by TJ Klune
Joe Bennett stood above me. His brothers were at the door behind him, watching. Waiting.
The Alpha bent over the hunter.
King’s eyes were wide.
Joe’s were red.
“Do you know who I am?” Joe asked quietly.
King didn’t speak. He only nodded.
“Good. My witch has helped you. I will do you the favor of letting you live. But only because I ask for a favor in return.”
“What?”
“Oxnard Matheson. Green Creek. You go there. And you tell him I said ‘not yet.’”
The wolves sighed at the door.
“Do you understand, hunter?”
“Y-yes. Yes.”
“Repeat it back to me.”
“Oxnard M-Matheson. Green Creek. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.”
“Good.” Joe stood upright, eyes fading. “Stay here until you can move again. Richard won’t return.”
“How do you know?”
Joe grinned wildly. “Because he knows I’m right behind him.”
And then he turned and walked away, pushing through his brothers and leaving the cabin behind. Carter and Kelly followed him a moment later.
I pushed myself up, dusting off my jeans.
King said, “I heard—I heard Thomas Bennett was gone.”
I contemplated picking up his knife from the floor and driving it into his chest. “And?”
“I’ve never met an Alpha before. He’s… strong. Stronger than I’ve ever seen a wolf be.”
“He’s just a kid,” I muttered.
“Maybe. But that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Power. It always has been.”
I was done here. I turned and headed for the door.
Then, “Livingstone.”
I sighed. “What?”
“They didn’t all die.”
A chill ran down my spine. I turned slowly to look back at him. His skin was pale, and I wondered if he’d ever make it to Green Creek to give Ox the Alpha’s message. “Who didn’t all die?”
He coughed. It sounded wet. “When they came for Abel Bennett. The pack. Green Creek. They didn’t all die. Some crawled away. Some ran. But others… they watched from the trees.”
“Elijah.”
He smiled weakly. “She’ll come. When you least expect it. And if you think the beast is the worst thing in this world, you haven’t seen anything yet.”
“Gordo!” Carter shouted from the road. “We gotta move!”
“Don’t die,” I told King. “You have work to do.”
And then I turned and followed my pack.
HE DID die.
Months later, after we realized the deaths were circling back toward home. Toward Green Creek and those we’d left behind.
He did die.
What was left of him was in pieces. In the end, Richard Collins found him in a motel in Idaho. His severed head was found on the bed. A contact had sent me the photos.
Words were written in blood on the wall.
YET ANOTHER FALLEN KING
Joe howled for hours that night.
WHEN THE sun rose the next morning, we all heard his voice whispering in our heads.
It said home and home and home.
four things/always for you
I WAS thirteen when I kissed Mark Bennett for the first time.
A month later, hunters came and killed most of our pack.
Things weren’t the same after that.
IT BAFFLED many people.
How a group of men could be killed by a pack of wild animals.
The men couldn’t be identified.
Bears, they said. Maybe it was bears.
But no animals—bears or otherwise—were ever found.
It became legend more than anything.
Within a year, people spoke about it less and less.
I KISSED Mark Bennett for the second time when I was fifteen years old.
Elizabeth was pregnant with another child.
Carter was walking and talking.
Thomas Bennett still had a haunted look about his red eyes, but he accepted his responsibilities as the Alpha of all.
Many men came to Green Creek. Wolves. From back East.
They followed Osmond, who bowed reverently every time Thomas stood before him.
“He’s an odd man,” Thomas told me once.
“He’s a kiss-ass,” I sneered.
Thomas’s lips twitched. “That too.”
“I don’t like him.”
“You don’t say.”
And that was that.
RICHARD WAS gone.
He left shortly after the hunters came.
That hurt Thomas almost as much as the loss of his pack, though he didn’t say it out loud.
I knew, though. He was my Alpha, and I knew.
MARK WAS eighteen. I kissed him because I wanted to and because I needed it.
He kissed me back briefly. I tried to deepen it, but he wouldn’t let me.
“You’re young,” he said, eyes flickering orange as if he was trying to retain control. “I can’t do this. Not yet.”
I shoved him away and stalked into the woods.
He didn’t follow me.
“OYE,” RICO said as the clamor of the lunchroom rose around us. “Look. Gordo. We’ve been talking.”
I looked up to see them all staring at me, Rico and Tanner and Chris.
I almost got up and left. Instead I said, “I don’t even want to know.”
“Yeah,” Chris said. “We figured you were going to say that.”
“So this is an intervention,” Tanner said. “But with friends.” He frowned. “A friend-tervention.”
“Stop,” I told him. “Please.”
He looked relieved.
“We’ve been talking,” Rico repeated. “And now we need to talk to you.”
“About?”
Chris leaned toward me from across the table. He didn’t seem to notice his elbow was in his macaroni and cheese. “Love.”
I hated them so much. “Love.”
Rico nodded. “Love, papi.”
“Love,” Tanner added, completely necessarily.
“What about love?” I asked, even then realizing how ridiculous that sounded.
“Your love for boners.”
I wondered then if I could get away with causing the ground to open up beneath them and swallow them all whole. I would need to act distraught, of course, and maybe even cry a little at the loss of my friends. But it would be worth it. “Rico. What. The fuck. Are you talking about?”
“You like penis,” Rico said sagely. “Like I love the titties.”
Chris nodded.
Tanner said, “I’ve got macaroni on my elbow.”
“I hate all of you,” I told them. “You have no idea.”
“Chris,” Rico said.
Chris pulled out a notepad. He flipped it open and waved it in my face. “I’ve written down seventeen instances in which you were staring at Mark with a gross look on your face. I have dates and times and everything.”
“I was supposed to be the one writing it,” Tanner said, “but my handwriting is terrible.”
“The worst,” Rico said. “It looks like ancient Greek.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I growled at them.
“You love Mark,” Chris said, squinting down at his notepad. “Last week. Saturday. Three thirty-seven in the afternoon. Main Street. Mark walked by the diner window with a friend, and Gordo sighed dreamily before asking who the girl was and why she was standing so close to Mark.”
“I didn’t do any of that.”
“You said you thought she was probably a bitch who wanted to get her claws in him,” Tanner said, wiping off his elbow. “Claws, Gordo.”
“We could go on,” Rico said, arching an eyebrow at me.
“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered.
“Chris!”
“Two weeks ago. Tuesday. Five forty-six in the evening. At Marty’s
. Mark brought Gordo dinner, and Gordo made SMF at him.”
“SMF?”
“Suck My Face,” Rico said. “It’s a look you get when Mark stands near you like you want to tell him to suck your face.”
We got detention for three days after I started a food fight when I threw my milk carton at Rico’s head. If it exploded before it hit him and drenched all three of them with far more liquid than should have been in that tiny carton, well. No one needed to know that but me.
“I DON’T want to suck your face,” I told Mark later.
He blinked. “What?”
I scowled at him. “Nothing. Fine. Whatever. How’s Bethany.”
He smiled, slow and sure. “Good. She’s… good. Sweet girl.”
“Great,” I said, throwing my hands up in the air as I stalked away. “Fine. That’s just swell.”
He laughed and laughed and laughed.
THINGS WERE happening. Things that I wasn’t privy to. I wasn’t always invited into meetings with Thomas and Osmond and the wolves from back East. Hell, I wasn’t even sure where back East was, exactly. But even though I still heard my mother’s voice in my head sometimes, I trusted Thomas. I trusted him to know the right thing to do. What it meant to be an Alpha, to have a pack.
I shouldn’t have.
MARTY SAID, “Oh man. That’s… that doesn’t feel right.”
And then he collapsed in the middle of the garage.
I reached him first.
His skin was slick with sweat.
His breathing was erratic.
He ended up in the hospital for a couple of weeks after they put a stent in his artery.
“A balloon,” he told me, looking grumpy as a nurse flitted around him. He scowled at her and tried to get her to leave him alone, but she told him she’d dealt with far worse than the likes of him. “They stuck a goddamn balloon in me, blew it up, then put in a stent. Helps the ticker keep chugging along.” He grimaced. “Apparently have to make some dietary changes.” He didn’t look very happy about that.
“No more diner food,” I told him seriously.
“No more diner food,” he said morosely.
FOUR THINGS happened during my fifteenth year.
Four things that would forever change the way I saw the world.
THE FIRST thing.
Thomas called me into his office. Elizabeth was sleeping upstairs. Mark was… I didn’t know where Mark was. Probably with Bethany. Osmond and the wolves from back East had been gone for days. The house was quiet, just the way I liked it.
So when Thomas called me into his office, I wasn’t expecting anything serious.
He motioned for me to close the door behind me. I did, and took a seat across from where he sat at his father’s desk.
“Gordo,” he said warmly. “How are you?”
“Fine,” I said. “But maybe cut the bullshit.”
He arched an eyebrow at me.
I shrugged.
“Remember when you were scared of me?” He flashed his eyes and snapped his teeth.
I laughed. “I was just a kid.”
“You’re still a kid.”
“I’m fifteen,” I said, puffing out my chest just a little.
“You are. And a pain in my ass.”
“You love me.”
“I do,” he said, and even though I wouldn’t say it, his words filled me with such a sense of pride that it almost took my breath away. He smiled, though, because he knew. He always knew. “Which is why I’ve brought you here. We need to talk. Man-to-man.”
That sounded good to me. I nodded. “I agree. Time to talk man-to-man.”
“I’m glad to hear that. What are your intentions with my brother?”
The sound I made would haunt me for years to come. Added to the fact that I started sputtering and that spittle shot out onto his desk, I was surprised he didn’t kick me out of his pack right then and there.
He didn’t, though. He just sat there, letting me drown, looking amused.
“What are you talking about?” I managed to say.
“My brother,” he said slowly, as if I was an idiot. Which, to be fair, I was offering no evidence to the contrary. “What are your intentions?”
“My intentions? What are you—oh my god, you can’t just—Thomas.”
“How curious your reactions are at the mere mention of Mark.”
“Not mentioning. Asking my intentions.”
“Right,” he said easily. “My apologies.”
“Damn right I get your apologies! What were you thinking?”
“That you’re his mate. And that you’ve kissed him. Twice.”
“That asshole!” I bellowed. “Where does he get off telling you—”
“He brought you gifts.”
“Dead animals.”
“Rather dated, but he’s got an old soul. Always has. And you know the traditions of wolves, Gordo. You’ve been in the pack since you were a child.”
“I am going to murder him,” I promised Thomas. “I’m sorry if you love your brother, but I am going to drop-kick him with silver-toed boots.”
“Should he not have told me?”
I sputtered more. It went on for a good, long minute.
“I am here as your Alpha,” Thomas said, finally putting me out of my misery. “And I have received a formal request from one of my Betas.”
I groaned and slumped farther in my chair.
Thomas put his hand on my hair. It felt good. Like home. “Don’t ever change, Gordo,” he said quietly. “No matter what happens, stay as you are. You are a wonderful creature, and I am very happy to know you.”
I sighed. When I spoke, my voice was slightly muffled. “I like him.”
“I should hope so.”
“But he says we have to wait.”
“There is that, yes. You are fifteen years old. He is three years older than you. Nothing… untoward should occur until you’re of legal age.”
I lifted my head and glared at him. “You were seventeen when you met Elizabeth. She was fifteen.”
“And I only made my intentions known,” he said. “Nothing more. Because to claim one as mate is a request. There is always a choice. I was very lucky that she chose me, in the end.”
“Didn’t she tell you this morning that if you were to come near her again with your penis, she was going to claw your face off?”
He grinned. It was a dazzling thing to see. “She’s nine months pregnant. She’s allowed to say whatever she wishes. And if she wanted to claw my face off, I would let her.”
I sighed. “I like your face where it is.”
“Thank you, Gordo.”
“Mark, huh?”
Thomas shrugged. “If it makes you feel any better, he was very nervous when he came to see me.”
“Nervous? Why?”
Thomas spread his fingers out over the desk, tracing scars in the wood. “Mark is—he cares. Deeply. For his pack. For his Alpha. For you. And now that he is to be my second—”
“What about—”
“Richard made his choice,” Thomas said, an edge to his voice. “He… he didn’t understand. Doesn’t understand. And I can’t find fault with that. It… he needs to find his own way. And I hope that one day, our paths shall cross again. I will welcome him home with open arms and embrace him as my brother. If that doesn’t happen, I cannot find fault in him for it. He lost much that day. As did all of us. Grief… it tends to change people, Gordo. As you are well aware.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
“But Mark will make a fine second. He is brave and strong. A very good wolf, if I do say so myself. Why, I doubt there is a better wolf in any other pack out there—”
So I said, “Are you trying to pimp your brother out to me?”
The Alpha of all sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t say it like that.”
“Because it sounds like you’re trying to pimp your brother out to me.”
“Is it working?”
I slum
ped down in my seat. “No. Maybe.”
“You do not have to accept,” Thomas said. “Mark would never force you. I wouldn’t allow it. You are young yet. There is a whole wide world out there for you to explore. I only ask that you not… string Mark along, whatever your decision. If you need time, tell him. If you don’t feel the same way, say so. You are your own person, Gordo. You will never be defined solely as the mate of a wolf.”
“But what happens to Mark if I say no?”
Thomas smiled. “He will be upset, but he’ll learn to live with it. And one day, there may be another that catches his eye and speaks to his wolf as you do.”
“It’s probably going to be Bethany,” I muttered.
“Possibly.”
I glared at him. “She’s awful.”
“Oh? She seemed rather nice to me.”
“What? You met her? When? Why? Did Mark bring her to—and now you’re laughing at me. You never met her, did you.”
“Nope.”
“I hate you.”
His smile widened. “Oh, how your heart just showed that was a lie. That makes me happy, Gordo. My little witch.”
I loved Thomas Bennett.
I SAID, “Here’s the thing. If I say yes, you don’t own me. You don’t control me. You don’t get to tell me what to do. I am a witch to the Alpha Thomas Bennett. I am my own man. I can fry the hair off every part of your body with a single thought. You don’t get to treat me like I’m weak or fragile. If we have to fight one day, then we’ll do it side by side. And I reserve the right to change my mind. Especially if you are going to be friends with Bethany, because she is the absolute worst.” I took a breath and let it out slow. “Okay, how was that?”
Elizabeth stared at me with wide eyes, her hand on her distended stomach.
Carter sat at her feet, gnawing on wooden blocks. He waved at me with a chubby hand.
Elizabeth said, “I think… huh. I think that was much better than what I said to Thomas. And—oh. Oh.” She grimaced, bottom lip sucked up between her teeth.
