by T. J. Klune
“Joe,” I croaked out.
“Got your attention, have I?” David said and smiled again. “Good.”
Yes. He did have my attention.
It was not a thing he should have wanted.
He didn’t have time to react when I rushed the door, curling my right arm into my chest, breaking through the glass with my shoulder. I grunted as the glass shattered around us, sharp stings prickling along my skin. David let out a low cry and tried to stumble back, arms pinwheeling. I crashed into him, knocking both of us off our feet. He landed on his back on the sidewalk, glass crunching underneath him. I pushed myself up before he could counter, straddling his stomach, pressing the crowbar up and under his jaw, the sharp tip digging into the soft skin.
“One push,” I said. “And this goes into your brain.”
“Impressive,” he wheezed. He stopped struggling. There was a thin cut from the glass along his right cheek, blood dribbling down toward his ear. “I… didn’t expect that. I should have. But I didn’t.”
“Where is he?”
“Jesus Christ, how much do you weigh? I can’t breathe—”
“Last chance,” I snarled at him.
“I don’t know where he is!”
“You’re lying!”
“I’m not! I swear to Christ. I’m not here to hurt you or your pack. I’m trying to help you, you overgrown—”
“Is he alive?”
“What?”
“Is he alive?”
“Yes! Yes. Last time I saw him, yes.”
“When?”
“Three months ago.”
“Where?”
“Alaska.”
“Who was with him?”
“His brothers. A witch. I didn’t ask their names!”
I pressed harder. Blood welled around the tip of the crowbar. “What did you do to them?”
“Nothing. Nothing. They saved me. Jesus Christ, they saved me.”
“From. What?”
“Richard Collins!”
And I paused.
He wasn’t lying. I didn’t know how I knew, but I did. This man wasn’t lying.
And he was the closest thing I’d had to Joe in almost three years. “What did he say?” I asked, voice hoarse. “A message. You said you had a message.”
“If you would just get off of me—”
“Tell me what it is!” I roared in his face, spittle flying.
“He said… he said not yet. He said for me to tell you not yet. He said you’d know what it meant.”
Not yet.
That fucking bastard.
“Anything else?” I asked coldly.
“No. No just Oxnard Matheson. Green Creek, Oregon. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.”
DAVID KING had been a hunter of wolves years before. He was raised in the King clan, his father and grandfather before him doing the same work. He’d been raised to kill anything with sharp teeth. But after his first kill at the age of seventeen, after he’d seen the light in a female Beta’s eyes die out as she choked on her own blood because of him, he’d quit.
He’d been shunned by his clan. Banned from them.
That had been almost forty years ago.
They’d been the ones to massacre the family of Richard Collins. David had taken no part in it. It was after his time.
But there weren’t many Kings left. They’d gone into hiding because they were dying out one by one.
“Throats torn out,” David said, wincing as he plucked a small shard of glass from his side. “Blood spread on the walls. A message from the wolves.”
“What message?”
David sighed. “That he was coming for all of us.”
David had gone into hiding, using old familial connections to stay one step ahead of Richard and the Omegas. Most hunter clans turned him away, not wanting any part of a feud that would surely result in their deaths. But there were some with which old debts were owed, and he was able to go stretches of days, even weeks, without looking over his shoulder.
“There were times when I thought maybe I was good,” he said. “Free. Because I didn’t have anything to do with my father and grandfather. I didn’t take part in that massacre. Grandad was long dead. Cancer, if you can believe that shit. Man goes his whole life fighting against tooth and claw, and gets knocked down by cancer.”
“What about your father?” I asked quietly.
David laughed. It was a hollow thing. “Old man, he was. Memory long gone. He was in a nursing home in Topeka. Heard they had to scrape what was left of him off the walls.”
One month turned into two, turned into three, and David was starting to think he’d been forgotten, that he didn’t even register on any radar.
“That’s all it takes,” he said. “Complacency. Just one moment of complacency, and you get sloppy. Maybe I showed my face to people who weren’t supposed to see it. Maybe I left my scent somewhere it wasn’t supposed to be. Don’t know, really. But he found me.”
Outside Fairbanks. The snows were melting, grass poking through bright and green and then he’d been there.
“He asked me if I knew who he was,” David said. “Just showed up at my door and knocked, neat as you please.”
David didn’t even need to answer. Richard Collins must have seen the look on his face, because he laughed when David tried to shut the door and go for his gun. He’d almost made it, but he thought Richard had let him. “It was a game,” he said. “I think it was just a game to him. The big, bad wolf had huffed and puffed and then he knocked my fucking door down.”
The next thing David knew, he was strung up in his own temporary home, arms tied and stretched out above his head, legs bound together.
“He cut me,” David said, lifting up his shirt. His torso was a mass of scars, some still mottled pink, most thick and rigid and white. They crisscrossed over his chest and stomach, wrapping around his sides to his back where I couldn’t see. It looked like he’d almost lost a nipple. “With his claws. For hours. The thing about pain is that you can take a lot of it before you pass out. I took a lot of pain that day.”
He was delirious by the time it ended.
“One minute there was Richard, Richard, Richard, and the next he was gone, and there was a red-eyed wolf in front of me. An Alpha.”
“Joe,” I whispered.
“Joe,” David agreed. “Joe Bennett. I’d heard what had happened to Thomas Bennett. Never met the wolf myself, but I’d heard about him. Most everyone had, if you were in the know. He was this… legend, you know? The closest thing to a dynasty the wolves ever had. I have no love for wolves, okay? Some of them are fucked up, some of them are monsters, but humans can be too. I should know. I’ve seen it. But Thomas… he was always off-limits for most people. Sure, there were those who said they’d hunt him down one day. Just so they could say they’d hunted the Alpha of all the wolves, but no one ever did. It was just shit they spoke to make themselves seem better than they were.”
Apparently Richard had been gone a good hour before Joe had found David. There were two other wolves and a witch. They’d patched him up, asked him questions. Joe had been angry.
“Why?”
“Because he’d been so close to Richard,” David said. “Apparently, it’d been the closest they’d gotten to him. Or so they said.”
They left almost immediately. But not before Joe had pulled him aside, eyes burning red, asking him to deliver a message.
Not yet.
I scowled at him. “And it took you three months to get here?”
“You try being almost gutted by a crazed werewolf,” David snapped. “I needed time to recover. And I needed to make sure he wasn’t going to find me again. I didn’t have to come here.”
And he was right, of course. Though part of me almost wished he hadn’t. Because not yet wasn’t enough.
“How did they look?” I asked. “Did they look… were they okay?”
David smiled sadly at me. “Tired,” he said. “They looked tired. Didn’t t
alk with the others, not really, but they were all tired.”
I nodded, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Then, “He doesn’t know. Does he?”
“What?” I asked.
“About you. How you’re an Alpha.”
“No. I don’t think so.” Then, “How did you?”
“I grew up in this life, kid. There are some things you learn. Tricks of the trade, I guess. The red eyes give it away, mostly.”
“I don’t have red eyes.”
“That’s why I said mostly. When you’re in the presence of an Alpha, you just know, okay? There’s this sense of… power. Of something more. Especially with an Alpha in his own territory. I’ve met one other Alpha, aside from you and Joe. Back when I was a kid. You all felt the same.” He cocked his head at me. “How did you do it?”
“I didn’t do anything,” I said, feeling scrubbed raw. “It just… happened.”
“Jesus, kid. I don’t envy you.”
“Why?”
“Because people won’t understand.” He sounded like the gruff man.
“I don’t give a shit about those people.”
“They don’t care about that either.”
“As long as they leave us alone, they can do what they want.”
“Do you really think they’ll do that?”
“Let them come,” I said, voice low and dangerous. “We’ve dealt with worse.”
David squirmed in his chair, just enough that I knew he’d gotten the point.
“Do you have a place to stay?”
He laughed. “Not here,” he said. “Never here. Especially in an Alpha’s territory. I’m leaving just as soon as we’re done here. He found me once, which means he can find me again. Gotta keep moving. For as long as I can.”
“That’s no kind of life.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But it’s the only one I have now.”
“He’ll end this. Joe will.”
“Kid, I don’t doubt you believe that. And maybe he will. But I’m not going to take any chances. I’m a ghost now, you see. And maybe one day I won’t have to be anymore, but until the day I hear that Richard Collins has had his head separated from his body, I’ll just be haunting the roads.”
He stood up slowly, wincing as he did.
“Sorry about that,” I said.
“About what?”
“The whole… window. Glass. Thing.”
He snorted. “I came into an Alpha’s territory unannounced. I think I got off pretty easy.”
He had. “Still.”
“It happens,” he said. “Been through worse, though I can’t say I won’t feel this tomorrow. Ain’t as young as I used to be. I’ll show myself out. It’s been… interesting.” He turned to walk away.
“You shouldn’t talk about me,” I said quietly.
He paused. “How’s that?”
“About what you’ve seen here. About… me.”
He snorted. “Nobody to talk to, even if I could. It’s better that way. I ain’t going to be ratting on you, Alpha. No worries about that.”
I didn’t stand. I felt heavy, weighted.
He made his way to the office door. His hand was on a doorknob when he stopped. “You know,” he said without turning around. “There was something about him. When he said your name. There was this… light. In his eyes. I thought maybe he was all rage and anger, lost to his wolf. An Alpha Omega, maybe. Violet and red mixing together. But he said your name and… I don’t know. There was something different about him, then. It felt… green? I don’t know if that makes sense. Thought you should know.”
Then he was gone.
STAND DOWN. false alarm. just some kids. broke a window.
The pack responded immediately with messages of relief.
are you sure? Elizabeth asked.
yes
She didn’t respond.
I stayed in the office long into the night.
Not yet, I thought.
Not yet.
I DIDN’T tell them about David King.
It seemed easier that way.
ROBBIE KISSED me toward the end of the third year.
I wish that I said I could have seen it coming.
I didn’t, though. That one was on me.
One moment we were walking through the woods, just him and me as I tried to do with each of my Betas, laughing and talking about nothing in particular, and the next his lips were on mine—clumsy things—his hands against my chest, his breath on my face. He was warm and sweet, and I hated myself that I didn’t push him away. I could say that I was startled. I could say that I didn’t expect it. But the fact remains I didn’t push him away, not at first.
I didn’t kiss him back.
I just stood there, laughter dying in my throat.
Hands at my sides. Eyes wide.
He didn’t move much, just a press that held for one and two and three and four and then he stepped away, heart jackrabbiting around in his chest, lips slick. His tongue darted out quickly, like he was chasing the taste of me.
We stared at each other.
I didn’t know what to do.
He said, “Ox, I—”
I held up my hand.
I thought on it. I really did.
Because it’d be so easy.
To take. Right here. Right now.
I hadn’t been with anyone since before Joe.
I hadn’t planned on it, either.
But I wasn’t sure where I fit with Joe’s plans anymore.
And it would be so easy.
And I liked him. Robbie. I really did. He was nice. And kind. And handsome. Anyone would be lucky to have that.
And I could.
But I could never give him what he wanted. What he deserved. Because Robbie deserved someone who could give their whole heart.
And I’d given mine away a long time ago to a blue-eyed boy who’d stood on a dirt road and waited for me.
“Robbie,” I sighed.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he mumbled, looking down and scuffing a boot in the dirt.
“Maybe,” I said. “But it’s not a bad thing.”
“It’s not?” A faint glimmer of hope.
“Because it can’t be a thing at all.”
He sighed, shoulders slumping. “Because of Joe?”
“Because of Joe.”
“He’s not here.”
“No. He’s not.”
“Ox.”
“He’s not here. But that doesn’t matter to me. Maybe one day, it will. But not now.”
“I just—I just wanted—”
I said, “Hey. It’s nothing to worry about. It’s okay. It happens.”
He was getting frustrated. “You’re my friend,” he said. “And my Alpha. I just… I want to be something. For you. I know you had Jessie… before. And I thought… maybe I could be after. If there could be an after.”
“You already are something to me.” I reached out and hooked my fingers under his chin to tilt his head up. “You’re more than I could have hoped for.”
He gave me a pained smile. “But not enough.”
“It’s not about being enough,” I said. “It’s about what’s right. I’m not right for you because I’m right for someone else. You’ll feel the same one day. When you meet them.”
He gave a short bark of laughter. “Maybe. But….” He shook his head. “No one has believed in me like you have. I don’t know if I want to feel any different.”
“You’re my friend,” I told him quietly. “And that is good enough for me. I hope it can be good enough for you.”
He nodded, and I dropped my hand.
We continued walking through the trees.
After a while, he said, “You must really love him. To do what you’ve done.”
“He’d do the same for me,” I said, knowing it was true. No matter how else I felt, I believed that with everything I had.
And we walked on.
THAT NIGHT, I dreamt of
him.
He was waiting for me on the dirt road, the sun filtering through the leaves, little splashes of light on the ground like puddles of rippling water. He smiled so brightly as I reached my hand for his, our fingers curling together like they always had.
We walked slowly toward the house at the end of the lane.
We didn’t speak.
We didn’t have to.
It was enough just to be.
ROBBIE WAS awkward around me for a few weeks after that. He stammered and blushed and avoided me when he could.
Elizabeth smiled and said it happened every now and then.
“He’d be very lucky,” she said to me as we sat on the porch watching the sunset. “Both of you would.”
“I belong to someone else,” I said.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad for that.”
And she never brought it up again.
MORE OMEGAS came.
We were stronger then.
Better. Faster.
More complete.
They prowled the edges of the wards, teeth snapping. There had to be at least fifteen of them. Maybe twenty.
“Human,” one spat at me.
I said, “I’ll only tell you once.”
Violet eyes flared.
“Leave. While you still can.”
They snarled at me.
I tapped my crowbar against my shoulder. “If that’s the way it’s going to be.”
My pack roared behind me, humans and wolves alike.
The Omegas took a step back, suddenly unsure.
But that was as far as they got.
THREE YEARS.
One month.
Twenty-six days.
home
IT WAS a Wednesday.
We were at the garage when I felt the wards change. Like they were shifting. Like they were breaking.
I was in the office, and it felt like I’d been struck by lightning.
“The fuck was that?” I heard Tanner say out in the shop as he dropped something metal to the floor.
“Jesus Christ,” Rico muttered.