by TJ Klune
And maybe they would always haunt us. Maybe we would never truly be free.
But their words were buried under the call of packpackpack.
I turned his hands over, palms up.
I pressed my own down against his.
He wrapped his fingers around my wrist.
I did the same to him.
We breathed in sync.
And I pushed.
The raven spread its wings.
The bonds between us all flared to life.
I heard them.
Even the ones who weren’t with us. They whispered in my head, telling me they were here, they were here with us, with me. That no matter what happened, no matter what came down upon us, we were Bennetts, and this was our territory. This was our home. And no one was going to take that away from us.
We were the goddamn Bennett pack.
And our song would always be heard.
I pushed through everything, even as the vines and thorns began to tighten around my arm. I saw it—
heard it felt it touched it yes touched it because he is me and i am him i am
wolf
i am
alpha wolf
—and it was stronger than I expected it to be, stronger than it’d been before. There was Dinah Shore singing about how she didn’t mind being lonely when she knew my heart was lonely too. There was Joe, Joe, skinny little Joe, saying it was pinecones and candy canes, it was epic and awesome. There was the quiet hum of an SUV underneath us, tires spinning on the road, and boy-wolves talking about how when they got home, there’d be mashed potatoes and carrots and roast, and all of us ignoring the tears on their faces. There was a woman, a wonderful woman, a sweet woman, saying there was a soap bubble in his ear, and they were dancing, oh god, they were dancing and everything was fine and nothing hurt. It was—
too much it was too much it was too much for me for me for me to
take
i can’t take it
i can’t do this
i can’t
it’s
—brighter then, and heavier, and there were brothers lying on top of each other, breathing each other in after being apart for so long. It was the feeling of a body heavy with child, a hand on the wide curve of a stomach, whispering sweet nothings of warm love. It was the way the humans felt amongst the wolves, like they’d once been lost but had finally found their way home. It was a wolf who didn’t belong anywhere finally finding somewhere he could stay, somewhere he could call his own. It was so big, it was so much bigger than I thought it could ever be, so much—
more
i need
more
gordo gordo gordo
pack
brother
friend
love
mate
give him
more
give him
everything
more
more
more
—expansive than it should have been. It was the way we trained together, the way we laughed together, the way we ate together on Sundays because it was tradition. It was how we loved each other and would die for every single person in this pack pack pack.
It was a wolf who one day whispered to a wide-eyed boy it’ll be you and me forever and we are going to be our own pack and I will be your Alpha, and you will be my witch.
You are my family.
This wolf.
This great white wolf.
They had held me down, yes. An Alpha. My father.
They had held me down while magic was etched into my skin.
I hadn’t been given a choice.
My mother had seen that, in her own way.
And there.
There through the they don’t love you, they need you, they use you spinning furiously around us all, stood a door.
It was strong, because I had made it that way. This was my Alpha and tether. My friend and brother.
It’d held.
I pressed my ear to the door.
On the other side, something scratched against it, snarling angrily.
Many somethings.
I stood upright.
I looked over my shoulder.
Behind me stood my pack.
All of them. Even Chris and Tanner, though they flickered in and out. I didn’t know what it was costing them to be here, but I loved them more than I could ever say.
Here. With me. My people.
Whole and healthy and strong.
Chris said, “It’s okay.”
Tanner said, “We can feel it too.”
Jessie said, “All of us.”
Rico said, “Right here, papi. Right here with you.”
Robbie said, “We won’t stop.”
Kelly said, “No matter what.”
Carter said, “Because that’s what pack does.”
Elizabeth said, “That’s what family is supposed to do.”
Joe said, “We fight back.”
Ox said, “And we never stop.”
Mark leaned forward and kissed me sweetly. I closed my eyes, and it was dirt and leaves and rain and he said, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
And I believed him.
I believed all of them.
Because I was feral strong and wolf proud. There was magic coursing through my veins, singing as loud as I’d ever heard it.
I was Gordo Livingstone.
I was the witch to the Bennett pack.
I turned back toward the door.
In between the door and me stood a white wolf.
I hated him.
I loved him.
I was so angry with him.
And somehow I let it all go.
Somehow I forgave him.
“I’m sorry,” I told him.
His eyes flared red as he whuffed in response.
“I need you now. Please.”
He leaned forward, pressing his nose against my forehead, and I said, “Oh.”
I opened my eyes.
The wolf was gone. There was only the door.
But I could still feel him under my skin.
He was with us.
He would always be with us until the day we stood in a clearing and were together again.
But if I had my say, it would be a long time before that happened.
I didn’t reach for the doorknob. It was useless to me. I wasn’t going to open the door.
I was going to break it.
With the strength of the pack behind me, I pressed my palms flat against it.
Little pinpricks of light shot through the grain of the wood. They were Alpha red and Beta orange and Omega violet. There was the blue of all we had lost and the sweet green of relief that it had finally come to this.
My arms were covered in roses, an unkindness of ravens.
The roses bloomed.
The ravens flew.
And I pushed.
The door vibrated underneath my hands. The growling and scratching on the other side grew louder.
I pushed harder.
The door rattled in its frame, and I gritted my teeth as a bright pain lanced through my head, sharp and terrible. It was fighting back against me, the magic in my blood curdling.
It said, I know what you’re doing.
I know what you think you’ll achieve.
And maybe… maybe you’ll win.
You are stronger than I thought possible.
But this is just a battle, Gordo. One tiny little fight.
There is still the war.
I will bring it to your doorstep.
I will take what is rightfully mine.
And there is nothing you can do to stop me.
You will lose, in the end.
You will lose everything.
I looked up at the door, and between my hands, between the pinpricks of light, the wood began to warp outward. I didn’t understand what I was seeing, at least at first. I knew that voice. God, how I knew it. Once, while an Alpha wolf h
eld me down, the same voice had told me it was going to hurt, it was going to hurt like nothing I’d ever felt before.
You’ll think I’m tearing you apart, and in a sense, you’re right. You have magic in you, child, but it hasn’t yet manifested. These marks will center you and give you the tools to begin to control it. I will hurt you, but it’s necessary for who you’re supposed to become. Pain is a lesson. It teaches you the ways of the world. We must hurt the ones we love in order to make them stronger. To make them better. One day you’ll understand.
One day, you’ll be like me.
The wood stretched out between my hands, and it took shape. There was a nose and lips, and wooden eyes, and it blinked again, and again, and then the mouth moved. The face of my father said, “I see you. I see you, Gordo. I knew you would be something special.”
I cried out as the pain in my head grew worse, as my father’s hands appeared in the wood, reaching up and covering the backs of mine, squeezing until I thought my bones would turn to dust.
But my father had always underestimated a wolf pack. And I had mine behind me.
They howled. All of them. Even the humans.
My father’s wooden eyes widened as his face split with a sharp crack, the door splintering.
He opened his mouth to speak, and I said, “No.”
The door shattered underneath my hands.
I was bowled over by a wave of violet rage, of rapacious violence.
And there, on the other side, stood—
I OPENED my eyes.
The others did the same, blinking slowly.
All except for Ox.
He breathed in and out. In and out.
I could feel them. All of them. My pack.
And more. So many more.
It was tornadic in nature, a self-contained storm that swirled in our heads and chests. I tried to find the edges, tried to find a way to contain it, but it was big, bigger than I thought it would be.
In the end, it didn’t matter.
Because he was here.
A boy who had become a man.
He who had become an Alpha even before he felt the pull of the wolf underneath his skin.
Oxnard Matheson.
The Alpha of the Omegas.
Behind him, a choking sound.
I looked over his shoulder.
Kelly had crawled on his knees toward his brother.
Carter was on all fours, his palms flat against the stone floor. His head jerked side to side as his chest heaved.
“Carter?” Kelly asked, voice trembling.
Carter looked up, face elongating, eyes violet.
“Kelly,” he growled. But it was the only thing he said before he shifted into a wolf.
It looked painful, probably more so than it’d been since the first time he turned.
The claws grew as his clothes shredded, bones popping, muscles shifting. He howled toward the floor as his back arched, hair sprouting along his skin under his tattered shirt.
It took only a minute, but it felt like it stretched on forever.
And when it was done, Carter was gone.
In his place stood an Omega.
But….
Somehow he was still there. With us. In our heads. Oh, his bonds that stretched out between all of us were tenuous, and they were wracked by the storm, but they held.
And next to him, in his own cage, was a large brown wolf with eyes of violet.
No one stopped me as I rose.
No one said a word as I walked between them toward the wolf behind the line of silver, the bite on my neck pulsing.
He watched me as I approached, eyes narrowing, fangs bared.
I stood in front of him, separated by an invisible barrier.
“I can feel you,” I whispered. “You’re still here. It’s not the same, but you’re still here.”
I toed the silver, breaking the line.
He moved almost faster than I could follow.
But before he could reach me, Ox was at my side, half-shifted and roaring, catching Mark by the scruff of his neck and slamming him back down to the ground.
Mark tried to bite at him, tried to scratch and wiggle free.
Ox bent over him until they were almost face-to-face.
He growled and flashed his eyes, which swirled with a mix of red and violet.
And Mark just… stopped.
He was still filled with rage, roiling and mean, but it poured into Ox and was muted, like a feedback loop where the volume was lowered on one side.
Ox stood up slowly, letting Mark go.
Mark pushed himself up from the floor.
When he was shifted, when he was a wolf with eyes of orange or ice, I could still hear him in my head, singing my name, thinking thoughts of a wolf, however primitive.
That was gone now.
Everything from him was primal.
Feral.
His nostrils flared as he looked at me, growling lowly.
But he didn’t come for me.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”
WE STOOD in front of the house at the end of the lane.
The blue house across from us was dark.
Ox watched it without speaking.
I said the only thing I could think of. “She would be proud of you. Of who you’ve become.”
He turned his head slightly to look at me. He was still Ox, but there was something more about him now. Something bigger. I had known Alpha wolves my entire life. It’d never been like this. He radiated a power larger than any other wolf I’d known. He was containing it, somehow. All the Omegas. They would hear him. They would listen.
And yet he smiled quietly at me. “I wonder sometimes. If that’s true.”
“You don’t have to wonder. I know it, Ox. Maggie.” I swallowed, forcing the remaining words out. “Thomas. Both of them. They knew before everyone else, I think. Who you were. And who you would be.”
“I heard him. Your father.”
I looked away, eyes stinging.
He took my hand in his. “Maggie was my mom. Thomas was my dad. I am who I am because of them. Because of Joe. Because of this pack.” He squeezed my hand. “And because of you. You are more than you think, Gordo. And I have never been happier to say that your father is not proud of who you’ve become. That’s a good thing, in case you didn’t know.”
I laughed wetly. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks, Ox.”
He looked back at the blue house. “Will this work?”
“It has to.”
He nodded. “What now?”
I glanced over my shoulder, hearing the rest of the pack exiting the house. Jessie and Rico came down the stairs first. Rico batted her hands away as she tried to help him. She rolled her eyes and muttered about not helping him if he fell down the stairs.
Robbie came next, holding Elizabeth’s hand. She was pale, but she carried herself regally. Her eyes were orange. She was ready to fight.
Joe came next, taking a moment to breathe in the cold air. The snow had finally stopped, and the clouds were beginning to clear. Above, the light in the sky was beginning to fade. Stars appeared like chips of ice. The porch steps creaked under him as he descended, coming to stand next to his mate. He kissed Ox’s shoulder but stayed silent.
Kelly and Carter followed, Kelly’s hand pressed against his brother’s back. Carter was skittish, eyes continually flashing violet. The timber wolf trailed behind them, crowding against Carter, trying to keep him away from the rest of us. Carter snapped at him, but the wolf remained by his side.
Mark was last. The muscles under his skin shifted with every step he took. His claws dug into the wood of the porch as he stood above us. His eyes never left me, always watching. Waiting. I wondered if I were to push the hair around his throat away if there would still be a raven there, hidden away. I wasn’t going to take the chance of trying to look, as he seemed confused as to whether he wanted to rub against me or kill me.
Two of
us were missing.
But we would get them back.
The hunters had made a mistake in coming here.
Michelle Hughes had made a mistake in sending them.
And my father had made the gravest mistake of all.
His time would come. One day.
“Gordo?” Ox asked. “What now?”
I looked at our pack before I turned back to him.
I said, “Now you howl. As big and loud as you’ve ever howled before. Bring them here. The Omegas. Bring as many of them here as you can. They’ll hear you. And they’ll come running.”
He studied me for a moment, eyes glittering. Then he nodded.
He turned his face toward the sky.
He exhaled a stream of white smoke.
Above, the clouds shifted, revealing the moon.
It was almost full.
His eyes were red and violet.
The Alpha of the Omegas opened his mouth.
And howled.
hear your voice/cry havoc
IT WAS close to dawn when Oxnard Matheson looked at me and said, “They’re here.”
I smiled.
THE MOON was bright overhead as we trekked through the snow. The clouds had mostly cleared, and the air was cold. The stars were blinking against the black sky. On the eastern horizon, the night was beginning to fade toward day.
Ox led the way. I was behind him, stepping in the paw prints he left in the snow. Joe was behind me, snout pressing every now and then against my back, huffing out a warm breath. Mark growled every time he did it, a threat Joe ignored. Carter was behind Mark, and Elizabeth brought up the rear.
Somewhere in the trees, the timber wolf prowled, never letting Carter out of his sight.
Kelly had tried to come along, had all but demanded it, but Ox had asked him to stay behind, to help Robbie guard the house with Jessie and Rico. He hadn’t been pleased with being left behind but did as his Alpha asked.
He wouldn’t look at me before we left.
It was different now. In our heads. Before, when the packs had been split and Richard had lost his head, it had only affected those under Ox. Joe, Carter, Kelly, and I hadn’t felt it. The Omegas. We weren’t a part of them.
We were now.
Ox took the brunt of it, and in turn Joe. But even though we had two Alphas holding it together, there was still the undercurrent running through all of us. It was like wasps trapped in our heads, building a thick nest in our brains. I felt their wings fluttering, their stingers scraping.
