by Alexis Davie
And most importantly, she couldn’t forgive herself for actually saying yes to his offer.
She should’ve been out of Evergreen Grove hours ago. Instead, she was sitting on the edge of the most comfortable bed she’d had in ten years, gripping at the bedsheets beneath her, as she stared down at her feet.
Despite every single one of her thoughts warning her against staying for more than a few days, despite every single cell in her body urging her to run away as fast as she could, Nina couldn’t help but think that this would be different—that Keppler wasn’t dangerous to her. She had spent ten years listening to her gut, surviving because she paid close attention to her instincts and never doubted them. If any part of her thought he was a threat to her, she wouldn’t have stayed in the woods to listen to him. She wouldn’t have let him bring her to this inn. She wouldn’t have let Mrs. Levitt leave the two of them alone in the room.
Despite everything Nina had forced herself to learn and believe for the past decade, she couldn’t help thinking that maybe Keppler would be different than the last werewolves she had interacted with.
Whatever the case was, she would deal with it when the time came. But first things first: she wanted a long, hot shower.
4
After a week and a half at the inn, Nina had gotten used to the same morning routine: Keppler usually greeted her to ask how she had slept, and then he joined her for breakfast at the dining hall, much to Nina’s chagrin during the first couple of days. She had eventually realized she didn’t mind his company as much as she had pretended she hadn’t, despite the fact that Keppler felt the need to constantly remind her that he was there to help her out in any way she needed him to.
“You can help me by shutting the hell up while I’m trying to eat,” she had snapped at him after the first week of hearing him say the exact same thing. From the kitchen, Mrs. Levitt had burst into laughter, and Keppler had blushed in embarrassment and apologized to her while Nina had barely been able to bite back a satisfied grin.
Truthfully, she… liked having him around, even if they didn’t say much to each other during breakfast. His presence was soothing, keeping her calm as the nerves in her body slowly started to calm down, too. He didn’t mind that she was mostly silent, and he didn’t feel the need to fill up the silence around them with awkward conversation or small talk. Some days, Nina found herself waking up earlier than she usually did, and instead of heading to the dining hall, she would wait for Keppler to arrive at her door so that they could go together.
She liked being around him. She liked being with—
Nina had stopped her train of thought before it could go on any longer. She was not in this town to make friends and bonds and connections she couldn’t hold onto. She was definitely not here to develop some sort of feelings for the first person who had shown her a smidgeon of decency and kindness in the last ten years, especially a person she had barely talked to, barely even knew. She was here to rest for as long as she could, feed the starving wolf inside of her, and then bail. That was it.
Once she was done with breakfast, Keppler had mentioned that he was having a meeting with his pack at the dining hall, and Nina was more than welcome to join them if she felt comfortable doing so. Nina had immediately clenched her fists, her mood quickly turning sour. A part of her wanted to get up from the table and hide in her room until she could make sure that they were all gone, but she forced herself to breathe.
If she was really going to stay in Evergreen Grove for a few more days, she couldn’t avoid Keppler’s pack. She would have to get used to their scents and learn how to recognize them, and they would probably have to do the same with her. She still needed to hunt, and she couldn’t do that if she was worried about encountering another werewolf the entire time.
“Okay,” Nina had made herself say. “I’ll stay.”
For some reason, her answer had caused Keppler’s face to light up, like it was some kind of victory for him. Nina refused to acknowledge that her sour mood diminished at the sight of his gleeful expression, crediting the change in her demeanor to the wonderful breakfast she’d had.
It was only a pack meeting. She was perfectly capable of standing in a room with a bunch of werewolves—who were not going to hurt her.
She had clearly underestimated what being in a room full of strange werewolves would do to her, and now she was focusing all of her energy in remaining in her place so that she would not flee like she so desperately wanted to.
Even though Nina was standing in the corner of the dining hall, far away from the rest of Keppler’s pack, she still felt like she was being torn apart, her fight-or-flight response urging her to run away as fast as she could, to get out of the room and keep going until she was out of Evergreen Grove, until she was out of Montana altogether. The werewolves of Keppler’s pack, however, didn’t seem to notice how she was literally struggling against her body’s desire to escape. They didn’t seem to notice her at all.
What was she still doing here?
Nina wasn’t even listening to what Keppler was saying. It was something about how they should be more careful when hunting in the woods because they had to keep a low profile and they didn’t want to risk any humans finding them and freaking out over the huge werewolves in the forest on the outskirts of town.
“The last thing we need,” Keppler said to the room, “is a human laying traps that could severely wound and even potentially kill one of us.”
Images flashed across Nina’s eyes: people she had grown up with lying on the ground, surrounded by pools of blood; gleaming white fangs and claws as sharp as daggers cutting across flesh and fur; a held out hand reaching out to her; glowing yellow eyes glaring at her; gaping maws stained with blood smirking at her, their laughter echoing around her as she fled; the ground vanishing from underneath her feet, as she tripped and stumbled on her shaking legs…and she was falling, falling, a scream catching in her throat as her hands searched for something to hold onto—
Nina took a sharp breath.
The meeting had been dismissed, apparently, because all the werewolves who had occupied the dining hall were starting to get up from their chairs and patting each other’s backs and shoulders, waving at each other, crying out their goodbyes and see you laters.
“I’m guessing you dislike meddling humans as much as we do.” Nina turned to her side, surprised to see Keppler standing beside her. When had he gotten there? How had she not noticed him? His arms were crossed over his chest, and when Nina frowned at him in confusion, he gestured to her with his head. “I thought you were going to shift any second.”
It was until he pointed it out that Nina realized her own arms had been crossed over her chest, except that she had started gripping her own arms at some point with such strength that her nails had nearly ripped through the fabric of the long-sleeved blouse Mrs. Levitt had lent her.
“Had an unlucky run-in with them or something?” Keppler asked her, and Nina pulled her gaze away from him, staring down at the floor. “It’s happened to us a few times before. No one has gotten fatally injured, thank god, but we’ve had a few close calls. It’s kind of weird, I guess—being a werewolf, you don’t think normal human beings can be so dangerous.”
Humans aren’t the danger to werewolves, Nina thought, gritting her teeth together. Werewolves are the danger to werewolves. We’re our own worst enemies.
“Nina?” Keppler softly called her. “Is everything okay?”
“Why are you being so nice to me?”
The words were out of her mouth before Nina could think about them or stop them.
Keppler seemed to be as surprised by her question as she was, because his lips, which had been parted as he prepared to ask her something else, snapped shut, and his eyes widened.
“What do you mean?” he replied, and Nina wanted to scream at him. She wanted to yell that he could drop the act, he could stop pretending to care about her, he didn’t have to keep looking after her like she was a child or a pu
ppy, god, she would be out of his hair as soon as she went hunting, she would leave this town behind and keep going the same way she had for the last ten years.
“I get that you’re the alpha of your pack,” Nina started, “and you have to make sure there are no problems with any out-of-town shifters or anything. I get that. But why go through… all this?” she asked, looking around the inn’s dining hall.
For someone whose emotions were usually clear through his expressions, Keppler could also mask them really well. He kept staring at Nina with a look she couldn’t quite decipher, though she was ashamedly glad that there was no pity in it. Not that she could see at least.
“Because I wanted to help you,” he finally answered. “And I would’ve done the same thing even if I weren’t an alpha.”
“But why?” Nina insisted.
“Because I wanted to help you,” Keppler repeated, and the genuineness of his tone made Nina’s eyes burn with barely held-back tears. She felt warmth stirring inside her for the very first time since she could recall, and it had nothing to do with the coziness of the dining hall. She glanced away from Keppler, struggling to believe his words, the simplicity of his answer, like there was truly no other reason for helping someone than just wanting to.
It was such a strange concept, one she hadn’t believed in for a decade… but perhaps she could start to believe it again.
Nina turned her head back to Keppler. “You said I could ask for your help with anything, right?”
“I did,” Keppler said with a smile.
“What about showing me around the woods?” she asked. “I still need to hunt before I’m ready to leave this town, and I’d rather avoid getting into another fight with one of your pack members.”
Something flashed across Keppler’s expression—too quickly for Nina to even begin to recognize what it was—but then he slightly shook his head to himself, and his smile was back on his face, as kind and genuine as it had always been. The warmth Nina had felt stirring inside her rushed to her head, and she felt lightheaded with something akin to embarrassment that was also not quite embarrassment.
“Sure thing!” Keppler said. “C’mon, let’s go. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”
5
Keppler was glad he hadn’t asked Nina if she would consider staying in Evergreen Grove permanently. He had been about to do it at the dining hall, right after the meeting with the rest of his pack. It was something he had been thinking about ever since he had gone home that first night and laid awake in bed and thought about the conversation they’d had in the woods and what he had heard from her at the inn.
I’m fine. I don’t need your help. I don’t need your goddamn charity. I’m good with just a mattress, if she has one. I can’t pay you for any of this.
Although he and Nina had breakfast together every single day since then, they weren’t exactly friends. Nina barely spoke a word through it all, and Keppler didn’t want to push her to talk about anything that might make her uncomfortable. Still, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that she’d had a rough time lately, and Keppler couldn’t stand the thought of her leaving town and going back to being on her own. No matter how much Nina had assured him that first night that she was fine, she clearly wasn’t.
She hadn’t mentioned anything about getting out of Evergreen Grove in the week and a half she had already spent here, so Keppler had figured she had changed her mind. Then, she had asked him to take her to the woods to hunt before she left town, and Keppler’s hopes of asking her to stay (just to make the whole thing official and let his pack know and deal with what would come from that) had been smashed to the ground.
He didn’t want her to leave. He didn’t want her to have to face the world by herself anymore. He wanted to help her, to be there for her, to be with her—
Keppler forced himself to shake his head, along with the thoughts that had begun forming inside of it.
He smiled at Nina, and he had to stifle the grin that threatened to overtake his mouth when she blushed at the gesture.
“Sure thing!” Keppler said. “C’mon, let’s go. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”
He couldn’t get attached to a woman he didn’t really know, even less so if said woman was still planning on leaving in… well, whenever she decided to leave, he supposed. That, however, didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy the time spent with her or try to make the most out of it.
And, who knew—perhaps Keppler would have enough time to convince Nina that maybe she could stay for longer than she was planning to.
* * *
Nina listened carefully and paid attention to everything Keppler taught her in the woods. Hunters, or mere humans who thought they could bite off more than they could chew, had been placing some leg-hold traps during the last few weeks to try to catch a shifter, as legends of them were not uncommon in Evergreen Grove. As Keppler had told Nina after the meeting, they’d had a couple of close calls before, though no members of his pack had been physically injured. The traps they had encountered had been leg-hold traps, which didn’t hurt them as much as simply capture them, but Keppler had still instructed his pack members to watch each other’s backs.
“Leaves don’t fall that often unless it’s autumn,” Keppler said to Nina as they trekked through the forest, inspecting the ground for signs of any hidden traps. “An amateur will use leaves to cover a trap, regardless of what season it is. Most humans aren’t that careless about hiding their traps, so they cover them with soil or similar materials. Sometimes they paint the traps so that they’ll fade into the ground or the rest of their surroundings.”
“How do you avoid those?” Nina asked, glancing down at the ground and slowing her pace, as if to make sure she wouldn’t accidentally step on a trap.
“Your instincts will pick up that something’s wrong,” Keppler replied. “A lot of werewolves will ignore it and assume that there’s another predator around, and they’ll think that they can handle it on their own.”
Nina snorted, catching up with Keppler. “If there’s one thing I know,” she said, “it is to always trust your instincts.” Keppler beamed, turning to her to tell her how he wished some of the more reckless members of his pack could hear her— “God knows I would be dead without them.”
That… wasn’t something he had expected to hear. Nina had lowered her voice, her sentence probably meant as a comment to herself rather than a statement towards Keppler, but it was still something he had heard. It hadn’t sounded like a hyperbole either, not like the ones Eliot was prone to spouting half the time a mission didn’t go according to plan. She had uttered those words with such resignation, as if that was simply the way things were.
It broke Keppler’s heart.
Just how long has she been on her own? he wondered. How long has she been afraid of asking for help? How long have her instincts kept her alive?
“Is there, you know, any way to let your shifters know that I’m not looking for a fight?” Nina demanded. “Because I don’t want a repeat of what happened with your buddy Eliot over me just trying to get some food.”
“Y-yeah, there— I mean, the pack already knows who you are, but if you ever came across a member of another pack, there are a few ways to show that you mean no harm,” Keppler answered, forcing himself to move on to the new subject. It wasn’t his place to ask Nina about a past she didn’t want to discuss.
Before he realized what he was doing, Keppler reached out one of his hands to hold Nina’s, and it was only when Nina took a step away from him that he even noticed what he’d done.
“I-I’m sorry,” he apologized immediately. “I’m sorry, I—I didn’t—” He had unconsciously meant for such a gesture to be one of support, a gesture through which he could tell Nina that she wasn’t alone anymore, that she didn’t have to be if she didn’t want to.
Nina sighed. “Let’s just keep going,” she said, and Keppler nodded.
* * *
“You’re pulling my leg,” Nina said w
ith a mouthful of the lunch Mrs. Levitt had so kindly made for her and Keppler.
“I am one-hundred percent not pulling your leg,” he replied.
“There’s no way that you guys communicate with each other by whistling songs from the ‘80s,” she insisted, her eyes narrowing in disbelief. “I don’t believe it.”
Keppler sat back against his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Listen, every pack has their own specific way of communicating with each other, decided by the current alpha—”
“And you expect me to believe that whistling ‘80s songs is your specific way and that you chose it?”
“I didn’t choose it!” Keppler cried, embarrassment slightly flushing his cheeks. “The whistling was chosen as our way to communicate decades ago, possibly even centuries at this point. Besides, it’s not exactly whistling, it’s just the closest it can get to it, considering we’re wolves when we do it. The music selection is the only thing that changes from alpha to alpha.”
“So if I go into the woods while your guys are hunting,” Nina started, her mouth curling upwards, “I shouldn’t be surprised if I hear several whistles to the tune of Take on Me?”
“I’ll have you know that our preferred song of choice is Hungry Like the Wolf!” Keppler exclaimed, and Nina burst into laughter, slamming her hand down against the table and throwing her head back as the melody of her joy spread through the empty dining hall of the inn. Truth be told, their preferred song of choice when the members of his pack needed to call out to each other changed depending on who was the first wolf to call out to the others, but he was sure that using that song would make Nina laugh.