“Hey,” I say, yanking once more.
“I’m moving, I’m moving,” he says, rolling away from me.
“No,” I say, reaching out to poke his shoulder. “I want some answers.”
“Right now?”
“Yes, right now.”
He sighs. “What’s your question?”
I don’t even know where to start. “Okay,” I say slowly. “Are we, like, married in werewolf land or something like that?”
“Did we have a wedding I don’t know about?”
“No.”
“Then we aren’t married. Is that what you’re worried about?” He makes an incredulous sound. “You think you’re stuck with me? That’s not the way it works, Stella.”
“Then how does it work?”
“What?”
“All of it. The werewolf stuff. You said you’d invite me to your pack. So how does it work? I’m not just going to blindly say yes, Harmon. Tell me what I’d have to do. What it’s like.”
He shifts restlessly in the dark. “Haven’t you lived here for three years? I know you weren’t part of it, but you lived with three wolves. You saw how it worked.”
“No,” I say. “I really didn’t. I barely saw anyone, and my mother wouldn’t even let me talk to my own sisters.”
He’s quiet for a minute. When he speaks, his voice is softer. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t know it was that bad.”
“So you thought I just hid every time you came over? You visited my sisters all the time. Didn’t you ever wonder where I was?”
“Your mother always had a reason. You were busy, or you weren’t feeling well… And then after you found out about us, she told us you were terrified and didn’t want anything to do with us.”
“Yeah, well, she was lying.” My voice breaks on the last word.
He reaches out and tugs at my knee. “Hey, come here. Don’t cry.”
“I’m not crying,” I snap, but my voice is choked by the tightness in my throat.
“Stella…come here.” He pulls at me again, until I relent and lie down next to him on the blanket. He throws another blanket over us, but leaves enough distance between us that only our knees touch when I curl up on my side, facing him. My throat is tight, but I’m not sure if it’s his nearness or the conversation. I’m suddenly very aware of our closeness, our aloneness, my vulnerability in this basement with this boy-wolf. No matter how injured and deformed he is, he could overpower me in a second if he wanted to.
“I knew your mother wanted to keep you hidden,” he says. “I didn’t understand why she didn’t make an effort to have you assimilated after you found out. There was nothing to hide after that. I never knew she kept you from your own sisters.”
“Well, she did.”
He’s quiet a moment. “The truth is, everyone is a little freaked out of you,” he says at last. “You’re not a wolf, but look just like your sister. And people here, they know what you can do, Stella. It scares them.”
“What do you mean, what I can do?”
His voice drops. “Projecting.”
“That’s why they look at me like I’m a giant freak? Mrs. Nguyen said anyone can do that.”
“Maybe, but we don’t do it. It’s dangerous. They’re not looking at you like you’re a freak. They’re looking at you like you’re a loaded gun.”
“Have you ever done it?”
“No,” he says, sounding slightly horrified. “I’d never want to. The only wolf I know who’s ever done it is…your mother. And I’ve never asked her about it. It would be rude to ask about something like that. I’m sure she doesn’t like thinking about it. It would be like if you asked me intimate questions about losing my father.”
“My mother did it? Seriously? Mrs. Rules did something forbidden?”
“Yeah, she did,” he says. “And she got stuck out of her body. The only reason she’s alive is that a witch put a spell over her to preserve her body until she found her way back. In return for the spell, we had to give the witches access to the trees in a huge part of our valley. That’s why we have enchanted trees here.”
I shudder, suddenly relieved I didn’t agree to leave with Mrs. Nguyen. I came so close tonight. If I’d left my body here, who knows when I’d have found it. But then I remember that she said I did it before, and I must have found my way back then. Even Harmon knows I did. Apparently, everyone knows more about me than I do.
“Do you remember me?” I ask. “From before I left. I lived here when I was a baby, right? And you’re two years older. Do you remember if I really did it, or did people just say that?”
He reaches out and touches my cheek with cold, human fingertips. “I don’t remember you doing it,” he says. “I wasn’t there. I was five when you left. I sort of remember you being around. And we grew up knowing why you left. There aren’t really secrets for us.”
“Except what it’s like to project.”
“If I wanted to know, I could ask your mother. If I asked, she’d tell me.”
“So if I joined the pack, and I asked her, she’d have to tell me?”
He hesitates. “I’m not sure,” he admits at last. “It’s not really a rule. We don’t have a lot of those. It’s just…that’s how things are.”
“So she’d tell me?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Your mother, she’s…”
“Mean?”
“She’s had experiences no one else has. It sets her apart a little.”
“Because she projected?”
“That’s one thing,” he says. “And she married someone who wasn’t a wolf. That doesn’t really happen around here.”
I have to work up the nerve to ask the next question. “Is that why…you didn’t want to marry that girl?”
“Witches, they’ll marry anyone,” he says with a note of scorn. “They can have unlimited mates at the same time. When they get tired of one, they release him. It’s not like that for us. When we Choose someone, it’s not something to take lightly. It’s a choice you make once, and it lasts forever.”
“I thought you didn’t have rules,” I tease, trying to lighten the mood a little.
“It’s not a rule,” he says. “It’s a law of nature. That’s how we are. If you Choose badly, that’s unfortunate. But you don’t get to Choose again. You’ve given that person your word, your heart, your matehood… I don’t know if there’s a word for it outside wolves. But you’re bound to that person. Forever.”
“Would you have married her if you knew she was a witch, not a shifter?” I ask. It’s easier to talk to him in the dark, where he seems so human.
He chuckles softly. “No. But I might have rejected her more politely. You don’t want to get mixed up with witches. And you definitely don’t want to offend them.”
“Mrs. Nguyen seems pretty harmless.” But a shiver runs up my back when I recall her abruptness when she left. What if I offended her by choosing to stay? She said I chose Harmon over her. Is that an insult?
“Oh, it’s all gravy if you’re on their good side,” he says. “In fact, I’d like to unite our people with theirs, too, not just the shifters. They aren’t bad people as a whole. But marry one? They’re polyamorous and matriarchal. Their lifestyle is basically the exact opposite of wolves’. It would be hard to reconcile ourselves to the marriage. I can’t imagine either of us would be happy.”
“Girls can’t be pack leaders?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“That’s not how wolves are in nature. Why would it be so for us?”
“Hmm. So girls can’t be leaders, and you only get one chance at love, and if you screw it up, you’re…well, screwed.” I pause to think it over. “Sorry to disappoint you, but you’re really not selling me on the whole werewolf thing.”
“Women are every bit as important as men,” he says.
“Then why can’t they be pack leaders?” I challenge.
“Don’t get all offended. I didn’t say you’d be a
second-class citizen. I said you couldn’t be Alpha. Which you couldn’t be anyway, because you’re not a werewolf.”
For a while, we lie in silence. Harmon’s breathing goes deep again, but I can’t fall asleep. I replay every part of the conversation I can remember, trying to keep everything straight, treasuring the most basic information. For so long, I’ve been in the dark. Finally, someone is answering my questions. I can’t help but think of the tentative friendship I formed with Harmon before I threw an ax at his father’s head. I really shouldn’t have done that. If I hadn’t, we’d have remained friends, and he might have told me all this a long time ago.
But that’s not what happened. I lost his friendship, and I was chained in my mother’s attic for attacking the Alpha.
My mother. Thoughts of her churn in my mind. I hate her, and yet…she fascinates me. I want to know her. In some twisted way, I still want her to love me. God, I’m pathetic. But she’s my mom.
My mom, who was once a rebel, who dared to go against the werewolf code and marry an outsider. She didn’t just accept the werewolf way because that’s how things had always been done. She wanted more for herself. Not that it worked out very well for her in the end, but I still admire her for having enough grit to go against the norm—even if she did end up loveless, divorced, shamed, and saddled with three daughters.
No wonder she’s bitter.
13
Eventually, around dawn, I fall asleep. When I wake, the slant of the sun streaming in the window tells me it’s early afternoon. I sit up, trying to figure out what’s different. And then I see the window. Someone has washed it, so the sun doesn’t have to struggle through a layer of splashed up dirt and mud. Throwing off Harmon’s blanket, I look around for him, but he’s not in the basement room.
I stumble to my feet and find my way through the tunnel, the sitting room, and into the bedroom before I find Harmon. He’s sitting on the far side of the bed, slumped over, with his back to me. Still half asleep, I visit the bathroom and then groggily shower, trying to wake up after oversleeping. When I get out of the shower, I notice the cardboard box on the counter. Every few days, I find a folded stack of freshly laundered clothes on the counter next to the sink, the same clothes I’ve worn from the dresser—ill-fitting jeans, t-shirts, sometimes a sweatshirt. Never a box.
Suddenly as excited as if it were Christmas morning, I grab the box off the counter. As I tear off the shipping tape, I realize how weird it is to think of Christmas. It’s been so long since I celebrated anything. I don’t even keep track of my birthday in a definite way. Last fall, when I turned sixteen, I didn’t even realize it was my birthday until a few days later, when I saw the calendar downstairs in my mother’s house.
Inside the box, I pull away the crumpled brown paper to find clothes. Real clothes. New clothes. My fingers tremble as I kneel on the floor beside the box and take out a shirt as carefully as if it were made of ash, halfway terrified it will fall apart in my hands. I must be dreaming. This can’t be real.
I’m being silly, though. There’s no point in having new clothes now. I’m in a freaking basement. Still, my throat refuses to cooperate when I try to swallow, and it takes several attempts before I succeed. I hold up the shirt against my body. It might actually fit. Real clothes, meant for me.
I stand and drop the shirt over my head. It feels strange to wear anything other than a faded, baggy t-shirt. Besides the one night I wore my sister’s dress, and the week afterwards when I had nothing else so I kept wearing it even though it was covered in mud and blood and who knows what else, I haven’t worn anything remotely cute in three years. And even though I’m not sure this is my style, or that I even have a style anymore, I know it’s cuter than anything I’ve worn in ages.
The lavender fabric is light and airy and soft, with little fringy threads hanging from the hem. It’s stretchy, but not too tight. I find a pair of cropped, skinny jeans and pull them on, relishing the way they hug my slight curves. Then I stand there, looking down at myself, feeling so ridiculous. I look like I’m going to the mall. I dig into the box, but there’s nothing ugly and baggy in it.
A pair of cute pajamas, dark wash jeans, denim shorts, a few more shirts, a package of new underwear—hallelujah. I tear through it all like a starving person. I try on everything, leave it lying in heaps all over the floor, like I’m back home, trying on clothes at Emmy’s house. For the first time, I wish Harmon hadn’t broken the mirror.
Thinking of him brings me back from my clothing madness. I look at the mess I’ve made, leaving my new clothes all over the gross floor. Suddenly guilty, I grab everything and shove it back in the box, my heart hammering. What if these clothes aren’t for me? And I just put them all on, assuming they were mine. Why would someone get me nice clothes? I close the box, searching for a return address, but it’s just a generic Amazon box. I dig through it again, looking for a gift receipt, but all I find is a packing slip.
Oh well. They fit, and I’m wearing them.
I pick up the box and pad back to the basement on my bare feet. Harmon is sitting at the table in the little den, but I don’t look at him as I pass. I’m afraid he’ll say something about the clothes, and I don’t know how to react to that. But I can’t stay in the basement room all day. I’m too excited. So I duck back through the tunnel, trying to act normal as I face Harmon.
“You look nice,” he says, thrusting a tiny vase at me. Spilling from the top is a cluster of tiny white roses.
“Oh,” I say, taking it without thinking. But all I can look at is him. I have to fight back a scream. I thought he hadn’t changed last night. He’s not human, but he has changed. One of his arms is entirely human now, and the other one is somewhere between wolf and human instead of all wolf. His chest juts out on the wolf side, like the narrow chest of a dog, while the other side is flatter and more human shaped, but covered in a thin layer of black fur bisected by scars. And he’s wearing clothes now—a pair of jeans rolled up on his more wolf side, with his paw hanging out the bottom and the shape of his leg obviously not right for human clothes.
I try to swallow, feeling sick. I don’t want to look at his face, but I can’t help it. That’s changed, too. His chin is more square now, more human, and patches on his neck and face are bare of fur. But it doesn’t make him look better. His ear is still a wolf’s ear, the good one. The other, now uncovered from the bandage Dr. Golden put on it, hangs down at an odd angle, and while it is the shape of a wolf’s ear, it is grossly naked of fur. One of his eyes is now slightly elongated, like a human eye, while the other is still fully wolf. And his head is a different shape, his forehead not sloped so much, his eyes off center as the wolf one stays closer to the side of his head while the more human one has moved closer to the center.
Overall, he’s more human, but no more disfigured and repulsive. His features have rearranged themselves into an even more grotesque picture, if that is possible.
“I know what I look like,” he says, slamming his fist down on the table. I jump a mile, shame sweeping through me. Harmon lurches from the table, and the familiar mix of pity and awkwardness swirls through me as he cants to one side, trying to get his balance. Now he has to learn to use his body all over again. It would have been better if he’d stayed the way he was. Because at this rate, he’s not going to be fully one or the other in two more months. He hasn’t changed that much.
We spend the day in different rooms, avoiding each other. That evening, I’m lost in my book when he comes shuffling in, so I don’t look up.
He stands there a good minute, then says,
“Love has gone and left me, and the neighbors knock and borrow,
And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse,
And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…”
He stops when I just stare at him. “Your book,” he says, looking slightly irritated and slightly embarrassed.
“You read girl poetry?”
“I read poetry,” he says, sco
wling. “Why do you look so shocked?”
“Because you’re a boy who doesn’t even have to go to school, which means you memorize poetry for fun.”
“I wasn’t always a disgusting brute,” he says, then stalks off into the bedroom. A second later, the bathroom door slams.
Since it doesn’t seem like he’ll be thanking me for staying with him last night, I continue reading. Once we get used to his new hideousness, it will be easier. I’ll forget what he used to look like, and what he looks like now. He’ll just be Harmon. And for a moment here or there, he’ll forget it, too, and he won’t be this insufferable monster. We’ll just be two people trapped in a basement. God, I’m tired of being trapped in a stinking basement.
14
For a few days, I give Harmon his space. He lies under the ladder more now than he has in weeks. I don’t know if he’s in pain or hiding his new face, or both. But it’s funny what a few new clothes can do. It’s crazy that something so inconsequential—what are new clothes to someone in prison?—can motivate me, but for some reason, it does. Wearing normal clothes makes me want to be normal again. It gives me something that I’m sure whoever bought them for me never meant to give.
Unless it was Mrs. Nguyen, as I suspect it was. I don’t know how she did it, but she knows how much I loved clothes and fashion in my old life. It would be just like her to do something that she knew would get me going. No one else here knows about my old life except Dad, and if he was free to buy clothes, he’d be free to find me. From what I know, he’s probably as stuck as I am.
After a few more days of pacing around while Harmon lies under the ladder, hardly moving, I can’t take it anymore. Our roles are reversed now. He used to pace restlessly while I lay under the window. I don’t know how he could stand it. It begins to irritate me beyond measure to see him lying there day after day.
A week after the full moon, when I set his breakfast down beside him, I sit down on the floor instead of eating in the sitting room.
He gives me a baleful look and pulls his plate towards him with his wolf paw.
Beastly Beauty: A Fairy Tale Retelling (Girl Among Wolves Book 2) Page 9