“They ever get smarter?”
Tommie laughed. “Yes, they did.” She lifted one shoulder. “Or I did.”
“I’ll bet they’re proud of you.”
“They were still worried about me. I went from wild child to hermit. If it wasn’t for work, I never left the house. But yes, they were proud.”
“Were?”
Tommie took a deep breath and nodded. “They were killed in a car accident almost a year ago.”
“I’m sorry for your troubles,” Cora said, “But you’re not alone anymore. You have family. You have pack or as close as we can come to giving you one. Once you’ve got pack, it doesn’t matter where you are, you always have a place to come home.”
“And where will you come home to, Cora? Do you want to find another pack?”
The old woman shook her head. “Wanting and getting are two different things. Take a good look at us, Tommie.” She poked her chin out at the group moving about the campsite. “You don’t know much about wolvers, but you know people. Who in hell’s gonna take in the likes of us. Who’s going to want half of nothing? We’ve got no talents ‘cept thieving, living off the land, and making do with next to nothing. This is what we’ve got. Each other.”
Tommie set aside her second shirt and stopped the older woman’s hand from its insistent and increasingly forceful stitching. “You’re not half of nothing to me,” she said, giving Cora’s hand a squeeze. “You’re the wolvers who took me in when I had nowhere to go. You’re the ones who are going to teach me about what I am and what I need to know. I only hope I can learn and it’s not too late.”
“Don’t you worry about it being too late. You hear us talk about an Alpha’s Mate? Well here’s your first lesson. Most Mates are human. They don’t know anything about us when they come, but they all learn. If they can, you can. Don’t know if we’re the best choice to teach you that, but we’ll do our best. You were the only one who listened when I tried to get help for Samuel. You paid a price for that and still went back and got him out. I don’t know what I’d do without that old man. I owe you.”
The wolver Cora couldn’t live without stopped on his way by. “What are you two gossiping about over here?”
“Never you mind, you old busybody? Ain’t you got nothing better to do than to horn in on other people’s tête-à-têtes?”
“Hmph. Don’t know what a tête-à-tête is, you old harpy, but if you’re in on it, you can bet it ain’t good. Bull and Boris are going into town to pick up some supplies. You need anything?”
“Yes!” Tommie folded the shirt and handed it to Cora. “I’ll go with them.”
“No.” Bull walked up behind them. “You’ll make a list and don’t make it too big.”
“I don’t need a list,” she argued. “Everything I need is at home.”
“We’ve been over this, Tommie. I said no.”
“We got in and out of the Gantnor Clinic. Surely we can get in and out of a little tiny house without being seen.”
“I said no and I mean it. I don’t want you anywhere near that place until I see what’s going on. You’re staying here.”
“You can’t tell me what to do, Bull Bulworth,” she snapped. “I’m not a prisoner.” Or was she? “Or am I?” she asked, daring him to say it.
“Let’s call it protective custody. Keep an eye on her, Cora.”
“I think I’m beginning to hate you, Bull.”
“You’ll get over it.”
Chapter 17
Made just the way she liked it with plenty of beef and fewer vegetables, Tommie should have enjoyed the tasty stew Boris left them for lunch. She didn’t enjoy it. She hardly tasted it, but that didn’t stop her from filling her bowl a second time.
She was angry with Bull for leaving her behind and for saying she was essentially a prisoner. She was angry with herself for missing him. It was only a few hours, but it felt like days.
“Good riddance,” she said to the trees beyond the school bus. “He can go to hell for all I care. I’ve never needed a man before and I don’t need one now.”
Her wolf made a sound that was clearly a canine laugh.
“You have your nerve laughing at me, you stupid wolf. You’re just as much a prisoner as I am.”
But her wolf didn’t see it that way. Just a few moments before, the animal was pacing back and forth inside her mind, restless and whining, and pawing at some invisible barrier. It was the same sensation Tommie’d felt so often as a teenager. At least now she knew what it was. Her wolf wanted out. Only this time, it wasn’t freedom the she-wolf wanted, it was Bull.
Now that she recognized the animal for what it was, Tommie felt as if a curtain had been parted and she could finally see what was happening on stage. The disturbances in her mind were the movements of her wolf pacing, prancing, and leaping, or yawning with boredom as it was doing now. Wolves didn’t have the capacity for introspection. The she-wolf needed no explanations for what she wanted. All she cared about was sleeping, running, eating, and Bull.
It had to stop. Tommie was not some lovesick teenager writing her boyfriend’s name in balloon letters on the cover of her notebook. She was a grown and fully independent woman who was not going to stand around and pine over his absence. He was a man of his word and he was coming back. And when he got back, she was going to give him a piece of her mind. This nonsense had to stop.
Her bowl was empty again and she absent-mindedly refilled it. Samuel’s voice interrupted the movement of her spoon to her mouth.
“You always eat like that?”
Tommie gave a guilty shrug and winced. “Pretty much. My father always said I was cheaper to house and clothe than to feed. Sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for,” the older man laughed, “and it’s good to see you ain’t shy about it. Knew a wolver once who was built just like you. He could out eat the lot of us. She remind you of anyone, Mama?” he asked his mate.
“I’ve thought it more than once. He had the same coloring as you,” she said to Tommie, “but his hair was darker, black as sin.” She winked and shimmied her shoulders. “The good kind of sin, if you get my drift.”
“Woman, you’re too old to be havin’ such thoughts.”
Cora laughed at the thunderous look on Samuel’s face. “You’re never too old to have such thoughts, just too old to act on some of ‘em,” she said and laughed harder when the stormy look grew. “And you can just put that look back in your pocket where it belongs, old man. My eyes might stray, but I’ve always known where my heart calls home and you know it. I didn’t hear you complaining about my thoughts last night, did I?” she muttered as an afterthought.
“The Mate used to say our Alpha had a hollow leg,” she went on without missing a beat, “It took that much to fill him up.”
“That was the Alpha we had a long time ago,” Samuel explained. “Tall, rangy fella, looked like he was built with them cables they hang bridges from.” He laughed and patted his pot belly. “Now me, I wear suspenders because my belly pushes my trousers down. The Alpha, Emanuel was his name, he wore ‘em because he had no butt or hips to hold his up. I think about him a lot. He was young, but he had a good head on his shoulders. He had plans to take us places.”
“What happened to him?” Tommie asked.
It was Cora who answered. “He got word of another small pack up north, much like ours, needin’ new blood and numbers, and he headed up there to see about merging the two packs into one. Took his family with him. Said it’d be like a vacation for the Mate, not havin’ to deal with the likes of us.”
By the way the older woman smiled, Tommie knew the long-ago Alpha’s remark wasn’t meant as a criticism. Cora stared into the fire they’d lit to keep away the autumn chill, seeing memories in the flames, and Tommie knew, too, that the story didn’t end well.
“He never came back, did he?”
“No, he didn’t. We don’t think he ever arrived. The Second sent men up there to look, but they never found hide nor hair of
him, nor the pack, neither. All they found were some abandoned houses that hadn’t been lived in for quite some time. No sign of wolvers, at least none they could talk to. It was like one of them ghost stories. All those houses had clothes in the closets and food in the cupboards. It was like they just vanished.”
“Not all of ‘em. A few had gone wild, lost touch with their human side,” Samuel explained. “You can recognize ‘em, but you can’t get near ‘em. They’re afraid of us, as wolf or man, same as they are of full human. Once they go over like that, they don’t ever come back. They can’t.”
A sharp cry of pain had them all turning to see Molly, her knuckle between her teeth in a face stricken with anguish. She turned and ran off into the woods.
“Damn fool! Now look what you’ve done.” Cora started to rise, but Tommie stopped her with her hand.
“I’ll go,” Tommie offered, “You’ve done enough today and sometimes it’s easier to cry on a stranger’s shoulder. She knows you love her and when she hurts, it hurts you. I’ll go talk to her.”
She had to go quite a ways into the woods before she found Molly crumpled in a heap beneath the branches of a towering pine, her face buried in her hands. Tommie sank down beside the sobbing woman and put a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I don’t know what else to say.” She knew how she felt with Bull gone for a few hours. Eli had been gone for months and now it looked like he wasn’t ever coming back.
“Say what the others do,” the young woman sniffed. “Say I have to accept it. Say I’m young and have to move on. Say I have to think of Sammy.” She turned to Tommie, her face ravaged with tears. “And then you tell me how I’m supposed to do that when my true mate is out there and still alive, because the others don’t seem to be able to. Tell me what I’m supposed to tell our son about why his daddy left him to run wild. Tell me how I’m supposed to give up hope.”
Tommie could almost taste the bitterness in the woman’s voice and her heart ached with it. Her hand slid over Molly’s back and rested on her other shoulder.
“I can’t say or tell you most of those things because I’m new at being a wolver and I don’t know enough to make those calls. But you don’t have to know anything about wolvers to know that you do have to be brave for Sammy’s sake. And I might be able to help with what to tell him.”
Tommie knew nothing about wolvers who went feral, but she did know something about the women and children men left to follow drugs and alcohol.
“It doesn’t matter what I say. He’s going to think his father chose running wild over his cub.” In spite of her disbelief, Molly relaxed within Tommie’s light embrace as if the contact gave her comfort. “He’s just turned four. He won’t understand.”
“You believe that as man or wolf, Eli loves his cub, don’t you?”
“I believe it because it’s true,” Molly said defensively. “I know it.” She began to pull away, but Tommie pulled her back.
“Then that’s what you’ll tell your son, your pup. You’ll also tell him that even though his father can’t be with him, you are, and you’re not going anywhere, because you aren’t.”
“Macey thinks it’s my fault,” Molly whispered. “She thinks I’m the one who talked her daddy into leaving the pack.”
“And if you hadn’t done that, Eli wouldn’t have been caught and everything would have been fine,” Tommie concluded. “You believe that, too,” she added because she sensed that it was true and when Molly looked at her with pain filled eyes, Tommie was sure of it. “Would things have been better if you’d stayed?”
Molly shook her head. “No. One way, I lose Eli, the other I lose Macey. Either way, I lose.”
She repeated the story, touching on a few more details than Cora. Tommie let the woman talk, but she didn’t need the repetition. She’d heard the story before, too many times to count; how the girls that came before didn’t matter, how this time it was real, how she was the one above all others...until the next girl came along. And that’s when Tommie usually heard the story, while the young woman was sitting in the chair on the other side of her desk, typically with a baby on her lap.
“So which sacrifice would Eli rather have you make, him or his daughter?”
“Eli would die for Macey.”
“Then there’s your answer. It doesn’t matter whose idea it was. You both agreed that this was best for Macey. Mission accomplished. What happened to Eli is not your fault. Macey probably won’t see it that way now, but give her time. As for what happened to Eli, Macey is an adult,” she began.
“But she isn’t, not really,” the girl’s mother objected.
Tommie smiled sadly. “I know that and you know that, but Macey doesn’t. Whether she’s gone over the moon or not, she sees herself as an adult and you need to talk to her like one. She may not want to listen, but she needs to hear the truth.
“She’s old enough to understand. You tell her that Eli has a sickness brought on by the choices he’s made. Don’t let your wolf rule your human. That’s Primal Law, right? Eli broke the Law and now he’s paying the price by losing what he loved most.”
“He didn’t choose to be locked in that cage,” Molly said angrily.
“No, he didn’t, but you said yourself that he didn’t always come home after the full moon. And yes, the Alpha could have done something about it and that’s on him, but the choice was Eli’s. Macey needs to know that because as painful as it is, it’s the truth and somewhere inside, she probably knows it. If you lie, if you try to candy coat it, she’ll know, and she’ll never trust another word you say.”
Molly sniffed and nodded. “So you’re asking me to give up hope.”
“Oh, no, definitely not. I’d be the last one to tell you to give up hope. Look at me. I hoped for years that I would find a cure for my craziness.”
“Have you found it yet?” Molly asked innocently.
Tommie choked on a laugh. “Yes, I replaced it with another form of insanity and passed the old one on to Bull.”
Molly’s faint smile lingered. “You love him, don’t you? I can see it in your eyes.”
There was no use denying it, so Tommie didn’t try. Her heart and body certainly said she did, but it was way too soon to know if it was real. What she did know was that her wolf was happier when Bull was around and restless when he was gone. What she didn’t know was how much she should listen to what the animal had to say. Just how far did ‘Don’t let your wolf rule your human’ go? And how was she supposed to trust this creature that she’d essentially just met?
“So? How was the sex?”
Good God! These wolvers didn’t beat around the bush, did they? Well, in for a penny, in for a pound as her mother always said. Trust couldn’t be built on lies and Molly had probably heard it from Cora anyway.
“I felt like I was on my way to heaven.”
That earned her another faint smile. “And how did your wolf feel about that?”
“I think I rode there on her back.”
Molly’s smile was gone. “Then you know how it is for Eli and me. There is no moving on for me. Eli’s my true mate. There is no future for me without him and it doesn’t matter if he’s man or wolf. All I’ve got is the hope that his heart remembers where its home is and he finds his way back to me.”
The woman spoke the truth. Her wolf saw it and Tommie could feel it in her heart.
“You know Eli’s heart better than anyone on earth, so if you believe it, I’ll try to believe it, too.” She stood and held out her hand to Molly. “Now come on, let’s get back to the group, the pack,” she laughed, “before they send out a search party.”
Molly took her hand and stood, giving her eyes one last swipe with her sleeve. “I’m glad you’re here. You make me think our luck might be changing.”
Tommie laughed. “Don’t count on me for luck. How does that saying go? If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.”
Molly’s head rose up and she cocked he
r head to the side, listening. “They’re here,” she said and by the way she said it, Tommie knew it wasn’t good. “I hope they know what they’re doing. Come on. Let’s go.”
Then she heard it, too. A sharp whistle sounded through the trees
“What is it?” she started to ask, but Molly had already begun to run in the direction of the camp.
Chapter 18
Molly wasn’t the only one alerted by the sound. By the time they got back to the cluster of tents, half the camp’s occupants had disappeared. The pups were missing and so were most of the men. A boy of twelve or thirteen stood by the tall woodpile with an armload of evenly cut logs. He made no move to put them down. Another boy hurried in with another load of wood, a messy tangle of long branches, but instead of carrying it to the woodpile, he took his load behind the bus.
“Macey,” Molly said behind Tommie’s shoulder and Tommie saw Samuel nod.
Samuel was sitting in his lawn chair by the front of the bus. Cora and another woman were behind the table where Boris laid out their meals. There was meat and bread on the table even though lunch was over and it was too early for supper. Another woman, laundry basket filled with dirty sheets and blankets was halfway out of Molly’s tent door. What was she doing in Molly’s tent and why was she frozen in place like the boys?
Tommie had attended a fundraiser once where volunteers had created tableaus depicting famous paintings using real people as the painted subjects. What she saw now reminded her of that fundraiser. The camp had become an eerie picture frozen in time. Something was going on here that she didn’t understand, but she could feel the vibrations of fear coursing through the women. Where were the men?
“You should be with Sarah, not me. Too late now.”
Tommie felt Molly’s tension as she tugged the back of her borrowed coat and Tommie stepped back, watching and waiting with the rest, not understanding what was going on.
Two SUV’s, moving faster than they should, pulled in. Men got out. The camp wolvers had already begun to move. It was as if the SUV’s arrival had triggered a switch. Suddenly, the camp looked as it should, though something still felt very wrong.
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