by T. J. Klune
Joe moved toward me slowly, like he was worried I’d be spooked. And maybe, in a way, I was. Because even though I knew what I meant to him, sometimes I didn’t think I knew everything. It was a weight on me, but I had strong shoulders. I could take it.
“All right, Ox?” Joe asked.
I said, “Yeah, Joe,” and I couldn’t keep the awe out of my voice.
“You sure?” He sounded amused.
Maybe I wasn’t. And maybe that was okay. Because Elizabeth was right. He’d given himself to me. All of him. I just had to make sure I kept him safe. Because sure, he’d chosen me. Out of everyone. He’d given me his wolf. Which was essentially the heart of him.
I said, “I love you, you know?”
And how he smiled.
IT TOOK time. It really did.
Things weren’t always going to be good.
They’d left us, and there had only been three of us.
They’d come back, and now there were eight and I was the Alpha.
There were clashes trying to merge them together.
To see if there were pieces of us that fit.
Sometimes they did, and we could move in sync with each other.
Other times we didn’t.
Robbie yelped in pain when Carter knocked him into a tree.
It was an accident. They were roughhousing. Wolves did that.
But all I heard was the crack of bone and the sound of one of mine hurting.
Robbie whined in the back of his throat, trying to lift himself up onto four legs.
I was in front of him even before I knew I was moving.
Carter had shifted back, standing nude, bare toes digging into the grass and dirt.
“Hey,” he said. “I didn’t mean—”
“Back the fuck off,” I snarled at him.
Carter’s eyes went wide, and he took a step back.
I turned and knelt beside Robbie. His ears were flat against his head, and he trembled slightly, reacting to my anger. I took a breath and let it out slowly.
There was a sharp knob of bone where one shouldn’t have been near his shoulder, bulging the skin and hair. Robbie grimaced, teeth gritting together as it slowly snapped back into place.
“Okay?” I asked, running my hand along his snout.
He nipped my finger gently.
“Sorry, Ox,” Carter said from behind me. “It was an accident.”
I grunted at him, unsure of why I felt this way. “Not me you should apologize to.”
“Sorry, Robbie.”
Robbie yipped and pushed himself to his feet, rubbing against me as he walked past. He butted his head against Carter’s hip and all was forgiven.
“You’re still thinking of them as separate packs,” Joe told me later that night. We lay side by side in my bed in the old house. The room was dark and the moon was a sliver in the sky. “You saw that as an attack on your pack, not as two packmates roughhousing with each other.”
“I don’t know how to switch it,” I admitted quietly. “It’s been this way for so long.”
Joe sighed.
“I’m not blaming you, Joe.”
“Maybe you should,” he muttered.
“I did. It’s done. I just need to figure out how to work through it.”
“Maybe….”
“Maybe what?”
“My dad,” Joe said. “He… taught me things. About what it meant to be an Alpha. What it meant to have a pack. I could… show you. If you wanted.”
I took his hand in mine.
I said, “Yeah, Joe. Sure. That sounds fine.”
ONCE WHEN I was seven, my father came home from the garage.
He sat on the porch, opened a beer, and sighed.
I sat near him because he was my father and I loved him so.
He looked at the house at the end of the lane. It was empty. It had been for a long time.
The sun was setting when he was on his fourth beer.
He said, “Ox.”
I said, “Hi, Daddy.”
He said, “Hey” and “Ox” and “I’m going to give you some advice, okay?” the words tripping all over each other.
I nodded, though I didn’t know what he was talking about. I just liked the sound of his voice.
He said, “You think you’re gonna get somewhere. You think you’re gonna do something great with your life. Because you don’t want to be like wherever you came from. But people are gonna shit where you walk. They’re not going to give a damn about what you want. All they want to do is knock you down. Trap you in a job you hate. In a house you can’t stand. With people you can’t even look at. Don’t let them. Okay? You don’t fucking let them do that to you.”
“Okay,” I said. “I won’t.”
He grunted at me and took another sip from the red and white can.
He said, “You’re a good kid, Ox. Stupid, but good.”
I wondered if that was what true love felt like.
JOE TOOK me to the trees, to the woods, walking the path of his father. His Alpha.
He said, “Dad told me that there have always been these threads that connect us. They bind us to each other because we’re pack. The better we work together, the more we trust and respect each other, the stronger the bonds become.”
He reached out and ran his fingers along the bark of a tree.
His father had done the same many times when we’d walked through the forest.
I told him as much.
He smiled at me. “It helps.”
I didn’t know what that meant, not really, but I let it go.
“You can feel them, can’t you?” he asked as he stepped over a rotting log that burst with flowers and long blades of grass.
“Most of the time,” I said.
“Carter? Kelly? Gordo?”
I shrugged. “It’s getting there. I think. I don’t know. Gordo, maybe. Only because I’ve known him. I’m tied to him.”
“You’re tied to everyone else too.”
Until you broke that away, I wanted to say. Until you snapped those threads like they were nothing.
But I didn’t. Because I was moving beyond it. For the most part.
“It was my fault,” he said, and I hated werewolves right then, hated being tied to them as I was, because there were so many times that my thoughts didn’t seem to be my own anymore.
“It’s not like that,” I muttered.
He rolled his eyes and there were whispers of who are you and where did you come from, spoken in the voice of a little tornado. It was that disconnect again. The little boy I’d known, the teenager he’d been, the man he was now. He was gruff and quieter than he’d been before, but little flashes broke through the cracks every now and then. Joe was Joe was Joe.
I could live with that. For him. Because of him.
“It’s a little like that,” he said. “But I’m fixing it.”
“How?”
He shrugged. “It’s hard to put into words.”
“Try.”
He narrowed his eyes at me but took my hand in his, our fingers meshing together. “I guess it’s like—okay, it’s probably stupid to say instinct and that you wouldn’t understand because you’re not a wolf, but it’s not like that. I think you’re more wolf than man these days.”
He sounded proud about that. I didn’t understand why.
“This is my home,” he said. “It’s where my father grew up, like his father, his father’s father. We were meant to be here. There’s a certain… magic in it, I guess. Not like Gordo’s magic, but something that runs through the ground beneath our feet. It recognizes me. The pack. The Alphas. When things get frayed—broken—it feels it.”
“And you broke it,” I said without meaning to. “When you cut us off, you broke it.”
He winced, but nodded. “Yeah, I guess I did.” Then, “You felt it, didn’t you?”
I remembered that feeling in my head and chest when I’d woken up that morning. The two words on my phone.
I’m s
orry.
Yeah. I’d felt it.
“There was something,” I said as levelly as possible.
He looked pained at that. “Ox, I—”
I didn’t want to hear it. I was done with apologies. They didn’t help us, not anymore. “We’re good, Joe.”
“Are we?”
“We’re getting there,” I amended, because it was closer to the truth.
“Which is why it’s up to me to fix it,” he said. “It’s not you, Ox. Why you can’t feel them. Not yet. It’s me. I divided us. And I’m trying to fix it.”
“How?”
He grinned. “Communing with nature, of course.”
“I still don’t get it,” I said, thinking about my father.
He said, “Hey, Ox. That’s okay. I get it enough for the both of us. I’ll fix this. I’ll fix everything. You trust me, right?”
Most might not have heard the doubt in his voice, the little sliver that pushed its way in at the end. But I’d known him since he was ten years old. We were just Ox and Joe and I knew him, probably better than anyone else. Even if he wasn’t the boy who’d left that day years ago.
There really was only one answer to his question.
So I said, “Yeah, Joe. I guess I do.”
SOMETIMES WHEN I couldn’t sleep, even with Joe beside me, I’d walk out into the trees. Gordo didn’t like that I did that, but I’d told him I wasn’t worried, because I had faith in his wards, that I had faith in him.
He’d said he would deny till his dying day if I told anyone that he got choked up over that.
On nights like that, I’d put on some shorts and one of Joe’s shirts. I’d kiss him on the forehead as he slept on. I’d head outside into the dark, the air cool on my skin.
And I’d just walk.
It usually took less than an hour before a white wolf would catch up to me, padding along beside me, brushing up against me. We didn’t speak much, but he was always there until we crawled back up into bed. Sometimes, he’d shift back. Other times, he’d stay as a wolf and we’d lie on the floor since the bed was too small. I’d take the blankets down and he’d curl up next to me, his gigantic head on my chest, rising and falling with every breath I took, red eyes watching me until I drifted off back to sleep.
NOTHING CAME for us in that first month.
Or the second.
There were rumors. Whispers.
“They tracked him north,” Michelle Hughes told us over Skype, “toward Canada.”
I frowned at the screen. “That doesn’t make sense. Why would he be heading away from us?”
“He’s not,” Joe said, a faraway look in his eyes.
“No,” Michelle said. “I don’t think he is.”
“A distraction,” I said.
“Misdirection, more like,” Michelle said. She looked tired, dark circles under her eyes. “I don’t know what he’s planning, but it’s not anything good. My teams went north, but the trail just… ended. One moment they thought they were close, and the next there was nothing there.”
“How can he do that?” I asked. “Can you fake a specific wolf’s scent?”
“Magic,” Joe said.
“Robert Livingstone,” Michelle agreed. “Most likely. Joe, are you sure we can’t come to—”
“We’ve already talked about this,” Joe said, eyes flashing crimson.
“And you’re being stupid about it,” she growled right back.
“I have the people here I trust,” he said. “That’s all we need.”
I hoped he was right.
THERE WAS a trust there. However small. However fragile.
But it was starting to build.
I saw it in the way the humans began to relax around Carter and Kelly. They looked less tense, less suspicious.
I saw it in the way that Gordo laughed at something Rico said. Or the way he bumped shoulders with Chris as they walked side by side. Or the way he hugged Tanner wherever they said good-bye.
I saw it in the way Robbie grew shy anytime Kelly walked into the room, blushing slightly, eyes darting toward the ground. Kelly would always look confused at this, but he never pushed it.
I saw it in the way we moved together. We weren’t in sync. Not yet. But we were getting there. We were finding the rhythm, the cadence we needed. I didn’t quite understand it myself, but their eyes were always on whatever doorway I walked through, like they were expecting me. They did the same with Joe.
It was in the way they spoke.
Carter said, “You can feel it, can’t you? The bonds. The threads. I’ve never had this, Ox. I’ve never had a pack this big.”
Kelly said, “I don’t understand. Why does he keep making those faces at me? Why does he stutter every time I try talking to him? I didn’t do anything to Robbie. I don’t get why he’s acting weird.”
Robbie said, “I don’t even know what to say to him! I don’t even know him. Anytime I try and talk to him, I forget how to talk and—oh my god, are you laughing at me? You’re a fucking bastard, Ox, I swear to god.”
Jessie said, “I tried going out with some girlfriends. We were at dinner, and they were laughing about… I don’t know what. And all I could think about was how they weren’t there, you know? They weren’t… in my head. Like the others. And it was empty for me. Ox, I swear to god, if you’ve ruined a normal life for me outside of this, I will punch you in your spleen.”
Chris said, “She’ll do it too. Trust me. When she was seven, I accidentally—ow, fine, it was on purpose, stop hitting me, for fuck’s sake—left one of her Barbies on a heating vent. It melted its face and looked… well, it looked just awesome. She didn’t think so. I still have a scar on my elbow from where she attacked me with her fingernails.”
Tanner said, “He’s different. Gordo. Maybe it’s just because I know about the whole witch thing now. Maybe that colors it. But I don’t know if that’s all of it. He’s different, you know? Since he came back. He’s… quieter. And more centered, maybe. I think he needed a pack, Ox. I know he had us, but I don’t think it was the same. I think his magic needed someone.”
Gordo said, “I couldn’t breathe. When we were gone. Not like I can here. Not like I can when I’m with you. I know you get it. I know we don’t really… talk. About stuff like this. Feelings or whatever. It’s not who we are. But, Ox, you let me breathe. I never wanted to leave you. I just—I’m. I had a pack. That night, something… I did what I had to. Or, my magic did. I bound myself to him. To Joe. But I need you to know. I was always bound to you first.”
Rico said, “If you had told me five years ago that I’d be in a werewolf pack with a kid half my age as my alfa who was also butt-fucking the other alfa—don’t you glare at me like that, Ox, you know it’s true—I would have asked if I could have some of whatever you were on. Life is… strange. Green Creek is strange.”
Elizabeth said, “I started painting again. First time in three years I picked up a paintbrush and it didn’t scare me. Oh sure, the idea of creating something new is always scary, but the act itself is cathartic. Liberating. I don’t know what phase I’m in now, Ox. But I’m going to do my best to find out. Maybe green. I feel green, Ox. Do you feel it too?”
Joe said, “I can feel them.”
Joe said, “I can feel all of them.”
Joe said, “Little pinpricks of light.”
Joe said, “My father taught me an Alpha is only as strong as his pack.”
Joe said, “Ox. Ox. Don’t you see? Can’t you feel it? Our pack is strong.”
Joe said, “And it can only get stronger. I think—”
Joe said, “I think he would have been proud. Dad. I think he would have been proud of me. Of you. Of us.”
Mark said, “It’s your heartbeat.”
“WHAT?” I asked, glancing up at Mark who sat across from me in the diner. Mark had wandered into the shop, telling me he was taking me to lunch. I wasn’t surprised when we sat in the same booth he’d sat in the day I’d met him. Things seemed to a
lways work out that way.
He was watching me with those same eyes I’d first seen when I’d barely been able to grasp the scope of the world. “How they move. How we move.”
I frowned. “Did I say that out loud?”
“No.”
I sighed. “Of course not. Fucking werewolves.”
He grinned. “I know these things.”
“I know you do. At what cost, though, Mark? I’ll tell you the cost. My sanity. And my fucking privacy.”
“Should have thought of that before you became an Alpha.”
“Like I had a choice in the matter.”
His smile softened. “You had a choice, Ox. You know that as well as I do.”
“Yeah,” I said.
The waitress came over and took our orders. She smiled flirtatiously at Mark, but he just ordered a tuna melt and didn’t react.
“I’m also your second,” he said as she walked away. “The enforcer. That’s how I know these things.”
That… gave me pause. Because we’d never discussed that.
He waited.
And, really, it made sense. “Okay, then.”
“You really didn’t know that.”
“I never really thought about it.”
“You still don’t have to,” he pointed out. “It doesn’t change things.”
“Who is Joe’s—never mind. Carter.”
Mark looked pleased.
“Heartbeats?” I reminded him.
“It’s how a pack works,” he said. “How we move in sync with each other.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s your heartbeat,” Mark said. “And Joe’s. We move with you because we listen to the sound of your heart.”
“But the humans—”
“They follow our lead,” he said. “And yours. Until it becomes second nature.”
“That’s what we did with Thomas?” I asked quietly, because suddenly things made much more sense. How we’d been with him. How they were with me. How Carter, Kelly, and Gordo were with Joe.
Mark said, “Yes. You didn’t hear it. Not like we could. But you moved with us. Over time. And now we do it with you. And Joe.”
