THE FIRST year was the hardest.
Because we didn’t know there was going to be a first year.
“YOU TEXT me,” I’d told him as we’d lain in the bed. I could still taste him on my lips and I wanted nothing more than to kiss him again. “Every couple of days. So I know.”
“I won’t tell you where we are,” he said. “Because I know what you would do.”
I scowled at him. “Fine. But you text me. You understand?”
He did.
I MISS you, the first text said, three days after they’d gone.
I stared at it for hours.
“SHE LEFT everything to you,” the attorney said as I sat across from him in his office. Elizabeth and Mark were close by, hiding in the woods. “The house. The accounts. And eventually, there will be a life insurance payout, but those things take time. It should be enough to pay off the mortgage and then some when it comes, though. She wanted to make sure you were taken care of should something have happened to her. You’re set, Ox. For now. I’ll get everything ready for you to sign to make it as easy as possible. You just focus on healing. Lord knows you’ve earned it.”
I nodded and looked out the window, thinking about soap bubbles on my ear.
CARTER AND Kelly are fighting, a text said. I told them to stop. They didn’t. So I went Alpha on them. They aren’t fighting anymore.
“WHAT THE fuck is this supposed to mean?” Chris said, glaring down at a letter Gordo had left for them at the shop. “‘I have to be gone for a while. Tanner, you’re in charge of the shop. Make sure you send the earnings to the accountant. He’ll handle the taxes. Ox has access to all the bank stuff, personal and shop-related. Anything you need, you go through him. If you need to hire someone to pick up the slack, do it, but don’t hire some fuckup. We’ve worked too hard to get where we are. Chris and Rico, handle the day-to-day ops. I don’t know how long this is going to take, but just in case, you need to watch each other’s back. Ox is going to need you.’”
Rico and Tanner were crowded into Gordo’s office. Chris’s hands shook as he held the letter, voice growing tighter and tighter with every word he read.
You’ll have to deflect, Gordo had told me in the woods. They’ll push you, Ox. For answers. You need to hold off as long as possible. They’re my brothers. I never wanted them involved in our world. But I don’t know how much longer that can last. Not now. I’m sorry to put this on you. I never wanted this for you. For them.
They all looked up at me.
“Did you know about this?” Tanner asked.
“Yeah,” I said, heartsore and tired. I wasn’t sleeping because of the nightmares.
“That asshole,” Rico growled. “How the fuck could he leave you like this? After everything?”
“Where did he go?” Chris asked, dropping the letter back onto the desk.
They all looked at me expectantly.
And I resented them then. Gordo and Joe. Because of the position they’d put me in. My back was against a wall and I didn’t know how to answer the question without bullshit.
Joe had left.
Gordo went with him.
They’d forced my hand.
And maybe I was already tired of carrying this burden alone.
So I said, “What do you know about werewolves?”
I THOUGHT we had something, he said in his text. I thought we’d found what we needed outside of Calgary. But it was just a dead end. A fucking dead end. Ox. It hurts.
I thought about calling him.
But he’d asked me not to. He needed to focus, he’d said.
There was no green here.
“DIOS MÍO,” Rico breathed, watching as Mark shifted in front of them, once a man and now a wolf.
“Should I be scared?” Tanner asked, voice high-pitched. “Because I feel like I should be scared. Okay. I’m scared.” He squeaked loudly when Elizabeth came out from the house and sat on the porch, watching them with her head cocked, tail thumping lightly against the wooden slats.
“Far-fucking-out,” Chris whispered. “This is like some Lon Chaney fucking shit!”
They all looked at me and waited.
“What?” I asked.
“You do it now,” Rico said.
“Like, just do it,” Tanner said.
“Show me your American Werewolf in London,” Chris said.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I muttered. “I’m not a wolf.”
They were very disappointed in that.
A TEXT came in the middle of the night.
It said, Please tell me you’re all right.
im all right
Bad dream
about what
He didn’t reply.
“GORDO’S A witch,” Tanner repeated.
“Shut the fuck up,” Chris said.
“I knew that motherfucker was up to something,” Rico said. “He sacrifices chickens at midnight and bathes in their blood, doesn’t he?”
We all stared at him.
“What?” Rico said. “It could happen. It’s a thing. I know my shit. I’ve seen stuff, man. Like things. Mi abuela used to slaughter chickens all the time. It was very hardcore.”
“That actually explains a lot,” Chris said. “Because of all his weirdness.”
“Like how his tattoos always seemed to be in different places,” Tanner said.
“Or how when we all moved here, he always went around our houses, rubbing the walls and muttering things,” Rico said.
“Or how he didn’t think it was funny when I wanted to put up witch Halloween decorations at the shop,” Chris said. “Because they were funny.”
“Or how he had daddy issues and never explained why,” Tanner said. “I always thought his dad was just a jerk. I didn’t know he was an evil jerk.”
“There were really a lot of clues,” Rico said. “I’m slightly disappointed in us.”
“We aren’t very self-aware,” Chris said with a frown.
“Holy shit!” Tanner said. “He can do magic.”
I sighed and gave in. “He has shiny arms.”
“Shiny arms?” Rico said. “Like… what.”
“His arms. They glow when he does magic.”
“Shiny arms,” Tanner said. “That’s… amazing.”
“Magic,” Chris said. “I… don’t know what to do with that.”
“And what about you?” Rico demanded. “How do you fit in with all of this?”
That led to tethers and mates.
“Like destiny and bullshit?”
“Oh my god, Ox, your life is like those shitty sparkly vampire movies. That I’ve never seen and don’t like at all, shut up.”
“Oh man. That explains the whole Jessie thing. She never stood a chance in the face of sparkly vampire destiny or whatever it is.”
I put my face in my hands.
The conversation went on for another three hours after that.