by T. J. Klune
“Of course,” she said smoothly. “Someone has to report back to Michelle over our every move.”
He blushed furiously. “Not every move.”
“Oh?”
“I haven’t told her about. You know.”
“About?”
“How… you’re back.”
“Why?”
He looked at me for some reason instead of answering her right away, eyes darting over my face. Elizabeth caught it and chuckled quietly.
“It just didn’t seem right,” he finally said, looking back at her.
“Interesting,” she said. “Be a dear and get the vinegar from the pantry?”
I watched as he was invited into her space. He seemed just as surprised as I was. But he moved quickly and without hesitation.
“He fits,” she said as I arched an eyebrow at her.
“Does he?”
“You don’t feel it?”
“I don’t know.” Because I didn’t know what I felt anymore.
“What an odd creature you are, Ox,” she said. “I’ve always thought so. It’s such a wonderful thing.”
I looked away.
WE LEFT Thomas’s seat at the head of the table empty.
Because it was now Joe’s.
I moved to take my seat, but Mark shook his head and pointed to where Elizabeth usually sat at the end opposite the Alpha.
Elizabeth didn’t even try to sit there, moving instead to my old seat as she spoke softly with Rico. There was no hesitation. She didn’t even look at me.
I didn’t understand what was happening, not completely.
Sure, I had the basic idea of it.
I was the mate of the Alpha.
I had a place in the pack, higher than it’d been before.
But I wasn’t a wolf.
We hadn’t yet mated.
And Joe wasn’t here.
The food was served.
Everyone waited. So I did too.
Until I realized they were waiting for me.
I looked at each of them in turn.
They held my gaze steadily.
I knew I should say something. But I’d never been very good with words.
I needed to try, though. For them. Because they needed it. And I think I did too.
I said, “We’re pack. It’s time for us to start acting like one again.”
And even though we weren’t whole (and the thought that we ever would be was a hope that I didn’t dare believe, not yet), and even though the absence of those we loved throbbed like a rotted tooth, I took the first bite.
The rest followed suit.
It wouldn’t be until later that I realized that had never happened before. That even when Thomas had been missing at dinner, we never waited for Elizabeth to eat first before we did. It was only done for an Alpha.
AT THE end of the first year, I received a message in the middle of the night.
I didn’t see it until morning.
I’m sorry, it said.
I didn’t understand.
about what
A response came almost immediately.
Failed message delivery. The number you are trying to reach has been disconnected or is no longer in service.
A cold chill crawled up my spine.
I called the number.
It rang once.
An automated message.
Disconnected.
No longer in service.
It was okay, I told myself. It was okay because these were burners. The phones. They’d just gotten a new one. Joe had forgotten to get me the new number. Like he always did.
I just had to wait.
I set my phone down, pulled Joe’s comforter up onto my chest. It didn’t smell like him. Nothing did in his room. Not anymore.
But that was okay.
Because I just had to wait.
the second year/song of war
IT WAS partway through the second year that the Omegas came.
They weren’t prepared for us.
JESSIE SAID, “Hey, Ox.”
We were at the garage. Tanner, Chris, Rico, and me. Robbie was there too, having decided he was bored enough that he wanted to learn his way around. It was slow going because he was absolutely terrible when it came to cars, so much so that I barely trusted him to do an oil change by himself.
But he tried.
I learned a lot about him. He was a year younger than I was. His mom had been killed in a turf war between rival packs when he was just a kid. His father lived in Detroit, a human that he only saw every now and then, given he didn’t want anything to do with pack life after the death of his wife. But they were two separate people, and their paths had no real reason to cross. It saddened him, sometimes, but he didn’t want to do anything about it. He didn’t have a mate. He’d had a boyfriend once, a long time ago, and a girlfriend later, but he wasn’t focused on that. He had a job to do.
He confused me. It wasn’t a good thing.
“Why are you still here?” I’d asked him.
He’d just shrugged and looked away. “I’m told to be.”
I didn’t believe him. Not anymore. Not when I’d overheard him on the phone, talking with those faceless people in the East, saying he didn’t want to be replaced, that he was fine out here with us, that he wanted to stay. Nothing had happened since he’d been here and he wanted to make sure it stayed that way.
He made it sound as if it was just a job when he spoke to us.
He was lying, but I didn’t think it was a bad thing.
Still, there was only so much a person could do to watch over us before boredom set in.
So he came to the shop.
He didn’t need to be paid, given he was already making an unknown amount just for being in Green Creek.
We just made sure to keep it off the books.
It was good, though. Having someone else to talk to.
I could feel it building, just like it had with Tanner, Chris, and Rico. The need to bind him to us. To make him a part of who we were. It didn’t happen right away, because he’d come in a stranger at a time when trust wasn’t given out very easily. I’d known the guys from the shop for years. They were my friends.
He wasn’t.
Not at first.
But he was becoming… something.
I knew we all felt it. But we never talked about it.
So he was there too, when Jessie came. She didn’t sound surprised to see me. I hadn’t seen her for any length of time since the funeral when her hand had been on mine. We saw each other in passing, maybe in traffic or at the grocery store, but I was rarely ever alone anymore, always someone from the pack with me.
There wasn’t time for her.
Not that there had been before, either.
It was one of the reasons we had ended up the way we had.
But even if it hadn’t been that, it would have been Joe. Eventually, everything would have led to Joe. I was thankful, for the most part, that we’d parted when we had. It made things easier.
So when she said, “Hey, Ox,” I was able to smile at her. I remembered the little flutter in my heart and stomach that I used to get at the sight of her, especially that day she’d come into the shop the first time, mother dead, following her brother to a small town in the middle of nowhere. It seemed like that belonged to somebody else’s life.
“Hey, Jessie,” I said, and she stepped over, not really caring that my hands were dirty when she pulled me into a hug.
I ignored the warning growl that came from behind me. I figured it was too low for Jessie to hear it, but even if she had, she wouldn’t have understood the territorial growl of a wolf. Robbie didn’t know Jessie, and Robbie was closer to us then he’d ever been before. Not quite pack, but I didn’t think it’d be too much longer. If he wanted. If we all did.
“It’s good to see you,” she said, pulling back.
To make things easier, I stepped away. I remembered how Carter, Kelly, and Joe had acted at her familiarity.
I didn’t want there to be any trouble.
I glanced over my shoulder and shot a glare at Robbie, who had the decency to look sheepish—and confused, like he didn’t know why he’d growled in the first place.
“You too,” I said when I turned back to Jessie. “What brings you in?”
“Lunch with Chris,” she said, holding up a fast-food bag. “Figured I’d stop by. Haven’t been here in a while. The place is looking good.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Chris is on the phone in the office. He’ll be out in a little while. Rico and Tanner are picking up some parts.”
She nodded, glancing over my shoulder. “Don’t think we’ve met,” she said to Robbie. “I’m Jessie. Chris’s sister.”
“Hi,” Robbie said. And that was it.
I barely stopped myself from rolling my eyes. Fucking werewolves.
“Hi,” Jessie said, not even bothering to hide her smile. She looked back at me. “He’ll fit right in here.”
I didn’t know if that was an insult or not, so I just nodded.
“How have you been?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Okay.” I knew what she was really asking, the part she was leaving off, the how have you been since your mother died. That was fine, though. She didn’t pity me. And I didn’t want her to.
Something in her eyes softened. “That’s good,” she said. “I know that it was… sudden.”
There was a flare of pain in my chest, a swelling black thing at just how sudden it was. It was dark and oily, with little thoughts of it was the fault of the werewolves and if they’d told me what was going on, I could have saved her and they kept secrets from me like it was nothing and look how everything happened. These were the thoughts I had sometimes when I was by myself in bed, unable to sleep, the clock slipping past three in the morning.
She didn’t know that, though. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have followed it up with “And how’s Joe? I know he went to a private school for his last year. He has to be getting ready for college, right?”
That was the cover we’d given. The grief at the death of his father had been too much for him to stay in Green Creek. He wanted out. So he went back to Maine. Carter and Kelly went out of state, vaguely east. No one seemed to question anything about Gordo. Not really.
In reality, we didn’t know where they were. No one had heard from any of them since they’d apparently cut off all communication. Carter, Kelly, and Gordo had ditched their phones too.
Robbie had said no one back East knew anything more. No one had seen them. No one had heard from them.
Elizabeth said all things happened for a reason. That we needed to trust that they knew what they were doing.
Mark was quiet on the matter.
I thought it was bullshit. I’d never felt anger toward Joe before, not really, not something that could plant roots into my skin and bones and grow into something else. But it was happening now. I thought maybe the growth was poisonous, because there were times that I told myself he’d abandoned us, that he’d only been thinking about himself and his selfish desire for revenge. That it was unfair, to me, to his brothers, to the rest of his pack. That he was putting himself in harm’s way for nothing. And apparently we’d been too much of a distraction to maintain contact with.
That’s what I told myself.
True or not, I didn’t think it mattered.
“Yeah,” I said. “College, and all that.” It almost sounded believable.
She squinted at me. “You guys still….”
I shrugged. I didn’t know how to answer that. Were we still… what.
Those were the other little thoughts I had. The ones that said I was nothing to him. That he didn’t just leave us, he left me. That other things mattered more than I did. That he was just a kid and didn’t know what he wanted.
Sure, my father was wrong most of the time, but he’d said I was gonna get shit.
And Joe was giving me shit.
“Huh,” Jessie said. “I always thought it was kind of a done deal.”
“Things change,” I said, forcing a smile. “We’ll see what happens when he comes back.”
If he comes back at all, that little voice said.
She reached out and took my hand in hers, squeezing my fingers gently. “He’ll come back,” she said, like she knew what I was thinking. And maybe she did. There was a time when we knew each other well. “You know that, Ox.”
Robbie growled again, fits and starts, like a motor trying to catch.
“Yeah,” I said. Because it was easier to agree than to argue with her about things she didn’t understand.
“We should get together sometime,” she said. “If you’re free.”
“I think I can—”
“We have that thing, Ox,” Robbie said.
“What thing?” I asked, trying to find my last bit of patience.
“That thing,” he insisted. “That will take up a lot of your time.”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“You won’t be free. For a while.”
“Is he a Bennett?” Jessie asked, sounding amused. “Because he sounds like a Bennett.”
“He’s a Fontaine,” I said with a frown. I didn’t understand what she meant.
“Sure,” she said. “Anyway, call if you get a chance. The phone number’s the same.”
I nodded and she turned toward the office, where Chris was just getting off the phone.
I turned on Robbie. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” Robbie said. “I mean, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Robbie.”
“Ox. Let’s finish this oil change.”
“We were fixing the alternator.”
“Huh.” He looked down at the car. “That makes more sense than what I thought we were doing.”
“She’s a friend.”
He scowled. “You didn’t hear her heartbeat. Or smell her.”
“Oh god, I hate werewolves,” I muttered.
“She stunk like arousal.”
“You shouldn’t go around smelling people.”
“I can’t help it! Tell her to not go around smelling like she wanted to hop on your dick!”
“Who wants to hop on dicks?” Rico asked as he and Tanner walked over.
“No one,” I said quickly.
“That girl,” Robbie said. “Jessie.”
I sighed.
“That’s Ox’s ex-girlfriend,” Tanner said.
“From high school,” Rico added helpfully. “Because those are the relationships that last forever.”
Robbie looked slightly horrified. “You dated her?”
I put my face in my hands.
“But you’re mated to the Alpha!”
That stopped me cold. I dropped my hands. I glared at Robbie and said, “I’m not mated to anyone. If I was, you can sure as shit bet he’d be here and—”
The others stared at me as I cut myself off. This wasn’t the time for that. Not now. Maybe not ever.
“Ox,” Rico said gently, like he was approaching a cornered animal. “You know he’d—”
So I said, “Don’t.”
He didn’t.
I muttered something about going to lunch and left them standing there.
THEY CAME four days later.
During those four days, I got more pissed off. I had problems, and I couldn’t think of a single way to be rid of them.
Because werewolves were my problem.
Packs were my problem.
Maybe I just wanted a normal life, away from everything that shouldn’t exist.
Maybe I wanted to leave all of this behind and find a place where wolves didn’t know my name.
Thomas had told me once that the longer a human was in a pack, the stronger the scent of pack would be until it was a part of them, ingrained into everything that they were.
Any wolf would know I belonged to others, no matter how much I scrubbed my skin.
And it grated at me.
&nb
sp; I stayed away from the others as much as I could. I worked later, not leaving the shop until well past midnight. The guys at the shop tried to push me, but I snapped at them to leave me alone.
Mark and Elizabeth didn’t push.
I didn’t want them to, but I was confused as to why I thought they should.
I should have known Elizabeth would wait until she thought I was ready. Sometimes, I thought she knew me better than I knew myself.
I rubbed my hand over my face as I walked down the dirt road toward the house at the end of the lane. It was probably foolish of me to be out in the dead of night alone, but I had faith in Gordo’s wards, even if I was losing faith in the man himself.
I was tired. Of a lot of things.
I sensed Elizabeth before I actually saw or heard her. I didn’t think this happened to most humans in wolf packs, but I didn’t know any others to ask. And the thought of asking questions these days was exhausting. Especially on top of everything else.
I said, “I know you’re there,” and expected her to walk out from the trees as a wolf.
Instead, she said, “Of course you do. I wouldn’t have thought anything less.”
She melted out of the shadows, moving with an inhuman grace. She wore a loose pair of sweats and an old sweatshirt of Thomas’s, the sleeves falling over her hands. Her eyes flared briefly in the dark, that Halloween orange that reminded me so of her son. There was an ache in my chest at the very thought of him.
And she knew. Because that’s just something she could do.
She said, “Ah. I wondered if that was it.”
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” I grumbled.
She laughed quietly. “I can’t not. It’s who I am.”
“Lurking in the forest in the middle of the night is who you are?”
“I don’t lurk.” She sounded moderately offended.
“You kind of do,” I said. “It’s part of your whole… thing.”
“I like you,” she said seriously. “Very much.”
I couldn’t stop the smile on my face even if I tried. “I know. I like you too.”
I started walking toward the house at the end of the lane.
She fell into step beside me.
“You’ve been avoiding us,” she said.