I shouldn’t be doing this.

That wasn’t the first time Isaac had this thought today. The weight of the words dragged at him more with every repetition, making him feel like he was dragging an entire gym’s worth of barbells. His brain was trying to delay him, dragging out the journey as long as possible.

The rest of him, his body, his soul, his heart, were what kept him going onward despite all that. Fuck logic. He needed to do this, even though at the same time he needed to be doing anything but this.

He rode down the highway in the direction of Pensacola Beach, a location he’d been avoiding ever since he put an end to his relationship with Moody. The memories were too stark, too fierce.

He turned off to the west, exactly as he had two years prior. Not two years to the day, though close enough. What was a handful of days, a few months, in the grand scheme of things? Hardly anything at all, that’s what.

Isaac abandoned his motorcycle at a parking lot, wedging his way into the space designated for bikes that had nevertheless been infringed upon by someone with a truck who clearly needed to go back to driver’s education class.

He walked along the winding, snakelike paths which led gradually to the end of the barrier island, so neglected by tourists that it was hard to see through the layer of sand to know where the concrete actually was. He didn’t need the guidance. If he closed his eyes, remembered the way he had walked when he first came out here on business, he knew he would arrive at the place all the same.

The hour was late. Most of the families had already vacated the area, they had in fact cleared out as soon as the sky started to go gray. Routines needed to be kept for children and adults alike, so this vacation of theirs wouldn’t ruin the course of their daily life when they returned home. A few teenagers still traipsed about, already in that odd sort of twilight area between childhood and adult so they didn’t notice the actual approaching dusk. And there were other couples, other groups, friends and family, though Isaac knew they wouldn’t stay long. Some beaches closed at night. Others stayed open, and that was where these people would go, drawn like fireflies to the dance lights and the fireworks.

Moody’s favorite spot.

Isaac crossed around the last dune where the shadows were deepest, carved harshly against the sand by the lowering sun. He was cut off from the rest of the world, forgotten, isolated. Peaceful.

It was a beautiful spot, with the endless ocean framed in the distance by curves of island and shore. The sunset only made the sight better, bringing thoughts of an end, a beginning, golden and red as the flames of a phoenix. To see a sunset was to lose part of yourself, only to find something else, returning as that mythical bird did.

Isaac looked out at the sky, the lights reflected in filmy smears across the water.

Where’s my end, where things are better?

Try as he might, he could glean no real information from the beauty of coming night. The world had no message for him now, not tonight. His shoulders slumped, with mingled relief and disappointment. As much as he wanted to move on, he knew how hard it would be. He must not be ready for that.

So, he focused only on the appearance of things instead, the way the sunset was so wonderful, all exotic jewel tones and clouds fringed in tropical colors. This phenomenon was so grand, yet composed only of light.

Appearances were often so deceiving, in such a bad way, but the sunset was beautiful despite its lackluster origins. Maybe he would do as sunsets did and surpass expectations.

Closing his eyes, Isaac let the memories come. He hadn’t wanted to admit to himself exactly how it made him feel to go on patrol with Moody, to be so close to the other wolf. His feelings of hurt were only the beginning. Everything else underneath was just too complicated to be understood, too tangled to unravel. However, standing here in the presence of the sinking sun, it was unavoidable.

As soon as he had seen Moody, he knew he was going to fall for him. Even just the first impression was enough to cement it deep inside his heart, his soul. The wolf in him recognized another wolf, formed a connection, and that was all it took.

“Yeah?” Isaac had said. He wouldn’t have said more if he hadn’t recalled the reason he was here. People skills. Talking. Being human, following human logic instead of lunging to the heart of the matter like a wolf. An omega would like that, since they tended to be more emotional and thoughtful than alphas. “What do you like about it the most?”

Walking up to stand at his side, the warmth of his body so close that Isaac had felt a similar heat tighten his loins, Moody pointed out across the water. “That.”

There was nothing out there.

Isaac had looked back at the omega, confused, wondering if this was some stupid joke. “It’s the horizon.”

“Isn’t it amazing? Anything could be out there and we wouldn’t know.”

“Actually, I think Mexico is pretty much straight south of here.”

A small fist collided with his upper arm, the contact too gentle to be painful. “It wasn’t literal. You alphas are all the same. Even if you aren’t from around here, you’re just the same as the rest of them.”

Isaac had rubbed his arm anyway, grimacing playfully. He already liked this wolf and the straightforward way he talked, speaking his mind without restraint. It didn’t matter that he was handing out insults, either. The wolf inside him was intrigued, his soul straining towards Moody with everything it had. “How do you know I’m not from around here?”

“You don’t smell like the ocean yet. It clings to you, but it’s not part of you like it is for everyone else who actually lives here.” Shrugging, Moody had accidentally brushed up against Isaac. He didn’t move away.

Neither had Isaac, because that initial touch did something to him he had never felt before. He was no stranger to sex, had taken a woman once before discovering his true preferences. After that, he’d spent many a night with omegas and betas, though these brief flings never blossomed into anything else.

He knew what it was to be aroused. He knew the release of orgasm. Sex came so much easier when a person was half-animal, or at least that was what he deduced from humans and the way they talked about the act. Everything was a skill, a technique. They labeled even the most primal of acts, categorized it, when in reality they should have been listening to their bodies instead of their minds. Sex was discovery, an act, not a science. All anyone had to do was experiment, pay attention to what felt good and what felt even better, following their natural rhythms.

Touching Moody was different. Sharper, more intense. Tingles like nothing he had ever known burst up from the back of his hand, where they made contact, and traveled up his arm, his shoulder, racing through his veins to encompass every part of himself. His muscles tensed. His vision went blurry and then suddenly clarified. He felt his nostrils flare, and the hairs on his arms stood straight up.

In truth, he felt like he’d been hit with a lightning bolt, arcs of electricity jumping from Moody’s body to his.

The wolf inside him had pricked up its ears. His soul had reached out, and Moody was there, responding, connecting with him, and then suddenly they had both fallen to the sand in each other’s arms. Their lips had crashed together, sweetness and the lingering tang of sea salt. Isaac thrust his tongue into Moody’s mouth, fucking towards his throat, straining towards him while their bodies meshed together. He felt as if he had found a missing puzzle piece, like a gap inside him had been filled. Moody’s arms went around his neck so perfectly, their hips and chests and stomachs aligning in all the right ways.

Then they had pulled apart, gasping for breath, faces sandy, winded, uncertain, laughing about it anyway.

Moody had said, “So, can I get your number?”

That was only the beginning. Isaac knew of the concept of love at first sight, absurd bullshit which made him roll his eyes. Shifters did tend to form relationships faster than humans, since they didn’t complicate things by sticking to any sort of expectations. Feelings were feelings. Animals didn’t need to go through a long courtship process to decide who they wanted to mate with; instead, they followed the whim of their instincts and went with whomever was most compatible. There was no need to worry about what might be considered gay or untraditional or weird, because the focus was upon the act of joining together as one.

If a shifter found someone he liked, who made him feel good, that was all he needed to settle down. It was almost as if they did everything backwards from humans, focusing on the physical and letting it grow into something more, instead of the other way around.

For the next couple of weeks, when Isaac wasn’t at the conference or attending business dinners, he spent time with Moody. From dawn to dusk, any time they could, they were in touch. They talked about anything and everything, and Isaac discovered it was much easier to hold a conversation when he cared about the person he was speaking with. Moody did most of the talking, going on long speeches about whatever came to mind, from issues with his disapproving father to his mother’s many recent mysterious illnesses. Isaac loved to listen to him, letting himself get lost in the sound and cadence of Moody’s voice.

When they weren’t talking, they kissed and touched and caressed each other, exploring the other’s body. Moody was a virgin, a little shy about going all the way. Since just touching Moody made Isaac feel better than sex with anyone else, he was content to continue on with this affair as things were.

Then, the conference ended. Isaac came to Moody the night before he had to leave, breaking the news to him that he would be leaving in the morning to return home. Since he hadn’t shared much of his own life with Moody, the omega had no idea that Isaac was going to have to leave. He knew Isaac was there on business, not that it would end.

Isaac had never seen someone’s heart break, hadn’t even known that it was a thing that could be visible. The light died from Moody’s eyes, draining away until the color of his irises was so dark they might as well have been black. His face went slack, all the life torn away. In an instant, he went from a vibrant young man to a lifeless mannequin.

It would have been better if he’d yelled, cried, or argued. Something volatile should have happened. Instead, there was just this passive fading.

“But I think I love you,” Moody had said, his voice a mewling thing of despair.

Isaac went home. There was nothing else he could have done. He had a career back in Alabama, a life back there, a pack. He couldn’t just uproot himself, no matter how much he enjoyed spending time with Moody. There was nothing else for him in Pensacola. He would be effectively homeless, definitely jobless, a floundering degenerate.

That should have been the end of it, if it hadn’t been for…

“Hey. What do you think you’re doing here?”

His heart jumping up in his throat, Isaac whirled around and found himself face to face with the exact person he had just been thinking about. “Moody!”

Moody flashed a weak smile. “Yeah, that’s me. And here you are. In my spot.”

“I don’t see your name on it,” Isaac replied, knowing this response was nowhere near good enough. There was only one reason he would have come to this exact spot, and that was to see Moody.

Surprisingly, Moody didn’t protest. He only shrugged and took a few steps forward to stand at the edge of the water, curls of foam lapping up over his toes. “I guess the tide washed it away. Whatever. Stay if you want. I don’t care.”

“But, do you want me to leave?” Isaac didn’t want to leave, but if that was what Moody wanted...

“I don’t care,” Moody repeated, his voice flat and dark. He bent down and picked up a sea shell, clasping the spiral a little too tightly for the gesture to be believably casual. Isaac looked at the shell. A pretty thing, off-white with specks of brown which culminated into a dark tip at one end. “You broke my heart. Having fun with you today doesn’t change that fact. So, do what you want. Like before.”

Rearing his arm back, Moody threw the shell as far as he could. Sunlight skittered across the shiny surface for just an instant as the shell reached the apex of its arc, and then it plummeted down beneath the surface of the sea with hardly a splash.

“We only knew each other for a couple weeks. I was only here on business.” The words came before Isaac could stop them. He wanted Moody to understand, to see some logic in what had admittedly been a bad situation. But, it hadn’t been anyone’s fault. Had it?

Moody picked up another shell, this time a round one that looked like it would have been right at home on a giant snail. He threw that one further, the weight allowing the shell to carry forward through some of the wind that had pushed the spiral back. “You could have told me just how long you were going to be around. Our cities are only an hour away. We could have done something together, made something together. Instead you just left me. God, this is why I’ve been avoiding you. It makes me so mad to think about.”

At least when you’re angry, you’re showing some emotion. It made me hurt to look at you being all sullen and shut-up, never knowing what you were thinking.

Isaac looked out at the ocean, the sun sinking ever lower towards the horizon line. Vibrant colors darkened slowly from orange and yellow and red, to a new dimension of purple and deep green. A few stars glittered out there, where the light of the city couldn’t block out their brilliance.

His hands tightened into fists. His nails dug sharply into his palms, making crescent indents in his flesh. Despite the fact that he knew Moody had every right to feel the way he did, he found himself growing angry. Being accused had a way of doing that to him. His heart was pounding, his blood lurching through his veins like a wolf in pursuit of prey. “If you’re so mad, why did you even come up here to talk to me? You could smell my scent coming in this direction. And why didn’t you ask to be put in a different spot on the roster?”

Moody grabbed another shell, sending a spray of sand into the surf with the sudden motion. He threw it, too hard. It plunked down into the water only a few feet away, forced there by the severe downward arc of the throw. “I didn’t want to bother Destiny. He’s too busy to realize that no one in their right mind would want to go on patrol with you.”

Isaac clenched his fists tighter. A growl rumbled deep in his chest, his hackles rising. The hair on the back of his neck prickled as a result of his brewing rage, making him feel like he stood on the edge of a coming storm. “I know you overheard what those two said to me outside. They weren’t the only ones to express that sentiment.”

Moody’s mask seemed to crack for a second, allowing another glimpse of his true emotions beneath the façade. Hurt sparkled in his eyes, rough like uncut diamond. Then he blinked, and there was only dark cinnamon beneath heavy lids. “Fuck ‘em. I don’t give a shit what they think.”

“Don’t you?”

“No. I’m not in this pack because I need to be.”

That was a downright lie. Isaac might not have known the exact situation, but he knew Moody well enough from their brief, intense time together to be able to see when the omega wasn’t telling the truth. Whatever the reason, he now knew that Moody depended quite a bit on his pack life.

“It’s just convenient, is all,” Moody finished, speaking a little slower than before. His shoulders slumped. He picked up another shell, made as if to throw it, and then seemed to decide there was no point anymore.

Just like that, Isaac felt his own anger drain away, adrenaline leaching out from his body, dissipating like steam did when water splashed on hot summer concrete. He sighed, wondering if it was worthwhile to try and fix this and knowing he would try anyway. Moody deserved better than just another argument. “Why did you come out here when you knew I was here?”

“I don’t know why I came here at all.” Moody shrugged. When his shoulders lifted up so did his shirt, offering a brief flash of his stomach. His skin was exactly as pale and smooth-looking as Isaac remembered; he swallowed hard, tried to catch ahold of his thoughts before they could get away from him. “I felt compelled to come out here. It was where I just had to go.”

In other words, the wolf inside him had been following Isaac. Their thoughts must have connected again when they spent so much time together on the patrol, uniting them against their will, without either of them even knowing what happened. Like it or not, they were aware of the other’s presence.

This was a common thing amongst wolves, especially mates or pack members. Thoughts and feelings created an aura that others could pick up on in varying degrees; when there were so many wolves adding to the atmosphere with their many personalities and experiences, the sensation was no longer very individual. If one wolf in a pack was having an extremely rough time of it, the others might be able to pick up on that without even knowing who in particular was causing the feeling. This was actually more useful than it was annoying, since such subconscious alarms were a good early warning system for future distress.

“Which I guess brings me back to my own question,” Moody said. “Why are you here, Isaac?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “After spending time with you today, I felt compelled to come out here.”

“You still feel a connection between us? After how you broke it off?”

“It wasn’t my choice,” Isaac said. “You really think your parents would have been accepting of you bringing a random guy home to live with you?”

“We could have worked something out. You haven’t ever heard of long-distance before? Or I could have come with you.”

Isaac had to admit that at the time, he hadn’t really considered any options except to return home and have things be the way they were before he went on the trip. Something just hadn’t sat quite right with him, the idea of pursuing that relationship with Moody. Maybe it had been their ages. They were both adults but they were only young adults, freshly released into a world which was very rarely welcoming to its newcomers. Everything was a struggle. Nothing came easy.

Isaac was in the middle of working on his career. Moody had only just graduated high school. Anything they could have had, any bridges they might have built together to span the distance, were just as likely to fail as they were to succeed. The timing wasn’t right. Hell, even if they did the whole long distance thing, their relationship would have drastically changed any plans either of them might have had.

“I wasn’t ready,” Isaac said, hardly realizing that the words had come out of his mouth until he heard their sound infiltrate the air. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s too late for sorry.”

“I’m still sorry anyway.” Isaac watched as the sun slipped down another notch. More stars bloomed in the sky, a garden of pinprick-sized blossoms against a dark, loamy soil background. The brilliance of the scene was fading, dusk smearing the last of the vibrant colors into insignificant blurs.

“Why did you come back here, to Pensacola? More business?”

Isaac opened his mouth to ask what kind of business he could have when he was getting up each day around the same time that most office workers were having lunch, when he felt something strange. Like something had touched his leg while he treaded water, the sensation was slick and cold and fleeting. Goosebumps rippled up the length of his arm, his hair standing on end again.

Straining his ears, Isaac listened for something to tell him what had bothered him so. Could it be that he was picking up on a disturbance in the pack? But no, Moody looked as if he hadn’t noticed anything. What, then, could be causing this feeling, like he was being observed and explored by something with an ulterior motive for curiosity?

He couldn’t hear anything except the steady rushing sound of the sea and the distant cries of sleepy gulls who were fat and content on their daily diet of garbage and stolen food.

He breathed deeply through his mouth and nose, tasting and scenting salt, the musty grit of sand underfoot, lingering odors of humans carried to him on the breeze.

“What’s going on with you?”

He barely heard the question, hardly felt that Moody was staring at him as if he was a patient in an asylum who had started talking to the padded walls of his cell. Cold trickles of nervous sweat trickled down his spine as he turned, his gaze meandering along the shoreline. Nothing there. He turned further, looking up from the shore to what he could see of the rest of the beach from this isolated spot.

A man stood, a dark silhouette against the gray sky. His clothes fluttered loosely about his frame, making it quite apparent that he was as thin as he was tall. His hair blew loose around his neck, flowing tresses. If Isaac hadn’t picked up on the definition of his form, the sharpness of it, the squareness despite his slender nature, he would have assumed he was looking at a woman of a very stately nature.

He knew better.

Now it wasn’t a chill down his spine but a memory of brutal, ripping claws, scoring through his skin over and over. The sea air suddenly felt hot and humid, like breath panted out at his neck and heels. Fangs flashed, silver as the moon.

Isaac blinked several times. The memories faded. The vision of the man on the dunes didn’t.

The end was now. The beginning of the next stage was here.

He said, “Moody,” and didn’t even recognize the sound of his own voice. “Get out of here.”

Moody whirled on him, his fangs out. Isaac didn’t even flinch, though he was again reminded of that horrible occasion when he had been chased away from his old life. “Excuse me?” he demanded. His hands clenched into fists down at his side, knuckles white from tension. “What did you just say to me? It should be me saying that to you. This is my spot.”

“Go!” Isaac commanded. Urgency made him act out and he lunged forward, stepped right up into Moody’s personal space and pushed him back. Every muscle inside him was drawn taut from anticipatio,n and he put in much more effort than he meant to, sending the omega sprawling on his ass in the end.

Moody stared up at him, his mask not just broken but completely gone. His eyes were red with hurt, rusty as a motorcycle left out in the rain. His lips moved with protest, devolving into a grim curse.

Then, Moody stood up from the sand and took off running. Three steps and he dropped down on all fours into his wolf form. His fur was such a dark shade of brown that it seemed instead to be black, though now it was gone pale gray behind the plumes of dust he kicked up while fleeing from Isaac.

“I’m sorry,” Isaac whispered. He lifted one hand, still feeling the fabric of Moody’s shirt and the gently-muscled chest beneath. This was for the best, he knew. He hadn’t been ready for a relationship before, not the kind that Moody wanted from him, and now the other wolf would stay away from him for good. He wouldn’t come back a third time. He was smarter than that.

The wind shifted. Isaac heard footsteps in the sand now, spaced far apart because the person approaching had such long legs. He didn’t look until the man had come up right beside him.

“Long time no see,” Isaac said, and turned to face his past.

The conversation which followed was not what he had been wanting. The future still seemed to be holding out on him.

Abruptly, he wished for Moody.