“Just as long as there are no wolves gnawing on my ass, I’m okay,” Rico said.
“Succinct as usual,” Tanner said, smacking him upside the back of the head.
“Pendejo,” Rico muttered.
“No one is gnawing on anything,” I said.
“Really?” Chris said innocently. “I’m sure Joe’s going to be disappointed to hear that.”
I glared at him as most everyone in the room snickered at that.
“We’re going to be fine,” I said, trying to get the conversation back on track. “We’ll run with them, there will be no gnawing on anyone—Chris, keep your mouth shut—and we’ll figure this out. Okay?”
They nodded.
“Okay,” I said.
This was going to be fine.
IT WAS not fine.
It had been fine, for the most part.
When we arrived at the clearing, the moon was rising and Joe and his pack were already there. The eyes of the wolves were flashing at the pull of the moon. Gordo’s tattoos were glowing, and I realized this was the first time I’d ever seen him as part of a pack on a full moon. It hurt dully to think he’d been a part of something for so long and I hadn’t been there to see it. There hadn’t been enough time to ask him about it after everything had happened.
Like they did when they first came back, they all moved together, watching us as we walked into the clearing. I was sure that if I were a wolf, I would have heard their hearts beating in sync.
It felt tense as we approached, a little bit off, but I didn’t think it was too bad.
It might have been wishful thinking.
“Ox,” Joe said, but not before his gaze flickered over my right shoulder, where I knew Robbie stood.
“Joe,” I said.
“Thank you for allowing us to join you tonight.”
I nodded, hating how formal this was. “Thank you for being here.”
“Oh my god,” Rico muttered. “They are so awkward.”
“Shut up,” Tanner hissed. “They’re werewolves. They can hear you.”
“I know what they are, stop whisper-shouting at me!”
“They are really awkward, though,” Chris whispered.
“They were always like that,” Jessie mumbled under her breath.
If I hadn’t been watching Joe, I would have missed the way his lips quirked for just a second, like he was fighting back a smile.
“This is my pack,” I said, trying not to snarl at all of them.
“And this is mine,” Joe said.
Carter and Kelly were snickering to each other. Gordo looked like he was ready to roll his eyes.
“Shall we run?” Joe asked.
“We can,” I said.
“And here comes the part where really attractive people get naked,” Rico said. “And most of them are related. Which isn’t weird. At all.”
“Rico,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Shut. Up.”
“It’s weird. Just because you don’t see it as weird, doesn’t mean it’s not.”
“Talking about it doesn’t make it any less weird.”
“I feel like we should at least address the weirdness—”
“Rico!”
“Shutting up now.”
Carter and Kelly had already disrobed by the time Rico closed his mouth. Carter winked at me before he shifted, the familiar snap of bone and muscle loud in the clearing. Kelly followed quickly, and then there were two wolves standing in the moonlight, eyes orange and teeth bared in a canine smile.
They weren’t all that much different than they’d been years before. Same coloring as they’d always been. But they were bigger and heavier. They would never be as big as Thomas was, but they had grown noticeably. I didn’t know if that had to do with age or Joe. Probably both.
Mark and Elizabeth followed suit, Rico muttering about everyone being way too calm with the nudity and Chris calling him a prude.
Soon, there were four wolves in the clearing, and they rubbed up against each other, Carter and Kelly crowding on either side of their mother, wriggling excitedly like puppies.
“Go ahead, Robbie,” I said, feeling Joe’s eyes on me.
“I don’t have to,” he said through a mouthful of sharpened teeth. “I can stay with you. I can run like this. Or half shift. It’s fine.”
But it wasn’t fine. I knew the moon was pulling at him, his wolf clawing just under the surface to break free. Mark had told me once a long time ago that it physically hurt not to change with the moon, and that if a werewolf denied it for too long over too many moons, it could cause a mental break.
“It’s fine,” I said lightly. “You should get used to the others.”
He didn’t look happy about that, glancing between Joe and me. He let out a huff and started stripping. I averted my eyes as a courtesy.
Joe was still watching me with a blank look. He didn’t used to be able to do that. I hated it.
Robbie shifted somewhere behind me. He was ganglier than the others and smaller, with long, thin legs and a narrow body. His tail twitched as he came to stand next to me, watching the wolves from his pack mingle with wolves from another pack.
He looked tense and unsure. I ran my hands over his head, tugging gently on one of his ears. He nuzzled into my hand and I felt a pulse of warmth along the thread that stretched between us.
“Go on,” I said.
And I thought he would. I thought he’d join the other wolves, but instead, he turned back to the humans behind us and started rubbing up against their legs, snapping playfully at their heels to get them moving toward the trees to run through the woods.
Then it was just Joe and me, listening as the wolves sang and the humans hollered.
He spoke first.
He said, “You did good, Ox.”
I didn’t know what to do with that, so I just said, “Thanks.” But that didn’t sit right, so I added, “It wasn’t just me.”
“Oh?”
“It was all of us. They did as much for me as I did for them.”
“I know. That’s what pack does.”
I bit back the retort and pushed away the familiar curl of anger. Joe probably knew it, could probably taste the bright spark of rage before I caught it, but he didn’t say anything about it.
Instead, he said, “But don’t think it wasn’t you, Ox. If it wasn’t for you….”
I waited to see if he would continue.
“Ox.”
I looked over at him. He was closer to me than he’d been in over three years. I didn’t understand why it felt like he was still so far away.
“Thank you,” he said.
“For what?”
“For doing what I couldn’t.”
I shouldn’t have had to! I wanted to shout at him.
You shouldn’t have put me in this position!
You left us. You left me.
“I didn’t have a choice,” I said instead.
He snorted, eyes bleeding red. “You always had a choice, Ox. And you still chose us. You always did.”
“That’s what pack does,” I said, throwing his words back at him.
He smiled at me. He had many teeth.
“Are you going to shift?” I asked, suddenly feeling very warm.
He took a step toward me.
My feet wouldn’t move.
Another step. And then another.
He stopped within arm’s reach but didn’t move to touch me. It was odd, knowing I didn’t have to look down to meet his eyes anymore.
“When I was gone,” he said, playing with the hem of his shirt, “when we were gone, every day was hard.”
I watched his fingers as he started to tug on his shirt, pulling it up.
“But the full moons were the hardest,” he said, and there was miles of skin. He wasn’t a little boy anymore, or even a teenager stumbling in his father’s footsteps. No, he was a man now and an Alpha. And it showed in the cut of the muscles in his stomach. The breadth of his
chest, and the way it was covered with a smattering of lightly colored hair. The way his biceps bunched as he pulled the shirt up and over his head before dropping it to the ground beside him. “They were the hardest,” he said, “because I would be howling for my pack, and only some of them heard me. Only some of them howled back.”
His hands moved toward the fly of his jeans, fingers trailing along his waist, curling into the hair on his stomach. He lifted one foot behind the other, toeing at his boot. It slid off and he pushed it to the side. “I was howling for you,” he said quietly as he slid off his other boot. “Even if you didn’t hear me, even if you couldn’t feel it, Ox, I swear I howled for you.”
He unbuttoned the top button of his jeans, and I told myself to look away. I told myself this wasn’t right. That I was still so angry at him that I could barely stand it, that we had so fucking much to talk about to even see if we could get back to the way we once were. Or even close to it.
He knew what he was doing to me.
And for a moment, I hated him for manipulating me like that.
But if I thought about it, really thought about it, I didn’t think he’d do something like that. Use his own body to get what he wanted. Granted, I didn’t know this Joe. I didn’t know what he’d done while he was away. How many people he’d fucked, if he’d fucked anyone at all. He was innocent and kind, the boy I once knew. I tried to fit him with the man before me, tried to reconcile the differences between the two.
The second button was undone, then the third.
I didn’t think he’d worn underwear, and the moon was bright enough to see his pubic hair, the base of his dick.
I looked back up at his face.
The blank look was gone, the mask of the Alpha slipped and discarded, even though his eyes still burned red.
He looked younger, almost. Softer. Unsure of himself.
He said, “There was never anyone else the entire time I was gone. There was never anyone else for me. Because even if you couldn’t hear me when I called for you, the howl in my heart was always meant for you.”
I wanted to tell him to get out of my head, because somehow he’d known what I was thinking. He shouldn’t have been able to see that. To hear that. To know that.
I wanted to tell him I hadn’t been with anyone else either.
That I had waited. And waited. And waited for him until I thought my skin would break apart and my bones would turn to so much dust. That I did what I had to do to keep us alive, that even though we had become something more than what the pieces of us should have made, there was an ache in my head and a hole in my heart and it was because of him. He’d done this to me.
He didn’t fuck anyone else?
Well good for him.
I didn’t even think about it.
There was a yip in the trees, louder than the others.
I looked over.
Robbie stood at the tree line watching me, head cocked in question.
“He cares about you,” Joe said from behind me.
“I’m his Alpha.”
“Sure, Ox,” Joe said, and I knew from the sound of it that he’d stepped out of his jeans. I told myself not to turn around. I’d already seen too much and I wasn’t going to break down that easily, even if he was all I’d ever really wanted.
Robbie yipped again and turned back toward the forest.
“We still need to talk,” Joe said, and he was right behind me.
I closed my eyes but I could still feel the heat of him. His breath on my neck. All I had to do was lean back and—
I took a step forward.
“We will,” I said. “Tomorrow.” Because I didn’t think I could go another day like this. It was choking me, and I was struggling to breathe through it.
“Tomorrow,” he said, and it came out like a promise I didn’t know I was making.
He shifted behind me.
The sound of it seemed to go on forever.
There was that heat behind me still, but it was different now.
Something pressed against the middle of my back.
His nose, from the feel of it.
He took in a long, slow breath.
Exhaled low and hot.
Something tugged near the back of my head, buried in the bonds of my pack.
I thought to reach out for it. To test it. To taste it.
But before I could, the Alpha wolf circled me.
And my breath was knocked from my chest.
He was big, bigger than Thomas had ever been. The top of his head reached almost to my neck. He was still completely white aside from his nose and paws. His lips and his claws. And his eyes, which were like fire. I wondered if this was how my mother had felt that first time. When Thomas had shown her that she would never be alone again.
And like he could hear every single thought in my head, Joe leaned up and pressed his nose to my neck and I said, “Oh.”
IT STARTED out fine.
Mostly.
I felt like I was caught in a free fall, my stomach swooping up in my chest to the back of my throat. I felt like I was stuck in that moment when you miss the last step and land hard on your foot.
We ran in the woods.
Through the trees, jumping over logs and creeks, our feet splashing in the water when we didn’t make it far enough.
The wolves were howling around me, but it was off, the harmonies too far off-key to really be singing together.
My wolves sang like they always did, in time and in sync.
Joe and his wolves did the same, but a step above or below mine.
It grated, the mixing of the two, but there was something there. Something that was thrumming just below the surface. It crawled along my skin, and I ran toward it, to escape from it.
The humans laughed as the wolves chased them.
Gordo hung back, mostly watching, eyes on the perimeter, arms alight as his tattoos fluttered and flew.
I thought we were close to something as we moved in the forest.
Something that was just out of reach.
Joe ran at my side, the muscles under the white coat moving like water. Like smoke, fluid and rippling.
I wasn’t a wolf. I didn’t think I’d ever be a wolf. I didn’t feel the pull of the moon.
But it felt different now.
I wanted to howl a song out. I wanted to sprout claws and fangs and tear into the flesh of a rabbit. I wanted my eyes to burst red, to feel the grass on my paws.
There were thoughts, some my own, some coming from all directions.
They said, PackLoveBrotherSon and safe here we are safe here and together oh my god we’re together we run together and home we’re finally home look here this tree i know this tree and he’s gone FatherHusbandAlpha he’s gone but i can still feel him i can still smell him i can still love him and so much more. It was all of them at once, the wolves, and maybe the humans of my pack. They were skittering along my thoughts, tying themselves to me and each other, the threads tangling.
But it was the wolf that ran with me that I heard the most.
He said, here.
He said, i’m here.
He said, with you finally with you.
He said, i can feel you.
He said, i know you can feel me.
He said, that little voice at the back of your head that little tug you feel that you’ve always felt that has never left you has always been me it’s always been me because you’ve always been mine i gave you my wolf because you are pack pack pack you are mate you are you are you are—
We were so distracted, running under this euphoric high, this fever dream that couldn’t have possibly been real, that we didn’t see him coming. One second Joe and I were side by side, and the next, there was a flash of gray and black in front of me, and Joe was knocked off his feet onto his side.
The fever broke.
There was loud snarling, a snapping of teeth.
I kept running for five steps before I remembered I had to stop.
I tu
rned and—
Robbie was on top of Joe, teeth buried in his throat. Joe was kicking up at him, the claws on his back legs shredding into Robbie’s sides, his stomach.
There was an angry roar behind me as Carter and Kelly burst out from the trees. Robbie let out a high-pitched whine as Joe got in a vicious kick, knocking him off and into a tree.
Elizabeth and Mark came from the other direction, eyes orange and teeth bared. They stood in front of Robbie as he tried to pick himself up, blood dripping from the lacerations on his sides.
Joe was already on his feet, the hair around his throat stained red. Carter and Kelly came up on either side of him, growling, backs arched as they crept toward Robbie, who had managed to get himself to his feet.
There was too much going on in my head.
I was being pulled in different directions.
There were threads pouring out of me, latching on to Robbie and Elizabeth and Mark and these threads were strong and true and they said pack and protect and mine. They only grew stronger as humans ran through the trees toward us, spiked with fear and thoughts of attack are we under attack remember the training remember what the Alpha taught.
There were other threads too, shredded and thin and weak, and they pulled toward the white wolf, the Alpha, even as the thought of another Alpha in my territory made me want to bare my teeth in anger. These threads spread to him and, through him, out to the others, to the other two wolves by his side, to the witch that came to stand next to them. He ran his hands over the Betas, arms flaring, the raven’s mouth open in a silent call as it flew up along his arm and out of sight onto his back.
They were protecting him.
Much like my pack was protecting Robbie, idiot that he was.
It didn’t matter that family was spread out among two packs.
All that mattered was the bonds between us that told us nothing touched pack, that nothing harmed what was ours. If it came down to it, they would fight each other.
Joe, though.
Joe wasn’t moving. By rights, he could. He was attacked unprovoked.
And was his pack really advancing? Or were they defending?
I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t have this.