Family Harmony

by J. J. Massa

  Mya flatly refused to think about Lakon Montgomery. Well, she wouldn’t think about him on purpose. He was the constant ache in her heart. If she didn’t feel him there, she felt him in her throbbing shoulder.

  Looking across the field, she realized that she was nearing her old friend’s house. When she and Myles had been barely sixteen, Sandy had helped them with Myles’s treatment. Ultimately, they’d had to move on and work in the city but Sandy had helped them.

  With her natural affinity for animals, Mya had helped Sandy, too. He’d worked with animals for many years but had decided, late in life, to go to school to become a licensed veterinarian. Mya had assisted him from time to time during his internship. She’d also helped him study when he came to the restaurant where she had been a waitress. They’d kept in touch, loosely.

  Mya approached his back door and heard him talking to someone. Sandy wasn’t a young man and he wasn’t married. Neither did Sandy watch television. She didn’t want to interrupt him and she didn’t want to draw attention to herself.

  She knocked on the door. “Sandy!” she called out.

  The door wrenched open and there he was. Tall and thin with a long, white ponytail pulled back from his face.

  “Mya Brooks! Is that really you?” Sandy would know better than to grab her. He just threw open the door and beamed at her.

  Maybe he was fifty or sixty but he still thought he was in his twenties, obviously. Some people never really aged. Now that she was older, she wished she’d fallen for him.

  “Hiya, Sandy. Did I hear you talking to someone?”

  “Hey, Little English Rose! Look how you’ve grown up! You sure got a handle on that English accent. I saw you on television the other day!”

  “That’s cool, Sandy. Did you say you’ve got company?” she persisted.

  “No, madam, I did not. And I don’t have a famous singer turning up at my doorstep for no apparent reason, do I?” They’d always been straight with each other. Now seemed like a good time to follow that tradition.

  “No, not for no reason.”

  “Where’s your brother? More importantly, where’s your boyfriend?” Sandy demanded, leading her into his kitchen.

  “Myles is in the hospital. He’s at Duke getting something done to his genes.” She gave her old friend a watery smile.

  *

  Mik sat in the laundry room off of his old friend’s kitchen. They’d been enjoying a good argument over a game of chess when Sandy had exclaimed, “Good Lord, I don’t believe it!” On the heels of that, he’d demanded, “When’s the last time you’ve spoken to Lakon?”

  Before Mik could answer, Sandy had shoved him into the laundry room and bade him to stay there, be quiet, and listen. Mik wasn’t sure why, but he was listening hard.

  “Let me guess, he’s being treated by a Livingston or a Montgomery?”

  That got Mik’s attention. So did the girl’s wariness when Sandy asked the question.

  “Why would you suspect that, Sandy? You know, it’s getting late, really, I should be going…”

  “Sit down and tell me what’s going on, young lady!” Sandy barked, pressing her into a chair with her back to the laundry room. “You gotta know Lakon Montgomery is from this part of the country if you’re sleeping with him!”

  Mik was taken aback. Was this the woman his son had called him about? Lakon had been so taken with this girl. He’d cared so much and been so sincere. Why was she so far away from Lakon now? He needed to call and find out.

  “Okay, um, give me a minute. Got coffee?” Her voice sounded oddly high.

  Mik heard Sandy bustling around making coffee. He pushed the laundry room door open a little more. Finally, Sandy set a cup of coffee in front of himself and his little guest, settling near her.

  “Mya, the last time you came calling, something bad had happened to you. In fact, every time you come calling that’s true. Now you talk to me, girl.” Sandy sounded gruff to Mik.

  “The short answer is, I got dog bit,” Mya told Sandy. Mik sat up straight.

  “You mean… You don’t mean…” Sandy was having trouble asking the question.

  “I mean a very large lycanthrope became angry with me and bit me. It needs treatment,” she said steadily.

  “He really bit you?” Sandy was incredulous. The girl nodded. “Let me see it.”

  Mik was grateful that the laundry room was immediately behind the kitchen table. He couldn’t see her face but he was beginning to have a bad feeling.

  “Okay,” she breathed, unbuttoning her shirt.

  She sat up straight in her chair and let the shirt drop from her right shoulder. She could barely move the shoulder and it was purple and green. The puncture wounds might have been infected.

  “Jesus, God,” Sandy breathed. He gingerly touched her swollen shoulder. “Lakon Montgomery did this to you, Honey?” His voice was just above a whisper.

  Mik couldn’t see it that well. He didn’t want to see it if the tone of Sandy’s voice was a good barometer of how bad the injury was.

  “It’s a whole thing, Sandy,” she said, carefully.

  “I’d really like to hear the whole thing, otherwise, I might find a way to kill the son of a bitch in his sleep—or wide awake…” Sandy began bustling around, trying to find things that could make Mya’s shoulder feel better. Mik came out of the small room and looked in horror at the girl’s shoulder.

  “I’m not saying he shouldn’t have—I dunno, not done that or something. But I think it started with his brother…” Mya was trying to be fair.

  “You’re gonna have to be more specific, Mya,” Sandy said through gritted teeth.

  “We were at the Amphitheatre in Raleigh and Riker came out of nowhere. He was all over me and I felt like a tasty bone. I was too scared to move. He made Lakon real mad. After that, things just got worse and worse.”

  “What aren’t you telling me, Mya?” Sandy demanded.

  “I just can’t Sandy. That’s just… I can’t okay?” She began to cry but got control of herself pretty quickly. “I’m here because I need your help and I need some space. Can you make that feel better at all?”

  “I’ll help you. I can make it feel better. While I treat you…” Mik moved around the chair. “I want you to meet someone.”

  As soon as the girl saw Mik, she shot to her feet. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?”

  Mik’s heart dropped. His son was in love with a girl who couldn’t accept that he was a werewolf. If Lakon had caused this injury, he guessed he couldn’t blame her.

  “You’re a Montgomery,” she breathed, backing away from him. She used the same tone one might use to say “child molester” or “serial killer”. He was stunned.

  “Mya?” he asked, incredulous.

  “You can’t take me back. I don’t want to be hurt anymore. Poor Bethany. I hope they don’t hurt her…”

  Mik was taken aback. The poor little thing was shaking like a leaf. She was a wreck.

  “Honey, sit down. I swear I won’t try to take you anywhere. Here, have some coffee.” Mik tried to sooth Mya, nudging the coffee toward her with his nose. “Sandy, put something in that coffee to help her calm down.”

  “You are, aren’t you? You’re a Montgomery.” She looked at Mik accusingly. “If I had to fall in love with a dog, why’d it have to be a mean one?”

  Sandy poured some whiskey into her coffee and laid an ice pack on her shoulder. Gently he eased her back into the chair. “I’m gonna give you a cortisone shot in a little bit. I wanna clean that out some first, but just calm down, okay?”

  She turned her reproachful eyes to Sandy. “I thought I could trust you, Sandy.” Her eyes filled with tears. Mik wanted nothing more than to kill his sons right then. Slowly.

  “Mya, I promise I won’t hurt you or try to take you anywhere. I won’t tell anybody where you are, I promise you on the lives of my grandsons.”

  “You’re not going to change into a big, mean guy now?” She asked him.

&n
bsp; “What you see is what you get, Honey. I’m a werewolf but I don’t transform. My mother was Canis lupus occidentalis, a Rocky Mountain Wolf. My father was a werewolf.” He hoped all this made sense to her. She didn’t seem as hysterical as she had before.

  Mya nodded, her reluctant curiosity taking over for a minute. “So werewolves can marry regular wolves or people?”

  “Yes, Honey.” Mik breathed a sigh of relief. She was much calmer now. “I want to understand, Mya. You’re not upset about werewolves in general, just Montgomerys?”

  She looked at him with unfathomable hurt in her eyes and nodded. “I had to think about it a while and it is mind-boggling. I thought of Lakon as my husband. Wouldn’t he be mad if I was really a—a, I don’t know—a bird or something?” She was angry but there were tears of sorrow in her eyes.

  Mik moved closer to her and sat down in front of her. “He should have told you, Honey.” Mik nodded.

  “Did your wife know you were a werewolf before you … slept together?” She blushed, maybe because it was such a personal question.

  “She did know. Elke is a werewolf, too. But she can transform and I can’t. She knew that too but it didn’t seem important to her at first. Later it bothered her. She’s gotten past it now.” He wasn’t sure why he was sharing such things with her but it was time someone from the Montgomery clan showed this woman some trust.

  “At least she had the information.”

  Sandy got up and began cleaning Mya’s bite wound. Her shoulder was exposed but the flannel shirt she wore covered the rest of her upper body.

  “Anyway, it turns out, being with Lakon, I know lots of werewolves who aren’t Montgomerys. None of them have ever hurt me or acted as if they might. Riker and Lakon…” she sniffed again, obviously fighting to keep from crying.

  “Tell me exactly what happened, Honey. Start from the beginning.” Mik was determined to get to the bottom of things.

  “We were at the Alltel Pavilion, a big enclosed amphitheatre, and I was halfway up the stands heading for the stage. Lakon was on the stage and there was this beautiful blonde woman with him. He had his head near her tummy so I could see her face. I stopped walking toward them because I was trying to figure out why she was so familiar to me. I knew I’d never met her.”

  Mya stopped to take a drink of her coffee and winced when Sandy injected the cortisone and placed a hot compress on her injury.

  “That had to be Bet, right?” Mik asked, encouraging her to go on.

  “Yes, Bethany. Anyway, while I was standing there, a man, Riker Montgomery, came up behind me and put his arm around me. He was pressed against me and pulled my head aside so he could put his mouth on my neck.”

  She stopped talking, taking great gulps of air. Mik rubbed against her side and she lowered her head. With effort, he managed not to respond to her story by growling.

  “He was licking me and stuff.” Mya continued her account of the event. “I tried to get away and he growled at me. He wouldn’t let me go. I asked him to but he wouldn’t. Lakon came and the two of them started snarling at each other.” Her voice was a little higher now.

  “They were growling and in each other’s faces and I was stuck between them. If Bethany hadn’t come and gotten me, I don’t know. But the rest of the day, Lakon was kind of angry. Then, that night…” She shook her head and jumped up, she shook her head back and forth, tears streaming down her face.

  “I have to go to the bathroom.” She bolted from the room.

  When she came out many minutes later, she was much calmer. Mik and Sandy were talking quietly.

  “Feel better, Honey?” Mik asked her. “You look pretty tired.”

  Sandy had finished treating her wound before she had fled the room. “I am tired. I left Lakon last night in the middle of the night. I didn’t get much sleep. I know he didn’t realize I was gone till sometime today.”

  Mik decided to skip that part of the story for the time being. He and Sandy convinced Mya to lie down on the couch for a while to rest.

  Chapter 10

  Mya was dozing when she heard someone dialing a phone. She heard the sound of it ringing and realized it was on speakerphone.

  “Hello?” a woman’s voice answered.

  “Hello, Love, how are you?” It was the deep baritone voice of that wolf—werewolf, Mik.

  “When are you coming home, Mik? The boys are pretty upset.” The woman sounded a little upset to Mya.

  “I’m pretty upset, too, Elke.” growled Mik.

  “Lakon said his mate found out he’s a werewolf and she’s afraid of him!” Elke said tearfully.

  This was Mik’s wife and Lakon’s mother! Mya held herself very still on the couch, curious about their conversation. Would Mik tell his wife that he knew where she was? Could she trust Mik not to lead Lakon to her?

  “Lakon’s mate isn’t afraid of werewolves, Love, she’s afraid of Montgomerys,” he growled angrily.

  “That’s a switch, isn’t it?” the woman responded breathlessly.

  “I’ll ponder the irony of that on the way home, Elke. When I get there, I want both those boys sitting on the porch waiting for me with their tails between their legs.”

  “Mik?” The woman, Elke, sounded surprised and scared.

  “If they make me go into the city to rip a strip off their pelts, I’m gonna make both Mya and Bethany widows. You tell them that. I never thought I could be so ashamed of my own sons. Never. I’ll be home in a few hours.”

  “Mik, are you okay?”

  “I’m feeling pretty low right now, Elke. I love you. I’ll be home soon.”

  Mya heard the dial tone and waited. She listened as Mik and Sandy talked to each other.

  “Take care of her, Sandy. I’ll call tomorrow night. I don’t like keeping a man away from his mate but I gave her my word. After what he did, I don’t know that he’s a fit mate anyway.”

  The werewolf sounded so sad and dejected to her. Mya wanted to go in there and comfort him. For some reason, she knew she could trust the old wolf.

  “Mik.” She called his name softly.

  She heard him padding into the room and around the couch toward her. She’d been lying on her left side and now she sat up, cross-legged. She was in so much pain.

  “Mik?” she said again. He stepped onto the couch and sat down, looking at her. “I’m sorry about all this, Mik.” She felt the tears gather in her eyes again.

  The old wolf placed his head next to hers in a hug. “I’m sorry, too, Honey.”

  She wrapped her good arm around him and gave him a squeeze. He rested his chin on the crown of her head and patted her with his large paw.

  “I wish I could make it all better, Honey,” he said.

  “I wish you could, too,” she answered sadly.

  “Stay here with Sandy and rest a bit. Maybe things will look better in a day or so.”

  She didn’t answer him. She was crying softly. He stepped off the couch and she lay back down. Mik tugged a throw from the back of the couch and covered her. He licked her cheek and let her stroke his head and neck until she fell asleep.

  * * * *

  Elke and Mik Montgomery’s home

  Franklin, NC

  Lakon and Riker sat on the porch of their parent’s home occasionally indulging in desultory conversation, but mostly they didn’t speak at all. Both men were in wolf form.

  Lakon had just opened his mouth to speak to his brother when a large silver wolf rocketed onto the porch and grabbed Riker by the upper back. Before the brown wolf could react, the older wolf, Mik, tossed him across the yard and was on him again.

  Mik immediately grabbed him by the side and tossed him into the air. As soon as he could move, Riker rolled to his back, exposing his underbelly in supplication. Lakon could hear what his father said from his vantage on the porch.

  “She struggled and you growled at her,” Mik rumbled. “You held her against her will, you scared her, she asked you to stop and you growled at her!” Mik grabbed his
throat and shook him, dropping his son before he did lasting damage.

  Lakon could see the fear in his brother’s eyes. Mik was a frightening sight with his hackles raised and his ears straight up. His lips were curled in an angry snarl and drool dripped from his fangs. His yellow eyes glowed menacingly in the dark night.

  “You think it’s funny to scare the hell out of an innocent girl just to get a rise out of your brother? DO YOU?”

  “Dad, I’m sorry,” Riker didn’t sound like the pack alpha just now. “I didn’t know he’d react like that…”

  “You’re his twin, you damned well did know! You didn’t think beyond torturing your brother, did you? It never occurred to you that you were scaring the hell out of an innocent human female, did it? Didn’t think about any other consequences your actions could cause, did you? I’m ashamed of you, son. Get out of my sight.”

  Riker scrambled backward and slunk away, ashamed and humiliated.

  Mik moved slowly toward his remaining son who stepped off the porch, shaking but resolute—almost eager to take his medicine.

  “You wanna know what I just left?” he snarled bitterly at his son. “Let me tell you!”

  Lakon stood straight, determined that he’d be a man about this. Nothing his father had in store for him could be worse than what had already happened he was sure. His father’s words changed his mind.

  “I just left a sweet, innocent woman, who cried herself to sleep. I tucked her in and put her to sleep after she tried to comfort me. I was feeling bad you see, because my sons had hurt her so badly. She told me that she was sorry about all this—as if she were somehow to blame.”

  Mik moved into his son’s face, teeth bared, snarling. “She’s sorry. She hugged me, too.” He took a breath, his lip curled, still drooling and menacing. “She hugged me with her left arm because she can’t move her right arm. At all.”

  He grabbed Lakon by the large muscle above his right front leg and flipped him to the ground, slamming the air from his lungs. Once again, he moved into his son’s face. Lakon rolled upright again.

  “You want to tell me why she’s so afraid of Montgomerys? Not werewolves, just Montgomerys.”

  He grabbed Lakon’s neck and shook him hard, lifting him from the ground and flinging him several feet away. Winded once again, Lakon lay on his back now, as his brother had. His stomach, chest and privates were exposed in submission.