My voice was hoarse when I said, “But I’m not—”
“Shut up!” he cried. “You know what? No. You don’t get to decide what you’re worth because you obviously don’t know. You don’t get to decide that anymore because you have no fucking idea that you’re worth everything. What do you think this is? A joke? A decision I made just for the hell of it? It’s not. It’s not destiny, Ox. You’re not bound by this. Not yet. There’s a choice. There is always a choice. My wolf chose you. I chose you. And if you don’t choose me, then that’s your choice and I will walk out of here knowing you got to choose your own path. But I swear to god, if you choose me, I will make sure that you know the weight of your worth every day for the rest of our lives because that’s what this is. I am going to be a fucking Alpha one day, and there is no one I’d rather have by my side than you. It’s you, Ox. For me, it’s always been you.”
So I said, “Okay, Joe.” I looked up at him. His wolf was close to the surface.
And he said, “Okay?”
I said, “Okay. Okay. I don’t know if I see the things you do.”
“I know.”
“And I don’t know if I’ll be good enough.”
“I know you will,” he said, eyes flashing orange.
“But I promised you. I said it will always be you and me.”
His face stuttered a bit, and he said, “You did. You promised me. You promised.”
I said, “I’m not much. I don’t have a lot. Sometimes I feel dumb and I say stupid things. My dad left, and I make mistakes all the time. I didn’t go to college, and I come home with grease under my fingernails and on my pants. I don’t have many friends. But I made a promise to you, and even though I wish you’d find someone better, I keep my promises. So, yeah, Joe. Okay? Just yeah.”
I must not have been a man yet because my eyes burned a bit. Mom was crying at the table and I could hear Elizabeth sniffling outside the window, but there was Joe in front of me. He was the little boy who had found me on the dirt road the day I turned sixteen. The little boy who had become a man and stood before me a few days before I turned twenty-three. He thought I was worth something. I wanted to believe him.
So he pressed his forehead against mine and breathed me in and there was that sun, okay? That sun between us, that bond that burned and burned and burned because he’d given it to me. Because he’d chosen me.
And I got to choose him back.
what life is/i need you
SO MATES were a thing.
And I learned that I still didn’t know jack shit about werewolves.
I SAID, “I feel like this is something I should have been told.”
Thomas looked at me as we walked through the trees. “Is it?”
“Yes.”
“Ah.”
“Elizabeth is your mate.”
“For lack of a better word, yes. We can call it that. But she is so much more to me.”
“How did you know?”
He laughed. “Because every time I saw her, I wanted nothing more than to make sure she never left my sight again.”
I understood that. Completely.
“You knew,” I said. “About Joe and me.”
“Yes.”
“That’s why….” I stopped.
He waited.
“When you train him. You bring me out.”
“Yes.”
“Because of what I am. To him.”
“Yes.”
“Mate.”
“If you want to call it that. It’s very romanticized, but I suppose that’s as close as we’ll get.”
“What am I?”
He looked surprised. “You’re Ox.”
And I said, “To him. What is Elizabeth to you?”
“Layers,” he said with a chuckle. “So many layers. She is mine and I would do anything for her. She makes me stronger because of that. An Alpha needs it more than any other. I wouldn’t be without her.”
“And that’s what I’ll be to Joe?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Or more. You’re different, Ox. I don’t think even I know how different. It will be truly a sight to behold. And I, for one, can’t wait to see it.”
“See what?”
“Your everything,” he said.
The sun disappeared behind a cloud overhead. “Why did you let him?”
“Let him?”
“Give me his wolf.”
“Because he chose to.”
I frowned. “You could have stopped him.”
“I suppose.”
“Carter said you tried to.”
“Because we didn’t know you.”
“But you let him anyway. Why?”
Thomas touched my shoulder. “Because Joe of all people should have been allowed to make a choice. After all he’d been through. And for the first time since we’d gotten him back, he had a choice. He chose to speak to you. He chose to bring you back to the house. He chose to hold your hand. That’s what life is, Ox. Choices. The choices we make shape what we’ll become. For a long time, Joe’s choices were taken from him. And then they were ruled by fear. But you came along and he made his own choice. So yes. I could have stopped him. I could have told him to wait. I could have told him no. But I didn’t because he chose. He chose you, Ox.”
“Who was it?”
Thomas looked away.
I said, “I need to know.”
“Why?”
“Because if I’m choosing this, I’m choosing all of it.”
His name was Richard Collins. He’d been an Alpha until it had been stripped from him. He’d raped and murdered members of his own pack. Fed humans to the more feral of them. He was a monster and he did not care. They tore the Alpha from his body, but he escaped before they could do anything more.
Thomas and Richard had been friends when they were children. Here. In this territory. They were pack and they loved each other very much. As brothers.
Human hunters had come one day.
Thomas and his father had been away.
They tortured Richard’s mother and father in front of him. Many others too.
Flesh charred and the air filled with ash.
Much of the Bennett pack was gone.
Richard had gone away then.
No one knew how he’d become an Alpha. Magic, maybe. Murder. Sacrifice.
He was cruel and he took life and hope away, until he was caught.
But then he slipped through their grasp.
Thomas had been asked to come back East and help the other packs find him.
To stop him.
They searched for years and years and years. Moving all over the country.
Thomas hadn’t thought there was any hope for his old friend, but he didn’t allow that to stop him.
They were in Maine when he got the call.
Joe was gone. Taken from the front yard in their little house by the sea.
They couldn’t find him. Couldn’t track him. The scent was gone, like it’d never been there before.
They looked for three days.
On the third day, the phone rang.
Richard said, “Thomas. Thomas, Thomas, Thomas.”
And Thomas said, “You son of a bitch.”
Richard said, “You weren’t there. You did nothing to stop them. They screamed for you to help them. I screamed for you. For your father. But you weren’t there.”
Thomas begged, “My son. Richard, my son. Please.”
And Richard Collins said, “No.”
He called a couple of times a week and Joe shrieked. He made Joe shriek and Thomas thought he was losing his mind.
It took eight weeks to find him. A mixture of scents and sheer luck led them to a cabin in the middle of the woods so much closer than they thought it’d be. But they did find him, battered and alone. He was not the same. He was a wolf, but wolves did not shift until puberty. He healed, but it was slow.
And he would not speak.
Once I could be sure my voice would work, I asked
, “What did he want?”
“To inflict pain,” Thomas said. “As much of it as possible.”
And I asked the question I’d asked him once before. “Is he dead?”
And Thomas said, “No. He will spend the rest of his days rotting away in a cell formed by magic. The magic won’t allow him to shift. For all intents and purposes, it has taken his wolf away from him.”
My hands curled at my sides. “Why didn’t you kill him?”
He watched me with sad eyes. “Because revenge is the lesson taught by animals. Because it’s more difficult to show mercy. I showed him mercy because he’d never shown my family the same.”
And for a moment, I hated Thomas. I thought he was weak. A coward. And he knew that. He must have known every thought that ran through my head at that moment.
He waited.
It passed because I knew him. But I had to be honest.
I said, “I don’t know if I’d have been able to do the same.”
“No,” he said, not unkindly. “I don’t expect you would have.”
And we walked on through the forest.
MOM ASKED, “Is this what you really want?”
I said, “Yes.”
“He’s seventeen, Ox.”
“And nothing will happen until he turns eighteen.” I didn’t want to talk about that part with her anymore. It buzzed along my skin until I felt flushed and hot. It was too much. The thought of touching. Of being touched.
She looked out the window to the summer sun. “What happens if it doesn’t work out?”
And I didn’t want to think about that. I didn’t want to think about that at all, so I said, “It’s about chances. That’s how everything is.”
“WE’RE FRIENDS first,” Joe whispered in my ear. “You’re my best friend, Ox, and I promise that will never change. We’ll just be… more.”
“WILL I have to become a wolf?” I asked Thomas. “To be with Joe?”
“No,” Thomas said. “You don’t.”
“I’ve thought about it,” I said quietly.
“Have you?”
“Yeah.”
He waited.
“I don’t have to be?” I insisted.
“No,” he said again. “You’re wonderful just as you are.”
I wondered if this is what it felt like to have a father who loved you enough to stay despite all your faults.
ELIZABETH SAID, “There is no one else I would have picked for him. Ox, you will do wondrous things together. He will be a leader, and as an Alpha, he will put the pack above all else. But remember that you’ll always be his heart and soul.”
MARK SAID, “I knew. From the very first day, I knew that you were made for something great. I am proud to call you my friend and pack.”
CARTER SAID, “I hope you’re ready for werewolf stamina. Like, for real. You’re going to be sore. For days.”
KELLY SAID, “I really wish I hadn’t heard Carter say that. I need to pour bleach on my brain. For days.”
I DREAMT of wolves and a bloodred moon. They sang to me and I took their songs and made them my own. I ran with them on four legs and my heart thundered in my chest. I could see and smell and hear everything and it was all green, green, green and Beta orange and Alpha red. The colors fit against the song and we sang because we were pack pack pack.
“UH, OX?” Mom called as I got ready for work. The sky was starting to lighten outside.
“Yeah?”
“I think it’s started.”
“What?” I tucked in my shirt as I walked down the stairs.
She was on the porch, the front door standing open. I came up behind her.
She said, “At least he kept it off the porch like I asked.”
A fat rabbit lay on the grass, throat shredded, eyes wide and sightless. Blood pooled underneath it, tacky and dark. Flies buzzed around it, landing on stiff paws.
“I’m not eating that” was the first thing I said.
Mom elbowed me in the stomach. “He might be listening!” she hissed at me.
“I mean. Uh. Wow. That looks so good!” I was almost shouting.
“Subtle, Ox.”
“A werewolf is courting me with a dead rabbit. There’s nothing subtle here.”
“Couldn’t have been flowers,” she muttered as she slid on her rubber boots by the door.
“He gave you flowers,” I reminded her as she stepped down the porch.
“I meant for you,” she said. She bent over and grabbed the rabbit by the ears, pulling it up off the ground. It came up with a low crackle, grass stuck to the underside. “Courting. I swear.”
“Why are you touching it?” I said, sounding horrified.
“We can’t leave it here,” she said. “He’ll be offended.”
“I’ll be honest. I’m already offended.”
“Quick,” she said as she walked by me into the house. “Look up rabbit recipes on the Internet before you go to work.”
“You’re dripping on the floor!”
“It’s just a dead rabbit, Ox. You sound hysterical.”
“I sound hygienic.”
I wasn’t very good with Internet stuff, so I googled “what to do when your future werewolf mate/boyfriend/best friend courts you and brings you a dead rabbit.”
First, there was a lot of porn.
Then I found a recipe for Maltese rabbit stew.
It was delicious.
The stew, not the porn.
The porn was weird.
GORDO SAID, “So. You just got a basket of, like, eighty mini muffins delivered to you.”
I said, “Mini muffins?” and I looked up from a tire rotation I was doing on a 2012 Ford Escape.
“Uh. Yeah. Like, eighty of them.”
“That’s a lot of muffins.”
“Lynda from the bakery brought them over. Well, actually, her son did because the basket was too heavy for her to carry.”
I sighed.
Gordo narrowed his eyes. “Dreamy sigh,” he accused.
He followed me into his office.
Sure enough, there was a basket of mini muffins. The biggest basket I’d ever seen.
I knew what this was.
It didn’t count as hunting. Not that I was complaining. I didn’t think Gordo would appreciate dead animals at the shop.
There was a note in an envelope.
It said Shut up. This totally counts as hunting.
I sighed again.
“Ox,” Gordo said.
I said, “So. Mates are a thing, huh?”
And he said, “Ox.”
“YOU’RE JUST a child!” he shouted at me later after the others had gone home. It’d been building all day.
I said, “I’m twenty-three years old, Gordo. I haven’t been a child in a very long time.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Do you even know what this means? What you’ve agreed to? This is for life. When the wolf attaches, it is for life.”
“I know.” Thomas had told me. I might have had a minor meltdown, but that was yesterday. Today was different.
“And you still agreed? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“Funny,” I said. “I thought this was my life. Not yours.”
He started to pace in front of me. “How the fuck am I supposed to protect you if you keep doing these things to yourself?”
“I can protect myself. I don’t need you or anyone else to do that for me.”
“Bullshit. You know I need—” He cut himself off with a growl.
“You need me. I know.”
“That’s not what I was going to say.” He slammed his palm against the desk.
“Gordo.”
“Fuck off, Ox.”
“He’s going to be the Alpha one day.”
“I don’t care.”
I pushed on anyway. “He’s going to need a witch.”
He reeled like I’d struck him. “Don’t. Don’t you dare.”
“What the hell happened to you?” I demanded. “Why do you
hate them so much?”
He laughed bitterly. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“It does if you’re always going to be like this. Look, I know you’re worried about me. That’s what you do. But you have to trust me. I already have enough doubts as it is. I can’t have them from you too. I need you, man. To have my back.”
He pounced on those words, of course. “Doubts? Then why are you even doing this?”
I said, “Not about him. About me. What if I’m not good enough for him? What if I can’t be what he’s going to need?”
He stopped his pacing and his shoulders sagged. “Ox, you can’t think like that.”
I snorted. “Yeah? It’s actually pretty easy to.”
“Your father did this to you,” he said with a scowl. “I should have kicked his ass when I had the chance.”
I looked up in surprise.
“I don’t like this,” Gordo said. “At all. But I’m going to say it anyway, okay? Anyone should count their lucky stars if they got to call you their own. I am not giving you my approval because it doesn’t matter to you anyway. Nothing I can say matters at this point.” His voice cracked. “But he had better treat you like you hung the moon or I will tear him from this earth.”
I reached out and squeezed his shoulder, trying to stop my knees from buckling. Of course everything he said to me mattered. How could he think otherwise? I said, “Gordo. Gordo. His wolf. He gave me his wolf. The stone wolf.”