-Josh-

“Come on… Almost there…” I muttered quietly, holding onto my brother’s arm tightly as he tried to keep hopping forward one step at a time.

He didn’t say a word, but he couldn’t stay silent. The quiet whimpers broke my heart, but we couldn’t stop. We were still out in the open and gaining nasty looks.

“Almost there…” I repeated for the hundredth time.

The weather was still bad after a week full of storms. It was still raining lightly, and our clothes were completely wet. I wished we could’ve stayed home, but we’d needed water, food, and especially money… But we weren’t really able to get any because after so many shitty days, the stores and shelters had stayed closed to deal with damages and flooding. Maybe if we could’ve walked further, we would’ve found a place that was still open, but…

I peered at my brother, who was struggling to keep walking…

I just wanted to… I was so fucking tired of living like this…

Finally, the corner of an alleyway leading to our hiding place came to our view. I started looking around, making sure no one was following us, but in the dark, it was hard to tell if there was someone watching us in the shadows. Most of the windows surrounding us were already dark, and the few people passing us by didn’t seem to care about us… Much…

“Fucking dirty brats…” some old dude muttered angrily while walking past us.

We did nothing to him… We just wanted to get back home…

I tried to steel my heart against the nasty glances, and also my brother’s pained sounds. We just had to get home…

“I can’t… Josh…” Alex said in a weak voice, sniffing. “Please…”

I gritted my teeth together and forced him to take the few last steps to the corner, and as soon as we rounded it, I lifted him up in my arms and kept walking. He wrapped his arms around my neck and started crying silently against my shoulder, repeating how sorry he was over and over again.

“Almost there…” I only said, but this time to myself.

He was scrawny, too thin and too short for a fourteen-year-old alpha, so he didn’t weigh much… The problem was that I was too thin and too short for a fifteen-year-old alpha, so the only reason I managed to carry him back into our nest was because I was too stubborn to give up.

I reached the old, crumbling grocery store that sane people had abandoned years ago. It looked far from one now after homeless people had spent all that time building their own spaces with whatever bricks and planks and tarps they’d found to get at least a little privacy from others. Now it was a dystopian hut village with narrow pathways and one large common area in the middle of it all.

It seemed like almost everyone was at home, and none of them paid attention to us as I walked past them to our corner by the back wall. Once we reached our small hut, I finally let Alex down. Or more like dropped him… My arms shivered uncontrollably, and for a moment, I could only feel pain. I ignored it and told Alex to get inside. Our doorway was so small and so low we had to crawl through to get inside our nest, put together with four large wooden pallets and several planks as walls, and a tarp as our roof. It was barely big enough for one person. Alex immediately curled up into a ball on his bed on the left, while I sat down on mine on the right. The hut wasn’t wide enough to fit a whole mattress in, so we’d cut one we’d found in a ditch in half so we both had a soft place to sleep.

“Do you have any dry clothes?” I asked him, but he shook his head. “Dammit…”

Neither of us had. Whatever clothes we had were drying above us, but after a week of chaotic rainfall, they just refused to dry. But maybe something was dry enough…

But I didn’t want to stand up. I needed to catch my breath first… And wait for my arms to stop trembling in agony… While I waited, I watched Alex, who was trying to calm himself down. He was cold, exhausted, and hungry… And new bloodstains covered his skin everywhere, as always…

“Where does it hurt?” I asked him gently.

“My right foot…” he whispered, still crying and sniffing quietly.

“I’ll check it, but give me a moment first…”

“Okay…”

I tried to stretch a little to ease my own pain, but while I was at it, Alex tried to reach for his hair. I quickly grabbed his hand to stop him.

“Don’t scratch it,” I told him for the millionth time.

“It’s so bad… It’s so bad…” he whispered, already rocking himself back and forth in his hellish agony of pain and itch.

“Okay, okay, okay… I’ll take a look,” I told him soothingly. “I’ll take a look…”

I tried to hold him gently, but fuck, his skin condition was getting worse and worse in this fucking weather… His hands were so dry his skin felt like sandpaper, and he had dozens of bleeding cracks all over his fingers and especially around his knuckles. Many of his fingertips had cracked open, and as his skin was drying even more, the deeper those wounds became. He could barely touch anything because it hurt so bad… The rest of his body wasn’t any better…

I quickly took a look at his blond, patchy hair, and the fucking bloody mess that lay under it. He’d been scratching again… His hair and scalp were so fucking dirty I had to pull away from the smell…

“We’ll try to find a shower tomorrow, okay?” I told him soothingly. “Maybe someone has soap we can use…”

“It just makes it worse…” he cried quietly.

“I know, I know, but… We have to wash this mess…” I said, while I turned around to grab his shoes. “Try to stay still now, okay?”

“O-okay…”

I let out a breath and closed my eyes. I was so tired… But he was my little brother… I had to take care of him first…

I was just so fucking tired…

“Here goes…” I warned him and carefully pulled his sneaker off.

His entire body tensed in pain, and while he did his best to stay silent, he couldn’t quite hold them all back… I knew it was bad… Really bad this time…

And if his hair smelled bad…

I gagged silently, turned away, then tried to man up. Fucking hell… Once I was sure I wasn’t going to throw up – if I even had anything to throw up in my system – I looked at his foot. It was so bad… It was so fucking bad…

“It’ll be all right. We still have some salve left,” I told him, making sure he couldn’t see why he’d been unable to walk.

There was a huge chunk of thick, dried layer of skin tearing off his heel… Among so many other cracks and wounds beneath all the dead layers of skin. There wasn’t a lot of blood, it was barely getting past the layer of dirt, but… I felt nauseated… It had to hurt so much… Did we even have water so I could wash the dirt off? No? Fuck…

Fuck…!

“It’ll be all right… I’ll try to get us some bandages tomorrow, okay? And I think we need more salve…” I told him soothingly. “We just need to get some sleep first, okay?”

“Okay…” he whispered.

“I’ll go ask if anyone has water for us. Try to stay still and rest, okay? And don’t scratch anything, okay?”

“Okay…”

“Good… Good, good…” I muttered and faced the doorway.

I was getting dizzy from hunger and lack of sleep, but I had to treat his wounds first…So… I crawled back out and went to ask our neighbors if anyone had a water bottle to spare. Most of them were asleep already and yelled at me to get the fuck off if I tried to wake them up. There was light in the middle of the village, so I hoped that at least someone was still awake.

But when I got closer, my stomach twisted unpleasantly… Our community had gotten a few new members in the past few weeks, and I wasn’t sure I liked these people. Three of them were at the center, laughing like they had no worries in the world. But they weren’t alone… There were a few older alpha ladies that were friendly to me and Alex, so I had to go talk to them. I just really didn’t like these new guys…

I approached the lights, and eventually, the five of them spotted me. They all had beer cans in their hands, but they didn’t seem too drunk. Just tipsy.

“Josh! Come say hi,” said one of the ladies, Helga, and gestured for me to come closer. Once I got to her, she offered me an unopened can. “Want a drink?”

“No, thanks,” I said, trying to avoid the three dudes. “I could use water though. It’s for Alex.”

“I think I have a few bottles in my house,” she said, giving me a friendly smile. “Sorry, it’s not much. I couldn’t get any bandages for you, either.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “And thanks for the water. You’re an angel.”

“Water? Pffft! Water is for kids!” one of the new guys said and let out a snotty laugh. “You’re a man! Have some beer with us!”

“The water is for my brother, Alex,” I told him coldly, finally facing him.

“The sickly kid? Face flaking off?” the guy asked with a frown.

I had to fight to hold my tongue. These three alphas were bigger and older than me. I just had to go get the water and go back to Alex.

“He has a skin condition,” I said, trying to sound calm.

“And he’s your brother?” the guy said.

I lifted my chin. “Yes.”

The guy stared at my very black skin, then looked back up at me. “I hate to break it to you, but I think one of your parents cheated.”

All three burst into mad laughter. Fucking drunks… Yes, Alex was white, and we’d known each other only for a few years, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t my brother, my family. I just rolled my eyes at their stupid joke, thanked Helga one more time, then headed to her hut.

“No, no, no! Wait, wait, wait!” the guy shouted after me, still laughing. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! We’re just a bunch of idiots, okay? Please come back! Have a beer with us! We have something we want to talk to you about!”

I slowed down. “What?”

“Business opportunities,” the guy said, and I heard him getting up on his feet. “We’ve got friends who need our help from time to time, and they got money to pay for our trouble.”

I stopped and slowly turned around. “What kind of help?”