Being(s) In Love 03 - A Beginner’s Guide to Wooing Your Mate (23 page)

“Do whatever makes you happy.”
Of course his dad would say something so spectacularly supportive and yet nonspecific. His dad, Zeki was starting to realize, had either spent too much time among the weres in this town, or had been one of them from the start, in spirit anyway.

At this vague, well-meaning advice, Zeki slumped farther into his dad’s chair and mourned his lack of cupcakes or brownies. “Dad. That is the least helpful response ever. This is like when you cook and you tell me to add ‘just enough’ of something. That isn’t my area of knowledge. I don’t know what ‘just enough’ is.”

“It’s both a precise unit of measurement and a feeling,” his dad answered. He had seemed as upset as Zeki that Zeki’s stockpile of Theo’s baking was gone, but he’d come in from the kitchen and sat on the couch opposite Zeki without asking why Zeki had run out of baked goods. He’d never asked why Zeki had hoarded so many baked goods in the first place either. His father was an astute and tactful man.

But he must not have felt like being tactful anymore after Zeki’s complaining, or perhaps he’d been tired of watching his adult son stare dreamily into space. Zeki had come home from the coffee shop, worked protective magic into the firefighter’s gear, and done little else but sit in that chair for days now. His dad probably missed the use of his comfortable chair, but he hadn’t said anything about it, until last night, anyway.

“Zeki,” his dad had started again after getting himself settled on the couch. “You know I’d love it if you stayed in town. I haven’t seen much of you while you’ve been away. But if work takes you elsewhere, or if you don’t want to stay, I’d understand. I raised you to follow your passion.”

“Dad.” Really, nothing Zeki could say would stop his dad once he’d decided to speak, but he had to try.

“I’ve observed some things in my years in this town.” Dov Janowitz was a slender, gray-haired force of nature. Zeki had prepared himself for a lecture on following his heart and was left gaping by the rest. “It’s a good town. But don’t get so distracted by how different we are. What the weres call mating, humans have it too. The difference is we have to work to feel it.” It was alarmingly close to what Sheriff Neri had told him, and Zeki stiffened. His father went on. “We don’t have overriding instincts to help with the fear. We have to think about it, but it’s”—he shrugged—“more immediate, for them. You should sit through a festival sometime—as an adult. You see a lot.” He raised his eyebrows in a leer to make Zeki wince. “They almost can’t help themselves. It’s like watching someone get hit by Cupid’s arrow and go down without a fight. Humans succumb too, but slower. So trust me when I say, it’s the same magic at work for all of us. I would know that, even if not for your mother.”

Zeki’s mother had died when he’d been eight. For years afterward, Zeki hadn’t been able to talk about her without crying. It had become a family rule to never mention her unless they were alone, or when something serious had to be said.

“What?” It wasn’t Zeki’s smartest response, but in his defense he hadn’t been sleeping well. He had a feeling he wouldn’t until he resolved this, one way or another. Theo had said weres didn’t sleep as well without their mates. He’d said it was something about safety, or feeling protected. Zeki didn’t see how this could be scary to them if the idea of a mate made them feel safe. A mate was a comforting thought. “Theo said it was supposed to be a good thing.” Zeki didn’t ask how his father had known. “But I don’t feel it like he does. That can’t be right, for him, I mean. He should have someone who feels the same.” He grew quieter and said what he really meant. “A were.” He could hear Jason and Kevin telling him he’d never be one of them so he should stop trying, that his feelings for Theo were so embarrassing.

His dad studied him until Zeki grew nervous. Then his dad sighed. “Do you know what you said to me, the very first thing you said to me after your first day of school in this town? You came up to me with a determined look on your face, and I could tell you’d been crying, although I didn’t know why, but you walked in that door and announced you were as good as any werewolf. And then,” his dad continued, leaving Zeki stunned, “and then you threw yourself—very dramatically, I might add—onto the couch and said, ‘Dad, his name is Theodore, and he didn’t even notice me.’ Suffice it to say, it got my attention.”

Zeki had no recollection of that particular moment of adolescent angst, but his father wasn’t a man who lied. You kind of got out of the habit of lying in a town of werewolves. It was another one of the advantages to living in Wolf’s Paw Zeki had let himself forget.

Like how the upside of everyone knowing your business all the time was that many of them tried to be helpful about it. A few, like the sheriff, actually were. Since Zeki had begun to do work for the fire department, people had begun to approach him with questions about magic—if not requests for work yet.

“So you work here now?” A voice called Zeki from his morose contemplation of his future, and he raised his head. The fortyish werewolf he’d met on his first day back in town was at the counter. She had a dignified look about her, despite her habit of ogling firefighters. She could have worked in the library.

Zeki straightened but regarded her warily. Her friends were lining up behind her. “Yes, I work here, for now.”

“Drip coffee, splash of cream. So you’re staying in town?” She glanced down at the pastry counter and let out a wounded gasp Zeki understood too well. He handed her the coffee in a cup and saucer and rang her up. Her friends requested their drinks, but she only scooted a little to the side to let them order.

Zeki allowed himself another pointless glance across the street at the firehouse and then turned to make some lattes. Mr. Elliot came out of the back to assist. When Zeki returned to the counter with the drinks, she was still there, watching him.

“I don’t know,” he snapped at her. “Maybe. If I get more work. Maybe not. I can’t say.” His gaze drifted toward the firehouse, which indicated his ambivalence more than anything he could ever say out loud. Being a were, she’d understand that more than his explanations.

“It can be difficult to make up your mind.” She was more sympathetic to Zeki’s situation than she’d been when they had met. But then, she’d thought Zeki had been callously gossiping about his rejected mate. Now he had no idea what she thought.

He wondered if he still smelled like Theo, even after days and several showers. There might be an invisible mark on him already, signs other people could see that Zeki was blind to for all his magic.

His dad’s voice was loud in his head. “
Maybe it wasn’t a crush, Zeki. You were always able to find magic so easily. Maybe you saw Theo Greenleaf and a part of you knew before your conscious mind did. Maybe you called it a crush because humans don’t have any way to describe those feelings that don’t sound ridiculous, and you thought you were too young for anything else. It’s certainly lasted longer than any crush I’ve ever seen.”

Zeki took a long, calming breath, and then another. He didn’t know who she was or why she took this so much more personally than the others, but he really wasn’t in the mood to justify his romantic feelings for Theo Greenleaf to a stranger.

He’d gone without sleep two nights in a row because he’d been imagining a lifetime of wishing someone else was in bed with him, a specific someone, a
Theo
someone, and then hadn’t been able to sleep without knowing what that felt like in reality.

That tended to make a wizard cranky. Espresso didn’t help.

“The town doesn’t need to worry. Whatever happens, Theo will be fine. He’s strong.” Zeki swallowed the sudden lump in his throat. “He gets caught up sometimes, walks right into things without thinking, but he’s powerful. Theo holds power he doesn’t even realize.” What was he saying? Zeki shook his head and walked away from her before she could glare at him any more. “I hardly know him. I didn’t know him then either, or your werewolf traditions. You could ease up about that. Show some understanding. Theo has, and I hurt him a lot more than I hurt you.”

Mr. Elliot didn’t say a word about his attitude. Zeki shot him a grateful smile.

“Of course you don’t know him. That’s the whole point!” Zeki’s nemesis pursed her lips in annoyance. Zeki glanced at Mr. Elliot again. This time, Mr. Elliot grimaced.

“Obviously, it’s none of my business, except for when it’s literally my business.” Mr. Elliot’s gaze dipped down to his empty pastry case. “But she’s right.”

“Those traditions you’re so confused about exist for you, and people like you. They exist for protection.” She straightened up to her full height, beating Zeki by an inch at least. She flipped her necklace of blue stones in an angry, or anxious gesture, then huffed. “Your protection… and our protection.” Zeki must have looked, or smelled surprised, because she snorted. “Oh yes. Everyone thinks weres are invincible. Even weres start to believe it after a while, but we aren’t. If someone rushes into this only to change their mind later, especially if that someone is human, it’s the weres who are left devastated. The traditions exist to give you time to think and decide. They exist to give you space, and to protect us from you. Then the courting begins. Or it should have.” She also spent a moment gazing sadly at the pastry case.

Zeki narrowed his eyes. He’d already discussed this with the sheriff. He didn’t want to have it out with anyone else but Theo, even if she did look like old wolf. “It would have been nice if someone had explained that to me when I was younger, or even last week.” He stopped, but his heart went racing on without him. “Wait, courting?”

“Courting. You know, gifts, conversation, demonstrations of concern and strength and sexual prowess? To learn about each other in the ways that matter, before you decide. Although usually, between the bond and a few dates, the decision is already made. Theo should have told you everything.” Her argument made him bristle.

“You do better as a scared, excited kid.” Zeki was this close to snarling at her. “Besides, I’ve been thinking about what happened—and don’t pretend you don’t know.” The town had talked about it. He saw no point in feigning ignorance of the chain of gossip. “I’ve been thinking it was partly my fault.” Their collective expression was surprise. Zeki took another breath. “I was a kid, I was mad at some bullies, and I cast a spell, to make them see the real me, the wizard I wanted to become. I didn’t think it through, which was my mistake, and I cast wildly, without direction. It wasn’t a love spell or anything, but I don’t think Theo would have… realized, about me, at that moment, if I hadn’t done it. It was an accident, and it was more my fault than his.”

That admission wasn’t going to do much for his fledgling magic career in town. He looked over their faces again, ready for condemnation or at least disapproval. Mr. Elliot seemed confused.

The older wolf were in front of him tapped her fingernail on the counter.

Zeki ran his hands through his hair. “Or maybe it was all meant to be, and things were supposed to be this screwed right now. It’s hard to say. Foresight and visions are really not my sharpest talents.” Theo was right, this much attention was incredibly uncomfortable. “The point is, either way, Theo didn’t get much say or chance to prepare, and he really was a kid. Leave him alone.”

The first were’s sudden, toothy smile nearly made him flinch back into the stacks of paper cups. But he stood his ground when she leaned in to sniff him. “You’re very protective of him.” Her observation only increased his wariness. “You’ll be a good match for our sensitive Theo.”

He opened his mouth to argue the point, but in one thing she was correct; Theo was sensitive. He was so sensitive he hid away in books and kitchens. Zeki loved that about him, his gentleness. In fact he was almost too gentle. It had taken Theo years to lose his temper and to say what he wanted out loud. He needed someone a little more direct around to take on the rest of the world for him.

Zeki closed his mouth, frowned, then opened it again. “Is that what mates do?”

The sheriff had seemed to think so, now that Zeki thought about it.

She looked at him in amazement. “Of course it is. What are they teaching in the high school these days? Evidently nothing of value.”

“They didn’t tell us about this stuff. They assumed we knew it, I guess.” Zeki stepped aside, lost in thought for a moment at this new perspective on matehood. Theo had offered to defend him from his high school tormenters. Zeki had doubted his ability, but now he remembered what he’d told the sheriff about the power of love. Theo wasn’t violent, but he would have done it. “So he protects me? Um….” Zeki corrected that misstatement. He would
cover
Theo in defensive, safeguarding spells if he could. “We protect each other?”

“And provide for each other. One more reason the courtship stage of any relationship matters. True love is well and good, but it’s not the meal that makes a home.” That was the last thing he’d expected to hear her, or any werewolf, say.

He glanced over to the Spring Thaw poster in the window. There were probably quite a few tourists who came here looking for those sparkly hearts more than they were looking for the sexy innuendos. Wolf’s Paw didn’t mind the tourists looking for sex. In fact they seemed to want them, or at least their money, but they’d kept their rules to protect themselves, and they’d started to focus more on the original aspect of the festival—spring, and love, and new beginnings. That could mean sex but not only sex. The weres of Wolf’s Paw wanted their happily ever afters too.

“He made me brownies.” Zeki had no idea why he said it, but her toothy smile made a second appearance.

She nodded toward the patio. “Come with us, Zeki Janowitz. I know one tradition you will understand.”

Zeki abruptly recalled the last time she and her friends had been at the coffee shop and sat on the patio. Truck washing day.

Nothing guaranteed Theo would be there, or that he would be pleased to find Zeki ogling him. About the only saving grace was the knowledge that the firefighters never acknowledged their audience.