by TJ Klune
Dangerous ground. “It’s all secret,” I said. “And I don’t like secrets.” It was a deflection, careless and rough.
But it worked.
He nodded. “I know you don’t. But it’s for your own protection. And for the protection of us all. He won’t be the last. I feel we are in for perilous times ahead.” He looked older than I’d ever seen him before when he said, “It’s time you know who the real enemy is. The ones who would take everything from us.”
“Tell me. Tell me. Tell me.”
Ezra said, “They are the Bennetts. And they will destroy everything if given the chance.”
He left me after securing a promise that I’d rest. He took my glasses from his coat pocket and set them on the nightstand next to the bed. Silly wolf, he said. You don’t need these. I love you, I love you, I love you.
I didn’t reply.
He was at the door when I said, “Omegas.”
He stopped. He didn’t turn around. “What about Omegas?”
“Have you ever seen one?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Oh yes. Poor creatures. Feral and dark. I can only imagine what it would feel like to have everything ripped from you, to have your tether shredded until it hangs in tatters. I think I would lose my mind too.” He glanced back at me over his shoulder. “Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering what else I haven’t been told.”
He winced. “I deserve that. And no, dear, I promise that you know everything I do. I won’t keep these things from you any further. You aren’t a child.”
“No. I’m not.”
He nodded. “Sleep, Robbie. We’ll talk more in the morning.” He closed the door behind him, leaving me alone.
I collapsed back down on the bed, trying to focus.
Bennett.
That name.
I knew that name.
Didn’t I?
Of course I did.
It was lost somewhere in the fog, out in the fringes, but I knew it.
Barely spoken aloud anymore.
They had betrayed the wolves.
They were the enemy.
And if they thought I was going to stand by and let them take my Alpha from me, then they were mistaken.
I would do anything to protect her.
Anything.
I didn’t dream of wolves.
Instead, there was a shadow above my bed.
I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t scream.
It leaned over me and whispered in my ear.
It said—
I opened my eyes.
The sky was gray through the window.
I blinked as I yawned, jaw cracking.
I heard Ezra moving downstairs in the kitchen. I could smell the terrible coffee he always made. I grinned to myself.
I pushed myself up out of bed, scratching my bare stomach as I popped my back.
I felt… good.
My head was clear.
I looked around for the jeans I’d been wearing the day before. They were folded on top of my dresser.
I frowned. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember taking them off and putting them there.
I shook my head. It was nothing. Yesterday was… well. It was what it was. And even if I only had a vague recollection, it was fine. Michelle was happy. Ezra was happy. I’d done a good job. They cared about me, and I couldn’t ask for anything more.
I grabbed the jeans and sniffed them. They smelled all right. There was the scent of a foreign wolf on them, and… hay? When the fuck had I been around hay?
Whatever.
I pulled them on, letting them rest low on my hips. My wallet was in the back pocket. The front left pocket was bunched up, and I reached in to push it down.
Something was inside.
I pulled it out.
A small piece of paper. A sticky note. Bright orange
There were two letters written on it in my own handwriting. Dashes too.
I _ _ _ _E
I didn’t remember writing it.
I knew what it meant. It was a game from my mother, like Hangman. She used it to teach me how to spell.
INSIDE
I stared down at it. When had I put it there? When had I written it?
I went to my closet and opened the door, shoved aside the hanging clothes. There, at the back of the closet, was a small wooden panel. Even if someone was looking for it, they’d miss it. Ezra didn’t even know about it. I’d waited until he was out of the house the second week I’d been in the compound before I made it, cutting the wood at the back of the closet.
A hint of claw grew from my right index finger, and I pushed it into the hairline crack at the top. I pulled.
The panel fell away.
Inside (INSIDE) was a box that carried all my secrets.
I pulled it out and sat on the floor, the box in my lap.
It was plain and made of pine. It’d once been a jewelry box, but my mother had sold all its contents to fund our escape.
Now it was filled with little details.
Her driver’s license. She wasn’t smiling. I touched the small photo before setting it aside.
Sitting in the box in a corner was a stone wolf.
A gift for the one who would complete me. It’d been carved by the Alpha who taught me how to shift. He said I needed to keep it safe. Keep it whole. It was small and made of black stone, the ears perked, the tail curled around the wolf’s legs. I lifted it out and—
Underneath was a folded… card? I didn’t recognize it.
I set the stone wolf aside.
The card fell over in the box, opening slightly. A cartoon wolf at the top. I HOWL FOR YOU!!!
I picked it up and opened it.
A phone number and four more words.
FOR WHEN YOU’RE READY.
I frowned down at it. I didn’t know where it had come from. I thought back over the past few days. I’d… what? I’d gone to see Michelle a couple of times. She’d summoned me. Told me I was a good wolf. That she was proud of me. Ezra had been there. He was smiling. It was fine. It was great. It was wonderful. It was
(can i trust you)
just on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t remember, I couldn’t
(wolfsong)
focus on, I couldn’t fucking focus.
Why did it matter?
Maybe one of the younger wolves had snuck it into my pocket and I’d forgotten I’d put it in the box. Rumor had it that a bunch of the girls (and some of the boys) had a crush on me. It was sweet. I sure as hell wasn’t going to do anything about it, but still. I had to give whoever it was props for being so forward.
I put the other items back in the box and closed it. I set it in the small opening and put the panel back in place. Maybe Ezra would know what this was about.
I opened the bedroom door. “Hey, Ezra,” I called out as I walked out of my room. “You’re never going to believe what I found. It’s—”
A pure white wolf stood at the end of the hall. Its head almost touched the ceiling. Its ears twitched.
I froze.
The hallway began to twist and bend, the siding cracking as pictures fell from the wall, glass shattering on the floor. The wolf took a step toward me as the ceiling split. The walls were bending, and I couldn’t move, I couldn’t even take a step back, and the wolf, the wolf took another heavy step toward me, its paws almost as big as my head. Its claws scraped against the wood floor, leaving long scratches.
The house disintegrated around me, the walls exploding outward, the ceiling rising and cracking.
And then it stopped.
The wolf grinned.
It had many teeth.
I said, “Who are—”
The wolf ran at me.
I braced for impact.
The moment before it struck me, its eyes filled with a bright and terrible red, and the Alpha—
Passed right through me.
I bent over, clutching my head, the paper digging into my ear as wolves
howled in my head, pulling, pulling, pulling.
They sang:
I HOWL FOR YOU!!!
I HOWL FOR YOU!!!
I HOWL FOR—
“Robbie?”
I opened my eyes.
Ezra stood at the end of the hall, head cocked, wiping his hands on a dishtowel.
The house was as it always was.
The pictures hung on the walls.
The ceiling was intact.
There were no grooves in the floor.
“You said you found something?” Ezra asked. “What is it?”
I stared at him.
He smiled.
“Nothing,” I said slowly. “It was… nothing. Just… a book I thought I lost.”
He nodded. “Funny how that works, isn’t it? We don’t even realize what we’ve lost until it’s right in front of us once again. It’s good to see you up and about. Come. Let’s get you fed.”
“Be right there,” I said.
He turned and went back to the kitchen.
I looked down at the crumpled note in my hand.
FOR WHEN YOU’RE READY.
gunmetal sky/never forget
My mother and I didn’t have many things. She said it was easier that way when you were always on the move. But she let me have books. A few of them, at least.
She said it was important. That I needed to learn.
She taught me how to read herself. There were nights when we’d be sleeping in the car, and she’d make sure to park near a streetlight so I could see.
She would make a nest in the back seat using old blankets and a flat pillow. I loved them because they smelled like her. She would always lie down first and pull me against her chest. Sometimes she would sing. Other times she would cry.
I didn’t like those other times.
But then she’d hand me a book and ask me to read to her. “It makes me feel happy,” she said. “You have a pretty voice.”
And so I’d read to her, stumbling over the words I didn’t know.
“Sound it out,” she’d say.
I would.
If I couldn’t figure it out, she never got angry.
“No, Robbie. It looks like a g and an h, but sometimes it makes a ffff sound.”
“A-and the wolf looked through the w-window. He saw the pig inside. ‘I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and I’ll b… blow your house down.’”
She kissed the side of my head. “Yes. That. Yes.”
Sometimes I could smell her tears, even if I couldn’t hear them.
I walked into the compound under a gunmetal sky.
The wolves waved at me.
I waved back.
Children ran squealing around me. I thought it was weird that they were out and about, given it was a weekday. They should have been in school.
“Play with us,” they begged. “Chase us. Shift and chase us!”
They all laughed when I bared my teeth at them.
They waited for me as I walked around the back of a house.
I took off my clothes.
Folded them.
Stored them near a back porch.
A piece of paper stuck out of one of the pockets.
I shoved it back in.
The bones and muscles under my skin began to shift, and I
am wolf
i am wolf and there
there are cubs
cubs to play with
cubs to chase
cubs to love
cubs to protect
i will
catch them and play with them and nothing will ever hurt them
A boy followed me as I shifted back hours later. He was bright-eyed with a devilish smile.
He turned away as I dressed myself. He was bouncing on his toes like he was excited.
“Had enough yet, Tony?” I asked him as I put my glasses on. “You can turn around now.”
He grinned at me as he did. “Your wolf is so big! Am I going to be big like you?”
“Bigger,” I said as he took my hand in his, tugging on my arm. “I bet you’ll be the biggest wolf there ever was.”
His eyes were wide. “Really?” he breathed. “Whoa. Even bigger than an Alpha? Mom says I’ll be a Beta, but maybe if I get big enough, I could be an Alpha too!”
“I don’t know,” I said seriously. “Being an Alpha is a lot of hard work.”
“I can do it,” he said. “I’d be the best Alpha in the world. And when I’m the Alpha, you won’t have to be sad all the time.”
I blinked. “What? I’m not sad all the time. I’m not sad at all.”
He frowned as he looked at my fingers. “Mom says blue is sad. And you smell like blue. Like the ocean.”
I knelt down before him. “What do we say about smelling other people without their permission?”
He scowled. “Not to do it.”
“Right. Because it’s impolite.”
He shook his head. “It’s not—I’m not being imperlite. It’s….” He scrunched up his face. “You’re my favorite. After my mom. And dad. And brother. And Ms. Dunstrom, but she’s my teacher, so she doesn’t count. So you’re like, my fifth favorite.” He looked proud.
I was touched. “You’re one of my favorites too.”
“I knew it,” he crowed. “I tried telling all the other kids, but they didn’t believe me.”
I laughed. “Maybe keep that to yourself. It’ll be our little secret.”
Something crossed his face then, something dark that looked tragic on a child so young. I could almost taste it, and it was like ash on my tongue.
“What’s wrong?”
He looked away but didn’t let go of my hand.
“Hey, it’s okay. You can tell me. Did something happen?”
He shrugged, though he looked uncomfortable. “It’s… a secret too. Like how you like me better than everyone else.”
“Okay. Is it a secret that will get someone hurt?”
He hesitated before shaking his head.
“Are you in any danger?”
He shook his head again.
“Is it something only for your mom and dad? Like a parental secret?”
“I don’t know,” he said, brow furrowing. “I mean, I heard my mom and dad talking about it, but it wasn’t their secret.”
“Did they know you were listening?”
The ash was replaced with the sourness of shame. So, no. They didn’t know. I suspected as much. “I didn’t mean to,” he said, kicking at the dirt. “It was just… they were talking, and they said your name, and I wanted to hear what they were saying because I like you a lot.”
“Ah,” I said. “I like you too, Tony. But I don’t know if what they were saying was meant for either of us to hear. You should probably just forget you heard anything, okay?”
“But you’re blue,” he said fiercely. “I know it. And they said you weren’t always blue, that when you were here before, you were green and happy and it was awesome.” He looked up at me. “What was it like when you were here before? Why were you blue when you came back?”
Gooseflesh prickled along the back of my neck. “From where? One of my trips? Sometimes I have to go see other wolves, and it can be tough because not everyone wants the same thing. It’s just… how it is.”
He shook his head. “Not that. I know about that. I’m talking about before. When you left for a long time. I don’t remember ’cause I’m too little, but when you used to live here with the pack.”
“I think there’s been a mistake, cub,” I said. “I never lived here before Alpha Hughes summoned me. Ezra found me and brought me back with him. It wasn’t…. I’ve only been here for a year. You know that.”
He scrunched up his face. “Where did you live before?”
“All over,” I told him. “With many different wolves.”
He didn’t look like he believed me. “But Mom said they already knew you. And that you were different. And she doesn’t lie about anything because lying is bad.”
His
parents. Griff and Maureen. We could have crossed paths before. I didn’t remember it, but it was possible. But I didn’t remember them before I’d come to the compound, and I’d never been to Caswell before that. After my own mother, I’d bounced around to different packs. I tried to remember all of them, all their names, but there were so many. It was all bleeding together. I stayed with some longer than others, but I’d never—
“Blue,” Tony whispered. “It’s all blue.”
I forced a smile on my face. “Hey. Nothing for you to worry about. Listen. Let’s just keep this between us, okay? I won’t tell your parents if you don’t say anything to anyone else. Is that okay?”
“Another secret?”
I nodded.
He didn’t look as happy about this one. “Okay.”
I hugged him close, and he giggled as he pressed his nose against my neck and inhaled. “And I promise to work on the blue thing. Thanks for telling me. I’m glad I have someone like you watching my back.”
“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” he whispered. “Alpha said you were sick and in bed and that’s why we haven’t seen you in a few days, even when it was the full moon. I thought wolves didn’t get sick.”
My hands shook. A few days. A few days. But that would mean—“Why aren’t you in school?”
He laughed. “It’s Saturday, silly. I don’t have to go to school on Saturdays.”
“Of course not,” I said, and my skin was buzzing. “No one goes to school on Saturdays.”
He broke away from me as a group of boys on the other side of the house called his name. “Bye, Robbie!” he called over his shoulder as he ran off to his friends.
