Page 75 of Pucking Feral: Part Two

Pull the gaiter away from my mouth just enough to get air.

Let it snap back against my face.

Repeat.

This is fine.

This is absolutely not fine, but I've been lying to myself for years.

What's one more morning?

Steam billows around me, painfully hot. The industrial-strength scent neutralizer burns my scarred skin where it touches, stripping away any trace of honeysuckle and summer rain.

Any trace of her.

I rubbed my skin fucking raw and bleeding trying to erase the best thing that's ever happened to me. The neutralizer made my skin sensitive and the roughest exfoliator I could find did the rest of the damage.

And I can't even fucking text her.

Ivy's in the crowd right now, somewhere in that sea of strangers, wearing her disguise, hiding in plain sight like she planned. My phone's in the soap caddy just in case she texts me.

We're not supposed to communicate with her unless it's an emergency.

But fuck, if she breaks the rules first…

I yank the gaiter away from my mouth—jaws—teeth—whatever again, suck in air, let it snap back. Water runs into my eyes. My palms are pruning wherever they're unscarred.

But I can still smell her on me.

Or maybe I'm imagining it.

Maybe I want to smell her so badly my brain is manufacturing ghost scents to torture me.

Wouldn't be the first time my brain fucked with me.

"Wraith!" Whiskey's voice booms from somewhere in the shower room. "You drown in there, big guy?"

I growl in response. Low. Annoyed.

The universal language of leave me alone.

"Cool, cool. Just checking you're alive and haven't steamed yourself to death. Your bro's having conniptions about how we gotta be out and dressed in ten for the media circus. And, uh… I gotta talk to you first."

What?

Why does he want to talk to me?

I turn off the water and stand there for a moment, dripping, the gaiter plastered to my face.

When I pull on a new dry gaiter and a gray undershirt and step out, the locker room air hits me hard enough to make my head sick.

The competing scents of alphas who've all been scrubbing ourselves raw are now mixed with the harshest soaps and neutralizers we could find, drowning out every last hint of Ivy.

Whiskey has managed to make himself bleed almost as much as I am—enough that red droplets are already showing through the fabric of my undershirt—and he doesn't even have the damaged scar tissue as an excuse.

I'm absolutely miserable.

And I miss her.