Wolfs choice, p.17
Wolf's Choice, page 17
“Can’t have you getting hangry,” he told me during week two, that relentless dimple proving his words were far from serious as he set a stack of steaming blueberry pancakes down in front of me. “That’s not nearly enough syrup,” he added, tipping the bottle I was holding so more of its sweetness glugged out.
“Hey!” I complained. But I didn’t recoil when the top of his index finger slipped and touched the bottom of my pinkie finger. The fleeting contact fed me even more than memory theft would have. Differently, but no less profoundly. No wonder I lingered there with my hand on the syrup jug, letting so much sweetness flow out that my pancakes turned into a soggy mess.
I ate them anyway. They were delicious. And the niggling urgency to steal faded another notch.
Still, despite everything, I demanded that Jack lock me into the cell each night. I couldn’t trust myself around him when he wasn’t alert enough to fight back if necessary. So I accepted the solitary confinement even though it reminded me of between, the place I now refused to go even when Jack shifted onto four feet and frolicked around me by way of invitation. I didn’t remember why, but I knew going lupine wasn’t worth entering the empty, cold spirit realm.
The other empty, cold time—night—wasn’t so bad at first. I was too exhausted to overthink the darkness and silence and I slept in a way I couldn’t remember sleeping since coming into a human body. I was certain that Jack would come if I called and the bars would keep danger away from me.
Then, after three weeks of hikes and laughter and meals together, my subconscious thrust fear forward in the form of a nightmare. I dreamed that my belly was so full of syrup I’d swollen like a tick. I could barely waddle, definitely couldn’t fight back as Tall Nose reached inside me and yanked that syrup out one fistful at a time.
“You don’t need this,” he said. “You’re a spirit, not a human.”
“Woelfin,” I countered, struggling with no success to prevent the thievery. “I’m a woelfin.”
“Same difference.” Then Tall Nose was tilting me up over his head, pouring syrup down his throat and cackling gleefully.
I was empty. So empty. And so very alone.
“You’re not alone.”
I woke to warm hands on my shoulders. A long, lean body pressed itself up against me on the tiny cot that provided the only sleeping space inside the prison cell.
“You can’t be here.” I didn’t push Jack away though. Instead, I snuggled into his warmth. He was like a bonfire thawing the ice inside me. His encircling arms were a shield against the terrors of the world.
“You want me to leave?”
The banter we usually tossed back and forth was distinctly absent at that moment. His words were clear and mine returned the favor.
“Don’t go.”
“Okay then.” His hug tightened.
The next day, I shifted and ran with him as a wolf.
Epilogue
“I thought this was supposed to be a small family gathering.”
Jack and I sat in his car, peering through the windshield at what looked more like the entrance to a woodland festival than like the picnic with Drake and Tru I’d been led to anticipate. There were at least a dozen vehicles parked in the grassy field, fairy lights leading toward a tree canopy that combined with an overcast sky to make the small LEDs visible even at midday. Meanwhile, a burble of not-so-distant laughter was audible without opening the window.
This was my first time seeing anyone other than Jack in over a month and I wasn’t so sure I was ready to be trusted around...was that a very small boy hacking at shrubbery with a very large sword?
“Grub!” A woman I’d never met disarmed the youngster with facility that spoke to frequent repetition. “What did I tell you about using swords on wood?”
“Fibers dull the edges. Sorry, Auntie Kira!” Despite his apology, the boy’s smile was just as big as it had started. He scurried away to join a half-grown wolf at the edge of the trees, swinging one leg over the beast’s back as if it was a horse he intended to ride.
The pair disappeared into the woods that way, boy hopping on one leg and wolf trotting along beneath him. For her part, the woman just rolled her eyes and proceeded to lock the sword into the trunk of one of the cars near where we’d parked before following the fairy lights back in the direction of the gathering.
“That was Drake’s apprentice and her nephew,” Jack observed beside me. “And, to be pedantic, I didn’t tell you this was a picnic with Drake and Tru. I told you this was a family picnic. Family members tend to be like objects in a car mirror—they often end up more numerous than they initially appear.”
Now I was the one being pedantic as I complained: “That’s not what the printed warning says.” When Jack only shrugged, I changed gears and prodded for more information. “Who else should I expect to jump out from behind a tree?”
“Well, I thought you might want to see how Merry was doing, so I sent out an open invite to Honor’s pack. But if that’s too much too soon, we can get out of here. Do something more wholesome, like hold up a bank.”
I forced the fingers that had been toying with the door handle to get their act together. “I do want to meet Merry,” I admitted, emerging from what felt like the only safety available to me. “But if I show any sign of wanting to steal a memory...”
“I’ll let Grub tackle you and rub your face in a pile of fresh deer droppings. Pinkie swear.”
Jack’s inability to be serious eased my tension a little. What he was saying without actually putting his assertion into words was that I hadn’t tried to steal his memories, not once during the weeks we’d spent together. We’d had this conversation so many times previously that we didn’t need to voice it now. Neither of us had to bring up my most recent rebuttal, that Jack hadn’t known me when I was fully kami. Nor the way he’d shrugged that off with: “But you have a body now.”
His irresistible dimple and its effects on my body made his argument difficult to refute.
So, today, I followed him down a narrow trail then out into a clearing where more shifters than Jack had mentioned were frolicking, some two-legged and some four-legged. There were party banners here, someone played a flute, and the air vibrated with even more laughter than I’d picked up from a distance.
Then a girl came barreling toward me wearing nothing except a tank top, underpants, and a cape-like pelt wrapped around her shoulders. “Aunt Kami!”
She jumped at me and I had no option other than to catch her before she bounced off and hit a tree. I knew from rough experience—pun intended—that naked human skin didn’t mesh well with certain aspects of the natural world.
“Hey, careful,” I chided, my voice coming out weirdly stilted. As if I was pretending to be a parental figure. Or perhaps what she’d called me—an aunt.
Because this had to be Merry. In motion, she’d been unrecognizable. But now that she chattered in my arms, I could see that she was the same girl who I’d first seen on the screen of Honor’s cell phone.
“Dad said I’m not supposed to bug you, but Mom said I was the one you’d want to see most. Well, me and my pelt.”
She thrust the latter object into my face and I inhaled the scent of lightly roasted marshmallows combined with the slightest tinge of wood smoke. It was hard to tell if that was this girl’s signature aroma or just evidence that the small-picnic-turned-family-reunion came with traditional cookout-style snacks.
“Okay, gotta go!” Merry wriggled out of my arms, clothes scattering and her pelt melding with her skin as I released her. Then a half-grown wolf pup was tearing off toward where Grub’s unmistakable voice seemed to be suggesting someone help him sharpen sticks to use as jousting spears. Given the absence of other steeds present, I could only imagine he intended to engage in that activity while riding a wolf.
Despite the chilly January weather, warmth suffused me. I might have ended multiple lives and severely impacted others, but Merry was happy and healthy because of me. That was something at least.
“Totally forgot to steal her memory,” Jack murmured. Then, glancing over my shoulder, he stiffened, his voice turning formal. “Brother.”
I swiveled to take in Drake, who didn’t actually look much like Jack now that I’d spent time around both of them. I would have expected the pair to be glad to see each other, but Drake’s offered handshake was just as stiff as Jack’s voice had been.
Something difficult must have passed between these two that I wasn’t aware of. And, for the first time since Jack had brought breakfast to my prison cell, I was able to help him out rather than vice versa.
“Really?” I said to both men equally. “A handshake? I want to see manly back thumping at a bare minimum. If you want an A-plus, there better be a hug.”
“Wouldn’t want to mess with my GPA,” Drake rasped. As he spoke, he pulled Jack in, the motion so slow it was clear he expected his brother to draw away from him.
Jack didn’t. Of course he didn’t. Bittersweet yearning was so strong in the air, I couldn’t see how Drake had missed the scent.
The brothers needed time alone together, so I waved at nobody on the other side of the gathering. “I’ll catch up with you two later,” I offered, half expecting Jack to stop me. Surely he didn’t really trust me alone around his extended family?
But Jack just nodded. He was completely focused on his brother, the pair still clenched in each other’s arms.
Their lingering hug was far less formal than their initial greeting had been. This time around, I silently awarded them an A+++.
Which meant I needed to scrape together my own passing grade. Make conversation without letting my greedy interior push me past ethical boundaries.
Alone, I walked out among the people Jack cared about the most.
Tru caught up to me before I’d quite passed out of earshot of the brothers. “You look excellent,” she observed.
“I look like you.”
“Precisely.”
She was teasing. Despite our shared past, despite everything I’d done to her and around her. Was it really possible I’d been forgiven?
“You probably don’t remember,” Tru told me, “but you gave me back something precious. A memory of my first kiss with Drake.”
She paused and I shook my head. I didn’t remember that. It seemed like such a minor reparation for all of the harm I’d caused her.
And I couldn’t come up with anything else to fill the silence that now yawned between us. Small talk used to be so easy when I was a full-on kami. Then, it hadn’t mattered what people thought of me. All that had mattered was getting them to provide what I craved.
What I craved now was for these people who were so important to Jack not to hate me. A much more difficult proposition. I cleared my dry throat and found words with difficulty. “So...um...what have you been up to?”
Tru had apparently been moving into a duplex a block down from Rosa’s house. With Chief O’Connell now a fan of having the Executioner within his territory, the pair had decided to formalize their living arrangements and indulge in home ownership. “It’s bigger than we need, though,” Tru observed. “Especially since Lynette prefers to stick to her bedroom at Rosa’s. We’re thinking about renting out the other half of the duplex. How about you? What are you going to do now that you’ve busted yourself out of jail?”
What I wanted to do was too nebulous to put into words at the moment. I wanted to help the homeless people I’d lived among when I was barely surviving on the streets of Lexington, to make amends to both people I’d harmed and those downtrodden by their mere existence.
But I also wanted to stick close to Jack. And not just because he was my training wheels ensuring I didn’t backslide into memory theft.
Before I managed to spit out any of that, mention of my name drew our attention to the pair of men I’d left behind not long ago. Their body language had softened since emerging from that elongated hug, but muscles restiffened on both sides as Drake demanded, “Stop evading. What are your intentions toward Kami?”
“I told him not to do this,” Tru muttered. “It’s none of his business.”
Jack seemed to disagree with Tru’s analysis. Because his voice was more serious than I’d ever heard it as he answered. “Kami’s learning to trust herself at the moment, so I intend to back her up in every way possible.”
“Too vague,” Drake rebutted.
“You want specifics? You want to hear my end goal?”
“She’s my sister. Yes, I want to hear your end goal.” Drake somehow managed to imbue the final two words with so much suspicion I had to smother a laugh. He really did sound like an overprotective older brother, and the warmth inside me that had kindled when Merry leapt into my arms grew larger and stronger with each moment that passed.
“End goal it is then.” Even though he was talking to Drake, Jack’s gaze met mine, his lone dimple slowly emerging. “Once Kami’s ready, I intend to ambush her. Shovel on the charm, kiss her until she’s giddy, then...”
His words were like a thumb strumming guitar strings inside my belly. Jack had been such a gentleman the entire time we were recuperating. I’d thought my attraction was all one-sided. Realizing it was reciprocated made my entire body flare hot.
Then I realized Drake was growling. I started toward Jack, who liked to joke around and who really might joke his way into an early grave this time.
I was too slow. Because Jack finished before I could reach him. “...then, if I get very lucky, Kami will accept me as her mate.”
My feet froze, but there was nothing cold about what was happening inside me. That heat was exploding into fireworks. Geysers of giddy sensation flared out from my belly and invaded every part of me. Even my fingernails tingled and throbbed.
“Does that pass muster?” Jack finished, his gaze still on me.
“Good plan, brother. Good plan.” Back-slapping ensued even though I certainly hadn’t insisted on fraternal shows of affection this time.
I hadn’t insisted because words were impossible for me at the present moment. My throat was so tight I wasn’t even sure breathing was possible. At the same time, my eyeballs prickled. Did human bodies really cry when they were happy as well as sad?
“Put the poor guy out of his misery.” Tru’s words brought me back to the present. Pointed out the way Jack’s dimple was slowly receding. “Give him an answer,” she suggested.
I couldn’t speak, though. All I could do was nod my head up and down once, jerkily, as if this body was completely new to me.
It was enough. Jack’s dimple reasserted itself so fast my breath gasped in unbidden.
And with returning breath came the ability to speak. “I was thinking,” I told Tru without looking away from the trickster who turned out to be serious when it really mattered, “that I’d get a job in Lexington. Maybe rent part of that duplex from you. But it sounds like even half of the duplex is too big for one person.”
“I’ve been told,” Jack observed, gray eyes burning with promise, “that I make an excellent housemate.”
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Moon Stalked Excerpt
The branch snapped beneath my feet. The wolf pelt that had been loosely wrapped around my neck billowed out as I fell.
Grab my escaping pelt or scrabble for a handhold?
I hit the ground on my back, air knocked out of my lungs but pelt cradled to my chest. For one long moment, all I could do was lie there and listen to the night.
At first, the signs were good. Crickets chirped. A car honked in the distance.
Then night critters fell silent. Closer than should have been possible, a canine growled.
I winced. A full day of scouting and we’d missed a guard dog. How was that even possible?
While I struggled to pull myself together, the timbre of the growl deepened. Footsteps padded closer.
Soon the dog would see me and bark a warning to its owners. Lights would flicker on in the household I was burgling. My one shot at redeeming my name would be lost.
“Mission aborted,” I muttered to myself. “Time to regroup and try again tomorrow.”
Easing my way to my feet, I started stripping. If one of the Smythewhites looked out a window to check on Spot, I didn’t want them to see anything two-legged. Shoes, socks, pants....
Someone laughed so close by I could have reached out and touched him. “Wardrobe malfunction?”
I leapt a foot sideways, my pelt slipping off my arm the way it had a habit of doing. As if my lupine nature wasn’t entirely quiescent when shed into a leathery skin. As if its wishes trumped my own.
Now, the pesky skin slid down to land on the grass between us. And before I could snatch it back up, the stranger’s hand slid across my discarded fur.
A ghost caress ran up the full length of my spine. My breath caught in my throat. It had been years since anyone touched my pelt.
The stranger’s voice was deep and smooth, like water against river rocks. “What’s this?”
“It’s….” I shook my head, unable to believe I’d almost answered. It’s what woelfin use for transformation. It’s the other half of my self, my most precious possession.
