However, a spotlight shining down on the top of the runway refuted that denial. Because there stood Bohdan, his meaty hand wrapped around the arm of a heavily pregnant Myrna, dressed in her warrior bikini. He made a dramatic pause taking in all of the applause with a stony face, before dragging Myrna down the runway as he charged toward the ring. Trailing behind them came, Sana, who seemed to be trying to get her father to stop his forward action. She pulled on his shoulder and shook her head, pantomiming big as the crowd, including Knud and Nago, yelled with glee and called out Bohdan’s name like he was the second coming.
Bohdan pantomimed to Myrna and Sana to stay there behind the ropes before climbing into the ring and asking, “Which one of you maggots have impregnated my newly discovered granddaughter? I will know from you. I will know from you NOW.”
“Most Honored Grandfather,” Myrna called from the sidelines, her miked up voice crying out across the crowd. “Please do not do this! Do not kill my baby’s father.”
“I will not kill him…,” Bohdan promised his granddaughter softly. But then he turned out to the crowd and added, “Right away.”
The crowd fell out laughing at his caveat, so that Bohdan had to wait until it died down to say, “First I will break every bone in his body!” With that threat he raised his infamous chain in the air.
“No, Most Honored Grandfather!” Myrna screamed.
At the same time Sana said, “Father, you take this too far. Let me deal with the man who has put the baby in my daughter!”
“After I break every bone in his body, I will take him to doctor,” Bohdan continued speaking to the crowd as if his daughter had said nothing. “Say doctor please fix this boy. I will wait the months for his body to be healed, and then…” Bohdan shouted, “I WILL BREAK ALL HIS BONES AGAIN.”
The crowd went absolutely crazy, even as Myrna let out a wretched scream.
“Nyet, Papa! She will never forgive us if you kill him. And I cannot lose her, too!” Sana called out. She’d spent the last three months of tour stops finding out that not only was Myrna her daughter, but also that her beloved Notorious African had been put into a coma by the Sinister English—who her and Ivor Dollar Emoji (the son of Bohdan’s sister, Ursula), had subsequently feuded with.
Wilma had assumed this match would be a continuation of their ongoing grudge with the Sinister English duo. But she guessed not now as Bohdan promised the crowd, “And after I break his whole body again, I will squash his babymaking part LIKE OVERRIPE CUCUMBER!”
“Sir, I invite you to try,” a voice called out from the other side of the coliseum.
A voice Wilma recognized. She turned with the crowd to look at the runway opposite of the one Bohdan, Myrna, and Sana had come down.
Upon seeing the new fighter, dressed in nothing but a pair black spandex pants, wrestling boots, and a mile-wide grin, the shifters, for reasons, probably none of the humans in attendance could understand, went absolutely apeshit.
And that was when Wilma finally stood the hell up, her mouth dropping open at the sight of her grandson, Rafes, striding forward to fight her former lover. She needn’t have worried, she realized then with a large grin. Because Rafes and Myrna had apparently found a way to bridge both of their worlds.
“What the hell am I looking at?” Knud asked on one side of her.
While on other side, Nago said, “Dude, I don’t think anybody’s ever going to call Rafes President Robot again.”
What followed was a match for the history books.
The wolves watched the President of North America fight one of the most legendary heels of all time with Rafes flipping, rolling, and throwing fake punches to avoid Bohdan’s infamous chain.
But eventually Bohdan took him down with a dirty trick, tripping him and putting a knee in his back before he could recover. Then he wrapped the chain around Rafes’s neck before asking, “Any last requests?”
“Yes,” Rafes convincingly choked out, while unzipping one of his wrestling pants pockets…
Then he pulled out a ring so big, Wilma could see it from her seat. “Myrna Warrior Princess, will you marry me?”
Only then did Bohdan release Rafes and give him a thumbs up approval.
The crowded didn’t just yell, they screamed.
“Sorry, Knud,” Nago said over all the pandemonium. “Rafes wins the most bad-ass Nightwolf Brother award this year. You had good run, though.”
“Nah, man, I get it,” Knud answered, before yelling down to Myrna along with the rest of the crowd, “SAY YES!”
Myrna’s face lit up like a Christmas tree at the side of the ring, and even Sana was jumping up and down, making Wilma wonder how much of the match had been planned and how much of it was fake.
In any case, Rafes never did get his official answer, because just as Myrna opened her mouth…
The audience gasped, and beside Wilma, Knud went completely still. “Did her…did her water just break?”
“Yeah, I think it did,” Nago answered with a grimace.
“Goddamn this dramatic ass family,” Knud muttered, before leaping over the VIP banister, and heading toward the ring.
40
Wilma
So the after party turned into a celebration. And while Myrna and Rafes weren’t able to attend, everyone else raised a glass to the couple who were resting with their newborn boy, Rafe Tikaani Nightwolf at the Detroit kingdom house’s now state-of the-art clinic.
Wilma didn’t know…okay, wouldn’t admit she was waiting for Bohdan until he walked into the celebration, a good two hours after it started. And her breath caught, because finally…he was here, at the house, she’d refused to invite him to when they were young.
The Detroit kingdom house’s décor had changed a lot since then, especially after her niece and her husbands had taken over the throne. The ballroom used to be black on black with a raised stage that had been used for announcements, weddings, and executions—sometimes all on the same night.
But the walls were all smart now and tonight, they were all projecting different slow-motion replays from the unexpected match between Rafes and Bohdan: the fight, the proposal, and brand spanking new footage of the baby everybody was already calling Rafe T, sleeping in his crib.
Wilma had been nursing a single glass of champagne while watching and rewatching the exciting footage all night. But had stopped and looked toward the door when her body tingled, her wolf sensing Bohdan had arrived, even before the big cheer went up from everybody in the ballroom.
But if Bohdan scoped her the way she had scoped him, he didn’t show it. He walked right past where she was standing near the door, making a beeline for a cluster of All-American male wrestlers, cooing over the baby sleeping on the smart wall.
Wilma swallowed, fisting her hand around the stem of her champagne glass as she watched Bohdan talk warmly to his wrestlers, before moving on to do a round of the room. His body slicing a path through the other partygoers, like he was a shark in their sea, and they were the kind of fish that end up in aquariums.
He still came off just the same as he had fifty years ago, Wilma noticed, as he shook hands and patted shoulders. Like a man who knew exactly where he was going and what he wanted.
And tonight what he wanted was definitely not her. She watched him the entire time, but he didn’t so much as look at her. Not even once. And though she’d gotten as close to perfect as a seventy-year-old could on all her heart tests at her last physical, that vital organ felt like it was shriveling inside her chest. Becoming weaker and weaker as Bohdan ignored her for another hour.
“You look tired grandma. Want me to take you upstairs? It’s been a long night.”
Wilma looked up into the worried eyes of Knud, the grandson who’d gone behind everyone’s back to become a doctor. And she wondered how frail she must appear to have him fussing over her and worried, after he just got finished delivering a baby.
She probably looked exactly like what she was right now, Wilma thought bitterly. Like a ti
red old lady who couldn’t let go of the past.
Yes, it had been a long night. She should take him up on his offer. Go upstairs, get into bed in her old room, which was now Fensa’s old room, and try to forget what had happened the last time she had fallen asleep there.
The past was the past, she reminded herself. Best left unbothered while she waited to die. That’s what she told herself as she turned to take her grandson’s proffered arm.
But then she spotted Bohdan at the house’s entrance, grabbing the long, old-fashioned dark coat he’d brought with him from an entry chair he’d laid it over neatly. He was preparing to go without having looked at her even once. Preparing to fade right back into her past.
She knew as she watched him put on that coat exactly what she should do.
But then instead of doing that, she pushed her still full glass of champagne into Knud’s hand. “Hold that.”
“Grandma?” he demanded behind her. “Where are you going? Grandma?”
Maybe Knud said something else. But his voice faded into her background, as did every other sound in the room, as she found herself using her wolf speed for the first time in years and years…running to catch Bohdan’s arm, right as he was about to leave out the door.
He turned on her, his eyes flat and angry. But for once she got her words out before he could start pummeling her with his.
“Bohdan, this…this is my house. Where I grew up. Where you wanted me to bring you, but I never did. But I guess, in the end, that didn’t matter. Because you’re here. You’re finally here and…and…” She had to stop, take a deep breath. She was a strong woman, that’s what Tikaani and everybody else in her family thought. But she’d always felt weak when it came to Bohdan. And this next part, it took every ounce of bad-ass she had squirreled away. But she did it. She pushed out the words, “And that diner. I checked. It’s still there. I’ll meet you. I’ll meet you like I should have done fifty years ago. I’ll meet you there tomorrow at five a.m. sharp.”
He stared at her, his face aged, but his shark eyes glittering just as bright as they had over fifty years ago. Then he said, “Do not think you still hold any appeal to me. No, I will not meet you.”
“Okay…okay…” she said, her heart rising in her throat, along with all her tears. But then she swallowed those tears down, and told him, “Come or don’t come if you want. But I’m going to be there. Tomorrow. At five a.m. sharp. And the day after that. As long as it takes. I’m going to be there until you show up.”
He stared back at her for so long, it felt like she was sizzling under his shark eyes.
Then, instead of answering. He snatched his arm away and walked out the door. Without another word. Without looking back.
Wilma called herself all sorts of fool when she got up the next day and keyed the name of that Lincoln Heights diner into one of the kingdom house’s driverless Cadillacs.
She knew before she got there that this was a silly-ass mission, and that there was no chance in hell Bohdan would actually show up.
And she was right. She waited for an hour at the same window booth they’d sat in the night they promised to run away together, but Bohdan didn’t appear that morning.
Or the next morning. Or the month of mornings that came after that.
On day thirty she walked in little more hopeful.
“Hey, Mx. Wilma, how you doing?” Sherelle, the morning waitress, called out as soon as Wilma came through the door. Sherelle sure did like those old fashion one-hundred-dollar cash tips her elderly customer left every morning on a single cup of coffee. She showed Wilma to “her booth” like a dear friend had come to visit, and not just someone who'd come to look out the window for someone who had never come.
Had never come. And would never come. She knew that on day thirty, when she waited and waited, and three hours passed without a glimpse of anybody who looked even remotely like Bohdan outside the diner window.
She went home, feeling more ready to die than usual as she told her Tikaani hologram to call Myrna for their daily talk.
“Most Honored Grandmother, you look sad,” Myrna observed, jiggling her new baby, until Rafe T. suddenly morphed into a wolf puppy and jumped down. “How fare thee out there in the kingdom Detroit?”
Wilma shrugged. “I’m alright.”
Myrna regarded her with a frown as if Wilma had said she had contracted all the diseases a grandma could get when she left home for a month instead of “I’m alright.”
“I think you should come home,” the Viking girl said fervently. “The Wolf House does not feel the same without you.”
“I’ll be home soon, baby. Don’t you fret,” Wilma promised feeling guilty…and foolish…oh so foolish.
What kind of nutjob would keep showing up at the same place day after day, even though Bohdan didn’t even live in the same city anymore. And probably wouldn’t come to meet her even if he did?
Nonetheless, she got up at four a.m. on day thirty-one, the same as she’d done the thirty days previous. Stuffed herself in a driverless car and went on down to the diner.
Of course, he didn’t show up.
Not on day thirty-two. Not on day thirty-three.
Yet, where did thirty-gotdamn-four find her? That’s right. Walking into the diner, feeling like the biggest fool…
Until the sight of Bohdan, sitting big as day at her table, stopped her right in her tracks.
Sherelle immediately rushed over to her with a guilty look. “I’m so sorry, Mx. Wilma. But I couldn’t exactly tell him that table was reserved. You see…”
“That’s alright, Sherelle,” Wilma said, cutting off the rest of the distraught waitress’s explanation as she walked forward with her eyes glued on Bohdan.
“You’re late,” he bit out, when she stopped in front of their table.
“I didn’t think it mattered,” she answered, her voice as soft as his was blunt as she took a very tentative seat across from him.
His jaw worked, once, twice, under his heavy white beard. Then he said, “Myrna is upset when she talked to Oksana last. She tells my daughter she does not know why you have decided to stay here in Michigan, why you are not coming home to Baltimore, like a decent grandmother after the birth of her baby. My daughter has no children of her own, so she worries over Myrna like real mother…”
“Okay…” Wilma looked to the side, then translated carefully, “So you just came here because you were worried about your daughter, who's worried about my granddaughter-in-law?”
“Exactly,” Bohdan answered, spitting the word out. “I have retired…”
“Yeah, I heard,” Wilma said softly.
“Maybe you have also heard my daughter is now in charge. For this reason it is not good to have her upset.”
“Yeah, that could be bad for business,” Wilma translated again.
“Yes, very bad for business,” Bohdan agreed. But he continued to glare at her, his frown as heavy as his beard.
And Wilma continued staring back at him, her eyes wide with wonder, even as Sherelle set two cups of coffee down between them.
“Anything else?” Sherelle asked Bohdan.
“No,” Bohdan answered, his voice as cold and ungiving as a block of ice.
“Don’t judge me,” Wilma said, reaching for the sugar dispenser after Sherelle went away. “I never did learn to drink coffee black.”
Bohdan looked at her for another hot-eyed shark second then said, “This is not date like that other coffee time.”
“Oh, was that coffee in your old apartment a date?” she asked, honestly surprised. “I didn’t know.”
Then she stirred her coffee, somewhat bemused by the frustrated look that crossed over his angry face.
“It is not my old apartment,” Bohdan said, his mouth barely moving. “I own it now. That and this diner.”
Wilma’s brows lifted. “I see. No wonder they let you sit wherever you want. Better drink that coffee before it gets cold.”
But Bohdan did not drink the cof
fee. Nor did he speak for minutes on end as Wilma drank hers.
Wilma waited. Wondering what would happen next, since she hadn’t ever allowed herself to imagine anything beyond the point of him actually showing up at the diner. And even that had seemed like a foolish girl’s dream. At least it had until a few minutes ago.
She was halfway through her coffee, when he suddenly placed both hands on the table, and started to push himself up, as if preparing to leave. But then just as suddenly he sat down again, sinking back into the old leather seat as he said, “I had…plans for morning after my last match with your grandson. Plans that were disturbed by you deciding to come to this diner.”
Her brow lifted even higher. “You don’t say,” she said after a few beats. “What kind of plans?”
Another long silence. He seemed to be going through some kind of struggle to get out his next words. But eventually he said, “I am not…well, like you.”
“You look well to me,” she answered, taking another sip of coffee. “Real well. I’m sure all the ladies tell you that.”
But he waved her off. “I am eighties era wrestler who started before time of sports science and regulations and sue culture to make companies like IWF follow those regulations. I did things to my body for this sport that would not be allowed now. If not for the biotech inside of me, I would not still be walking around. Or alive.”
Wilma set down her coffee, her heart sinking, even though she shouldn’t have been surprised.
She didn’t know much about humans, but his story made sense. A human man his age, fighting in the arena with her werewolf grandson even in pretend…now that she thought about the only explanation was a shit ton of tech.
“Are you in pain?” she asked. “Well, thank God for biotech, then.”
“No thank God,” Bohdan answered. “I am not in pain, but…I am old and tired and…and…I have plans…plan to turn it off. Today.”
The Brothers Nightwolf Trilogy Page 72