A Wolf Apart

by Maria Vale

  No incontinent puppy, I wait for nearly two hours before I dial her number, lying on my bed, the phone cradled in two hands.

  “Hey,” she says. “I have to put logs on the fire. Do you want me to call you back?”

  I think for only a second. I know what she’s doing. She’ll call me back in two hours, and then she, she, will have the upper hand.

  “I’ll hold,” I say and press the phone tighter to my ear, listening for the creak of the stove’s door. If I concentrate, I can hear the cindered wood crumble under the heavy poker, the dull thud of one new log, then another. I can almost smell the damp earth and woodsmoke that surrounds her and the cushion of silence everywhere and Thea’s hair sheltering me.

  The metal door of the stove squeaks closed again, and the latch clicks into place.

  “You still there?”

  “Yeah.”

  My wolfish ears strain for the sound of her chair as she leans into it.

  “I’m so sorry I had to run out like that, but you seemed like you could use your sleep. There was a woman trapped in her car overnight. The snowplow had covered her. It took a while to find her, but she’ll be fine.” Thea shakes out the throw with a light swish before pulling it over her legs.

  “Anyway, I’d really like to see you again,” she says and blows on something. I can almost smell the warm tannic steam from her tea.

  And just like that, she upends everything I know about the way humans play the game. She had an emergency. Not just a silly pretend emergency. A real emergency. And she wants to see me again. My wild pricks up his ears and gets to his feet, his tongue lolling excitedly. Like an incontinent puppy. I turn over on my front, my hand underneath me, the weight of my body pushing my raging-hard Pavlovian member against it.

  “Yes. Yeah, I’d like that. When?”

  “I was going to come into the city to see my uncle this Friday. If you have time.”

  “Friday? You mean this Friday?” My wild gets up and prances around and stands with his paws on the sills of my eyes looking out, his tail wagging. “Yeah… No… I mean…” I think for a moment about Jeremy and the all-important hand.

  “That’s great,” I say, because I know that whatever I have on Friday is going to be canceled.

  Fuck the hand.

  And I do.

  Chapter 19

  Hāmweard, ðu londadl hǽðstapa, in 25 days

  Homeward, you landsick heath-wanderer, in 25 days

  Checking my reflection in the bright, brassy shine of the elevator, I tighten the textured silk tie and shift the lapels of my Fioravanti jacket, just to be sure it sits properly on my shoulders. Then I pull the cuffs of my white Ascot Chang shirt, checking reflexively the platinum-chain cuff links.

  The ravaged face looks back at me with a wolfish smile, and the elevator doors slide open with a ping.

  “Oh. My. God!” Dahlia shrieks. “Mr. Sorensson, what happened to you?”

  “Accident.” I pick up the Whole Foods bag with all my worldly possessions and beam brightly at the HST staffers. “Hit a deer.”

  From the far end of the hall comes the hurried whisper of satin lining against nylon. Hobbled by her long, green pencil skirt piped in snakeskin and high alligator heels, Janine manages only a mincing race walk as she hustles toward me.

  “Janine, I—”

  “Oh. My. God! What happened to you?” In my absence, the law seems to have discovered the deity.

  “I had an acci—”

  “Didn’t you have your seat belt on?”

  “The windshield—”

  “They didn’t give you any stitches? What kind of doctor did you go to? That is definitely going to scar. I suppose that means you’re going to skip the blood drive again?”

  She says “again” with full significance, because every six weeks, a nurse and her volunteer sidekick come around looking for blood. And every six weeks, she eyes me with disdain while the little men who have never fought a bobcat in their lives sit in comfortable chairs in the main conference room while the women fret over them before offering them a plate full of chocolate-chip cookies and a red plastic glass of orange juice. They emerge ostentatiously rolling down their sleeves and for the rest of the day sport red-and-white stickers that warn everyone Be Nice to Me, I Gave Blood Today!, the opposite of which is Be a Shit to Me, I Kept My Blood to Myself!

  But they all have blood types that are easily recognizable. I don’t. The oxygen content means that the color isn’t even quite right, shining a noticeably brighter, more vibrant red than is the human norm. So, every couple of months, I—who ripped out the heart of a heavily armed Shifter, who has the sunken hollow where a wolf crunched through my sinus, whose First Kill was a fisher—have to put up with the tsk-tsking of humans as they show off their cookies and their tiny, carefully bandaged punctures.

  “Yeah, no. Probably not a good idea.”

  Janine follows me into my office. I know she wants me to ask her what’s on her mind so she won’t have to bug me. I’m not really up for it though. The two picture hangers are right where I left them. Janine leans against the wall next to the bleached rectangles, tapping something against the heel of her hand.

  “Oh,” she finally says, like she’s just noticed. “I almost forgot why I needed to talk to you.” She shows me the white card with the black embossed snowflake. “Lori needs to finalize the list for L-Cubed. For the seating arrangements. She says she needs to know who you’re taking.”

  I pull one framed degree from the bag, following the wire with my finger, making sure it’s angled onto the hook.

  “I doubt that seriously.”

  “Doubt what?”

  “That she needs to know who I’m taking.” I step back to check that it’s level. “Lori’s never needed to know my plus-one before.”

  Janine stops leaning casually on the wall.

  “A what? I am not a fucking plus-one. Your other women might have been, but don’t ever make the mistake of treating me like that.”

  She pulls herself up tall on her spindly Gianvito Rossis, smoothing her Cinq à Sept skirt over her tight hips. Maxim insists his old law-school friend hasn’t given Janine an unlimited Barneys charge card, but there is no other way Janine could maintain her steady diet of Proenza Schouler, Dries van Noten, and Prada.

  For Pack, all our offspring are the same. Beloved by all, protected by all, marked by all. They are our future. But humans are not like Pack. They see their children not only as their legacy, but as accessories signaling their personal success.

  Mother, father, son, daughter. The words seem odd on a wolf’s tongue. Like we owe them some responsibility that we don’t owe to the Pack as a whole. The only right that is peculiar to those closest to us is First Blood, the right to kill your child or your mate. The responsibility to take a life you have failed.

  “Hello?” Her voice breaks through. “Do you even remember who my father is?”

  How could I forget? A day doesn’t go by when you don’t—

  “My father is Judge Wilson Unger. And he—Judge Wilson Unger—has always said that I could be a great lawyer.”

  “But?” I pull the other frame out from the bag and settle it above the first.

  “But what?”

  I lean back again. Adjusting them both until they are straight on the wall and even with each other. “You said ‘could,’ and ‘could’ is conditional. What is the condition? You could be a great lawyer if what? You actually worked for once?”

  “If I decided to! The reason I’m not is because I don’t want to be. I don’t want to be tied down like you, like everyone in this office. I want to live. Really live. This is the only life I’ve got, and I am going to carp dime.”

  “It’s carpe diem, Janine.” I feel sick that I ever touched this callow girl whose version of independence is a Barneys charge card and a one-bedroom in
a doorman building supplied by her parents. Carpe diem. The battle cry of the perpetually indulged. We have nurslings who have more sense of responsibility than this supposed adult. “I can’t listen to you anymore.”

  “You can’t listen to me?” she sputters. “You can’t listen to me?” She crumples the invitation and throws it at me. “You better listen to me now, asshole. You think you’re God’s great gift to women, but this is one girl you’re going to be sorry you ever screwed around with.”

  “Believe me, Janine, I already am.”

  She tears across to her office, grabs her Alexander Wang coat and her Victoria Beckham Tulip bag, and storms out.

  Chapter 20

  Hāmweard, ðu londadl hǽðstapa, in 21 days

  Homeward, you landsick heath-wanderer, in 21 days

  She didn’t come back Friday either. The thought that Janine might have extracted herself from my life with so little effort on my part is a small but very real adornment to my day.

  Most of the day is spent running and rerunning my backward calculations: Thea will be at Penn Station at 4:43 p.m., which means she boards the train in Amsterdam at 1:20 p.m., which means she left home maybe at noon. I keep my phone in my pocket, compulsively checking her train’s progress on the Amtrak app.

  At 4:15 p.m., I can’t wait anymore. “Penn Station,” I tell the cabbie, then throw myself back against the cold vinyl. The cab’s smell is a stifling combination of chicken, hot dust, and the adhesive backing of duct tape.

  “Keep the windows open, please.”

  The streets are crowded with pre-weekend traffic. I pay the driver and run the last mile.

  Passengers are already pouring from the doors of Thea’s train by the time I get there. I search through the masses of little humans, sniffing my way through jasmine and the leathery scent of fear and caramel mocha and tobacco and Jamba Juice and salty misery until I hit the musty smell of damp earth and my spine tightens, pulling me like a leash toward the tall woman with the long, black hair who is just out of reach, swerving in and out of the crowd. When she reaches the escalator, I’m blocked in at the bottom, and all I can see is her hair licking against her back.

  “Thea, stop.”

  She turns and looks for me, and when she finds me, she smiles, her body relaxing. There is no “hand” at all. Just the courage to be open and joyous in a world that always seems so calculating.

  At the top of the escalator, she stands to the side, shrugging her worn canvas backpack a little higher on her shoulder, and waits until I finally get to her. I can’t help but pull her up while she slides one arm around my neck and the other around my back. Her body pressed against mine, she raises her face to me. If Penn Station didn’t serve as Hell’s Vestibule, I would mount her right here.

  Grabbing her hand, I race for the street, throwing my body in front of a cab and helping the elderly couple out. “My treat!” I shout as I bundle Thea in. I give the cabbie my address, tell him to take the West Side Highway (“Yes, I know it’s out of the way”), and cram a handful of twenties through the partition. Then I slide the window closed. Someone has scratched HOME into the plexiglass.

  Thea straddles my lap, and when I look down, her eyes follow mine to the enormous bulge bent to the side. She chortles against my mouth, and I find myself laughing, something I haven’t done for so long that the memory of it feels like a dream.

  “If you don’t move me,” I whisper, “I am going to break.”

  She slides her hand down and under, rearranging, but she doesn’t let go, and with every curve and halt of the cab, her hand jerks a little, and this part of me that simply could not get heavier and thicker does.

  I run through the lobby with Thea’s backpack held to my front so as not to offend civilized humans for whom sex is something that is best kept offstage.

  At the door, I fumble with the key, then open it wide, suddenly anxious. I’ve never had anyone in here, and last night, when I tried to imagine it through her eyes, it was so sterile: the asbestos-white carpeting that I never walk on, the hard, narrow sofa I’ve never sat on, the white resin cast of coral that I’ve never known the purpose of, the glass-front refrigerator that holds nothing but batteries and ice and an untouched bottle of pricey vodka left by the broker.

  The two dozen roses I bought from the twenty-four-hour deli—hoping they would add a little life and color—have remained perfectly tight and symmetrical. They smell like paper.

  This isn’t home, I want to say. My home, my real home, is rich and complicated and alive. Stretching up the great folds of mountains are forests that are old and baroque with the huge roots of ancient blowdown surrounded by the opportunistic suckers stretching to take their elder’s spot in the sun. Lichen and moss fight over massive rocks, and water carves tortured paths and it’s all bent and crowded and even the boggish smell of rot stinks of new life.

  She leans against the wall, untying her boot. “It’s very…clean,” she says, seemingly at a loss for anything else. Just then, she loses her balance, dropping her boot. Little flecks of dried mud and leaf fly across the pale wooden floor. She grits her teeth.

  “I’m sorry,” she starts to say. “Do you have a broom…”

  No.

  I don’t want to clean it up. I don’t want her to be sorry for bringing something real into my life. I envelop her, my back shielding her from all this crappy nothingness, and her body relaxes into mine, lengthening against me. Her hands slip around my neck and my waist, her lips brush my cheek, the sunken wound near my nose, my eye. My mouth.

  My tongue breaks in, at first just tasting the sweet bitterness of mint and coffee. My hand struggles with the button at her jeans.

  “Let me,” she says. She doesn’t pull her body away from mine but slides her hand down between us. I press closer so that when her fingers twist against her button, that twisting rubs against my crown. When she pulls at her zipper, her hand glides down to the root and rests momentarily against the heavy weights beneath.

  Then she lets go, and I hook my thumbs through the belt loops on either side of her jeans and hold them still while Thea shifts her hips, holding me around the waist, so I’m tight against her. By the time she’s finished with her shifting and pulling, I’m hurt and achy. Then she crosses her hands in front of her sweater, and when she pulls it over her head, she looks at me with an expression of pure lust.

  Humans apparently categorize lust as a sin, like wrath or sloth or envy or anger or those others that I’m forgetting right now. We understand those; they have consequences for others.

  But lust? That overwhelming need to please and be pleased? How is that a sin? How is it anything but pure?

  Thea clearly has little experience with ties and snorts in frustration when the knot grows too tight to get the tie off. All the civilized buttons and cuff links and knots that lock up my body.

  I grab the tie and pull it over my head, then slide my hands under each placket and tear, sending little shirt buttons scurrying under the radiator in the process. I squeeze two fingers between skin and French cuffs and yank at those, freeing my wrists. My pants follow. Pinked, hand-sewn, bespoke, ripped, destroyed, and beyond repair—and I could not care less, because I am naked with the Goddess of the City of Wolves in my arms, against my skin. I pull her up until her thighs are wrapped around my hips.

  “Wait, I’ve got to get a condom.”

  “I’ve got dozens.”

  “Dozens? I find that both really reassuring and really not,” she says.

  “I didn’t say how many dozens. I’ve just always been very careful.” I don’t want to be careful with her. I want to feel her slick grip on my cock and come in vast waves until she is inundated with me. I just don’t know how to explain that STDs and pregnancy are not a worry, will never be a worry, because I’m a werewolf and she’s not.

  In a few steps, I lay the Goddess of the City of Wolves on m
y bed. She refuses to let go. “No, you don’t,” she says, and her legs tighten against me, pulling me lower until my erection is trapped between my belly and her rolling hips.

  She sighs happily, with no sign of calculation or coyness or guile. This isn’t a transaction. It’s just…sweet, feral joy.

  Her body shivers under me like aspens do in the late fall. With my mouth and teeth, I nip and suckle at her skin, sinking lower and lower until I feel her pulse under me like the warm blood of a fresh kill.

  Something is rising in my blood, something old and terrible and wonderful and very, very untamed. I reach for the drawer of my nightstand while I still have the wits to do it.

  “You’re panting,” she says, watching me fumble with the damn condom.

  “What?”

  “Breathing fast. Wheezing, even. Do you need help?”

  “Just maybe don’t watch so closely?”

  “If that’s what you need,” she says, and she turns away, raising her hips and her perfect ass in the air and ohmygodican’tfeelmybrain.

  I lunge. The only thing that stops me from taking the cord of her neck in my teeth is the thick waterfall of black hair. I lay across her back, gasping.

  Thea watches me over her shoulder. Watches me pull back from the spot where shoulder and neck join.

  She forces her hips tighter against me until I am positioned at her entrance, my body shivering. “Do what you need to, Elijah,” she whispers, her head to the side. “Trust me to take care of myself.”

  Silly human doesn’t know what she’s talking about. But then, with a gentle sweep of her hand, she sends her hair tumbling down to one side, leaving exactly the spot I’d been looking at completely exposed.

  My wild takes hold, and I strike. She startles, like even our females do sometimes, then stills, the muscle of her shoulder tightening under my teeth. I growl softly against her skin, to reassure her.

  Her head cocked slightly to the side, she seems to be considering what she feels. There is no safe word between us. If she tells me to stop, I will stop. However much I don’t want to, I will stop.