by Lynn Red
Jake sat down and reached for the oversized mug of coffee he’d forgotten he made. “There’s something else,” he said, his voice low and shamed. “I need to tell you before anyone else does.”
Without a shred of hesitation, Greta took over the stirring of the macaroni, and a moment later, poured it into a casserole and added the panko that Jake apparently forgot, since he left the entire handful in a pile on the countertop. She scooped that on to the creamy, steaming mass, and reminded him in the most motherly voice imaginable that he could tell her anything.
“He challenged me.” Jake said, gritting his teeth and taking a long pull on the coffee. “He came to the office the other day and challenged me to a mating.”
“Oh,” Greta said, trying to sound unconcerned but failing. “Oh, dear.”
For a moment she busied herself with the oven. She removed three pot roasts before sticking the four gallon casserole in and adjusting the heat. “Well,” she finally said, “you have your girlfriend. That’s a good start. And what does he have? Certainly he isn’t going to simply force someone to mate?”
“He’s after my girl,” Jake said, still gritting his teeth. “At least I think he is. She mentioned him the other night right after we... well anyway, she mentioned him. And this wouldn’t be the first time he tried something like this.”
That got Greta’s attention. She wadded her apron up in a balled fist, and made a long, drawn-out humming sound. It was her thinking noise. She made it whenever something was working its way through her considerably cunning, though completely unassuming, self.
“You could always trap him,” she offered.
When she started in with the cunning plots, her grandmotherly appearance took on a much darker tone. She was, really, a wolf in grandma’s knit sweater, but she was usually the most passive, sweetest wolf you could ever hope to meet. But when someone messed with one of her cubs? That’s when the teeth came out.
“Trap him? I don’t even know how to begin trapping him. He’s got the support of part of the pack, you know that. If I just sneak into winning this mating challenge, they’ll never back me.”
“He has the support of the part of the pack that wants to freely kill people and eat humans whenever the urge strikes. That’s not the population anyone wants backing them.”
She hadn’t ever been soft when it came to Dane. Even when their father was alive, she frequently refused to let him in the house when he’d get in a rage, or when he’d start throwing things around. Partly it was because she wasn’t Dane’s natural mother – that surely had something to do with it, although she selflessly raised him like he was – but partly it was because she just hated the violence.
“Those wolves,” she continued, “are going to be the death of us. We’re strong, certainly, and we can always cause some havoc – but the thing they don’t consider is that as far as population goes? I’m fairly sure humans outnumber werewolves... what, ten million to one? More, maybe? We start up with that medieval business of hunting people in the alleys and terrifying cities, like your silly brother wants? We’re the ones that’ll be hunted down. We’ll be killed to a wolf, don’t you doubt it.”
She was getting worked up, and Jake knew better than to try and get a word in edgewise.
“This isn’t a fairytale we’re living. This is the twenty-first century, Jacob. I don’t mean to be dramatic, but if your brother takes over the pack? He’s going to kill every single one of us to satisfy his idiotic, teenage bloodlust. And I doubt it’ll stop just with our pack. Once people find out about us, and realize that we are exactly as terrible as the Grimm tales have us? They won’t stop until there isn’t a single breathing werewolf left on the planet.”
After sitting for a moment longer, she crossed her fingers in her lap, patted her thighs and stood up. “Rutabaga pie is done. Didn’t you say there was something else you wanted to tell me?”
“Oh,” he said, still reeling from the monster of an info-dump his mom had just put in his lap. Even though none of that was news – he’d known how dangerous it would be for wolves to be outed. After all, that’s why they worked so hard to keep secret. That’s why they kept to themselves and only their most trusted advisers – like George – were privy to the unbelievable reality that there were actually werewolves. And, Greta was exactly right. Dane’s unbelievable rage and his utterly childlike glee in killing humans and forcing them into... whatever it is he forced them into? That wasn’t going to go unnoticed. He also knew that if Dane were willing to go to such extremes to satisfy his own stupid urges, there was no telling what he’d do to win this challenge and take over the pack.
A mixture of rage, confusion, and an almost helpless feeling settled into Jake’s stomach. He hated violence, hated the fighting and all that... but he had a feeling he wasn’t going to have the luxury of pacifism if he was going to stop his brother.
“Jacob?” she asked. “There was something else? Maybe about your sweet little girlfriend?”
Greta was up and flouncing around the kitchen again, smiling her sweet smile. Jake’s guts were a mess. A sweaty, roiling, gurgling mess. “Nah,” he said. “It can wait, it wasn’t anything important.”
Nothing important. Like, you know, the girl I’m currently an idiot for isn’t a werewolf. Ugh. When was the last time that even happened? The 1800s? He shook his head as another couple of shouts from the living room resulted in at least two people leaving the house, probably to have a little slugfest.
“I better go calm the tempers,” he said with a sigh. “Don’t want them breaking your curio cabinet.”
“Yes dear, that’s true,” Greta said, as sweetly as she could.
As soon as Jake was up and out of the kitchen, she balled up her fist and slammed it on the countertop, sending the remains of the panko pile flying.
*
“Uncle Elbert!” Jake shouted, grabbing his rather elderly, and fully drunk, uncle by the collar. “You cannot start a fight with someone because you think they said something fifteen years ago.”
“He did say it!” Elbert insisted. His fermented breath was upsetting, but not as much as the fact that Jake had gotten to the front room just in time to find the curio cabinet face down. Thankfully the glass had only cracked, and the door would need new hinges. He made a note to ask Dilly about fixing the glass next time he saw her, which immediately put a little flutter in his stomach.
“And it was thirteen years! That’s nothing to a wolf!” Elbert’s squawking brought him back to reality. At least they were all out front now, so there wasn’t much more damage that could occur, except to the rosebushes, which had survived things a lot worse than two skinny, old, drunk werewolves falling into them.
Jake sighed heavily. “Okay, okay. Fine. Would an apology work?”
“You’re a lunatic if you think I’m apologizing that that old jackass!” It was, Jake realized with disappointment, apparently his other old, drunk uncle’s turn to start in. “I only called him what’s true. He did try to steal my mate, so I called him a flipper!” Jeffry was livid. He was also slurring pretty heavily, and having to work rather hard to stay on his feet.
“Okay, fine,” Jake said. “Flipper is a pretty bad thing to call someone, a grave insult even,” he was playing up the drama pretty heavily. “But then again, mate stealing is a pretty nasty thing to do. Even if it doesn’t work.”
“It would have!” Elbert piped up. “She said he couldn’t satisfy her in the way a man is supposed to! Except he shot me, and she ran off!”
And sometimes, Jake thought, it’s best to pick your battles.
“You know what? You two are so drunk I doubt you could hurt a rabbit. If this is really what you want, then just get it over with. Don’t mess up the rose bushes, I spent a lot of time on them.”
Elbert lunged at Jeffry who responded by swinging an arm wildly, and falling flat on the ground. The two of them tussled for about eight seconds, and then were either snuggling, or making up. Jake wasn’t paying much attentio
n, because as soon as the flailing began, a sound that he recognized – and a sound that made his guts churn – met his ears.
“Still trying to keep wolves from being wolves, brother?”
Dane’s voice is about the only thing in the world that can make me see red this quick.
Jake spun on his heel, eyes and nostrils flaring. After the day he’d had, it would be really good to belt his smug-ass brother right in the mouth. But somehow, he resisted the urge. Partially because he didn’t want to descend to his brother’s sophomoric bullshit, but also because he didn’t want to set an example like his brother so happily enjoyed.
“Why are you here, Dane?” Jake snarled, using every ounce of his self-control to keep from wolfing out and tearing into his brother. His brother with the golden hair and the sea-blue eyes. His brother who had stolen three of his five attempted mates; Jake’s own personality, er, quirks, had done the rest. “Why can’t you just leave us alone?”
Jake hadn’t realized it, but everyone – including the feuding drunks – had stopped whatever they were doing, and were paying rapt attention to the proceedings between the alpha and the pretender. Which one of them was the rightful alpha, and which one the pretender, depended completely on the individual being asked.
“Because I don’t have to,” Dane said. “I went away for five years and came back because I heard you were going soft. I heard you were turning our pack – our pack of werewolves – into a bunch of whiny peaceniks. I can’t have that. And so,” he raised his arms to the sides and swept them back and forth. “I’m back to make my people feel like wolves again.”
Elbert clapped for a moment, and then stopped when he realized he was the only one. Jake turned briefly back to the house to see his mother watching from the window. As soon as he caught her eye, he saw her purse her lips and then turn back to the ovens.
“You have no idea what you’re going to do, Dane,” Jake snarled. “You’re going to ruin everything. You’re going to take thousands of years of carefully crafted safety and secrecy and turn it all into a big, flaming wreck.”
Dane quickly closed the distance to his brother and stared straight in his eyes, tilting his head downward slightly to emphasize their minute height difference. “I’ll do what we’ve been doing for centuries. Wolves aren’t meant to hide in the shadows like scared children. We’re meant to be predators, little brother. I’m going to win this stupid mating contest to satisfy all the old wolves’ need for tradition, and then I’m bringing us to the fate we should have always had. If you think that means I’m going to make the world burn?”
“Not the world, Dane, just us. If you think you’ll get away with this...”
Dane scoffed a laugh. “It’ll only burn if I lose,” he said. “And when’s the last time I lost?”
Jake seethed, anger pulsing in his temples. Dane laughed again as he turned and simply walked away.
-8-
“I’m not sure I’m into this werewolf war thing. It’s exciting, sure, but... jeez it is confusing.”
Delilah
I was still waiting to hear from Jake, he hadn’t showed Wednesday, or Thursday, so I was a little worried, which is totally not like me.
Seemed like I was developing a lot of non-Delilah traits, but really I kind of liked this new form of me. Felt a tad bit more human than usual, which is a funny thing to say, but there it is.
I figured he was just busy, after all he is a high powered CEO of... something or other. And past that, there was something about him that I just trusted. He didn’t seem like the sort to bother with lying, which was honestly pretty great.
“So what was it like?” Jeannie asked me through the open door between the office and my studio. “I mean, having a billionaire all up on your gear?”
I choked just enough to make me drop my electric sander. Luckily I had already taken it away from the block of granite I was going at, so I didn’t do any more irreparable damage to a statue that was going to pay my bills for the next unknown period of time.
“Up on my gear?” I wiped my sweaty hair out of my face and pulled my safety goggles off. “Could you define that?”
Jeannie snickered. “Oh come on, I‘ve seen you after you get some. You get all glowy and you smile a lot. You never smile for no reason except after someone got up on your gear. And, since you said you had an air-quote date with the guy, I put two and two together. So, what was it like?”
I drifted into a little thoughtful respite, not entirely voluntarily. My mind just kind of went to the same place it had back at home with Jake on the couch. I started thinking back to the way he’d kind of semi-avoided my question, and although I understood why, it was still weighing on my mind a bit.
What you should be asking is why the hell does he have anything to do to me? God knows I’m still asking that question.
Why the hell would this guy’s brother give quite so much of a shit about whether or not he got a silly statue of himself? And that’s... really as far as my mind had taken that line of questioning. Jeannie told me Jake was a billionaire, or at least she figured he had to be. And of course that comes with its own little set of fantasies. For me though, I wasn’t into all that.
“Earth to Dilly,” Jeannie said. Then she sighed, because I was still ignoring her, lost in my own head.
I never understood which knife goes where beside a plate, or which fork I’m supposed to use, or why the soup spoons in nice restaurants were so small and the prices so high. And honestly? Knowing that stuff kind of terrifies me. It’d be like I was betraying my people, you know? Like I was being too big for my britches, or whatever you want to call that feeling.
I guess it sounds funny for an artist, who makes her living by selling luxury goods that no one needs to talk about high end restaurants or jewelry or fashion or whatever in such a way, but...
Yeah, there it is. One of the many bizarre crises of my improbable life.
I was thumbing through a magazine that morning, which I clearly remember was a Wednesday. Second Wednesday in December, and that it was very cold, which isn’t all that common down here. I flipped past a section about how to give your man earth-shattering orgasms. I caught enough of it to see that the primary advice this sage had to give on the subject was to “listen to what he likes, and when he starts moaning louder, do that more!” which even I, with my limited experience in earth-shattering orgasms, especially in the receiving department, could have told you if given enough time.
“Hey!” Jeannie called from the front. Her sudden shout startled me so much that I almost pitched over in my chair, but somehow I caught myself on the desk and only bit my tongue a little. “Hey! Dilly! You gotta see this!”
She got all high pitched and squeaky, which meant either the warehouse across the little dirt lot from us was on fire, or there was a wizard in the parking lot doing battle with a dragon. I stood up, slowly, and let my blood pressure regulate.
“Get up off your ass and come look. Your two boyfriends are about to kill each other.”
I sighed. “I don’t have any boyfriends. It was just that once with Jake, I—”
Jeannie wasn’t paying the first lick of attention, so I just kept on. “Listen, we had one date. One date – and what the hell are you talking about them trying to—”
“Kill each other? Look outside, jackass,” she said.
“Huh?” I turned away from the desk, then flopped my giant leather gloves on Jeannie’s desk and looked out the slightly dingy window – I really do need to clean that sometime – to the sight of Jake and his brother in a collar and elbow tie-up, just like pro wrestlers, outside of my studio.
“Holy shit,” I said.
“I already said that,” Jeannie said. “What the hell should we do?”
I shook my head, absolutely dumbfounded. It’s not rare for me to be speechless, or to kind of stammer or babble, but being completely dumbfounded isn’t a normal state for me. “Go out there and break them up,” I said with a raise of an eyebrow. “If noth
ing else, you’ll get in between them before they rip one of your arms off.”
She started nodding and made her way to the door.
“I was kidding, you moron! Don’t go out there! Look at those two, they’re—”
“I’m not much of a risk taker, you know that,” Jeannie said. “But to get between those two?” She shrugged as Jake’s brother – Dane he’d called him – got some leverage on Jake and hip-tossed him to the ground. He followed his brother down, crouched on top of him and landed one single punch before Jake rolled out from under him and got to his feet. “I’d risk an arm. Hell, maybe a leg. Depends on how long I’d be between ‘em.”
“You’re ridiculous,” I said with a laugh.
“You are too,” she replied, still staring out the window at the battling giants. “I hope they’re fighting over you. How, like, primal and satisfying would that be? Two enormous Neanderthals beating the shit out of each other to claim their princess; it’s the story of half the fairytales on earth. Except, you know, it’s happening right here, and as far as I know, you’re no princess.”
“Says you.” I stared in a mixture of shock and awe as Jake dodged a punch and promptly crunched a fist straight into his brother’s nose. “Also, we have to do something. Or one of them actually is going to kill the other one.”
Finally, one of the two participants started speaking loudly enough for us to hear. It was Jake, and he wasn’t not happy. “I will never let you take over the pack! I don’t care what kind of challenges you give me, or what you pretend to want to do, I’m not letting you get everyone killed!”
He punctuated this with a punch that made Dane’s teeth turn red with the blood from a busted lip, even though the black-haired brother was still grinning like a psychopath. The crimson stain just enhanced the wild look in his eyes, which I’m gonna admit this, even if I’m not entirely comfortable with it – the whole feral, wild, savage thing? Kinda hot. From the way she was gnawing on her lip, I figured Jeannie agreed.
“Did he just say pack?” Jeannie asked. “That’s weird.”
