by Roxie Noir
Carson squinted at Nathan, looking like a man who really needed some sunglasses.
“Fishing?” he said.
“Yeah, we said we were gonna go fishing today,” Nathan said. “Last night? At the bar? You said to meet you here around eleven?”
“Oh, right,” said Carson. He shifted his weight from foot to foot.
It was all Nathan needed. Obviously the other man believed him.
“Hop in,” Nathan said.
“Actually, my recollection of last night ain’t so good,” Carson said, scratching his head. “I was kinda hoping to find breakfast or coffee or something.”
Nathan faked a big smile, leaning one arm on top of the car.
“I’m not doing so hot after last night either,” he said. “Want to go get some bacon instead? I know a great diner twenty minutes away.”
“They got coffee?”
“Of course. It’s a diner.”
Carson walked toward the car.
“I’m in,” he said.
The two men didn’t talk a whole lot on the way to the diner that Nathan had invented. There was no diner, of course; he was taking Carson to the middle of the national forest. Grizzlies had a wonderful sense of direction, and he knew that Carson would find his way back to town — it wouldn’t be fun, though. It would be nerve-wracking and exhausting, especially with a black eye or two.
That was Nathan’s job, though. To teach people lessons. The lesson here was that you didn’t get drunk and nearly cause a riot in Fjords.
It was impolite.
“The diner’s down here?” Carson asked as Nathan turned down an unmarked paved road.
“It’s really out of the way,” Nathan said. He’d been in a terrible, dark mood ever since he’d woken up that morning, and it was comforting in a terrible way to know that someone else was about to have a worse day.
“The bacon though, man, it’s worth it,” he said.
He turned onto a gravel road, barreling down it so fast that it sounded like the wheels might rattle off.
Carson had gone very, very quiet, and he looked at Nathan strangely.
“Were you at the engagement party?” he finally asked.
Nathan glanced over.
“Why?”
“You just look real familiar is all,” Carson said.
Up ahead, the gravel stopped and the road turned into two ruts.
Nathan pulled up and stopped the car.
“We’re here,” he said, and Carson looked around, obviously lost.
“We are?” he said. He still hadn’t gotten suspicious, which Nathan found incredible.
“This is the parking area,” said Nathan.
Carson got out of the car and looked around for few moments before he started to get angry.
“Where the fuck are we?” he asked, confronting Nathan. He was a little shorter than the other man, and he bounced on his toes in a not-very-threatening way. “You think this is—”
Nathan punched him, sending Carson stumbling backward, and he shut up.
Even as his knuckles blossomed with pain, power shot through Nathan.
This, at least, he knew how to do. He knew exactly what was going on, and he was in control of it.
Then Carson straightened up, and a pang of guilt shot through Nathan. Carson’s cheek was already swelling where he’d hit the other man.
Unbidden, Leah’s face flashed in front of him.
Is this who you want to be? She asked him, and Nathan stopped dead in his tracks.
“What the hell, man?” said Carson, still partly bent over, his hand on his face. “I thought we were going fishing!”
Nathan watched to see if Carson was going to try anything, but the other man looked far too hungover and sick to throw a punch, much less land one.
This isn’t what I want, Nathan thought.
He actually felt bad that he’d punched this guy.
Be better than this, even if she’s not yours.
“Fuck,” Nathan muttered.
“What?”
Nathan turned and stomped around the gravel road, kicking rocks into the trees.
“FUCK!” he shouted, listening to the echo shout back at him.
Carson just watched Nathan like he was a crazy person.
Finally, Nathan marched back to the car and opened the doors.
“Get in,” he told Carson.
“I don’t know—”
“Get in unless you want to walk back to town from here,” Nathan commanded, in no mood to deal with this man or his hangover logic.
Carson did as he was told, sitting as far away from Nathan as he could, still holding his hand to his face.
Halfway back to town, Carson finally spoke up.
“Can you at least tell me what this is about?”
“You’ve been getting drunk and shifting in the middle of town,” Nathan said. “I’m supposed to convince you to quit it.”
“Oh,” said Carson.
Half a mile from town, Nathan stopped, pulled off the road, and told Carson to get out. The other man didn’t ask questions, just did what he was told.
“If you tell anyone I went easy on you, I’ll break all your bones,” Nathan snarled.
Carson nodded dumbly, and Nathan took off again. Walking half a mile with a hangover wasn’t a bad punishment, he figured, but it was something.
18
Leah
Leah woke up late the next morning to someone pounding on the door of her tiny attic bedroom.
“I’m UP!” she shouted crankily.
She felt awful, even though she’d slept like a log. She hadn’t showered when she’d gotten home for fear of waking someone up at two in the morning, and her hands and feet were still covered in grass stains. The dress she’d worn yesterday had been shredded to ribbons when she’d panic-shifted, of course, so she’d have to find a way to explain that.
Worst, she’d finally realized that she couldn’t have Nathan. There was no way. What her father said was more or less law in his family, and there was no way he’d go for Nathan over Ian. He especially wouldn’t want to lose face after publicly promising Leah to Ian in a ceremony.
Jonah Whitehorse wasn’t the kind of man who ever changed his mind, and Leah knew that if he caught her with Nathan, he’d have her back in a tiny cabin in the Yukon so fast her head would spin, and he’d be furious with her for embarrassing him.
It was best, Leah thought, to just take what comes and make the best of it. What she wanted didn’t matter at all, and it never had.
“Come ON,” shouted Emily through the door, and Leah rolled her eyes. How could one person be so meek in public and such a loudmouth around her own family?
“Give me FIVE MINUTES,” she hollered back, desperately looking for another skirt.
At least she hadn’t been caught last night. Thank God for small mercies.
All day, Leah’s job was pies. They needed at least a dozen for the barbecue, in addition to all the desserts that they’d already made.
Rolling out the dough, listening to her sisters bicker and laugh and tease each other, she finally found a sense of peace. She loved baking, and she especially loved it right now because it distracted her from her thoughts just enough.
Besides, being in the kitchen always made her feel like she was loved. Unlike almost every other room in a house, it was her mother’s domain, and however prickly her mother could be with strangers, she was warm and loving with her own children.
Maybe that’s how I’ll cope, she thought, her mind drifting back to her impending marriage. At least I know I’ll love my children, no matter who they’re with.
The thought wasn’t as comforting as she wanted it to be, but then she caught Emily sneaking a bite of pie dough and swatted her sister’s hand.
“That’s raw!” she said. “Don’t mess up my circle.”
“It’s fine,” Emily said, rolling her eyes.
“Can’t you go be useful?” Leah said, half-teasing the other girl.
Emily made a face.
“Either cultivate a skill or help us out over here,” hollered Rebecca.
Leah couldn’t help but smile. At least there was some love in her life. Through the kitchen window, she watched her brothers sweat and set up tables, meat already cooking and smoking over a wide assortment of grills and fires. Her father, not working, looked over everything.
If someone knows how to do meat, it’s Whitehorse men, she thought, her hands deftly lacing up a pie crust.
Hours later, after she’d showered the thin coating of flour off of herself, Leah sat in a chair in the room her sisters were sharing and let them deal with her hair. It was curly and wild, completely untamable as far as she was concerned.
But, of course, her father wouldn’t let her cut it off, so she moved through the world with a cloud of red around her at all times.
Now, Rebecca held a blow-dryer with diffuser to her curls while Abigail sprayed her hair with something that smelled faintly of flowers. Leah had no idea what it was.
“Where’d you get that?” she asked.
“Internet,” said Abigail.
“Where did you learn about that stuff?” she asked.
“Internet again,” said Abigail.
Then she sighed.
“Leah, you’re going to be so glad to be out of Daddy’s house,” Abigail said. “There’s so much to the world.”
For a moment, everyone was silent. Then Leah spoke up.
“Did you love Caleb and Ethan when you got married?” she asked, her voice very quiet, barely audible under the hum of the blow dryer.
In the mirror, she could see her sisters exchange a look.
“Caleb’s a good man,” Rebecca said.
“So is Ethan.”
“That’s a no,” said Leah, making a face.
“Ethan provides very well,” Abigail said, carefully. “And he gave me Emma, of course.”
Emma was her daughter, somewhere downstairs, running amok with all the other kids.
“I don’t see too much of Caleb, really,” said Rebecca. “It works out.”
“I see,” said Leah. That answered that.
“Life’s not a fairy tale,” said Abigail. “But, I mean, you knew that.”
She shut off the hair dryer, and Rebecca gave Leah’s mane one last good squirt.
“There,” she said, and Leah looked at herself in the mirror.
Her hair was less wild, at least, and it was very shiny.
“That’s better,” she said, in a tone of voice that suggested it wasn’t that much better.
“It’s as good as you’re gonna get,” Rebecca said, one hand on her hip. “Once you’re married you can just shave it all off.”
Leah stuck her tongue out, into the mirror, and her sisters laughed.
Then Emily leaned in the door.
“Ian’s here!” she shouted before scampering off to somewhere else.
Abigail leaned in to kiss Leah’s cheek and whisper in her ear.
“The first year is the hardest,” she said.
Rebecca just nodded in agreement.
Then Leah stood and went downstairs to greet her future husband.
Overall, the barbecue wasn’t so bad, she thought. With her entire extended family, most of her clan, and nearly all of Fjords in attendance, she barely had to spend any time with Ian, and that was well enough. He was odd and stiff, and seemed to mostly speak with the older men of the North Star clan about business or something.
She saw Nathan come in at one point, and it felt like her heart might seize up in her chest. He wouldn’t look at her, though. Not that she could blame him, after the stunt she’d pulled last night.
If he never wanted to look at her again, that was fine. She would simply have to handle living in the same town as him, feeling that tug in his direction all the time, and never acting on it.
Finally, she stood around with her cousins, laughing for once, actually enjoying her family.
“I think it was the look on his face,” her cousin Paul was saying. “That thing just bucked him off and he landed right on his ass, looking surprised as all get out that a sheep could do that,” he said, grinning. “I don’t know what that idiot thought would happen if he tried to ride a sheep, but that was the end result.”
“Did he chase it?” Leah said, trying to stifle her giggles. “Tell me he tried to chase it down.”
Paul just grinned.
“He didn’t not chase it,” he said. “He was so drunk he just fell right over, though, and one of the goats came over and peed right on his back.”
Leah nearly shrieked with laughter.
Paul and his brother lived pretty far out in the middle of nowhere, the two youngest of her father’s brother. Every time she saw them, they had great stories, mostly about getting drunk and trying to ride various farm animals.
Then, everyone around Leah suddenly went quiet. She was looking down at her paper plate, stabbing herself a forkful of delicious pie.
“I would like to speak with you,” said a horribly familiar voice.
Her cousins and siblings quickly scattered.
Leah tried to smile, but something in the way he spoke to her made her wretchedly nervous.
Just try to be a good wife, she thought. The first year is the hardest.
“What is it, sweetheart?” she asked.
Even as she said it, the endearment tasted bitter on her tongue.
Ian scowled and grabbed the paper plate from her hand, stalking a couple of feet and throwing it in a nearby trash can.
She’d only eaten one bite, and she stood there and watched open-mouthed.
“What are you doing?” she asked, then bit her tongue.
Don’t question your husband like that, she thought to herself.
Ian looked her up and note disdainfully.
“You don’t need another slice of pie,” he said.
That was my first and I can’t believe you just wasted delicious pie, Leah thought, tears starting in her eyes, but she didn’t say it out loud.
She didn’t say anything.
“I’d like to talk about your behavior,” he said, stepping forward to tower over her.
Leah bowed her head.
The first year is the hardest, she reminded herself, but she’d met her sisters’ husbands, and she wasn’t sure that they’d had it this hard.
“What about it?” she said, softly.
“You’re embarrassing me,” he said, his voice too loud. “My wife should be quiet and ladylike, not rambunctious and loud. At least cover your mouth when you laugh.”
Leah blushed hard, the red rising to her cheeks. She balled her fists in her skirt, furious but impotent.
How dare he, she thought, but didn’t say anything out loud.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, looking down at the ground.
From the corner of her eye, she could tell that everyone was pretending not to watch them.
“You also need to be by my side whenever possible,” Ian went on. “I don’t want to go looking for my wife when I want her.”
Leah ground her teeth together, feeling her jaw flex.
I’m not your wife yet, she thought. I’ve still got a couple days.
“Yes, Ian,” she said softly, still doing her best not to cry.
Ian nodded, and if he noticed her distress, he didn’t seem to mind it.
“That’s all understood?” he said.
Leah could feel everyone’s eyes on her, and wrung her hands together, trying not to squirm.
“Yes,” she said, quietly.
“I’d like some more pie,” he said. “That blueberry is delicious.”
Then he walked back to the knot of men, turning his back to her.
Leah took two deep breaths, forcing the tears back down.
Then she walked to the pie tables, cut a big piece of blueberry, grabbed a fork, and brought it to Ian.
As she handed the plate to Ian, she felt like her skin was crawling. She was nauseous, and she broke out in a sweat as she got closer.
Still, she forced herself to hand over the plate, smile, and kiss his cheek.
“I’ll be back in a moment,” she said. Her hands and voice shook, but she didn’t think anyone noticed.
Then, calmly as she could, she crossed the yard into the house, sprinted up three floors to the tiny cramped bathroom on the top floor, locked the door, sat on the toilet in all her clothes, and burst into tears.
19
Nathan
Nathan got to the barbecue late, hoping that no one would notice. He’d spent a long time in the shower, washing off the sawdust of the day, trying to avoid thinking about Leah at all.
Her choice had been clear. As awful as it made him feel, it was understandable: choosing her family and the way they’d always done things over him, a violent wildcard who she barely knew, made sense.
After all, he’d beaten up her idiot cousin just that morning.
When he got there, he went straight to the meat. That, at least, would be good. Shifters always knew how to grill, and this time was no exception.
He sneaked glances over at Leah, laughing with a bunch of people her age who looked kind of like her — family, he assumed. She looked happy for once, and even though Nathan wished he was the one making her happy, he was glad for her.
Then he got into a long conversation about custom dining tables with Evan, one of the few men who’d made the transition from Roy’s leadership to Brock’s leadership very well.
“Do you ever use reclaimed wood?” Evan was asking, sipping on his lemonade. No alcohol here, either.
“Sometimes,” said Nathan, glad for a topic he could talk about without too much effort. “I prefer to use local, though, and with reclaimed wood the choices are pretty limited.”
“I see,” said Evan. “What I’m really looking for is...”
Nathan wasn’t listening anymore. Instead, he was watching Ian chew Leah out while she lowered her head in submission. Everyone was watching the two of them and pretending not to.
