by T. J. Klune
CARTER WENT to college. I found a rare weekend to go visit him. Kelly and Joe wanted to go, but they had homework and Elizabeth put her foot down.
Carter was okay with that.
He had a dorm room to himself.
He introduced me to a few people, but I forgot their names almost immediately because it’d been weeks since I’d seen my friend. He must have felt the same because he made the people leave and we lay on the floor, his head on my legs, and he said, “You smell like home.”
We stayed there until the sun went down.
He took me to some club and got us in. I didn’t know how. He said it was probably because we were bigger than everyone else.
The music was loud. The lights were flashing. I didn’t know how he could stand it, given that all his senses were heightened. I could smell booze and sweat and the cloying sticky perfume of a woman who came out of nowhere and rubbed herself against me before she disappeared back into the crowd.
Carter just laughed.
He said, “Here,” and handed me a glass of something.
I drank it. It was fruity and it burned.
He did too, but alcohol did nothing to wolves, unless they drank enough to kill a normal human. He’d told me once that he just liked the taste. He wondered what it’d be like to be drunk. I wondered what it’d be like to feel the pull of the moon.
I saw the glint of orange in his eyes.
It was hot in the club. Sticky and moist.
One moment I was laughing as two women came and sandwiched him on the dance floor, and the next there were pretty green eyes in front of me. Pale skin. A wicked smile with a hint of teeth.
He said, “What’s your name?”
And I said, “Ox.”
“Ox. That’s unique.”
I grinned because I felt good. “I guess. Who’re you.” My limbs were loose. The bass crawled along my skin.
He said, “Eric,” and, “You want to dance?”
“I’m not very good. I’m too big.”
That wicked smile curved even farther. “That right?”
He pulled me by the hand and led me through the crowd. Carter caught my eye and asked a question that only I could hear and I shrugged and turned away.
Eric pressed himself against me, a long hot line of sweat and flesh. There was a roll of his hips against mine and I said, “Wow.” He laughed.
The song changed and I felt lips against my neck, a quick flick of a tongue.
Later, I was in a bathroom stall. Eric was on his knees. My dick was in his mouth, my head back against warm ceramic tile that shook with the beat of the music. My fingers were in his hair and everything was hot and wet. I grunted a warning and he backed away, jacking me until I came on the dirty floor. He stood up and kissed me while he jerked himself off. He sighed into my mouth. He tasted like stale beer and mint. He came on his hand. I felt raw.
“Thanks,” he said, zipping up his pants. “That was great.”
“Sure,” I said, because I was unsure of what else to say. “You too.”
And then he left.
I stood in the bathroom for a while, but it smelled of piss and my head hurt.
I couldn’t find Carter and I tried to find that thread, that thing inside that said BondPackBrother, but I was overwhelmed by everything and so I said, “Carter, Carter, Carter,” and for a moment nothing happened. And then he was in front of me, eyes narrowed, hands on my arms, looking me up and down, trying to find where I’d been injured.
His nostrils flared and he said, “Was it consensual?” and I blushed and looked away.
It took a moment, but I nodded.
His arm went around my shoulder and he chuckled near my ear, his forehead pressed against my hair. “You dog,” he said.
“Says the werewolf.”
He growled near my ear. “Was it good?”
“Shut up.”
“Was it awesome?”
“Shut up, Carter.”
“Did you swoon?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
“Look at you,” he said. “Getting blowies in public. My little Ox is all grown up.”
“Bigger than you,” I muttered, and he just laughed and laughed.
He pulled me away. It wasn’t until we got out onto the street that I saw the lipstick smeared across his lips. Across his neck. I told him he was a whore. He snarled, and I ran. He chased me, orange eyes flashing happily. He pretended to let me win.
We slept in the same bed, curled around each other because we were pack, and I knew he missed home.
I showered for a very long time before I left the next morning.
When I got back, Joe asked, “Have fun?”
And I said, “Sure, Joe,” but it felt like a lie.
NICK HAPPENED a year later. He came in to Gordo’s all dusty from the road. The clutch on his bike had blown out a few miles outside of Green Creek. He stayed for a week. I fucked him on the last three days he was in town. He left and I never saw him again.
Joe was fourteen and he didn’t talk to me for three weeks after that. Said he was busy. Finals were coming up and he had to study.
“Sure,” I said, trying not to worry at the strain in his voice. “You okay?”
“Yeah, Ox.” He sighed into the phone. “I’m okay.”
I almost believed him.
I HAD just turned twenty-two when monsters came to town.
For all Gordo’s warnings about how big and scary the world could be, for all Thomas’s notions of a territory protected, nothing had ever happened. No one came. Nothing attacked. I never asked questions about other packs or what else existed if werewolves were real. I lived in a bubble in a small town in the middle of the mountains and I thought that’s where I’d always be.
Everything was good. Everything was fine.
Carter had just graduated and moved back to work with his father.
Kelly was taking online courses so he didn’t have to leave the pack.
Joe was sixteen and still waited for me on the dirt road almost every day.
Gordo was thinking of opening another shop in the next town over.
Mom smiled when she ran with the wolves at night.
Jessie moved back to Green Creek and was a teacher at the school.
Tanner, Rico, and Chris took me out for beers, and we ate our weight in buffalo wings.
Mark was close to telling me about him and Gordo.
Elizabeth was painting in pinks and yellows.
Thomas smiled out to the trees, a king content with his domain.
I should have asked more questions. About what was out there. About what they could want. But I was naïve, and dangerously so.
I was walking toward the diner for lunch. I rubbed the grease from my fingernails. My hands were callused, signs of hard work. I marveled at how I had a place here. In Green Creek. My father had said I was gonna get shit, but he was dead and I had a place. Friends. Family. I had people. I was something. I was somebody.
It was a bright June day and I was alive and happy.
And then a woman said, “Well. Hello.”
I stopped. Looked up.
She was wrong. Off. Dark. Beautiful with red hair and pale skin and a shark’s smile on her face, all bite and teeth. She wore a pretty summer dress, blues and greens. She was barefoot, and I wondered if her feet burned on the cement from the sun.
“Hello,” I said. There didn’t seem to be anyone else on the sidewalk.
She took a step toward me. She cocked her head to the side and I thought, Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. “My name is Marie,” she said. “What’s yours?”
“Ox.”
“Ox,” she breathed. “I do like that name.” She was close enough to touch and I didn’t know how that had happened.
“Thank you,” I said. “That’s very nice of you.”
She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. “You smell like….”
“Like?”
She opened her eyes. They flashed violet, like an O
mega. “Human. Tell me, human. You play with wolves?” She took another step toward me.
I took an answering step back. In my head, Thomas was telling me to remember my training. To remember what he’d taught me. I didn’t think it was really him, but I couldn’t be sure. I knew Gordo had wards up all over town, so surely he would have known if another wolf had breached them.
“You should leave,” I told her. “Before.”
“Before?”
“You know why.”
“Ox? What’s going on?”
“Shit,” I muttered. I looked over Marie’s shoulder. Mom was hanging out the diner’s door, watching me with concern on her face.
“Go back inside,” I told her as Marie looked back at her and wiggled her fingers in an obscene wave. Her fingernails were painted blue.
“She smells like you,” Marie said to me. “Did you know that? Like you and wood smoke and autumn leaves. And I know what she smells like now. Scent memory, Ox. It never leaves.”
“Ox,” Mom said.
“Inside,” I snapped at her.
She went inside. I knew she’d be reaching for the phone.
Marie laughed. “Little human has some bite to him. Did the wolves teach you that?”
“This is the territory of the Bennett pack,” I told her. “You don’t belong here.”
“Bennett,” she said. “Bennett. Like that name means anything anymore. Let me tell you about the Bennetts.”
“The fuck is this?”
Gordo was at my side. His face was twisted in anger. His arms were covered by his work shirt, but I knew the tattoos on his skin were starting to shift.
Marie hissed. “Witch.”
“Wolf,” he snarled back. “You got balls, lady, showing your face here. Thomas Bennett is on his way. What do you think he’ll do when he sees you?”
A flicker of fear crossed her face before it disappeared. She smiled again, more fangs than not. “The fallen king? Coming out of hiding? Oh glory be!”
“It’s not hiding when you’re in your own territory,” I said.
“With humans in his pack,” she said. “Low, even for him. Belly dragging across the dirt.”
My hands curled into fists.
Marie grinned at me. “Aren’t you just precious? I could gut you, you know. Right here. Before you could move. Your Alpha has been hidden away long enough. He’s weaker now. Even I can feel it. I could take you and he could do nothing.”
“Try,” I said, and Gordo tensed.
But she didn’t. She took a step back. Looked over her shoulder before turning back. She smiled a little and said, “Say hi to your mom for me, Ox,” and then she was off, down the street until she disappeared.
THEY CAME two nights later.
They were feral. Four of them. Not a pack, as they had no Alpha, but somehow still working together.
They’d made a mistake, though. By showing themselves. Or, at least by Marie showing herself.
Thomas made Mom and me stay at the Bennett house in those days that followed Marie cornering me. I told him Gordo needed to be there too. Thomas didn’t argue. Gordo did. I told him to shut the fuck up. I might have sounded slightly hysterical.
Mom went to work during the day. Carter and Kelly went with her.
Gordo and I went to work. He didn’t let me out of his sight, even when we had to take a longer than normal lunch break so he could strengthen his wards.
Joe stayed home from school. I brought his homework, and he took it from me with steady hands.
Thomas and Mark holed themselves up in Thomas’s office, whispering angrily into a phone, speaking to people I’d never heard of.
Elizabeth kept us calm, hands casually in our hair as she walked by.
On the second night, we sat down to dinner. Conversation was quiet. Silverware scraped against clay plates. Then Gordo took in a sharp breath and sighed. “They’re coming,” he said.
Alpha and Beta eyes shone around us.
We knew the plan. We’d trained for this.
I thought my hands would shake as I picked up a crowbar infused with silver, a gift from Gordo. They did not shake.
Thomas and Mark. Carter and Gordo. Out on the porch.
The rest of us stayed inside. Elizabeth and I in front. Kelly with Joe and my mother.
I saw them approach in the dark. Their violet eyes shone amongst the trees.
Thomas said, “This is Bennett territory. I will give you a chance to leave. I suggest you take it.”
They laughed.
A man said, “Thomas Bennett. As I live and breathe.”
Another man said, “And a witch no less. Smells like… Livingstone? Was that your father?”
Gordo Livingstone. His father, who’d lost his tether and hurt a great many people.
But Gordo didn’t reply. It wasn’t his place. The Alpha spoke for them all, even if Gordo wasn’t pack.
Thomas said, “One chance.”
The third man said, “The children will suffer. Especially little Joseph. I don’t think it’ll take much to break him.” There was a nasty smile on his face, and I would have murdered him where he stood without a second thought if Elizabeth hadn’t tightened her hold on my arm.
Thomas said, “You shouldn’t have said that.”
And Marie said, “You talk too much.”
And then there were claws and fangs and desperate snarls. The wolves half shifted and tore into each other. Thomas’s eyes were fire-red and he seemed bigger than the others, so much bigger. I wondered why the Omegas thought they ever stood a chance.
Gordo went after the first man. His tattoos shone and shifted, and I could smell the ozone around him, lightning-struck and cracking. The earth shifted beneath the Omega’s feet, a sharp column of rock shooting up and knocking him into an old oak tree.
Carter took the second man, and they were all teeth and tearing skin. Carter roared angrily as the Omega sliced sharp lines down his back, and Kelly gave an answering snarl behind me, taking a step toward his brother before Joe grabbed his hand, eyes wide and frantic.
Mark raised the third man over his head and brought him down over his knee, and the crack of the Omega’s back was sharp and wet. The Omega fell to the ground. His arms and legs skittered and seized.
Thomas took on Marie. Her red hair flew around her wolfed-out face. His red eyes tracked her every movement. He was grace. She was violence. Their claws hit and caused sparks to flare in the dark. He moved like liquid and smoke. She was staccato. She had already lost, but didn’t know it yet. She would. Soon.
But.
We didn’t know there was a fifth. Maybe the wolves should have known. Maybe they should have been able to sense him. Maybe the breaching of the wards should have tipped Gordo off. But there was blood and distraction, magic and breaking bone. Our family was fighting, and they might have been winning, but not without taking hits.
Senses were overloaded. Hackles were raised.
My mother was at the rear of us.
She said, “Ox.”
So I turned.
An Omega had her. He held her against him, her back to his front. His arm circled around her, elbow against her breasts, hand and claws around her throat.
I said, “No.”
The Omega said, “Call them off.”
I said, “You’ll regret this. Every day for the rest of your miserably short life.”
He said, “I will kill her right now.”
I said, “You will regret this.”
The big bad wolf smiled. “Human,” he spat.
My mom said, “Ox,” and it was so soft and sweet and full of tears and I took a step toward her.
“Let her go.”
The Omega said, “Call. Them. Off.”
And Joe. Joe. Sixteen-year-old Joe. Standing off to the side. Forgotten because the Omega had eyes on me, like he could sense that I had any power here. Like I had any control over the pack. Either he was mistaken or thought he knew something I didn’t.
But Joe. Before I could take another step, he was moving, legs coiled, claws out. Jumped-kicked off the wall. Launched himself up and over the Omega. Brought his claws down into the Omega’s face. Eyes punctured and skin split. The Omega screamed. His hand around my mother’s throat fell away.
Mom wasn’t stupid. She had trained. She saw what was coming. She elbowed the Omega in the stomach. Brought the heel of her foot up into his balls. Ducked away.
Joe spun off him, dropping to the floor.
I took three steps.
The blind Omega growled, “There will always be more.”
I said, “You shouldn’t have touched my mother,” and swung the silver-infused crowbar like a bat. It smashed upside his head, skull cracking, blood flying. Skin burned and hair smoldered. The Omega grunted once and fell to the floor. His chest rose once, hitching, failing. Then it stopped.
The sounds of fighting fell away outside of the house.
I took a deep breath. I tasted copper on my tongue.
Mom said, “You okay?” She touched my arm.
I said, “Yeah. You?”
And she said, “Yeah. Better now.”
I said, “Joe.”
And he looked at me, eyes blown out, hands at his sides dripping blood onto the floor. I didn’t stop to think. I didn’t care. I stepped away from my mother and pulled him close. He fisted his hands in the back of my shirt, claws tearing lightly at my skin. I didn’t care because it told me I wasn’t dreaming and we were alive. His nose was in my neck because he was so tall now. So much bigger than the little boy I first found on the dirt road. He breathed me in and his heart beat against my chest, the blood of the werewolf I’d killed pooling at our feet.
DAYS LATER, I asked Gordo, “What else is out there?”
And he said, “Whatever you can think of.”
As it turned out, I could think of many things.
THOMAS LED me through the trees and told me there were many packs, though not as many as there used to be. They killed each other. Humans hunted and killed them like it was their job. Like it was sport. Other monsters hunted and killed them.