by Holley Trent
“You should celebrate that,” Willa whispered.
But how could I?
“Shit.” Marco fondled his earring and leaned in the doorway, giving his head a doleful shake. “I wish some lady would stalk me to the ends of the Earth and try to make me act right.”
Diana wanted to tell him that it was easy for him to say that when he wasn’t the “lesser” one in the relationship, but she couldn’t speak. Blue still had the equivalent of a magical stranglehold on her.
“I shouldn’t even have to tell you this,” Blue said. “You’re being unbelievably ridiculous right now, but obviously you need to hear it, so here you go. You concern yourself too much with a person’s ability to regurgitate the things he’s learned and memorized. Big deal. It’s a specific skill set that happens to help me in certain ways, and obviously also Lanie. There’s an entirely different kind of intelligence that you have that we just don’t talk about because we don’t understand it, and maybe it scares us a little. Your instincts are unimpeachable.” He scoffed. “Except in circumstances concerning yourself. You can’t seem to sort things into the proper boxes where your own problems are concerned, but that’s okay. We can do that for you, hmm?” He looked to Willa.
“Of course,” she said immediately and gave Diana another squeeze.
“Never let anyone tell you that having sense isn’t the same thing as being smart,” Blue said. “If I’d listened when certain people told me that I was wasting my time getting educated—”
“Like our father,” Diana interjected, forcing out the words because she was finally able to speak again. “But he told me I didn’t have any sense.”
And she realized then that their father had told each of them different things. He’d told Blue that he was weak for needing his books. He’d told Diana that she was never going to develop a stunning intellect, so she’d better find a man to do her thinking for her.
Blue hadn’t fallen for it.
Diana had.
She’d fallen for the lie and taken it to heart and convinced herself that she’d never be good for anything except following someone else’s orders.
That was what her father had wanted. One more follower in a Coyote pack of so many.
Diana hung her head again. Not because she felt so small, but because she’d believed the lies for so long, and she’d used them to insulate her from the people in her life who wanted her to shine.
Blue stood, pulling his energy away from her. He went to the door and chatted quietly with the Coyotes.
Willa stayed holding her, resting her head atop Diana’s shoulder. “Digest it,” she whispered. “Chew it up, swallow it, and be done with it. You deserve better than this. You know that, don’t you?”
Diana was afraid to nod. She was afraid lightning would strike her down for daring to be so bold, but she managed to make the motion, anyway. And then she nodded harder, forcing herself to accept her due.
Lanie was hers, and had been hers from the day they’d met. Diana may have left, but Lanie kept pursuing because she’d apparently known what Diana hadn’t been able to accept.
There was no one else. They’d been carved to fit together, to balance each other. They stood straighter when they weren’t apart.
“When’s she coming back?” Diana asked in a tired voice, sniffling.
Blue unmuted his phone and asked Lanie that very question. Covering the mouthpiece, he told her, “Back in the U.S. the morning of the twenty-fourth.”
“Okay.” Diana stood, fixed herself up the best she could, and dried her eyes on the back of her hand.
She’d have herself together by then, some way, somehow.
She nudged the Coyotes down the walkway and toward the pickup truck they’d arrived in. “Keep your mouth shut about this,” Diana snarled.
“Yikes. Hey, I don’t know nothing about nothing,” Dirk said.
“Me neither,” Marco said.
“Great.” She cleared her throat and tried to put away her scary dominant Coyote voice. “So! If you’ll bear with me for a few more hours, I’ll make the trouble worth your while. I’ve got to get some stuff out of storage.”
“For you, Deedee?” Marco asked. “Anything. As long as you’re payin’.”
She rolled her eyes, but laughed. “Yeah, I’m paying.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Diana wanted to be waiting for Lanie at the airport when she flew back into Albuquerque. She’d never done that before. She’d always taken for granted that Lanie would find her if she wanted her, but she couldn’t keep using that tactic and expecting things to be different.
And she did want things to be different. She understood, finally, that the puzzle pieces connecting them had been put down in the right sequence all along. She’d been the one blowing them away from each other. She’d let fear ruin her, and she wasn’t going to do that anymore.
Diana stood in baggage claim near the stream of passengers arriving from inbound flights, hoping she’d chosen the right place. After forty minutes, she began to worry that she hadn’t. She looked down at the memo saved in her phone and verified the flight number and time. The sign did say international arrivals.
Finally, Lanie came through the corridor, chatting amiably with a woman holding a briefcase and not looking her way.
Diana called out to her. Blurted, really, not knowing what else to do.
Lanie stopped. Looked. Recognition dawned on her face followed quickly by a beaming smile. She turned to her companion. Evidently, she gave her regards because the lady went her separate way.
Lanie hurried around the barrier, reaching for Diana before Diana could even think to thrust the bouquet she’d been holding at her.
A dozen roses crushed between them as Diana added her own force to the embrace. With an arm wrapped around Lanie and her face buried in her flight-mussed hair, they rocked.
Lanie whispered, “What are you doing here?”
“I figured I shouldn’t make you do all the chasing. I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah?”
Diana sniffled. She wasn’t going to cry. She’d committed herself to that goal as soon as she’d climbed into her SUV that morning and headed east. She’d said she wasn’t going to cry, and that she wouldn’t make any more excuses for why they couldn’t be together.
“Do you have a bag?” she asked weakly, and they moved out of the way of the foot traffic.
Cringing, Lanie did her best to fluff up the heads of the roses. “Yeah, it should be bobbing around the conveyor now. I was all the way at the back of the plane. Took forever for me to get off.”
Diana grabbed her free hand and searched for the appropriate carousel. Finding it, she edged Lanie up and swiped her bag as it bobbed toward them.
“Surprised to see you,” Lanie said as they made the trek toward Diana’s vehicle. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m thrilled to see you. I just wouldn’t have expected you to come.”
“I’m trying to do better.”
“And…why’s that?” Lanie asked, slowly. Warily.
Diana supposed she deserved that.
Diana didn’t say anything as they approached her SUV and loaded up. She didn’t say much of anything until they were nearing Maria and the beast part of her had calmed down enough for her to put her words in a sensible order.
“I made a lot of mistakes. I want to fix them, if you’ll let me. If you can…stand me.”
“Standing you has never been a burden, Diana. You know that.”
“Maybe not, but I worry that one day, you’ll change your mind, and I’ll be left on my own like my father told me I’d be. The fear of that—well, you don’t know how much it just fucking cripples me. It’s not an easy thing for a shifter to find a mate that our animal halves agree that we should pursue, and even if our drive to keep her is high, the fear of not being enough still rears its ugly head.”
“Of course you’re enough,” Lanie said, grabbing her right hand. “Why the hell did he tell you otherwise?”
&nb
sp; Diana didn’t say anything. She didn’t have the words to explain Randall Shapely’s motivations or how, as fathers went, he was one of the worst sorts. It didn’t matter, anyway. Lanie was smart. Eventually, she’d figure things out on her own.
“You’re everything I needed,” Diana said, “and I never even knew I wanted. I thought it would be easier to give you up on my own than to have you stay for years, and then leave after I’ve become too dependent.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I was trying to show you that. You wouldn’t let me.”
“Put yourself in my shoes. No. Actually, don’t. Never do that. Just…keep being you, and I’ll try to accept that you see something in me worth having.”
“Oh, God.” Lanie rolled her eyes.
She didn’t say anything else until Diana had parked behind her building and gathered her things from the trunk.
“Wow. They hung more lights.” Lanie’s assessing, intelligent glaze flitted to each corner of the courtyard and the entrances of the alleyways. “It’s festive, huh?”
“Yeah, it is.” Diana hooked her arm around Lanie’s and guided her to the door of her unit. She suspected her place was a mess, but there wasn’t anything to be done about that. Lanie would understand.
She hoped.
She unlocked the street level door.
Lanie bounded up the steps and through the top door that had been left open.
She stopped on the mat, just like Diana expected. “Christ, what happened? There…seems to have been a struggle.”
Diana joined her at the top and pushed Lanie’s suitcase out of the way. “Yeah, it’s just temporary. I pulled a few things out of storage to make myself a little more comfortable while I renovate, and I haven’t had a chance to put things in place yet.
Lanie turned to her with one eyebrow raised high. “Renovate?”
Diana shrugged. “Why not? It’s a good location. All the Coyote kids know where I am and certainly aren’t shy about coming up to ask for snacks. It’s within walking distance of everything that matters, and…it has good water pressure.” She shifted her weight nervously. “I thought…maybe you could help me with the layout. Blue’s going to help me buy the whole building outright, which means I’ll become a landlord to those assholes downstairs, and—”
“Yes.” Lanie whipped around to look at her and repeated that gorgeous word. “Yes.”
Diana blinked at her, uncertain.
“Ask me, Diana. Ask me whatever it is you’re holding back.”
Diana shoved her hands into the pockets of her sweatpants and shifted her weight again. She didn’t bother asking how Lanie always knew there was something left unsaid. Of course Lanie would know. She was one of the very few people on the planet who was equipped to know.
“Maybe it’s a…pipe dream,” Diana started. “But I thought maybe we could try living together again. Just sometimes, maybe. I know that Maria is kind of in the middle of nowhere, and—”
“Sweetheart, I can work from anywhere.” Lanie moved against her, gripping Diana’s wrists, freeing her hands from her pockets. Twining Diana’s fingers with her own. “What else do you want to tell me, Diana?”
“That…I want you here, and that you terrify me because you’re so fucking brilliant, and I’m a wreck.”
“It’s sweet that you overlook all my flaws.”
“You don’t have any.”
Lanie laughed, loud and long, doubling over at the waist, face going red from the exertion. Diana was finding it difficult not to take the response personally until Lanie straightened up and grabbed both of her hands. “That is exactly why I love you. You want me anyway, even as I am.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“Lots of people.”
“They don’t matter. You’re mine.”
Lanie grinned. “Am I?”
“Yes. And I’m not going to punish myself anymore. I’m going to let myself believe that you’re mine for a reason, and I’m going to be good to you. The best to you.”
“That was all I ever asked for, Diana.”
“I know. I wasted our time, but I’m going to make up for it.”
Lanie’s brows snapped together. “Oh?”
Diana shifted her weight. She knew Lanie wasn’t going to refuse her, but getting the words out was still difficult. Diana was truly putting herself out on a ledge. “We…could get married after the full moon?” She could hear the pounding of her heart in her ears and she stared at the floor because the floor couldn’t judge her for being so emotionally disordered and messy. She was afraid to see doubt on Lanie’s face when for so long, there’d been conviction. “I kind of have my hands tied before then, you see.”
“Yes.”
Diana looked up again.
Lanie’s smile was serene.
Smug, even.
“Yes?” Diana confirmed in a weak warble.
“Of course,” Lanie said emphatically, and then repeated in a tender whisper, “Yes.”
Oh.
The wild beast inside of Diana pawed at the seams of her consciousness and seemed to dance in told-you-so triumph. The human side of her couldn’t help but smile and to breathe. Finally, deeply breathe.
“Anything I can do to help?” Lanie pulled Diana’s head down so they were forehead-to-forehead, lips-to-lips. “With your full moon problem, I mean.”
“You’re always trying to troubleshoot my problems.”
“Just being a team player. Obviously, I’m going to do whatever I can to get you to come home to me sooner.”
“I see.”
She liked the idea of Lanie being at home—in her kitchen, on her sofa, in her bed—very much.
“I’m sure I could think of something you can do,” Diana whispered. She pressed her forehead against Lanie’s and closed her eyes. They rocked a few gentle beats in time to the holiday music in the town square she hadn’t even been paying attention to before.
She let herself be soothed by the woman standing on her welcome mat. More than that, she allowed the doubts to be chased away by her triumphant inner coyote that had been trying to get her to be brave all along.
Diana had been brave about every other thing in her life, but Lanie had been her biggest obstacle. The heart was such a delicate thing. It didn’t matter if the person who owned it had sharp teeth and claws on occasion.
“Tell me what to do,” Diana whispered to her. “Just tell me what to do.”
“Love me as much as I love you. That’d be a proper start. We’ll figure out the rest one day at a time. Between the two of us, that should be a piece of cake. Okay?”
Diana nodded. Agreeing to that was the easiest decision she’d ever made.
EPILOGUE
The following February
Diana stood, half-naked and looking bored as a teenager, atop the big rock at the Coyote pack’s running grounds. “All right, you reprobates,” she shouted out. “Since Blue’s on paternity leave, Lance is traveling, and Kenny’s otherwise occupied, I’m the bitch in charge for the time being.”
Lanie turned her head slightly and snickered.
Barbie Pratt, at her side, blinked curiously at her.
“Ignore me,” Lanie said, still trying to choke back laughter. The last thing she needed was for that child to be further agitated. Barbie still wasn’t used to running with the pack on full moon nights. She was in a sea of adults and nervous as all get-out.
Lanie couldn’t help but be amused by the collective Coyote fear of Diana. She might never understand why so many of the men thought she was frightening.
“You know the rules,” Diana called out. “Be back here in your human skins by dawn. If any of you think you’ll be unable to get into work tomorrow, call in now. Be responsible.”
A few pack members broke off and shambled toward their vehicles.
Diana looked up at the moon. “And finally, stay off of other people’s private property. You guys have been doing an awesome job respecting those boundaries as of late, and I want to comme
nd you all for keeping each other in check. I want to see more of that tonight. Buddy up. Keep each other out of trouble.”
“Who’s gonna keep you out of trouble?” Dirk shouted cheekily.
“Worry about yourself, bud,” Lanie called over to him. “I’ll worry about her.”
“Well, all right, then. Just checkin’.”
The Coyotes took off, seemingly collectively knowing exactly when to settle onto all fours and shift into their furry shapes. They ran into the desert, grouped in twos and threes.
Diana strode over, wiping sweat from her brow, looking staggeringly uncomfortable in her own skin, but she had to be. She could probably resist the urge to shift, but with everyone else around her doing so, the drive was greater. She’d explained that to Lanie, and all sorts of other Coyote trivia when they were holed up in a motel room as studs and drywall were installed at Diana’s place. An expensive endeavor, for sure, but Lanie was considering it an investment.
“Ready?” Diana asked Barbie.
Even to Lanie’s unseasoned perception, Barbie was beyond ready. She was convulsing at Lanie’s side. Her parents had run ahead into the desert, leaving her in Diana’s care. They all knew who was best at keeping those young ones corralled. Diana would find them all and keep them out of danger.
Barbie nodded weakly.
“Go on.”
Barbie rushed to the back of the rock, sending her clothes flying from the private shadows behind it.
Diana gave Lanie a short but soulful kiss and murmured, “Got everything?”
“I’ve got snacks, coffee, earplugs, and a long book. I’ll be fine. I’ll be here when you get back.”
“I’m looking forward to hearing you say that every single month.” Diana winked.
She handed Lanie her bra and panties, and then ran after Barbie, shifting silkily into her Coyote form without so much as a moan or a howl.
“And to think she’s intimidated by me.” Lanie scoffed and threw up her hands. “What a weirdo.”
And that beautiful weirdo was all Lanie’s.