by Lynn Red
“Wait a minute,” I said. “How much of you keeping me a secret has to do with this? You can’t possibly be worried that I’m the sort of person to do something like that. Can you? Are you?”
Instead of immediately responding, which is what I wanted, Erik turned his glass around a few times in his fingers, took another swallow and studied my face. “I don’t think you are,” he said, slowly.
“You don’t think I am?” The whiskey gave me a little courage I didn’t have otherwise, but it was still an honest feeling. “You don’t think I’m the sort to steal a bunch of money and run? Erik Danniker, do you realize that I had no idea this was even like... a thing? Until like five minutes ago, I’d never heard a single word about this.”
He nodded, still studying my face. “That’s true. On the other hand...”
“How can you say that about me? Is it the whiskey? Or do you actually think I’m going to try and scheme you? To play you like that? You’ve known me two years, Erik, when have I ever done something that conniving?”
Erik put his hands up in the air, obviously flustered. “I... no, that’s not what I meant,” he said. “I was just thinking out loud. I didn’t mean to make you think I suspected you. It’s just that’s what the pack will think. That whole thing is too fresh in a lot of their minds for them to trust you. That makes sense, right? You understand?”
I looked down at my feet and swallowed the drink. “I guess,” I said half-heartedly. “Then I’ll have to figure out some way to make them trust me.”
Erik took a big breath and sighed. “I don’t know that it’ll be as easy as that. They’ve got a long history of not trusting normal people. After all, look at the town. There aren’t any. That’d be like, I don’t know, an eighteen year-old moving into a retirement home and getting all the old people to trust them. I just don’t—”
I snorted ingloriously, and could hardly keep from bellowing I started laughing so hard. Although he was pretty much right.
“So you’re saying I’m just stuck? I can’t possibly do anything that will make all these people, who by the way, all seem to like me fine, trust me? I’m just supposed to shrug my shoulders and give up? I mean, if they are just not going to trust me at all, ever, then why was I brought here in the first place? Why am I allowed to go to court meetings and hear all the town secrets if I’m just going to steal everything?”
I was fuming. I wasn’t proud of it, but I also couldn’t stop myself.
“You know why you were hired. Town initiative, outreach program to open the place up and maybe get some fresh perspective on things. Honestly, it worked better than anyone thought,” he said. “You lasted a whole lot longer than the first guy. He took off the second he saw Leon.”
“Great,” I said. “So I’m a failed outreach project. I wasted two years of my life, and now because some undead bear shows up, everyone’s decided humans are evil again? Remind me why I’m still here?”
Erik moved closer and grabbed my shoulders. “That’s not what I’m saying at all. It’s just that—”
“Yeah,” I cut him off. “No, that’s exactly what you’re saying. Some human stole a bunch of money years and years ago, and so all the people in Jamesburg are now literally incapable of ever trusting another person. Even one they like. I should just up and leave then?”
“Whoa, whoa, no one said that,” Erik said, holding me still. He leaned in for a kiss but I twisted away at the last second.
“Not so fast,” I said. “This is one time I’m actually serious about not wanting the distraction from you getting me all hot and excited.”
That shut him down faster than anything I’d ever seen. Erik just stood there looking dejected for a second. Dejected! I’d never see that before. That was almost as crazy as when he apologized.
“I just want to be able to have the woman I love around all the time and not have to worry about what a bunch of cranky old foxes and hedgehogs will think about it,” Erik said all in one breath.
And then he realized what he’d actually said.
The ‘L’ word. There it was. He’d never once admitted any kind of feelings for me. Actually, he’d never admitted much of anything except that he liked me a lot and that I wasn’t horrible dinner company. He made his emotions clear through actions, he always said.
“You... what?” I asked.
He turned bright red.
The pack alpha turning bright red with embarrassment. Oh my God, I could’ve fallen over dead. Even if the whole pack thought I was a crook by association because of my species, seeing Erik almost curl up into a ball, utterly mortified at having actually expressed a normal emotion was just... priceless.
“Nothing,” he said. “What I meant was—”
“Oh no,” I said with a grin. “You don’t get away from it that easily. I heard you, and you know I heard you. Say it again. It makes you as mad as it does me how closed-minded everyone is about this, doesn’t it?”
He grinded his teeth.
“Yes,” he said, looking straight at the ground. “I’ve never...”
“Out with it, you big brute,” I said. Goading him was just too much fun. “Why are you acting so embarrassed? I tell you how much I care about you, and God forbid, even love you, all the time. Why is it so awful for you to admit the same thing?”
As he stood there, bashfully staring at the toes of his boots, I started remembering back about a year ago when I realized that I was in love with Erik.
We’d had some trysts, some romantic rendezvous before, but there was this one time that I was, sick with the flu, and he showed up in the middle of the night with a bottle of water and two Thera-Flu packets. I realize that doesn’t sound like much, but for Erik? He even heated up the water when he found out it was supposed to be hot. It was... well, it was surprising to see how protective and nurturing he got when his precious little Izzy felt like shit. I think that was an exact quote.
When I asked him why he was so nice, he said it was because he couldn’t have his secretary feel like shit, because it made my transcriptions hard to read. That’s... not exactly what he meant, though. The way he hung around for like three days, cancelled all sorts of meetings? Yeah, I got a pretty good idea how much I meant to him right then.
But still, he never said anything. Never gave me any kind of emotional support or said nice things. That part bothered me, but I’d long since decided that he was just going to do things on his own accord.
“Why does it bother you?” I asked, remembering the way he kissed me the first night my fever broke. He looked about like he was going to cry with how sick I was. He never did, of course, but I swear he had mist in his eyes back then. “I mean, what difference does it make? I’m just some girl to you, right? Like, you’ve had other mates before. What’s so special about me? Oh wait, no, now you’re physically addicted to me. Is that all I am, Erik? A fix?”
It came off as a little more irritated than I meant. Erik never made his various lovers any secret to me, and honestly it never bothered me, but ever since he started in with the promises and the talking about how he wanted me to be his real mate and all that, I started getting a little jealous, and more than a little curious.
He looked back up at me, staring at my face for a second before he opened his mouth and then closed it again without speaking.
“What is it, Erik? What aren’t you telling me?”
“I don’t know,” he said. His voice was a lot shakier than I’d ever heard it. He sounded... vulnerable? If I was about to laugh when he made that retirement home joke, hearing the little crackle in his normally smug-as-all-hell voice had exactly the opposite effect. “I just... I don’t know. It sounds stupid, but...”
I shook my head. “No,” I said, “none of this sounds stupid. You just told me you loved me for Christ’s sake.” I was on the verge of tears from his unexpected revelation, but somehow I managed to hold them off. “How could you think that’s stupid?”
“Not that,” he grumbled. “The stuff abou
t the pack and the politics and everything else. I shouldn’t care, you know? I should just tell them to take a hike if they don’t like the way I do things. I mean, I’m the alpha, right? And no, it’s not just the addiction. I feel things for you I didn’t even know I could feel.”
“You are,” I said, “but I know you have other things to think about. You can’t just do whatever you want, or you’d be some kind of a weird, crooked, half-animal king. You were elected, you can’t just—”
Erik looked me straight in the eye. “Chosen. We live in different worlds, Izzy. Very, very different worlds. We don’t care about democracy or kings or anything else.”
His seriousness caught me a little off guard. I cocked an eyebrow, not really sure why he turned so quickly. “All I meant was that you had to think of other people.”
He snarled, pulling his lips back over his teeth and giving me one hell of a charge. “No,” he growled, “I don’t. I don’t have to care one bit about what anyone else thinks. I am in charge.”
I watched Erik’s face for a second. He was chewing hard on the inside of his mouth. There was something deeper going on than just some dumb Jamesburg politics, which Erik always had a dismissive attitude about.
“You’re scared they’re going to throw you out, aren’t you?” I clapped my hand over my mouth as soon as I spoke. Not out of fear or anything, but because it was actually meant to be a thought for the inside of my head, not something to air.
Erik’s response was a glare. “Where did that come from?”
“I... I mean, why hide it? You’re worried that if you come out with this relationship that we both obviously get so much out of, that they’ll suddenly see you as... I don’t know, half an alpha or something, right? They’ll think you’re too weak to resist a stupid human?”
He grunted a laugh. “They’d like to have the balls to try to go at me.”
“Well what is it then? Why is it that every time someone challenges you, you tighten up your lips and start frowning? Why can’t you answer me with a straight face and not go off on some tangent about how great and powerful you are? You were elected, Erik, you know—”
“Chosen,” he said softly. “We call it choosing, not electing.”
I shot him a side-long glare.
“Sorry,” he said.
“If you have a problem, why can’t you talk about it with me? That’s what relationships are, Erik. If you think that what you want is a serious... anything with me, then you need to wrap your head around that.”
I sat down, hard, and drank some coffee that was really old. “This coffee is disgusting, and the way you’re acting right now it’s really hard not to call you a baby.”
“You don’t understand,” Erik said. “You don’t know how this place works. Alphas don’t just get up and quit. We don’t just resign when we get caught in a sex scandal. If you’re an alpha, you’re an alpha for life, even after your term is over, you—”
“What really happened to Atlas?” I asked.
Erik fell dead silent.
“What happened?” I prodded. “You said he went crazy like werebears do, and then after his mate stole all the money and left he jumped off a building. There’s more to it, even if you don’t know what it is, there’s more to the story.”
I took another drink of the old coffee and immediately wished I hadn’t, though it kept my hands busy.
Erik shook his head again, and shrugged. “That’s all I know. All anyone knows.”
Outside the window, a couple of cars stopped at the light honked their horns, and someone started shouting. It was so quiet in the apartment that it almost felt like we’d been invaded. And then, of course, I realized that we had, in a way, and we were just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“You can tell me anything, Erik,” I said. “We have to trust each other, you know?”
“I know,” he said in a quiet grumble. “It’s just... how can I? I mean... no wait, I said that wrong.”
I was already on my feet by the time he finished. “To take a phrase from you,” I said, “what is that supposed to mean? For all your stuff about love and everything, you doubt me too, don’t you? Underneath it all, that’s what it comes down to, huh? You’re scared of trusting me.”
“No,” Erik said. He stuck his hand out and I dodged again. “That’s not what I meant, Izzy, I’m just flustered and confused and irritated and... what are you doing?”
“You keep making all these promises, Erik,” I said. “You’ve been telling me for a year and a half that you were going to come up with some way to make the whole town feel comfortable with us being together – with you having a pureblood human for a mate. Over and over, you say the same thing, and now you’re... you’re acting like you agree with all their unease over me. Like you’re not sure I’m who you think I am.”
Erik reached out and grabbed my shoulders. “Isabel, listen to me,” he said. His voice was tight in his throat. I hit a nerve. “I just don’t know what to do. Atlas coming back, even if it’s a complete non-issue, has brought all this old prejudice back to the surface. What he did, or rather what his mate did, is on the front of everyone’s mind now. Can’t you see that?”
I took a deep breath, steadying myself. One after the other, I took Erik’s hands and removed them from my shoulders. “What I see,” I paused, considering my words carefully for a moment. “What I see is that you don’t have the courage to stand up for me. I have to believe that’s it. You know why? Because the only other alternative is that I have to believe the man who keeps telling me we’re meant to be and all this... I have to believe he thinks I’m a thief.”
“Izzy, no!” Erik stuck out his hand again, but I twisted away.
“I’m leaving,” I said. I grabbed my purse off the table and stuck my phone, my notepad, and almost dumped that raunchy cup of coffee into it. “I’m leaving. I’m done. If you are so worried about me stealing a bunch of money from Jamesburg, then fine. I’ll make this whole thing easy on you. All right? Goodbye.”
“Wait!” Erik called after me, but I wasn’t hearing any of it.
I strode right to the door, grabbed the handle, and felt a stab in my heart the second I turned the door. How did this whole day – this whole life – turn around in the blink of an eye? And it wasn’t even zombie alphas I was worried about... hell, that hadn’t even occurred to me to worry about.
But I’d been down this road one too many times.
I’d had too many men give me the love run around when the reality was, they were perfectly happy to sleep with me, but weren’t going to admit it to their friends. This was the exact same thing, just on a whole other level. And of all the things I didn’t know, the one I did know is that I wasn’t going to put up with having my heart broken again. Not a chance.
If my heart was going to break, I thought as I closed my eyes to blot out his protesting and the sounds of his boots clomping after me, I was going to be the one who did the breaking.
Bandages don’t hurt unless you pull ‘em real slow.
This one, I ripped.
-5-
Jenga
“How do you drink so much? You’re big though, I’ll give you that.”
Jenga Cranston approached a rickety shelf that lay fifteen feet inside his rickety door. The door was nearly always open, even when it was cold or raining. The only time he bothered to close it was when a particularly exciting frog or fly or some other sort of vermin, wandered in and he didn’t want it to get out.
“Hnnnng.”
“That’s all you ever say, Atlas,” Jenga’s one slumped shoulder shook with laughter. “It’s almost like I forgot to attach your tongue.”
Glancing through a jar in which floated a newt, Jenga watched the golem of Jamesburg’s former alpha. He never got tired of how still Atlas was. As his shoulder twitched and one of his knees ached, Jenga vaguely wished he could be that motionless for any length of time.
“Ah, here it is,” he sighed as he pulled a choice jar from th
e rack. “Two bats, one rattlesnake. I imagine they’ve been sitting in this vodka for six... seven years by now. Should be nice and strong.”
He poured the foul looking, and even worse smelling, liquid into a large paper cup and half expected it to melt the bottom. Satisfied the concoction wasn’t going to melt his rickety table Jenga shuffled across the room and set the cup in front of Atlas.
With a groan of effort, the old bear turned his head. What would have taken most people a quarter second took him about four times as long.
Jenga tapped his fingernails on the top of the table. “Any day now,” he said. “You drink enough of this and I think you’ll be as good as new. Oh, hum,” he reached out and plucked a worm from Atlas’s ear. “Must’ve missed that one somehow.”
“Hnnnnng.”
“Yes, yes,” Jenga said. He deposited the worm in the cup full of liquor and then lifted it to Atlas’s lips. Jenga’s hands trembled as he poured the liquid down Atlas’s throat. Only a little went dripped over his chin. “Feel better, old friend?”
“Hnnng?”
“Oh good,” Jenga said. “I hear some inflection.”
He grinned widely, his beard heavy and jingling with chicken feet, dried up lizards, and countless other gris-gris he’d plucked from the swamp behind his house. Across his one-room abode, a loud noise from the television startled the crotchety old swamp-dwelling witchdoctor.
“They’ll never figure it out. Ancient astronauts, aliens from space,” his voice was rattling and loose, just like the junk hanging in a pile around his neck. “Didn’t this channel used to show nothing but programs about people in pawn shops? Those were better days.”
Atlas parted his lips in something that would have resembled a smile ten years ago.
“Is that... oh good!” Jenga switched off the television and came back to see Atlas still grinning. “I had a feeling that elixir would get you cranked up. Can you talk yet? Or is it still just the—”