by Allison Moon
“Yes, there is. I’m just learning how to be on my own. I couldn’t even leave the state to go to college. I grew up, like fifty miles from here, and this the farthest I’ve ever been away from home!”
“That’s what I’m saying. We can travel together!”
“I want to travel,” Lexie nodded. “I want to see amazing things and meet amazing people and all of that.”
“That’s what I’m offering you.”
“But I want to do it in my own time.”
“Come with me,” Archer said.
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
“I won’t.”
Archer’s face twisted with tears and regret. “I’m sorry I killed that man. I’m sorry Blythe is dead. I’m sorry I let your mother die.”
“This isn’t about that. I’m not mad at you anymore, for any of that.” Lexie shook her head, expecting tears but finding she had none left. It made her feel clean. “I spent my whole life thinking that my mother skipped out to follow some deadbeat across the country, lost in love. I grew up believing she was stupid and weak, and maybe crazy.”
Lexie gaped at the audacity of her mistake. “Tonight I learned that she was some shaman, some magical diplomat.” She chuckled, wiping the corners of her eyes with the back of her soot-freckled hand. “And yet I still feel like she was a complete fool.”
Lexie spat the last word as if she could expel the thought that way. “I’m not going to follow love like some hungry bloodhound. I don’t want to be anyone’s wife. Not now. I’m eighteen. I need to be eighteen for a little while.”
“I want to have a family with you.”
“I know.”
“I will be the best mate for you.”
“Probably.”
“I will love you and take care of you. Come with me.”
Lexie grimaced now, unable to sew up her heartbreak, plumbing its depths to sear its characteristics into her memory, recognizing the worth of this moment. She tried to apologize, to look into Archer’s eyes and tell her so, hoping that would make her understand. But Lexie wasn’t sorry.
“Blythe was right, Archer. This situation is out of control. Let me do this for you. Let me finish what you can’t. Blythe was a tyrant, but she was right that we can win. I think the Pack is doing it wrong. My dreams were my mother’s instructions. They weren’t just telling me how to recognize werewolves, they were telling me how to communicate with them. I believe that Renee will be a good leader, and I think I can help. The Pack needs me. “
“I need you.”
“No you don’t.”
“I want you.”
“I want you, too.”
“Please come with me.”
“No.”
Archer’s hand tightened on Lexie’s, squeezing as if to make their bodies merge. “I can change. I will change for you.”
“What for?”
“We could marry.”
“You’d become a man to marry me?”
Archer nodded, her desperation clawing at her features.
“That’s insane.”
“I could, I think. I would. For you.”
“Please don’t.”
A solemn silence filled the space between them.
“Where will you go?” Lexie asked.
“I don’t know. South. Maybe the desert for a while. I’m tired of trees.”
Lexie kissed Archer gently. They held one another for long and lonely minutes, Lexie breathing deep to take in as much of Archer as she could.
“I love you so much, Lexie.”
“I know,” Lexie said. “I love you, too.”
Chapter 27
The sun didn’t rise that morning. Instead, the whole sky grew brighter at once, like a lazy florescent bulb, slowly clicking itself into action. While her peers were waking with hangovers or pressing snooze on their alarms, Lexie tried once more to mourn her mother.
She was alone again within the familiar comfort of her truck, and though she was free to cry or scream, none of it came. She tried running through the meager catalogue of memories she had stored in her mind--her mother braiding her hair, singing her lullabies, zipping up her jacket. The banality of the memories evoked only cold remove. She wondered whether this nothingness she felt was reflective of her lack of feelings for her mother, or whether it boded a hard-heartedness she had never recognized in herself before.
Staring in the rearview mirror, Lexie smacked herself in the face, hard, to see what it felt like. The marks of her fingers swelled on her skin. It felt like nothing. She did it again, and then once more. Warmth came, then pain. Another hit, and she drew forth tears. It felt like a small accomplishment, seeing the tiny tear well at her right eye. It proved she was still part human, if nothing else.
Lexie drove away from Archer’s cabin, stopping at the River View Diner. She joined the flanneled workingmen enjoying their hearty breakfasts and black coffee. She squinted at everyone in the diner, trying to glean werewolves in people’s clothing. Instead, she just saw the tired and solemn faces of third shifters and day-workers. No one paid her any mind, and she remembered for a moment that to the residents of Milton, she was just another townie, no one special. She watched them eating alone, reading the newspaper, or just looking blankly ahead, chewing. Lexie practiced being like them, complete in her solitude. She could do that again, or at least she would like to try.
It was ages since she’d eaten, and she was forced to blot up a pool of her saliva that splashed the table as she read the menu.
The sausage and gravy settled heavy her belly as her truck rumbled to the Den. Frost fought at her windshield, and she pined for a sweatshirt for the first time in months. The Den was dark, but she could hear the crying and murmured conversation of the women from the driveway.
She turned the knob without knocking, knowing that they all heard her as she pulled up. She stepped gingerly through the space. The girls sprawled around the living room floor, not unlike Lexie’s first night in this room. Corwin dozed as Sharmalee lay on her chest, weeping quietly, clutching at the flesh of Corwin’s belly. Jenna scratched Mitch’s head as he leaned forward on the heels of his hands, his bleary, bloodshot eyes fixed on the square of carpet between his ankles. He looked as though he were running out of tears and relied on Jenna’s hands to squeeze out whatever was left. Hazel curled beneath a blanket in the corner, snoring.
Apart from them all stood Renee. She leaned over the kitchen sink beneath a solitary incandescent light, blotting at a wound on her left arm. It was deep and ragged, the gap showing all shades of red. She had dressed the wound once already, the old bandages lying in a rusty heap on the counter top. Her hair was charred, divots of it missing like a pillow short on stuffing. She turned as Lexie entered, digging her fingers into her hair in a vain attempt to fix it.
They looked at one another like survivors and wished for one blessed moment for the sisters to be out of ear-shot. Lexie felt like a traitor, and in Renee’s exhausted eyes, she could tell she felt the same way. In that gaze, Lexie felt as if she were pardoned by a crooked judge. She had given up on the lifelong embrace of her love to stand in a cold kitchen among sobbing women at seven a.m. on a Sunday.
Their shared silence was a show of solidarity, though Lexie’s nerves were frayed by the pool of women in the other room. She desperately needed to be alone, but her unawareness of the fact was magnified by her need to be scratched behind the ears and told that everything would be okay. So, she stood with her sisters to hide among the shell-shocked.
“Things will change,” Renee said, exhaustion stealing the elan from her voice. “Blythe was a hypocrite. I won’t make her mistakes.”
Lexie nodded with a half-hearted smile.
“Take my room tonight,” Renee said. “I’m sleeping in Blythe’s. Always wanted an eastern view.” She laughed without humor. Lexie didn’t join in. “Thank you,” Renee said. She didn’t smile, but Lexie felt the words’ truth. Lexie’s bleary eyes burned. She nodded.
/> In Renee’s room, Lexie squeezed her eyes shut as she stripped, trying to feel the fleece beneath her cheek, the wood grain ripple against her fingers. She thought of that night at the Full Moon Tribe, experiencing her last few moments of pure humanity, and the events that made up her life since. Frost clung to the window, not yet burned off by the morning. It looked like it might snow again. Somehow it had become winter and Lexie had missed it entirely.
The cotton sheets scratched her skin. She sighed, bitter at her discomfort. Stretching and squeezing, trying to make herself comfortable on this unforgiving bed, Lexie kicked off the sheets and buried her face in her hands. The cool, still air of the room crept over her skin, its chill easily mistaken for the crispness that filled her head each morning as she awoke in Archer’s arms.
Lexie feared she had made the wrong choice, even as she knew in her heart she hadn’t. In saying no, Lexie had sent a glorious love away. Yet, as she lay in the brightening room, she realized that in saying no to Archer, she was saying yes to something else. She struggled to hold that in her mind, to play with the possibilities of that yes.
As sleep came to steal her from the turmoil of her mind, her back shivered, craving the curve of her lover’s body to rescue her from the coming chill.
Acknowledgements
The existence of this book is due in part to the silent and bawdy support of my extraordinary community of friends, lovers, peers, family chosen and family borne.
Great thanks to those who read and commented of various drafts and sections of this book: Tatyana Brown, Julianne Carroll, Katie Lippa, and friend Jeff.
To the Goddess of Track Changes and my knight in shining corsetry, Alyc Helms.
To Jon Imparato, for your generosity of spirit and keen artistic mind. You have been like a father to me for years, and I love you.
To Matt Walker. If Jon is my spirit dad, you’re my wacky uncle. Thanks for lending me your eagle eyes.
To the extraordinary community of people at the LA Gay & Lesbian Center. Thank you for the work you do and the home you gave me while I nurtured my artistic self-expression.
To Caryn Solly, for your tough love and grounded enthusiasm.
To Professor David Higgins for your love, respect, and wisdom. You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar.
To JP for your boundless creativity and generosity. Thank you for creating such a gorgeous image to go with my story.
To Kara Wuest for sound judgment and guidance.
To Mom and Dad, who told me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up, and meant it.
To Adrienne and Ken, for putting my coming-out article on their fridge.
To the women of Camp Beaverton, who showed me what a righteous group of babes looks and feels like. You are my inspiration.
To the supportive community of online readers and fans, for cheering me on and sticking with me over years of development and postponements.
To the legion of couch and spare-room owners who happily housed and fed me when I decided that the thing to do in a down economy was quit my job and write a novel.
To all the acquaintances who said “Lesbian werewolves? I’ll totally read that.”
And beyond all, love and thanks to Reid Mihalko, my cheerleader, my pace car, my powerful exception, and my biggest champion.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Allison Moon is a founding member of Camp Beaverton for Wayward Girls. She grew up exploring the woods of Ohio, and now she's exploring a different kind of wildlife in the California Bay Area. In 2011, she was named a Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging LGBT Writers Fellow. Lunatic Fringe is her first novel. Learn more at http://www.TalesofthePack.com
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27