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By the time the dust settled, it was too late to travel. So Luke ended up renting an Airbnb just barely large enough for the entire pack to sprawl out on sofas, beds, and floor.
I thought it would feel strange to shift into fur form and curl up beside strange skinless. But these weren’t strangers. Not any longer. Instead, Blade’s chin resting on my shoulder and Ruth’s breathing in my ear lulled me into a deep, dreamless sleep.
We woke as a unit. A growl and every one of us was standing. A rustle of fabric, the scratch of fingernails. Someone lingered outside the door.
Luke shifted before the rest of us had time to put thought into action. He was filthy and naked...and armed with Ruth’s handgun. He peered through the peephole then barked out laughter.
Ruth was behind him, four-legged and raised-ruffed, when Luke opened the door and started carting in parcels. A passerby whistled appreciation of the full-frontal nudity, but Luke just kept working until the coffee table was stacked two layers deep.
“Is this what humans do for Christmas?” Blade asked, sounding younger than I’d ever heard her. And eager. Her fingers flew to the corner of the first parcel.
“Wait.” Ruth stopped her. Sniffed with human nostrils. Then her brow furrowed as she handed the box down the row toward me. “I believe this one is for Honor.”
For me? The label was made out to Luke with no return address.
Still I trusted Ruth—our alpha, even if I was the only one who acknowledged that fact. I pried with my fingernails, pulling loose a shred of tape.
“Here.” Luke didn’t take the package away from me. Instead, he handed over a knife from the kitchen.
I slit the tape and drew back the flaps to reveal a wolf’s pelt. Mottled gray, just like mine. Like Grace’s.
“Whoa! Is that...?” Michael asked.
I ran my fingers through the fur, feeling no static of incipient magic. I couldn’t be certain but I thought.... “No.”
Still, the jumble of parcels was heartening. Carl had spread the word about Luke’s pronouncement already. And werewolves were responding, not by attacking us but by sending any possible woelfin pelt as homage to Luke’s might.
“Keep looking.” Ruth suggested. “Here.”
One after another, Blade, Michael and I opened parcels. I couldn’t be certain, but two of the pelts felt different than the others. Perhaps not just skins peeled off bleeding animals. Perhaps shed woelfin furs, long separated from their hosts.
There was only one way to be certain. I cocked my head up to meet Luke’s questioning gaze. Nodded. “I need to take a trip across town.”
***
“HONOR.” MY SISTER PEERED out at me through a crack between door and jamb.
I couldn’t quite meet her gaze, but I could answer: “Grace.”
We might have stood there forever if Bastion hadn’t interjected from somewhere inside the apartment. “I made enough tea for everybody. Perhaps you should invite her in?”
Grace paused for an endless moment, then she opened the door wider. My own trepidation, I suspected was equally evident as I walked inside.
The apartment I entered looked homey in a way it never had when I was next door peering inside avariciously. Justice lounged in an armchair by the window, law books beside him. Three mugs steamed on the counter. Bastion pulled down a fourth even as he flicked on the stove.
“I wanted to thank you for everything you did yesterday,” I started, eyes on the welcome mat I hovered atop. “Michael told me how hard you worked to track me, how you supplied weapons to the pack when Carly called.”
It was the wrong thing to say. I could tell as soon as I lifted my eyes off the floor and looked at my sister.
“Family doesn’t thank each other,” Grace answered. Her lip quivered. She was close to crying. “Here, sit.” She drew out a kitchen chair while Bastion added a mug to each of our places.
I didn’t accept the offered perch. Couldn’t have bent my torso sufficiently to do so with what I had buttoned inside my coat.
Instead, I scooted the mugs aside and drew out the pelts I’d hugged close to my body heat. “These might be wolfsfells. I don’t know....”
Justice’s reaction was wordless yet powerful. High-pitched pain. As if his bare toe had been run over by a forklift.
Still, he set his mug down carefully before crossing the room with four long strides. His Adam’s apple bobbed, then he reached out to run one careful finger through fur less tired and aged than Bastion’s had been when we finally recovered it.
“I...” He glanced sideways at Grace, his loyalty stronger than his obvious yearning.
Her smile was sad when she urged him forward. “Put it on. Bastion’s collar should fit you. Honor and I could use a moment alone if the two of you want to go to the park.”
They did. I could see the shared excitement in the barely restrained tension of their shoulders. In the way identical eyes met, the way identical smiles barely managed to hide behind broad hands.
Justice changed in the bathroom, proof that unmagical humanity wouldn’t shed so easily. But when he walked out into the living room, he was all sure-footed wolf. Strong, wild, complete.
His twin’s eyes glittered with joy at the knowledge that, one day soon, they’d both be lupine. Running together as pack mates. This was what our family was meant to be like.
The door closed behind them, leaving Grace and me alone in the apartment. It smelled, I realized, like dozens of human perfumes all mixed together. Air freshener and scented dish soap. Shampoo and body wash. To save himself from overload, Bastion must have kept his human self well separated from his pelt.
Speaking of pelts, there was one left on the table. The one that matched mine in color. The one that had called to my fingers like a magnet when I pulled it out of a plastic mailing bag.
“It’s yours, isn’t it?” I asked my sister.
Grace swallowed then nodded. But she didn’t touch it. Instead, she used a napkin to brush the pelt off the table and into a name-brand handbag. Then she set the purse on the floor as carefully as if it was a baby...or a snake in a brittle glass cage.
“I’ll keep it safe. Thank you.”
I winced. Hadn’t she just said family members didn’t thank each other?
I knew where this was going, but I couldn’t prevent the question that bubbled up out of me. “You aren’t even going to try it on?”
Rather than answering, Grace reached out to trace the red sore on my neck, her finger not quite touching. “I have creams that will prevent scarring.”
I jerked back without meaning to. “No. I earned my scars. I’ll keep them.”
Unlike Ruth, Grace didn’t snort. She smiled. Then she waved her hand in a broad circle to encompass the half-sewn dress atop a mannequin, the rack full of fancy spices, the rest of her human apartment.
“Just like I earned this.”