by T. J. Klune
Before.
I never thought about how much it took to actually be a wolf. Thomas and the others had always made it look so easy.
The only time I’d ever seen anything close to a lack of control had been the night Joe had first shifted.
Years. It’d been years since that night.
So I hadn’t thought about it much.
Now it was all I could think of.
I lay in the clearing with my head in Joe’s lap, his hand in my hair, both of us unconcerned with my nudity. The grass was cool against my heated skin. I was listening to his heartbeat, taking a breath for three beats, letting it out for five.
The wolf in me still gnashed, its hackles raised, but it was calming under the touch of the Alpha.
We didn’t speak for a long time.
I didn’t know what he was thinking. I didn’t understand the smells coming off him. They were bright, these smells. Kinetic. They burned my nose. But underneath them was Joe. It was smoke and earth and rain. It was the smells I always had associated with him intensified a thousand times over. I wanted to bury myself in them, roll around in them until his scent covered me.
But the silence ended. It had to. There was too much to say.
He said, “Osmond is dead.”
I grunted, having figured as much.
“Gordo killed him. The others in our pack took care of the rest of the Omegas. The humans that were taken made it to the garage, they were safe. We found them huddled together in the back of the garage underneath one of the lifts. Gordo… did something to them. Altered their memories. They weren’t hurt by it. They just… won’t remember. This. The Omegas. Us. You. None of it. They’ll heal. They thought they were in a car accident. It was odd, really.”
Convenient. Maybe too convenient. I didn’t know just how far Gordo’s magic ran or what he’d had to do in the years since he’d been gone, but there’d be time. Later. Now I just needed to hear Joe. To be near him.
I tried to find words, any of them, to say something. But all that came out was a garble of sounds, more wolf than man. Joe’s hand stilled briefly in my hair, but then resumed, blunt fingernails scratching my scalp.
He said, “I should have known that something was wrong.”
His voice was even. Carefully restrained.
“I should have known,” he said again.
I wanted to ask how he’d found out, but—
He heard it anyway. Somehow. “You closed the bonds. For everyone. I called you. Your phone went to voice mail. I called Gordo. He didn’t answer. I went to the shop. The others followed me because they knew, Ox. They knew something was wrong.”
A slight crack in the tone. Anger spilled through, tinged with something that tasted like pain. Or sorrow. I didn’t know if there was a difference between the two.
I pressed my face into his lap, trying to stay calm.
“Gordo knew,” he said. “He followed you. Said something wasn’t sitting right. And he just… he knew. I didn’t. But he did. He—”
My hands were claws.
“You foolish man,” he whispered. “You stupid, foolish man.”
I whined at him, begging him not to push me away. Not now. Not ever.
“How could you think this would ever be okay?” he choked out. “How could you ever think…? I couldn’t get to you in time. I couldn’t—and then he was there, the monster from my dreams he was there, and his hand was inside you—”
He broke off as he began to shudder.
I wrapped my arms around his waist, pressing my face into his stomach.
“I couldn’t stop him in time,” Joe said, no longer even and smooth. His heartbeat had skyrocketed. He gripped my hair. He was speaking through fangs. “I couldn’t reach you in time. I had to watch you—when he… did what he did. And all I can remember, all I can remember thinking is how this was a dream. That it was all a dream. But it wasn’t because you’d told me once that you can’t actually feel pain in your dreams, that that’s the difference between dreaming and being awake. Ox. I wasn’t dreaming because I felt it. Everything. He tore into you and he tore into me and then his head was gone and you were bleeding.”
He hunched over me, as if trying to protect me from everything around him.
His breath was ragged in my ear.
He said, “You fucking bastard. How dare you die in front of me.”
It was then I found my voice.
Because I needed to speak.
And because he needed to hear me.
I should have said I’m sorry.
Or everything will be okay now.
Or the monster is dead and I’m here and I’ll never leave you.
I didn’t say that, though. Any of it.
When I spoke, my words were muffled against him.
My voice was deeper than it’d ever been, like I was trapped somewhere between man and wolf.
I said, “I would do it again. If it meant keeping you safe.”
He inhaled sharply.
And it was the truth. I would gladly give up my life if it meant Joe would live another day. Or any of them in our pack. Because that’s what an Alpha did. Thomas had taught me that. An Alpha put his pack above all else. It was an Alpha’s job to keep his pack whole. To keep them safe. To keep them alive.
Richard Collins might have tried to come after them, even after he’d given me his word.
But that was a risk I’d had to take.
Because it meant they’d be safe.
I turned, lying on my back to stare up at him.
He looked down at me.
A single tear fell, landing on my forehead.
“I hate you,” he whispered.
I nodded, because I knew he did. For this one thing. “You would do the same. For me. And for that, I hate you too.”
He laughed wetly. “Goddamn you.”
The angle was rough when he bent over to kiss me. His back was curved as much as it could, and I raised my head slightly to meet him. It was just a graze, a brush of his lips against mine. But it felt like more than any time that had come before. There was desperation in it, and longing and hurt, so much goddamn hurt, but there was green too. So much green shot through it because we were here. We were both here and not even a monster could tear us apart.
HE TRACED his fingers over the skin of my stomach where Richard’s claws had gutted me. There wasn’t a mark, the skin completely healed. There wasn’t even any pain. It was like it’d happened to someone else.
I wondered then if all my scars were gone, the marks that made up the map of my life. If they’d all healed too. The thin line on the back of my neck where I’d caught it going through a barbed-wire fence when I was six. The small divot from chicken pox on my cheek when I was nine. The mark on my right forearm from when my daddy had been drunk and had thought it’d be funny to toss a brick at me to catch. That one had gotten me six stitches and an apology.
I couldn’t look. I didn’t know how I’d feel to see them gone.
I was more myself now. The wolf was pushed back. I thought it was because Joe was near. I could feel all the others, more than I’d ever felt before. Two days ago, they’d been there, but the edges had been blurred. Now, they were all crystal clear. They were waiting for us. We’d get there. Soon.
Joe said, “I turned you because I couldn’t let you go.” It was the first time he’d spoken in almost an hour.
I sighed. “I know.”
“Are you angry?”
“No. I’m not angry at being a wolf.”
“But you’re angry.”
“No.”
“Ox.”
“Not really. I don’t know. I can’t tell what’s my anger and what’s yours. It’s like… it’s going through me and—”
“Feedback loop,” he said.
“I don’t know what that is.”
“It’s a circuit. A circle. Completed between you and me. Everything I feel is everything you feel.”
I nodded slowly. “Is it always going to be like t
his? It’s….”
“Overwhelming?”
“Yeah.”
“No, it won’t,” he said. “You’re newly turned. Everything is dialed up. Once you get the hang of it, you can control it better.”
I thought that sounded right, but it didn’t help me now. “So we’re both angry, then.”
He snorted, hands pressing harder against my stomach. “Nah. It’s just me right now. I’m pissed off.”
“At me.”
“Damn fucking right I am.”
“Oh.”
“Why?”
I didn’t play dumb. I didn’t think I’d be able to anymore. “Because if there was a chance he wouldn’t hurt you, then I had to take it. And the others. The humans. I couldn’t… I couldn’t leave them, Joe. I just couldn’t.”
“You should have told me.”
“Kinda makes the whole heroic thing moot if I tell everyone about it.”
The breath he let out then was more of a sob than anything else, but we waited until he was okay again.
“You can’t do that again,” he said finally.
“If it means—”
“Ox. No more secrets.”
I squinted up at him. “Is that because you can read me now like this?”
He snorted. “I could always read you, Ox. We’re… I just could. You’re Ox.”
“You’re Joe.”
“Right,” he said.
I looked up at the stars. “Do they know?”
“Who.”
“Alpha Hughes. The others. Back East.”
“No. I told Robbie to wait.”
“Until?”
“You.”
“Why?”
“We’re a team, Ox. You and I. I can’t do this without you. And you shouldn’t have to do this without me. Not anymore.”
“I can,” I admitted. “Do this without you. I just don’t want to.”
He chuckled, and it was a nice sound to hear. “Good.”
“Hey, Joe?”
“Yeah?”
“What do I look like?”
“You look like you.”
“As a wolf.”
“You look like you,” he repeated. “I would have known you anywhere. And I will.”
The sky was starting to lighten.
Birds were beginning to call out.
I was overwhelmed by the sheer everything of it.
He said, “You’re big, Ox. Bigger than I’ve ever seen before. Bigger than me. Than my father. But it makes sense, you know? Because that’s how you’ve always been to me. Bigger than anything else. The day I saw you, I knew things would never be the same. You’re all- encompassing. You dwarf everything else. When I see you, Ox, all I see is you.”
He said, “Your eyes are red, like mine. But your wolf is black, Ox. Black like the dark. All of you. Not a single variation. Your tail is long, and your paws are big. Your teeth are sharp. But I can still see you in the wolf. I can see you there, in the eyes. I know you, Ox. I would know you anywhere.”
He said, “You didn’t shift because of the moon, but because you had to. Because your wolf knew it had to find me. So I could prove to you that I could bring you back. Once upon time, there was a lonely boy, a broken boy who didn’t know if he could shift, and it took one person to show him how. And now I’ve done it for you because that’s what we do for each other. That’s what pack is. That’s what this all means.”
He said, “You’re mine, Ox,”
He said, “I’m yours.”
He said, “And I can’t wait to show you how I’m made for you just as much as you were made for me.”
I reached and cupped his face. He leaned into my touch. There was never anyone such as him before. From that little boy on the road, to the teenager with red eyes, to the hardened man who stood before me at the house at the end of the lane and said the same words he’d said to me all those years before. There was never one like him. And he was mine.
I pulled him down to me.
The kiss was warm and wet. His lips worked over mine, my hands holding him close, and I thought that even though the monster had been brought to an end, this was only the beginning. I didn’t think I could let him go. Not anymore. Not again. We weren’t fixed. There was a chance we never would be. My daddy had told me once that people were gonna give me shit all my life. The monster had told Joe that his family didn’t want him anymore. We’d have to live with that, those things that were whispered in our ears. Maybe we’d never be free of those shadows. Not completely.
But we’d still fight like hell.
And maybe that’s all that mattered.
THE SUN had started to rise when the rest of our pack found us, wolves and humans both. I could hear them coming through the trees the moment they stepped into the forest. I had felt them wake up shortly before that.
I knew when they got to us that Rico, Tanner, and Chris would probably shriek at my nakedness, accusing me of trying to use my position as Alpha to make a harem. They would be all wind and bluster, but I would see the relief in their eyes as they saw no gaping wounds in me.
Gordo would roll his eyes fondly at them before handing me a pair of sweats. He would lean down and whisper in my ear that I was never allowed to scare him like that again, and I could sure as shit bet we’d have words later over my actions. He would cup the back of my neck and he’d press our foreheads together and we would breathe.
Jessie would look a little unsure, maybe a little teary-eyed as she watched me. She’d be the first to yell, to tell me how stupid the choices I made were and just who the fuck did I think I was, did I have a fucking death wish?
Robbie would be a wolf, and he’d rub up against me, trying to get his scent on me, hating the stench of blood that still clung to my skin. He’d tell me later it smelled like death, that I smelled like death, and he couldn’t deal with that. He couldn’t lose me. I was his Alpha, goddammit, and I needed to take better care of myself, because he didn’t know what he’d do with himself if I was gone.
Carter and Kelly would also be wolves, and they would yip and prance around Joe and me, backsides wiggling as they pressed themselves against us, trying to act aloof, but their eyes would be just a little too wide, the whines in their throats a little too panicked to fool anyone. Eventually, they would collapse on either side of us, curling into their Alphas and closing their eyes, finally breathing steadily.
Elizabeth and Mark would bring up the rear, both of them in human form. They’d watch the others descend on us, Mark with the secret smile on his face, Elizabeth closing her eyes and letting the sounds of pack pack pack wash over her. They’d join us after the others had started to settle down, Elizabeth next to her sons, and Mark sitting next to Gordo, both of them avoiding each other’s gazes, but their hands in the grass next to each other, pinkies touching, and there would be a sense of right, of being complete, finally, finally, finally.
We had lived.
We had loved.
We had lost. Oh god, had we lost.
But we would be here now. Together. And maybe this wasn’t over. Maybe there were still other things to come. Robert Livingstone. Alpha Hughes. All the monsters still out there in the world.
That was fine. That was okay.
Because we were the goddamn Bennett pack.
And our song would always be heard.
epilogue
HE SAID, “You ready?”
He towered above me, a look of such reverence on his face.
My skin was sweat-slicked, heated. I felt flushed and overwarm.
I almost couldn’t find the words, but I managed to say, “Yeah. Yeah, Joe.”
He leaned down to kiss me as he pressed slowly in. I gasped as he fucked into me, and he swallowed it down, tongue against mine. My dick was trapped between us, dragging against his stomach.
He sank down as far as he could go, his hips pressed against my ass, my legs up over his shoulders. We breathed each other in, eyes open, noses brushing together.
He said, “Oh fuck,” against me as his hips stuttered.
And he waited, holding himself in place, like he couldn’t move, like he didn’t want to move.
I said, “It’s okay, Joe. Please. It’s okay and I need—oh god, I fucking need—”
He said, “Yeah, Ox. I’ll give you what you need. I’ll fuck you, okay? Just let me fuck you and—”
And he pulled away, then pushed back in. The bed creaked below us and he did it again and again, and we were both snarling at each other, my claws digging into his back, not caring if they pierced flesh.
He rolled his hips into me as he sat up, pushing my legs back against my chest until I was almost folded in half, just so he could look down and see his dick in me. He slowed, eyes wide as he watched me come apart beneath him. We’d been at this for hours, and I was too worked up to make this last much longer. For all his inexperience, he was a fast learner, doing things to me that caused my eyes to roll back into my head and my mouth to go slack.
But this wasn’t about fucking or just getting off.
This was about more.
So much more.
I could feel it building in the base of my spine. I didn’t try and stop the shift as it rolled through me.
Joe was the same above me, half-shifted and crying out as I clenched around him.
He said, “Ox, it’s almost time.”
I said, “Yes, okay, yes. Please, yes.”
Because we’d been building to this. This moment.
Ever since the day he’d handed me a box that held a little stone wolf inside and promised himself to me.
I snarled, “Do it.”
His eyes flashed red.
His fangs descended.
I came messily between us, tilting my head back, exposing my throat.
He whispered my name, said my name, shouted my name as he came in me.
And then he bit. Right in the space between my neck and shoulder.
There was pain, bright and glassy.
Then it faded, replaced with something different.
Something so much larger.
My eyes snapped open as I gasped.
Because it was more than I ever thought it could be.
It was everything.
His teeth slipped from my skin.