My mother and I didn’t have many things. She said it was easier that way when you were always on the move. But she let me have books. A few of them, at least.
She said it was important. That I needed to learn.
She taught me how to read herself. There were nights when we’d be sleeping in the car, and she’d make sure to park near a streetlight so I could see.
She would make a nest in the back seat using old blankets and a flat pillow. I loved them because they smelled like her. She would always lie down first and pull me against her chest. Sometimes she would sing. Other times she would cry.
I didn’t like those other times.
But then she’d hand me a book and ask me to read to her. “It makes me feel happy,” she said. “You have a pretty voice.”
And so I’d read to her, stumbling over the words I didn’t know.
“Sound it out,” she’d say.
I would.
If I couldn’t figure it out, she never got angry.
“No, Robbie. It looks like a g and an h, but sometimes it makes a ffff sound.”
“A-and the wolf looked through the w-window. He saw the pig inside. ‘I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and I’ll b… blow your house down.’”
She kissed the side of my head. “Yes. That. Yes.”
Sometimes I could smell her tears, even if I couldn’t hear them.
I walked into the compound under a gunmetal sky.
The wolves waved at me.
I waved back.
Children ran squealing around me. I thought it was weird that they were out and about, given it was a weekday. They should have been in school.
“Play with us,” they begged. “Chase us. Shift and chase us!”
They all laughed when I bared my teeth at them.
They waited for me as I walked around the back of a house.
I took off my clothes.
Folded them.
Stored them near a back porch.
A piece of paper stuck out of one of the pockets.
I shoved it back in.
The bones and muscles under my skin began to shift, and I
am wolf
i am wolf and there
there are cubs
cubs to play with
cubs to chase
cubs to love
cubs to protect
i will
catch them and play with them and nothing will ever hurt them
A boy followed me as I shifted back hours later. He was bright-eyed with a devilish smile.
He turned away as I dressed myself. He was bouncing on his toes like he was excited.
“Had enough yet, Tony?” I asked him as I put my glasses on. “You can turn around now.”
He grinned at me as he did. “Your wolf is so big! Am I going to be big like you?”
“Bigger,” I said as he took my hand in his, tugging on my arm. “I bet you’ll be the biggest wolf there ever was.”
His eyes were wide. “Really?” he breathed. “Whoa. Even bigger than an Alpha? Mom says I’ll be a Beta, but maybe if I get big enough, I could be an Alpha too!”
“I don’t know,” I said seriously. “Being an Alpha is a lot of hard work.”
“I can do it,” he said. “I’d be the best Alpha in the world. And when I’m the Alpha, you won’t have to be sad all the time.”
I blinked. “What? I’m not sad all the time. I’m not sad at all.”
He frowned as he looked at my fingers. “Mom says blue is sad. And you smell like blue. Like the ocean.”
I knelt down before him. “What do we say about smelling other people without their permission?”
He scowled. “Not to do it.”
“Right. Because it’s impolite.”
He shook his head. “It’s not—I’m not being imperlite. It’s….” He scrunched up his face. “You’re my favorite. After my mom. And dad. And brother. And Ms. Dunstrom, but she’s my teacher, so she doesn’t count. So you’re like, my fifth favorite.” He looked proud.
I was touched. “You’re one of my favorites too.”
“I knew it,” he crowed. “I tried telling all the other kids, but they didn’t believe me.”
I laughed. “Maybe keep that to yourself. It’ll be our little secret.”
Something crossed his face then, something dark that looked tragic on a child so young. I could almost taste it, and it was like ash on my tongue.
“What’s wrong?”
He looked away but didn’t let go of my hand.
“Hey, it’s okay. You can tell me. Did something happen?”
He shrugged, though he looked uncomfortable. “It’s… a secret too. Like how you like me better than everyone else.”
“Okay. Is it a secret that will get someone hurt?”
He hesitated before shaking his head.
“Are you in any danger?”
He shook his head again.
“Is it something only for your mom and dad? Like a parental secret?”
“I don’t know,” he said, brow furrowing. “I mean, I heard my mom and dad talking about it, but it wasn’t their secret.”
“Did they know you were listening?”
The ash was replaced with the sourness of shame. So, no. They didn’t know. I suspected as much. “I didn’t mean to,” he said, kicking at the dirt. “It was just… they were talking, and they said your name, and I wanted to hear what they were saying because I like you a lot.”
“Ah,” I said. “I like you too, Tony. But I don’t know if what they were saying was meant for either of us to hear. You should probably just forget you heard anything, okay?”
“But you’re blue,” he said fiercely. “I know it. And they said you weren’t always blue, that when you were here before, you were green and happy and it was awesome.” He looked up at me. “What was it like when you were here before? Why were you blue when you came back?”
Gooseflesh prickled along the back of my neck. “From where? One of my trips? Sometimes I have to go see other wolves, and it can be tough because not everyone wants the same thing. It’s just… how it is.”
He shook his head. “Not that. I know about that. I’m talking about before. When you left for a long time. I don’t remember ’cause I’m too little, but when you used to live here with the pack.”
“I think there’s been a mistake, cub,” I said. “I never lived here before Alpha Hughes summoned me. Ezra found me and brought me back with him. It wasn’t…. I’ve only been here for a year. You know that.”
He scrunched up his face. “Where did you live before?”
“All over,” I told him. “With many different wolves.”
He didn’t look like he believed me. “But Mom said they already knew you. And that you were different. And she doesn’t lie about anything because lying is bad.”
His parents. Griff and Maureen. We could have crossed paths before. I didn’t remember it, but it was possible. But I didn’t remember them before I’d come to the compound, and I’d never been to Caswell before that. After my own mother, I’d bounced around to different packs. I tried to remember all of them, all their names, but there were so many. It was all bleeding together. I stayed with some longer than others, but I’d never—
“Blue,” Tony whispered. “It’s all blue.”
I forced a smile on my face. “Hey. Nothing for you to worry about. Listen. Let’s just keep this between us, okay? I won’t tell your parents if you don’t say anything to anyone else. Is that okay?”
“Another secret?”
I nodded.
He didn’t look as happy about this one. “Okay.”
I hugged him close, and he giggled as he pressed his nose against my neck and inhaled. “And I promise to work on the blue thing. Thanks for telling me. I’m glad I have someone like you watching my back.”
“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” he whispered. “Alpha said you were sick and in bed and that’s why we haven’t seen you in a few days, even when it was the full moon. I thought wolves didn’t get sick.”
My hands shook. A few days. A few days. But that would mean—“Why aren’t you in school?”
He laughed. “It’s Saturday, silly. I don’t have to go to school on Saturdays.”
“Of course not,” I said, and my skin was buzzing. “No one goes to school on Saturdays.”
He broke away from me as a group of boys on the other side of the house called his name. “Bye, Robbie!” he called over his shoulder as he ran off to his friends.
I stayed behind the house for a long time.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with it,” Michelle said, sounding irritable. She pressed a button on her keyboard, and the computer chimed. “It never does what I want it to do, and it needs to update every five seconds.”
“Maybe not that much.”
“It seems like it.”
“It doesn’t help that you’re banging on it.”
She sighed. “Sometimes hitting things makes me feel better.”
“Be that as it may, I don’t know if electronics respond to physical violence. You can’t Alpha your way through a Windows update.”
She shoved back from the desk, her chair bumping against the bookcase. It rattled quietly as she stood. “Just… can you fix it, please? I don’t have time to deal with it, and you understand these things better than I ever will. There’s a pack coming in next week, and I don’t want to have to spend my time worrying about this.”
“Anything big?” I asked. Normally I’d keep my mouth shut, but I was her second by her own words, and I felt a little braver than normal.
She eyed me for a moment before shaking her head. “No. Passing through and want to pay their respects.” She stood from her chair, motioning for me to take it. “I have to go to a meeting in town. Can you take care of this by the time I get back?”
“Do I need to be involved?”
“I don’t believe so. I want Ezra to check the wards around Caswell. Make sure they’re intact. Can’t be too careful these days. All manner of things can try and sneak through.”
I thought they were being paranoid, but so long as I didn’t have to walk with Ezra as he fucked around with the wards, it was fine with me. It was long and boring, and listening to Ezra mutter at invisible walls did not make for an enjoyable afternoon. “I’ll take care of it. It’ll be done by the time you get back. You work too hard. Especially since it’s Saturday.”
She didn’t flinch. Instead she looked relieved. “Thank you. You’re a lifesaver.” She headed for the door as I sat down in her chair. She looked back at me as she put her hand on the doorknob. “Let yourself out after you’ve finished. And Robbie?”
I looked up at her over the monitor. “Yeah?”
She looked like she was going to say something, but instead she shook her head. “Nothing. Thank you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
She was gone before I could respond.
I felt warm from my Alpha’s praise. It was a little thing, but it felt like a fire burning in my chest. It almost made me want to tell her I seemed to have misplaced a few days here and there, and had she possibly seen where I’d put them?
I shook my head.
I sounded like such a cub.
“All right,” I muttered as I cracked my knuckles. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
She had spyware.
And adware.
And it was a fucking mess.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered. “No wonder everything is going so slow.” I ran the security software. While the system check was running, I sat back in the chair, the back of my head hanging off the back. I looked up at the towering bookcase behind me, seeing old books with golden script on their spines with such titles as THE HISTORY OF LYCANTHROPY and THE MOON AND YOU: FACT AND MYTH.
I stood up to browse the shelves while the computer did what it needed to. Michelle had never said I couldn’t, and while she wasn’t necessarily here to say otherwise, it still felt like I was skirting a line.
“It’s just history,” I whispered to myself. “I’m allowed to learn.”
I was alone in the office of the Alpha of all.
What could it hurt?
With Tony’s voice whispering in my ear and the vision of a white wolf in a crumbling house, I brushed my fingers over the covers. Some, especially near the top of the shelf just out of reach, were covered in a thin layer of dust, as if they hadn’t been taken from the shelf in years. I could see which books had been taken down, given there was no dust in front of them, but they were all rules and regulations, ancient laws that governed the wolf world.
In other words, all crap.
Except.
There were two volumes near the top right corner, shoved between larger books. One looked very old, the words on the spine once gold but now faded. The other, the thinner of the two, had no title on its spine.
“What’s this?” I asked no one in particular.
I glanced back down at the computer.
Only halfway done.
The house was empty.
Outside, I could hear wolves talking to each other.
Rain was coming. It’d be here within the hour. I could smell it.
Against my better judgment, I pushed the chair against the bookshelf. I climbed on top of it. It wobbled but held.
The thick layer of dust on the top shelf caused my nose to itch. Whatever these books were, they hadn’t been moved in a long time. I pulled them both out, the older book on the top. My skin started buzzing at the faded gold pawprint embossed on the cover.
The pages were stiff, almost like cardboard. The words on the first few were illegible, the handwritten notes having faded with time. I made out a couple of dates in the top right-hand corners. If it was real, the book I held was over four hundred years old.
I stopped when I came to a page that held a drawing.
A beast.
A monster.
A wolf, but one unlike any I’d ever seen before. It stood upright on two legs, the muscles thick in its calves and thighs. Its arms were long and ended in misshapen paws almost like hands, with hooks for claws.
Words were written underneath, some more legible than others: lost and broken and tether and mate and pack.
“An Omega?” I mumbled, brow furrowing.
I could make out one more word, and it chilled me to the bone.
Sacrifice.
I looked away from the beast to the margins of the page. Written in much newer ink, in different handwriting, were more words.
Is this what he could become? Should we have killed him when we had the chance? I don’t know. They assure me he’s trapped forever.
And what of the other? He’s more than what I thought. He’s an Alpha. I don’t know how. I don’t know why. But if this is true, if the beast can rise, then an equal and opposite must also rise.
Ox.
Ox.
Ox.
I closed the book. I reached up, meaning to set it on top of the bookcase. A sharp burst of laughter from just outside the house startled me. I almost fell from the chair. I caught myself at the last moment, but the old book slipped from my fingers. I winced as it slid behind the bookcase, clattering down to the floor.
“Shit,” I muttered. I’d have to move the whole bookcase to get it out. I looked down at the smaller book. The cover was blank. The book itself was wrapped with a leather strap. Initials were carved into the leather.
TB
I couldn’t think of anyone with those initials.
I stepped down from the chair, clutching the book to my chest.
It wasn’t from a witch. It didn’t smell like magic.
I undid the leather strap and let it dangle.
Inside, the pages were lined and yellow, filled with barely legible chicken scratch. I made out words like power and creek and father and sons. It was the same handwriting that had been in the margins of the other book.
I turned to the first page.
There was an inscription, written with a delicate hand, so much different than all the pages that followed.
To my beloved—
Never forget.
—E
Two things happened at once.
The computer chimed,
and
my phone rang in my pocket.
I startled, dropping the book onto the floor. I cursed as I pulled my phone from my pocket, glancing down at the screen as I pushed the chair back under the desk.
UNKNOWN
I frowned at the phone. I thought about ignoring it.
I answered it instead.
“Hello?”
A crackle of static filled my ear.
I pulled the phone away to look at the screen again. The call was connected. I put it back against my ear. “Who is this?”
The phone beeped as the call dropped.
I looked at it again and—
I was standing next to the bookcase, the leather tome in my hands. The chair was pressing against my thigh.
My phone was in my pocket.
The computer was still updating.
I blinked slowly.
I felt like I was underwater. Like I had when I’d gotten close to the house under guard.
I looked down at the book. The inscription on the first page was the same.
I flipped to the second.
There was a date from years before across the top right corner.
It took me a moment to read the first few lines.
They said, I have made mistakes. So many mistakes. That’s the terrible gift of hindsight; it allows you to see everything in such startling clarity. My father always said if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. I didn’t understand what he meant. Not then. Not before it was too late.
I do now.
Elizabeth thinks I should call him. I doubt he’d even pick up the phone. He’s always been hardheaded, and it’s undoubtedly gotten worse because of what we did. What I did. I don’t know how to make him understand. That we couldn’t take the chance that his father had done something to him, put something in the marks carved into his skin when he was a child. A failsafe in case his plans didn’t go through. Gordo wouldn’t—
The computer chimed.
The scanning software had finished.
I grimaced as my head began to throb.
The book fell to the floor.
I stumbled toward the desk, hands flat against it.
My phone began to ring.
My claws dug into the wood.
The computer chimed again. And again. And again.
My phone wouldn’t stop ringing. The combined sounds rattled around my skull.
I said, “What is this? What is this? What is—”
“—this?” I asked as we walked through the woods.
He laughed, taking my hand in his. I couldn’t see him, not really. It was static and snow, a vague outline of a person, but it was right. Oh god, it was right. “It’s nothing. Just… why do you ask so many questions all the time?”
I bumped my shoulder against his. “I need you to come with me. That’s what you said. You have to know how that sounds. All mysterious.”
“It’s… goddammit. I’m not trying to be mysterious.”
No, I didn’t think he was. I—
—fell back into the bookcase, hands covering my face, muttering, “No, no, no, this isn’t real, this isn’t real, this isn’t—”
“—anything bad,” he said. “It’s… I hope it’s good.”
“You hope,” I teased him, feeling lighter than I had in a long time. The trees were green, the sky was blue, and the forest was alive. There was a hum beneath my feet, deep in the earth, and I knew its power, I knew what it was capable of.
He squeezed my hand in his, and if I listened, if I focused hard enough, I could hear and feel the blood moving through his veins, the quick, birdlike beat of his heart. He was nervous, the tang of sweat sharp and sour, but there was so much more to it. It was—
—books falling around me as I crashed into the bookcase and—
—grass and—
—I tilted my head back, my fangs dropping and—
—lake water and—
—I fell to my knees and—
—sunshine. It was sunshine, the feel of warmth on my skin, soft and melodic, a song whispered under one’s breath. It was a caress, and he was laughing, and the sun was shining on his blurry face and he said, “I hope. I hope more than anything. I see you, you know? I see you. And I’ll—”
“Never let you go,” I whispered, my face pressed against the floor.
The computer was silent.
My phone was silent.
I lifted my head.
The little leather book lay off to my left.
I stood slowly.
Something fluttered to the floor.
I looked down.
There, by my foot, was a note.
I could see four words.
FOR WHEN YOU’RE READY.
I nudged it with my boot.
It fell open.
The phone number was the same. One I didn’t know.
Without thinking, I pulled my phone from my pocket.
I dialed the number.
It rang once. Twice. Three times.
Then, “Hello?”
I didn’t speak.
“Hello?” the woman said again, sounding annoyed. “Listen, buddy, if you think panting in my ear is gonna get you anywhere, maybe we should meet face-to-face and I’ll show you just how wrong you are.”
“Who is this?” I asked, voice barely above a croak.
“Who the fuck is this?” she demanded.
I cleared my throat. “This is… Robbie. Robbie Fontaine. I found your number in my pocket.”
“Robbie? What the hell—hold on a second.” There were muffled voices in the background, and I thought about throwing my phone. Throwing it and tearing off my clothes to shift and run toward the refuge. It was safe there. It was safe, and I would find the ancient tree, and all would be well. All would be—
“Robbie. What’s going on? I didn’t think we’d hear from you so quick, or even at all. What—”
“Who are you?” I demanded.
“Who am I?” She paused, and the silence tore at my head. “Robbie… it’s Shannon. Alpha Wells.”
Oh fuck, an Alpha. “Alpha. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you. I just… I didn’t know where I’d gotten this number. How did I get this number?” I thought back over the past few days. No Alpha had come to Caswell. I would remember. I’d met with Ezra and Michelle, and she’d said… she’d said….
I frowned. What had she said?
I couldn’t remember.
“Robbie,” the woman said. She sounded strangely flat. “I gave my number to you. Before you left Fredericksburg. A week ago.”
I was startled into a laugh. “Fredericksburg? Where’s that?” My palms were slick with sweat.
“Shit,” she muttered. “Fuck, how the hell did they—Malik. Do you remember Malik? What he showed you? What he—”
“I don’t know any Malik,” I bit out. “I don’t know what you think he showed me, and with all due respect, Alpha Wells, if this is some kind of joke, it’s not funny. At all. I can’t—”
“The prisoner. In your compound.”
That knocked my breath from my chest. “How the hell did you—”
“It doesn’t matter!” she cried into the phone. “If they took this from you, then they know. I gotta get home. We have to run. The others are already on their way. They need to know what they’re walking into—”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” I snarled. My vision was tunneling, and I thought my phone was going to shatter with how hard I was squeezing it.
“I know,” she snapped. “And it’s because it was taken from you. I don’t know how, but I know why. Robbie, get to the prisoner. I don’t care how you do it, but get to him. You’ll see. Delete this phone call. Don’t let them know you called this number. I have burner backups and I’ll call you when we’re safe. It’s almost time. Find the prisoner. Do you hear me? Find him. You find him and you kill him.”
The phone beeped in my ear as the call dropped.
I lowered it slowly.
On the blue computer screen was a message in a gray box.
UPDATE COMPLETE! RESTART?
In the corner was the date and time.
12:47 PM.
May 9, 2020.
