Wolfsong (58 page)

Gordo was with them, and I could see him trying. Trying to find his way back to them. Trying to forge the bonds that had been there before. Because even if they hadn’t known, even though none of them were wolves, they’d still been his pack longer than anyone else. He needed them. Like he needed me. It was slow going, given the long history between them. They understood. Mostly.

Carter and Kelly were manning the grill. Robbie was trying hard not to shadow Kelly too much. After that first meeting where Joe and I had told them about combining the packs, Robbie had pulled back, had softened slightly around the others, less bristling and sharp edges. It helped that he had started to divert his attention away from me. Joe, possessive bastard that he was, was amused by the whole thing, especially seeing the bewildered look on Kelly’s face.

Joe was walking in the trees somewhere. An Alpha needed to be in touch with his territory. I’d told him I’d go with him, but he’d shaken his head. “It’ll be fine, Ox,” he’d said before he disappeared into the woods.

And so it was just Elizabeth and I. The salad I’d tossed was ready in the large plastic bowl. She hadn’t given me another task. So I waited. It felt like the right thing to do.

Eventually, she stopped dancing to that song that only she could hear.

She said, “Ox.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s nice, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Then, “What is?”

She smiled but didn’t look up from the potato salad she was stirring.

“This. Us. You and I. All of them.”

And it was. So I told her so.

She said, “I didn’t expect this.”

“What?”

“That we could have this again.”

“I wanted you to,” I said. “I wanted you to have all of this again. After.”

She nodded. “I know you did. But you couldn’t. Not right away.”

I shrugged, trying to keep cool. “I don’t know.”

She glanced up at me. “You did,” she said. “I know you.”

She did. Very well. If I’d thought my heart could take it, I would have called her Mother. But hearts are a funny thing; they beat strongly in our chests, even though they can shatter at the slightest pressure.

She heard all I couldn’t say. Part of it was the threads between us. Most of it was because she was Elizabeth Bennett. She just knew.

She said, “He needed to come home. For me. For us. But for you most of all, I think.”

“He missed us all the same,” I said.

She rolled her eyes, something she so rarely did that it still always made me smile every time it happened. “Sure,” she said. “I know
that
. I am aware of
that
. But it was for you, Oxnard. Even if you don’t believe it. Even if you don’t understand it. He came here for you.”

She stared at me as if daring me to contradict her.

I said, “Okay. Yeah. Maybe.”

She huffed. “You’ve settled into your skin since he’s been back. You were the Alpha before. But it’s different now.”

“Is it?”

“You know it is. And Joe. He….” She sighed and looked away. “One day, a very long time ago, my son was taken from me by a monster. I’d always told my son that there was nothing to fear. That I wouldn’t let anything hurt him. But I lied, because he
did
get hurt. Badly. Over many weeks. I heard him crying when… when the monster called us. I heard him crying for me. I wanted—” She broke off and shook her head.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said hoarsely.

Her eyes flashed orange as she looked up at me. “I do,” she snapped. “I
do
. Because you don’t see your own merit. Still. After all this time. We found him, Ox. We found Joe and he was
broken
. He was weak and starved and
broken
. He flinched at
everything
. And for a while, I don’t think he even knew who we were. And when he
did
know, when he remembered us, he cowered away because that…
that man
, that
terrible man
had told him we didn’t love him, that we never wanted him, that he was never meant to be an Alpha.”

Her claws came out as she gripped the countertop.

She said, “And I
despaired
over him. Because I didn’t know what to do. I loved him more than I had ever loved anything. I thought maybe that alone would be enough. To bring him back. To put his pieces together again. But it wasn’t enough. Richard Collins had only taken weeks to destroy the little boy I’d known. He was this
shell
, okay? This empty
shell
, and I didn’t know how to fix it. And then, Ox. Oh, and then there was
you
.”

She was crying, and I didn’t know how we’d gotten here. I knew the other wolves could hear her too, but they weren’t busting in through the door. They were waiting. For what, I didn’t know.

“You came,” she said. “And he brought you home, like something he’d found in the woods. And the look on your face that first day. You were so nervous. So sweetly shy. You didn’t understand what was happening. You couldn’t. But I did, Ox. And Thomas did. Because Joe spoke. He spoke to
you
. He made the choice, even if he didn’t know what it meant. You were his, Ox. Even then. And he was yours.”

I couldn’t speak. I had no words left. Because this was the first time I’d seen her cry. Even after Thomas, she’d grieved as a wolf. So this was new, and I didn’t know how to deal with it. It didn’t help that her words were hitting me hard in the chest, and I almost couldn’t breathe.

“And he had to leave again,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Whether or not it was right, whether or not he should have, he did. They told me. About him. Carter and Kelly. How he closed down like before. How he gave himself over to the wolf. How he didn’t speak for months and months. And yet, the
moment
he comes home, the
moment
he sees you again, he finds his voice like he’d never lost it at all. So don’t you say that you’re not worth it. Don’t you think you’re not good enough. Because you have brought my son back to me again and again, and even if you weren’t my Alpha, even
if
you weren’t the one my son chose, I would be indebted to you for that. You’ve given him back to us, Ox. And no one can take that away from you.”

She laughed then, her cheeks wet, eyes red, but only in a human way.

I said, “I” and “I just” and “I want to be who you think I am.”

She said, “Ox. Ox, can’t you see? I don’t think. I
know
.”

She was light on her feet, three steps and she was pressed against me, hands curled between us, her head pressed against my chest. I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and held her close, and there were those threads between us, and she pushed her way through them, singing
pack
and
son
and
love
and
home
.

After a time, I said, “It’s tradition, I guess.”

She rubbed her face against my shirt. “It is,” she said.

“Everything okay?” a voice said from the doorway.

She laughed again and stepped away from me.

“Everything’s fine,” she told Joe. “Ox and I were… well. I suppose that’s it. Ox and I were.”

Joe nodded, looking concerned.

“I should get this out there,” Elizabeth said, a smile on her face. She took the potato salad and went out the door without looking back.

Joe moved toward me slowly, like he was worried I’d be spooked. And maybe, in a way, I was. Because even though I knew what I meant to him, sometimes I didn’t think I knew
everything
. It was a weight on me, but I had strong shoulders. I could take it.

“All right, Ox?” Joe asked.

I said, “Yeah, Joe,” and I couldn’t keep the awe out of my voice.

“You sure?” He sounded amused.

Maybe I wasn’t. And maybe that was okay. Because Elizabeth was right. He’d given himself to me. All of him. I just had to make sure I kept him safe. Because sure, he’d chosen me. Out of everyone. He’d given me his wolf. Which was essentially the heart of him.

I said, “I love you, you know?”

And how he
smiled
.

IT TOOK
time. It really did.

Things weren’t always going to be good.

They’d left us, and there had only been three of us.

They’d come back, and now there were eight and I was the Alpha.

There were clashes trying to merge them together.

To see if there were pieces of us that fit.

Sometimes they did, and we could move in sync with each other.

Other times we didn’t.

Robbie yelped in pain when Carter knocked him into a tree.

It was an accident. They were roughhousing. Wolves did that.

But all I heard was the crack of bone and the sound of one of mine hurting.

Robbie whined in the back of his throat, trying to lift himself up onto four legs.

I was in front of him even before I knew I was moving.

Carter had shifted back, standing nude, bare toes digging into the grass and dirt.

“Hey,” he said. “I didn’t mean—”

“Back the fuck off,” I snarled at him.

Carter’s eyes went wide, and he took a step back.

I turned and knelt beside Robbie. His ears were flat against his head, and he trembled slightly, reacting to my anger. I took a breath and let it out slowly.

There was a sharp knob of bone where one shouldn’t have been near his shoulder, bulging the skin and hair. Robbie grimaced, teeth gritting together as it slowly snapped back into place.

“Okay?” I asked, running my hand along his snout.

He nipped my finger gently.

“Sorry, Ox,” Carter said from behind me. “It was an accident.”

I grunted at him, unsure of why I felt this way. “Not me you should apologize to.”

“Sorry, Robbie.”

Robbie yipped and pushed himself to his feet, rubbing against me as he walked past. He butted his head against Carter’s hip and all was forgiven.

“You’re still thinking of them as separate packs,” Joe told me later that night. We lay side by side in my bed in the old house. The room was dark and the moon was a sliver in the sky. “You saw that as an attack on your pack, not as two packmates roughhousing with each other.”

“I don’t know how to switch it,” I admitted quietly. “It’s been this way for so long.”

Joe sighed.

“I’m not blaming you, Joe.”

“Maybe you should,” he muttered.

“I did. It’s done. I just need to figure out how to work through it.”

“Maybe….”

“Maybe what?”

“My dad,” Joe said. “He… taught me things. About what it meant to be an Alpha. What it meant to have a pack. I could… show you. If you wanted.”

I took his hand in mine.

I said, “Yeah, Joe. Sure. That sounds fine.”

ONCE WHEN
I was seven, my father came home from the garage.

He sat on the porch, opened a beer, and sighed.

I sat near him because he was my father and I loved him so.

He looked at the house at the end of the lane. It was empty. It had been for a long time.

The sun was setting when he was on his fourth beer.

He said, “Ox.”

I said, “Hi, Daddy.”

He said, “Hey” and “Ox” and “I’m going to give you some advice, okay?” the words tripping all over each other.

I nodded, though I didn’t know what he was talking about. I just liked the sound of his voice.

He said, “You think you’re gonna get somewhere. You think you’re gonna do something great with your life. Because you don’t want to be like wherever you came from. But people are gonna shit where you walk. They’re not going to give a damn about what you want. All they want to do is knock you down. Trap you in a job you hate. In a house you can’t stand. With people you can’t even look at. Don’t let them. Okay? You don’t fucking let them do that to you.”

“Okay,” I said. “I won’t.”

He grunted at me and took another sip from the red and white can.

He said, “You’re a good kid, Ox. Stupid, but good.”

I wondered if that was what true love felt like.

JOE TOOK
me to the trees, to the woods, walking the path of his father. His Alpha.

He said, “Dad told me that there have always been these threads that connect us. They bind us to each other because we’re pack. The better we work together, the more we trust and respect each other, the stronger the bonds become.”

He reached out and ran his fingers along the bark of a tree.

His father had done the same many times when we’d walked through the forest.

I told him as much.

He smiled at me. “It helps.”

I didn’t know what that meant, not really, but I let it go.

“You can feel them, can’t you?” he asked as he stepped over a rotting log that burst with flowers and long blades of grass.

“Most of the time,” I said.

“Carter? Kelly? Gordo?”

I shrugged. “It’s getting there. I think. I don’t know. Gordo, maybe. Only because I’ve known him. I’m tied to him.”

“You’re tied to everyone else too.”

Until you broke that away
, I wanted to say.
Until you snapped those threads like they were nothing.

But I didn’t. Because I was moving beyond it. For the most part.

“It was my fault,” he said, and I
hated
werewolves right then,
hated
being tied to them as I was, because there were so many times that my thoughts didn’t seem to be my own anymore.

“It’s not like that,” I muttered.

He rolled his eyes and there were whispers of
who are you
and
where did you come from
, spoken in the voice of a little tornado. It was that disconnect again. The little boy I’d known, the teenager he’d been, the man he was now. He was gruff and quieter than he’d been before, but little flashes broke through the cracks every now and then. Joe was Joe was Joe.

I could live with that. For him. Because of him.

“It’s a little like that,” he said. “But I’m fixing it.”

“How?”

He shrugged. “It’s hard to put into words.”