by Sam Hall
My teeth dug into my bottom lip, but Nan reached across and squeezed my hand.
“He loved you, Paige, so very much. He showed me the clips on the YouTube of your fights, sent me links to articles when you were featured. Hold that in your heart tonight, sweetheart. That’s what he would have wanted you to remember.”
I met Nan’s eyes and saw none of the usual dominance there. This wasn’t her commanding me to eat or look after myself better. Instead, she was as she had been when I was a kid—a strong, reassuring presence. I swallowed hard. Shouldn’t it have been the other way around? She was getting old. It felt like I could see the fragility of her bones through her flesh, the once robust figure looking like it was wasting away. But her smile was strong, and so was her hand when she reached out and cupped my chin.
“Eat up, and then a sleep before the night comes. It’ll be a long one.”
There’s a peculiar kind of strangeness that comes from revisiting your childhood bedroom. It was much more so here than my actual room in the alpha residence, probably because the room I always slept in at Nan’s was frozen in the 1970s still, the décor hopelessly outdated, even when I was young. The faded curtains with their lurid floral patterns, the quilted satin bedspread, always clean and warm, having kept many a child happy at night. The little narrow beds, enough to house whichever kids were staying over at the time.
“We made sure everything was freshened up and washed.” Rose leaned on the doorframe.
“Probably gonna be a little squishy, now you’re all grown up,” Lynn said. “But try and sleep. You’re probably too young to remember your mum’s vigil.” She reached out and smoothed a stray strand of hair away from my face. “It’s hard, love. It’s just you, the chapel, Mother Moon, and him.”
“We didn’t know…that Adam was sick,” Rose said. “If we’d known…”
I nodded. It went without saying, didn’t it? But I thanked them for it anyway.
“Excuse me, ladies. If I could just have a minute with Paige?”
They both turned to see Mason had appeared in the hallway.
“We’ll come and get you when you need to get ready. Rest, even if you can’t sleep,” Lyn said, squeezing my hand before pulling away.
We waited until they’d disappeared off into the house to speak.
“Your grandmother’s put me in here with you.”
“In here!?” I clapped a hand over my mouth, as if that’d hold back the yelp I’d just let out. For some reason, I could see my Nan’s eyes clear as a bell in my mind, and they winked at me, just once. That meddling…
“There are separate beds?” He ducked his head in through the door. “Single beds. Well, beggars and all that. Look, I’m the last one you want in here, and if it’s that big a deal, I’ll take the couch and Declan or Micah can come in here.”
It was weird, seeing that familiar mask of anger transform into… I shifted my weight from foot to foot, the way I would to prepare for a fight. I remembered this look. His eyes shone with challenge, daring me to make a big deal of it. We would have separate beds, sleep in the same room like a couple of siblings. Fuck, even his mouth twisted slightly into a… Was it? Was that an actual smile? I stepped back abruptly, gesturing for him to come in.
He shrugged off the leather jacket he was wearing. You know those ones that are cut close, that just seem to exist to further emphasise the breadth of a man’s shoulders? Keys, wallet, were all chucked on one of the beds. The one where my cousin, Kelly, usually slept. Gun, belt. Wait, what?
“Why do you have a gun?”
“We all do,” he said, shooting me a sidelong look, then reached behind to pull his shirt up over his head. He said something else, some kind of explanation by the tone of his voice, but while my focus had sharpened exponentially, it wasn’t on what he was saying.
I’d dreamed of this moment so many fucking times, and the fact I was getting it the day after my dad died was one of those cosmic jokes. I still felt empty, hollow, and my head ached, but then there was this. I’d cried my heart out on that chest when Declan and I decided it wasn’t going to work, when I didn’t get the grades I’d hoped for, and sometimes just when being the heir got too much. He’d held me with those arms too, the ones with the wolves running up the forearms. When he sat down on the bed to pull his boots off, it all got a bit much, because this had happened before as well. Maybe it was my scent, maybe it was the frozen silence, but those dark eyes rolled up to meet mine, and he paused mid shoe removal.
The light in my room had been similar to this, even though it was a different time of day. Nan kept her house shrouded in gloom, preferring the low light for the homey, cocoon like feel. Then, it’d been late in the afternoon, just before my birthday party. I’d been stuffing around in my room, pacing the floor half naked, knowing what was coming. We weren’t married off at eighteen, not unless we wanted to be. Usually, the heir indicated who her choice was before the pack, and they had time to get used to the idea. Then a protracted courtship began to make sure the youthful decision was the right one. The heir and her mate were slowly eased into pack leadership, taking more and more cues from the existing alpha pair, until finally, they stepped back and the next generation took over.
Dad had put it down to Mum dying young. Me not growing up with a strong female role model—though what the hell he thought his own mother and sisters were, I had no idea, let alone Nance. How else could I have chosen so wrongly? I’d been tossing around outfits on the bed that night, looking at combination after combination, only in a pair of sleep shorts and a sports bra, when he knocked.
It was that which really had me on edge. We’d shared so many moments, Mason and I. I felt them like a weight on my chest. All those glancing touches, those long looks, that secret smile that seemed to appear just for me. I’d asked him to come up and see me. Heirs talked privately to those they wanted to take as mates, to feel them out, make sure the feelings were shared. I knew his wolf liked me a whole lot, being able to feel that keenly, but the man?
Back in Nan’s room, I jerked off my top and sweatpants, leaving me standing there in just a sports bra and girl boxers when he finally saw it. His shoe dropped to the floor, but we didn’t acknowledge it, eyes boring into each other. That faint smile, that look of challenge, it was all stripped away to reveal this.
“Paige…”
“You whisper my name. You did it then too. How often do you catch yourself doing that, Mason?” I said, my voice a low, deadly growl. His eyes went wide at that, deprived of his professional mask. I liked that a lot. I wanted something, anything other than that distant, shitty mask all the time.
“I—”
“You do it all the time, don’t you? Sometimes I’d swear I could hear it on the wind. You don’t want to, but you do.”
“You don’t understand what you’re asking.”
“Nope, I don’t. I really, really don’t. There is literally nothing I understand about you or about that night.”
“There’s nothing to understand, Paige. It’s done. I turned you down, you left.”
“And that’s the last time I saw Dad.”
His teeth ground together, those long, sensitive fingers gripping each other, as if that was the only place they could find support.
“You blame me.”
The words were bald, hard, hanging in the air between us, sucking up all the oxygen until we were both gasping.
If Zack’d been here, he would’ve been redirecting me away from this, trying to get me to attack the issues with Mason in manageable bites, rather than this, now. He’d be worried I was maxing myself out again, putting what I needed to one side again, and just throwing myself in, despite what it was doing to me. My heart thudded so hard, so fast, if I half closed my eyes, I could see the forest around me again.
But I wasn’t the hunted this time, he was.
“You should.” He met my gaze head-on, flat, empty, no hint of dominance. This was the stare of a wolf pinned to the ground, surrendering. �
�I tried to resign, told Alpha Spehr that I was moving on to another town, another pack, but he wouldn’t hear of it.”
“He chose you over me.”
He shook his head. “He told me that this was right, that this is what you needed to do. To see life beyond the little microcosm of Lupindorf, to get more experience, to be free.”
“So what did that have to do with you sticking around? Why couldn’t you transfer?”
“Because when you came back, he said you’d need me.”
It was odd how words could pack the same power as a punch to the head. I jerked back, stiffened, feeling the slap of them against my skin, even though he hadn’t moved an inch. Fuck, I’d rather he came at me with his fists, as I knew how to put him on his arse if he did. My body thrummed with a need to do just that—to smash that fucking face with all its perfect angles and perfect stubble and perfect full lips that I could still feel the ghost of.
“And what do I need you for, Klein?”
His chin tipped back a little, revealing an expanse of tanned brown neck. For a human, this might appear like an act of rebellion, but for a wolf shifter? Mine growled within me, shifting back and forth at the submissive display. She wanted to shove his head back, fully bare that throat to me, and then sink her fangs in, just a little, to force him to show the respect he’d never seemed to be able to after that night.
So I did.
The wind was shoved out of him with an oof as I landed on him, forcing him back onto the bed, one hand on his jaw, the other on his chest as I hunched over him. A low, vicious growl started in my belly, growing louder and louder until…
“That’s it.” His soft voice came out strangled, my fangs on his throat making it difficult, but speak he did. “That’s it, Paige.”
He wanted this, that had my wolf balking, scenting the air as if that would give us a hint at the mysteries of Mason Klein. But we couldn’t seem to let go, not just yet. All of it came rushing up, as it would over and over, I was sure. The pain of my eighteenth, of the rejection, sure, but that was old and well worn. Plastered over top of it, much thicker, much more intense, was the pain of what I’d lost, leaving town, not coming back fast enough. Not seeing…
The first sob was ugly sounding, coming through outstretched jaws, so I forced my fangs back as my tears hit Mason’s skin. But when I went to pull back, his arms went around me. Foreign and familiar, I remembered their weight, their strength, the way they pulled me down against him, holding me nestled against the wall of his chest. My wolf fought this, our jaws flexing, snapping, ready to rend and tear, sure there was yet more threat here. But my body uncoiled in tiny increments as he just kept stroking my hair, crooning nonsense words to me, until finally, I relaxed.
He was gone by the time the aunts woke me. Of course he was. I stepped free of the blankets under their impassive gaze, then they reached for me before I went to pull my clothes on. They shook their heads, leading me by the hand, down the hallway, past the guys who were stripping down and walking out the back door. They would have a kiddie pool of lake water set up there, but we would use the bathroom. My nan looked at me with a beatific smile when I entered, clad only in a simple white cotton gown.
“And now the purification begins.”
Chapter 12
As we drove to the chapel, people lined the streets. They stood there, eyes down, silent witnesses to our passage.
“We bathe our sister, our daughter in the waters of the lake,” Nan said, collecting a dipper of water from the bath, no doubt collected from Blue Lake, and poured it over Rose’s head. We watched it trail over her skin before Nan bent down to do it again.
The crowds got thicker the closer we got to the chapel. I was wedged now between Mason and Micah, only able to see the people when I peered past either man.
“Let the water of the mother wash pain and fear away. Let it wash away worldly concerns. Let it open our hearts so we can accept her light in.”
I felt the weight of Mason’s leg against mine, of Micah’s. Each man shot me a sidelong look or two when I got in the car, pressed against their bulk, but something had happened when it became my turn.
I’d stepped into the bath, stripped naked, walking in as I’d come into this world. Nan recited the words, poured the water, and something…shifted. It’d been so long since I’d done this. Moon worship was something some city shifters did, some transmuted and added to the more conventional human Christian religion, focussing on Mother Mary, and others just left it behind.
That’d been what I did, ready to shed any and all of my history when I left town. I hadn’t really noticed the loss of the sacred until right now. It was just water from the brilliant blue lake that had formed in a limestone cave outside of town, but as it slid over my skin, I felt it, that shift into a quieter, softer, denser space. Nan’s words resonated through my body, but my mind refused to engage too much with them. It stilled, for the first time in so damn long, no mindfulness or meditation needed to make it so. Or rather this was a meditation, dressed up in a ritual maybe? It didn’t matter. I stepped out of the bath, was wrapped in towels as I had wrapped each one of my aunts, while Nan performed the ritual for herself, water forcing the white cotton of her gown to stick to her skin as she forced out the words.
We turned as one, heard the shake in her voice, saw it in her hands. Tears joined the trailing water as she poured it over her head, her body. Again and again, she bathed herself in the water, seeming to need more from it than we did, until finally, the dipper dropped, her gown was unbuttoned and left to float in the water, and she stepped out as well.
I looked down at where Mason’s dark jean-clad thigh pressed against my white cotton covered one. We were her priestesses, every woman was, so we wore her gowns, this one embroidered many generations ago by another Meyer, another woman whose blood beat in my veins. She’d used a scratchy silver thread on the fabric to mark out the Mother’s phases, showing us how she turned her face against the world, only to bring it back again.
Micah’s hand shifted on his knee, jerking my attention to him. I watched him with cool, clear eyes, saw those grey eyes burning bright against that tanned skin, the furtive lick of lips that had gotten too dry as those eyes dipped down to look at mine. My head twitched slightly, as if to capture that moment more clearly, to see what he’d do next. The thick muscles of his throat worked, his chest sucking in air as something built inside him, this stranger, this man.
“Paige, we’re here.”
Mason’s voice was soft, solicitous, but it jerked my attention like a dog on a lead, my eyes swinging around to see the chapel, all white stone, graceful arabesques, and pitched roofs, gothic ornamentation spilling across its face. Mason took my hand when I stepped out, Declan moving closer to do the same, but my eyes stayed on the big circular window at the apex. This is where she would come in, Mother Moon, where she would bathe us, bathe Dad in her light. Which was why I didn’t see him.
He leaned against the chapel wall, Zack, a wall himself of masculine energy. I noted the contrast between the two of them, and it made a kind of sense. He’d have to have gotten here early, damn early, to get such a choice position, but he was all lazy confidence right now. Those dark eyes, the echo of the other ones watching me right now. Brothers, twins, if I closed my eyes slightly, I could see them overlapped—Zack against the wall, Mason standing just in front of me, a question in his eyes. But what question was that? I wanted to open my mouth, say something, anything, but my lips remained glued together, a hand sliding into mine breaking the hold they had on me. I looked up to see Declan standing beside me, squeezing it. He drew me past the two of them and inside, where I needed to be.
It was beautiful, I guessed, but sometimes pretty things hurt so much. He looked so much more like my dad laid out on the white marble dais, a similarly embroidered piece of cotton covering him like a sheet, like he was just asleep. Because that’s what they did, these magicians of embalmment. Before they washed him down with the waters of the lake,
they removed all evidence of medical trauma, then cleaned and prepped what was left of my father to create this perfect facsimile.
I walked down the steps, Declan’s hand a warm weight in mine, feeling like I, we, floated along. My aunts, my female cousins and my grandmother all fanned out, creating a ring around Dad, waiting for me to take my place at his head. I let go of Declan, feeling light, too light, as I moved closer, as if he anchored me to the here and now, so where was I at this minute? I knelt down on the cushion on the left-hand side of Dad, Nan across from me on the right. She spared me one long look and then nodded.
I’d been weirded out the first time I went to a human wedding. The Christian rite was so…talky. So many speeches, so many words to communicate the sacred. That was not our way. The kind of still quiet I sought when I did meditation fell so much more easily over me. That’s what this was for, I remembered that from when Mum died.
Human life was so full of stuff. I’d fallen into its rhythms when I went to the city, and it had worked for me for some time, but this… I looked at my father, really looked at my father for the first time in so long. My eyes took in the way his hair had begun to thin, to recede, the deep chestnut colour threaded through with much more grey now. I saw all the lines on his face, drawn deeper by his mobile expressions—always smiling, laughing, frowning, growling. That was one thing the funeral director couldn’t capture, revealing only the passage all those many emotions had left. A nose broken when young, fighting on the footy field, a short beard, almost all silver. Strong, broad shoulders that I’d felt blotted out the sun when I was a kid, arms that had reached out to stop me from blundering, that gestured for something to be done and it was so, that moved when he spoke, as if to communicate the meaning, that wrapped around me, swung me up, pulled me close until I drew back.
A single tear fought free. It wasn’t great to cry early. The vigil was so long, the sun slowly dropping in the big round windows, going down, dying as my father had, to give way for her. But where there was one tear, there was another and another. They slid down and acted as a herald almost to the others.