“Oh, thank God!”
Ethan paused, still half in his car. “I honestly wasn’t expecting such an enthusiastic greeting. Accusations of stalking maybe but not praise to a deity.” He stood fully, holding up a cardboard carrier. “I brought a local IPA, thought maybe we could have a few drinks?”
“I need you!”
His grin was slow and familiar, and very, very hot. “Very definitely not expecting that.” Folding his arms, he leaned against his truck and nodded at my house. “Like the color scheme you’ve got going on here. Really works with the midcentury style of the house.” He nodded, pleased with what he was seeing. “A lot of people get these post-war VA homes and start stripping ‘em down to modernize the exterior. Glad you kept the aesthetic.” He flashed me a bright smile. “Now, what’s this about needing me? Care to elaborate?”
My face was a lovely shade of beetroot, heat spreading up my chest to my neck before suffusing across my cheeks. Ethan’s quick grin did nothing to help my embarrassment. And if my previous experiences with Ethan were any indication, there was no way he was going to let me forget the double entendre or my blush.
“I need your help,” I corrected, baring my teeth in a parody of his grin. He laughed but got the rest of the way out of his car and came to me with an easy lope that would have looked ridiculous on almost anyone else. He stopped just out of arm’s reach and fell into an easy posture, hip cocked and arms loosely folded. I wasn’t fooled, though.
He wasn’t waiting. He was waiting.
His gaze flickered from my house, curiosity evident in his expression, to Mrs. Hudson’s where the clatter and rush of the dinner hour was now in full swing, then back to me, his brow quirking in a silent question.
“I think whoever killed the Raymonds was here earlier.”
He startled, jerking up straight so fast, I was surprised nothing popped. I told him quickly what I’d noticed, and he gave me a curt nod, striding away from me and toward the back of the carport where it opened into the small yard I shared with the Hudsons. He was gone less than five minutes, leaving me standing alone and awkward in my own driveway. He came jogging back with a grim set to his mouth, brows drawn and expression dark.
“Is your house unlocked?”
“Uh, no? I mean, I locked it when I left this morning but—”
He cut me off, holding out his hand, wiggling his fingers. It took me a second to realize he wanted my keys.
“You could use your words like a big boy, you know.” I dropped the ring into his hand anyway. Ethan sighed gustily and started picking through the keys before I had pity on him. “The silver one with the pink dot of nail polish on top.”
He hesitated for a moment, glancing up at the house and then back at me. “I know I’m going to hate myself for this in a minute but come inside with me. You’ll be able to tell me if anything is off.”
He honestly thought I was about to let him go in there without me? “To be frank, I was planning on following you in,” I admitted, brushing past him closely enough to get a good, hard hit of his smell, bergamot and sandalwood and salt-sweat-skin. Get it together, Landry! “Just let you flush out the killers first.”
“Thanks,” he drawled. “Glad to be useful.”
The déjà vu hit hard. We’d had a very similar conversation That Summer (yes, it was worth the capitals). I had gotten home from work, a part time thing at the dinky little Dairy Queen knock-off in Belmarais, to find my house standing wide open from front door to back when no one was home. I’d turned my bike (because I was that kid) around and high tailed it to Ethan’s, begged him to come back with me and check out the house. “I don’t wanna call the cops. Aunt Cleverly would flip if they got all up in her shit and there wasn’t anything wrong.” Ethan had thrown on his shirt (and he was that guy, never owned a shirt he didn’t take off and throw in the corner as soon as he could) and made me put my bike in the back of his truck.
Back at the house I shared with Aunt Cleverly, he’d walked around the outside, making me stay back at the truck before telling me to follow him into the house and see if anything seemed out of place. We’d gone through every room and cupboard, even the tiny little closet where the water heater lived. Nothing was gone or moved. Ethan had declared that the door probably didn’t catch on the latch as Cleverly left for her shift earlier that day and the wind had blown it open, but I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling someone had been there, looking around.
We’d gone back to his place, ignored his brothers, and hung out in his room till my aunt was home from work. And by hung out, I mean we had hot, sweaty monkey sex for hours with the enthusiasm only newly out teenagers who just figured out what their dicks were for could muster.
The walk through my house was haunted by the ghosts of that moment in time. Everything was still locked tight, Ethan using the key on the deadbolt to let us in. Not a thing was out of place, down to the sock I’d aimed at the laundry basket that morning and missed. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling.
“You ever go into a room, and you know someone was just in there but left like the second you walked in?” I asked once we rounded back into my small kitchen. Ethan took a seat at the table as I headed for the fridge, accepting the beer I held out in his direction. “That’s what I feel right now.”
“I’m not trying to downplay your concerns,” he said carefully, taking the open beer I offered him, “but I think it’s possible you’re projecting a bit.”
Sinking into the chair across from him, I tried not to be annoyed. It’s possible I failed, because my next words made the scowl between his eyebrows deepen. “You think I’m crazy again?”
“Landry, I never thought you were crazy. Never.” He didn’t quite meet my eyes, looking at my shoulder instead. “I said some shitty things but that was… Hell, a lifetime ago, almost. I’d hoped you’d have moved past that by now.”
“Wow. That’s kind of shitty, you know?” I took a deep pull of my beer, wincing at the acrid, sour bite of it. “Are you over it?” I asked, cutting him off when he spoke. “I mean, that whole thing? Not just us fucking like rabbits.”
“Which part?” he asked, setting his beer aside and leaning forward, forearms resting against the table. He pinned me with the intensity of his glare. “The part where you lost your shit and told me to go to hell? Or the part where you broke my heart and took off to fucking Baltimore before I got back to town?” Ethan blew out a rough breath, leaning back to scrub at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I guess we can safely say the answer to that question is no,” he murmured. “Sorry. For about a second before I opened my mouth, I really thought the only thing I was going to say is ‘yeah, no big deal, water under the bridge’ or something bro-y like that.”
“I think having our dicks in each other’s mouths for the better part of four months put us past bro status some time ago.” I took another pull of my beer, staring at him over the bottle. He smirked, shook his head, and ducked his face away. I could see the pink tinge to his ears and felt myself unbend just a tiny bit inside. “I’m not going to apologize for everything. I thought…” I trailed off, rolling my mostly empty bottle back and forth between my hands. “I believed you when you said I was just an experiment.”
“Jesus, Landry. You know—”
“No, I didn’t. Hell, I trailed around after you like a hungry dog after a bone for the better part of middle school and high school. Everyone knew I had a thing for you. When you got interested in me, I jumped on it because, hell, it was every damn wet dream I’d had come true.”
Ethan set his bottle down carefully, lips parting on something unspoken before he shook his head, closing his eyes like he wanted to block me out but couldn’t.
“When I told you about me, about…” I gestured vaguely at my temple. My little ‘problem’ had been a mental one—or at least I thought so back then. Like my mom, like my grandma. None of us Babins were right in the head, and everyone in Belmarais knew it and loved to remind me about it. “You didn’t freak out on me. You treated me the same as ever. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.” I laughed, raising my bottle to my lips. Damn thing was empty. How’d that happen?
Ethan raised his brow again, damn it, and glanced from me to the fridge. Daring me to get more liquid courage. I sighed and settled back in my chair. Best to get over this and get all the dirty laundry aired before we had to work together again.
“The most beautiful boy I’d ever seen, the one I had been dreaming about day and night since I figured out my girls-are-yucky phase wasn’t a phase, not only liked me back but didn’t think I was one of the headcase Babins? Didn’t tell me all this weird shit happening to me was my brain being broken? Shit, I thought I’d hit the lotto.”
Ethan huffed, something between a laugh and sigh. “I thought you were a were, like me.” His beer was empty, too. I knew he wasn’t feeling it at all. A benefit of being were was a very fast metabolism. Beer buzzes never lasted longer than a minute or so, if even that long, and even then, it would have taken a tremendous amount of beer, not one bottle of the shitty light beer I kept in my fridge. Still, I blamed the alcohol for the look he gave me, all blown pupil and unwavering focus. “I thought you were being coy with me whenever I hinted around about it. I didn’t realize you had no idea.”
“Not until Tyler.” I sighed.
“Fucking Tyler.”
Apparently, everyone in the Stone family had thought I was a were, too. I just thought they were being antsy around me because of my family’s reputation, but they were being paranoid about a new wolf in town, one from a family with no history of weres in the bloodlines. Tyler, bless his little heart, decided to force my hand one day, make me prove I wasn’t trying to encroach on pack territory or something. Walked right into the den where Ethan and I were definitely not having a sneaky grope underneath a blanket, no sir, and shifted right in front of me. Looked me dead in the eyes and shifted. Everyone on the block heard my scream.
That was the beginning of the end as far as Ethan and I went. He pried it out of me, the details about my little problem. Heightened senses, the increased prey reactions—what I referred to as my scared rabbit brain, my ability to tell when someone wasn’t ‘right.’ Ethan’s acceptance of my differences became strained, stilted. He never shamed me for them, but he started testing me, it seemed. Pushing my buttons.
It all came to a head when he snapped at me, accused me of being afraid of my wolf side, holding myself back. We started to excel at makeup sex, tearful fights always ending in orgasms. Even then, I knew it wasn’t healthy, but I was seventeen. No one has ever accused seventeen-year-olds of making great decisions.
Ethan was caught in the same tangle of memories as me, apparently, because he reached across the table and tapped one finger against the back of my hand where it rested next to my empty beer bottle. “You were never an experiment for me. I know what I said, and it was shitty. But you were never… It was never like that. I didn’t need to ‘find out’ if I was gay or not. I knew I was.”
“To be honest, I thought maybe the experiment was whether or not you could be with someone who wasn’t like you.” I nodded, eyes prickling. It was something I’d figured out a long time ago about Ethan, that he’d lied to me that day about just using me for sex. He wanted to hurt me, to hurt us, but I never understood why.
Now or never.
“Why, then?”
“Jesus, Landry.” He sighed, letting his head fall back against the top of the chair. “You scared the hell out of me. Out of all of us. There you were, oblivious as all get out, waltzing into the middle of a pack of weres without a care in the world. And when I figured out you weren’t one of us, even though everything in me was screaming that you were?” He shook his head, the finger on the back of my hand pressing down a bit more firmly. I was a butterfly, and he was the pin. “My family was on my ass about you soon as I told them you weren’t like us. My father—he went ‘round to every damn pack in driving distance. Wanted to talk to the heads of families in person, see their faces to make sure they weren’t lying to him when he asked about you.”
“I remember Aunt Cleverly getting pissy about your dad,” I murmured, unable to look away from where our bodies touched, however minutely. “Said he was full of himself and needed to get his head out of his ass.” Ethan made a choked, amused noise. “I know she didn’t think y’all were anything other than plain old human. I know your father didn’t ask my God-fearing, church-going aunt if she had a werewolf in her spare bedroom.”
There was that sound again. Definitely amused. “You know how many weres are God-fearing church goers?” he teased. “And if I recall correctly, he asked her if you had some sort of, in his words, ‘mental defect or some shit.’”
“Seriously? Cleverly must’ve loved that. She was always worried people would think I was weird, or she’d messed me up somehow.” My aunt hadn’t exactly been overprotective, but she’d definitely been cautious, making sure I was as aggressively normal as possible in the eyes of the community. Afterschool job, check. Hobbies, check. Dinner at a decent hour, check. Homework, chores, neat appearance, check, check, check.
Ethan grunted softly. “He was convinced by that point you were just refusing to accept your true nature and had somehow gotten stuck.”
“Stuck?” I finally looked up at him. He looked away so quickly I knew I’d almost caught him staring. “Half were, half human? Like Eddie Munster or something?” I laughed, turning my hand palm-up without thinking. He froze for just a split second, long enough for me to realize what I’d done, but he didn’t pull back. Ethan uncurled his fingers and laid his hand against mine. It was the most awkward, heart-flutteringly wonderful hand holding I’d had in a while.
“We do not speak of Eddie Munster,” he sniffed. “Besides, he was supposed to be fully werewolf.” Ethan made a face, and I laughed again. Our amusement petered out after a few seconds, though, and we sat in hesitant quiet for several more before Ethan spoke again. “But when I finally got back…”
“I’d graduated.” I sighed. “I couldn’t stand it there after you’d gone.”
His expression shuttered, but he didn’t move his hand away. “From what I was told, you drowned your sorrows with Patrick Morris pretty damned quick.”
“Patrick Morris?” My lips curled in disgust at the very mention. The man had been mean as a rabid dog when we were in high school, and the years hadn’t improved him. “Who the hell told you… Oh, wait. Your brothers?”
Ethan had the good grace to look mildly ashamed. “Yeah. Tyler and Stephen both said they saw you and Patrick at the lake, down by Breyer’s Cove.”
Slowly, I curled my fingers around his palm. His hands had always been larger than mine, rougher too, and that hadn’t changed at all over the years. He tensed in my grasp before slowly relaxing against me. Nervousness rolled off him in waves. He shifted his weight, a subtle movement but obvious to me, rocking onto the balls of his feet as if ready to flee. Or pounce. Ethan’s gaze darted from my mouth to my eyes and back again before settling at some indistinct point on my face. There was the faintest hitch to his breath. I wondered how my own uncertainty felt to him, if it fluttered like hummingbird wings or crackled like static.
His sizzled along my awareness like water on a hot griddle, popping and rushing as he took deliberate, slow breaths. His dark green eyes were narrowed, his body tense. He was waiting, poised.
“The night you left and every damned night after, I stayed home. Until the day I left for college, my entire life consisted of going to school, going to work, coming home, repeat.”
“So, what you’re saying is… I’ve been an ass for going on fifteen years now.”
“Hey. Don’t be like that.” I leaned forward, squeezing his fingers in mine. “You’ve been an ass for much longer than that.”
Ethan’s snort of laughter broke open the dam between us. I pulled on his hand, and he rose to his feet, tugging me with him. We stepped into each other’s arms, a hard embrace that didn’t erase the awfulness of the past but dulled the sharp edges a bit. We’d been much younger than, less sure. I started to say as much to him, or something like it, tilting my head back to speak without a mouthful of cotton shirt in the way, but he was already leaning down. It was muscle memory, déjà vu, nostalgia, need, all of it bundled up into one burst of realization the moment before his lips brushed mine.
That’s what Ethan looks like when he wants to kiss me, I remembered. Oh, and that’s what my nerves do when I see that face. Hello, tap dancing butterflies.
I couldn’t close my eyes, even though I thought I should. His were closed, after all, lashes dark crescents against his tan skin, the faintest traces of freckles drawing my eye as I hummed a surprised sound of pleasure against his mouth. I parted my lips against his, taking his breath into me when he sighed. Ethan started to pull away but thought better of it, letting go of my hand to grasp my hips, holding me against him as we swayed gently in my kitchen, the kiss deepening.
Part of me was desperate to wiggle free, to run and just keep going until he was so far behind me, he’d never catch up.
When we were younger, I thought that was some sort of guilt, growing up gay in a conservative little town giving me internalized homophobia. But now… now I knew it was whatever made me almost.
Almost were, almost not human. Almost afraid of this.
Ethan made a guttural sound, not quite a growl but close enough that I smirked. His fingers tightened on my hips, and he rocked against me. Someone was obviously more than happy to see me, I thought, unable to stop smiling into the kiss. He nipped my lower lip and I gasped, drawing back just a little. His teeth flashed in a wild grin, hands moving up my back to tug me back into the embrace before I could go far.
Arousal was thick in the air, not a scent but an awareness. A feeling racing in my veins and heating my blood. Ethan was feeling it too. He wanted to chase, to hunt and play and take, and good Lord I wanted to let him.
“Landry”—he breathed against my neck when we finally came up for air— “tell me to stop if you don’t want this. I won’t be mad. I promise, I won’t. Don’t do this just for old time’s sake, or… or, I don’t know, to hurt me later. Please just tell me and—”
I hushed him with a breath against his ear. “We’re different now, huh? We’re not going to use this to hurt one another, right?” He nodded, eyes squeezed shut. It was a visceral thrill, seeing this big, strong were damn near begging me for… Well. For whatever we’d do. I didn’t know if sex was going to happen just then, but it was definitely in the future for us, if we kept our heads out of our asses. “Do you? Want this, I mean? Or is this… I don’t know, nostalgia run rampant? A chance to have our goodbye and pretend it never happened later?”
“I want this,” he said, voice heavy. “I want you. I’ve always wanted you.”
I pressed against him again, ducking my head to kiss the curve of his jaw. “That’s good. Very, very good. Yes…” He laughed shakily against me and slid his hands up my back, one hand reaching the curls at the base of my skull and tangling there. “We should at least go into the living room, though. I’m getting a crick in my neck trying to make out like this.”
Ethan released me but stayed close as I led him through to the small living area. The sun had dropped lower, bathing the room in dark golden light with thick shadows stretching from the corners. I tossed some of the pillows off the sofa and dropped to one end of it, Ethan stretching out along the other. It was always awkward, interrupting a make out session, no matter how old you are or who you’re with.
We sat in heavy quiet for a minute, then two. Ethan was doing his best not to look at me, cutting his eyes to the side as he kept his face turned toward the small fireplace across the room, pretending he was interested in the scattering of family photos I’d set on the mantel. His long fingers drummed against his knee, the muscles in his forearm shifting, distracting me for several seconds, making it hard to remember what I was going to say. “You’ve done a good job sprucing this place up. A few years ago, whoever owned it was just letting it go to shit. Done a great job of restoring it…” He trailed off. “Very. Very midcentury modern.”
“Um.” There we go. Years of advanced studies finally pay off in your suave conversational skills. “So, why did you come over, anyway? I mean, thank you. Really, thank you. But…”
He finally looked at me again, cheeks pink. “Ah. Well. I don’t have your personal number. Just the ones for the office. And… I’d already missed you.” He rubbed the back of his neck, that dull flush spreading from his cheeks to his throat. “And apparently your home number is unlisted.”
“I don’t have a landline,” I murmured. “Just my cell phone.”
“Ah.”
“Mmhmm.” Welp. This got awkward as balls pretty fast. “So, you wanted me?” His brows shot up, and his expression cycled quickly from surprise to embarrassed to salacious in record time. “I mean,” I said, a bit more loudly than I’d intended, “you drove all the way out here to see me, and I’m guessing it was something to do with the Raymonds if you were trying to catch me back at work…”
I couldn’t look at him, not while he was giving me that look. It made me want to giggle like a teenager and hide my face.
Ethan cleared his throat, twisting onto one hip and facing me. He was trying, bless his heart, to look serious and all business, but his lips were still swollen, and judging by the way he was awkwardly positioned, he was trying his damnedest to keep me from noticing his erection. “Um, right. The Raymonds are insisting on an autopsy for both of the kids before they go through with the cremation.”
I sat up straight, all hints of arousal fading fast. “What? They should contact the coroner’s office, not you. Or at least through the funeral home. They shouldn’t have taken them home.”
Ethan couldn’t have looked more uncomfortable if he’d tried. “They, uh… they’re requesting a private autopsy. They want the remains sent to this private hospital north of here. Garrow Clinic?” I shook my head—the name didn’t ring a bell. “The clinic sent word ‘round to my office this evening, just at the end of my shift. You’d already left work, when I called.” He slid me a sideways glance that reminded me of a puppy waiting to be chastised. “Sorry?”
“I’m not mad about it. Confused but not mad.” I wished I’d brought my beer bottle with me because I desperately needed to fidget. “It’s been days since they died. Any tox screens will be piss poor. Their organs have already started to deteriorate!” Ethan’s face crinkled in disgust. “Sorry, I forget not everyone can talk about this sort of thing without being grossed out.”
“It’s just… I kind of knew them. Thinking of them deteriorating is just…” He blew out a breath. “Sorry.”
“And it’s expensive,” I added. “The Raymonds weren’t a very wealthy family last I checked. A private autopsy can cost over five grand conservatively. Especially going through a private clinic. And it’d have to be done by a pathologist, not just the family doctor.”
“There’s no way the Raymonds can come up with ten grand,” Ethan murmured. “They didn’t seem to think it was anything other than feral dogs when I spoke to them the other day, but this morning, there was a message waiting from Mrs. Raymond, demanding I call her immediately. She told me she thinks you were wrong on the cause of death and wants a second opinion. I guess she didn’t like my reply, that she needed to talk to your office herself, because the people at Garrow called this evening.”
It’s in bad taste to laugh about the dead, but it’s perfectly fine to cackle about the dead’s family. “What the hell? First of all, the cause of death wasn’t dog attack. It was blood loss due to massive abdominal and thoracic trauma. Secondly, what the hell?” I shoved myself to my feet, heading toward the kitchen to grab another beer. Make out time was long gone, apparently, because there was no way to get myself back in the mood after that news. Ethan grabbed my arm as I passed, though, and tugged me down across his legs. “Hey!”
“Hey,” he repeated without any mocking to his tone. “I thought you weren’t mad about this. It’s not like, I don’t know, cheating on your hairdresser with another one, right? Them getting another opinion on the cause of death?”
“It’s not a good look for me, professionally, if the private autopsy turns up a different cause of death, but even a first-year medical student could tell you it’s going to be damn near impossible to determine the cause was anything other than the blood loss due to trauma. And frankly it’s unusual that someone would insist upon a private autopsy like this. You usually see it in cases where cause of death is less obvious, like a young person just dying in their sleep with no known pre-existing conditions. Not someone dead from an apparent animal attack.” I held back my other thought: I needed to look up this Garrow Clinic. I’d never heard of it, and if they were doing private autopsies, I needed to know. The forensic pathology world wasn’t so big as we couldn’t find one another easily, and when you narrowed it down on a regional level, it got even cozier. I knew the pathologists in our area by name, many also by face, and not a single one of them worked at a place called Garrow.
Ethan shifted his legs, so I sat on his thighs rather than his knees, tilting them up so I tipped to one side. Leaning against his chest, my legs hooked over his, I smiled. “So that’s what you’d come over to tell me?” It seemed like a pretty thin excuse, especially since I’d have found out myself on Monday when I had to sign off on my copies of the exam notes being sent to whomever they had performing the autopsies. But he was here, in my house, and maybe a little stalkery, but honestly, I was okay with that for the time being. Kind of. Mostly.
“I just want to be sure that you’re not going to… I don’t know, get fired or something.”
Aw, damn it. He was being sweet. And I wasn’t ready for that.
I wiggled a bit, turning on his lap until I could look him in the face. “I’m an appointed official. It’d take more than someone wanting a private autopsy to get me removed from the position. I may get some shit from the county about it since this is the first time it’s happened under my watch, but unless they find something grievously wrong with my report, I’m fine.”
Ethan studied me with an unfamiliar expression on his face before wilting back against the sofa a little, pulling me with him. “We should talk more about… Well. Everything. Before.”
“Everything before or everything before we do anything?”
“Both,” he chuckled. “Fucking hell, I missed you, Landry,” he breathed, pulling me down so my head was under his chin and his arms were around me.
“There’ve been others,” I murmured. Both a question and a fact.
“Mmm. I’d have been shocked if there hadn’t been.”
I had to ask. “Is there anyone now?”
“Ah, no. The job doesn’t really allow a lot of time for dating.”
“Ah.” Reluctantly, I slid to my feet, offering him an apologetic grimace. “Sorry, but if we’re going to have this conversation, I need to be somewhere that’s not your lap.”
Ethan nodded. “I’d say it’s an old habit but…” He shrugged, looking sheepish, and got to his feet.
We headed back into the kitchen, Ethan taking up his seat at the table and me heading for the coffee maker. I felt unexpectedly shy under the glare of the kitchen light, and the domesticity of the moment was weird for us. I fussed with the coffee maker, painstakingly measuring grounds, then spent an inordinately long time choosing mugs, arranging creamer and sugar on the table, and generally trying to avoid the moment.
“I guess I’ll go first,” he said when it had been quiet for too long. “I’m not going to lie and say I’m not still attracted to you, but I know we’re not going to just jump back in the way things were.”
“We were teenagers,” I reminded him. “And hormonal.”
“You know there was more to it.” The soft burr of his voice sent a wave of want through me, and I knew it was obvious. He straightened in his chair, his gaze hooded as he regarded me across the table, coffee finally poured but ignored. “But we’re grown men now. We can’t… we can’t just listen to the wolf in us like that now.”
“Wolf in you, maybe,” I replied, my tone unintentionally tart. “Mine’s defective.” I added too much sugar to my coffee, needing something to do with my hands under his intense stare. I was exposed—bare and open in front of him in ways that had nothing to do with sex.
“We’re coming back around to this again,” he muttered, shaking his head.
A spark burst to life in my blood, igniting my temper. I dropped my spoon on the saucer, unable to keep from glaring at him. “Don’t belittle me,” I snarled. “You know what this has done to me, to my life. Hell, we just talked about this not an hour ago!”
“We touched on it,” he growled. “And you sounded like you’d made peace with how you are.”
Words and anger choked me. No, not anger, I realized as the heat crept down my spine and sweat slicked my neck. Embarrassment. Shame. The old wounds of being different. Too weird for the humans, too weird for the weres. Not being able to tell anyone what the hell was going on in my head, all day every day, since my earliest memories.
I closed my eyes and let my chin drop, exhaustion creeping in on me. “It’s impossible to make peace with it when it informs every single moment of my day, Ethan. I’m not like you—”
“Yeah, we’ve covered that. Ad nauseum.”
“Look at you, college boy,” I teased without mirth. “But I don’t think you get it. It’s not just a neat trick, being able to smell that were on the Raymonds or knowing how fucking turned on you are when I bite your neck. All day, every day, I am aware. My brain is constantly spitting out red alerts, telling me I’m in danger. Any predator in a thousand yards loves me. I stink like fear to them. Like easy prey.”
“No, you don’t,” he snapped, smacking one hand down on the table. “You don’t!”
“Not to you!” I was shouting. The Hudsons could probably hear me, I realized, but I couldn’t stop now that the floodgate was opening. “Do you know how many werewolves live in the Baltimore area? Including the suburbs? Twenty-two. I met each and every one of them within a week of arriving. Do you know how many places there are to hide in the greater Baltimore area where a werewolf can’t find you?”
Ethan’s expression grew closed off, carefully blank. “None.”
“None,” I repeated.
I could taste those memories, smell the dry dust and wet mold of the places I tried to hole up to avoid the three small clans in Baltimore. They were aggressive, more than Ethan’s clan had been. The difference between the two was stark. Where the Stones and the other weres in Belmarais had been reserved but trying to interact with humans, the clan in Baltimore gave zero fucks about how humans perceived them. They were violent, indulged in vices that would’ve killed most humans, horded wealth and power. I could never prove they’d killed anyone, but the way they hunted me down night after night, slowly appearing in my daytime life as well… I had to leave the city before I found out for sure.
“Ask me how many weres live in Denver. Or Houston. Or Charleston.”
Every part of me ached to run, to flee from the predator at my table. Wolfwolfwolf! It was starting to drown out all coherent thought, making my breath sharp and hard. My heart raced, my pulse thumping all the way down in my palms and the soles of my feet. I wanted to climb out of my skin, turn myself in knots just to get away from Ethan, and he wasn’t doing a damned thing but looking at me with that blank, guarded face.
“I didn’t even have to try,” I spat. “They would find me within a day, maybe two, of arriving. It’s a fucking miracle I finished college. Hell, it’s a miracle I made it back here without one of them deciding I was too tempting after all.”
Ethan pushed himself up hard enough to make the table skid a few inches, his chair tumbling backward and clattering to the floor. “I never heard a damned word about this. Why didn’t I hear, goddammit?”
“Ask your father. Isn’t he the one in charge? Isn’t he the one who tells y’all all the pack news and shit?” It felt like I was experiencing full body whip lash as I dropped from runrunrunrunrun to freeze, the urge to flee transmuting into the need to hold as still as possible, the stalking wolf in my kitchen far too close to chance a break for safety.
Ethan stopped mid-stride. He raked his hands through his hair, the gesture becoming familiar now, and shook his head. “Dad’s been in the home for two years now,” he said, voice so low I could barely hear him. “Had a stroke and just… didn’t come back from it.”
“Shit, Ethan.” I stood but hesitated. I wanted to go to him; he and his dad had been close, or at least as close as the prickly old man would let them be. I settled for a weirdly friendly pat on the shoulder and a muttered, “I’m so sorry.” With almost anyone else I knew, I’d have gone in for the hug and offered a compassionate ear, but I was pretty certain Ethan would have just gone stiff and brushed it off—his father brought that out in him, even if the old man wasn’t in the vicinity.
“I’m in charge of the clan now,” he said, slightly louder but still soft and tired. “And I haven’t heard a damned thing about you in years. Not from Dad, not from the other clans. Why is that?” He turned to face me then, expression grim. “Why wouldn’t they want me to know?”
I shook my head. “Ethan…”
“No. I’m not saying it’s your fault. But something is wrong. Really fucking wrong. Someone like you on the loose? And the other clans knowing? Not just knowing but actively pursuing you?”
“Pursuing? That’s definitely one way of putting it…”
“Landry, did any of them hurt you?”
The question was so plaintive, so unexpected, I recoiled a bit. “You mean like hit me or something? No. Just scared the hell out of me more than once. Well, except this one were in Little Rock. I was in a gas station on my way back to Dallas a year or so ago. She came out of the stock room, saw me, and damn near came over the counter to corner me and tell me to fuck off out of the city. She said she’d kill me if she saw me again.” I held out my right arm and pushed back my sleeve. “She got me on the arm, a scratch but deep enough to scar.”
Ethan grabbed my arm and scowled down at the faint pink mark. “No bites, though?”
“I thought you told me it didn’t work like that,” I reminded him. “It’s inherited, not transmitted.”
“Doesn’t stop some weres from trying.” He let go of me but didn’t step back. “Or some humans.”
“What? Wait, other humans know about y’all? I thought that was the biggest deal: no one who isn’t were knows you’re were. Are there just like a million of us who know and have to act like we don’t know, and we could all be in the same support group right now if we just had each other’s contact info or something?”
Ethan’s lips pressed into an almost-smile before his expression fell again. “Since the earliest part of our history, there have been humans who know about us. How do you think we keep going? We can’t all have kids with other weres, or the family trees would stop forking pretty damn quick. Some of us reproduce with regular humans. They’re sworn to secrecy.”
“Like a ceremony or something?” I couldn’t help it; I laughed. “Oh my God, is there a secret handshake?”
“Fuck’s sake, Landry,” he growled, exasperated, but his eyes crinkled. He wasn’t that mad at me yet. “Focus!”
“I’m trying, but you’re making it difficult, because all I can think of now is some organization like the Boy Scouts but for humans who know about werewolves where we all meet up once a week to have a potluck and talk about near misses.”
That was the mood killer right there. “Near misses? How many have you had, Landry?”
I stepped away then. Not far, less than a foot, but it did something to the tension between us, twisted it from a softening sort of awareness back to frustration, nearly to anger.
“Enough to know that whatever is wrong with me, whatever made me like this, is probably going to get me killed one day. Belmarais is safe because even though it’s been so long, I know your clan aren’t going to start hunting humans down. Never once in the entire time I lived here before college was there anything that would lead me to believe weres were truly hunting ordinary humans.”
“Until the Raymonds,” he murmured. “If they were killed by a were.”
“They were,” I said fiercely. “I have no doubt in my mind. If there’s one thing my little problem is good for, it’s sussing out weres. And the smell was all over them.” I blew out a harsh breath, the scent-memory threatening to gag me. “And that were was here earlier, before I got home.” There we are. Full circle. “And it’s not,” I added, “one of yours. Not unless you’ve got some new people in your clan that I haven’t met.”
“No, just… just us still. Everyone you knew back then.”
“Then it definitely wasn’t one of y’all. None of you smell like that. Whoever killed the Raymonds smelled wrong. Like if were scents could go bad.” Just thinking about it made the sense memory grow stronger. The sour-bitter-wrong stench was thick in my nose, pouring down my throat. “Ugh, I need some water or something. Just a sec.” I made it only a few feet before Ethan’s hand shot out to grab me. “Hey!”
“Shhh.” His grip was tight to the point of pain. Sharp points pressed against my bicep. Shit—he was changing or close to it. Fuck fuck fuck!
Slowly, I turned my head, hoping he wasn’t on the verge of losing all control. It was a perilous moment, those first few seconds after a were shifted when their brains were muddled, and human was vying for control over wolf. If he was close, I might be royally fucked. I risked a glance up at his face and saw his eyes were golden, the pupils wide. Nostrils flaring, he breathed in deeply, grasp on my arm growing even tighter.
“Ethan,” I said as softly as I could manage, “you’re hurting me. Stop. Please.”
Slowly, his grip relaxed, but he didn’t release me entirely. “Someone’s outside,” he murmured. “Were.”
The thought that it might be Waltrip crossed my mind, but I discounted it quickly. Just because Ethan decided to be a stalker and come see me didn’t mean Waltrip would, I reasoned. Then again, he was a creepy asshole, so… maybe?
I tried to ease away from Ethan’s grasp, but he kept his fingers curled around my arm. “It’s probably just the were from town the other day,” I murmured, my tone as calm and even as I could make it. “His name’s Oliver Waltrip. He’s a PI. He came to my work the other day and wanted to arrange a meeting about the Raymonds.” I decided discretion was the better part of not pissing off the werewolf in my kitchen and left out the details about the parking lot encounter with Waltrip. Still, it didn’t help.
“What?” Ethan breathed, voice thick and tinged with a growl. “He’s still in the area? I had Tyler and Rosie look everywhere and not one damn trace of the weres you described turned up. We thought they were up from one of the other cities nearby…”
He trailed off and sniffed the air again. “Stay inside, Landry. Fucking hell. Just… stay inside and lock the doors.” Ethan let me go, pushing past me in a blur of motion. My back door slammed, and I lurched toward it, slamming the bolt home. The only thing my flimsy wooden door would do against a determined were was buy me a few seconds while they broke it down, but a few seconds could make all the difference. I was kidding myself, but it was all I had.
The smell was thick in the air; it hadn’t been my sense memory, I realized, but actual scent. The were that had been all over the Raymonds was outside my house, close enough for their stink to get through the minute crevices and cracks, close enough for Ethan to finally pick up on it. I knew I should get away from the door, go find something to defend myself with, but I was frozen in place.
The faintest sounds came from outside: thumps as something hit the side of the house, the clatter of a garbage can lid falling, a short bark, all muffled by the house and shrubs outside. It felt like an hour but was likely just a few minutes before a hard knock fell on my front door. “It’s me,” Ethan boomed.
Ethan shoved the door open the second I unlocked it. He shouldered me aside and reset the lock in the knob as well as the deadbolt. Eyes still shining gold, he physically set me to one side, picking me up with his hands at my ribs, before prowling through my house. “Um, hello?” I started to take a step after him, the feeling of my personal space being invaded somewhere between embarrassment and annoyance, but he snapped out a growl and disappeared into the dark recesses of my house’s only hallway. “You can seriously just turn on the hall light and see everything,” I called. No response. “Why am I standing here?” I muttered.
“Because I asked you to,” he called from the back of the house.
“Sure, that’s the part you hear? And you didn’t ask. You shoved.”
“I carried,” Ethan retorted, striding back down the hall toward me. He stopped in the middle of my small living room and looked, for just a moment, comical among my belongings. He had always been tall, but the years had filled him out and made him, if I looked at him just right, seem giant. More than.
The moment flickered and faded, leaving me staring not at a larger than life were next to my sofa but a frustrated, visibly tired Ethan with wild eyes and fists clenched at his side till his knuckles where white.
“Right. So. I already know you’re going to fight me on this, but you’re not staying here tonight.”
I’d already decided that for myself as soon as I realized the murderous were had returned. But hey, I’d throw Ethan a bone and pretend like I was going along with his idea. “Okay.”
He jerked, blinked, and cocked his head. Nice doggy… “Okay?”
“I’m stubborn, not stupid.” I was also shaking, hoping he wouldn’t notice, and trying not to give in to the urge to just climb him like a tree and let him hide me from whatever the fuck was just outside my house. Instead, I made myself stand straight and shouldered past him, maybe bumping him a little on purpose, and headed for my bedroom. “I’m assuming I’m allowed to pack. How long should I plan to be gone?”
“Uh, let’s start with the weekend,” he said, sounding like he was still standing in the living room.
“Did you at least get a look at the were? I’m assuming they got away. No offense. I just figure that otherwise we wouldn’t be just standing here talking while I pack my bags.” I grabbed handfuls of clothes from my drawers, adding in a few work shirts and some slacks at the last moment. “Hello?”
“Just checking the windows,” Ethan said, startling me. He’d come down the hall so quietly, his appearance in my doorway went unnoticed until he spoke. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to set you off.”
“I know.” My voice shook on the words, and I knew he could smell the nervous energy roiling off me. Something like fear, adrenaline maybe. “The were?” I prompted, tucking the book on my bedside table into the side pocket of my bag.
Ethan hesitated, worrying his lower lip for a moment as he looked up at me from beneath lowered lashes. “That’s the thing.” He sighed after a moment. “I could smell them, but I didn’t see anything out there.”