by Lauren Esker
But the moment passed as quickly as it had come, because Damon said, "Mom! Dad!" in a tone of utter shock.
The biggest member of the wolfpack shifted into the Wolfe clan alpha. Verne Wolfe was a big, powerful man, and even human non-shifters often seemed to sense something wild about him, something that made the tiny prey animal in their hindbrain want to squeak and run for cover. Julie's was certainly scrabbling with its little paws at the back of her mind right now. Verne's black hair hung down to his wide shoulders, and he glowered at the teens, Julie and Terry in particular, from under heavy brows.
The others were shifting now too, following suit. Damon's mother was there, and his sister Vanessa—tall and graceful and already a B-cup even at age 12—who scowled at Julie as if looks could kill. The older Wolfe cousins were there, as well as an uncle or two. All of them looked automatically to Verne for direction.
"And what exactly," Verne demanded, his deep voice rumbling in his chest, "do you children think you're doing with my son?"
Neither Julie nor Terry could move. Terry groped for his sister's hand and closed his fingers around her muddy ones. She clung back, willing to take whatever comfort she could.
But now Damon was the one to move, stepping between his father and the Capshaw siblings. He seemed tiny compared to the much bigger Wolfe, a slender sapling of a half-grown boy, but he was straight-backed and proud. "They're with me," he said, his clear voice carrying boldly into the forest. "They're under my protection."
He'd included Terry, Julie realized in surprise. Her brother's fingers tightened briefly on hers, an involuntary expression of shock.
"Ridiculous," his father snarled. "Foolish boy. That's not your decision to make." Julie wasn't sure if it was just her imagination that she could still sense the wolf lurking beneath his human skin.
"What are you going to do?" Damon said defiantly. "Hunt them? This is the twenty-first century, Dad. That's not how we do things anymore."
"Are you challenging me, boy?"
Damon straightened his back. "If that's what it takes."
For a moment Julie was intensely, heartbreakingly proud of him. Then her heart broke again for a different reason, when Verne Wolfe backhanded his son fiercely across the face. Damon was knocked flat to the ground.
Terry made a small, abortive move forward, then stopped himself. Julie was startled to see Vanessa, too, make a small lurch in place, as if to come to her brother's aid. It was her mother who forced her to stop, clutching her daughter's arm and holding her in place.
"Get up," Verne Wolfe snarled at his son.
Damon struggled to his knees. Blood trickled from one corner of his mouth. He swayed.
"Get up!" Verne snapped, but Damon only swayed in place. His eyes were half closed, while Verne's fierce pale-yellow eyes were fixed on him with bitter anger.
There was something inhuman going on between them, Julie realized—something only the wolf shifters could sense. Vanessa cringed, her face tinged with green; she looked as if she was suffering a migraine. The other members of the Wolfe family looked equally ill. The least affected seemed to be Verne's mate, but even she had a hand pressed against her temple.
Reeling, staggering, Damon somehow managed to climb to his feet. Julie's chest tightened once again with a fierce pride.
Then Verne punched his son in the face. This was a hard blow, the kind meant to take down an enemy. Damon folded up and fell.
Julie heard a cry of anger, and it took her a moment to understand that it had come from her own throat. She didn't remember lunging forward, but now Terry was holding her back. All she could see was Verne standing over his son's crumpled body.
Vanessa had fallen to her knees, with both hands over her mouth and tears in her eyes. Her mother was white-faced, but stood her ground, making no move to intervene.
Verne nudged his son with his foot. "Still want to get up? Want to challenge me?"
Damon groaned and started to push himself up, then flopped back down.
"Roll over," Verne Wolfe ordered him. "Show me your throat."
With obvious effort, Damon rolled onto his back and tilted his head back, exposing his human throat. Verne placed his booted foot on it. Julie could barely see for the tears blurring her eyes.
When Damon relaxed under his father's boot, going limp, Verne took his foot off the boy's neck. He then looked up at the horrified, wide-eyed Capshaw siblings.
"If I ever see any of you sheep children near my kids again, or on my land," Verne said, "I'll show you what we do to sheep around here." He nudged Damon with his boot. "Get up. You're not hurt that bad."
Damon struggled painfully to his feet. His head down, he didn't look at Julie. Vanessa rushed forward to put her arms around her brother.
"Take them up to the road," Verne told his wife, jerking his chin at the Capshaw children. He shifted back to his wolf shape and trotted off into the woods.
Numbly, Julie allowed herself and her brother to be gently ... well, there was no other word for it, shepherded back to the road. They waited in a huddle. The Wolfe cousins, back in wolf shape, paced around them, sharp teeth flashing. They seemed to be enjoying the Capshaw children's fear.
"It must seem terribly cruel to you," Mrs. Wolfe said gently. "But it's our way. It always has been."
"How awful for you," Terry said grimly. He had his arm around Julie. She felt stupid about it, but she couldn't stop sniffling.
A beat-up farm truck pulled off onto the shoulder. Verne Wolfe was driving, and, to Julie's happy surprise, Damon was in the passenger's seat. However, he didn't meet her eyes, just turned his face away. Bruises were starting to purple his jaw and cheekbone.
"Get in the back," Verne told the Capshaws.
Having little choice, they climbed into the truck bed. It was half full of lashed-down hay bales, so they sat uncomfortably on the prickly hay for the short ride to their farm. Verne Wolfe didn't say anything, merely pulled off beside their farm stand and waited until they jumped down.
Julie spun around, hoping to speak to Damon one last time, but the truck was already pulling away. She caught a brief glimpse of Damon's pale face looking back at her, and then he was gone.
"If you don't want Mom to know you were sneaking out, you better take a shower and get changed pronto, little sis," Terry told her.
Julie was too upset to do more than skim past his tacit willingness to keep her secret. "We have to do something to help."
"Like what?"
"Something! Anything. You saw what Mr. Wolfe did, and how everyone just stood there and let him do it. Did you see how scared Vanessa was? That man abuses his family, and because he's the pack alpha, he can get away with it. We have to call the police or something."
"And tell them what? That we were out in the woods, running around as animals, and Verne put the werewolf whammy on his son? They'll send you to a nuthouse."
"We can't just let him hit them and bully them!"
"That's what they're like, though! That's wolves for you. They're savages." Terry looked more sad than angry. "Every last one of them."
"They're not," Julie whispered, to herself as much as her brother. She couldn't stop hearing Mrs. Wolfe's voice: It must seem terribly cruel to you. But it's our way. She looked over her shoulder and tried not to think about her last sight of Damon's white face in his dad's truck. "Not all wolves."
Though she didn't know it at the time, that night would be the last time she ever spoke to Damon—until ten years had gone by.
NOW
1. Julie
It was raining, a gray miserable drizzle that turned the parking lot to gravel-strewn mud. With her hands full, Julie couldn't cover her head to keep the rain from turning her hair to a dark blond frizz. She ducked gratefully under the open-sided pavilion roof that covered the Johnson's Mill Farmer's Market, and, with relief, deposited her burden, a large plastic tote of potatoes, behind the counter of the Primrose Farms market stall.
"Oh, Julie, honey." Her mother turned
around from making change for a customer. "We're almost out of tomato plants. I think there's another flat of them in the van. Could you get them, please?"
"You couldn't have mentioned it before I went the first time?" Julie muttered under her breath, but quietly enough that her mother couldn't hear. When she was a kid, she'd loved helping out with the market stall.
But that was before she went off to college and discovered that a wider world existed than the small town of Johnson's Mill. Unfortunately, degrees in English literature weren't exactly a ticket to fame and fortune. So here she was, like the world's worst case of deja vu, back in the little town where she grew up. She'd been home exactly two days and was already hauling around muddy sacks of produce in the rain. Her future stretched before her, long and dreary and full of potatoes.
With a sigh, she scrubbed her dirty hands on her jeans and prepared to go out and get wet again.
Just then salvation arrived in the form of her brother, carrying a flat of tomato plants in one hand and another of baby cucumbers plants in the other. Rainwater was beaded on his short blond hair. It was still weird for Julie to look at Terry and see a grown man instead of a gawky kid carefully nurturing the handful of sparse hairs on his chin. He wasn't tall—all the Capshaws, male and female alike, tended to be short and stocky—but he'd filled out in the shoulders and was now sporting a small beard. He thought it made him look distinguished, no matter how many times his sisters told him it really made him look more like a hipster or a wannabe guitarist in a folk band.
"My hero," Julie told him. "You saved me a trip."
"Oops, my mistake. Next time I'll make sure to wait." He put down the trays of plants and then poked her in the side. "Gotta keep you in shape, after all. I see they've been feeding you well in the big city."
Julie swatted his hand. Four years away at college didn't make big brothers any less annoying.
"Children," their mother sighed. During a temporary lull in customers, she began setting out the plants to fill gaps in their display.
"Where's Ava?" Terry asked, perching on a stool behind the counter. "I thought today was her day off at the diner."
"She ran back to check on our farm stand," Julie said. "Mrs. Robson stopped by to tell us there's been some strong gusts of wind out our way, and you know how our awning likes to come down when it gets stormy."
Their mother looked up from arranging the display. "Since you're both here now, any volunteers for a coffee run?"
Julie's hand shot up. "Ooh, me, me!" She hadn't had a chance to look around the market yet, and she was eager to see how many of the familiar family businesses were still here.
Terry snorted. "Trying to avoid the work?"
"Hey, kiddo, she's been here since dawn, helping me set up," their mother informed him. "And where were you, exactly?"
"Working my morning shift at Johnson's Mill Autobody," Terry said. "Like every week."
Julie left them to their friendly mother-son banter and slipped out of the booth. No one seemed to notice her go. It was as if they'd moved on without her, the seams of the family knitting up in her absence. She told herself she'd only been back for two days. It wouldn't always feel like this, the uncomfortable feeling of trying to squeeze back into her old life as if it was a pair of jeans she'd outgrown.
The farmer's market, at least, was about like she remembered. It was still held every Wednesday and Saturday at the big wooden pavilion next to the fairgrounds. The main difference was that it had grown since she was a kid. There had always been a few tents outside the main pavilion to contain the overflow businesses, but now they spilled into the fairgrounds like a bunch of white mushrooms. On a damp, windy day like today, Julie felt sorry for those latecomers. She could see a couple of them out there now, running around trying to fasten down flapping tent canvases or stop leaks. And, of course, most of the customers were in the main pavilion, out of the rain.
Julie wandered the aisles of the pavilion. There were some new, unfamiliar businesses, but most of the families who had market stalls during her childhood were still there. She waved to the Archers and the Robsons and the Mayfields—all longtime neighbors—and blew a kiss to Mindy Nguyen, one of her best friends from high school, who was working the front counter at her family's pho booth. Tiny, ancient Agnes Bradley, from one of the valley's other long-time sheep-shifter families, was still knitting busily as always behind her display of handmade sweaters, and old Red Corrigan, just a little more grizzled and bald, still had his craft stall where he sold kitchen knives made from antique sawblades.
It shouldn't have surprised her, then, to come around a corner and find herself facing the big wolf's-head sign of Howling Wolfe Farms. It certainly shouldn't have felt like a shock that raced through her blood and struck lightning off a place deep inside her.
Of course the Wolfe family was still here. It wasn't like they'd moved away. And they'd had this spot at the market ever since Julie could remember.
The young woman running the stall, with her dark hair and high cheekbones, must be Vanessa. She had her hair cut in a stylish bob now, and moved with a brisk grace that reminded Julie sharply and painfully of Damon.
However, her head was down as she worked at making change for customers. Julie thought she looked sad.
Vanessa looked up and noticed Julie watching her. She slapped on a vacantly cheerful smile that Julie, after years of working her own family's market booth, was all too familiar with—Quick, there's a customer, now smile!
"Can I help you, miss?" Vanessa asked.
She doesn't recognize me. Have I really changed that much? "I, uh," Julie stammered, and that was enough time for Vanessa's pretty face to lose its smile and start to frown. At first the frown was puzzled, and then her eyes widened.
"You're one of those Capshaw girls," she said. "Which one? Not Ava, she's the skinny one—you're Julie, right?" Now the frown was a scowl. "Don't think I've forgotten how you seduced my brother all those years ago."
Julie stared, open-mouthed. "I was twelve!" she managed to gasp at last, indignant. "We were kids. There was no seducing at all. We were just playing together!"
And it was a decade ago, she wanted to add. How can you still be holding a grudge about it? But grudge-holding was the main thing the Wolfe and Capshaw families were good at. Julie's Uncle Aaron still got red-faced, hopping mad if anyone made the mistake of bringing up that one time back in the 1970s when Damon and Vanessa's grandfather rear-ended him in a rainstorm.
Vanessa was still glaring at her like Julie had put a toad in her locker (okay, yes, she actually did that, but it was second grade!). Now other people were starting to stare, too. Julie's cheeks flamed.
"I don't want a fight," she said, holding up her hands and backing away.
"Yeah?" Vanessa retorted. "Like your uncle didn't want a fight when he slammed on his brakes and made my grandfather run into his car on purpose? Grandpa could have been killed!"
"That was not our fault!" Julie shot back. "Your grandfather is the one who drives like a maniac! And besides, it was in 1973! Can't anyone ever get over anything in this town?"
Vanessa's eyes were starting to gleam in a wolfish way. No way she'd get mad enough to shift in a public place full of non-shifters, but instinct took over and Julie's slow retreat turned into a hasty backward scramble. She almost knocked over a rack full of organic baked goods, and—just to make everything perfect—ran full tilt into somebody.
Firm hands caught her shoulders, stopping her from falling. "You okay?" a warm voice asked.
Julie looked up—straight into the hazel eyes of Damon Wolfe.
A very grown-up Damon Wolfe.
There was no doubt it was him. But wow, he had grown up. And ... out. His shoulders had broadened, straining against the black leather motorcycle jacket he was wearing. And, like most of the rest of his family, he'd turned out to be tall. He had always been taller than Julie, even when they were kids, but now he towered over her.
Still, the mop of dark ha
ir was the same, and she'd know those laughing eyes and devilish grin anywhere—even if there was a shadowed edge to it now, as if he'd been places and done things that had left a lingering sadness.
He'd evidently just come in from outside. Water droplets frosted his hair and glistened on his long eyelashes.
Julie couldn't stop staring at him.
His hands still rested on her upper arms, warm even through her long-sleeved sweater. And his eyes had gone wide with recognition. "Julie Capshaw," he said, and she nodded dumbly. His quicksilver grin flashed, there and gone. "I thought you left town."
A weird feeling clutched at her insides. She had no idea he'd kept tabs on her enough to know that. "I, uh—came back?" Then she winced. What a stupid thing to say.
But something about Damon—his nearness, his masculine smell, his strong hands gripping her shoulders—had completely turned her head inside out. She couldn't think straight. All she could think about was him.
"I'm glad you came back," he said. His deep voice seemed to wrap around her heart, warming a part of her that had been cold for so long she'd stopped noticing it.
But—he's a Wolfe! said an inner voice that sounded suspiciously like her father's. As it turned out, she and Terry had been unable to keep their midnight escapade from their parents. The whole truth of Julie's clandestine friendship with the Wolfe boy had come out, and she was pretty sure that was why her parents had kept a close eye on her throughout high school. They'd watched her like a hawk. Ava certainly hadn't had that much scrutiny. If they saw her now—
And then she thought, Screw it. As kids, their parents could forbid them to see each other, but now they were both adults. And this stupid family feud would never be over unless someone was willing to make the first move.
"I was just going to—to get a cup of coffee. Do you want to join me?" she asked, her heart beating fast.
Damon looked surprised. "I'm sorry. I have to be somewhere."
"Oh. Of course." She tried not to be crestfallen. It had been ten years—ten years of listening to his family badmouth hers. She'd been stupid to think they could pick back up where they'd left off.