From the moment he’d seen Kate, Colton wasn’t sure if he blinked. The paranoid feeling that if he closed his eyes for even a split second she would disappear completely refused to fade. Hollow Grove was a town that had the tendency of bringing people together after years of separation, he’d experienced it first hand already, but this was different. This reunion seemed impossible. Kate was gone, their entire pack had been lost. Colton had come to terms with that decades ago after years of struggling with the mistake that he’d made.
Once he had his arms around her the thought crossed his mind that the absolute last thing she would want was for him to touch her. Colton was part of the reason why they’d lost their family, he’d always argued that they needed to join the fight to protect their right to exist. But when Kate didn’t pull away or push him off his hold around her tightened. Loosening only when she started to pull back.
A breathless laugh left him at her question. Was he real? Was any of this or was it just a dream? Resisting the urge to pinch himself he nodded, his head dipping just slightly. Not moving enough to break the contact of her hand on his cheek. “I’m real? Are you sure you’re real?” A million different questions formed in his mind. There was so much he wanted to ask her. But where to even start? He didn’t move away or break contact, needing to physically keep his arms loosely wrapped around her to reassure himself that he wasn’t imaging her there.
“How? The last time I saw you…” He trailed off, images of that day coming flashing back. A part of him had clung to hope when he’d escaped the humans that she had somehow survived her injuries but all he’d found was large grave. The remaining supernatural’s he could find in the area had told him no one else from the pack had been seen alive. Every bit of remaining optimism that he’d kept was crushed. “Where’d you go? What’ve you been doing all this time?” Colton wanted to ask a million other questions but he limited himself, stoping himself so she actually had a chance to answer.
This was strange. Kate had spent a long time mourning Colton. Mourning the people she thought she loved. She’d also spent a long time being angry with him, too, her survivor’s guilt had left her feeling an overwhelming amount of emotions, going through the stages of grief more times than she could imagine. It had been thirty years. She’d had time to heal. To forgive him for everything that had happened, though she never thought about whether he’d do the same were he still alive. Her stubbornness had come between them so many times.
Of course the idea that Colton was alive had never dawned on her.
Her laughter felt strange, she shook her head and sniffled, trying to keep the tears at bay, despite that they were tears of happiness. “M’ real-- m’s’real as they come.” Kate, too, didn’t break contact, her hand pressed firmly against his cheek, almost afraid that if she did, she’d wake up from her strange dream, back in Canada. “Someone found me--” she answered his question quickly, as if it happened days ago and not decades ago. “A witch, I owe her my life still.” She spoke to the woman who’d healed her periodically, it had become a friendship that she’d never let go of. “I was as good as dead without her.”
Finally accepting the fact that if she let go he’d still be there,she dropped her hand, but didn’t move far away, her smile still as bright as ever. “Canada,” was her only answer, laughing at how absurd it sounded, someone who;s roots were so embedded in the South ending up there. “I wanna know about you-- we got a lot to catch up on.” She looked down at his file. “What do I need t’tell ya? I reckon you might owe me lunch.”
