High Moon

by Kati Wilde

  For a second I freeze, desperately hoping he didn’t hear what just came out my mouth while I was listening to Nicki Minaj. The chances that Jonas will understand the lyrics that he just heard are zero. Still. I like to pretend that I wasn’t singing about masturbation in the middle of the kitchen.

  I tug out an earbud, shaking my head. “I’m just about done.”

  “All right. Then I’ll head to bed.” But he doesn’t head anywhere, hesitating in the doorway, instead. “Will you be in the library after you’re finished here?”

  Which isn’t really a library, but the room we use as the ranch office. But it’s where my father used to work and write, where he filled every spare shelf with his research books, and the name stuck. It’s also where I’ve been retreating to every night this week, reading through his notes until sheer exhaustion forces me upstairs to bed.

  “For a few hours, at least,” I tell him.

  “Do you got a minute for me now?”

  Dread suddenly builds in my chest. Because I think I know what’s coming. I haven’t just been retreating to the library all week to study. If I’m honest, I’ve been hiding from him. I’ve been spending a lot of time with Ethan, showing him the ropes around the ranch, but that isn’t the only reason I haven’t spoken to my uncle much. I’ve been avoiding this.

  But I apparently can’t avoid it any longer. “Sure,” I tell him, and begin turning the wheel on the press, as if this is going to be like any other conversation on any other day.

  The cider pours out of the spout in a steady golden stream. Last year I joked that it was just like milking the cow, since she urinates about the second we start squeezing her udders, and Jonas laughed until tears dripped down his cheeks. Then we spent the rest of the year asking each other if we wanted a glass of cow cider.

  I don’t think either of us feels like laughing now.

  “All right.” He hesitates again, but this time the delay feels heavier—just like his accent suddenly is. Which means he’s struggling with his emotions beneath that calm exterior. “I know you’ve been having a hard time since…”

  He trails off, but it’s not like him to shy away from something. So maybe it’s because he can’t decide exactly what part of it all I’ve been having the hardest time with.

  But since I’ve had a week to obsess over all of them, I’ve got a pretty good idea.

  “Since I learned that my parents were werewolf hunters?” I help him out, and give the wheel a hard twist. “Or since discovering that they ran away from a secret organization, changed their names, and were later killed by the same kind of people they used to hunt? Or since I found out that you tracked the berserkers down and killed them out of revenge, but didn’t tell me. Or since I realized that, for the past eleven years, while everyone in town thought I went crazy in that mine, because I swore that I heard mom and dad having a conversation with the bears that killed them, you knew that I really heard them talking.”

  “Yeah,” he says, and his accent’s so thick it’s practically a juh. “So maybe you’re struggling to understand why I—”

  “No,” I tell him. “I get it.”

  “Do you now?”

  “I think so.” My throat feels tight and raw, so it takes a second to continue. “My parents never told me about their pasts, so when you became my guardian, you simply respected their decision and did the same. And after I got out of the mine”—god, I feel like I’m trapped in there now, in the tiny dark, squeezed in there like the apple mash that I’m pressing tighter and tighter—“you always told me that you believed me about hearing the bears talk, but we both know that I thought you only believed that I believed it. And you could have told me that you knew it was the truth, but then maybe you’d have to explain the rest of the truth, too, and risk me thinking that you are crazy when you say, ‘Makena, some berserkers killed your mom and dad, but I hunted them down and killed them, too. And they looked human when I stabbed them with my silver knife, so now you’re probably wondering if I’ve gone mad, but I swear they were really werebears.’ Or bearkin. Or whatever.”

  “You got my voice pretty good there.” Though the faint smile that the impersonation brought to his mouth fades quickly. “I’d say you got into my head pretty good, too. Because you understand my reasons just fine.”

  “But I don’t understand!” It bursts from me. “Because if I did then I wouldn’t be so mad. But I am so…so…angry at you—and at them.”

  “At your folks?” he asks quietly.

  “Yes.” And it’s killing me. My chest hitches and I press down as hard as I can on the wheel, because putting all the effort into this means I can’t put any effort into screaming or crying. But my voice still trembles when I tell him, “I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

  He shakes his head. “You’re the same as you’ve been. Makena Laine. You were born after they changed their names, so—”

  “No.” I stop him, and stop myself, stepping back from the press and trying to breathe. “Did you hear what I just said? You killed those berserkers and the only reason I’m upset is that you didn’t tell me. And every night when I look through my dad’s notebooks, it’s partially because I want to help Ethan find the hunters who murdered his parents, knowing that he intends to kill them, too.”

  “You don’t think they deserve it? Especially knowing that they might do it to more úlfheðinn?”

  “I must think they do. But that’s not even the issue.” And I’m still working through what the issue is. “Last week, if you asked me whether someone should take revenge like that, I’d have said no. I would have understood why they wanted to, but then I’d have said that it wasn’t okay, because there are rules and laws about that kind of thing. But now…”

  “But now you know there’s a whole lot of shit that isn’t covered by any laws.”

  And that’s the Jonas that I’ve always known, that practical man who I’m just beginning to realize has played outside laws and rules for a lot longer than I could have guessed. Even before he helped my mom and dad. It’s a man I know and don’t know.

  On a shuddering breath, I tell him, “The whole world just upended.”

  “I know it did,” he says. And I think he does know. That for him, it probably upended when he found my parents ripped apart, and he knew for certain that everything they’d said was true.

  “So I just…don’t know anything anymore. I don’t know who they were. And I don’t know who I am now or what all of this makes me. Though I’m trying to figure it all out.”

  “Through that research?”

  I nod, and he sighs.

  “There’s plenty of your father there, for certain. And your mother…well, you just look in the mirror, because she put a whole lot of herself into you. But you listen, Makena. If you want to know about them, just ask me and—”

  “I know.” And I do. “But…I don’t think I’m ready to hear it yet. Right now it’s easier to come at it sideways, looking at what they did and why they did it.”

  “All right. But just know that, in all the ways that matter, they were both the same before and after. And they were the finest two people I’ve ever known,” Jonas says in a raw voice. “At least until you grew up into the woman who is the very best parts of them.”

  Tears fill my eyes in a burning rush and I desperately try to hold them back. “You’re just saying I’m so great because there’s a lot of you in me, too.”

  He laughs. “I won’t argue with that. And I think that you’ll find that you’re exactly the same as you were before. You’ve got a good sense of right and wrong. It’s just that those lines aren’t so clear to you anymore, because they’ve shifted around a bit. But you’ll discover them again and they’ll settle in. Maybe it’ll just take a little while.”

  “Maybe,” I say softly—but can’t let him go before I tell him this. “I love you, Uncle Jonas.”

  His accent thickens like glue. “I love you, too, girl. And that’s one thing that won’t ever change.”


  I know. Whatever else happens…I know he’ll love me through it.

  * * *

  Maybe my uncle is right. Some things are the same as they always were. Such as the way it feels to walk into the library each night. The room used to be one of the farmhouse’s old bedrooms but Jonas and my dad installed shelves on the walls, and my dad filled it with books, a desk, and a window seat where I used to curl up and read while my dad sat at the desk, poring over texts filled with runes.

  The ranch’s financials take up all the room on the desk’s surface now, along with the computer. Every time I walk in here I feel a little pang, missing him all over again. On those days when my uncle sits at the desk, the pang is deeper. Brothers, he and my dad look a lot alike, though my father wasn’t so rugged or so sunburnt all the time. That resemblance doesn’t always hit me hard—except in here, when sometimes I’ll walk in and see my father…before losing him all over again.

  But tonight the library is empty, with only my memories to keep me company. Cradling a steaming mug of mulled cider between my palms, I cross over to the desk. The bare floorboards are chilly beneath my feet until I reach the thick, patterned rug that anchors the desk and chair. One of my mother’s rugs. All the bright colors in this house were hers. Everything about her was colorful, strong and fierce and full of life. I miss my dad the most in this room. But my mama…she’s everywhere in this house. There’s nowhere she didn’t touch.

  In some ways, she and Jonas had more in common than she and my father did. My dad worked around the ranch—we all did—but it was her and Jonas who spent almost all their time outside. I remember them with their heads together, figuring out the pasture irrigation and grazing cycles and turning this place from the old ranch it was into a grass-fed beef operation.

  Yet there was never any doubt where the love was. My fierce mama and studious father were electric together. When I was old enough to notice, I remember how they’d look at each other. As if they were each other’s entire world. It’s how I recognized so easily the way that Ethan looks at me.

  But their feelings developed over years together. Not because of some mysterious scent that pulled my dad to my mom, as if a chain dragged him close and kept him from leaving.

  My throat tightens and I sit down at the computer—because not everything has changed. And I still know wrong from right. So a few minutes later, an internet search yields what I’d hoped to find—a few ounces of a dried wildflower that will break that chain. A few clicks, and it’s done. Fifteen dollars plus shipping and handling. A low price for Ethan’s freedom.

  But an ache builds in my chest with every click, and suddenly the library isn’t the bastion of comfort that it usually is. Instead the entire room seems to be closing in on me. On a ragged breath, I push away from the desk, grab my mug and one of my father’s notebooks, then head for the front door.

  Outside, I’m met by a chorus of crickets. Moths flutter madly around the porch light. Summer still has a firm hold on the days, but autumn has begun taking crisp bites into the nights. Goosebumps tighten the skin on my bare legs as I stand on the porch, looking out into the dark.

  I don’t see anyone—or hear anyone. Since he stays out all night, watching over the ranch, Ethan has taken to sleeping in the hours between dinner and when Jonas goes to bed. I’m not certain if he’s already out there—a giant werewolf haunting the hills overlooking the pasture—or if he’s still asleep in the bunkhouse.

  “Ethan?” I whisper, just in case he’s somewhere nearby.

  When there’s no answer, I head for the porch swing at the south end of the house. Just enough light spills through the library window to see by as I curl up in the corner of the swing. Since it’s still too hot to drink, I place the cider within reach on a side table made from the stump of an oak tree.

  The current notebook looks like my father’s initial attempts to cross reference various Native American shapeshifter legends with early berserker and werewolf lore. Questions written in the margins tell me that he was searching for any evidence of whether early Scandinavian explorers might have picked up the curse in the Americas and took lycanthropy back to Europe with them. But that line of query doesn’t seem to go far, and he seems to be returning to the idea that they were wholly independent developments—with the New World shapeshifters being much older and more varied. Then…nothing. Because this was one of the last things that he’d been researching before being killed.

  “You all right?” Ethan’s deep, rumbling voice comes quietly out of the dark.

  My heart jolts against my ribs. I glance up, searching for him. There. Near the cherry tree that shades the porch. Amber eyes gleam in the faint light.

  Through the shadows, I make out his shape—human, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, his thick hair rumpled. But in truth, I see the same thing that I’ve seen every time I’ve looked at him in the past week.

  Not the werewolf. Though maybe I should.

  Instead I see him, still dripping wet from his shower, his dark hair slicked back and wearing nothing but a towel. I don’t picture lethal teeth and razored claws and shaggy fur, but acres of thick muscle darkened by crisp hair, hands that so sweetly and gently pulled me closer, and a mouth that kissed me until I was practically climbing his big body.

  “Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to scare you,” he adds softly. “I’ll make more noise next time.”

  I shake my head. “You didn’t scare me.”

  “No? Your heart’s beating like a jackrabbit’s.”

  Not because I’m scared. But I’ll let him think so. “You can hear that?”

  “I can. Just like I heard you calling me. Did you find something in those notebooks?”

  I…didn’t call him. But I did whisper his name a few minutes ago. “Where were you?”

  “The bunkhouse.”

  I take in that rumpled hair again, and simply imagining him in bed sends heat rushing through me. “Did I wake you up?”

  “No. I’d just changed and was on my way out.”

  Changed. But not into clothes. At least, I don’t think that’s what he means. Because he’s wearing them now. “Do you go out in clothes?”

  “Not unless I want to do my best Hulk impersonation and rip them apart.”

  I laugh. “So you don’t end up a werewolf Freddie Mercury in super tight pants? Because that’s what I was imagining.”

  “That’d be good for expanding my vocal range when I howl. But mostly clothes just rip.” Amusement deepens his reply. “And I figured you’d appreciate me putting on something before I came over here. Though if I’m wrong, I’d be happy to take them off again.”

  Another flash of Ethan standing in his towel passes behind my eyes. “Clothes are good,” I say a little breathlessly.

  “Okay, then.” His grin is a glint of teeth through the dark. “So you had something to tell me?”

  Because he still thinks I called his name. And I didn’t, but…now is as good a time as any to tell him what I’ve found in my father’s notebooks. Nothing huge, unfortunately—like the names of the hunters my parents worked with—or I’d have already let him know.

  “A few things. And…” This is a totally awkward way to have a conversation. He’s almost fifteen feet away, and I can barely make him out in the shadows beneath the tree. But staying away isn’t like Ethan at all. “Is there a reason you’re all the way over there? Are you covered in blood or something?”

  “No. But I woke up real hungry, Makena. So I figured it’d be best to stay over here.”

  “So you don’t eat me?” I laugh. “If you’re that hungry, there’s leftovers in the…”

  Oh. His meaning hits me a second too late and I flounder, trying to switch gears. “So you’ve got it all contained, though? Nothing is about to do a Hulk impersonation and wreck your pants?”

  His laugh rolls out. “That sounds more like the Kool-Aid Man.”

  I grin at that image, then tilt my head to indicate the seat beside me. “But you can contro
l it, right? So…”

  “I can control it,” he confirms, silently striding out of the shadows on bare feet. I can’t stop myself from checking out the state of his pants as he comes closer… And, oh lordy. He is definitely on the verge of wrecking those jeans. Yet he moves as if that enormous bulge is no impediment at all, easily vaulting over the porch rail. “The question is whether I will control it, considering I’m still trying to get fired.”

  I know that he’ll control it. He has all week—giving me time, just as I asked. “Then you shouldn’t go around re-shingling a barn roof in a single afternoon,” I point out. “That’s the best way to make sure you never get fired.”

  “I’ll try harder, then.” The swing creaks as he lowers his weight onto the seat. Then I squeak as his big hand circles my ankle and draws my foot into his lap.

  “What are you doing— Oh my god.” Because what he’s doing is using his thumbs to massage the arch of my foot.

  I groan and lean back, letting him do as he wants. And if this is just another reason to fire him, well—I’ll add it to the top of all the other reasons he’s given me this week. He hasn’t even kissed me again. He’ll flirt and tease when we work together, but it’s gone no further than that. And by god, he works. The barn roof was just the start of it. He works quick and smart and strong…and then stays up all night, watching over the ranch.

  The truth is, he’s putting in far more labor than any employee ever should. Ranching already means long hours. And those hours aren’t always regular. But Jonas and I always try to keep those hours fair for our hands and never ask them to put in more time than we do. But Ethan has been.

  I frown, studying his face. If the hours are wearing on him, I can’t see it. “Are you getting enough sleep?”

  “Yeah.” His voice is rougher, deeper.

  “Are you sure? Because you’re up all night, so—”

  “I’m sure. I don’t need much sleep, and I’m real good at napping on my feet.”