KNUD, Her Big Bad Wolf: 50 Loving States, Kansas

by Theodora Taylor

  “I’m a former Marine!” he yelled at her. “You know this. You don’t sneak up on ex-soldiers!”

  “When I was a child, I used to sneak up on my bodyguards, many of which were ex-armed forces, all the time,” she answered.

  “What?!” he asked.

  “And they never once tried to punch me, much less keep coming at me, when I fended off one of their surprise attacks.”

  “Fended off?” he repeated. “Why would you need to fend off attacks from ex-military bodyguards?”

  “Because that’s the only way one learns true self-defense,” she answered as if he should already know this.

  More images flashed through his head, memories of the past colliding with the now. Him swinging on her…the kid walking into the garage to find his father dead…the little girl dead on the table… His wolf whimpered with guilt. And the red anger bubbled in the shadows, frustrated, wanting to come back for more.

  “It looks as if we’ve both been unexpectedly hijacked by our pasts.” L-heart rubbed the back of her neck and peeked up at him with a chagrined smile. “I suppose we truly do need to talk about what just happened. I’ll get us some ice cream and a plate of cookies.”

  Ice cream and cookies. She wanted to talk about this over ice cream and cookies when he could barely look at her after what he almost did.

  “That’s not in the rules,” he said following her to the kitchen counter where she’d produced a spatula that definitely didn’t belong to him. Out of the goddamn blue.

  “Yes, but—”

  “There’s no BUT here.” He pointed to the rules hanging right in front of her on the kitchen wall. “Talking—especially about our pasts—is against the goddamn rules. No personal details. We both agreed to that!”

  She set the spatula down, and though her gentle High Media-smile remained on her face, he could smell the emotions she was refusing to show, acrid and bitter. “Buddy, I’m aware of the rules, but in this case…”

  “I. Am. Not. Your. Fucking. Friend,” he shouted, over-enunciating every word like she did but for a much different reason. “We’ve already broken half these goddamn rules and now you want to talk? We don’t talk. We fuck. That’s all we’re supposed to be doing. Not cuddling, or telling each other about our bad days, or eating cookies and ice cream together. We fuck and that’s all we do because you’re a complicated wackjob, and I don’t need you jumping out of closets at me! Who told you to come in here and bake cookies in my goddamn kitchen anyway?!”

  He flipped the tray of cookies nearest him with an angry bear swipe of his hand. The metal tray flew off the counter and hit the floor with an echoing clang.

  But that sound was nowhere near as loud as what filled up the room next. A silence so terrible he choked on it, suddenly incapable of saying anything else.

  But as for L-heart…

  She looked down at the tray and broken cookies on the floor. Then back up at him. Her smile unreadable, but her scent as clear as a scream.

  “Yes, you’re right about my violations of our agreed upon rules. Thank you for both accommodating and indulging me for as long as you have. I’ll leave now.”

  He realized the mistake he’d made before she even took the first step toward the door. Away from him.

  “Wait a minute, L-heart,” he said, reaching out for her. “Wait a minute…”

  He’d pushed and shoved so many people away. But for the first time he wanted to pull someone back toward him.

  Yet before his hand could make contact with the body that had become so familiar over the past few weeks, she said, “Please, don’t touch me,” flashing a bright and brittle smile.

  He let his hand drop to his side, not knowing what to say. Or how to explain the red anger, which he should have guessed would take her from him in the end. He couldn’t justify his actions, couldn’t talk about any of it. But even so, he didn’t want her to go.

  That was when he wished they’d exchanged personal info. A name. He needed a name. Something to call her by. A way to beg her to come back to him. But he could only stand there helpless, not knowing what to do in the entirely new situation of wanting back something he’d broken in anger.

  And then the time for calling after her was done. The door slammed behind her and she was gone.

  16

  My question about the father of my baby echoes in the air.

  Grace opens her mouth…right before her face crumples into tears, like a mask that suddenly starts to melt.

  “Grace!” I say, alarmed. I’ve never seen her cry before—not even when we were both toddlers. “What’s wrong?”

  Grace shakes her head. “I told them I would take care of you!” she answers. “When my dad and your dad called me after you decided to move here, I told them to zen. I mean, Kansas is so boring and I honestly thought Uncle Lex had nothing to worry about. Between your martial arts skills and mine, I didn’t think there was anything that could hurt you here. But I was wrong and I failed you.”

  “Are you kidding?” I ask, aghast. Not because she’d talked about me with my dad behind my back, but because: “It’s not your job to take care of me, and it wasn’t fair of our fathers to put you in that position to begin with!”

  She sniffed. “Of course, you would say that. But I saw all the warning signs and kept ignoring them. First, I let you go off with that guy at the club.”

  I blinked. “What guy? What club?”

  “I don’t know who he was!” she all but wailed, her voice full of self-recrimination. “If it had been my father, he would have vetted him seven different ways before letting him talk to you. But you seemed to know him and you gave me a back off signal when I tried to approach. At first, I thought you were using him to get out of talking to Ethan, but then it looked like you were having a really good time. So when you decided to go home with him, I was like ‘why not? Let her blow off some steam for once.’”

  I shake my head. “I don’t understand. You’re saying I met some random guy at a club and then went back to his place? Where does he live?”

  Grace shakes her head. “I don’t know. Some place on the other side of the district. You came back the next morning and told Spidey and me over brunch that he lived in an itty-bitty studio but had a super long dick—no surgery. Then you said even though it was supposed to be a one night stand, you two decided to become sex buddies.”

  I stop her right there with a raised hand, because that doesn’t sound like me. At all. “Are you trying to say I, Layla Rustanov, became sex buddies with a random guy I sort of knew from a club?”

  Grace grimaces and reluctantly nods. “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. And here I thought my tattoos were bad ass. I guess when you decided to rebel, you wanted to go big.”

  I shake my head again. Unable to believe a word she’s saying. “Was he handsome?”

  “Yeah, I guess he was technically pretty,” Grace answers after a moment of consideration. “If you like pretty paired with a thuggish aesthetic, which I didn’t think you of all people would. But you stayed sex buddies for, like, months.”

  More blinking from me because I really can’t see myself agreeing to a one-night stand, much less an ongoing sexual relationship, with a pretty-but-thuggish stranger.

  “And I never told you his name?”

  Now it’s her turn to shake her head. “No, you just called him Buddy…as in…”

  “There’s no need to clarify, I get it,” I say, my brain working overtime to process everything she’s just told me.

  “In all seriousness, the whole ‘relationship’ seemed kind of like a big joke to you. I mean you guys saw a lot of each other because you said he was really good in bed. But you never talked about him. This new guy…he seemed to be nothing more than a diversion. And you were on the device so I figured you were safe.”

  But the device had failed. And apparently, it most likely had failed with some random guy I met in a club and decided to go totally off-brand with.

  “Were we still…” I p
ause because ‘together’ seems like the wrong word to use for whatever it is I was doing with this man, “…seeing each other when I had my accident?”

  With a kind of culinary sixth sense, Grace seems to know the exact moment to remove the pot of boiling pasta from the burner.

  “Not that I could tell,” she answers as she drains the noodles. “I think you guys got into a fight about a week before your accident. A big one. You told me you’d be spending Friday night at Buddy’s. But then around eight or so, you came home. And you didn’t want to talk about why you hadn’t stayed over…just went straight to your room where you spent most of the weekend, crying. I was really worried. It got to where I was going to cancel my plans to visit my parents for summer break. But you told me not to. Said you had to go to work on Monday anyway.”

  Grace returns to the counter and it looks like she’s about to cry again. “But I shouldn’t have listened to you. I should have followed my instincts and tracked down the guy who made you cry.”

  “No, Grace,” I shake my head and take her hand. “Please…you have to stop blaming yourself. There’s nothing you could have done. And I can take care of myself. You know that.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.” She raises apologetic wet eyes to mine. “But less than a week later, a group of hunters found you washed up on the banks of that river.”

  17

  Five days before Kukunniwi…

  She’d been crying. Knight could see that as soon as she walked into the small Department of Wichita Children Services reception area, just a few seconds after he came through the door.

  She’d come out to meet him, making it unnecessary for him to find her in the back office’s cubicle maze. For some reason DWCS still hadn’t added her picture to their department website, even though she’d been working with them full time for over a month now.

  But here she was, her beautiful brown eyes tinged with red, and her usual smile tight with misery. The opposite of her usual smile.

  Of course, his sappy wolf immediately started in on him: Kiss her. Apologize! Make promises. Say you’ll stay in Kansas. Ask her to move in with you. Anything. Anything she wants. Just make her smile again for real. Please!

  “Hi,” Knight said, ignoring all the crazy shit his wolf was talking.

  Her eyes searched his face. Probably looking for some sign, any, that he was human. Or that he regretted what happened on Friday night.

  He was human—at least partly. And he did regret what happened on Friday night. More than she could ever know.

  But this was precisely why he didn’t do relationships. Because the red anger eventually destroyed everything he touched. She’d found that out the hard way.

  Now she knew, and he couldn’t let her unknow for fear of what he might do. Or try to do. With a human who’d already told him she wanted kids.

  He kept his face hard. Giving her nothing to work with. Nothing at all.

  Finally, she gave up and pasted on a patently fake smile as she said, “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “I know.”

  “This is where I work and I…” she trailed off, her lips tightening as her eyes slowly drifted back to his, blazing with anger. “I refuse to engage in any drama here.”

  “I’m not trying to bring any drama,” he promised.

  “Then may I ask why you are here?” For all her High Media training, it was clear she had to work to keep her voice level.

  “For the kid…Jandro.”

  She blinked. Obviously, that hadn’t been the answer she’d been expecting.

  But it was true. If it were up to him, she’d never have to see his stupid face again, and he’d never torture his wolf by forcing it to see hers. But there were things that were more important than his pride. Like the welfare of a deaf cub who’d be stuck taking meth for the rest of his brief life if somebody didn’t step up and do the right thing.

  To that end, he held out an old-fashioned manila folder. “I’ve got somebody who wants to foster-to-adopt the kid, and I need to talk to a social worker who knows ASL. So if there’s someone else here besides you, send them my way. If not—”

  She snatched the folder out of his hand before he could even finish the sentence. Opened it, flipped to the first page, then immediately looked back up at him. “Qim Wulfkonig? Qim Wulfkonig, the deaf billionaire?”

  “Yeah,” he answered.

  “Qim Wulfkonig, the deaf billionaire, wants to adopt Jandro, no questions asked?”

  “Yeah, I told him and his dad about Jandro—”

  “Wait,” she said holding up her hand. “You know Qim and Grady Wulfkonig???”

  Incredulity riddled her tone. He guessed she’d figured thug doctors serving out their residency in Kansas, and deaf billionaire businessmen from Oklahoma didn’t usually hang out in the same circles.

  “Yeah, I know him,” he answered. “Qim’s my cousin. And Grady’s my uncle by marriage. He married my Aunt Tu.”

  “Tu? Wait. Your aunt is Tu Ataneq???”

  “Can we just cut through all the disbelief bullshit and accept I know all these people or I wouldn’t be here discussing them with you?”

  She searched his face again, this time seeming to rewrite everything she thought she knew about him. And Knud could just guess what she was considering…

  An ex-Marine with anger issues living in a shitty apartment was one thing.

  But the nephew of one of the richest families in the human and wolf worlds living like a PTSD case in a shitty apartment was another. He could practically hear her thinking, “and he called me a wackjob…!”

  He tried not to care. What she thought of him didn’t matter. Only Jandro mattered.

  She opened her mouth and he braced himself to tell her just that. Screw whatever assumptions she’d made about him anyway.

  But instead of commenting on his background, she asked, “Why does Qim Wulfkonig want to adopt Jandro? He’s 25 and single. Is this some kind of Daddy Warbucks-scheme? Is he trying to use him for publicity? Because if that’s the case…”

  Two things struck him right then. 1 – L-heart was clearly primed to find the Orphan Annie story 99.9% less charming than the rest of the universe; and 2 - She was fucking amazing. Most people would have jumped at the offer to rehome a difficult-to-place foster kid. In fact, he was almost positive just about every social worker in this building would have happily thrown Jandro at the world’s richest deaf man, no questions asked.

  But L-heart’s first and only thought was about Jandro’s welfare.

  Regret filled his heart for the future she’d almost certainly have with another man. A human man who’d be able to give her things he couldn’t…like emotional stability and kids.

  “No, it’s nothing like that,” he replied, trying hard to ignore the wolf whimpering in his chest. “He is young, yes, but he’s a guy who knows what he wants. And that has always included a family. It’s true he doesn’t live in Kansas, but in spite of that, I think he’d be a really good match for Jandro.”

  She continued to squint down suspiciously at the paperwork. “You talked to Jandro for all of ten minutes and now you think you’ve found the perfect parent for him?”

  Shit. He’d forgotten she had no idea that the wolf cub she’d brought to his apartment all those weeks ago was actually a shifter. As far as she was concerned, she’d found an abused and injured dog, one he’d taken to a nearby no-kill shelter the next day. End of story.

  “Ok, listen,” he said. “Qim will actually be in Kansas all this week. I was going to go with the WCH social worker to visit him on Friday. But she told me you had to agree to sign me off as the official interpreter for Jandro’s paperwork…or something like that. Real talk, I’m terrible with all this red tape shit. Bottom line, this form…?” He took the folder back from her and shuffled through the paperwork he’d printed out until he found the form he was looking for, then handed it back to her on top of the folder. “All you have to do is sign it and—”

  “W
hy is an Oklahoma billionaire here in Kansas for the week?”

  “Wow, I really did not miss your constant interruptions,” he said.

  A wounded look flashed across her face.

  And dammit, he had to resist the urge to apologize yet again. Because while he might not have missed all her interruptions, he definitely missed kissing her into silence.

  They’d only spent a weekend apart. And he knew ending things before it got too serious was the best outcome for them both.

  But tell his fucking wolf that. Or his dick.

  His miserable wolf wouldn’t let him go to the club to hunt down another woman. Only her, only her, it said. But even though Friday had been proof of all the reasons he couldn’t have her, he hadn’t been able to fall asleep without jerking off to images of her beneath him, accepting his claim. And when he finally did fall asleep, it still hadn’t been enough.

  The nightmares were back. The kid standing over his father’s body, looking at him in shock. Before crumpling to the ground in a small, untidy heap.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck…

  “Dr. Knight? Dr. Knight?” someone was saying in the distance.

  He blinked. And there she was again. Cutting through the bad memories with a worried look hovering just above her fake smile.

  “You know my name now?” His fake name, but still…

  “Yes, it’s on this form you would like me to sign,” she answered. “Please enlighten me. Why is Qim Wulfkonig here this week and this week only?”

  “His family runs a summer camp program in the Kukunniwi Woods. It goes mid-June through August. Qim and his Dad do this father-son trip every year to make repairs and prep the camp for the coming season. Look, can you just sign the paperwork…?”

  She closed the folder. “Jandro’s a good kid who only recently lost his mother. He’s going to need a lot of guidance, therapy, and understanding. I want to make sure he gets all of that. The deaf are already underserved in this system, especially the ones without bioware. I fear Ms. Olcan may have a difficult time making a fair and balanced decision about this if she has to depend on you, Mr. Wulfkonig’s cousin, to translate. That’s why I won’t sign off on this paperwork.”