by TJ Klune
Aside from us, the house was mostly empty. Music was playing in the kitchen. Dinah Shore. Elizabeth Bennett was sashaying away, her dress flaring out around her legs as she sang that she didn’t mind being lonely because she knew in her heart I was lonely too. She smiled at me, the sun like a spotlight through an open window over the sink.
“I like this song,” she said. “Don’t you?”
I could only nod.
Joe shook his head and went to her. She laughed in delight as he bowed before her, one hand behind his back. She took his other hand in hers, pulling him close. We left them dancing in the kitchen as if all was right in the world.
Ox headed for another set of stairs.
There was a beautiful painting hung halfway up, a violent slash of color on a white canvas. I didn’t understand it. I wanted to touch it.
“She painted it,” Kelly said from behind me. “Mom. She’s good. I don’t always understand it, but I don’t think that’s as important as how it makes me feel.”
I nodded but didn’t speak.
We reached the second floor. All the doors were open save one. I sucked in air greedily, taking in the scents of packpackpack. Ox and Kelly didn’t mention it. The only closed door reeked of Kelly, and I didn’t want to ask. I couldn’t. I wasn’t ready.
The bathroom in the hall was bright and airy. Fresh flowers sat on the windowsill. The white claw-foot tub was spotless. There was a towel folded on a small bench next to it.
“I’ll be outside,” Ox said, nodding toward the bathroom, “when you’re finished. You and I are going to talk.”
Ah. The catch.
“Okay,” I said meekly.
He stepped out of the doorway and leaned against the wall.
I stepped inside.
Kelly followed, closing the door behind us. It latched firmly. There was no lock. It would have been pointless.
I didn’t look at him when I asked, “Is one of those rooms mine?”
Or ours.
“It was,” he said from behind me, voice even. “But after… everything, we moved.”
“To where?”
He chuckled. “Not very far. The blue house. It used to be Ox’s. He lived there with his mother.”
“Oh.”
“We shared it with some Omegas who stayed here.”
My eyebrows felt like they were trying to crawl up into my hair. “We what?”
He pushed by me, rubbing his bandaged arm. He nudged the towel to the side before sitting on the bench next to the tub, hands flexing on his knees. He looked up at me. “For a while they had nowhere else to go. Many stayed with us until we could place them in packs throughout North America. A couple even went to packs in Mexico. We ate a lot of food that trip.”
“We.”
He shrugged. “You and me and Carter. We drove. It was nice. Rico taught me enough Spanish to get by.”
“He doesn’t like me very much.”
Kelly hesitated. “You…. Give him time. He’ll come around. It’s been a lot. For all of us.”
I stayed near the door, suddenly uncomfortable. “Brodie.”
“Yeah. He was one of them. Alpha Wells is a good wolf. They’ll take care of him.”
“Who brought him?”
He looked away. “Gordo. And Mark.”
“When?”
His hands tightened on his knees. “A few months ago.”
We were both thinking it. Ox probably was too.
Gordo and Mark had crossed the country to bring an Omega child to be placed in a wolf pack that was less than a day’s drive away from where I’d been. And they’d known it. They’d known I was in Maine. Carter had said as much.
They hadn’t come for me.
They hadn’t even tried.
My hands went to the plain white shirt I was wearing. Elizabeth had given it to me, along with a few others. They were new, she’d said. They kept them for anyone passing through who needed them. They smelled faintly of pack, but not like it would have been had they shared their own clothes with me.
I started to pull it up.
I stopped.
He arched an eyebrow at me, like a challenge. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”
My face grew hot. “Right,” I muttered. “Just… no ideas, okay?”
He laughed, but I didn’t think it was at me. “I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that. Not really.”
I was almost insulted. I was proud of my body. I was strong. I was young. I was capable of providing for my—
Fuck.
He wiped his eyes. “No, oh god, get that wounded look off your face. Christ.” He took a deep breath. “I’m ace.”
I frowned. “What’s that?”
“Asexual.”
“Oh. Oh.” I scrunched up my face. “Like… really?”
Now he was laughing at me. “Like, really.”
“How did that work?” I blanched. “Holy shit, ignore me. Seriously, don’t think you need to explain—”
“If that’s what you want,” he said, and that was it.
I scowled at him.
He smiled at me.
I lasted a few more seconds. “Are you sure?”
“I am,” he said simply.
“But.” I waved my hand in the direction of my neck and the scar on it that extended near my shoulder. “And. Like. You know.”
He laughed again. I thought I even heard Ox snorting outside the door. “We made it work. It’s not that I’m repulsed by sex or anything. It’s just not everything to me. There’s more to us than physical intimacy. Or there was.”
“Oh.” I bit the inside of my cheek, but the words came out in a rush. “And I was okay with that?”
“You were,” he said, and his voice took on a wistful tone that made me feel like I was intruding. “We made it work because we… well.”
Blue.
The room filled with blue.
It was smothering.
I wanted to go to him. It was like a pull. Toward what, I didn’t know.
Instead I pulled off my shirt and let it fall to the floor.
“You can stop flexing,” he said, the blue fading slightly.
“I’m not.”
“Really,” he said. “So your pecs usually bounce up and down like that normally? That’s something you should probably get checked out.” He looked me up and down, but there was no stink of arousal coming from him. Instead, it was warm, like a heavy blanket on a winter day. “You’re bigger than you were. Harder.”
“I’m… sorry?” I wasn’t sorry at all.
He shook his head. “It looks good on you.” He reached over, pulled the shower curtain back. He turned the faucet. Water began to pour into the tub. “Best get to it. You need it. Even I can smell you, and my nose is weak as hell.”
I took a deep breath and reached down, slid my sleep shorts to the floor, and stepped out of them. And I absolutely did not strut toward the tub, even if he had to cover up his laughter with the back of his hand.
I stepped into the tub and pulled the curtain closed. I twisted the lever near the tap, and the showerhead poured water down on me.
I groaned in relief.
“None of that,” Ox muttered through the door. “You’ll have time later.”
I almost fell down.
Kelly stuck his head through the curtain. “All right?”
Of course he couldn’t hear what Ox said—he was human. “I’m fine,” I snapped at him, pushing his head out and closing the curtain again. “Your Alpha is making insinuations.”
“Knock it off, Ox!”
“No!” Ox called back.
“Fucking werewolves,” Kelly muttered before sitting back on the bench. It creaked under his weight, and I just stood under the water. I didn’t remember anything ever feeling so good.
“Ace, huh?”
“Ace,” he agreed.
“That’s… okay.”
“Glad you think so.”
And something settled in my che
st that I didn’t even know was askew.
It felt dangerous.
fix you/enigmatic dicks
We walked for a long time.
Ox never left my side.
The sky was cloudless and the sun was warm.
He’d offered me shoes, but I’d shaken my head. I liked the grass between my toes.
He led me through the trees. I didn’t know where we were, but I followed him as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I glanced back over my shoulder. Kelly stayed behind us, trailing his hands along the trunks of trees. He smiled at me when he caught me watching him, but never spoke. I’d insisted that he come with us. Ox agreed.
“Where are we going?” I asked Ox.
“You’ll see.”
“Is it about me?”
“In a way.”
“Oh.”
We didn’t speak much after that.
We came to a large clearing.
It was familiar, like it was right on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t place it. It was a maddening itch I couldn’t scratch.
Ox was watching me. Kelly too.
I didn’t know what they wanted from me.
I said, “What is this place?”
“It’s ours,” Ox said. “The pack’s. Our territory. Many things have happened here. Good and bad.” He looked off into the surrounding trees. “I learned the truth here. About wolves.”
I crouched down to the ground, pressing my hands flat against the grass.
The earth felt alive, but it was foreign. Unknowable.
I stood back up.
Ox said, “I don’t know how to fix you. And for that, I’m sorry. I thought—” He shook his head. “It’s not like it was with the Omegas. Whatever Robert did to you, it’s more than I am.”
Robert. Ezra. Robert. And all at once, it hit me again, a devastating wave of loneliness. I had no one. I had nothing. Everyone was a stranger, even if they thought otherwise. I knew nothing about them. I was a deserted island in a sea of blue.
“Hey,” Kelly said.
I looked over at him.
His brow was furrowed. His nostrils flared from muscle memory. It took him a moment to remember that nothing would come from it. His expression stuttered and shook. It was brief. He tried for a smile and nearly got there. He said, “That doesn’t mean we’re giving up. It’s just… we have to think about it differently. Try to find another way.”
“And what if there’s nothing you can do?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Then we work with what we have. You’re here, Robbie. That’s all that matters.”
It wasn’t enough, and it made me angry. Which is why I said, “Ezra isn’t all bad. Or whatever his name is. I know he’s… he’s done things to you. To all of you. But he was kind to me. He loved me. He told me. He didn’t lie to me about that.”
Kelly and Ox exchanged a look, and I wondered if I’d once been part of it, these secret communications between members of a pack.
“I believe you believe that,” Ox said slowly. “And maybe even part of him did. Or does. I’m not trying to take that away from you.”
“Then what are you doing?” I demanded.
“Going for a walk,” he said easily, as if it were nothing.
He continued on, crossing the clearing, leaving me to stare after him.
“Yeah,” Kelly said as he came to stand next to me. “It’s an Alpha thing. Don’t try to question it. It’ll only make him more insufferable. Joe won’t tell me, but I think part of being an Alpha is learning to be an enigmatic dick.”
“I heard that,” Ox called over his shoulder. He didn’t stop when he reached the edge of the clearing. He crossed into the tree line, hands clasped behind his back.
“His eyes,” I said.
“The violet?”
I nodded.
Kelly dug one of his shoes into the ground. “Weird, right?”
“Werewolf Jesus.”
Kelly snorted. “Carter.” He sighed. “Dumb, but he kind of has a point. Ox is different. He was a human Alpha before Joe had to bite him.”
“How?”
“We don’t know. There’s never been anyone quite like Ox. You certainly thought so when you first came here. You kissed him once.”
“I did what?”
Kelly laughed. “Yeah. I wasn’t here for it. It was when we were out in the world.”
“But he has Joe!”
“Didn’t stop you.”
“Oh my god,” I said faintly. “I’m going to be straight-up murdered. That’s what’s going on, right? You are taking me out in the middle of the woods to kill me.”
“Nah,” Kelly said. “We’d just do that at the house. Easier to clean up that way.”
That didn’t make me feel any better. “You sound as if you’ve done that before.”
“We have,” he said grimly.
I blinked in surprise. “Who?”
“It was bad. Before Ox was the Alpha of the Omegas, he… was lied to.”
I didn’t want to know. I said, “Who?”
Kelly looked at me. His eyes were bright. He wasn’t a wolf, but he made a good human. I didn’t know how to tell him that or even why I thought I should. It would remind him of all that he’d lost because of me. “Michelle Hughes,” Kelly said.
I closed my eyes.
“Before we knew about the infection, before we knew how it spread, Omegas were coming here. Drawn like Green Creek was a beacon. We didn’t know why at first. But almost on schedule, one would come every couple of weeks. They were lost. Vacant. Driven by instinct.”
“Why did they come here?”
“Part of it was Ox. But a bigger part, we think, was Gordo. Magic has a signature, a fingerprint. But it’s born of blood, and Gordo is his father’s son. And since it was Livingstone who infected the wolves to turn them Omega, they were drawn to Gordo’s magic. They hated it, but they couldn’t stop even if they wanted to. Most of them tried to come after him.”
I opened my eyes. “Who did they kill?”
“Michelle sent a man named Pappas here—”
“Pappas?”
“You after you.”
“What?”
“A man named Osmond was Michelle’s second-in-command. He betrayed everyone for the beast. Then you were Michelle’s second. After you came here and stayed, Pappas took over.”
My head hurt again. “I don’t know Pappas.”
“He’s dead. One of the hunters Michelle sent to Green Creek.”
“Michelle wouldn’t have her own second killed—”
“He was infected too,” Kelly said. “Robbie, she’s not….”
“She’s not what?” I asked, trying to keep the anger from my voice.
“She’s not a good person,” Kelly said. He looked defiant. “I don’t know what you think or what she’s told you, but—”
“You don’t know her. Not like I do. Not like—”
“She told Ox to kill an innocent woman,” Kelly snapped. “An Omega. She said it was the only way. And we believed her because we trusted her. She said there was nothing to be done to help her, nothing that could save her. Ox did what she asked. I don’t give a damn what you think of her, not when I remember feeling what Ox felt in that moment, when he took the woman’s face in his hands and twisted until her neck broke. And she wasn’t the only one. We sent many Omegas back East because Michelle said she’d deal with them. And she did. By killing every single one of them. And you were furious about it. Or at least the Robbie I knew was.”
I was speechless. Surprised, even, at how much those words hurt.
Kelly was breathing heavily. He grimaced and looked like he was about to say something else. Instead he huffed out an angry breath and followed his Alpha, leaving me to stare after him.
There was a bridge, wood painted red and picture-perfect over a stream.
On one side was a plaque, six words in metal.
May our songs always be heard
Kelly and Ox stood in fr
ont of the plaque. Ox reached up and put his arm around Kelly’s shoulders. Kelly traced the engraved words with his finger.
I stood away from them. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t for me.
I thought about running.
Their backs were turned.
I’d have a head start. I probably wouldn’t make it very far, but I wouldn’t know unless I tried.
I’m trusting you, Robbie.
I stayed where I was.
They turned to face me. I wanted to ask what the plaque meant, but I didn’t. Powerful scents have a way of lingering, and this place was filled with fury and blood and something much, much deeper that pulled at the back of my mind.
Ox left Kelly standing near the bridge. He came to me. He filled up my entire world until all I could see was him.
He said, “One day and one day soon, I’m going to ask you about Caswell, Maine. I’m going to ask you to tell me everything. The layout. The people there. How strong they are, and if they’re willing to fight for Alpha Hughes or against her. Because a reckoning is coming. Alpha Hughes has long held a position that was always meant to be temporary. And we’re going to take it back. Do you believe me?”
I could only nod.
He said, “But I’m not going to ask you that today. Because today you don’t trust me. Today you don’t know me. You don’t have any reason to believe me when I say I don’t want innocent people to get hurt. That I want as little bloodshed as possible. But anyone who doesn’t stand with us stands against us. And it’s going to be the last thing they do.”
He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my forehead. He spoke again, lips against my skin. “You have this void. This hole in your head and heart where you know something should be but isn’t. It’s the same for all of us. We were taken from you, yes, but you were also taken from us.”
He stepped back.
And then he said something so ridiculous that I couldn’t make sense of it. He said, “It’s almost my birthday. I’d like for you to join us this coming Sunday. It’s tradition.”
Then he stepped around me and started back the way we’d come.
I gaped after him.
Kelly sighed. “I told you, man. Enigmatic dicks. All of them.”
“Sorry about this,” Kelly said as Ox and Joe looked on.
