by Amy Lane
“Meddling, beloved?” he asked quietly, pulling back the covers and ushering me under them. I went, shivering because being up at 4:00 a.m. in the winter did that to you. He climbed in next to me, making me the happiest filling in an elf Oreo cookie ever.
“Yes,” I said through chattering teeth. I backed up against Bracken and burrowed into Green’s embrace. I pulled his T-shirt out of his cotton shorts and put my hands against the blessedly warm, satiny small of his back. “Yes, I was meddling. Why do you ask?”
Green laughed and adjusted his head so his long yellow queue streamed behind him. “No reason at all,” he rumbled, rubbing his hands up and down my shoulders until the shivers stopped. “Not a reason in the world.”
Bonding
JACK THOUGHT Teague looked unsurprised to see him sitting in the car, lacing his boots and breathing hotly on his half-mitted hands.
“She put you up to this?” he asked gruffly as he trotted down the stairs to the driver’s side of the Mustang.
“C—Lady Cory? Yeah. Did she tell you?” Jack hadn’t ridden in the front seat of the Mustang since going Christmas shopping. As he belted in and smelled the cold leather and oil, he realized he’d missed it. For a year and a half, his entire reason for living had been to be right here in this car at Teague’s side.
Teague shook his head and stood with the door to the ’Stang open and grunted. “Didn’t tell me anything—she just can’t lie for shit. I thought I got out of there a little easily.”
Jack stood up out of the car and leaned on the roof with his door open. “You gonna make a big, furry-assed deal out of this, or can we get our asses in gear so we can be back in time for New Year’s Eve? I understand there’s one hell of a party.”
“You don’t like parties,” Teague reminded him. Neither one of them made a move to get in the car.
“Neither do you.” Jack was stonewalling. He knew it. But Teague hadn’t overtly kicked him out of the car yet, and that was encouraging.
“You don’t even know where I’m going,” Teague reached into the car and turned the key in the ignition to warm it up inside. The garage wasn’t too chilly, because it was underground and the worst of the frosty cold stopped at the door. But the car needed warming up anyway.
“You’re going the same place you went last year, Teague. You left early in the morning, you came back in the afternoon, and you didn’t talk for a week. You didn’t eat for a week either. Our next job, you were the one who picked a fight. Remember that? You almost got shot!”
“I remember,” Teague grunted, rubbing his chest uneasily.
“I’d rather not go through that again,” Jack said reasonably. “How about this time, I go along?”
“I’m gonna be a grumpy asshole anyway.” Jack was pretty sure Teague knew he had won. “There’s no reason for you to catch that in the teeth.”
“How about because I love you and I choose to. Will that do you? Can we get in the goddamned car now?”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
And away they went. Teague cranked the music as soon as they cleared Green’s driveway.
Jack was prepared for a long, silent run, but there was a big hamper of food behind him, and he decided to dive right in. The first thing out was one of the two big thermoses of white hot chocolate with hazelnut cream—and while it made Jack happy, he knew that once he gave Teague a big-assed mug full of it, Teague would be as pleased as a little kid. Jack found it in himself to let go of the resentment that Cory’d had to tell him about this little adventure. She’d done it for him and Teague and their little family, and it was hard to stay mad at someone for that.
“Mmmmm…,” Teague all but groaned. “Damn, Jacky. It’d be worth becoming a werewolf just to get this in your coffee mug every morning.”
Jack grunted an agreement and then found his balls and asked, “So. Where are we going?”
Teague sighed. “Angel’s Camp. But we have to stop somewhere first.”
The stop was at a liquor store for a bottle of Jose Cuervo Gold. Jack was surprised—Teague drank nothing but beer. But as the car drove around the lake and then took the rolling back roads toward Mokolumne Hill, he started to have an inkling of what this was about.
Mokolumne Hill was one of those places that had become an icon for bad roads and possible vehicular death. The road wound closely along the hill, switchbacks abounded, and railings were thin and often falling off the crumbling scrabble of soil. By the time they arrived at the hill, the sun was up, and Jack was supremely grateful. Werewolf or no werewolf, he didn’t want to become a highway statistic, no matter how carefully Teague was driving.
Near the crown of the hill was a pullout, where slower traffic could pull over and allow faster traffic to pass, and Teague was nothing if not cautious as he pulled the car onto the muddy shoulder and parked. He should be cautious. Not too far from this spot was where his father had gone off the road and died.
He got out, grabbed the tequila, and walked to the front of the car, looking out over the mist-shrouded, ice-coated valley in the thin orange sunlight of morning.
Jack sat, torn. Teague was so good at isolating himself, at creating an impenetrable force field of space around his body, that it was hard to know if he was being stoic or truly wanted to be left alone. But watching Teague’s shoulders slump as he stood alone and shivering, Jack didn’t think he could stand to watch him be alone for another moment.
Jack stepped quietly out into the dawn.
Teague was muttering. Two months ago, Jack wouldn’t have been able to make out real words, but he heard them now.
“I’m more than you ever said I would be, and I’ve got more than you ever said I could have. Nobody beats me, nobody hurts me—just your ghost, you ass-ripping motherfucker. I’ve let you eat up most of my life up to now, but I’ll tell you something. This is the last thing you’ll ever get from me, Sean Sullivan. It’s the last drop of Cuervo you’ll ever drink. It’s the last thing your kid is ever gonna do for you.
It’s more than you deserve, you sonuvabitch.”
Teague pulled his shoulder back and hurled the Cuervo out into the desolate valley below. It sailed far, far from where they stood before plummeting down, and Jack realized Teague had probably picked this exact spot because there wasn’t a soul in sight for miles on this side of the road.
The distant tinkle of glass reached them, and Jack watched Teague dumbly, feeling useless. Teague turned, making sure his face was averted. “We’d best be going, Jacky. We’ve got a party.”
“Yeah, wait a minute,” Jack said. He didn’t have anything to throw, he thought wretchedly, so he picked up a rock because that’s all he had. If he was going to make a grand gesture, a rock would have to do.
“He’s mine, motherfucker! You can’t hurt him anymore!” He really put his diaphragm into it, shouting loud enough to echo off the valley, to make his throat burn with the anger.
He turned a defiant face to Teague, realizing his face was freezing and wet. It was enough for Teague to come and comfort him, squaring that bantam little body protectively in front of him. Jack looked down and framed Teague’s scowling, freckled cheeks in his slender hands.
“He can’t hurt you anymore, beloved,” Jack told his lover softly. “You’re ours, okay?”
Teague nodded mutely, and when Jack wrapped long arms around his shoulders, Teague leaned against his chest willingly.
“You’re ours,” Jack repeated. “Ours.”
They stood quietly then. If Jack expected Teague to fall apart, he was mistaken. Maybe all of that had been cleansed, purged in their tumultuous first days at Green’s hill. Maybe the only place it would ever come out was Green’s hill. One set of arms alone was not enough to keep Teague safe from the bloody monster of his dreams. But it didn’t matter. Jack was his comfort, his harbor, his beloved, and while the scary dreams might never be gone completely, Jack and Katy would be there to quiet him in the night. It would be enough.
The dr
ive home was quiet too, at least until Mokolumne Hill was safely in their rearview mirror.
“We need a ceremony,” Teague said into the blue. “Something… permanent. I know we’re supposed to, like, physically bond—”
“I have,” Jack said, surprised. “So has Katy.”
Teague’s eyes got big.
“How do you know?” he asked, surprised.
Jack shrugged. “Because we were watching a show on TV that used to get me hot because the actor looks just like you, but I didn’t get hot until you walked into the room. I said something to Katy, and she realized the same thing. Katy and I turn each other on, but otherwise it’s you and no one else.”
Teague blushed. “Oh.”
Uh-oh. “What?” Jack turned to him, surprised. Of all things, he didn’t expect this to be a problem.
“Uhm… you know that thing that happens when the vampires feed?”
Jack frowned. “Not anymore.”
“Oh.”
Jack shook his head, not sure what to say. And then he realized it didn’t matter. “It’s no big deal,” he said, meaning it. Teague had said he was damaged. If this was the extent of the damage, well, so what?
“Well, it’s another reason for the thing,” Teague said. “A big thing—a… ceremony, like what we just did, only not horrible.”
Jack felt his chest grow tight. “Like, you know, a wedding?”
Teague nodded. “Yeah. Like, in front of the hill. Like us, and the hill, and… you know.”
“Like a wedding.”
Teague grunted. “Whatever.”
Jack smiled to himself. Like the opposite of what Teague had planned for himself two months ago. Like Jack and Katy loving him for a very long life. Like announcing “forever” to the world. Like Teague never being alone, ever ever again.
“Like a wedding,” he repeated.
“Forget I said anything,” Teague grumbled. Jack, comfortable that they were on a straightaway, reached over and took Teague’s hand as it rested on the steering wheel and brought it to his lips.
“Katy and I would be happy to marry you.”
“That sounds so….”
“Gay?”
“Shut up.”
Jack laughed. “So who’s going to officiate?” he asked playfully, starting to like the idea.
“Who else?”
“Green.” Jack was trying not to be that dumb about things. “Will Cory be in it?”
Teague shrugged. “I’m sure she’ll stand up there with him. They’re sort of a team.”
Yeah. A team. “They do a good job of it,” Jack agreed, no rancor in his voice at all. “Do you think the three of us will be like that—Cory and Green and the rest?”
Teague squeezed Jack’s hand tight. “Yeah, Jacky. We’ll be like… like a werewolf version, you think? It’ll be good.” He hesitated for a minute. “You think we could ask her how she did it when it was her turn?”
Jack had to smile. Yeah, he’d been dumb about things, but the hill—the hill was magical for a reason. Part of that reason was its leaders. He’d respect that. He had to respect that. The hill had given him Teague and Katy, and if nothing else, he should be grateful.
“Yeah, we can ask her. But you know what we should do first?”
Teague’s smile went soft, the way it only did when he was thinking about her. “Ask Katy.”
“Yeah. Are we going to get down on one knee?”
Teague’s nose wrinkled. “Hell, no. But we should do it sweet. With dinner, and private, and maybe the ring and everything. Make her feel cherished. Make her feel special.”
Jack swallowed. “You are cherished. You are special,” he said quietly and kissed Teague’s hand. “And we will spend our lives making you feel that.”
Teague flushed and scowled. “Oh Jesus, Jacky,” he complained. “Save the sweet stuff for her.”
But Jack knew he was pleased. Jack planned to do a whole lot of pleasing, for both his lovers, for the rest of his life. He figured this moment, this icy, funny, happy moment at the death of an eventful year, was probably a good start.
Epilogue—Putting the Past to Bed
“ABSOLUTELY,” CORY was saying. “February 11 would be perfect.”
Green fought the urge to goggle, and Bracken’s wide eyes met his as they shared the same thought. But neither of them put a voice to it, and Cory continued to talk to Teague, animation in every line of her still healing body. Green thought privately that the next time she decided to run across the yard in her bare feet in December, he’d actually spank her bare pink bottom himself.
“I thought you hated being in public,” Bracken interrupted. Tact and Bracken were still virtual strangers, after all.
Teague blushed. “You guys… the hill. You got to see all the bad shit. Maybe it’s time for you to see the good shit, you know?”
Cory nodded at Teague at the same time she rolled her eyes at Bracken. Bracken shrugged, but she soldiered on. “I get it, Teague. I think it’s perfect. The day is great. You guys get an idea of what you want, and we’ll do the rest, okay?”
Teague gave an actual smile, and Cory launched herself at him for a hug. “I’m so glad you came here,” she said softly, and he mumbled a thank-you before he went to tell his mates the wedding was a go.
“February 11?” Green asked, as soon as he was out of earshot. “Isn’t that the day—”
“Yeah,” she allowed. “It’s the day I looked up.” Cory and Adrian had possessed, when all was said and done, just a handful of days as lovers. Cory had been so sure someone as beautiful as Adrian could never love someone as plain as she was that she hadn’t even looked him in the eyes for their first year of acquaintance. She’d worked her nowhere job in one of Green’s gas stations, and Adrian had come and gone, checking on Green’s people who inhabited the place, and only at the end had she looked up, met his eyes, allowed herself to fall in love.
“Beloved,” Green said quietly. They’d been sitting on the couch together, Cory leaning on Bracken and knitting while Green caressed her calf absently as he worked. Now he put the laptop down entirely and held out his arms. She went to him, rubbing her face on his shoulder.
“I’m tired of bad-shit anniversaries, Green.” She said it softly, but Green had no doubt she meant it sincerely. “I’ve got so few good memories of Adrian. I’m throwing that one—or at least the regret in it—under the bus. Is that okay?”
“That’s fine,” he told her. He met Bracken’s eyes over her shoulders, and Bracken looked stricken for a moment. Anything that threatened Adrian’s memory would hurt him. But after a considering silence, he patted her shoulder and leaned in for the group hug.
“Adrian would probably rather you forgive yourself for that one,” he said, and she lifted her arm and held Bracken to her chest as Green was holding her.
“Do you think he’d be with us?” she asked hesitantly. “If he’d stayed with us, do you think…. This thing we’ve become, we all would have done it together, right?”
“I have no doubts, beloved.” And Green didn’t. Not a single one.
Jack and Teague and Katy were proof of all a group of people could become if they opened their hearts to love. His beloved, with her enormous heart and her unlimited capacity for bravery? There was nothing she couldn’t be, no family she couldn’t forge. Together there was nothing they couldn’t become.
Being
Prologue—Falling
KATY DREAMED in red when she was a wolf. This nightmare was black, edged in red, and in it she watched Teague falling through the sky, a black form against the old-blood dark. He didn’t flail, he didn’t fight, he just fell.
For a moment he stalled, fell slower, and while he was doing that, he adjusted his body, slowed his motion, prepared to land in such a way that his thigh bones wouldn’t be driven through his brain; and then, just when her heart stopped screaming in despair, when he was still near enough the treetops of the horizon to be seen, the plummet began again.
S
he’d been running toward his still form before it was even him.
But in the dream, in the way of dreams, she was back with her mother, back when she was tiny, before the drugs had devoured Mommy whole, and Mommy was throwing her up in the air.
“Up, up, up!”
“Wheee!”
But Mommy threw her too high, too high, higher than—smack! Katy went high as the trees, and then there she was, holding her heart, plummeting to the ground to shatter on top of Teague’s still form.
She woke up and woofed, then howled when she looked around the alien house with the alien sea smell and the alien sea view from the windows.
Jack tackled her before she could get to all fours and really throw her throat into the howl, and suddenly she was pinned to the floor by a tender, exhausted man.
“Shh… baby. Shh…. He’s okay. He’s going to be okay. C’mon, baby, you need to snap out of it. Please, for me?”
Jack was speaking at a whisper, and his voice sounded… funny. Strange. Broken.
Then another voice rasped across the alien space, and Katy’s heart actually beat so loud she almost couldn’t hear it.
“Jesus Christ, Jacky! What in the fuck is all that noise?”
Katy whimpered in Jack’s arms, and something broke, something that had been holding her to this wolf’s body when she was just as happy as a curvy human.
Abruptly she was soft and naked in her lover’s arms, and she was sobbing.
Catching
EVEN THOUGH Jack had to tackle Katy, his relief when she turned human was gut-churning and profound.
Teague had been wounded in the heat of battle with a kiss of rogue vampires in a way that had been terrifying. Excruciating. Every fear Jack had ever had for the three of them. But Katy’s refusal to return to her human form had been frightening too. Jack… Jack was the weakest member of their little group, in spite of his size and apparent strength. He was the emotional one; he was the one who lost his everlovin’ mind in any given situation.