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He was still gasping from the exertion, his ghostly body tingling from having been inside of a living body and then flung out so violently.

Ivan wasn’t doing much better. He was worse.

Ivan was hyperventilating. There were bruises along his mouth and neck, and he was clutching at his chest, scrambling away from  Eric and toward the bed.

Eric went to him. He tried to, he didn’t know, what was he

supposed to do for someone who couldn’t breathe like this?

“Ivan? Ivan, look at me.”

Ivan tried to push him away, but Eric deflected his weak attacks.  He grabbed onto the other man and held him, pulling him back against his chest for support. This was what he’d done that one time all those weeks ago when he came upon Ivan being attacked. The ghost had gotten in, but Ivan had had some trouble getting it out.  When he did, this had happened. He could feel Ivan’s heart. It was as fast as a hummingbird.

Even for a vampire that couldn’t be a good thing.

Eric made soothing noises as he held onto the other man, and

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eventually, thankfully, Ivan’s heart rate went back down to normal.

Eric sighed. Thank God.

Ivan lurched away from him, and Eric felt cold at the loss. He  watched as Ivan scrambled to his feet. He had to hold himself up on  that ugly-ass dresser that was in the room.

His chest pumped up and down once more as he stared down at  Eric as though he were…well, a ghost.

“Ivan—”

“Get away from me.”

Eric stood up. “Ivan, I’m sorry, please…”

“
I said get out of here
!” Ivan exploded.

Eric sucked in a breath right before his throat closed up. He  nodded and vanished from Ivan’s sight, but not from the room.

Ivan collapsed onto the ground and curled up on himself sobbing.  Eric couldn’t watch him do that without his heart breaking into  pieces.

Ivan had once told him what it felt like when another spirit tried  taking possession of his body. He’d compared it to being—

Eric cut the thought off before he could even think the horrible  word. That didn’t stop his brain from listing all the things that Ivan  experienced while others did that to him. The loss of control, being  taken over by another person, having that person
 
inside
 
of him, mixed  in with all the pain and panic Eric had felt when he was being pushed  out, were all normal feelings when a spirit attempted to take  command of Ivan’s body.

Eric couldn’t believe he’d done it to him. He didn’t even know

how
 
he’d done it, but Ivan was there, on the floor, crying out for the  grief and pain Eric had just put him through.

Eric had wanted Ivan to accept his loss, but this was not the way  he wanted it done. Eric left the room as he throbbing in his chest got  to be too much to bear.

Maybe this was what Opal had meant when she said that ghosts were not meant to be in this realm. They did terrible things they

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wouldn’t have normally done.

* * * *

If it had been as simple as vanishing and never returning, exiling himself to God only knew where, Eric would’ve done it in a heartbeat. It wasn’t like he had the will to exist after what he’d done.

He was already dead, though, and he couldn’t leave. He was still somehow strangely tied to the land where he’d died.

And to Ivan.

It was impossible for Eric to travel beyond pack territory, so he

would remain stuck where he was.

He was both angry for this and relieved. He wasn’t ready to leave  Ivan behind thinking so badly of him. He needed to tell Ivan that what had happened was an accident and explain that it would never happen again. Mostly due to the fact that Eric was still attempting to move on to the afterlife so that his brother could stop mourning for him and  Ivan could have something closer to normalcy in a life partner.

God. He hated this.

Morning had come and gone hours ago, and now it was midday, but the sun was still shining as brightly as ever. Eric sat on top of the new black roof of his old house that Isaac had helped to install with the other alphas weeks ago. The renovations of all the cabins was going smoothly thanks to all the money that hunter brought into the pack. Sometimes Eric could barely recognize the place. It definitely wasn’t the rundown dump it used to be.

The pups were suddenly released from the care of the omegas who tutored them during the day, and they ran out of the cabin where their lessons were held into the sunshine, shrieking their joy.

All Eric could think about was Ivan, only twenty feet beneath him.  Was the other man okay? Or was he still in the thousand pieces that  Eric had left him in.

That hippie-looking woman, Opal, had come and tried to knock

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on the door at around noon.

He’d growled when she had done that. Stupid woman. Didn’t she know that vampires slept during the day? She might as well have knocked at two in the morning for all the curtsey she’d showed.

It was going on four, and now she was back. Still early for a vampire, but when Ivan didn’t answer again, Eric’s insides clenched up with worry.

He would not go down and check on the other man. He would not.

Opal stepped away from the door, apparently giving up. She looked as though she was about to walk away when she suddenly stopped and turned. She looked right up at Eric.

He hated it when she looked at him. It made him feel like that

creepy kid from
 
The Grudge
, sitting above everyone like he was.

She faced him full on, stuffing her hands into the pockets in that  long flowing skirt of hers.

“Not blushing anymore, are you?” Eric said. He didn’t bother  shifting his body to hide his penis. He’d stopped thinking there was  any point about it. She might be human, but now she was staying with  a pack of werewolves. She would get used to seeing naked men.

Apparently she already had. It hadn’t even been a week.

She didn’t say anything back to him either. She probably didn’t  want to draw any more attention to herself than what she already was,  staring at the top of one of the cabins like she was.

She moved toward the side of the cabin and then kept on going  into the trees.

She was good at getting her point across without saying anything.

Eric followed her.

If anyone thought it was strange that she was walking off to be alone within the trees, no one stopped her, though Eric did see a couple of curious glances as they went. Most notably from Eli.

She stopped sooner than he expected to. The small clearing between the shrubs was hardly the ideal place for a private conversation with werewolves all around who had excellent hearing.

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Maybe she was hoping that the yells and laughter of the pups would drown out anything she had to say. Maybe she just didn’t want to go farther into the woods were so many wild werewolves were supposedly lurking.

“It’s nice to finally be able to speak with you,” Opal said. The warm smile on her face told him that she meant it.

She actually liked talking to ghosts.

“Uh, thanks,” Eric said. “You, too,” he added quickly so as to not be rude.

Opal chuckled a little at his lack of tact. “I make you nervous. It’s all right to admit it.”

No way. “You don’t make me nervous.”

“Of course I do. I make you nervous because I came from nowhere and all of a sudden am offering the medium you’ve attached yourself to a way to survive without you.”

After last night, a way to survive without him was probably for the best.

“Oh, does that trouble you?”

It wasn’t what she said so much as how she said it that had Eric

growling at her. “Watch it, lady.”

Opal put her hands up but hardly looked worried considering Eric  wanted to rip her apart. “I meant nothing by it. Relax yourself.”

“What do you want?” Eric demanded.

“This is where it will get a little strange, but I want to know what  you want.”

She was right. That was strange, and it had Eric a little taken  aback.

“You’ve been sitting on the roof of that cabin for the last twelve  hours or so. Ivan invited me over today to practice some meditation  exercises, but he’s not answering the door.”

“He invited you over at noon for meditation?”

The disbelief in Eric’s voice must have been apparent.

Opal shrugged. “He said he would be up late, so I was to just pick

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the time. He didn’t answer the first time, and that was fine. I gave it a  few more hours so he could rest, and then came back. Still no

answer.”

She looked pointedly at Eric when she said that.

He blushed. “I have been wanting to ask you something,” he muttered.

There was a large gray rock protruding from the earth between a couple of leaning trees. The rock was smooth and dry, and Opal fixed her skirt and sat on it like she was royalty or something.

“Go on.”

He hated this so much. Why was it only her he could talk to about this? Why not his brother, or James? People he actually cared about.  Why couldn’t they speak to him?

“I possessed Ivan last night.”

Opal’s thin blond brows raised high into her hairline. Her mouth didn’t drop, but her lips did pinch together, and that was enough for him to get that it was a shock, even to her, that he would do such a thing.

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” he snapped.

Opal put her hand on her chin. Eric had never seen anyone do that when they were thinking before.

“I see,” she said, and then said nothing else.

He waited, but considering the subject matter, he wasn’t very patient.

“You see what? What does that mean?”

“It means…” She looked up at him, squinting her eyes. Then she  straightened herself and crossed her arms over her chest and her legs  at the knee. “It means that your spirit is restless. You’ve been on earth  for far too long. You’re lashing out.”

Was he? Eric certainly felt pretty restless right now, but that was  only because of what he’d done last night. He’d been making himself  sick over the conflicting urges to be with Ivan or to let him go so that  he could have a normal life as well.

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Never once had he thought that meant he wanted to be inside of  Ivan’s body.

In ways that didn’t have the other man gasping and moaning beneath him, that is.

“What’s it like, being possessed?” Eric asked.

Opal blinked at him. “What’s it like?”

“Yeah, what happens to you? What do you feel? You’re good at  keeping the spirits away from you. Even I haven’t seen any at all so  far today, and that’s not just because of me, but you had to have been  possessed a couple of times before.”

He had to know what it was that Ivan felt. Ivan had told him, but

now Eric needed to hear it from her.

Her eyes hardened, and her lips pressed tightly together. “It’s a violation. Someone else is forcing their will onto you, causing you pain as they do it, when they are inside, and it is a fight to get them out. When they come out, your body is left shaking and your mind can barely function. You can hardly breathe. Everything inside of you feels as though another hand had touched it, and you do not like it.  It’s a terrible feeling.”

Eric winced. Well, at least now he understood why Ivan would compare it to rape.

“It was an accident,” was all Eric could force himself to say.

“Yes, well, you still did it, intentional or not.”

“But I’m stuck here. I’ve tried moving on, and I have no idea how to do that. I don’t want to hurt Ivan again.”

“You can start that by not haunting the cabin he is staying in.”

“I’m not going inside the house,” Eric muttered.

“Stay away from it completely. Stay away from him. If you are unable to leave as of yet, then spend your time running through the forests. Do the things that you used to enjoy doing. They will take your mind away from him and bring you much closer to peace.”

“They will?”

“Yes.” Opal nodded. “Whatever it was that made you feel free in

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life will do the same for you in death. Since you were a werewolf, my  guess is that it was spending time in your wolf form, hunting and  racing through the trees. Many spirits cross over while doing such  things.”