Holiday Wolf Pack

by Bridget Essex

  “Look...I’m sorry about earlier.” She searches my gaze, her eyes bright and blue and unblinking as she pins me to the spot with only a look. She licks her full lips, puts her head to the side. “What I mean is...” she searches my gaze. “I’m really sorry about your girlfriend.”

  It’s so unexpected, what she says, that I half-wonder if I actually heard her correctly. Or hell, you know, maybe I am still dreaming. But it’s the weight of her hand in mine, the heat of her skin against mine that draws me back to the reality of this moment.

  The woman is so sincere as she gazes up into my face, her blue eyes narrowed as she says: “Your girlfriend was an asshole, and she doesn’t deserve you. I hope you know that.” For a long moment, she holds my gaze while my heart beats wildly through me. I could never have predicted those words, have no idea what to say in reply.

  But then she simply stands, tugging at the hem of the sweater again. “Thank you for the clothes,” she tells me, nodding to me as she no longer meets my gaze. She lingers for a long moment, and I think she’s about to say something else as her jaw works, but she doesn’t. Instead, she sighs again and she moves quickly across my apartment, and before I can even blink, she’s opening my apartment door.

  She’s leaving.

  Although I’m in shock, both at the transformation and the knowledge that, I suppose, werewolves are actually real, and--truth be told--I’m in shock at what she just said to me, the kindness of her words, the sincerity of them...

  I don’t have time to be in shock, and--in that moment--I rely on pure instinct that actually does kick in, and then I’m up, too, racing across the apartment, grabbing my coat and the keys from their peg by the door, and then I’m out, into the hallway, following the woman who pads down the hall with bare feet, her hands deep in my jeans pockets, her shoulders hunched forward, and her long black hair flowing down her back.

  “Wait!” I call after her, then realize how late it probably is and that I shouldn’t be shouting in my hallway. I grab my snow boots from behind the door, and my sneakers, too, and holding all of this stuff, I race after her.

  And, to my surprise, she does wait for me, glancing back over her shoulder with that single brow raised, her lips quirked sideways in a sly smile.

  I hand her the sneakers, panting, as I drop my snow boots to the ground and jimmy them onto my feet, tugging on my puffy winter coat over my pajamas. “Where are you going?” I ask her, then, shoving my keys into my pocket.

  She pulls on my sneakers and does the laces up quickly. She glances up at me from where she crouches, pulling on my shoes. “I have to go save my sister.” She grimaces a little and shakes her head, glancing back down at the shoes. “She’s, uh...still at the pound.”

  At the pound, where Angie adopted her. I stare at her in surprise.

  “How did you both end up at the pound? How did that even happen?” I ask her, the both of us continuing down the hallway together when she rises.

  “Well,” she says quietly, casting a glance out of the corner of her eye at me as she smiles a little, “that’s a long story.”

  Her smile is infectious, and, surprisingly, I find that I’m smiling back at her.

  That this is weird is the understatement of the century, but a woman just transformed into a wolf in my apartment on Christmas Eve...so weird is kind of relative.

  And, at this point, I don’t really feel like letting her out of my sight just yet. Not when she just told me that her sister needs help, too.

  We reach the elevator door and the woman pushes the down button while casting me another small smile. She leans back into her heels and takes her right hand out of her pocket, holding it out to me. “I’m Paige,” she tells me then quietly.

  I take her hand and shake it up and down almost mechanically. The warmth of her skin against mine pulls me back into the moment, pulls me back from the millions of questions that are flooding my head, the impossibilities that I’m trying to understand and my worldview that’s been practically shattered. “I’m...I’m Mandy,” I tell her, and then because it’s what you always say after introducing yourself: “pleased to meet you.”

  But, in the circumstances, it sounds utterly ridiculous, and I find myself chuckling at that. And she’s chuckling, too, but for some strange reason, I know she’s not laughing at me. I’m pretty certain that she knows this situation is weird, too, and--together--we’re laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.

  “Well, Mandy...are you really prepared to leave your warm bed on Christmas Eve,” asks the woman quietly as the lights above the elevator begin to indicate that it’s climbing toward us, “to follow some stranger out into the wind and snows?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell her, shaking my head and wrapping my arms around me. “It doesn’t seem a decent thing to do to let you go out all by yourself to do...what, exactly? Your sister is at the pound, yes? Does she need help, do you need to get her out?” I search her face. “What are you going to do?”

  Paige shakes her head and bites her lip. “What she needs,” she tells me then, as the elevator dings open, “is to be rescued.” She casts a sideways glance at me, and then there we are: the both of us staring at this open elevator and neither one of us moving.

  I lick my lips, my heart knocking loudly against my rib cage. “I want to help you,” I tell her quietly.

  Paige shakes her head. “You should go back to bed,” she says, turning her back to the elevator and turning toward me...but also taking one step backward, toward the open door of the elevator. “It’s nice and warm in your apartment,” she says with a soft smile. A sad smile, I realize. “You should go back to it.”

  It’s the dead of night. It’s Christmas. I’m standing in my hallway in my pajamas and winter coat in front of a gorgeous stranger.

  What do I have to lose? So I say it.

  “Or...maybe I should go with you,” I tell her, my mouth suddenly dry.

  Paige shakes her head at that. “I’m not so sure,” she rumbles softly, “that that’s such a good idea.”

  I hold my ground, take another deep breath. “Why not?” I ask her.

  She pauses at that, running her fingers through her hair one last time, the long, black strands falling all around her shoulders like an inky cascade. She shakes her head, her low, throaty voice making me shiver again. She holds my gaze. “Because you’re a good person,” she says, her words soft. “And what you’ve been through tonight,” she says cautiously, but I still frown at that, still feel my mouth downturn as she brings up the breakup, “you don’t really deserve to go out in the middle of the night on Christmas to the pound to rescue some stupid werewolf who was stupid enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.” She flicks her gaze to me, then away from me, down the hallway as she works her jaw. “You don’t deserve any of this.”

  That reminds me a little of what she said a few minutes ago, back in the apartment about Angie and me deserving better. Paige looks so genuinely solemn and fiercely truthful in this moment. She wants me to go back to my apartment because she doesn’t want to trouble me, not after what I’ve “been through.”

  But I have time enough to mourn the fact that Angie didn’t give a crap about me. And, honestly, there’s something about this gorgeous woman, this unexpected woman who suddenly appeared in my apartment, standing in front of me, her hands deep in my jeans pockets, her shoulders rounding out my sweater.

  I don’t want to let her out of my sight. Not yet.

  “This is the strangest Christmas Eve of my life,” I confess to her, wrapping my arms around myself tightly. “But I can’t let you do this by yourself...ah...” I trail off, laugh a little, though--even to my ears--it sounds high-pitched and nervous. “Um, what is it, exactly, that you’re going to do when you say ‘rescue?’”

  She laughs at that, and then she puts her head to the side. “I’ll think up a plan. But are you sure about this, Mandy?”

  The way she says my name? God, it’s electrifying. The word is so low and th
roaty, I feel it in the deepest parts of me, sending a shiver through me, and making a flicker of desire surprisingly rear up deep inside my heart.

  I could never have predicted this night. And I can’t predict what will happen next. But that doesn’t quite matter.

  She watches me with piercing blue eyes, her gaze steady and predatory and unnerving.

  And really damn gorgeous.

  “Yes,” I tell her breathlessly. “I’m sure.”

  Paige smiles at that, and then, slowly, she reaches forward, curling her long fingers around my wrist. She tugs me gently into the elevator, and the door closes behind us. She presses the ground floor button, but she hasn’t, I am acutely aware, taken her other hand away yet. She still holds my wrist gently but tightly with her long, warm fingers. After a prolonged moment, she lets me go almost regretfully, leaning against the side wall as she buries her hands in her pockets, lifting her chin toward me.

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t really have much of a plan at all.” She rolls her eyes and sinks back in her heels, suddenly looking tired. “All I know is that most people right now are at home and sleeping, and that if there was ever any time to break into the pound...it would be tonight,” she says, her head to the side as she watches me. Her eyes darken a little. “That your ex adopted me, and today of all days, was just a bad twist of fate. I really thought that both I and my sister would be able to break out of the pound tonight together. It’s what we were waiting for: Christmas Eve, everyone home for the holidays and all eyes off the pound. We’d make off together. But a wrench was thrown into those plans, as it were..”

  And then, she looks me up and down, her gaze long and lingering, and--I realize--a little bit hungry as she gazes deeply into my eyes. “It was a lovely wrench, though,” she growls to me.

  I stare at her, my heart pounding so fast through me that all I can hear is that rhythm, and the quickening of my breath. Paige doesn’t do anything else for a long moment, only watches me carefully.

  The elevator door dings open. We’re on the ground floor.

  “Let’s go...let’s go get your sister,” I tell her breathlessly, fishing around in my coat pockets for my gloves.

  Her eyes sparkling, Paige pushes off from the wall and nods at me. “As you wish.”

  A little thrill goes through me at those words, and then I pull my coat hood up, and pull on my gloves. Paige has no coat at all, but she doesn’t seem to mind as we both shoulder through the front door of my apartment building, and into the frigid wind and whirling snow of a Christmas Eve night. Well...it’s late enough that we’re probably long past midnight, and it’s actually Christmas right now. It seems very late, or early, depending on how you look at it. But, either way, it’s a beautiful night if you’re gazing out at it from a warm and cozy apartment, and it’s utterly bitter and desolate if you’re out in it.

  Shoulder to shoulder, Paige and I begin to walk companionably against the wind, up the block.

  “So, you’re a werewolf.” I have to shout to Paige to be heard over the roaring wind. She glances at me, tucking a long strand of black hair behind her ear as she chuckles again. She’s wearing nothing more than my sweater, jeans and sneakers, but she looks perfectly comfortable out in all fo this cold. The snow whirls beneath the street lamps, casting everything into half-shadows, but the lamplight reflecting off the snow also gives everything a hazy, magical glow.

  The perfect night, really, to be walking the streets of Boston with a werewolf.

  “Yeah,” she tells me with a quick shrug. “My sister and I are hereditary wolves, so our parents were wolves before us, and theirs before them. We grew up this way, and--honestly--we’ve always been much better about getting caught. But Anna--that’s my sister...she was out with her boyfriend, who, of course, knows what she is. But they got wasted. They’re in their early twenties,” she says with a wry half-smile and glance my way. “Anyway, they were being stupid because they were drunk off their asses, and Anna transformed into her wolf. I was within the general vicinity--I work downtown--and I could smell her animal form, so I came to find her. Animal Control had been called about a ‘wolf-dog’ seen downtown, and she was too drunk to change back into her human form, so I found her and stayed with her, trying to get her off the streets, out of sight, and it just didn’t work out that well.” She sighs for a long moment, shaking her head. “We’ve been so damn careful all our lives. It’s very, very important,” she says then, glancing my way again, her eyes a very calculating, piercing blue, “to only ever tell people what we are if we think we can trust them. And we can never tell groups of people. It’s just not safe. We have to keep our secret. And if Anna transforms while she’s in the pound...she’d out us all. And there would be consequences to that.” Paige shudders, shoves her hands deeper into her pockets and bends her face toward the sidewalk and against the wind.

  I don’t know what to say. It’s obvious how concerned Paige is for her sister. I reach out between us and I place my hand at the small of her back. It’s supposed to be a comforting gesture, but when Paige glances at me, it’s in surprise. I snatch my hand back, clear my throat. “You’re a good sister,” I tell her, then. “I’m sure she’s fine. We’re going to get her out now, and she’ll be back with you, soon, probably a little wiser.” I clear my throat again, feeling awkward. I’m not sure what else to say. “Just...don’t worry,” I murmur to her.

  Paige appraises me for a long moment before she glances back down the deserted sidewalk. What she says next is so unexpected that her words--coupled with a great gust of frigid wind--knock the breath out of me.

  “She didn’t deserve you, you know,” Paige growls.

  The blush heats up my face, and the snow falling against my skin begins to melt faster. I don’t say anything, but Paige shakes her head, snow flying off her hair in all directions. “She was a lousy excuse for a partner,” she says, still growling low as she tilts her chin up. “She didn’t care about you. I hope you know that you made the right decision, breaking up with her.”

  “It’s not everyday,” I mumble, “that someone has an audience to their breakup.”

  “Sorry,” says Paige, not sounding sorry in the slightest. “But I had to deal with her while she volunteered, and during the entire adoption process at the animal shelter, and a taxi ride to your apartment. All with that woman. All utterly unbearable.” She glances sidelong at me, one brow up. “Why did you two start dating?

  “That’s a little personal,” I mutter to her, feeling my face redden. I know she didn’t mean for it to sound judgmental (at least, I think she didn’t mean for it to sound that way), but the words are as harsh as a slap.

  Paige backs off, spreading her hands. “I’m sorry. She just got my hackles up.” She holds my gaze for a long moment as we pause beneath a bright street lamp. Her voice softens. “I meant what I said, though. You deserve better than that, and there are many, many women out there who would do better by you.”

  It’s such a passionate declaration, and so intimate, that I don’t know what to say.

  “Sorry,” says Paige again, burying her hands in her jeans pockets and lifting her nose to the wind as she glances down the street. “I’m just an incurable romantic. I believe that there’s someone out there for everyone in this world, the perfect someone. I’ve always believed that...it’s my weakness.” When she glances down at me, her blue eyes are bright and piercing and utterly sincere.

  “I don’t think that’s a weakness,” I tell her quietly. “I used to believe that, too.”

  “Used to?” she asks me. A snowplow drives by slowly, the hazard lights overhead coloring everything in intermittent orange light as we turn the corner and begin down the other block. Here between the taller buildings, the gusting winds pummel us a little less, and I think I can actually start to feel my nose again.

  “Yeah, well...” I trail off, wondering how much to tell this stranger. Because she is just that, I remind myself. A perfect stranger.

  But...she�
�s also a werewolf. And things aren’t exactly cut and dry in this situation. We’re out together on a snowy Christmas night. Things are weird and complicated.

  Why not tell her?

  “Things haven’t been easy lately...with dating...” I wave my gloved hand and trail off again as I search for the right words. “I actually dated a lot of women this year,” I say then simply, “and none of them came close to the one for me. Though they were all nice ladies, we were just all so desperately incompatible. I just seem to be having a bad string of dates...” I cast a glance at her. She’s silent as she considers this, but I feel vulnerable (and, honestly, a little silly) that I was just so candid with her. “What about you?” I ask quickly then. “Are you...uh--”

  “I’m alone,” she says then, her voice softer now. Almost wistful. “It wasn’t always this way,” she says, taking a deep breath. “I loved, once, maybe much more than I should have. And she broke my heart.”

  She. That illustrious, glowing word that every lesbian in the world waits for, holding their breath, when talking with a woman they’re incredibly attracted to and wondering if there’s even the slightest shred of hope that they have a chance with her.

  I try to make polite, sympathetic noises, but my heart is pounding about a mile a minute, and inside my gloves, I press my index finger to my palm and press down hard with my fingernail. Ouch.

  I don’t wake up.

  So this isn’t a dream.

  Oh, my God, get it together, Mandy, I think over and over again in a quick mantra. Just because Paige is single and a lesbian, or, at the very least, attracted to women (thank you to every lucky star in the universe), it doesn’t mean that now’s the time to think about such things, right?