Heartsong

by TJ Klune

  He led me to the second floor, down the hall. He stopped in front of a closed door near the end.

  He said, “It’s your old room from before you and Kelly moved to the blue house.”

  I nodded, suddenly unsure. I didn’t know what to expect. The basement felt safer. For me. For them. “Are you sure it’s all right?”

  “It is. I spent the day cleaning it out. After you and Kelly moved, we used it for any Omegas who came to us, the ones who needed to be close to Ox.” He grimaced. “It was a little musty, but I aired it out as best I could.”

  “Maybe I should just go back down,” I said, tugging on the strap to the backpack. “Full moon is coming at the end of the week. We don’t know if anything will happen.”

  “It won’t,” he said simply.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I know you.” And he opened the door.

  It was plain. Generic. A bed stood against one wall with a small rug at the end. There was a chest of drawers and a painting on the wall. It looked like one of Elizabeth’s. It made me ache.

  Mark nodded for me to go inside.

  I couldn’t move.

  He said, “First steps, Robbie. It’s all about the first steps. It was Ox’s idea. Joe agreed. So did the rest of the pack.”

  “Rico—”

  “Even Rico.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “I bet he bitched about it first, though, huh?”

  He shoved me into the room. He followed me inside as I set my backpack on the edge of the bed. “Not a lot in here. Most of your old stuff is still in the other house. I wasn’t sure if you were ready for it, and Kelly thought it was best to wait. At least for now.”

  They were right. It’d been a long day, and I wasn’t sure how much more I could take.

  I looked around the room, trying to take it all in to see if something triggered in me—a thought, a memory, a remembrance of my time spent here.

  There was nothing.

  “You can do what you want with it,” Mark said. “Leave it as is or do something more.” He glanced at my backpack, and I had to stop from growling at him. He nodded and took a step back. “No one will take anything from you, Robbie. Not in here.”

  “You already know what’s in the backpack, don’t you?”

  He didn’t try to lie. “Yes. When we brought you back, we had to make sure there was nothing that could hurt us. I went through it myself.” He hesitated. “I found my brother’s journal in there.”

  “Of course he’s your brother,” I muttered.

  “Where did you find it?”

  “Michelle’s office.”

  “And you took it.”

  I nodded.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “It seemed important.”

  “It is,” he said. “The others don’t know it’s there.”

  “They don’t?”

  He shook his head. “I figured you could be the one to tell them. To tell Elizabeth, when you’re ready. It should go to her.”

  “Did you read it?”

  He sighed. “I started to. I was greedy for it, for anything from him. But I realized it wasn’t meant for me. At least not right away. It should go to her before anyone else. Then she can decide what to do with it.”

  I sat on the edge of the bed. “I don’t know why I took any of what I did when I left here. It’s weird, right?”

  He rubbed a hand over his shaved head. “You already had it on you.”

  I looked at him in surprise. “What?”

  “You took that wherever you went,” he said, nodding toward the backpack, “when you left on assignment. It wasn’t because you didn’t trust the pack, it was just an extension of you. You had it with you on that first day you showed up on our porch. Said you traveled light, and for a long time, no one knew what you had inside. We did, eventually, when you let us in.” And then, “Still got the stone wolf, huh?” He said it like it was nothing, like it was just a simple conversation between friends.

  I nodded, eyes narrowing.

  “Take it out.”

  My claws dug into my palms.

  He said, “I’m not going to take it from you. I just want you to see it.”

  I almost didn’t. I almost asked him to leave. To let me be. I was tired, and I didn’t know how much more I could take. I didn’t know why I had that damn wolf. It should have been Kelly’s.

  I did as he asked.

  I took it out.

  It was heavy and cool.

  He said, “I know things don’t make sense. That we have a history with you that you can’t remember. But I know you fought to keep some part of who you were with everything you had.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because you still have that,” he said, pointing toward the wolf. “You kept it secret. You kept it safe.”

  “It was important,” I muttered. “I had this cubbyhole in the back of my closet in the compound. I hid it away.”

  “Like a hole in a tree.”

  I closed my eyes. “Yeah. I guess.”

  “And no one was able to take it from you.”

  “No.”

  “Good,” he said. “And I know you’re still you, Robbie. I know it with everything I have, because that’s not your wolf. It’s Kelly’s.”

  I took in a stuttering breath.

  He was in front of me then, and he bent over, trailing his nose along my hairline to my ear. “You took it with you wherever you went,” he whispered. “Because you loved it so and couldn’t bear to leave it behind. With you, it was safe. With you, he was safe. After he was taken from your mind, part of you still held on. Even if you can’t remember anything else, remember that. I asked you once why you carried it with you all the time. You said it was because you never thought you could have something so special, and you needed to remind yourself that it was real.”

  He kissed my forehead and let me be, closing the door behind him.

  I sat there for a long time, the wolf of stone in my hands.

  * * *

  I couldn’t sleep.

  I missed the little house outside of Caswell, though the thought made my stomach twist with guilt.

  Even worse, part of me wanted to see Ezra. I felt like I was cleaved in two, and there was this guy, this version of myself who could have spent the rest of his life never knowing where he’d come from, the people he’d once loved nothing but smoke reflected in a fractured mirror. That Robbie would have been none the wiser. If the Bennett pack had kept on thinking that I’d betrayed them, I might have never known reality. It was as if Caswell was a dream, and I’d awoken into a nightmare. How far would they have pushed me? What could they have made me do if I’d never known the truth?

  It hurt.

  And then there was this other Robbie, this Robbie smiling in photographs hung on the wall in a garage in a town in the middle of nowhere. This Robbie was happy, this Robbie was loved, this Robbie was whole, and here I was, stepping into his shoes like I deserved it. Like I belonged.

  I felt like a fraud.

  I wanted to believe.

  I didn’t know how.

  I tossed and turned for a few hours. The moon was bright through the window. It whispered to me, and I tried to shut it out. Begged it to leave me be.

  It didn’t.

  And then I felt guilt about that too, because Kelly probably didn’t feel it like the rest of the wolves, didn’t feel that electric thrum coursing through his body, a kinetic and enthralling energy that was wonderfully insistent. He would remember what it felt like, would remember the comforting weight of the moon as it called out, singing here i am my loves here i am because i am always with you i am your mother i am your father and all will be well will be well.

  It was my fault.

  No matter what anyone said, if Kelly hadn’t been on that bridge, if he hadn’t tried to protect me, if he hadn’t tried to stop Ezra, he would be as he once was.

 
; He was fragile now.

  Breakable.

  Soft.

  I sat up in my bed.

  Maybe….

  Maybe he needed me.

  To help him.

  To protect him.

  To keep him safe.

  I slid out of bed, dragging the comforter off and trailing it behind me. I barely noticed the stone wolf in my hand.

  I opened the door to my bedroom.

  The hallway was dark.

  The only sounds were the deep, slow breaths of a sleeping pack.

  Elizabeth.

  Ox.

  Joe.

  Carter.

  Even the timber wolf.

  I stopped in front of Kelly’s room.

  He was sleeping too.

  I placed my hand flat against the door.

  I whispered, “I won’t let anything happen to you. No matter what.”

  I laid the comforter on the floor, making a little nest. It wasn’t going to be comfortable; the floors were wood and the comforter was thin. But it would be enough for now.

  I lay down in front of Kelly’s door.

  Just for a few hours, I told myself. Just to make sure.

  As the night wore on, I listened to the sound of his heart, memorizing every beat and tick and stutter. At one point it sped up, as if he were dreaming. I told him that it was okay, it was all right now, he could sleep easy because I wouldn’t let anything happen to him.

  He didn’t hear me, of course, but that didn’t matter.

  Anyone who tried to get to him would have to go through me.

  It wasn’t until someone softly tapped my shoulder that I realized I’d fallen asleep.

  I blinked in the low light spilling in through the window in the hallway.

  Elizabeth said, “Hello.”

  I said, “Hi,” feeling foolish. “I was just….”

  She crouched down next to me. She ran a hand through my hair. I leaned into it, and she laughed quietly at the low rumble in my chest. “You were just,” she said, and it was warm and kind.

  I nodded. She understood.

  “I wonder,” she said.

  “About what?”

  “What makes a man?” Her face was covered in shadow. Her hand never left my hair. “If all he knows is stripped away, what is it that remains?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I didn’t either until we found you again. I think I know the answer now. Would you like to hear it?”

  “Yes.” Almost more than anything.

  She said, “What remains is a broken heart shattered like so much glass. Pieces are missing, and the ones that are left don’t fit like they used to. But still it beats, because no matter what is taken away, no matter what is lost, it needs to continue. To survive. You are a survivor, Robbie. And not even magic can take that away from you.”

  I closed my eyes, struggling to breathe.

  She sang then. Softly, just a song for her and me. She didn’t mind being lonely, she told me, because her heart told her I was lonely too.

  We stayed that way as the sun rose.

  * * *

  It was an adjustment—Green Creek and all it entailed.

  I tried to memorize the names of everyone that came to see me at Gordo’s. I stopped asking after the second morning if every person coming in had something wrong with their car. It turned out that Original Flavor Robbie (I hated Tanner for that) was quite popular, and Robbie 2.0 (I hated Carter for that) was barely keeping up.

  They didn’t ask me where I’d been, most leaning forward and whispering conspiratorially that they understood it was wolf business. Most of them knew something was off, but they didn’t ask. They’d seen the missing flyers posted around Green Creek. They had bits and pieces of rumors, but they mostly left it alone.

  On Friday morning two weeks after I’d arrived back in Green Creek, Gordo told me the garage would be closing early.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Full moon, kid. Chris and Tanner are still newer wolves. Don’t want to take any chances.”

  I glanced through the door. Chris was bent over an open hood. Tanner was on his cell phone calling about some parts that hadn’t yet been delivered. “There been any problems?”

  Gordo shook his head. “They’ve taken to it quicker than I ever thought they would, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “And we’ve got company coming in.”

  That was the first I’d heard about it. Granted, I didn’t think the pack was filling me in on every detail, given that they were still walking on eggshells around me. “Who?”

  He twirled a finger at his eyes. “Ever since Ox became….”

  “Werewolf Jesus?” I asked.

  He glared at me. “You need to stop listening to Carter.”

  “I’m trying,” I assured him. “But he makes it hard when he won’t stop talking. He’s suited for politics, if you think about it.”

  Gordo sighed. “Point. Ever since Ox became the Alpha of the Omegas, we tend to be a bit crowded on the full moons. A few chose to stay here in Green Creek, but we’ve been able to place most of them in other packs. The ones that were worse off aren’t more than a couple days’ drive away. They come in most full moons to be around Ox. It keeps them calm when he’s near.”

  “Their packs come too?”

  “Not all of them, and never the Alphas. They understand what the Omegas need. It’s not something they can provide for them. At least not yet.”

  “Because of your father.”

  He scowled. “Yes.”

  “Do you….”

  “Spit it out, Robbie. I have work to do before we close up.”

  I thought about telling him that it was nothing, it didn’t matter, because anything I asked would be like digging claws into an open wound. But I had to know. “Do you ever miss him?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  “Look, kid, I don’t know what it was like for you. I don’t know how he acted, what he said or what he did. But you know it was all a lie, right?”

  I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. “I guess so.”

  He shook his head. “There’s no guessing here, Robbie. I know… I know you saw some side of him and that you didn’t know any better. But my father isn’t like that. There was a reason he did what he did. He wanted something. And he took you because of it.”

  “What did he want?”

  He said, “I don’t know. But I have a feeling we’re going to find out before too long. Whatever he has planned, whatever he’s after, he won’t stop until he has it. Or we finish it.”

  “Finish him,” I whispered.

  He looked at me strangely. “Do you….” He let out a frustrated breath. “Do you care about him?”

  “I don’t know how to turn it off.” I couldn’t look him in the eye. “It’s this divide. I keep telling myself he’s wrong, that what he did was wrong, but then I remember how he treated me. How he cared about me. And I know you all think he was using me,” I added before he could interrupt. “Maybe he was. He probably was. But what if he wasn’t? What if all of this, everything he’s done, has just been because of what was taken from him?”

  From the corner of my eye, I thought I saw the raven on Gordo’s arm flutter its wings. “And what was taken from him?” Gordo asked. His voice was flat.

  Oh, how thin the ice beneath my feet was. I could almost hear it cracking. “He said… he said he had a family once. That wolves took them away from him.” And then, “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  I shrugged awkwardly. “Talking.”

  He snorted, and I shuddered when he dropped his hand on my shoulder. “Never thought I’d ever hear that from you. There’s more to it than that, kid. If we’d had this conversation a long time ago, I might have even agreed with you. But I know better now. Everything my father has had done to him is because of his own actions. Wolves aren’t to blame, at least not in the way you’re thinking. H
e had a tether. It wasn’t my mother. And when she found out, it didn’t end well. I think he’d been manipulating her memory for years, keeping her compliant. And it fucked with her head. His tether died. My mother killed her. And then my father killed my mother and many other people. He survived somehow. His magic was stripped from him so he could never hurt anyone again. I was only twelve.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I muttered. “How the hell did he escape?”

  Gordo shook his head. “We don’t know, but he did, and that’s all that matters at this point because he won’t stop. And neither will we. We’re going to have to have a talk, kid, and soon. We’ve tried to give you space and time to find your bearings again, to know your place here. But we can’t continue on this way. We’ve let it go on too long as it is. We’re going to have to make a decision.”

  “About?”

  He dropped his hand. “What we’ll do in order to survive. And much of that depends upon you. I hate it, Robbie. I wish it didn’t have to be this way. But you’re going to have to make a choice. Either you’re with us, or—”

  “I’m against you.” I felt sick.

  “No,” he said, not unkindly. “Or you stay out of our way. Because this will end one way or another. And we can’t have you standing between us and them. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “It’s too late for that,” I said bitterly.

  “I know. But things could be worse.”

  “How?” I looked up at him.

  He nodded toward the front of the garage.

  Kelly was crossing the street toward us. He was in uniform. He saw us watching and gave a little wave.

  “You could still not know he exists,” Gordo said quietly. “And if there’s one thing I’ve learned through all of this, it’s that we need each other now more than ever. We’re pack, kid.”

  * * *

  Ox drove us home. His work shirt lay folded on the bench seat between us, the old truck bouncing on the potholes in the dirt road. He wore a loose tank top, the window rolled down, his arm hanging out the side. The air was warm, and I didn’t know if there was anywhere else I’d rather be.

  That lasted until we rounded the corner to the houses.