by SM Reine
Shit. Werewolves can’t smell lies, exactly, but they can smell unease or fear, and sense when your pulse speeds up—which often amounts to the same thing. If I want to convince Luke I’m being truthful, I have to give him another explanation for my physiological reaction.
I make a big show of sighing, putting on the same moronic girl persona I always use when I want to keep someone from taking me seriously. “Come on, Luke,” I whine. “You already told my mom about me and my friend.” I nod toward Will’s truck. “She wants to kill me. What do you think she’s gonna do if you or—” I wave a hand back at the house to indicate Astrid “—you know, what’s-her-face tells her that I was drinking with the same boy at two in the afternoon?” I put on my best sulky expression.
The idiot teenager bit wouldn’t fool the few people who know me well, but Luke hasn’t spent time with me since I was an idiot teenager. He studies me, eyes narrowed in annoyance. Luke is used to people either fighting with him or shamelessly kissing his ass. He doesn’t quite know what to do with a young woman who pouts at him.
I don’t want to keep making eye contact, which could be seen as challenging, but I don’t want to look shifty, either, so I drop my gaze to the end of my ponytail. “Plus, you know, you’re kind of scary,” I mumble, eyes lowered.
Bingo. His ego assuaged, Luke finally relaxes his grip on my arm. Before letting me go, though, he reaches down and grabs my chin, forcing my face up so I have to meet his eyes. “Go, then,” he snaps. “But don’t ever bring a founding to one of our homes again. Is that absolutely clear?”
I open my mouth to answer him, but suddenly Will is there, forcing his body between us. I didn’t even hear him get out of the car. He is taller than Luke, and nearly as muscular, so Luke is forced to let go of me and take a step back so he can look up at him. Shit. Shitshitshit. “Don’t touch her,” Will says calmly, his broad shoulders keeping me from even seeing Luke.
Goddammit! I had this. When I circle Will’s back, I see the two of them are already locked in an epic stare-off. I grab Will’s hand and pull him as hard as I can toward the truck. “We’re leaving now,” I promise Luke, who doesn’t deign to look at me. Will doesn’t want to walk away, but I dig my heels in, yanking his arm with everything I’ve got, and finally he staggers forward a few steps, breaking the stare-off with the alpha werewolf.
“Sashi,” Luke seethes, drawing out the last syllable of my name. His face has clouded over with rage, and waves of hostility are practically radiating off him. I don’t have much time before he flips out.
“We’re going,” I repeat, hoping he won’t notice the desperation in my voice.
“If I ever see him again,” Luke growls, and he doesn’t even need to finish the threat. I know he won’t hesitate to kill Will, and for no better reason than because he’s irritating.
“You won’t,” I assure Luke. I keep pushing Will until he gets behind the wheel, and then I race around to climb in the passenger side. Luke stands there coiled with tension, his eyes boring holes into us.
I don’t start breathing again until we’re a mile away from the duplex.
Then the air surges violently into my lungs, and I have to unbuckle my seat belt and bend forward, putting my head between my legs as tremors of unspent fear shudder through me. Will, who was driving in stormy silence, looks over with alarm. “Sashi?” He wrenches the steering wheel sideways, pulling the truck onto the curb. He unbuckles and scoots across the truck bench toward me, putting one hand on my back. “Are you okay?”
I nod, trying to calm down my breathing enough to answer. “I’m fine,” I manage, but I know it’s not convincing. I can’t tell Will that we could have died back there, or that if my mother ever finds out what I’ve done, I’ll be disowned. I can’t even tell him that I messed up, because he’ll have a dozen follow-up questions I can’t answer. “Just a little asthma,” I mumble lamely.
Will seems to buy it, but I feel a rush of shame and regret. I have handled this thing all wrong. I should have kept Will out of it, for one thing.
“Sashi?” Will is saying. “Did you get the answers you needed?”
I push out a breath and sit up, careful to meet Will’s eyes. I make my face very sincere and calm, because I can’t mess this part up. “Yeah. He didn’t do it,” I lie. “He’s a dick, and a little…” Could I say ‘territorial?’ Do people say that about human men? “Possessive,” I finish instead. “But he’s not hurting her.” The words actually taste bad in my mouth, like ashes and rot.
There is a momentary pause as Will decides he believes me. “Where to?” he finally asks.
A thought edges its way into my brain, so unwanted, yet so obviously true: I need to break it off with Will.
He’s too vulnerable, and things with the werewolves are too volatile right now. For a moment I am almost dizzy with loss and grief for the relationship that never got started. This is why you don’t date humans, I remind myself. Not seriously, anyway. As much as I hate myself for agreeing with my mother, I know I can’t be with someone from outside the Old World. Will could have died back there. He could have died.
But I already like Will so much…I hate this. For a moment I feel a spurt of red-hot hatred for my mother, who bred me and trained me to never fit in in the human world. But the hatred changes nothing.
“Can you just drop me off at home?” I say at last.
A frown wrinkles Will’s forehead as he senses the change in my mood. We drive back to the northwest part of the city in silence. Will remembers the way without me reminding him, which is impressive. When we’re a few streets away, he asks, “What’s bothering you, Sashi? Did I say something?”
“No, I just…” How am I supposed to do this? I try to imagine the last two days from his point of view. A weird girl starts to hook up with him, kicks him out when her mother shows up, seems like she’s going to hook up with him again, and then takes him on a bizarre adventure to check on a potential rapist. “You should probably just forget you met me,” I say honestly.
Will spins the wheel abruptly, pulling over a block from my house. When the truck is in park, his eyes flash over to me, full of pain and confusion. “What are you talking about?” he demands. “I thought we…connected.”
I shrug. “I was just looking for a quick hook-up,” I tell him. “It’s getting too complicated, though, so we should just forget it.” I unbuckle my seat belt and start pushing the door open. “This is close enough. Thanks for coming along today.” I open the door and hop out of the truck before he can see that my eyes are welling up. I start walking toward the house without another word.
“Dammit, Sashi, wait!” I hear the truck door slam behind me as Will follows me. He grabs my hand, and I reluctantly turn toward him, putting on a bored expression.
“What?”
“I’m not buying any of this.” He searches my face for a long moment, but I manage not to flinch. Finally he adds, “I don’t know what just happened, but here—” He turns my hand over and digs into his pocket with his free hand. He pulls out a pen and starts to write something on my palm. “This is my address and my number. If you change your mind…”
“I won’t.” I jerk my hand away, but he’s already finished writing. I can’t resist rising up on tiptoes to give him a quick peck on the cheek. “It was nice to meet you,” I say by way of farewell.
I keep my head down as I walk toward the house, but I can feel his eyes on me for a long time. I don’t hear it when he starts his truck and pulls away, but that’s probably because I’m busy fighting back tears.
10. Astrid
I am peeking through the living room window as the girl, Sashi, tries to convince Luke her boyfriend is harmless. I wince when Luke grabs her face, wondering if I should intervene, but before I can take a step toward the front door I see the boy practically fly out of the truck to wedge himself between the two of them. I am impressed; even if you don’t know he’s a werewolf, Luke is pretty goddamned scary-looking. The boy is taller than him,
though, and he looks…not tough, exactly, but determined. Like life has kicked him hard and he’s more than willing to kick back. A jolt of envy hits me, and I suddenly feel very, very alone. There is no one to protect me from Luke.
But now the tables have turned and Sashi is tugging the boy toward the truck—she’s the one protecting him. After it pulls away Luke storms toward my front door, and I nearly groan aloud as I drop the curtain and press my back into the wall. I know from past experience that Luke is usually at his least violent on the day after the full moon—immediately after shifting, he doesn’t feel particularly compelled to mate or hurt someone. But Sashi has clearly put him in a temper.
Luke bursts through the front door, and I hear the metallic slap of the screen door falling off its frame. He doesn’t even look back at it, just stalks into the living room and throws himself on the couch. I instinctively crouch down on the floor so I won’t be higher than him.
“That kid is up to something,” he seethes.
“Which one?” I say, my eyebrows raised. It’s not like Luke to brood. But the instincts he’s been wrestling with all spring seem to include a healthy dose of paranoia.
“The doc’s kid. Sashi.”
“What do you think she’s up to?” I say very carefully.
His face darkens. “Dunno. Maybe report me to the goddamned neighbors.” If Luke sees the irony of complaining about this to his semi-prisoner, he doesn’t show it. He’s referring to the neighboring packs, and hope sparks in my brain. Would they really do something?
I doubt it. This is the problem with werewolves: we only care about our own pack members. Everyone within the pack is usually loyal to a fault, but nobody gives a shit if someone in a neighboring pack is hurting his or her own pack mate. If someone wanted our territory, they might be willing to help overthrow Luke, but it would be impossible to arrange such a thing without it getting back to Luke.
Luke has been fuming silently, but suddenly he looks straight at me, his hard expression cracking. “I don’t mean to be like this, you know,” he says, a thick note of desperation in his voice. His eyes are begging me to believe him. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I know,” I say. We have done this dance so many times before. Sometimes we argue and shout and break things, which is why I haven’t bothered unpacking most of my stuff. And sometimes he tries to seduce me, and I get to decide whether to fight him or close my eyes and submit. Either option leaves us both unsatisfied.
It’s not the sex that troubles me, exactly—when you turn into a wolf once a month, it gets easier to accept the idea that your body isn’t always your own. I take great comfort in knowing that whatever he does to my body, whatever pain or pleasure he forces on me, he can’t touch my mind, my soul.
No, what plagues me is that he can’t stop trying. Something in Luke’s brain has fixated on me, and now the mating instinct is telling him that he owns me. And every time he treats me like a possession, it feels like greasy fingers are trying to worm and scrabble their way into my core.
I hate him so much, but when he bows his head, resting it in his hands, I feel sorry for him too. I do believe him—before he met me he had probably never hurt a woman. But the werewolf magic has rewired his brain in a way that isn’t compatible with either of us. “You and me…we’ve kind of reached a stalemate,” I venture. “It’s been six months. Maybe it’s time to think about other options.”
He lifts his head to stare at me. “What other options?”
“You could trade me again,” I offer. “Or try to get another single female in the pack. I think we’d get along fine if you found another mate—”
“No!” Luke shouts, leaping to his feet. I can see the crazed shadow behind his eyes has returned. “You are mine!”
A few months ago, this would have terrified me, but I am too weary of Luke and his temper to even feel afraid anymore. I’m completely screwed now, so I figure I might as well go for broke. “But I don’t want to be yours, Luke,” I say in the most reasonable tone I can manage. “I want to be my own.”
His hands clench into fists, and he takes a heavy step toward me. “No,” he growls. His expression flickers for a second, uncertain, and then he wrenches himself away, turning his body to beeline for the door. I hear it slam shut as Luke races out of the house, trying to get himself away from me before he hurts me again. A moment later I hear an engine start up as Luke drives away from my home. He has controlled it this time.
My body goes limp with relief, and I am glad I was already sitting on the floor. I curl up into a protective ball, my mind racing. I can’t keep living this way. Something will have to give, and soon.
11. Sashi
If I were a braver, tougher person I would have scrubbed Will’s number off my hand the second I got home, and never thought of him again. Instead, I transfer the information to a post-it note and hide it on my desk, under a pile of textbooks. Just in case.
When my mother gets home that night, I am curled up on the couch, my knees pulled to my chest, watching a DVD of The Princess Bride. Mum stands in the kitchen doorway for a moment, watching me, and then disappears back the way she came. A moment later she returns holding a giant bowl of popcorn and a couple of Diet Cokes. She sits down at the other end of the couch and sets the sodas on the coffee table and the bowl on the couch between us. When I am ready, I sit up enough to reach both. We don’t speak, but after a few minutes of silent watching, Mum reaches over and pats my ankle. No matter how much we fight, or how little I think she understand me, she’s still my mum, and she knows I’ve broken it off with Will.
When I’m not thinking about him, my thoughts keep returning to Astrid, searching for a way to help her without making it worse. My Old World contacts are limited, thanks to Mum’s isolationist policies, and there’s really only one person I can think of who might be able to help. The next afternoon, after my volunteer shift, I make the hour-and-a-half pilgrimage to Mankato, which is home to the closest coven I know about.
We don’t have much contact with the coven, because Mum has almost as much disdain for coven life as she does for the werewolf pack, but I met the leader, Florence, when I was fifteen or sixteen. As it turns out, she still works at the county library. She still has the same honey-blonde hair down to her waist, too, although there are a few strands of gray in it now. Although she’s very surprised to see me, she agrees to meet with me in the break room.
Florence listens thoughtfully as I explain the problems in the Southern Minnesota werewolf pack, but shakes her head as soon as I finish. “I’m sorry, sweetie,” she says. Florence is one of those women who throws around endearments with abandon. “But we keep to ourselves, and the wolves keep to themselves. Unless they’re attracting the attention of humans, there’s nothing I can do.”
I blow out a frustrated breath. “Well, what would you do if they were attracting attention?” I ask.
Florence leans back in her hard wooden chair, pushing ragged bangs out of her eyes. “I would go up to Minneapolis and talk to the cardinal vampire there. He would make sure the whole thing gets covered up, one way or another.”
“Can you give me his information?”
“Oh, sweetie, no.” Florence reaches over and puts her hand on mine. “You don’t want that, trust me. Once you have his attention…” She pauses for a moment, searching for words. “Hon, you have to understand that he might think the best solution is to kill your friend, or your friend and this alpha both. He only cares about keeping the Old World hidden. By any means necessary.”
I tug my hand free. “This is insane!” I protest. “There’s got to be a way to stop Luke from abusing Astrid without anyone else getting hurt.”
She shakes her head again, not without sympathy. “It’s a wolf problem, sweetheart. Let them take care of their own.”
I sleep on it, and decide there’s still one more person I can ask for help: Kelly. When he brought Astrid to Mum to have her leg set, he seemed fairly sympathetic. I can’t expect him
to go up against Luke directly, but there must be something he can do.
The problem is getting to him. Kelly is one of the werewolves who works for Luke’s construction company, so it’s not like I can just drop by his office, and even if I knew where he lived, going to his place is too dangerous: I don’t completely trust him, for one thing, and I can’t imagine it would be a good idea to leave my scent at his place.
In the end, the only thing I can think of to do is call the construction company around lunchtime, when everyone comes indoors, and ask for Kelly. The first time I try it Luke answers the phone himself—I think there’s a receptionist, but she might be on her lunch break. The next day I try again, and this time the receptionist answers, but she tells me that Kelly is out on a job. On the third day, however, I am in luck: Kelly is in the office.
I tell the receptionist that I am Kelly’s dental hygienist trying to confirm an appointment, and she puts me through to him.
“Hello?” Kelly says when he comes on the line. His voice is puzzled. “I just had my teeth cleaned last month.”
“Kelly, it’s Sashi Noring,” I say, adding quickly, “I want to talk to you about Astrid. Is Luke around right now?”
“No…hang on.”
He puts me on hold for a moment, and when the line picks up again there is much less ambient noise in the background. “I’m in the conference room,” Kelly says in a low tone. “What do you need to say?”
The phrasing seems odd, but I push on. “Do you know that he’s hurting her? Forcing himself on her?”
There is a long pause, and then a quiet, “Yes.”
“She needs help,” I blurt out. “Can’t you do anything?”
