11. My, What Big Ears You Have, Grandma!
My, What Big Ears You Have, Grandma!
Present Day
Cian
On the surface, Mash’s grandmother—the pack’s alpha—could have been anyone’s grandmother. Just a regular old lady. Wrinkled white skin, short grey curls, kind blue eyes, and furry silver ears and tail. She wore an elasticated tent-style skirt and a floral purple and pink blouse with oversized buttons.
“You said your mate was a she,” she said, those blue eyes of hers sliding from kind to scrutinous.
“Did I?” Mash said, laughing. “I don’t think so, Nana. It was a terrible phone connection. It’s Ci, you remember Ci?”
She did that sassy grandmother, “Mmm hmm,” and raised a single brow. Damn, we were already getting foiled. I didn’t expect to be rumbled this quickly.
“Hi . . .” I said, racing forward to shake her hand. I’d forgotten to ask Mash what the protocol was for meeting the alpha. Did I shake her hand, did I bow, let her pat my head? I couldn’t remember from the last time I’d met her . . . It had been ten years ago. And what did I address her as? She must have a name, but my mind was blanking. Did I call her Alpha or Nana, or did it even matter?
She looked down at my outstretched arm. “Hasn’t my boy told you? There’ll be no hoity-toity handshaking here. We’re huggers.” And she pulled me into a near rib-cracking embrace.
I felt her breathing in the scent of Mash on me, her chest filling with air against my stomach. Maybe she was checking the legitimacy of our bond. I held my own breath, closed my eyes, braced for impact.
She let go of me. “Nice to meet you, Cian. Welcome to the Cassidy pack.”
I breathed my sigh of relief.
“You may call me Alpha when you’re in the presence of others besides your mate, and Rita when it’s only us three present.”
I looked around, saw we were the only people out here. “Thank you, Rita.”
“Where’s Mam? Where’s everyone else?” Mash said, sidling between us and draping his arm around his grandmother. After a second of hesitation, he dropped the other arm around me—which was weird, to say the least. Mash had always been a touchy-feely, hands-on type of guy. Not just awkward bro hug- slaps, but proper cuddles, and right then was the moment he hesitated?
She smiled at me. “You boys are early. We aren’t expecting people until tomorrow. I’ll call your sisters and Zach and Kai over this evening. Your mam’s in the workshop. Come inside, I’ll get the kettle on. We’ll bring your bags through later.”
“Got any biscuits?” Mash said.
It was slightly warmer than the average August. As always, the Mythic Realms were a few degrees cooler than the sweltering summer heat of the city, but the main difference with the city was that every building, every single one of them, had air con.
“Fuck,” I huffed as we emerged from the small entrance hall lined with photos of Mash and his siblings into . . . the belly of hell.
Rita’s kitchen was like a sauna and a charcoal grill had had a baby. A baby that was big enough for werewolves to walk around inside. And then those people decided they would store all their food and drink and tables and chairs in there. A ceiling fan whirred overhead but made almost no dent in the oppressive heat, and in the corner of the room a table-top fan swayed pathetically from side to side. Multi-coloured ribbons fluttered in front of the blade guard, as though the fan was saying don’t blame me, you can see how much I’m trying.
Now I understood why nineteen-year-old Mash arrived at Remy in possession of only shorts and tanks. I wholly regretted my choice of attire—thick cords, a regular black T-shirt with a short-sleeved flannel shirt, and boots. Boots! My feet were already swimming in their own pools.
“Should I take my shoes off?” I asked Rita, praying she was one of those people who were precious about their floors and carpets.
“Nah, you’re good,” she said, waving me off and filling the kettle straight from the tap. No filter jug.
Gods, I was going to die out here.
I whipped off my shirt and folded it over the back of a dining chair. Rita’s eyes swept over the two full sleeves of tattoos on my arms, but she said nothing to me.
“You still just got the one tattoo, Mash?” she asked.
In answer to her question, Mash pulled his vest over his head. I watched as the fabric brushed along his abdominal muscles, his obliques, his pecs. I almost tore my eyes away, as I was so accustomed to doing, but I remembered we were supposed to be pre-mated, and I was allowed to look. Encouraged to. Would have been suspicious if I didn’t.
And so I did. I drank in everything about Mash’s delicious naked torso. His ultra-defined muscles—a werewolf specialty if my time at Howl had taught me anything—the soft triangles of sandy-blonde hair spreading out like an hourglass on his chest and stomach, and the tattoo nestled directly over his heart.
A black paw print, about five inches in diameter, with the letters GBC in the centre.
I had a matching one on my forearm.
Again, Rita watched me without words. I felt under scrutiny and hoped I was passing whatever tests she mentally put me through. Or perhaps she was watching me for signs I was faking the whole werewolf deal. Maybe she was waiting for my ears to twitch back into human ears, or my tail to retract.
“Is that my son I heard pulling up?!” someone yelled. A moment later, Mash’s mum, Kimmy, came jogging into the kitchen. She ran and leapt into his arms the way women did in his rom coms. He caught her easily, despite the fact she wasn’t much shorter than him, then she buried her nose in the crease of his neck and began sniffing him like a dog at the airport searching for drugs.
“Mam,” he said, squeezing her tight. “I’ve missed you.”
I’d never had a guy friend as tactile as Mash. Girls and women, yes, but not dudes. My girlfriends would hug and kiss me, hold my arm as we walked, touch me to show me something, kiss me on the cheek, pull lint off my shoulders, or apply sun lotion without batting an eyelid. But Mash was the only male friend I had who would treat me like that. Before I met his pack, I figured it was just a Mash thing. Because he was so big, and attractive, and unfazed, and so confident in himself and his sexuality he didn’t need to hide behind a front. But when I’d come to his home a decade ago, I’d realised his entire pack was the same—huggers, as Rita put it.
All cuddles and kisses and play fights and noogies and tickles, shoulder rubs, foot rubs, arms around each other. One time, Mash’s brother Zach kissed me on the mouth, and it was his mating we were attending at the time.
I’d never had that with my family. Mum had cuddled me when I was a boy, but that stopped as soon as puberty started—probably my fault as an easily mortified teenager—and Dad shook my hand the day I graduated from my master’s.
It had been the second week of uni when Mash climbed onto the couch with me, hooked his legs over the armrest, and put his head in my lap. Initially I’d frozen, my arms stiff by my sides. I was acutely aware of how close his mouth was to my junk.
“You can rub your fingers through my hair, you know?” he’d said. “I had a . . . stressful day. I’m not really sure science is my thing.”
I’d obeyed. Hesitantly at first, because I was just so damn unsure. But as my fingertips slid into his sandy-blonde locks, and Mash’s tail began tapping the sofa cushions, my own body released some kind of super-addictive happy hormones that told me never to stop. Never stop touching Mash Cassidy. If he wanted his head scratched behind his ears, or his belly rubbed, who was I to say no?
So it didn’t come as a shock that the moment Kimmy let go of her son, she wrapped her arms around me, pulling me into an embrace, squishing her enormous soft chest into me. She smelled like wood shavings and wax polish, and the metal fastenings of her dungarees bit into my abdominal muscles. Her touch was both strong and loving. A mother’s touch. I fought the sudden urge to sob.
Okay, that was weird.
She pulled away from me, but still held me by the tops of my arms. “You’re a he? Rita said Mash was bringing her . Unless—oh, heavens, did I just get your pronouns wrong?”
“No, you didn’t. I use he,” I said.
“Apparently, I was mistaken. Apparently, the phone line was bad,” Rita cut in, hands on her hips, though her tone was soft.
“May I?” Kimmy said to me.
I raised a brow. Shot Mash a silent question.
“She’s asking if she can scent you?”
“Oh. Sure,” I said, finding it odd that she would need consent to sniff me but not to squish her boobs into my face.
Then she pressed her nose into the crease of my neck and began sniffing me the same way she had with Mash. This was new. I had not been sniffed like this the last time I came here. But then, the last time I was here, I wasn’t pretending to be Mash’s lover.
It tickled, her breath and the cool tip of her nose. I held my breath.
I looked over at Mash. His posture was stiff, but he had no other outward signs of nerves. I felt as though, if Rita and Kimmy fell for our half-baked slapdash fakery, it would be plain sailing to convince the rest of his pack. After all, Rita was alpha.
When Kimmy pulled away from me again, she had tears rolling down her cheeks. She licked her lips and pursed them together.
“Oh, my sons,” she said. She kissed me on the forehead and Mash on the cheek. Likely because she couldn’t reach his forehead.
I guessed that meant we’d passed the test. Mash’s shoulders eased. I didn’t let myself think about how she had just inhaled the scent of Mash’s piss on me, though I had to admit, it smelled pretty good.
There must have been some kind of chemical reaction when I’d rubbed it on myself. It went from smelling like pee to smelling like something else altogether. Somehow woodsy, like pine, and sweet like caramel, and spiced like cinnamon. It smelled like those expensive designer colognes I’d sampled at the human department store, but more . . . like it had been made bespoke for me by artisan perfumers.
I wondered what we smelled like to other people, especially Mash’s pack. Whether we smelled just as good to their super-sensitive noses or if they smelled something else. Maybe I’d work up the nerve to ask one of them over the two months I was here.
“Mam, this is Cian,” Mash said, and we all laughed at the belated introduction.
“We’ve met,” Kimmy said. “A few times, actually.”
I swallowed hard. I’d forgotten about the one time Mash’s mum and sister, Clementine, visited us at our second-year halls. I waited for the realisation to catch up with her. Waited for the, “Hang on, you’re a shifter, not a were.”
It didn’t come. She obviously didn’t recall my full human form. “Have you told your pack you’re fated?”
“My pack, uh . . . Not yet,” I said. Thoughts tripped over themselves in my mind. Fuck, I’d have to invent a pack. Mash and I should have discussed that in the car on the way over. Why didn’t we—
Shit, did she say fated? Fated, not mated? Had Mash told her we were fated?
My palms were suddenly sweating. I rubbed them on the knees of my cords. Mash didn’t seem the slightest bit perturbed.
“Well, not to worry. We’re flattered you told us first,” Kimmy said, pulling Mash in for yet another hug, ruffling his hair and laying another series of rapid kisses on his cheek. “But you really ought to let your alpha know. Won’t they be expecting you for Harvest Fest?”
“We actually don’t—” I stopped myself from finishing that sentence. I didn’t know a single werewolf family who didn’t celebrate the holiday. Admitting I didn’t was akin to admitting I was a shifter. “Uh, yeah, probably,” I said instead. “I’ll call them later today.”
Rita watched us from the corner of the kitchen, her back against the counter.
“What’s your pack’s name? I don’t think Mash mentioned it,” Kimmy said. She was still fussing over her son, so hopefully she hadn’t clocked the fleeting moment of panic on my face.
“It’s . . .” I looked at Mash. Please help me, I tried to communicate, but he just stared wide-eyed back. Kimmy tilted her head to the side. “It’s . . .” I glanced around the sweltering kitchen for . . . something, inspiration, anything. Spotted a postcard pinned to the fridge with a magnet. A cozy chocolate-box cottage with the name THORNSHIRE printed underneath. My eyes fell to the newspaper in the centre of the dining table. One of the smaller headlines read: New evidence suggests Silverclaw disappearances may be linked to shadow creatures, not humans.
“Thorn Shadow?” I said and then kicked myself because I’d said it like a question.
Kimmy’s head tilted to the other side. “Haven’t heard of them. Where’re you from?”
Fuck. “Uh, South Winterlands.” Shit, they were going to hear my heart beating in my chest. I didn’t dare look at Rita for fear of crumpling like a house of cards.
“I know them,” Rita said.
I let my breath out and turned to her. She busied herself filling up a teapot with freshly boiled water. Like it needed it to be any hotter in here.
“Your alpha is Bane Thornhelm,” Rita said.
I couldn’t figure out whether it was a question. “Yeah, that’s him,” I said, praying to fuck this Bane Thornhelm wasn’t some megalomaniac crime lord like his name hinted towards.
“Oh, wow, okay,” Kimmy said, her voice neutral. No clue whether I’d just admitted to being related to a mass murderer. “Well, Mash will be your al—”
“Let me help with the tea, Nana,” Mash said, lunging forward.
“May I use the bathroom before we have tea?” I felt the sudden urge to get the fuck out of the inferno kitchen and search on my phone for Thorn Banehelm, or whatever this crime boss’s name was.
“You can use Mash’s bathroom,” Kimmy said. “Do you remember how to get there? It’s down the corridor, last door on the right.”
“I remem—” I started to say, but Mash interrupted me.
“I’ll show you,” he said, and began shunting me—with his bare chest—out of the kitchen.
We were halfway down the hall when Mash turned to me. “Oh my gods, I’m so sorry.”
“Who the fuck is Bane Thornhelm?” I whispered.
“I’ve no fucking clue.” Mash stopped outside his bedroom door. It still bore a hand-carved wooden plaque that read ZACHARY & MASHEW, and another more crudely painted sign that read KEEP OUT OR ELSE. “Oh no, wait. Isn’t he the guy with like the minge tunnel?”
“The what?!” I accidentally shouted.
Mash laughed. “You know, he’s got a pergola in his garden leading to his house, but it’s essentially a giant bush trimmed into the shape of a vulva.”
“Oh my gods,” I whimpered. “That’s so much worse than crime lord.”
“Huh?”
I twisted the knob on Mash’s door and sighed. “I’m just glad to be out of that boiling kitchen. Also, bagsy the bottom bunk.”
“Bangers, come on, you know I’m too fucking tall for the top.”
“No way. I’m doing you the favour here.”
“Fight you for . . . it . . .” Mash said. His words died as I opened the door. “Uh . . .” He laughed nervously. “Oh, fuck.”
Gone were his childhood bunk beds. In their place sat a very large, very squishy-looking king-sized bed. It had been made up with a blue and white striped cotton duvet set. At the foot of the bed were two stacks of fluffy laundered towels. His and Hers . Atop the His stack was a handwritten note.
Mash and mate, welcome home.
Mash looked at me, scratched the back of his head. “So, yeah. We might have to share a bed for two months.”