Wolfsong (20 page)

“I’m nervous!” Joe cried. “It’s not my fault! That was the only thing I could think of!”

“
You have it written down
,” I hissed at him.

“I mean,” Mom said, “you just threw it out there like it was nothing.”

I ignored the sounds of choked laughter coming from behind me.

“Okay,” Joe said. “Let’s try this again. Hi, Maggie. How are you? These flowers are for you. I think your son is the greatest thing in the world.”

Everyone fell quiet.

“Do you?” Mom asked.

He nodded. “I do. There’s a lot you don’t… know. About me. Things were… hard. For a while. Sometimes, they still are. But Ox. He—just. I have nightmares. About bad men. About monsters. And he makes them go away.”

I tried to swallow past the lump in my throat.

“And I’ve been waiting,” Joe said. “For him to look at me like I looked at him. And he finally did.
He finally did
. And I’m going to do everything I can to make sure it stays like that. Because I want him for always.”

“You’re seventeen,” she said. “How can you possibly know what you want being so young?”

“I’m a wolf,” he said. “It’s not the same. We’re… wired differently.”

“And if he says no?”

Joe paled. “Then, uh. I guess. I will. Be okay? With that?”

“Would you?”

He nodded, hands clenched into fists at his side. “Maybe not. But I would respect it. Because Ox is my best friend above all else. And I would have him any way I could.”

“Hmm,” my mother said. Then, “Ox? What do you think?”

Everyone held their breath.

And I… what.

Stared, maybe. My skin felt too tight.

Like it would split.

Like it would split and then I’d wake up because it was just a dream. All of it was just a dream.

And so I said, “
Why
?” because that was the one thing I couldn’t quite figure out. The one thing I couldn’t get. My daddy was dead but he’d said I was gonna get
shit
, and this wasn’t
shit
. This was terrifying, this was
opportunity
. This was
responsibility
, and it wasn’t shit. It wasn’t shit at all.

“Why what?” Joe asked. He sounded confused.

“Why me?”

Now he scowled. “Why not?”

“You’re going to be Alpha one day.” And he’d be a great one.

“And?”

I looked down at my hands. “That’s important.”

“I know.”

“I’m not….”

“You’re not what?”

“You know. Anything.”

Then he was in front of me and he was
pissed
. He practically
vibrated
with it. “Shut up,” he said. “Just shut
up
.”

I said, “Joe—” but he cut me off with, “You don’t get to say that. You don’t get to even
think
something like that.”

“You’re
seventeen
—”

He was snarling now, and I knew if I looked up at him, his wolf would be fighting through. “So? You think I don’t know what I’m doing? You think that because I’m
only seventeen
I don’t know what I’m talking about? I haven’t been a kid for a very long time, Ox. That was taken away from me the first time he made me scream into the phone so my mom could hear it as he broke my fingers. I haven’t been a kid since he
ripped
it from me and made me into something else. I know what this is. I know what I’m doing. Yes, I’m
seventeen
years old, but I knew the day I met you that I would do
anything
for you. I would do
anything
to make you happy because no one had ever smelled like you did. It was candy canes and pinecones. It was epic and awesome. And it was
home
. You smelled like my
home
, Ox. I’d forgotten what that was like, okay? I’d forgotten that because
he
took it away from me and I couldn’t find it again until I found you. So don’t you sit there and say I’m
only
seventeen. My father gave Mom his wolf when
he
was seventeen. It’s not a matter of
age
, Ox. It’s when you know.”

My voice was hoarse when I said, “But I’m not—”

“Shut
up
!” he cried. “You know what? No. You don’t get to decide what you’re worth because you obviously don’t know. You don’t get to decide that anymore because you have no fucking idea that you’re worth
everything
. What do you think this is? A joke? A decision I made just for the hell of it? It’s not. It’s not destiny, Ox. You’re not
bound
by this. Not yet. There’s a choice. There is
always
a choice. My wolf chose you.
I
chose you. And if you don’t choose me, then that’s
your
choice and I will walk out of here knowing you got to choose your own path. But I swear to god, if you choose me, I will make sure that you know the weight of your worth every day for the rest of our lives because that’s what this is. I am going to be a fucking
Alpha
one day, and there is no one I’d rather have by my side than you. It’s you, Ox. For me, it’s always been you.”

So I said, “Okay, Joe.” I looked up at him. His wolf was close to the surface.

And he said, “Okay?”

I said, “Okay. Okay. I don’t know if I see the things you do.”

“I know.”

“And I don’t know if I’ll be good enough.”

“
I
know you will,” he said, eyes flashing orange.

“But I promised you. I said it will always be you and me.”

His face stuttered a bit, and he said, “You did. You promised me. You
promised
.”

I said, “I’m not much. I don’t have a lot. Sometimes I feel dumb and I say stupid things. My dad left, and I make mistakes all the time. I didn’t go to college, and I come home with grease under my fingernails and on my pants. I don’t have many friends. But I made a promise to you, and even though I wish you’d find someone better, I keep my promises. So, yeah, Joe. Okay? Just yeah.”

I must not have been a man yet because my eyes burned a bit. Mom was crying at the table and I could hear Elizabeth sniffling outside the window, but there was Joe in front of me. He was the little boy who had found me on the dirt road the day I turned sixteen. The little boy who had become a man and stood before me a few days before I turned twenty-three. He thought I was worth something. I wanted to believe him.

So he pressed his forehead against mine and breathed me in and there was that sun, okay? That sun between us, that bond that burned and burned and burned because he’d given it to me. Because he’d chosen me.

And I got to choose him back.

what life is/i need you

SO MATES
were a thing.

And I learned that I still didn’t know jack shit about werewolves.

I SAID,
“I feel like this is something I should have been told.”

Thomas looked at me as we walked through the trees. “Is it?”

“Yes.”

“Ah.”

“Elizabeth is your mate.”

“For lack of a better word, yes. We can call it that. But she is so much more to me.”

“How did you know?”

He laughed. “Because every time I saw her, I wanted nothing more than to make sure she never left my sight again.”

I understood that. Completely.

“You knew,” I said. “About Joe and me.”

“Yes.”

“That’s why….” I stopped.

He waited.

“When you train him. You bring me out.”

“Yes.”

“Because of what I am. To him.”

“Yes.”

“Mate.”

“If you want to call it that. It’s very romanticized, but I suppose that’s as close as we’ll get.”

“What am I?”

He looked surprised. “You’re Ox.”

And I said, “To him. What is Elizabeth to you?”

“Layers,” he said with a chuckle. “So many layers. She is mine and I would do anything for her. She makes me stronger because of that. An Alpha needs it more than any other. I wouldn’t be without her.”

“And that’s what I’ll be to Joe?”

“Maybe,” he said. “Or more. You’re different, Ox. I don’t think even I know how different. It will be truly a sight to behold. And I, for one, can’t wait to see it.”

“See what?”

“Your everything,” he said.

The sun disappeared behind a cloud overhead. “Why did you let him?”

“Let him?”

“Give me his wolf.”

“Because he chose to.”

I frowned. “You could have stopped him.”

“I suppose.”

“Carter said you tried to.”

“Because we didn’t know you.”

“But you let him anyway. Why?”

Thomas touched my shoulder. “Because Joe of all people should have been allowed to make a choice. After all he’d been through. And for the first time since we’d gotten him back, he had a choice. He chose to speak to you. He chose to bring you back to the house. He chose to hold your hand. That’s what life is, Ox. Choices. The choices we make shape what we’ll become. For a long time, Joe’s choices were taken from him. And then they were ruled by fear. But you came along and he made his own choice. So yes. I could have stopped him. I could have told him to wait. I could have told him no. But I didn’t because he chose. He chose you, Ox.”

“Who was it?”

Thomas looked away.

I said, “I need to know.”

“Why?”

“Because if I’m choosing this, I’m choosing all of it.”

His name was Richard Collins. He’d been an Alpha until it had been stripped from him. He’d raped and murdered members of his own pack. Fed humans to the more feral of them. He was a monster and he did not care. They tore the Alpha from his body, but he escaped before they could do anything more.

Thomas and Richard had been friends when they were children. Here. In this territory. They were pack and they loved each other very much. As brothers.

Human hunters had come one day.

Thomas and his father had been away.

They tortured Richard’s mother and father in front of him. Many others too.

Flesh charred and the air filled with ash.

Much of the Bennett pack was gone.

Richard had gone away then.

No one knew how he’d become an Alpha. Magic, maybe. Murder. Sacrifice.

He was cruel and he took life and hope away, until he was caught.

But then he slipped through their grasp.

Thomas had been asked to come back East and help the other packs find him.

To stop him.

They searched for years and years and years. Moving all over the country.

Thomas hadn’t thought there was any hope for his old friend, but he didn’t allow that to stop him.

They were in Maine when he got the call.

Joe was gone. Taken from the front yard in their little house by the sea.

They couldn’t find him. Couldn’t track him. The scent was gone, like it’d never been there before.

They looked for three days.

On the third day, the phone rang.

Richard said, “Thomas. Thomas, Thomas, Thomas.”

And Thomas said, “You son of a bitch.”

Richard said, “You weren’t there. You did nothing to stop them. They screamed for you to help them.
I
screamed for you. For your father.
But you weren’t there
.”

Thomas begged, “My son. Richard, my son. Please.”

And Richard Collins said, “
No
.”

He called a couple of times a week and Joe
shrieked
. He made Joe
shriek
and Thomas thought he was losing his mind.

It took eight weeks to find him. A mixture of scents and sheer luck led them to a cabin in the middle of the woods so much closer than they thought it’d be. But they did find him, battered and alone. He was not the same. He was a wolf, but wolves did not shift until puberty. He healed, but it was slow.

And he would not speak.

Once I could be sure my voice would work, I asked, “What did he want?”

“To inflict pain,” Thomas said. “As much of it as possible.”

And I asked the question I’d asked him once before. “Is he dead?”

And Thomas said, “No. He will spend the rest of his days rotting away in a cell formed by magic. The magic won’t allow him to shift. For all intents and purposes, it has taken his wolf away from him.”

My hands curled at my sides. “Why didn’t you kill him?”

He watched me with sad eyes. “Because revenge is the lesson taught by animals. Because it’s more difficult to show mercy. I showed him mercy because he’d never shown my family the same.”

And for a moment, I hated Thomas. I thought he was weak. A coward. And he knew that. He must have known every thought that ran through my head at that moment.

He waited.

It passed because I knew him. But I had to be honest.

I said, “I don’t know if I’d have been able to do the same.”

“No,” he said, not unkindly. “I don’t expect you would have.”

And we walked on through the forest.

MOM ASKED,
“Is this what you really want?”

I said, “Yes.”

“He’s seventeen, Ox.”

“And nothing will happen until he turns eighteen.” I didn’t want to talk about that part with her anymore. It buzzed along my skin until I felt flushed and hot. It was too much. The thought of touching. Of
being
touched.

She looked out the window to the summer sun. “What happens if it doesn’t work out?”

And I didn’t want to think about that. I didn’t want to think about that at all, so I said, “It’s about chances. That’s how everything is.”

“WE’RE FRIENDS
first,” Joe whispered in my ear. “You’re my best friend, Ox, and I promise that will never change. We’ll just be… more.”

“WILL I
have to become a wolf?” I asked Thomas. “To be with Joe?”

“No,” Thomas said. “You don’t.”

“I’ve thought about it,” I said quietly.

“Have you?”

“Yeah.”

He waited.

“I don’t have to be?” I insisted.