A Pack of Vows and Tears

by Olivia Wildenstein

  “I phoned up the DMV and set an appointment for a driving test tomorrow,” Jeb said, whipping me out of my thoughts.

  “I thought I needed a year before I could pass it?”

  “The woman who runs the place, she owed me a favor.”

  I glanced at Jeb.

  He indulged my curiosity. “Her husband was using the inn to shack up with his mistress.” He shot me a jaunty smile. “I wouldn’t have tattled had the guy been an upstanding citizen, but he was a jerk, who at some point tried to get with Lucy.” His glee dampened a little at the mention of his wife’s—ex-wife’s?—name.

  “Is she still locked up in Eric’s basement?”

  He stared at the winding mountain road. “No. She’s back at the inn.”

  “She’s working for Aidan?”

  “She’s packing up and arranging the handover.”

  I almost swerved off the road. “I thought you were going to fight for the place!”

  Jeb clutched the grab handle. “My lawyer suddenly changed his tune. He said the contract was airtight and it would be a waste of my resources to try and nullify it. And now I can’t find a single lawyer in our zip code willing to represent me. Aidan Michaels’s money is burning holes in too many pockets.”

  Not for the first time I wished the hunter dead.

  I thought of Megan and her cross. Once people knew us, once they realized we weren’t all out for blood, maybe their fear would subside. “Do you really think that if knowledge of us spread it would be so bad?”

  Jeb scrubbed his beard, and it made a chafing sound. “That’s a tough one. Some people have a romanticized idea of werewolves, but finding out we exist . . . I’m not sure their awe would outweigh their fear.”

  “Do you think we’d get hunted down?”

  “Remember what they did to people they claimed used witchcraft back in Salem?”

  I shuddered.

  “And they weren’t even witches. So, to answer you, Ness, I’d rather not find out.” He reached over. I thought he was going to adjust my hold on the steering wheel, but instead, he laid his hand on top of mine. “Aidan Michaels is old, Ness. He’ll die soon enough.”

  Unless he died tonight, it wouldn’t be soon enough. “Did you at least recover the payment for the inn?”

  “Yes. But it’s being held in escrow until the divorce is finalized. Hopefully, that’ll be soon.” After a beat, he added, “Lucy’s being a little . . . difficult.”

  I didn’t ask what that was supposed to mean. If Jeb wanted to tell me more, he would.

  “I like the apartment, Jeb, but I was thinking, if you have any money set aside with which you could fix up Mom and Dad’s old house”—I shrugged—“at least the windows and front door, we could move in there?”

  “The place needs more than new windows and a door.” Jeb removed his hand from mine.

  “I know, but I thought I could do the rest myself. I know how to sand and oil a floor, courtesy of Dad. I could borrow the material from the Watts. And then we’d just need to buy some paint for the walls.”

  “It needs an electrical overhaul and probably new plumbing.”

  I batted my eyelashes, trying to whisk away the disappointment that clung there.

  “Derek’s son is an electrician. I could ask him about rewiring the system. And we had some plumbers back at the inn. I’ll get us some quotes.”

  I blinked at Jeb. “So yes?”

  “Why not?” He smiled, but I smiled wider. “You sure you want me living there with you, kiddo? You sure you don’t want to sell the parcel?”

  “Sell it?” I croaked. I hadn’t even considered selling it. “I just got it back. Thanks to you.”

  Jeb sighed. “I never should’ve made your mom sell it, but all our money was tied up in the inn—”

  This time, I was the one who placed my hand on Jeb’s. “You got it back. That’s all that matters,” I said just as we reached Frank’s house.

  There was another car parked next to Frank’s—a familiar forest-green Land Rover.

  “Are Nelson and Isobel here?” I asked, getting out of the car.

  “Guess so.” Jeb grabbed the bottle of red wine we’d bought on the way over.

  A second after we rang the doorbell, I was swept into a pair of warm arms and peppered with kisses. I instinctively closed my eyes, which was smart considering some of Evelyn’s kisses landed on my puffy lids.

  “Oh, how I have missed you, querida.” My ear got a loud peck, which momentarily made it ring.

  “I’m glad to see you too, Evelyn.”

  She finally pressed me back, running her thumbs under my eyes. “You have been crying.” She shot my uncle a disgruntled look that made him stick his hands in the air.

  “No. Just not sleeping enough. That’s all. Nothing to worry about.”

  She harrumphed. “I hope you are hungry. I have made all of your favorites. Cheese quesadillas, candied bacon, chocolate-zucchini bread, and Isobel is glazing the cinnamon rolls I baked this morning.”

  I peeked around Evelyn and caught sight of Isobel. If it wasn’t for her pallor and slightly hunched shoulders, it would’ve been impossible to tell she’d been operated on six days ago.

  Next to her, her son was wiping his hands on a kitchen towel. “Huh. I thought you weren’t a fan of all that stuff anymore.” He plucked one of the rolls off the cooling tray and chomped on it, while his mother chided him for not waiting until we were seated.

  Evelyn cocked one of her penciled-in black eyebrows that made a flush creep up my neck.

  I decided to avoid August’s taunt and Evelyn’s pointed gaze. “I can’t believe you’re already up and doing things, Isobel.”

  August grunted, while Evelyn said, “I do not think Isobel knows how to be still.”

  Isobel smiled. “I’ll be still when I’m dead.” But then she must’ve remembered we were in the presence of a man who’d just lost his son, because she bit her colorless lip. “Sorry, Jeb.”

  He shrugged.

  She gave him a rueful smile and handed her son a dish. “Can you take those to the table?”

  August scooped up the plate with one hand, and then Evelyn clapped, and we all took our seats around the table—me, between Evelyn and Jeb. August sat across from me. Unfortunately the table wasn’t wide, and as he adjusted his legs, his feet knocked into mine.

  Frank’s grandson came out of the bedroom I’d slept in the night Everest died, bleary-eyed and messy-haired, and made his way over to the seat beside August. They fist-bumped.

  The wine was uncorked and poured.

  “Want some, Ness?” Nelson asked.

  “She’s underage,” August said.

  I rolled my eyes but said I was good with water.

  Nelson tutted as he served Jeb. “You were drinking way before you were twenty-one, son.”

  “Doesn’t make it legal,” August said, to which I shook my head.

  What was up with his hoity-toity behavior? It was so unlike him . . .

  After Evelyn said grace, we all tucked in. The food was delicious, and the company, besides Mr. Broody in front of me, was delightful.

  “Were you at The Den on Thursday night, August?” Jeb asked.

  “No. Why? Were you?”

  Jeb smirked. “Me? I’m way too old to hang out in a place like that. Ness went, but they turned her away at the door.”

  I took a swig from my ice-cold water, and it went down the wrong hole. I coughed so hard Evelyn rubbed me between the shoulders. The lie I’d told Jeb was that the bouncer hadn’t allowed me inside, thus embarrassing me. Thus making me cry. I would never have cried about it, but Jeb ate it up.

  “I told her she should’ve phoned one of the boys. That they would’ve gotten her in.”

  August narrowed his eyes. “That place is full of college kids. Besides, doesn’t that friend of yours dee—”

  I kicked his shin under the table. He couldn’t blow my cover.

  One of his eyebrows arched high. “I guess the
y’re stricter in the summer.”

  I stabbed a piece of quesadilla. The golden shell crackled from the impact of my fork.

  “Any more Creek spottings?” I asked Frank before I stuck the morsel inside my mouth. I was desperate to change the subject, but I also thought that if anyone was up to date on pack information, it would be the elder.

  “It’s been quiet.” Frank darted a worried glance at Jeb, who was concentrated on his plate.

  Perhaps me bringing up his son’s murderers had been indelicate. “Is Liam going to send anyone to Beaver Creek?”

  A small, vertical groove appeared between August’s eyebrows.

  Frank took a sip of wine. “I was thinking of going out there myself. I know Morgan. I know the way she thinks.”

  Evelyn went whiter than the glaze atop the cinnamon rolls. “Frank . . . no.”

  He took her hand in his and gave it a firm squeeze. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I could go,” I volunteered. “Maybe the Alpha would take well to a girl.”

  August’s freckles darkened. “Ness, that would be completely—”

  “No, no, y no.” Evelyn squeezed my wrist so hard she cut off my blood circulation.

  “Some women feel less threatened by members of the same sex,” I said.

  Frank scratched his wrinkled neck. “I don’t think it would be wise. The Creeks are . . . well, they’re very in tune with their other nature, which doesn’t make them very civilized.”

  “They killed Everest, Ness,” Jeb whispered. “I won’t lose you too.”

  I pressed my lips together. For Jeb’s sake, I stopped fighting.

  No one spoke of pack politics after that. They talked summer Olympics and tax reforms. When Little J left to meet up with his friends and the men started talking politics over cigars and whiskey, I cleared the table. Evelyn and Isobel tried to help, but I told them to go sit down, that I was happy to move after all the food I’d ingested.

  “Honey, help Ness,” Isobel told her son as she went to take a seat on the sofa.

  August pushed off one the wooden beams and reluctantly made his way to the kitchen.

  “I don’t need your help,” I said, slotting plates into the dishwasher.

  But I got it anyway.

  We didn’t talk as we cleaned up the kitchen, didn’t even look at each other.

  At some point, he asked, “Why do you look like you cried all night?”

  I licked my lips. There was no point in denying something that was so blatantly visible. “Because I did.”

  “Why?”

  “A couple days ago, you send me a harsh email, and now you’re concerned about why I cried?”

  He frowned. “Harsh email?”

  “Not to mix business with pleasure. For your information, I didn’t ask Liam to come over, just like I didn’t ask him to make you leave Boulder, just like I’m not dating Liam, okay? So there was nothing personal or remotely pleasurable about his visit.” I poured in the dishwasher powder, then smacked the door shut. “Besides, you must’ve misunderstood him, because apparently he didn’t ask you to leave. He asked if you’d be leaving.”

  August grunted.

  “Can you stop grunting all the time? Seriously, you’re twenty-seven. Even Little J doesn’t grunt as much as you do.”

  He blinked at me, and then he crossed his arms and leaned his hip against the kitchen counter. “Any other compliments you want to lob my way?”

  “I’m sure I can think of more if you give me a few minutes.”

  He had the audacity to smirk, which just infuriated me because he was obviously not taking our conversation seriously. “You get very flushed when you’re angry.”

  “And that’s funny?”

  “When you were a kid, you’d get beet-red when things didn’t go your way.”

  “Still don’t see why that’s funny.” I washed my hands, then dried them on the kitchen towel and started covering the leftovers.

  August pressed off the counter and took the Saran-wrapped dishes to the fridge. “Want to tell me why you lied about not liking zucchini bread and cinnamon rolls and all that other stuff?”

  “Because I don’t like people assuming they have me all figured out.”

  “Since when am I people?” There was a twinge of hurt in his tone.

  I looked up from the platter topped with scraps of smoked salmon. “You think you know me because I get red when I’m angry, or because I still eat all that stuff I pretended not to like, but I’m not that little girl you ferried around in your truck and brought to the ice cream parlor for a scoop, okay?”

  His frown deepened, brought out lines on other places of his face.

  “You’re ten years older than me. You’ll always be ten years older. That’s never going to change, but every time you call me Dimples, I feel like I’m six. I don’t think you mean to make me feel like a kid, but that’s the way it comes out. I’m tired of people thinking I’m childish. Or expendable.”

  “Expendable?” August’s eyes were the vivid green of the leaves dotting the tree outside the kitchen window. “When did I make you feel expendable?”

  “That wasn’t—You didn’t.” I dragged my damp hands through my hair. “I’m really beat, August.” I tried to pass by him, but he held out his arm to bar my path.

  “Who made you feel expendable?”

  “No one. I don’t know even know why I said that.”

  “Ness—”

  “It doesn’t matter. Not anymore.”

  “If it didn’t matter anymore, then you wouldn’t look like you were about to have a meltdown.” He didn’t lower his arm. “You might’ve changed, but I haven’t. I’m still a great listener.”

  My lips quirked into the smallest of smiles. “I appreciate the offer, but I’d rather gnaw off my arm then have a heart-to-heart with you about boys. No offense, but it would just be weird. And not because of the link, but because you’re a guy.”

  He still didn’t lower his arm.

  “Fine. Want to tell me why you broke up with Sienna?” I asked, trying to prove a point, not because I wanted to discuss his ex.

  The memory of the other night twisted in my gut like a dagger. Once the initial shock of finding Liam with another woman had worn off, I’d realized that something else had hurt even more: the fact that he’d done this with so many people present. It was tacky. Again, though, he hadn’t cheated on me. I had to stop seeing this as a betrayal. He’d betrayed no one.

  “No,” August said.

  It took me a second to remember what question he was answering. “See?”

  He finally lowered his arm to let me through. I walked over to Evelyn and Isobel and talked exclusively with them for the next two hours. The skin on the back of my neck prickled more than once. At some point, I turned around to see if I was going crazy or if someone was watching me. I caught August staring.

  At least I wasn’t going crazy.

  I squeezed a smile onto my lips, feeling as though our talk had somehow dismantled some of the tension between us. If only a talk could also dismantle our link.

  Five more months.

  What was five more months?

  34

  There was a knock on the office’s glass door. I looked away from the three tabs I’d opened on the desktop to check who’d arrived.

  “Hey, August.”

  He walked toward me, hands in the pockets of a pair of olive-green cargo pants that had a couple small tears in them, as though they’d gotten snagged on the construction site.

  “I bought cake for one of the guys. It’s his birthday. Want some?”

  “Um. Sure.” I started to wheel myself away from the desk when I caught the time on the upper right hand corner of the screen. “Actually, I’m going to have to take a raincheck on that cake.” I gathered up my stuff and wedged it inside my bag.

  “Going somewhere?”

  “Driving test. I sent your dad an email that I’d be taking off for an hour.”

  “Oh.” He th
umbed the seam of his lips.

  “Was I supposed to inform you, too?”

  He dropped his hand from his face and shook his head. “Break a leg, or should I say a side mirror?”

  I smiled. “I think that if I break a side mirror, I won’t get my license.”

  His thick lips crooked into a smile. “Yeah. Try to avoid that.”

  “Will you be here when I come back?”

  He nodded. “I’m working from the warehouse today.”

  “Good. Because I found some discrepancies on invoices from this one lumber company. Anyway I’ll tell you all about it as soon as I come back.” I dashed through the warehouse just as my phone started ringing.

  “I’m outside,” Jeb said.

  I stepped through the wide-open loading dock entrance. “Me too.”

  I returned to the Watts’ warehouse an hour and a half later, clutching a piece of paper so hard I’d wrinkled the crap out of it.

  August and Uncle Tom were bent over a thick plank coated in a palette of stains. August must’ve sensed me approach through our little tether, because he looked up.

  “Did you get it?” he asked.

  I thought it would be obvious by my shit-eating grin, but apparently it was too subtle for August.

  “Did you have any doubts I would?”

  He smiled. “Well done, Dim—Ness.”

  “Dimness? That’s a new one.”

  “I meant, Ness. Just Ness.”

  “I know. I was just teasing.”

  August scratched the base of his neck. “Hey, Tom, does your nephew still work at KPR?”

  Uncle Tom tweaked the button of his overalls and gave a quick nod.

  “Can you tell him to warn drivers about a blonde at the wheel of a big black van?”

  I stuck my tongue out at August. “That’s very mature.”

  Uncle Tom grinned, which made his candied-apple cheeks puff out.

  I raised my chin in the air. “I’ll have you know I’m an excellent driver.”

  August chuckled.

  “The guy who gave me the exam said I was a natural.” He’d then asked if I wanted to have dinner with him sometime, but I left that part out. I’d just smiled pleasantly even though I’d found it a little icky. He was a good two decades older than I was and missing a tooth, and not a molar. I wouldn’t have noticed a missing molar.