something was wrong. Everything was wrong, but this was something else, something more. Someone was missing.
(Someone other than Carter.)
“Where’s Joe?” he asked, and they all looked at him as if it was a stupid question before realising that he was right, that Joe was gone. And none of them – not even Ox – had noticed him leave.
Kelly stood up again, pulling his hand away from Robbie’s.
“I’m going to find him.”
“I’ll go,” Ox said, also getting to his feet, but Kelly shook his head, facing his Alpha down.
“No. I’m going. I’m going to find him.”
He had to do this. He knew suddenly and clearly that Joe was the only person he wanted right now. Robbie was his mate, and he loved him, but he was not the one who could help him now. And Ox was his Alpha, as Joe was, but this was nothing to do with Alphas and Betas. He needed his brother, and the fact that his brother was also an Alpha was incidental. And he knew that if he needed Joe, then Joe needed him just as badly.
He found him in the clearing, naked, newly shifted from his wolf, and screaming into the void for their father. They clung together and cried, and talked, and cried some more, and then when their tears were spent, they laughed a little at how stupid their big brother was. (But admitted too that they would – had – would - do the same. For Ox, for Robbie, they would do the same.) And it was not good, but it was better. It was awful, and they were so angry and so lost and so broken, but it was better, because they had each other. As brothers.
They went back towards the house hand in hand, and Ox met them halfway and Joe went with him. Kelly carried on alone, but Robbie was there, always Robbie, waiting for him on the porch, looking anxiously out across the snow. He smiled when he saw Kelly and came down the steps towards him.
“Hi,” he said, holding Kelly at arm’s length and looking up into his face questioningly.
“Hi.”
“Hello.” And then Robbie pulled him close and held him and Kelly’s arms went round his mate, and they stood together in the falling snow for a long long time.