Wolfsong (38 page)

I said, “I know you’re there,” and expected her to walk out from the trees as a wolf.

Instead, she said, “Of course you do. I wouldn’t have thought anything less.”

She melted out of the shadows, moving with an inhuman grace. She wore a loose pair of sweats and an old sweatshirt of Thomas’s, the sleeves falling over her hands. Her eyes flared briefly in the dark, that Halloween orange that reminded me so of her son. There was an ache in my chest at the very thought of him.

And she knew. Because that’s just something she could do.

She said, “Ah. I wondered if that was it.”

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” I grumbled.

She laughed quietly. “I can’t not. It’s who I am.”

“Lurking in the forest in the middle of the night is who you are?”

“I don’t
lurk
.” She sounded moderately offended.

“You kind of do,” I said. “It’s part of your whole… thing.”

“I like you,” she said seriously. “Very much.”

I couldn’t stop the smile on my face even if I tried. “I know. I like you too.”

I started walking toward the house at the end of the lane.

She fell into step beside me.

“You’ve been avoiding us,” she said.

“I’ve been busy,” I said.

“Ah,” she said. “At the shop.”

“Yeah.”

“Must have been big.”

“What?”

“The influx of people to Green Creek who all needed their cars worked on at the same time.”

I glared at her.

She smiled serenely back at me.

“Dozens of them,” I said.

“You’re upset.”

I stopped walking and fisted my hands at my sides.

“It’s okay to be upset,” she said.

“I’m not
upset
,” I growled at her.

“Of course not,” she said. “You’re only avoiding your pack, and when you
do
see us, it’s like you despise us. Not upset at all.”

“I don’t
despise
anyone,” I said.

“That certainly can’t be true. There are many people out there to despise.”

“Elizabeth—”

“We don’t blame you.”

I blinked. “For
what
?”

“Blaming us.”

I took a step back. “I don’t—”

“It’s okay if you did. Or do. I don’t know that I wouldn’t if I was in your position. It’s certainly a proper place to rest your grievances.”

I hung my head.

“After all,” she continued, “if you’d never heard of wolves, none of this would have happened. If we hadn’t come back to Green Creek, you never would have met us and your mother would be sleeping in her bed. Or, rather, I hope she would have been, because you can never really know what might happen. Life can be funny that way.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

“Because someone has to,” she said. “And since Joe’s not here, I need to be the one to do it.”

My anger flared, a bright and burning thing. She felt it, if her eyes widening slightly meant anything.

She said, “He didn’t want to leave you, Ox.”

I laughed bitterly. “Really. Because he sure as hell left pretty damn quick for someone who didn’t want to leave.”

“He didn’t—”

“Don’t tell me he didn’t have a
choice
,” I snapped at her. “Because he
did
. He could have
chosen
us. He could have
chosen
….” I didn’t want to finish that thought, because it would have made it all the more real.

But Elizabeth knew. “He
did
choose you, Ox,” she said, ignoring the anger in my voice. “Or have you forgotten that? He gave his wolf to no one else. Only you. It’s only ever been you.”

“A lot of good that does us now. He’s only god knows where, with Carter and Kelly. With
Gordo
. Fuck, we don’t even know if he’s
alive
. If any of them are.”

“They are.”

I stared at her. “You know this.”

“Yes.”

“Because….”

“Because I am a mother. And I am a wolf. I would know if they were gone, sure as I knew when it happened to Thomas.”

My throat felt dry. “I can’t feel them. Not like before.”

She reached out and grazed her fingers along my arm. I didn’t know if I wanted her touching me or not, but she drew her hand away before I could step back. “I don’t expect you could,” she said. “You’re not a wolf. Even if you are more than you used to be, it’s not the same.”

“Have you talked to him?” My heart thudded in my chest.

“No,” she said sadly. “I haven’t. Any of them. If I had, you would know. Ox, I understand why he did what he did, even if I don’t agree with it. It’s a terrible thing to lose a parent. As you very well know. And I don’t mean to minimize anything of yours, but Joe lost his father.
And
his Alpha. And then had to assume the role he’d be preparing for much earlier than he thought he’d have to.”

“It’s not about what’s right,” I told her. “It’s about revenge. Did you even try and stop him?”

She looked as if I’d slapped her and that was the only answer I needed.

“Look, it’s—”

“What would you have done?” she asked. “If you’d had the chance to make things right and ignored it only to find out your inaction caused others to suffer.”

She didn’t sound like she was judging me, merely curious. “I would have put the pack first,” I told her honestly. “Even though I was angry, and even though I wanted nothing more than to see Richard Collins dead, I would have kept the pack together. To keep them safe. To keep them whole. And once we were all back on even ground, we would have made a decision. Together. That’s what Thomas taught me. He said that above all else, pack comes first.”

She smiled a wobbly little smile. “He loved you,” she said. “Thomas did. Very much. As do the rest of us. Joe, above all others. I don’t know if you understand this, Oxnard, but we need you. More than you could possibly know.”

My eyes burned and I wanted nothing more than for her words to be true. “But what about what
I
need?” I asked her.

“You need us just as much as we need you.”

“I need him.”

“I know.”

“They need to come back.”

“I know.”

“Will they?”

She touched my arm briefly. “When they can.”

It wasn’t good enough, but I knew it was all she could give.

She said, “Let’s go—”

My phone rang.

It was shockingly loud in the quiet forest.

“Sorry,” I muttered. And for a brief moment, my heart tripped all over itself because I
knew
this was it. This was going to be
Joe
, and he’d say he was
sorry
, that he never meant to be gone this long, that he was coming home, that he’d never leave my side again and everything would be
fine
.

I fumbled with the phone. The screen was bright in the dark, blurring my eyes, and I couldn’t
see
, I couldn’t—

“Hello,” I croaked out. “Joe, it’s—”

“Ox?” a tearful voice said. “Ox. They… hurt me. Ox.”

Not Joe.

“Jessie?” I asked, confused and angry and hurt all at once. Because it wasn’t Joe, it wasn’t Joe,
it wasn’t Joe
—

“Ox,” she said. She was crying. “Their
eyes
. They’re
glowing
—”

“Where are you?” I bit out, hand tightening on the phone.

And then she screamed.

“
Jessie
!”

The scream fell away.

Another voice came through the phone.

It said, “Hello, Ox.” It sounded like it spoke through a mouthful of very sharp teeth.

“Who is this?” I snarled into the phone.

“I found a friend of yours. She smelled like you. A little bit. Maybe like a memory from long ago. Trying to travel back inside your little… wards.”

“I swear to god, I’ll fucking kill you if you touch a hair on her head.”

“Oh no,” the voice growled. “I suppose you’ll have to kill me, then. Because of her blood. It tastes so good.”

“What do you want?”

“Better. Thank you. It’s simple, really. I want you, Ox. The remains of your pack. He will be so… pleased. With me. He will
love
me… for taking away everything he could not.”

“You don’t know who you’re—”

“Ox,” the wolf snarled, because it couldn’t have been anything but a wolf. I’d been around them long enough to recognize the sounds they made. The anger they could have. “I don’t think you’re
listening
.”

Jessie screamed again, her voice cracking in the middle, bright and shivery with pain. “Don’t,” I pleaded into the phone. Because this was my fault. He was doing this to her because of
me
. “Don’t hurt her. Not any more. What do you want?”

“Come to me,” the wolf said. “Outside these…
sticky
things. These
burns
. These goddamn
wards
. Step outside them. And we’ll see… what we’ll see.”

“Where?” I said through gritted teeth.

“The bridge. I’m told there is only one. You have twenty minutes, Oxnard. I’m afraid I really must insist on that. Twenty minutes. Or her blood will be on
your
hands.”

The wolf clicked off.

My hands were shaking as they fell to my sides.

“You heard?” I asked.

“Everything,” she said, eyes flaring orange in the dark.

“They don’t know, do they.”

“No. They think we’re fractured.”

“Good,” I snarled. “Because they’ve fucked up.”

She half shifted, claws popping and fangs descending. Hair rippled along her cheeks and brow.

And for the first time since she howled a song of mourning at the death of her Alpha, Elizabeth Bennett tilted her head back and
sang
.

Only this time, it was a song of war.

WE
WERE
fractured.

Part of us were gone. Our pack wasn’t whole. That much was true.

But we made up for it. We filled those spaces with temporary things to hold us together while we still could.

“What’s the point of all this?” Rico had asked, sweat dripping down his face.

I’d remembered what Thomas had told me. About pack. And protecting one’s territory. “It’s just in case,” I’d told Rico. Tanner and Chris were within earshot, panting out little sharp bursts of air. Mark was half-shifted. Elizabeth was full wolf. Their eyes flashed at me.

“In case of what?”

“Anything. Go again.”

And they did. Again.

And again.

And again.

IT WAS
an oddity, where the wolf had wanted us to meet. An old covered wooden bridge outside of Green Creek. It was supposed to be quaint, even though the paint was peeling and the wood was cracked. People from the city came up in the fall to take pictures of it while the leaves changed around them. It stretched over a creek bed that trickled with cold water from higher up the mountains.

It meant, though, that it was out of the way, so nobody from town would get hurt.

We didn’t bother with a car. Mark met us in the trees, already shifted, eyes bright in the dark, tail twitching. Elizabeth disrobed while Tanner called, having heard her song. “Is this real?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said through gritted teeth. “They have Jessie.”

“Fuck. Chris, he’ll—”

“Get them. Meet at the shop. I’ll tell him.”

“Ox—”

“Move,” I snapped. “
Now
.”

He grunted and disconnected.

I turned back to the others.

Robbie was there now too, a gray wolf with black striping along his face. He was smaller than Mark and Elizabeth, and leaner, but his teeth were sharp and his paws were big. That thin thread that somehow stretched between us and him pulsed gently, and I could feel the
packpackpack
riding along each little wave. We hadn’t quite acknowledged it, none of us had, because betrayal ran deep. He wasn’t Osmond, but he was still part of where Osmond had come from.

But Robbie had been here. He’d trained with us. He’d eaten with us at our table. I didn’t think it’d be too much longer before whatever obstacle between us fell away.

I wondered if Joe could feel them.

I wondered if he even cared.

They followed me through the trees, running in the dark by my side. I didn’t need to look where I was headed. I knew this place, these woods, this forest. I knew every inch of it. Thomas had taught me that. He’d shown me that a territory was a home and this was my home. I knew where to jump. Where to duck. I didn’t think of
how
or
why
. It just was.

We were careful when we got to Green Creek, keeping in the shadows. It was late, very late, and the streets were empty, but there were already rumors of wolves in the woods, and we didn’t need anyone in town to think they’d walked along the streets.

The shop was dark, but I could feel them toward the back.

Their voices cut off as we rounded the corner. They looked at me as the wolves went and rubbed up against them.

Tanner tossed me my crowbar, careful to not let it touch Robbie, who had pressed his side against Tanner’s leg.

I caught it as Chris said, “We heard it. The howl. It was like….”

“In your head?”

They all nodded, looking relieved.

“You get used to it,” I said. “Mostly.”

“What happened?” Rico asked.

“Chris,” I said. “I need you to listen to me.

He frowned. “What… what happened?”

“Omegas,” I said. “Outside the wards.”

“They can’t get in, right?” Rico asked. “Why are we—”

“They have Jessie,” I said, not taking my eyes off of Chris.

He paled. “What?” he whispered.

“They made her call me.”

He took a step forward, stiff and radiating anger. “She’s alive?” he demanded.

“Yes.” And I thought she still would be. They needed leverage. We had nine minutes. Maybe ten. “I heard her voice.”

“What did she say?”

She’d screamed, but I didn’t need him to know that. “That they had her, and that their eyes were glowing.”

“Fuck,” Rico muttered.