by Casey Morgan
“Yes, we’re together and with one another,” he snaps. “Now calm down and deal with your emotions, okay?”
I nod again, not saying anything. Flint kisses me on my cheek, and I close my eyes, taking a long, deep breath. I hate how he feels when he touches me, but if I have to act like I ‘belong to him’ then I can’t seem disgusted when we have skin on skin contact.
Flint finally lets me go and goes back to speaking with Anson. I look down at the ground, knowing I’m trapped here. I could walk off, maybe. Flint couldn’t stop me. When no one is watching me, I will slip away into the woods. The only problem is I don’t really know where I am. The one time I was out here, I was on the very edge of their compound and knew how to get myself back home. But now we’re deep in the woods, and I’m all turned around. Plus, if there really are wolves in those woods, I don’t want to end up something’s dinner.
I just need to relax and wait. I’m sure Flint will get me to the bus station in due time.
We finish up with the tour, waiting in front of a large dining hall.
“Since you are our guests for the evening,” Anson starts, “we are required to feed you dinner. We are also happy to do so. This is where we gather to eat as a family, so come in and join us.”
The three of us walk in the dining hall, and it is full of so many people. I knew the orchard people were sizable, but I didn’t know there were this many of them. It’s like its own little town. It’s totally crazy.
I’m so busy looking around that when I turn to look back at Flint, he has gone away with Anson to a large table at the front of the hall. He’s really taken to fully abandoning me. He’s not even acting like we’re together. So, why should I?
I see an empty spot where no one has even sat in the surrounding seats, so that’s where I go. I’m sure no one will come and bother me since they’ve been so unwelcoming so far. I’m not sure how to get any food, though. I’m practically starving. Momma and I had our argument before breakfast, so I haven’t eaten all day. No one is coming over to help me. They all seem to have plates coming out of nowhere.
“How do I get something to eat?” I mumble to myself.
“Are you hungry?” a deep voice asks behind me.
I nearly jump out of my seat, surprised that anyone here is talking to me. I turn around and see a handsome young guy with two plates of food. He has long wild brown hair that’s a little unkempt, and these brown eyes with some yellow in them that makes him look almost animalistic or untamed.
“Umm…” I don’t know what to say. My brain is completely short-circuiting.
“Are you hungry?” he asks again. His eyes are shining as he looks at me. I get my first waft of the food in his hands, and my stomach growls like King Kong. He cracks a smile when he hears it. “I’m going to take that as a yes.”
He places the food down in front of me, taking a seat right beside me. I look down at the plate he’s given me and see potatoes, veggies, and fish. I pick up the fork he brought and poke at the food. I doubt anyone here would try to poison me, but it would be a cute unsuspecting guy that they would send over with the lethal dose.
He takes a bite of whatever is on his plate. He’s chewing slowly as if to show me that the food is okay to eat. I stab a couple of green beans and bring them up to my tongue. They’re still slightly warm, light garlic notes seeping into my tongue. I take more food and eat it with more gusto. My rumbly stomach is happy I’m finally putting something inside of it.
“So, you were hungry,” he chuckles.
I look back at him, realizing I am stuffing my face. I swallow what’s in my mouth. “Yeah, this is the first thing I’ve eaten today. Sorry if I pigged out.”
“No, don’t worry about it. If you’re hungry, you’re hungry. Pig away.”
“Yeah,” I smile, tucking my hair behind my ear. “I’m Mini, by the way.”
“Pax.”
“Is that short for anything? Pax?”
He shakes his head. “No, I’m just Pax. Is Mini short for anything?”
“Yeah, it is. It’s short for Minerva.” I smile because he’s the first person in a long time to ask me that. Everyone is typically so intrigued by the fact that I go by Mini, they don’t even consider that it might be a diminutive.
“Minerva, that’s pretty. Not a name you hear around here often.”
“No, I guess not.” I keep eating, trying some of the fish. It’s so buttery, the skin practically melts in my mouth. “Who cooks all this food?”
“A few women on the compound are in charge of meals. We have recipes passed down from generation to generation, and every cycle, they improve on it, somehow.”
“That’s amazing! I always heard about your community. I’m from Renton, so not too far, but my Momma always told me to stay away from the woods, or else the wolves would eat me. I’m sure she was just exaggerating, but it did manage to scare little baby Mini for a long while.”
Pax looks kind of weird after I mention the bedtime stories my Momma used to tell me. It’s then I realize that he could take it as an insult that we think of the Staymans like that.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to say that you guys are like, I don’t know, cannibals or something. Sometimes I don’t think, and the words just spill out of my mouth.”
Usually, I’m a lot better at this, especially when talking to men. I rarely slip up, but Pax caught me off my guard. Maybe it’s because he’s been so friendly to me even though the rest of his family has had daggers in their eyes.
“No, it’s not that. Don’t worry about it,” he shakes his head. I feel like he’s just saying that for my benefit. “I was just wondering,” he continues, “if you wanted to go for a walk in the orchard? It’s beautiful under the moonlight.”
“A walk?”
I turn my head and look towards Flint. He’s wrapped up in some conversation with Anson, and I’m sure he hasn’t looked my way this entire time. He’d probably hate it if I went off with Pax, but I don’t really care. He’s been kind of shitty person up to this point, and I owe him nothing. Getting under his skin might be just what I want to do.
I turn back to Pax and nod. “I’d love to go for a walk.”
“Cool.” He sports this huge dorky smile that kind of warms my heart.
We both stand up, and he takes my plate. As we exit, he places them on a counter, and then we leave the dining hall. Stepping outside, everything is shrouded in darkness, but the moon and stars provide enough light for me to see.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“I thought we’d go into the woods. I promise I know my way around, so we won’t get lost.”
I bite my lip thinking about all the times we’ve been told not to go into the woods with men we don’t know, but, for some reason, I feel calm around Pax. I don’t think he wants to hurt me or that he would try to.
“Okay, I trust you,” I tell him. I follow him as we go into the trees. Thank goodness I have on my sneakers. I’m sure wandering through the woods would be hard in anything but. Pax leads us to a moonlit path, and we slowly stroll.
“So,” I start, “have you lived here all your life?”
“Yeah, this orchard has been my entire life. I don’t really know too much about anything else.”
“Do you like it here?”
He takes a deep sigh as he looks up at the stars. “It’s all I’ve ever known. It’s my home, but there are things that frustrate me sometimes. We’re an old, traditional community, so it’s hard to get stuff to change. I feel like we’ve been so stuck in the past that the whole world is moving forward without us. Soon, we’ll get too far behind. And then, who knows what will happen to us.”
That’s exactly how I felt about Renton! It’s probably way different for him living in a community like this, but the fact that people are so averse to change is the issue.
“What do you mean by traditional?”
“Well, for example, we don’t really use any modern technology here. I’m the on
ly one with a laptop, and it barely works. I’ve been trying to get Anson to buy me a new one, but he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t understand that we need to change some of our ways if we want to keep up with the changing world.”
“Is Anson like the boss or something? Why can’t you just buy your own laptop?”
“Because he already said no, and, if I go against his explicit order like that, it’s just really bad.”
I don’t really understand what he means by that. I guess they all treat this Anson guy like the parent. It’s hard to just openly say ‘fuck you’ to a parent. It took me years to finally just give up on trying to please my mother.
“I kind of understand that,” I respond. “What other things do you want to do around here?”
“Oh, there’s so much. I know the way we harvest takes longer than it needs to. Recently, I’ve been looking for ways to make the work more efficient. That way, the people we have doing the harvesting don’t have to spend more time than necessary working out in the fields. I think it would be nicer if we could get more downtime. My family deserves to have more fun, more often.”
“That’s really nice. You really care about your family.”
“Yeah, they can grind on my nerves sometimes, but they mean well, and they just want what best for all of us.”
I can’t imagine having a family as large as Pax, and I realize they all aren’t blood-related, but he cares for them so deeply. He’s working so hard so he can give as many people as possible a better and easier life.
“Have you tried talking to Anson about why you want to make all these changes?”
“I have, but he’s of the ‘if it isn’t broken, why fix it’ generation. And I’m already on thin ice with him because of all the arguing I do. I’m considered a bit of a black sheep at times. There really is only so much you can push against the head before they look at it as a rebellion, and I don’t want to rebel. I just want to make things easier for the people who live here. If I cause a scene, that’ll just make things harder.”
I don’t know a lot about how life works here, but I understand that basic principle. I pushed back against my parents a lot, and life at home was hard. I felt like if my siblings were less complacent than maybe it could have worked out. Maybe, in the long run, it will. Maybe my leaving will show them that they can too.
But, in regards to Pax, he probably knows what best for his situation. It’s just so touching to see him with such an open heart. I’ve been worried this entire time that the people who live here might be running some kind of weird, freaky cult, but I can see that it was probably all in my head.
The orchard seems way less scary now. In actuality, it’s kind of beautiful. Seeing the moonlight touch all this nature, being surrounded by trees and apples, and just the outdoors, it’s amazing. And being able to spend it with Pax is even more amazing. I’ve never liked anyone so quickly, but he’s made me feel at ease in a way that no one in my life has ever done.
We continue to walk, going deeper and deeper into the trees. I have no idea where we’re going, but I don’t feel anxious in the slightest.
Chapter Seven
Pax
Minerva. Mini. That’s her name. She’s so much more than I could have possibly imagined. She’s been on this walk with me and has listened to everything I’ve had to say about wanting to fix up the orchard and my complaints about Anson. She didn’t have to entertain my ramblings, but she sounded genuinely interested and asked me a bunch of questions. It was actually rather nice.
I don’t want to sound too hasty or creepy, but she’s already wiggling her way into my heart. The affection I feel towards her is so much, so fast. Something I’m not used to at all.
We’re still out on our walk, getting closer to the edge of the land we own. It’s weird being so comfortable with someone I just met. I could talk to her for hours, and I don’t think I’d ever get bored.
Mini also seems less nervous, so maybe she likes me, too. I still can’t fully tell if she’s Flint’s mate. She hasn’t explicitly told me that she is, but she glanced his way a few times in the dining hall. It doesn’t feel right just asking her because if she doesn’t know that we’re shifters, then she’d be all confused. So, I’ll just stay in the dark for now.
But I have had another thought since we’re getting closer to the edge of the compound. I’ve been thinking about lone wolves. Sounds like Flint might be one given the way he answered some of Anson’s questions. But I’m also curious about the lone wolves that might be camped out around here. I want to see for myself what kind of danger they might pose.
“Uh, Mini?”
“Yeah?”
“So, we think there might be some vagrant men living on our land, and some of the family is worried, so I was wondering if it would be okay with you to go check it out. From a distance, though.”
I can see that Mini is a little worried. It does sound weird that I want to take her to go check out some potentially dangerous people, but I really feel like I need to do this. It’s the perfect moment, and I don’t always get those.
“Um, so no one has actually seen them?”
I shake my head. “I’ll make sure we stay far away enough, so they won’t see or hear us.” Or smell us. We’ll need to make sure to cover our tracks. I won’t let anything happen to her. She will be perfectly safe with me.
“Okay, I guess we can go. If it’s important.” She still seems quite apprehensive, but I’ll chalk it up to the fact that it’s dark, and we’re about to go even deeper into the woods to check out some sketchy men.
What a great way to impress the woman I like.
I go to where the reports said they might be. Apparently, no one has thought to come out this far. It does take quite a bit of time, which can be wasteful if there ends up being no one here, which is why I thought it would be a good idea to set up cameras or sensors or something. It would save so much manpower.
But manually checking it out is also fine.
Mini and I sneak back through the woods. I hold up a finger to motion for her to be as quiet as possible. If there is another werewolf out there, they’ll hear the slightest disturbance, and we’ll be fucked.
As we get closer, I can see a single wolf in the distance.
“Is that him?” Mini asks.
“I think so,” I respond.
He doesn’t seem so dangerous walking around on his own. He’s just another wolf-shifter like the rest of us, so he needs a place to stay. I guess Anson was right, and we should calm down.
“Wait! There’s another guy,” Mini whispers. She points, and someone else is coming who meets up with the first guy. They seem to really know one another. If they were lone wolves, I feel like they wouldn’t be this friendly. I don’t know enough to make that judgment call, though.
“Let’s get a little closer,” I tell her. She nods.
We walk over to another vantage point, and from there, it’s obvious to me that this isn’t a few lone wolves but a pack. There are at least thirty, maybe even forty werewolves camping out on our land. It looks like they’ve been here for a while, just by the way they have their stuff all situated. This isn’t good. This is exactly what Ershin was trying to warn us about.
“I thought you said it was only a couple of people.”
“That’s what I thought.” I’m still looking at all the wolves mingling with one another, but Mini has turned her full attention to me.
“Do you have to go tell Anson?”
“Yeah, this isn’t good.”
She just doesn’t know how bad it is. This many wolves on our land can only mean that they want to attack. A few of them start shifting. Thankfully, Mini isn’t paying attention at this moment. I grab her hand and lead her away.
“What’s going on?”
“We just need to go.”
Quietly, we get away from all of it. I wonder if I should tell her what’s going on. I still don’t know how much she knows about the whole shifter thing. I want to be totally hon
est with her. She deserves to know what’s going on around her. I’m sure that’s the weird energy she’s been feeling.
She’s the only person who’s in the dark, and that feels like a cruel joke. But there’s a con to letting her in on everything which is scaring her away. People don’t usually respond to learning about shifters positively if it’s the first time. A few have human mates, but they knew them for some time, and the reveal wasn’t super sudden.
Mini is already at high alert. If I start telling her that werewolves exist, there’s a high chance that she’ll think I’m crazy and run away. If I were her, I’d probably do the same thing. I wouldn’t be able to blame her.
We finally get far enough away that I feel like we’re safe.
“Are we done running?” Mini gasps. I may have been moving too quickly.
“I’m sorry if I was moving too quickly. I just got worried that they would see us.”
“No, I’m fine. Just a little out of shape, you know.” She smiles up at me, finally getting a hold of her breath. “Whew! I did not know I was that out of shape, though.”
I laugh at her joke and, while I’m laughing, realize we’ll still holding hands. She’s actually holding on to me quite tightly. Maybe she’s still shaken by everything that’s going on.
Or is it possible that she likes me? I mean, even though she was looking at Flint back at the dining hall, they didn’t exactly look like loving glances. She looked either frightened or annoyed by him. That doesn’t mean she isn’t with him, but it’s very possible that she isn’t.
In fact, with each passing moment, I’m getting the impression that pursuing Mini wouldn’t go against shifter law in the slightest.
I position myself in front of her, keeping my hold on her hand. She looks up at me, licking her lips. I stare at her lips, their moistness glistening under the stars. I place my fingers under her chin, feeling how soft her skin is. It’s just so smooth, the texture reminding me of silk. I want to taste and touch every inch of her.