by Kati Wilde
Her friend’s reply doesn’t hold an ounce of apology. “Of course I am.”
“You’re pissed at him because he came asking about my parents. Now you’re doing this? So much for your moral high ground.”
“I’m pissed because he lied, not because he came looking.” There’s a brief pause before she admits, “Okay, and because he came looking.”
“I’m not mad at him for that. If I were him, I’d want answers, too. And—” Makena breaks off suddenly with a soft, “Oh no.”
The quiet that follows tells me they’re likely reading whatever article it was Carrie found. My tension eases, and I get back to work. Carrie poking into my history doesn’t concern me. Anything they find will confirm what I already told Makena.
She’s the first one to break the silence, her voice thick with sympathy. “He was deployed when it happened? God. I can’t imagine coming home to that.”
“Me, either,” is Carrie’s murmur of agreement. “And he doesn’t look so scary here.”
Makena snorts out a laugh. “You’re just a sucker for a man in uniform.”
Which tells me what they’re looking at—the military photo taken when I was in basic training. The picture ran in several of the newspaper articles, so everyone could put a face to the soldier who lost his entire family.
“True. But who isn’t a sucker for a uniform?” Carrie asks breezily before her voice turns serious again. “I’m just saying, the kid in this picture is not the same guy you hired.”
“No, he isn’t,” Makena agrees softly. “He looks so…young.”
“Like the before in a before-and-after photo.”
“Yeah.” There’s a slight hesitation, then Makena says, “I wonder if my pictures look like this, too. If I have a before and after.”
“You do,” Carrie tells her gently.
There’s another brief silence, in which I imagine Makena is absorbing that—maybe the same way I am. Before and after. They aren’t wrong. When that photo was taken, I was as full of myself as any eighteen-year-old wolfkin warrior is—and I had no idea how fucking young and stupid I really was. The army hardened me up plenty after that, though, so the picture was already four years out of date by the time it started running in the papers. But I suspect that even if someone had snapped a picture of me stepping off the plane coming back home, the difference between that grieving man and the man I am now would show a stark change—and the young boy is long gone.
“Buuuuut...” Carrie starts up again, “You haven’t changed in the same way. Your before-and-after is mostly just grief, and the weight of taking on the ranch and all those responsibilities. With him, I wonder if the before-and-after is more like Jekyll and Hyde.”
As if frustrated, Makena huffs out a short breath before answering. “His references checked out. If Kyle confirms his whereabouts last night, then he hasn’t done anything shady aside from asking about me. And that isn’t that shady.”
“It’s shady enough for me. And I’m not kidding about him being scary. You don’t see it?”
“I see it.” There’s a stubborn note in Makena’s voice now, and I imagine she’s crossing her arms and staring her friend down in the same way she tried staring me down. “But maybe ‘scary’ is what I need around here.”
“Sure you do. But only if it’s the right kind of scary. Kyle says this guy has been in and out of jail.”
“And one of his references just told me that Ethan was at a livestock auction with his boss when he overheard some assholes hassling a migrant family, and he told them to cut it out. It turned into a huge fight where Ethan was the only one left standing, and when the cops got there everyone got hauled in. And every other story about his arrests was almost exactly the same.”
“So he stands up for the little guy. Good for him. But is that what you need around here?”
“I don’t know. I just think about how many people stay quiet in situations like that—and how they pretend not to see anything, as long as they’re not the ones getting hurt. Yet Ethan doesn’t. And I admire that. So I don’t want to punish him for it.”
“I admire that, too.” Sincerity rings through Carrie’s response. “But look at him. He’s freaking huge. He can afford to speak up and pick fights because he won’t get hurt, and he’s got nothing to lose. It’s not so easy for you. And you didn’t pick this fight with MDC. Instead they brought it to you. But you’re handling it—”
“Just barely handling it,” Makena breaks in wryly.
“And that’s my point. You are handling it. Now. But can you take more trouble coming your way if your ranch hand decides to start picking fights?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.” A bleak note flattens her voice. “But if MDC kills all my livestock, it won’t matter who I hire. I won’t need any employees if I don’t have a ranch.”
Carrie makes a sound like a frustrated growl. “God. If there was just something to pin on them, some real evidence, you can bet that I would be screaming it to everyone in the county. Kyle, too. Because everything I say now…there’s just nothing tangible. So a bunch of them don’t want to listen.”
“You really think it’d matter if it was tangible?” Makena scoffs. “Some of them are convinced the new development and all the jobs will save them. So they’ll excuse anything MDC does and say I brought all this trouble on myself.”
Carrie makes another of those frustrated sounds. “I wish you weren’t right.”
“Me, too.” A heavy sigh follows. “But, you know—MDC has more than enough land to do everything they promised for this town. All the rest of this is just MDC being greedy. So fuck anyone who’ll look the other way as long as they get theirs.”
“I won’t argue with you there. But, Makena—just because you’re right doesn’t mean you’ll win. And you know we’ll do everything we can to help. So that’s the only reason why I’m harping on you about this Ethan guy. There’s plenty of other people in town you could hire and you know are trustworthy.”
“And most of those people have families who can be threatened, like Julio did. At least Ethan doesn’t have that.”
“Are you saying you don’t worry that they’ll threaten Ethan directly?” A short silence follows, as if Carrie’s waiting for Makena to deny it. When she doesn’t, Carrie continues. “Although, the way it sounds, he might not even wait for a threat. He’ll go looking for a fight with MDC. If he does, you might be the one who has to deal with the fallout. So is hiring him really going to help you?”
“I don’t know,” Makena says in a weary voice. “But I truly hope so.”
Hoping apparently isn’t enough for Carrie. She starts in again on the lie I told her, adding to Makena’s uncertainty and her burden.
Beside me, Thelma whines softly. The sound makes me realize how close to the edge I am. An old radial tire I was intending to toss aside has a ragged tear through the rubber because I was gripping it so hard while fighting against the urge to roar into the house and shut Carrie down. Not to defend myself. But because she’s trying to help Makena, yet every word she says lays more worry on her.
And I’m not usually slow on the uptake. I don’t know where my head’s been since meeting Makena—probably somewhere in my dick—but while looking down at the shredded metal fibers sticking out of the tire, I realize I’ve been doing the same damn thing.
While telling myself that I’m helping Makena, I’ve been adding to her worries. Because if I hadn’t told that goddamn lie, there wouldn’t have been anything for Carrie to pile on.
It’s not just the lie, though. Makena called me a grandstanding prick for offering to drag all those carcasses into her trailer. I just couldn’t see the point of making her ask other people for help when I could do it myself.
But, hell. Maybe it was grandstanding. Revealing I could smell so well wasn’t; that truly was to put her mind at ease. But I’ve got no excuse for claiming I could toss around fifteen hundred pounds as easily as some men toss a bale of hay. Except maybe I wan
ted her to know how strong I am. Maybe I wanted her to be impressed.
And she was right to blister my ass for it. She couldn’t know I wasn’t just flapping my lips. Instead she was worried I’d get hurt—or worried she was about to hire a man with more bluster than sense.
Either way, I piled more worry on her, though she already has more than enough trouble.
Worse, my posturing could bring more harm than just worry. Ever since my family was killed, I haven’t hidden everything I can do. Transforming, sure. I’ve kept that secret. And I’ve never let anyone see exactly how strong or fast I am. But there’ve been plenty of times when I was stronger and faster than any man should be. Not enough to make people question whether I’m human—I figure that possibility doesn’t even enter their minds—but enough that it’s drawn notice.
In all these years, I haven’t pondered why I’ve done it. But examining my reasons now, the answer’s obvious: I hoped whoever murdered my family and all the other kin would come for me. Because that would be a hell of a lot easier than tracking them down has proved to be.
But if they come for me here, at Makena’s ranch? Just the thought makes my blood run to ice.
So when it comes time to drag those carcasses into the livestock trailer, I swallow my grandstanding pride and pretend I’m no stronger than any of the locals who show up to help.
Luckily, there’s no shortage of hands to go around. Carrie did a good job getting the word out. By ten, Makena’s yard looks like a parking lot. There’s plenty of gawkers among them, folks who talk about how terrible it all is but who really just seem interested in seeing the slaughter for themselves. But there’s genuine concern and anger, too.
This time I keep my ears open on purpose, hoping that some stupid fucker will brag to a friend about being responsible, or suggest that he knows something. But all I hear is plenty of speculation, a little gloating, and more whispering. Amidst all of it, a few names are mentioned that I might look into later—maybe by showing up at their house and discovering whether they have a scent.
Hell, that person could be here now and I wouldn’t know it. The sun’s high and hot, there’s not a bit of breeze moving, and the scent of blood and meat hangs in the shed like a crimson fog. Usually I don’t mind that so much—I like the scent of both—but the odor’s so damn thick I can’t smell Makena. I can hear her well enough. Just about everyone who’s visited has taken up some of her attention, offering sympathy and help, so it’s been easy to keep track of her. But knowing where she’s at isn’t the only reason I like smelling her fragrance. The air she perfumes is simply easier to breathe. So losing her scent tightens up my chest and leaves me feeling like I lost something necessary—something more than just an odor.
I ought to have realized that she wouldn’t let me alone for long, though. Despite the gallon jug of water she makes sure I have available, soon she’s bringing me a tall glass of lemonade and claiming the electrolytes and sugar will be good for me after sweating in all this heat. About an hour later, she sets up a box fan in the shed to get the stagnant air moving around—which makes it even harder to pin her scent down, but I’m not about to complain. Even if I did, I doubt she’d listen.
Makena Laine is the sweetest hardass I’ve ever known—and she believes I’m sick. So of course she checks in on me.
But the truth is that I’m feeling just fine. When she shook my hand this morning, it was like a part of me was missing—the part with fangs and fur and claws. Like it had been ripped away. And right after, I felt whole again, but so damn weak. As if I tried to transform, I wouldn’t be a massive wolfkin warrior but a little pup recovering from a wound.
I still don’t have a goddamn clue what happened. If it was because I touched her, or something else.
I’m thinking it must be something else. What that is, I have no idea. She didn’t have anything on her hands but those silver rings.
I’ve touched silver plenty of times before, though. A wound created by a silver blade or bullet can slow healing, so for that reason it’s dangerous to wolfkin—just like all those legends about werewolves claim. Yet silver alone never hurt.
But there’s another part of the werewolf legends that I can’t help but think of now. Because there’s two ways to become wolfkin. One way is having a mother or father who is. The other way is by getting bit—and being changed by a curse.
That second way is the basis of the stories most humans know. The werewolves of horror and lore. And those legends aren’t too far off. The curse unleashes a beast within the human, and every full moon that beast breaks free. The person changes into his warrior form, but that warrior is a mindless, vicious predator. So instead of being what I am, a cursed werewolf is a creature with its heart and soul ripped apart: two halves of one being, a beast and a human sharing the same body.
And maybe “half” is what I felt when Makena’s hand touched mine. Like I wasn’t wolfkin anymore, but just a man.
To me, that sounds like a horror story. But it’s also pure speculation. Maybe Makena can tear one of the wolfkin apart. Maybe something else was affecting me. I don’t have any idea how magic works, and there’s no point in pretending I know what the hell is going on. More than likely, whatever conclusions I draw would be wrong.
Here’s what I do know: my instinct isn’t screaming at me to get away from her, and my brain isn’t telling me to pick up and run. Instead I’m thinking that even if her touch tears me apart again, it’ll be worth the pain.
Something drew me to Makena Laine. Magic, instinct, whatever. But I was going off nothing more than her sweet scent. Now every moment that I’m with her moves me far beyond where I started, and it’s all because of who she is. Not magic.
But Makena…she started drawing away from me after I kissed her last night, and she hasn’t stopped since.
I know she’s right to erect a fence between us. I’ll work for her until this trouble is over, and then I’ll leave. There’s just no other choice. But I’d give anything to see the fence she erected come down before I go. Because I’m fucked either way. Whether I touch her again or don’t, walking away is going to hurt. And having her under me would be a bit of heaven before the inevitable hell of going.
But simply seeing her is a bit of heaven, too. Even if it’s only because she thinks that I’m going to keel over any minute, thanks to my medical condition. It doesn’t matter why she checks in on me. With Makena, I’ll take what I can get.
What I can give Makena will matter more, though. Which means that, just after noon, I hang up my butchering tools and scrub the blood from my hands. Both Makena and Carrie called me scary. So if word spreads among the townspeople that a big scary fucker will help look after Makena’s property from now on, maybe that’ll make whoever killed her cattle think twice before trying anything again.
And if they ignore that warning and come anyway, they’ll discover exactly how scary I can be.
Half the town seems to be parked in her yard now—but they haven’t come empty-handed. Out on the lawn, long tables are set up and loaded with all kinds of goodies, from sandwich fixings to freshly-baked cookies to strawberry pie. With the dogs tagging along at my heels, I grab a paper plate and pile it high. I already met a few of the folks when they came to help clear out the pasture, but I make a point to introduce myself as the new ranch hand to plenty of others—and all the while, I match up scents to the people they belong to.
Everyone here smells like a person should—though by the time I’ve mingled and glowered my way through the picnicking townsfolk, a whole lot of them are smelling a mite uneasy. Since the one person I want to smell is down at the other end of the pasture again, I head back to the butchering shed and share my lunch with Thelma and Alf.
Fifteen minutes later, I’m back to work. The spoiled meat isn’t worth much but the hides still have some value if Makena sells them, so I take more care stripping the skins than I do butchering the carcass.
I’m pulling at one of those hides when Makena p
okes her head in. “They’ve got lunch set up out here.”
I ought to have known she was here, but between the fan blowing all the scents around and all the people coming and going, I’d lost track of her. Her sudden appearance rips through me like an electric jolt, stiffening just about everything in a man that can be stiffened, and popping out everything in a werewolf that pops out. My teeth and claws extend and sharpen, and I have to actually struggle for a second to pull them back—too late to save the hide I’m ripping off a steer.
Fortunately she doesn’t seem to notice the holes I just gouged into the skin. The heavy leather apron I’m wearing conceals everything else that’s poking out.
She nods when I tell her that we already partook of the picnic spread, but doesn’t disappear again as I expect. Instead she grins and glances at the dogs.
“Does that ‘we’ include your fan club?”
“It does. I figured they’ve been working so hard staring at me this morning that they earned a peanut butter sandwich.”
Makena’s laugh stiffens everything up all over again. Then she saunters deeper into the shed and drags out an old wooden crate, turning it upside down and taking a seat…right in front of the fan.
Christ Almighty. Suddenly it’s like I’m swimming in that scent. I thought I’d adjusted to breathing her air but this is like going from swimming across a placid lake to swimming in a stormy ocean.
Luckily Makena’s attention isn’t on me but on the half-dozen carcasses that I’ve got hanging from the ceiling. “I hope the dogs in town are hungry.”
I grunt a response, my head spinning with the glory of that scent.
Her eyes narrow on me. “You all right?”
Worried about my condition again. Shit, maybe she’s right to be worried. I’ve never had so much trouble keeping my claws and fangs under control. I don’t know why they’re popping out like this. Transforming isn’t hard, but unless I’m hurting, it’s also something I have to think about. Like doing a pushup. Right now it’s acting like a smile, instead. Sometimes you smile deliberately, and sometimes you can’t help it.