A Symphony of Howls

by Val St. Crowe

  There were, however, lots better ways to handle it than the way that he had. He hadn’t said anything to anyone. He should have told me about Tempest. He should have told Tempest about me. How hard was it to pick up the phone and call her?

  And now I was supposed to spend the rest of my life mated to this guy? He was my destiny? How the hell was I supposed to make that work?

  The woman came to my table with a steaming cup of coffee and a glass of water.

  I was grateful for both.

  “My name is Tiffany,” she said.

  “Camber,” I said.

  “Where is Judah?” she said.

  “With Tempest,” I said.

  She grimaced.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Well, he’s not without his faults, our Judah,” she said. “But for the sake of the pack, you must forgive him that. He’s young, and you’re young too. You will have time together, many years.”

  The pack. Yes, the pack. Of course, for the pack, I would find a way to make this work. I couldn’t leave the pack. Judah? Him I could probably leave, at least right now. I wasn’t feeling very fond of him. But the pack? No. I would not ever give up my home. Now that I had felt what it was like to belong, I would fight to the death to protect it.

  “I…” I squared my shoulders. “Yes, of course. You’re right.”

  “Have you had a chance to look at the menu?”

  I ordered my meal and she whisked off to tell the kitchen staff to make it for me. Then I put cream and sugar in my coffee and held the warm mug in my hands, breathing in the delicious smell of the coffee. I resolved not to waste too much of my time thinking about Judah. He didn’t deserve that from me, not after the way he’d behaved. Instead, I wanted to luxuriate in the wondrousness of my new home.

  In a few moments, my food was brought out, and it was wonderful. I ate it all up, and felt full and sated. Each bite was delicious, tastier than food I’d had anywhere else. I was just setting down my fork when a shadow fell over my table.

  It was Judah. “Here you are,” he said. “I should have known I’d find you here. This is the heart of the town. Did you meet Tiffany?”

  “I did,” I said. “I love it here.” I looked around appreciatively at the tavern. “It’s so… perfect. And the food is amazing. I came here directly, almost like my feet led me here even though I didn’t know where I was going.” I laughed, realizing I sounded a little silly. “I don’t even know what I’m talking about.”

  His features softened and he looked truly pleased. “You belong here.”

  “I do,” I said, giddy with the truth of it. “I really do.”

  He sat down opposite me. “I’m glad that something is going well.”

  I sighed. “Yes, you’re lucky that I feel so at home here, because you’ve really made a mess of things.”

  He hung his head. “I have. It’s true.” A long pause. “I’m sorry.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  He looked up at me.

  “I want to forgive you,” I said. “Well… no, that’s not really true. I don’t want to, or I would. But I want to want to, and maybe that counts for something?”

  “We need to talk,” he said. “I know that we do.”

  “Yes,” I said. “We do. I’m your mate. I’m the one you’re fated to spend the rest of your life with, so it stands to reason that you should do the best that you can to make me happy. One might even argue that you should make me happy first, before you make anyone else happy.”

  He flinched.

  “I mean, not that I imagine you can make either of us happy,” I said, shrugging. “The truth is, I’m sure she’s devastated. I’m just… annoyed.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  “I appreciate that,” I said.

  He laughed a little. “Can we go somewhere to talk? I’d rather not talk here in public. And you’d probably like to drop off your suitcase, get comfortable, that sort of thing.”

  “Where do you have in mind?”

  “Home,” he said.

  “Home?”

  “Our home,” he said. “It’s my home now, but we’ll share it, you and me together.”

  “Your home, which you haven’t prepared for me,” I said. “And right after you’ve just dumped your high school sweetheart. I don’t think so. There’s got to be someplace that I could stay on my own.”

  “Please don’t insist on that,” he said.

  “I think it’s perfectly reasonable,” I said.

  “Sure, okay, yes, it is,” he said. “But if the pack finds out that its alphas are living apart, it will cause unrest. And the pack finds out everything around here. They’ll know. Our bond needs to be strong to keep the pack strong. The magic that powers the protective spell on the village is tied to the two of us and to our bond. It’s vitally important that we be unassailable.”

  “Wow,” I muttered. “So, nothing’s really riding on this or anything.”

  “Just… come back to my place. To our place. If you hate it, we’ll find somewhere else for you, I promise.”

  I sighed again. The pack, the pack, the pack… More and more, I felt as though I was subjugating myself for the good of the rest of the wolves. And… the frightening thing about that wasn’t the fact of it, but that it didn’t bother me at all. That I was eager and willing to keep the pack strong, and that there was no limit to the sacrifices I would make.

  I’d never really loved anything so much before.

  Love meant that it had to be a good thing. Right?

  * * *

  “I was called as an alpha when I was young,” Judah was saying. “I didn’t know what it meant. Tempest was with me through all of it.”

  The two of us were sitting together in the living room in his cabin. As the alpha, I had wondered if his cabin would be larger and more elaborate than all the others, but it didn’t appear to be that way. From the outside, his cabin looked just the same size as the others, and inside, it was more cozy than fancy. There were two bedrooms in the cabin, and each were about the same size as the other. He didn’t insist that we share a bedroom yet, since we weren’t comfortable with each other. I was grateful, because I would have had to put my foot down against that. After everything that I had learned, I wasn’t interested in sleeping with him again anytime soon.

  The living room was full of overstuffed leather furniture swathed in furs. There was a stone fireplace against one wall, and a fire cheerily danced in the hearth. I had to admit that I loved it here. The house was exactly as I would have liked it. I even liked the decoration, which emphasized comfort and warmth.

  I sat on an easy chair angled toward the fire and Judah sat on another next to me. We looked into the fire when we didn’t look at each other. The conversation wasn’t an easy one, and I could tell that Judah might just as happily have skipped it. But I needed answers. I needed to understand.

  “So, when she found out you were an alpha, then she knew,” I said. “She knew that you two couldn’t be mates.”

  “We had thought something might be strange before I was called,” said Judah. “Amongst werewolf teenagers, you understand, dating is intense. Once two wolves sleep together, they are a mated pair, and they are connected in a way that other wolves aren’t. That bond begins to strain against all the other connections in their lives—to their families, their teachers, everyone.”

  “Wait, what?” I said. “Sex equals bonding for werewolves? I didn’t know this.”

  “Well, it’s not as if the mating bond is forever or anything,” said Judah. “Like I told you before, it can be broken if the female wolf sleeps with another man.”

  “But that means she’s bonded to him,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “So, once a woman is mated, then she’s just passed around from man to man?” I said. “She never belongs to herself again?”

  He looked into the fire. “You could put it like that.”

  “That’s crazy sexist. Why is nature so sexi
st?” I balled my hands into fists.

  “Well, it’s not great for the men either. They don’t necessarily have any say about whether or not they become unmated. So a female werewolf can leave her mate abruptly or he can be stuck mated to someone with whom he no longer cares about.”

  “While he’s already moved on,” I murmured, “because men can sleep with other women and not break the bond.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “That’s horrible,” I said.

  “It’s not an easy life being a werewolf,” he said. “We are pulled by the moon. We are driven by our instincts. We are sometimes more beast than human. And we are vilified and exiled, hunted by those outside the woods.”

  I wrinkled up my nose. “You’re right. Everything about being a werewolf is awful.”

  “Well…” He looked up from the fire and the flames reflected in his eyes. “There is the pack.”

  I drew in a breath. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. The pack is wonderful. But I guess you’ve always felt it, growing up here.”

  “No,” he said. “Before we shift for the first time, we don’t feel our connection to the pack either. We’re just human like everyone else. Then once we feel the call, then we feel the pack.”

  “You were called to be a werewolf before you were an alpha, right?” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “The alpha call came after the current alpha died. But there were signs that I would be different, and one of them was that Tempest and I didn’t mate.”

  I nodded slowly. “So, you’ve known for some time that something between you two wasn’t right.”

  “Yes.”

  We were quiet.

  He leaned back in his chair. “You’d think that would mean that I would have left her earlier, but we were teenagers, and being told we couldn’t have each other, it only…”

  “Made you want each other more,” I said, because I understood. They had been rebellious and young, and their love had been forbidden by the forces of nature itself. Of course they held on even tighter.

  “Yeah,” he said, shaking his head. “For a long time, I think we convinced each other that we’d beat it somehow, that we’d defy the odds and be together. But, um, eventually, we grew up, and we had to face the facts. We were not meant to be. And yet, it was hard to let go. I tried so many times to stay away from her, but…” He studied his palms. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about all of this mess.”

  I surveyed him. I felt sorry for him and Tempest. I did. But I also felt sorry for myself. And I was angry. If he’d told me this before, I would have tried to back out of it. I wouldn’t have let it go so far. But then, of course, I wouldn’t have become alpha to this pack, and I felt in my heart and my soul and my bones and my guts that this was my home and this was my pack. And there was nothing that I would do to give that up. So… well, this was the way things stood.

  “Listen, the pack demands that I mate,” he said. “Without a female alpha, I was weakened, and that meant the entire pack was weak. The protective magic hides us, and it is tied to the alphas. If it fails, the bloodhounds can find our village. If the bloods come, they will destroy us. They kill indiscriminately when the rage is on them. Women, children, babies—”

  “Stop,” I said. The thought of my pack being massacred was suddenly more than I could bear.

  “You’re my mate,” he said. “You feel it, don’t you, that you are the alpha of this pack? It’s right. You fit here, and you belong.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “So, you see, I had to. I had to do this. And if I had told you all about Tempest, you would have refused me, and then… well, then that would have been that. You are the only female alpha that exists for this pack.”

  “Is that really true?” I said. “You couldn’t have mated with some other alpha?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think it is like Vivia said. We were destined to be together.”

  “But then, why…?” I didn’t finish my sentence.

  “Why what?” he said.

  I struggled to find the words, hunting around for several moments. I gestured hopelessly with my hands and then dropped them into my lap. “It’s like you say. I feel that I belong here. I know it. But when it comes to you, I don’t have any sort of certainty. Do you feel something strong for me? Do you feel anything less for Tempest?”

  He met my gaze helplessly, his face like a frightened animal caught in a spotlight. He didn’t answer.

  * * *

  “I don’t believe that,” said Sinead.

  “Believe it,” I said. I was lying on the bed in my bedroom, talking on my phone. It was evening, and Judah had gone out to pick us up some dinner. I had decided to call Sinead while I waited for him. “I mean, I get it. He was a kid. He was in love with her. It’s tragic, really. In some ways, I’m the homewrecker. I’m the one who’s breaking up their happy little couple.”

  “No way,” said Sinead. “You did not do anything. He did this all to himself. He’s a total dick.”

  “He’s not, though,” I said. “I mean, I am very annoyed with him, and he handled it badly, but he’s not a total dick. He’s just… an idiot.”

  “No, no, no,” Sinead said. “This is not the way this is supposed to go at all. You meet your mate, and he whisks you off to his pack and then you live happily ever after. Like a fairy tale. This is all wrong.”

  “But the pack… the pack is right,” I said. “I told you how good it feels to be here, right? Like there’s this piece of me that was empty for all this time, for my whole life, and now it’s full, and now I’m complete, and everything that was wrong is right.”

  “Which sounds great and all,” said Sinead, “but he can’t be your mate. That can’t be the way it’s supposed to be. Vivia got it wrong. She messed up somehow. I’m going to go and talk to her—”

  “Don’t you dare tell her all the things I’ve told you,” I said. “I don’t want everyone knowing that my new mate already has a girlfriend.”

  “You said he ended things with her.”

  “He did,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean that he’s over her or anything. And he and I, we’re not even close to being anything like mated. We’re glorified roommates and that’s it.”

  “That’s not acceptable,” said Sinead. “You got a bum deal. You didn’t get what you were supposed to get. You need a do-over, and I mean it.”

  “A do-over would mean a different mate,” I said. “And I’m not giving up my pack. I couldn’t give it up anymore than I could give up my lungs. I need the pack. The pack is me, and I am the pack. So, I’m staying mated to Judah, the end.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Positive.”

  A long pause from Sinead. “Well, all right then, you’ve just got to somehow salvage the relationship.”

  “How could I do that?”

  “I know it’s not ideal,” said Sinead. “But if you’re going to stay with him, you have to make the best of it. And maybe, with time, you’ll fall in love anyway, and it’ll be a wonderful love story. It’s just going to take time for you two to come together.”

  “I can’t imagine that,” I said. “He’s in love with another woman. She’s in love with him. And I’m angry with him for not telling me any of this.”

  “I know, I know,” said Sinead. “But you’re mated. You have a bond, right?”

  “Supposedly,” I said. “I certainly don’t feel a bond.”

  “Maybe you have to make the bond come to you,” said Sinead.

  “Like how?”

  “I don’t know, by doing romantic things. You should have a candlelight dinner or something.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “You should cook for him!”

  “What?”

  “Do you know how to cook?”

  “I mean… kind of,” I said. I had a small repertoire of dishes that I didn’t completely suck at, but I usually only cooked for myself, at least that was what I had done when I lived
alone. “I could maybe cook something.”

  “Okay, so perfect,” said Sinead. “That’s what you do. You make him an amazing dinner, and then you guys eat together, and bare your souls, and the bond will flare to life, and you’ll fall in love.”

  “I don’t think it’ll be that easy.”

  “Well, you felt the bond to the pack easily. Maybe this one just takes a little nudging.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “So, what are you going to cook for him?”

  “Um… I can do pasta,” I said. “I can also do—” The door to the cabin opened. “Oh, Sinead, I have to go. Judah’s home. He brought something for us to eat tonight.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll talk to you later. But run some dinner ideas past me before you decide, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, smiling.

  We said our goodbyes, and I hung up. Then I wandered out into the kitchen to talk to Judah. He was leaning against the counter, shoving a sandwich into his mouth and hastily chewing.

  I was surprised. Why wasn’t he even sitting down at the table? Was he really hungry or something?

  He swallowed in a big gulp. “Hey, sorry. Something came up, and I’ve got to go. You enjoy the food.” He gestured to a brown paper bag sitting in the middle of the kitchen table. Then he shoved the rest of the sandwich into his mouth. “Don’t wait up for me,” he said around his mouthful.

  He hurried out of the room.

  I was so startled I didn’t call after him, or protest, or even say goodbye.

  The door to the cabin shut.

  He was gone.

  I sat down at the table. Eating alone, hmm? So, what had come up? Why wasn’t he eating with me? Was he going to see Tempest? Was I going to wonder that my entire life when he wasn’t with me?

  “The pack is worth it,” I whispered. And it was.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I woke up the next morning to the sounds and smells of bacon frying. I had slept exceptionally well, better than I could remember sleeping in a very long time. The bed in Judah’s guest room was very comfortable, and I enjoyed the quietness of the woods, which was different than the sounds of the city in the places where I had lived in my human life. At Vivia’s, it had been quiet, too, but here I felt connected to the woods in a way that I hadn’t felt there. I didn’t know why. It was better here, just in general. It was perfect.