by Amanda Milo
I wave to her. “Go ahead.”
She jumps up and down. “IT’S A TRAMPOLINE!”
Charlotte and Maggie both make shocked exclamations—and then they’re tearing the poles out of the box.
“Careful,” I caution, searching for the flimsy sheet of instructions. I try to lift the netting. I tug on it. I really tug on it. “Gosh, for being see-through, this is heavy.” This is why I love our UPS man. He went above and beyond on delivery day, offering to carry it to our backyard like a trooper because there was no way I could heft the box.
“I’ve got it,” Deek says. “Back up, and I’ll unfold this.”
I catch the tiny piece of paper that was tucked into the folds of what will soon hopefully be the trampoline’s net. A peek at it tells me it’s a waste of paper. “Oh, great. An incomprehensible line drawing.”
“Here, let me see,” Charlotte says. “Wow.”
Maggie reaches up for it, and we pass her the sheet. “I could draw this,” she declares. “Mom, I could draw this blindfolded.”
“We don’t need the directions,” Ginny announces.
Charlotte looks at her friend, nonplussed. “You know how to put together a trampoline?”
“Not yet.” Ginny jerks her thumb at Deek. “But we’ll figure it out, and we’ve got him.”
Deek almost takes a step back when our attention swivels to him.
“Everyone says werewolves are super strong,” Ginny says speculatively, eyeing Deek’s arms.
His fingers find his sleeve, and he tries to tug it down once before he catches himself and straightens. Glancing around at us nervously, he admits, “Almost all shapeshifters are strong.” He meets my eyes, and adds, “Finn is stronger than most.”
He quickly drops his gaze.
I wave to the box. “Since the product didn’t indicate that a shapeshifter is required for assembly, I think you’re going to rock the strongman part all on your own.” I flash him a smile he surprises me by looking up to see. “Ready to get started?”
He doesn’t immediately look away. “Just tell me when you want me.”
CHAPTER 16
SUSAN
Deek makes the springs look like they have all the resistance of twist ties as he latches them on the net’s hooks and attaches them to the trampoline’s frame—which we assembled fairly easily without too much of his power needed. (Until it came time to close the frame into a circle—this thing did NOT want to close without some serious power, which our werewolf provided, thankfully.)
The springs though? We all try them mostly to get an appreciation for Deek’s muscle. Although Ginny is stronger than Charlotte, and even me, she’s no match for the adult male werewolf in our yard. And after we’re done testing what strength we have against his considerable, quiet brawn, we all look at Deek with new eyes.
He is singularly uncomfortable with the attention.
Thankfully, we don’t make him so nervous that he Changes, and once the trampoline is assembled, the girls are scrambling to hop on and—well? Hop.
The girls are all laughing, giggling, excited. It’s a happy moment that begins with one bounce each from Charlotte and Ginny—and Maggie goes flying.
Like a Slinky sent zooming down the stairs, Maggie makes an impressive arc, catapulting through the air, and head-first she plummets to the ground.
I make an “AH!” and dive for her. But I never would have made it to her landing spot in time to save her. I’m too far away. I’m too slow, even booking it.
Deek gets there in time. With reflexes like a super cat, he leaps, rolls, and catches her before her head cracks into the ground.
“OhmyGodThankYouThankYou THANK YOU!” I chant through my hands, genuinely thanking the good Lord above for sending the werewolf I’m rushing to. I drop down beside Deek, who is on his back on the ground, Maggie hugged to his chest. I throw myself on both him and Maggie.
“Is she okay?” Ginny and Charlotte cry at the same time.
I pull back and check her over. Physically, she’s fine. But she’s shaken; Maggie starts to cry.
Carefully, easing up by degrees, Deek curls up to meet her eyes. Because her back is to his front and she’s smaller than he is, he’s hanging over her, staring at her upside down. “Hey. You’re okay.” His big hand almost covers her whole arm. He rubs up and down gently. “That was quite the Superman you pulled.”
Maggie stands herself up in his lap and whirls around to throw her arms around his neck.
Giving me a worried smile, Deek’s gaze grazes mine and then he’s hugging Maggie back. With little effort, he gets his feet under himself and stands, holding her easily. Then he offers me a hand up.
I take it. “Thank you.”
“No problem,” he says, like it wasn’t.
Wiping my eyes, I wave to the girls. “Maybe, from now on, only one at a time.”
Apprehensively, they each take turns, and despite the harrowing launch of the baby through the air at the beginning, the girls start to have fun. Maggie holds on to Deek’s hands when she jumps at first, but then she’s hopping around with no trouble at all. She stops though, looking a bit downhearted.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
She waves to Charlotte and Ginny. “It was more fun together.”
“Hang on,” Deek says. And then he walks toward the house.
Not a minute later, a massive brown wolf races back out and vaults onto the trampoline with Maggie.
The picture of the two of them together is insane: she’s just over three feet tall. He’s that at his shoulders, at the very least.
Surprisingly, despite his weight, his arrival doesn’t send her springing off. In fact, as she begins to shriek in delight and bounce around him, he only braces his paws and hunkers into the force that she’s generating from the springs’ recoil—she’s not affected by his mass at all.
She is, however, thrilled at his presence.
“Watch, Mom! Deek’s playing with me!” she shouts loudly enough they can probably hear her all the way in Yemen.
“That’s great, honey,” I say back, thinking that Deek’s a wolf who’s doing a great impression of cream in the process of being turned into butter by way she’s shaking the daylights out of him.
When it’s Charlotte’s turn again, to everyone’s surprise, Deek doesn’t hop down. He even woofs at Charlotte to encourage her to get up there with him.
Her first jump is tentative.
He lunges at her, and pounces down like a fox smashing through snow.
Surprised, Charlotte whoops and bounces backward. Then her eyes narrow, and she grins at him. “Oh, this is so game on.” She leaps at him.
He wurfs, dodging her, and soon they’ve timed their bounces so that she’s not flying off, and he’s riding motion rather than suffering it.
He does the same for Ginny, who loses her breath laughing and has to stop.
Maggie is leaned up against my leg, getting sleepy, I think. It has been quite the day for her, by the sounds of it. I run my fingers through her hair until Charlotte bumps me.
“Mom. Deek wants you.”
Startled, I look up—and I’m face to face with a werewolf. He’s leaning off the side of the trampoline, so tall he has to bend his neck to meet my eye level.
His eyes are wolf’s eyes, but they’re still the same arresting deep golden color.
When he sees that he has my full attention, he backs up, his tail swaying playfully.
“C’mere, Maggs,” Charlotte says, and guides her to stand with her and Ginny. “Get up there, Mom!”
“Yeah, Mom, play with Deek!” Maggie suggests, reanimating at the excitement of it.
I grimace. “I haven’t been on a trampoline in—”
Deek sneezes.
Then he growls at me, making the girls—and me—gasp and laugh.
I throw my hands up. “All right! You get your way, but if I end up taking a header or breaking my back, we’re going to have words, Wolfman.”
Deek snaps
his teeth good-naturedly.
I toe off my sneakers and haul myself up.
Immediately, I feel self-conscious.
Deek rushes me—the fox spring maneuver, just like with Charlotte—and lands just in front of me, raising me up with his bounding leap.
Despite my nerves, I’m laughing—and then I’m bouncing with him as he chases me, with him fooling around like he doesn’t care what he looks like… until I don’t care either. I just have fun.
The girls and I chuckle, shout, and tease as we play together, this regal-looking creature springing and prancing with me. He keeps it up until I’m winded and calling for a ceasefire.
“What’s a sees fire?” Maggie asks.
“Cease, as in stop,” Charlotte explains. “And fire, for this word, means shooting. So cease fire means stop shooting.”
“In this case, it means stop jumping,” Ginny adds.
Maggie looks contemplative.
Charlotte smirks up at me. “She’s going to use this later.”
“Oh yeah,” I agree. “At some perfectly random time.”
Ginny is nodding. “Wait for it.”
Maggie forgets the whole topic as something occurs to her. “Is it time for ice cream?”
I reach into my back pocket for my cell phone. I take a look at the time. “Should be firm, if not frozen.” I grin at them. “Ready to change your mind about beets?”
CHAPTER 17
LUCAN
“How have we never tried this?” Charlotte exclaims to everyone, then shoves another spoonful of beet ice cream into her mouth. “Mom, why didn’t you show us Grandma’s recipe before?”
Susan is wearing a very cat-that-got-the-cream expression. It’s exceedingly satisfied and a little tiny bit smug. “I should have recorded you guys’ complaining while we were making it,” she almost singsongs.
“We were wrong,” Ginny says, licking off her spoon. “So, so wrong.” She peers into her bowl. “Why does dirt-root taste so good?”
I’m sitting on a barstool adjacent to Susan, who is basking in this moment of sweet vindication. I nudge her sock-clad foot with my bare one.
Her attention swings to me.
I nod to Maggie, who is slumped over her ice cream—out cold.
Susan covers her laugh with her hand and hops off her stool to carefully take her youngest down.
“Want help carrying her?” I ask.
Susan smiles. “I’ve got her, but thanks.” She takes in Maggie’s innocent little ice cream-smeared face. “I have to enjoy these moments when I can. She’s growing up so fast.” She looks at Charlotte, and sends a smile to Ginny too. “They all do.” She sighs and takes Maggie to her room.
When I tear my gaze away from where Susan disappeared, I turn to face my empty bowl—and meet the very direct stare of Ginny.
I look down.
“Am I going to be a submissive wolf, like you?” she asks.
“You are not submissive,” I tell her. “You’ll be exactly who you are now.”
Her voice holds wonder and her seat creaks when she sits straighter. “I’m an alpha?”
Wordlessly, I nod. I stand and take my bowl and Maggie’s to the sink.
“How cool,” Charlotte says.
“Yeah,” breathes Ginny.
“What’s cool?” Susan asks, reentering the kitchen. “Deek, you didn’t have to take care of Maggie’s. But thank you,” she adds, and the way she says it makes me feel a phantom stroke of appreciation, right down my spine.
I shiver. And it is so not in a bad way. But Susan is Finn’s girl. His mot, as the Irish like to say of a girlfriend. Shaking myself, I roughly clear my throat. “You shouldn’t thank me.” I tilt Maggie’s dish so that the melting concoction slides right into my mouth. I set the emptied bowl into the sink, swallow, and explain, “I had an ulterior motive.”
Susan laughs softly.
Ginny gets up, and I step aside to give her room as she walks her own bowl to the sink. I keep my eyes lowered, my gaze drifting to Susan’s socks. They’re white at the toe and the heel, and blue in the middle. “Deek says I’m an alpha,” Ginny responds, answering Susan’s earlier question. “So I won’t be like…”
The silence has a weight to it, and I glance up to see all three sets of eyes on me.
Yesterday, I would have dropped to the floor. Tonight, I feel more confident of my place here. Still, I have to lock my knees. “You won’t be like me,” I tell her.
Ginny hurriedly mutters, “Sorry. I didn’t mean for that to sound like there’s something wrong with you.”
I shrug. “If I was an alpha, I would be all wrong. But I’m not. Submissives are a different thing.”
Charlotte passes me to get to the sink and surprises me by patting my arm. “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it’s stupid.”
“Albert Einstein,” Ginny says. “Nice.”
“It’s a great quote,” Charlotte agrees. “Sounds like that’s the difference between alphas and submissives, right? Fish to squirrels?”
More like sharks to squirrels. “That’s not a bad way of looking at it.” I stare at their bare feet. I note their toenails are painted in matching colors, blue or purple, maybe. I note this somewhat absently, because as a submissive, I spend a lot of time looking at feet. And paws.
“Welp,” says Susan mildly. Which confuses me for a second because where I was raised, whelp is how you address a child you’re two seconds from baring your teeth at. “I don’t know about you all, but I’m headed for a relaxing soak in the tub. Then it’s bedtime for me.”
“Can we hang out on the trampoline?” Charlotte asks her mother.
Susan starts to nod, then winces. “Yes—but don’t fall asleep out there. All right?”
I frown, gaze jumping up to her eyes before quickly shifting to the safety of her throat.
Susan must catch my minute expression or shift because she glances at me and explains, “My dad was a police officer. He’d come home with all the stories of kidnappings and violent crimes that take place right in backyards, and it would shock you how often it happened.” She looks to the girls. “So have fun out there, but if you get sleepy, hustle inside.”
“Are we really going to get sleepy on a trampoline?” Charlotte asks.
Susan shrugs. “I did when I was your age, up until a drunk guy wandered into the backyard. Blessedly, my dad was home then and took care of the situation. That was the last time I fell asleep outside. But it was nice. Used to spend all night stretched out under the stars. I would wake up at three in the morning, covered in dew and chilled.” I watch her eyes glow with the memory.
“That’s me and my packmates,” I share, feeling a kinship. Relaxing under a blanket of stars feels wonderful.
All three females look at me, and I lower my gaze. “Sometimes on a trampoline, but anywhere, really. A porch, a good hill. A rocky outcropping.”
“Pack territory sounds nice,” Ginny says wistfully.
I incline my head. “And you’ll get to experience it soon.” I move my eyes to the level of Susan’s necklace. “I’ll check on them to make sure they get inside.”
“Thanks, Deek. Night, girls.”
Charlotte stops her mom from leaving the kitchen by throwing her arms around her in a squeezing hug. Ginny follows this, and the three part ways for the evening.
I head down to the basement, leaving the door ajar for myself. I strip and Change, ascend the steps again, and nose the door open enough to leave. I trot to the door leading to the backyard, and because it’s closed, I furtively Change, open it, and Change back. In wolf form, I slide around to the side of the door I intend to be on, and shoulder the thing closed. Soundlessly, I pace to the trampoline, and although it’s dusk, it isn’t so dark that the girls don’t see me coming.
The girls’ talking hushes at my arrival, but when I only lay down and place my muzzle on my paws, for all the world looking like nothing more than a strange dog, the
y eventually go back to talking.
I tune their words out, listening instead to their voices to absorb the camaraderie. It reminds me of home. Of Pack.
I don’t doze. And when the girls’ words slur with sleepiness, I get to my feet and wurf at them, circling the trampoline like they need to be herded.
They laugh and get down, heading for the house, patting me as they pass me, even Ginny. I follow.
They retire to Charlotte’s room for the night.
And to my desperate relief, Susan’s door stands open. She doesn’t know it, but I’ve spent every night with her since I arrived. (Yes, that would be a grand total of two.) Until this morning, I was able to sneak out before she woke.
I’m hovering near her door because it’s like Finn said—for now, Susan is my alpha. She’s the rock that keeps me anchored; she’s comfort, she’s reassurance, she’s protection—even if, technically, my body is stronger than hers.
It’s the instinct of a submissive to seek the alpha.
I curl up on her hardwood floor, tuck my nose under the tip of my tail, and mean to sleep. But my nose catches the scent of Susan’s sweat.
It’s a nice smell. Tropical, and mildly sweet like kiwi. A little metallic.
Also like fried salty pickles.
Since I’m not yet settled enough to find sleep, quietly, I pad to the source of the scent (the secondary one, since she, on the bed, is the primary producer of her unique smell) and find a blouse wadded up next to a hamper. I take it in my teeth, walk it back to the center of the room, and curl up on it.
It’s the best sleep I’ve had since I came here.
CHAPTER 18
SUSAN
When my alarm goes off, I roll over in time to blearily watch a tail disappear around the doorway. It’s so swift that when I blink, it’s gone and I wonder if I imagined it.
But then I get out of bed and find my dirty shirt spread out on the floor where I know I didn’t leave it.
Blinking, I toss it in the sink and search the cupboard for dish soap. I keep a small container in my bathroom for the purpose of stain removal, and when I locate the bottle, I squirt a generous amount on the grease stains and let it soak.