by KT Strange
“Car’s taken care of. Buddy’s coming to grab it. He’ll be here in ten.” Cash sauntered over to us, eyes on Max. I could hear her swallow nervously as he approached.
“You okay, Max?” he asked, crouching down so he was eye-level with her. She bit her lip and shot a quick, uncertain look at me before shaking her head. Cash sighed and reached out his arms. Trembling, she answered with her own hands slipping around his chest. He pulled her in to cradle her head against his shoulder as she started to cry, the noise stifled into the collar of his shirt. He hugged her tight, meeting my gaze over her head. “Can you get her another bottle of water?” he asked.
“Here,” Ace said, before I even had a chance to move. He held the water bottle out to me, and I cracked the lid off.
“Max, you should drink something.”
“I’m a monster.”
“Like hell you are,” Eli’s voice cut across the room. His eyes were blazing in his face. Max lifted her head from Cash’s shoulder and stared at him in shock at his outburst. I shifted in beside her, and wrapped an arm around her waist from behind. Cash pressed a light, butterfly-soft kiss to my forehead and sighed as Max shivered, tears rolling down her cheeks. He thumbed them away as Eli spoke again. “There’s a lot of questions I’ve got right about now, but nothing concerning whether you’re a monster or not.”
Finn sighed, and I heard him murmur to his twin.
“Maybe don’t come on so strong?”
Eli rolled his eyes in response and walked over to us. Ace made a low, grumbling noise and shifted his weight from foot to foot.
“You need to ease off,” he said, his normally cheerful expression dark as he watched Eli with caution. Max rubbed a hand over her face.
“I—”
“Max, there is nothing that happened in the last ten minutes you asked for, or wanted.” Eli ignored Ace as he spoke, and I felt him tense beside me. I wondered if Ace was going to speak up again, as Max let out a huffing, soft hiccup of a sob. “Did you mean to set that guy on fire?”
“I didn’t even see him,” she whispered. “It was just pain.”
“You ever know you could set anything on fire like that?” Eli demanded. She shook her head, hard.
“No!”
Cash’s arms tightened around her when she half-shouted the word at Eli.
“Seriously, asshole,” Cash growled as he got to his feet, Ace moving beside him. My mouth was dry. Max’s muscles were trembling as she sat beside me, and I hugged her tight to my side.
“You need to stop, Eli,” my voice cut through the tension between the guys. Eli’s gaze hopped from Max to me. He sighed and looked away.
“Sometimes, we lose our way. Phoenixes, they mate for life, but their offspring, well, they have a tendency to abandon them places. We found one, in Germany, back during the war. She was just a little thing, a girl, couldn’t even speak properly yet, just chirped out bird noises at us that we couldn’t understand. Maybe that’s what happened to you. Your dad?” Eli folded his arms over his chest. Cash and Ace both relaxed somewhat as Eli did. It was a good thing too, because I was certain the three of them were about to brawl and Max did not need anymore trauma.
“He’s a cop,” Max’s voice wasn’t half as resentful as it could have been, or would have been if I had been her.
“Mom?”
“Dead,” she rubbed her hands over her knees. We didn’t really talk about it often. Max made jokes about her ‘tragic backstory’ but I knew she wasn’t really comfortable discussing it.
“Let’s get the girl washed up, and into real clothes before we continue this game of twenty questions,” Charlie suggested as he seemed to read my mind. He was reasonable in his tone, although I got the impression he would be more forceful if he had to.
“Shower,” I said, helping Max to her feet. “You can borrow some of my clothes.”
“I’m not a midget like you, though,” her words were watery. She wiped away more tears and sighed, tugging at the hem of the hoodie. Charlie cleared his throat, and the boys walked away as one, to the other side of the jam space. My boys may have been wolves, but they certainly weren’t dogs.
“I’ll find you something that fits,” I assured her as I tugged her back to our sleeping area, and the bathroom beyond it. She eyed the mattresses pressed together on the floor, and the mess of pillows and blankets everywhere.
“Oh, girl, you and I are going to have to talk about that,” she whispered to me, and my heart squeezed to see a faint smile on her lips.
“Maybe after you get clean,” I said. “Promise.” I grabbed some towels for her, pointed her in the direction of the shower, and rummaged around for a t-shirt, and some underthings that would fit.
“Here,” Ace said as he came around the corner. He pulled out a clean pair of jeans from his backpack. “She’ll fit these, she might even need to roll up the hems a bit.”
“She will, she makes fun of me for being short, but she’s not as tall as you,” I replied. He must have noticed the shake in my voice, because he cupped my cheek with his hand and tilted my head to look me directly in the eyes.
“It’s going to be okay.” He leaned in close, kissing me slowly. The tense feeling that had taken root in my muscles gave way to his warmth, and my fingers clutched at the soft fabric of his shirt, pressing into his hard muscles underneath.
“Everything is just spinning out of control. Who was that guy? Is Max really a phoenix?” My voice hitched as I spoke, and Ace wrapped his arms around me, pulling me in to rest against his chest. I sighed, letting his heat soak into me, the tension melting somewhat.
“We’ll find out about the guy, and yeah, sweetheart, I’m pretty sure she is.” His hands rubbed up and down my back, and he nuzzled the top of my head affectionately with his cheek. “I’ve never met one.” He sounded cautiously excited. “Our pack, we had a phoenix, way way back before even Cash, n’ Finn, and Eli were born, but an actual phoenix. I never thought I’d get to see one for real.”
“It’s just Max, though,” I said softly, but I couldn’t help smiling up at him. His enthusiasm and excitement were contagious, and they chased away the worry and bad feelings away, at least for a time. I let my fingers trail through the mop of blond hair on top of his head, and his eyes fluttered shut as he gave a long, low sigh.
“Even better that it’s Max. She’s yours, your friend. I think after all this time, we’d be wary of a phoenix coming to us like this, but we already know Max, and like her.” He kissed me again, and my fingers tightened in his hair, making him groan into my mouth. I needed to feel grounded, after the way the world had just tipped on its axis all around me. Ace’s kisses were the best at chasing away the clouds. If there was one thing Ace was good at, it was lifting my spirits.
“You two gonna make out like teenagers at summer camp, or are you going to come talk to us?” Eli rumbled from behind Ace and I pulled away from the younger wolf, my cheeks pink.
“Let me lay out some clothes for Max,” I said, putting the folded clothes by the bathroom door. Ace shoved his hands in his jeans pockets, his shoulders squared. He was eyeing Eli, his expression as close to mutinous as I’d ever seen it. I tucked my arm through his and tugged. “C’mon.”
Eli watched me for a moment before turning on his heel. We followed him to where the rest of the guys were standing around in the kitchenette. Someone had made coffee, and Finn passed me a cup, bumping my hip with his gently. I sighed and settled into his side as he wrapped an arm around my shoulders. The scent of coffee rose to greet me as I took a long, grateful sip of it. The comforting heat of it helped settle my nerves.
“Chels is gonna get back to me in a few days about that hedge witch,” Charlie said, leading off the conversation before Eli could get growly. Why the guy was so grumpy, I had no idea, but from Cash and Finn’s worried looks, I was trying not to judge. There was something more going on that I wasn’t party too.
“Maybe ask her if she knew about Max,” Finn drawled. “Since she a
nd her boys seem to know everything. If they did, I might have a few words with Chelsea. It would have been good to get a heads up.”
Eli cleared his throat.
“While it’s not out of the realm of possibility that Chelsea and her guys knew, I’m not so sure that they did. Phoenixes are tricky. They hide themselves well and their offspring even better.” Eli’s gaze landed on me and I knew what he was about to ask if I had an idea.
“I know Max as well as I know anyone, but I never thought, or rather, I never saw this coming. Her dad’s a cop, she was dating Craig all throughout the last three years of college, and I know her mom passed away when she was really young, in a car accident. Max was there for that too, but she survived. They don’t have any extended family, I think her grandparents were gone by the time she was born.” I shrugged. Max didn’t dwell on the past, but then again, her father was loving, even if a little overbearing. He didn’t like Craig that much. I was beginning to wonder if he had a good reason for that, maybe.
The door to the bathroom opened beyond the half-wall behind us, and after a moment, Max came around the corner, her hair damp from the shower. She’d needed to roll up Ace’s jeans, but my shirt fit her just fine, even if it was a little tight in the shoulders. She was twisting her hands together in front of her.
“Hey,” she said, letting out an exhale of air. “So um. This phoenix thing? Is it… is it normal to just start, my fingers to start, bursting into flames?”
Finn pushed off the counter behind us, standing in front of me, as if he was going to protect me in case Max spontaneously combusted again.
“Not really, no, not unless you want to,” Eli said, his tone cautious. “Why?”
“Oh, you know, nothing. Just this keeps happening.“ Max bit her lip and held out one shaking hand. A puff of smoke curled up from her palm, and a spike of fire followed it.
Three
Charlie
No matter how much Eli bitches about how he can’t use his phone as the information superhighway as he seems to still insist on calling the internet, never let it be said I don’t know my way around Googling things.
The immediate answer to Max’s problems were fire-retardant gloves meant for welders. She wasn’t exactly thrilled at the unwieldy leather mitts, but considering the other option was setting everything on fire, she settled down pretty fast. Getting Max calm and comfortable was what really mattered, considering she was Darcy’s best friend. If Max wasn’t happy, Darcy wasn’t going to be happy, and none of the pack would be okay with a bonded mate who felt agitated.
Never mind that half the pack still hadn’t bonded her, she was imprinted on each of us. Sometimes when she was close it was like I could feel her heartbeat thumping under my own skin. Holding myself back from Darcy felt like I was starving myself of oxygen. I knew I couldn’t last much longer but I didn’t have a choice. Some people are too broken for love. She had better, stronger, more worthy wolves around her. Who was I in comparison to Finn, or Ace? Or even Cash, for all his constant messing around.
“Hey what’s going on with you? Looks like you’re really lost in your thoughts,” Finn shot me a grin over the frying pan as he started cooking up some breakfast for the pack Darcy and Max. I shrugged.
“It’s a lot to take in,” I said, shooting a look over at Max where she sat with Darcy. The two were on the couch talking, one brunette one redhead close together. It wasn’t hard to get a read off of Darcy’s body language that she wasn’t feeling all that comfortable ringt about then. I couldn’t exactly blame her for that, considering her best friend turned out to mythical creature and who had no idea to begin with. I was pretty sure that Max was telling the truth. She was handling the news well enough, I guess, as well as anyone could expect her to. Lucky for her she’d started off as Darcy’s friend before learning about us as werewolves, and Glory Revolution being unicorns. Max seemed like she had at least some comfort in the paranormal world, or enough start to deal with this new information.
“Yeah, I don’t know what I would think if I suddenly found out that I was a werewolf, and I’d never known before.” Finn sighed and flipped some bacon on to plate with a paper towel on it. “She seems to be doing okay. Max is made of good stuff.”
“More like fiery stuff,” I said with a low laugh. Finn smiled at me.
“It’s going to be good to have a Phoenix kicking around anyway.” He poured out equal portions of pancake batter into the pan and I watched as the bubbles rose to the surface of each creamy circle of dough. “Last time I saw one—”
“You were in Germany. Yeah, I got that.”
Finn rolled his eyes.
“I know you’re probably tired of hearing our ‘stories’ as you like to call them, but there’s a reason we share them with you.”
“You don’t want us to forget our past, or where we came from.”
I got it I really did. Maybe Ace had been raised by the pack, without any elders around us to pass on all the knowledge of the wolves that have gone before, but the pack still been around when I was a kid. I knew all the old stories. Hell, I probably had paid better attention to them than the three warriors who were constantly harping about their veteran status. Because what were they doing when I was growing up in the middle of the pack? They were off exploring the world, looking for mates, hitchhiking across North America, while the rest of us were at home just try to eke out a living.
When werewolves were on the defensive and being attacked by hunters, we had to find a way to eat. Living out in the woods, hunting in our pack’s territory but not much further meant my family took what work was available in the local small towns. Carpentry work, farm labor, that kind of thing, as much as it was available. We weren’t always rock stars. I guess you could kind of call werewolves the blue-collar workers of the magical world. From the salt of the earth to moon dust, our kind had been hiding in shadows for two hundred odd years, living at the edges of society where it was safe. Thinking about how little we had when I was growing up, it still made me wonder why the witches wanted to take even more from us. It wasn’t good enough that we turned into traveling entertainers living on the roads, or that we were bricklayers in small towns, or that we went to war to defend our shared country while they sat in their turreted mansions. No, it wasn’t good enough that we could barely get by, they wanted us dead and gone, completely erased from history.
“You keep getting lost in your thoughts and I’m gonna have to send someone to find you.” Finn’s laughter broke me out of my internal musings. “Besides breakfast’s up.” He nudged me and motioned toward the stack of plates. I grunted but helped him with the breakfast anyway, as the pack flocked to where the girls were sitting. Darcy immediately started hand-feeding Max, since the girl wasn’t exactly agile with the big leather mitts on her hands.
“This is lame,” Max said, staring at her hands after a few minutes and mouthfuls later.
“You wanna try taking them off again?” Darcy offered. Max sighed and shook her head.
“I’ve never lit anything on fire without a match before,” she said, pulling her feet up onto the couch. Finn and I exchanged glances as Ace made a soothing noise around a piece of bacon.
“You’ll get used to it.” Darcy’s tone was gentle as she smiled at her friend. “When I started sparking up for the first time, it was pretty shocking.
We all groaned at her terrible pun and she smirked. Max rolled her eyes.
“I guess I feel like this is something really profound, and I don’t know how to handle it.” Max chase a bite of scrambled egg around her plate with her fork before giving up.
“Don’t think about it then,” Eli spoke up after being silent for some time. “For now, just know that you’re with us, and we’ll keep you safe.”
Max nodded, slowly. I exchanged glances with Finn and Cash. I knew they were thinking the same thing as me: whoever had attacked her had probably not done it spontaneously. It’s not like Max was a gangbanger, or had a criminal record, not with he
r dad being a cop. It was a targeted attack. The odds were high, given her ex-boyfriend ran with hunters, that she’d been targeted because she was close to the witching and paranormal world. Maybe even her being close to us.
It probably had nothing to do with her being a phoenix. That reminded me of something…
“So when do you want to try shifting?” I asked. Max stared at me, her eyes wide, and choked on scrambled egg. Darcy pounded her friend on the back with a small fist, kneeling to get right in between Max’s shoulder blades.
“Did you have to ask her that while she was eating?” Darcy demanded as Max gulped down half a glass of water.
“What do you mean by shifting?”
“Like we do. Or we did, before… things happened. Turning into your true form, your phoenix form.”
Max’s eyes widened with each of my words and Eli growled at me.
“Stop freaking her out.”
“Don’t tell me you aren’t thinking about it too.”
“I can shift?” Max’s words, her voice usually low-throated, came out as a pitchy squeak. Darcy glared at me and I gave her an apologetic smile. The truth was going to tumble out at some point, it might as well have been right then.
“All magical creatures can, except witches,” Ace said, stealing a slice of bacon right off of Cash’s plate. The older wolf pretended not to notice, and even forked over another slice onto Ace’s plate when Ace wasn’t looking. “So you know, with the right amount of practice, you’ll be all beaky and feathery and stuff.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Eli cut in, giving Ace a warning look that Ace ignored in favor for eating more bacon. Max was pale.
“So lighting stuff on fire, and turning into a giant bird—”
“Not so giant. Maybe like, medium sized. Like a big dog,” Finn offered. “I haven’t ever seen a phoenix shift, but you know, family stories.”