Robbie yipped again and turned back toward the forest.
“We still need to talk,” Joe said, and he was right behind me.
I closed my eyes but I could still feel the heat of him. His breath on my neck. All I had to do was lean back and—
I took a step forward.
“We will,” I said. “Tomorrow.” Because I didn’t think I could go another day like this. It was choking me, and I was struggling to breathe through it.
“Tomorrow,” he said, and it came out like a promise I didn’t know I was making.
He shifted behind me.
The sound of it seemed to go on forever.
There was that heat behind me still, but it was different now.
Something pressed against the middle of my back.
His nose, from the feel of it.
He took in a long, slow breath.
Exhaled low and hot.
Something tugged near the back of my head, buried in the bonds of my pack.
I thought to reach out for it. To test it. To taste it.
But before I could, the Alpha wolf circled me.
And my breath was knocked from my chest.
He was big, bigger than Thomas had ever been. The top of his head reached almost to my neck. He was still completely white aside from his nose and paws. His lips and his claws. And his eyes, which were like fire. I wondered if this was how my mother had felt that first time. When Thomas had shown her that she would never be alone again.
And like he could hear every single thought in my head, Joe leaned up and pressed his nose to my neck and I said, “Oh.”
IT STARTED out fine.
Mostly.
I felt like I was caught in a free fall, my stomach swooping up in my chest to the back of my throat. I felt like I was stuck in that moment when you miss the last step and land hard on your foot.
We ran in the woods.
Through the trees, jumping over logs and creeks, our feet splashing in the water when we didn’t make it far enough.
The wolves were howling around me, but it was off, the harmonies too far off-key to really be singing together.
My wolves sang like they always did, in time and in sync.
Joe and his wolves did the same, but a step above or below mine.
It grated, the mixing of the two, but there was something there. Something that was thrumming just below the surface. It crawled along my skin, and I ran toward it, to escape from it.
The humans laughed as the wolves chased them.
Gordo hung back, mostly watching, eyes on the perimeter, arms alight as his tattoos fluttered and flew.
I thought we were close to something as we moved in the forest.
Something that was just out of reach.
Joe ran at my side, the muscles under the white coat moving like water. Like smoke, fluid and rippling.
I wasn’t a wolf. I didn’t think I’d ever be a wolf. I didn’t feel the pull of the moon.
But it felt different now.
I wanted to howl a song out. I wanted to sprout claws and fangs and tear into the flesh of a rabbit. I wanted my eyes to burst red, to feel the grass on my paws.
There were thoughts, some my own, some coming from all directions.
They said, PackLoveBrotherSon and safe here we are safe here and together oh my god we’re together we run together and home we’re finally home look here this tree i know this tree and he’s gone FatherHusbandAlpha he’s gone but i can still feel him i can still smell him i can still love him and so much more. It was all of them at once, the wolves, and maybe the humans of my pack. They were skittering along my thoughts, tying themselves to me and each other, the threads tangling.
But it was the wolf that ran with me that I heard the most.
He said, here.
He said, i’m here.
He said, with you finally with you.
He said, i can feel you.
He said, i know you can feel me.
He said, that little voice at the back of your head that little tug you feel that you’ve always felt that has never left you has always been me it’s always been me because you’ve always been mine i gave you my wolf because you are pack pack pack you are mate you are you are you are—
We were so distracted, running under this euphoric high, this fever dream that couldn’t have possibly been real, that we didn’t see him coming. One second Joe and I were side by side, and the next, there was a flash of gray and black in front of me, and Joe was knocked off his feet onto his side.
The fever broke.
There was loud snarling, a snapping of teeth.
I kept running for five steps before I remembered I had to stop.
I turned and—
Robbie was on top of Joe, teeth buried in his throat. Joe was kicking up at him, the claws on his back legs shredding into Robbie’s sides, his stomach.
There was an angry roar behind me as Carter and Kelly burst out from the trees. Robbie let out a high-pitched whine as Joe got in a vicious kick, knocking him off and into a tree.
Elizabeth and Mark came from the other direction, eyes orange and teeth bared. They stood in front of Robbie as he tried to pick himself up, blood dripping from the lacerations on his sides.
Joe was already on his feet, the hair around his throat stained red. Carter and Kelly came up on either side of him, growling, backs arched as they crept toward Robbie, who had managed to get himself to his feet.
There was too much going on in my head.
I was being pulled in different directions.
There were threads pouring out of me, latching on to Robbie and Elizabeth and Mark and these threads were strong and true and they said pack and protect and mine. They only grew stronger as humans ran through the trees toward us, spiked with fear and thoughts of attack are we under attack remember the training remember what the Alpha taught.
There were other threads too, shredded and thin and weak, and they pulled toward the white wolf, the Alpha, even as the thought of another Alpha in my territory made me want to bare my teeth in anger. These threads spread to him and, through him, out to the others, to the other two wolves by his side, to the witch that came to stand next to them. He ran his hands over the Betas, arms flaring, the raven’s mouth open in a silent call as it flew up along his arm and out of sight onto his back.
They were protecting him.
Much like my pack was protecting Robbie, idiot that he was.
It didn’t matter that family was spread out among two packs.
All that mattered was the bonds between us that told us nothing touched pack, that nothing harmed what was ours. If it came down to it, they would fight each other.
Joe, though.
Joe wasn’t moving. By rights, he could. He was attacked unprovoked.
And was his pack really advancing? Or were they defending?
I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t have this.
Not like this.
Robbie took a step forward, spittle dripping down into the grass as he rumbled deep in his chest.
Carter crouched low.
And I said, “Stop.”
My voice was a crack in the air.
All the wolves stopped at once, ears flattening to the backs of their heads.
Except Joe. His eyes grew brighter.
Even the humans took a step back, reacting to their Alpha, eyes wide, shoulders tense.
They waited.
There was an order here. No matter how much I wanted to go to Joe, wanted to make sure the wounds in his neck were closing, that the red on his throat was nothing serious, I couldn’t.
Because I had to tend to my own first.