by T. J. Klune
“I’ve been busy,” I said.
“Ah,” she said. “At the shop.”
“Yeah.”
“Must have been big.”
“What?”
“The influx of people to Green Creek who all needed their cars worked on at the same time.”
I glared at her.
She smiled serenely back at me.
“Dozens of them,” I said.
“You’re upset.”
I stopped walking and fisted my hands at my sides.
“It’s okay to be upset,” she said.
“I’m not upset,” I growled at her.
“Of course not,” she said. “You’re only avoiding your pack, and when you do see us, it’s like you despise us. Not upset at all.”
“I don’t despise anyone,” I said.
“That certainly can’t be true. There are many people out there to despise.”
“Elizabeth—”
“We don’t blame you.”
I blinked. “For what?”
“Blaming us.”
I took a step back. “I don’t—”
“It’s okay if you did. Or do. I don’t know that I wouldn’t if I was in your position. It’s certainly a proper place to rest your grievances.”
I hung my head.
“After all,” she continued, “if you’d never heard of wolves, none of this would have happened. If we hadn’t come back to Green Creek, you never would have met us and your mother would be sleeping in her bed. Or, rather, I hope she would have been, because you can never really know what might happen. Life can be funny that way.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
“Because someone has to,” she said. “And since Joe’s not here, I need to be the one to do it.”
My anger flared, a bright and burning thing. She felt it, if her eyes widening slightly meant anything.
She said, “He didn’t want to leave you, Ox.”
I laughed bitterly. “Really. Because he sure as hell left pretty damn quick for someone who didn’t want to leave.”
“He didn’t—”
“Don’t tell me he didn’t have a choice,” I snapped at her. “Because he did. He could have chosen us. He could have chosen….” I didn’t want to finish that thought, because it would have made it all the more real.
But Elizabeth knew. “He did choose you, Ox,” she said, ignoring the anger in my voice. “Or have you forgotten that? He gave his wolf to no one else. Only you. It’s only ever been you.”
“A lot of good that does us now. He’s only god knows where, with Carter and Kelly. With Gordo. Fuck, we don’t even know if he’s alive. If any of them are.”
“They are.”
I stared at her. “You know this.”
“Yes.”
“Because….”
“Because I am a mother. And I am a wolf. I would know if they were gone, sure as I knew when it happened to Thomas.”
My throat felt dry. “I can’t feel them. Not like before.”
She reached out and grazed her fingers along my arm. I didn’t know if I wanted her touching me or not, but she drew her hand away before I could step back. “I don’t expect you could,” she said. “You’re not a wolf. Even if you are more than you used to be, it’s not the same.”
“Have you talked to him?” My heart thudded in my chest.
“No,” she said sadly. “I haven’t. Any of them. If I had, you would know. Ox, I understand why he did what he did, even if I don’t agree with it. It’s a terrible thing to lose a parent. As you very well know. And I don’t mean to minimize anything of yours, but Joe lost his father. And his Alpha. And then had to assume the role he’d be preparing for much earlier than he thought he’d have to.”
“It’s not about what’s right,” I told her. “It’s about revenge. Did you even try and stop him?”
She looked as if I’d slapped her and that was the only answer I needed.
“Look, it’s—”
“What would you have done?” she asked. “If you’d had the chance to make things right and ignored it only to find out your inaction caused others to suffer.”
She didn’t sound like she was judging me, merely curious. “I would have put the pack first,” I told her honestly. “Even though I was angry, and even though I wanted nothing more than to see Richard Collins dead, I would have kept the pack together. To keep them safe. To keep them whole. And once we were all back on even ground, we would have made a decision. Together. That’s what Thomas taught me. He said that above all else, pack comes first.”
She smiled a wobbly little smile. “He loved you,” she said. “Thomas did. Very much. As do the rest of us. Joe, above all others. I don’t know if you understand this, Oxnard, but we need you. More than you could possibly know.”
My eyes burned and I wanted nothing more than for her words to be true. “But what about what I need?” I asked her.
“You need us just as much as we need you.”
“I need him.”
“I know.”
“They need to come back.”
“I know.”
“Will they?”
She touched my arm briefly. “When they can.”
It wasn’t good enough, but I knew it was all she could give.
She said, “Let’s go—”
My phone rang.
It was shockingly loud in the quiet forest.
“Sorry,” I muttered. And for a brief moment, my heart tripped all over itself because I knew this was it. This was going to be Joe, and he’d say he was sorry, that he never meant to be gone this long, that he was coming home, that he’d never leave my side again and everything would be fine.
I fumbled with the phone. The screen was bright in the dark, blurring my eyes, and I couldn’t see, I couldn’t—
“Hello,” I croaked out. “Joe, it’s—”
“Ox?” a tearful voice said. “Ox. They… hurt me. Ox.”
Not Joe.
“Jessie?” I asked, confused and angry and hurt all at once. Because it wasn’t Joe, it wasn’t Joe, it wasn’t Joe—
“Ox,” she said. She was crying. “Their eyes. They’re glowing—”
“Where are you?” I bit out, hand tightening on the phone.
And then she screamed.
“Jessie!”
The scream fell away.
Another voice came through the phone.
It said, “Hello, Ox.” It sounded like it spoke through a mouthful of very sharp teeth.
“Who is this?” I snarled into the phone.
“I found a friend of yours. She smelled like you. A little bit. Maybe like a memory from long ago. Trying to travel back inside your little… wards.”
“I swear to god, I’ll fucking kill you if you touch a hair on her head.”
“Oh no,” the voice growled. “I suppose you’ll have to kill me, then. Because of her blood. It tastes so good.”
“What do you want?”
“Better. Thank you. It’s simple, really. I want you, Ox. The remains of your pack. He will be so… pleased. With me. He will love me… for taking away everything he could not.”
“You don’t know who you’re—”
“Ox,” the wolf snarled, because it couldn’t have been anything but a wolf. I’d been around them long enough to recognize the sounds they made. The anger they could have. “I don’t think you’re listening.”
Jessie screamed again, her voice cracking in the middle, bright and shivery with pain. “Don’t,” I pleaded into the phone. Because this was my fault. He was doing this to her because of me. “Don’t hurt her. Not any more. What do you want?”
“Come to me,” the wolf said. “Outside these… sticky things. These burns. These goddamn wards. Step outside them. And we’ll see… what we’ll see.”
“Where?” I said through gritted teeth.
“The bridge. I’m told there is only one. You have twenty minutes, Oxnard. I’m afraid I really must insist on t
hat. Twenty minutes. Or her blood will be on your hands.”
The wolf clicked off.
My hands were shaking as they fell to my sides.
“You heard?” I asked.
“Everything,” she said, eyes flaring orange in the dark.
“They don’t know, do they.”
“No. They think we’re fractured.”
“Good,” I snarled. “Because they’ve fucked up.”
She half shifted, claws popping and fangs descending. Hair rippled along her cheeks and brow.
And for the first time since she howled a song of mourning at the death of her Alpha, Elizabeth Bennett tilted her head back and sang.
Only this time, it was a song of war.
WE WERE fractured.
Part of us were gone. Our pack wasn’t whole. That much was true.
But we made up for it. We filled those spaces with temporary things to hold us together while we still could.
“What’s the point of all this?” Rico had asked, sweat dripping down his face.
I’d remembered what Thomas had told me. About pack. And protecting one’s territory. “It’s just in case,” I’d told Rico. Tanner and Chris were within earshot, panting out little sharp bursts of air. Mark was half-shifted. Elizabeth was full wolf. Their eyes flashed at me.
“In case of what?”
“Anything. Go again.”
And they did. Again.
And again.
And again.
IT WAS an oddity, where the wolf had wanted us to meet. An old covered wooden bridge outside of Green Creek. It was supposed to be quaint, even though the paint was peeling and the wood was cracked. People from the city came up in the fall to take pictures of it while the leaves changed around them. It stretched over a creek bed that trickled with cold water from higher up the mountains.
It meant, though, that it was out of the way, so nobody from town would get hurt.
We didn’t bother with a car. Mark met us in the trees, already shifted, eyes bright in the dark, tail twitching. Elizabeth disrobed while Tanner called, having heard her song. “Is this real?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said through gritted teeth. “They have Jessie.”
“Fuck. Chris, he’ll—”
“Get them. Meet at the shop. I’ll tell him.”
“Ox—”
“Move,” I snapped. “Now.”
He grunted and disconnected.
I turned back to the others.
Robbie was there now too, a gray wolf with black striping along his face. He was smaller than Mark and Elizabeth, and leaner, but his teeth were sharp and his paws were big. That thin thread that somehow stretched between us and him pulsed gently, and I could feel the packpackpack riding along each little wave. We hadn’t quite acknowledged it, none of us had, because betrayal ran deep. He wasn’t Osmond, but he was still part of where Osmond had come from.
But Robbie had been here. He’d trained with us. He’d eaten with us at our table. I didn’t think it’d be too much longer before whatever obstacle between us fell away.
I wondered if Joe could feel them.
I wondered if he even cared.
They followed me through the trees, running in the dark by my side. I didn’t need to look where I was headed. I knew this place, these woods, this forest. I knew every inch of it. Thomas had taught me that. He’d shown me that a territory was a home and this was my home. I knew where to jump. Where to duck. I didn’t think of how or why. It just was.
We were careful when we got to Green Creek, keeping in the shadows. It was late, very late, and the streets were empty, but there were already rumors of wolves in the woods, and we didn’t need anyone in town to think they’d walked along the streets.
The shop was dark, but I could feel them toward the back.
Their voices cut off as we rounded the corner. They looked at me as the wolves went and rubbed up against them.
Tanner tossed me my crowbar, careful to not let it touch Robbie, who had pressed his side against Tanner’s leg.
I caught it as Chris said, “We heard it. The howl. It was like….”
“In your head?”
They all nodded, looking relieved.
“You get used to it,” I said. “Mostly.”
“What happened?” Rico asked.
“Chris,” I said. “I need you to listen to me.
He frowned. “What… what happened?”
“Omegas,” I said. “Outside the wards.”
“They can’t get in, right?” Rico asked. “Why are we—”
“They have Jessie,” I said, not taking my eyes off of Chris.
He paled. “What?” he whispered.
“They made her call me.”
He took a step forward, stiff and radiating anger. “She’s alive?” he demanded.
“Yes.” And I thought she still would be. They needed leverage. We had nine minutes. Maybe ten. “I heard her voice.”
“What did she say?”
She’d screamed, but I didn’t need him to know that. “That they had her, and that their eyes were glowing.”
“Fuck,” Rico muttered.
“They took her,” Chris said to me.
“Yes.”
“And we’re going to get her back.”
“Yes.”
“Ox,” he said, and I put my hands on his shoulders, pressing my forehead to his. “She’s all I have. She’s not…. She’s my sister, Ox. They can’t do this to her.”
“We’ll get her,” I promised him. “We’ll bring her back, and they will regret the day they took her from us.”
He exhaled heavily and his shoulders trembled underneath my hands. But I could feel the moment he pushed it aside, the way he tensed and hardened. The way his eyes grew dark. The way he bared his teeth.
“They think,” I said, raising my voice so the others could hear, “that we’re nothing. That they can come here and take what they want. That we’re broken.”
The wolves growled and gnashed their teeth.
“We’re going to show them just how wrong they are.”
And maybe, just maybe, for the briefest of moments, I could understand Joe and the choices he’d made.
I FELT Gordo’s wards before anything else. They stopped ten yards before the covered bridge. We weren’t trapped. We could leave Green Creek anytime we wanted to. This wasn’t about keeping us in. It was about keeping all others out that intended to do the pack harm. And if anything was strong enough to push through, supposedly we’d know. Gordo had said he didn’t think anyone could get by them, not even his father, but they were mixed into the pack bonds, a sort of alarm system.
They hummed just under my skin the closer we got. It felt like I was warm and vibrating, and it whispered little songs in its own way. Gordo’s magic was tied to us, maybe more to Joe, but they were gone and the wards remained. I spared a thought for him, then pushed it away. I didn’t have time for memories. Not now.
He had stretched them far around Green Creek, deep into the woods. They didn’t cover the entirety of the territory belonging to the Bennetts, but enough that we were safe.
There were wolves standing in front of the bridge outside the wards.
I approached first, the others out of sight. I knew the wards were messing with the Omegas’ senses, so it didn’t seem likely that they’d know how many others were with me. Maybe they were even stupid enough to think I’d come alone.
Violet eyes watched me. I counted ten pairs tracking my every step.
I didn’t see Jessie. I’d forgotten, briefly, that I couldn’t feel her like the others. I remembered that day in my room when she and I had ended and I’d tried to do the same. She wasn’t pack. I couldn’t feel her like that.
I stopped just before the wards. Somewhere off to my right, Gordo had burned a rune into one of the trees. The invisible line before me thrummed. I took a breath. It stank of ozone.
“You come alone, human?” a familiar voice growled from in front of the b
ridge.
The wolf from the phone.
I said, “What is your name?” I could only make out his Omega eyes.
He said, “Where are the others? The remains of what you once were.”
“I asked you a question.”
The Omegas around him laughed as he stepped forward. He was still mostly hidden by the shadows, but I’d gotten used to the dark.
The wolf didn’t look that much older than I was. His beard was patchy, his hair pulled back and tied off with a leather strap. His fangs had dropped and were dimpling the skin of his bottom lip. I thought maybe he was smiling.
“You,” he said, voice filled with gravel, “asked me a question.”
The wolves laughed again.
“Your name,” I said.
“Humans don’t get to ask anything,” he growled. “You are the scum beneath our feet. The fallen king made a mockery of the wolf pack. And look where that got him. Filled with holes, his blood spilled upon his own ground.”
Easy, I told myself. Easy.
Because there was a very real chance I was about to launch myself at him, not giving a shit about how many there were of them.
He’s goading you, Thomas whispered. He doesn’t understand what you have become.
I didn’t understand either. I didn’t know what I was. Not anymore.
I didn’t think most humans felt like I did, even if they’d belonged to a pack.
Thomas had said I didn’t need to be a wolf. That I didn’t need to be more than I already was. He hadn’t been wanting that for me. He’d offered me a gift not because he’d wanted me to change, but because he’d wanted me to be more connected to him. To the others.
Even though I sometimes heard his voice, even though I sometimes walked with him and my mother, they weren’t there. These were just memories, pieces of them I’d stored away that clawed their way out of me when I least expected it.
I wondered if he’d known. What I would become.
I’d never get to ask him.
But even back then. Before. He’d watched me. I’d catch him, every now and then. Like he was expecting something from me.
I said, “I will ask you. One more time.”
“Human,” the wolf spat at me.
I brought the crowbar up and rested it on my shoulder. The metal scraped against my ear. The pack bonds were electrified. Mark and Elizabeth. Tanner. Chris and Rico. And Robbie too, his quiet pulse becoming more like a beacon. He was here now. With us. I thought Joe would be proud.