2. Tail as Old as Time
Tail as Old as Time
Fifteen Years Earlier
Cian
“You’re so short for a werewolf!”
Those were Mash Cassidy’s first words to me. I’d barely crossed the threshold of my halls—Mum and Dad in tow—when the guy who would become my closest friend leapt to his feet and peered down . . . and down . . . and down at me.
“That’s because I’m not a werewolf. I’m a shifter,” I replied.
“Huh. Of course . . . smooth ears,” Mash said. His parents had already left, or perhaps never accompanied him in the first place. “I thought they housed species together.”
I did too, but I’d temporarily forgotten how to speak. I’d also forgotten to pay attention to what my new home for the next year looked like, because Mash Cassidy was everything adolescent Cian had been dreaming about since he’d figured out he was gay.
Mash was tall—so fucking tall—and had muscles everywhere. He had blonde hair that fell down to his shoulders in messy waves, emerald-green eyes, and his face was frankly ludicrous. He had dimples, three of them including one on his chin, cheekbones that would slice my finger open, and the straightest, most model-perfect nose. He wore board shorts and a pink and white tie-dye workout vest. He had monumental amounts of armpit fur, and was sweaty and smelly.
But instead of repulsing me, it did . . . other things to me. Things that definitely shouldn’t have been happening in front of my parents.
“I’m Mash, by the way.” He leaned closer, took my hand in his, and pumped his fist. Like me, he’d be nineteen at most, but he was already so much more of a man. “You must be Cian.” He pronounced it with a soft C and a Y. Like the colour cyan. Sigh-an.
“It’s Cian,” I corrected. “Like key . . . you know?” I mimed putting a key into a door, twisting it.
Of course Mash would have read my name on the housing assignation letter. It was probably the first time he’d ever seen it, so how would he have known it was a hard C?
I wasn’t annoyed at his mistake. I realised this guy could spit in my mouth and I wouldn’t be mad.
I needed to stop thinking those thoughts in front of my folks.
The assignation letters had stated only our new roommates’ names, their chosen degrees, and their hometowns. Mash was from Howling Pines. Never heard of it. Must be some small Mythic Realm town. So, not a city boy like me, then. I’d also learned he was to study bioscience, which was great—another nerd, though I’d picked computer sciences.
Mash was anything but the small-town science geek I’d been expecting, though.
“Cian, awesome!” he boomed back at me, correctly this time, then he turned to my parents. “You must be Mr and Mrs Barker?”
My father frowned at him, but it was his polite frown. The one he used when he was deliberately keeping his face neutral. “I am. Call me Carl. And this is my wife, Olive.” He shook Mash’s hand, and I caught another whiff of Mash’s scent.
Either he’d only recently hit the gym or he’d moved all his boxes from his car to the dorm on his own. He smelled like sweat, and weed, and something faintly soapy . . . coconutty.
Again, I should have felt violated by the intrusion, but all it did was chub up my dick. Damn. And I was supposed to live with this guy for at least the next year?
“Are your parents here?” Dad asked, looking around the room at all of Mash’s boxes and bags.
“My sister dropped me off, but my mam can’t leave the reserve.”
“Reserve?”
“Nature reserve. We’re sort of game farmers.”
Mum turned to Dad. She rolled her tongue over her bottom lip. “Farmers, Carl. Farmers.”
The pair shared a look.
Mum’s was all, I can’t believe our son will be living with a farmer for his first year of uni.
And Dad’s was, don’t worry, we’ll figure something out later. We could write to the student housing association, or the dean, or fuck it, I’ll buy him his own apartment here in Remy. I could see the cogs whirring inside his mind. Could practically hear them clunking about.
Mash watched my parents’ silent exchange, his face impassive. I prayed for a sinkhole to appear in the middle of my new halls and swallow me whole—maybe it could take this absolute god of a werewolf with me. I wouldn’t object.
I directed my gaze to my boots until, out the corner of my eye, I caught Mash staring at me. My stomach flipped, and he winked. He winked!
“Let’s bring Ci’s boxes upstairs, and then we’ll all go for dinner,” Mum said.
“I’ll help.” Mash was already leading us out of the halls. “I’m actually really strong.”
I followed him out the door.
Behind my back, Mum whispered, “Well, I’m not about to let the poor boy starve.”
Dad said, “Did you see the size of him, Liv? The lad’s not going hungry, that’s for sure.”
Mash made light work of all my uni things, including my three crates of books which he carried all at once by himself. He delivered them to my new bedroom.
“I got here first, so I took the biggest room,” he said. “Snoozers losers.” He smiled at me, and I swear an invisible laser beam shot from his eyeballs and began tugging directly on my heart . . . and my dick.
Our dorm was a small two-bedroomed apartment in a block of forty identical student apartments. Out of ten levels, ours was on the eighth. We had a bedroom each, a compact open-plan living-dining-kitchen area, and a shared bathroom.
An entire year, just Mash Cassidy and me in this cosy apartment.
I blew out a breath. Fuck, I was in trouble.
When we finished bringing my stuff up from Mum and Dad’s car, Mash was even sweatier than before, his scent intoxicating. I couldn’t wait to be alone in my room so I could relieve some of the tension jabbing painfully against the fly of my jeans. But first, we had to get through dinner.
“Are you changing before we go to The Wild Phoenix?” Dad asked Mash, one eyebrow disappearing into his hairline.
Mash looked down at his attire. “Is it a fancy place? Only I don’t have any fancy clothes.” Even his canvas trainers had holes in them.
“I’ll tell you what,” Mum said over the top of everyone. “Here’s fifty silvers. You boys get a pizza tonight, celebrate your first night together, and Dad and I will head into town for some supper.” She pushed a wedge of notes into my hand—way more than fifty silvers, but like hell was I going to refuse the money.
“I don’t think your folks like me much,” Mash said, once Mum and Dad had left and we’d ordered pizza. Meat feast for Mash, and caramelised red onion and goat’s cheese for me.
“I’m just now realising my parents might be snobs,” I said. Although that wasn’t strictly true. Perhaps I was making excuses. “So, you grew up on a farm?”
I’d already unpacked my groceries, so I took two beers from the fridge.
“I mean, we’re game farmers, but it’s not technically a farm. It’s actually eight hundred and fifty acres of forest. We manage the lands and the deer population. There’s also wild turkey and pheasants. We’re more like rangers, I guess. But we do sell the meat. It’s really good. You eat meat?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re from Bordalis?” Mash asked.
“Yeah, Old Town.”
He let out a low whistle. “No wonder Daddy doesn’t want you rubbing shoulders with me.”
“Sorry about him.”
“’Sfine. I don’t need his approval. Not like I’m fucking you, is it?”
I almost choked on my beer. Luckily, I was saved by the buzzer. The pizza delivery guy, thank gods. I opened the door, accepted the pizza, tipped the driver.
“Speaking of fucking,” Mash said, the second I got back into our flat. I pointedly did not look at him. “I’m probably gonna be bringing a few girls back now and then. Is that gonna be a problem?”
“No, I guess not. It’s your flat too.” I tried to hide the sudden sinking sensation. He was straight. The most perfect man I’d ever laid eyes on was straight.
Of course he was straight.
“Neat.” Who said neat? Urgh.
“What about you?” he asked.
“What about me?”
“You bringing girls back or . . .”
“Oh, right. No, probably not. I’m gay.”
Mash was silent for a few seconds. “Sweet. At least we’ll never be arguing over the same chick.”
“I honestly can’t imagine that’s a fight I’d ever win.”
He side-eyed me, a smile fattening his cheeks, his dimples popping. Gods, how was anyone supposed to resist that face?
Straight.
“I grew up around women. My alpha is a woman—my nana, actually—and most of the pack betas are women too, including my mam. Plus, I have three sisters. I just get women, and I’m like really good with them.”
“Your grandmother is your alpha?” I asked, immediately regretting how awkward and weird I sounded. I knew very little about werewolf culture—about packs, and alphas, and betas, and their customs and traditions. I only knew that those customs and traditions were highly regarded, often strictly observed, and not a place for outsiders—non-werefolk—to poke their noses in. I hoped he wasn’t offended, but at the same time, I needed to binge this man.
“Yep, it used to be my dad, but he died when I was three. Accident. Farm machinery. I don’t remember him, but people tell me I look like him. The alpha role automatically went back to my nana.”
“Not your mum? Or any aunts or uncles?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s fucking weird. The lines of succession don’t follow birth order or rank or anything like they do with humans. It feels so random at times. The call of the alpha picks whoever it wants to be next, and that’s it. Nobody gets any say. Actually, I’m—”
He cut himself off before he could finish whatever it was he’d planned on saying. I couldn’t think of anything to add to the conversation, so I nodded.
“So . . . you can shift whenever you want?” Mash said, probably to fill the lull. “That must be pretty cool.”
“Yeah, I guess. I never really thought about it before. I don’t shift that often, though.” These days only when I was completely alone, because in wolf form I could suck myself off. No other reason. Hadn’t shifted in a public space for a couple of years. “You can only shift on the full moon?”
Mash nodded. “Literally one night a month. And I can never seem to remember much, but I get massive.”
“You’re huge anyway,” I said, and I found myself blushing. Oh, come on, Ci.
“How big do you get? Shift for me now.”
I paused, caught off guard for a second. “Then I’d have to get naked.”
He shrugged. I guessed Mash wasn’t the type to have ever had insecurities. I bet he didn’t even know the definition of the word. The guy probably came out of the womb six feet tall with muscles on muscles.
“I can shift part way, though. Watch,” I said. I concentrated hard and shifted just enough to let my ears transform like a were’s, and for my fluffy tail to appear. I wiggled it free from the seat of my jeans.
“Hey, that’s pretty cool.” Mash sat upright on the couch, his pizza box shunted dangerously close to the edge of his knees. “You look were. And your fur is grey. I thought it’d be black like your hair.”
I looked at the fur on my tail—dark grey, like gunmetal grey. I shifted back to my human form.
I’d discovered I could shift part way when I was a kid, but keeping it in the in-between stages like this—so I resembled a werewolf—was super uncomfortable. Like trying to stop your pee mid-flow. It wanted to be all or nothing, not halfway.
“Mine’s the exact same shade as my hair,” he said.
So . . . beautiful, then. The colour of the sun-warmed sand.
“Tell me about your farm—uh, reserve. Where is it?” I asked.
“Howling Pines? East Mythic Realms, between Winterlands and Gwindur. In Lykos. Werewolf country.”
Of course.
“What do you do there?”
Mash laughed. “Mostly we just run around the forests reinforcing the boundaries because the neighbouring packs can get a little overzealous with their marking. We keep the deer population under control, and we go to the market and sell the meat. My sister’s been talking about setting up a farm shop on site, but there’s not much foot traffic out that way, so there’s no point. I look after the trees too. Fell the dying ones before they fall and damage the others . . . make sure the diseases are kept at bay. I’m actually really good at that. I’ve got like tree sixth sense or some shit.”
“A stick sense?”
“Fucking hell, that’s bad.” Mash polished off the last bite of his pizza and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “I’m stealing that. Stick sense.”
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
“Anything for you, roomie.”
“Is Mash your actual name, or is it a nickname, or short for anything?” It was one of the oddest names I’d ever heard, but then, I grew up in a gated community with predominantly human neighbours.
“It’s short for Mashew.” He looked at me and fake-grimaced through his smile. “Not joking. It was meant to be Mathew, but my dad screwed up and spelled it wrong on my birth certificate. My full name is Mashew Keyland Cassidy.” He did a double thumbs up.
“So, Mash? Not Mas or M or I dunno, literally anything else?”
He laughed, his face pulling into a wide, mesmeric grin. “When I was a baby, I really loved mash potatoes, apparently. It just kinda stuck.”
I’d always been envious of people who were so freely able to poke fun at themselves. It wasn’t how I’d been brought up—it wasn’t proper—and it usually made me uncomfortable. Like sitting against the wall at a party watching everyone else have fun but not knowing how to join in myself.
That wasn’t the way with Mash. I didn’t feel excluded from his fun. It was more like being sucked in by his force field. He made it easy to feel included in his joy.
“What’s your middle name?” he asked.
“Michael James,” I replied.
“Wow, that’s really fucking boring.”
I snorted out my laughter. “Yes.”
“Better just stick with Cian or—wait, I’m gonna call you Bangers.”
“What? Why?” I said, schooling my features into something a little less disgusted.
“Bangers and Mash! Ultimate pairing! Absolute peak culinary . . . awesomeness. Just add gravy. Can’t go wrong, mate.”
I hated it—my new nickname—but I kept that part to myself.
“I’ve never eaten bangers and mash.” My parents would probably have had coronaries if Portman, the chef they paid over a hundred thousand silvers a year for, served something as everyday as sausages and mashed potato.
“It’s my favourite. I’ll cook it for you tomorrow,” he said.
“We’ll cook it together. I love cooking, and I want to check out all the food shops. I saw this place online near here; it’s called The Market. Looks like this huge undercover marketplace that sells fish and meat and fruit and veg and spices and all sorts. You can teach me how to make it.”
Mash watched me with a curious expression on his face, his head tilted gently to the side. “I think it might be you teaching me. So, you enjoy cooking?”
“I love it. Dunno, I just feel so . . . relaxed around food.”
“You never wanted to be a chef?”
“Oh, gods, my parents would pitch a fit. They’re both barristers and they wanted me to go into law. It was a fight just to get them to agree to computer science. I had to give them a fucking presentation—with slides!—about how the future wealth of the Eight and a Half Kingdoms lies within tech start-ups.”
Mash pulled a face. “Yeesh.”
“Yeah.” I shrugged. It was what it was. “What about you? How come bioscience?” He was the last person on the planet I’d imagine studying science of any kind.
“I love trees.” Right, he’d already said that. Pay attention, Ci. Stop fucking staring at his forearms. “Thinking of maybe becoming a tree surgeon one day. You know, if I can get out of my . . .” He trailed off. I didn’t press for more. “For a guy who loves to cook, you sure are skinny.”
“Shifter metabolism,” I said. Mash didn’t need to know how self-conscious I was about my body. “And you’re pretty hench for an eighteen-year-old . . . unless you skipped a year or seven?”
Mash flexed his biceps in a mini gun-show style. Don’t gawp, Ci. “Nineteen, actually, it was my birthday last week.”
“No way! It was my birthday last week too. On the sixteenth.”
“Mine was the fifteenth. I’m a day older than you. That’s bananas. Did you do anything nice for your birthday? I had bangers and mash for my birthday tea, and then we went to the cinema to watch Ruff and Tumble . It’s my second—no, third favourite movie. The projectionist put it on especially for me.”
“It’s a romantic comedy?” I said, slightly taken aback that this six-foot-six giant muscular werewolf guy had admitted his third favourite movie was one whose target demographic was human women. Most guys I knew wouldn’t even confess to watching it, let alone claiming it as a third favourite.
Mash hefted a shoulder, apparently not remotely concerned at the implications for his masculinity. Though it was different, wasn’t it? For a guy like Mash—who was essentially action-figure perfect—to like rom coms, compared with a skinny, pale, nerdy guy like me. Not that I liked rom coms anyway, but it would be nice to have the freedom to.
“For my birthday, we went to this restaurant my parents like in Bordalis, and then to a preview at an art gallery their friend owns. It was okay . . . the art was nice, and I got off with the gallery owner’s son. But that was in July because they both had separate trials last week.”
“Oh,” Mash said. The expression on his face and his deliverance of the word let me know he didn’t approve. “What did you do on your actual birthday?”
“Nothing really.” Watched porn, had a wank, played on my FaeStation. “Mum and Dad were both working late. I hardly saw them.”
“Well, tomorrow we’re gonna pretend like it’s your birthday again, and we’ll eat bangers and mash, and you have to wear the birthday crown.”
“The birthday crown?”
“Yep, it’s like fabric or something. Everyone in my pack has to wear the birthday crown on their birthday, all day, even my alpha.”
I shook my head. “No, that’s not necess—”
“Tough shit, Bangers. You’re gonna wear the fucking crown, and we’re gonna do all the crap you wanna do all day. So, what do you wanna do?”
I thought about it for a second. I didn’t like fuss, and I really didn’t want to wear a crown, especially in public, but this man—whose body more closely resembled that of a classical marble sculpture than a living, breathing person—wanted to treat me like a king all day. Yeah, I could be on board with that.
I could be so fucking on board with that.
“Go to The Market and get supplies, and then come back here and hang out with you.” For the rest of eternity.
“Done!” Mash held his hand out for me to shake. I took it, and ignored the lightning heat now coursing through my veins. “Right, I’m gonna find some shit to make a crown from.” He pushed to his feet and looked around the open-plan space. “Tin foil and card?”
He didn’t wait for me to answer.