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As dark as it had been inside my head, sunlight sparked bright around me. The forest behind Luke’s duplex butted up against the same park I’d run in previously. By the time Luke caught up, I’d lost myself to the wild.
Breezes ruffled my fur. Birdsong overwhelmed distant traffic. The air smelled of honeysuckle while Luke was spicy and entirely male.
He drew me deeper beneath tree shadows, cautious at first then full of joy as I kept pace with him. We raced and romped, losing track of the past and the future in favor of the present. All I knew was that I needed to exert myself to recharge my pelt. What had once been a chore now turned into breathtaking joy.
Together, we chased a rabbit with no intention of catching it. Startled a doe and watched as she leapt, white tail blazing and legs twice as long as they had appeared at rest.
A poodle yipped from a nearby trail and Luke dropped to his belly to stalk the miniature opponent. We slid south, into a ravine and up the other side. The dog had quieted, but the reek of flea shampoo pinpointed its location. Luke scrambled up the side of a boulder, but I found myself turning in the opposite direction instead.
Because something was tugging at me. Almost like a finger stroking across my fur. Raising the hairs in the wrong direction...until I turned and turned and...there.
Following the tiny trickle of directional impulse, my ears pricked as a little girl’s sing-song chant called from the other side of a vast, spreading oak. “You are my best friend,” she caroled.
I stuck my head around the oak’s trunk, curious. The girl sat at the base of a tremendous cliff, the overhang arcing over her head to shade the ground into barren sandiness. Someone much older had strung a rope over a tree branch, threaded the line through a foot-long board, then tied a knot at the bottom. But the swing dangled empty while the child perched beside it. She was speaking to one member of the plastic menagerie scattered across the sand.
“And you are my best friend,” she answered herself, voice pitched even higher. She wriggled the doll jerkily with childish fingers, spread its arms wide so it gave her neck a poky hug.
The scene was cute...and lonely. At that age, there’d always been at least one member of my family so close I could reach out and touch them. It was strange to imagine a doll being this child’s closest companion.
Perhaps that’s why I sat there, peering at the child rather than turning around to follow Luke and his poodle. I watched as something silver and shiny fell from the girl’s free hand to settle around the doll’s neck. The chain was doubled up to prevent it from puddling at the feet of the toy human. Still, I could see what hung from the links.
Half of a silver wolf paw. B on the curved left side, half of an F on the jagged right side.
This adorable munchkin was the one responsible for rifling through my clothes.
***
PERHAPS ONE OF THE skinless would have dove in to retrieve the stolen possession. Or maybe not. Because as I backed away, my thoughts were interrupted by Luke and the poodle, racing into the forest together. No, not together—the mighty wolf was fleeing from the miniature poodle’s tiny teeth.
They came around the bend and caught sight of me at the same moment. Luke’s tongue lolled in greeting. The poodle froze, realizing its enemies had doubled. Still, the midget bristled and stood his ground.
For half a moment, we were all silent. Then the poodle began yapping furiously, barks interspersed with curly-headed snarls. Standing up to wolves was the highlight of the animal’s year, that much was evident. Especially when Luke backed away as if terrified. It was several seconds before the demanding calls of the poodle’s master drew the beast back into the trees.
Only then did Luke snort with amusement. His eyes twinkled. He’d been enjoying himself.
For my part, I was stuck between family and honor. My necklace was a promise I’d made to my twin. But I couldn’t very well snatch a dollar-store necklace out of the hands of an eight-year-old child.
Blinking against scratchiness in my eyeballs, I noted that shadows were lengthening. Katydids had begun their evening chorus. The moon was barely visible in the darkening sky.
My pelt was charged. Remaining wolf now was a pleasure, not a duty.
I left without a single backward glance at the child, sprinting back the way I’d come.
***
AN HOUR LATER, LUKE’S voice curled around me, drawing my gaze away from my sleeping cousin. “When I was a kid, I made a mistake.”
Bastion slept easier than previously beneath my pelt. But the receding energy hadn’t left me in a tsunami of pain, and Bastion hadn’t woken. No wonder I latched onto Luke’s conversational gambit like a flotation ring thrown to a swimmer caught in a riptide.
“A mistake?”
“A mistake.” He sank down on the opposite side of the bed, so we could still watch Bastion while speaking over my cousin’s motionless body. Somehow, Luke seemed to know that I needed to hear about someone else’s life rather than rethinking all the choices I could have made differently in mine.
“My father was one of those stereotypical alpha assholes,” Luke continued. “Domineering. Dictatorial. He solved his problems using his fists.”
I couldn’t help snorting ever so softly. That was exactly the stereotype I’d been told about the skinless as a child. Luke’s eyes crinkled, as if he could hear me making the comparison. Then he shrugged and continued with his tale.
It was simple when it came right down to it. Luke was raised with a brother as close as a twin. One year older, but with a much hotter head.
“When he was eighteen and I was seventeen, Gabriel got sick of Dad’s bullshit. He saw the pack as his inheritance. Couldn’t stand watching our father run it into the ground.”
I winced. I had a feeling I knew where this was going. “So he challenged your father.”
That wasn’t how woelfin families managed leadership. Far from it. Instead, our youngsters moved out of their family home with parental blessing when they started craving independence. Cousins split apart to start their own groupings when one set of twins chose a matched set of mates.
We definitely didn’t challenge each other for supremacy. We didn’t fight each other to the death.
Skinless, on the other hand, were bloodthirsty. Or, some of them were. I had a hard time matching up my understanding of the skinless with the man sitting on the other side of Bastion’s sick bed.
“I knew it was going to happen.” Luke’s gaze flew inward and I got the impression he’d lost track of the present as he delved into ancient history.
Or perhaps not. Bastion shifted uncomfortably, knocking the pillow out from under him, and Luke paused long enough to lift my cousin’s shoulders and tuck the soft support back underneath his head.
I ran my fingers through Bastion’s hair and he soothed back into stillness. “How could you know what was going to happen?” I asked once it was clear my cousin was as well as he could be.
Luke shrugged. “Gabriel was my brother. He was pissed and I heard about it. Frequently. Still, I thought he understood that challenging our father was equivalent to painting a target on his own back.”
“What happened?”
“Dad laughed in his face...then he killed him. Ripped his own son to pieces in front of the entire pack.”
I leaned all the way across Bastion so I could peer up into Luke’s gaze where it bored into the blanket. From the outside, fault so obviously lay with the father. But Luke, I could tell, still believed he was the one who shouldered responsibility.
“You blame yourself, but you shouldn’t. You were only a kid.” My words weren’t getting through to him, so I tried a question. “What did you do afterwards?”
“Left the pack. Spent a decade training hot-headed youngsters so they wouldn’t get themselves killed the way Gabriel did.”
“Sounds like you made up for your mistake and then some.”
The air-conditioner pushed cool air into the bedroom. Luke raised one eyebrow as he stared directly at me. “Like you made up for your mistake? Putting your sister and cousin through school? Working long hours so they could pursue their dreams?”
My throat tightened so hard I raised a hand to massage it. For a moment, I couldn’t even hear what Luke was saying. Instead, my mind was racing, trying to understand why Justice would have shared our woelfin nature with someone he was ready to punch earlier in the day.
“My mistake?” I was barely able to force the words out.
Luke shrugged. “Your cousin was vague.” Still, he glanced sideways at my pelt, spread atop Bastion. He didn’t know, but he was beginning to make guesses.
And that, from one of the skinless, was more dangerous than juggling a cocked and loaded gun.
“I think...” I started, trying to figure out how to send away someone who was helping my family entirely altruistically.
“Listen to the hottie.” Bastion’s voice was low and scratchy. “It’s time to stop beating yourself up and start living a little.”
And, just like that, running for the hills was forgotten. My favorite cousin was finally awake.