15. Caleb
“ H ey, think fast!”
I jolted instantly from sleep as my phone crashed into my chest. One benefit of the life I’d lived was that my brain knew how to jump into action when there was the possibility of a threat.
But then I saw Keller standing at the foot of his couch, looking chagrined at me but not entirely pissed off. Good. I didn’t want to deal with another lambasting after I’d pissed him off by running after Emily that first night. I still hadn’t explained the whole story to him, and I knew I needed to, but I was just so exhausted after everything with Emily.
Should I have chased after her that final time? She’d been so scared, and how many times could I dive-tackle her in one night? At some point, I had to accept that she didn’t want my help.
Besides, I was still in plenty of shock from that kiss. Where had it even come from? One moment, I was just trying to get her to calm down, to not panic, and the next…
The shrill ring of my phone cut off my train of thought as Keller let out a groan. “That’s what I’m talking about. It’s been going off for over an hour, practically nonstop.”
“Sorry about that,” I said, sitting up quickly and turning on the screen. I hoped it was Emily, her calling me back to ask more questions or apologizing for freaking out. I would tell her that it was perfectly understandable, of course, and I just so desperately wanted to hear her voice.
But when I saw the number that was making my phone lose its shit, I was utterly uninterested. I declined the call and flopped back onto the couch, disappointed.
“You know, when I said you could crash here, I didn’t know you came with your own alarm,” Keller said.
“Sorry about that,” I replied. “I won’t be here much longer.”
That was the truth. I had my own place, of course—unmated alphas tended to keep their own space—but Keller’s place was in Boulder and closer to Emily’s campus. It made keeping close to her on the days approaching her shift much easier.
Honestly, I needed every advantage I could, given how I seemed to be doing the wrong thing at every single step.
“Welp, now that that’s handled, I’m gonna go make some coffee,” Keller said.
“Coffee?” I asked. “Is it time for work yet?” Impressively, Keller managed to have a regular nine-to-five, something most wolves couldn’t hold down, considering the somewhat tempestuous nature of our anatomy. We tended to favor trade, art, and gig work where we could dictate our schedules a little more specifically.
“Nah,” he said. “I’m gonna hit the gym.”
“The gym?” I echoed, sounding perhaps more incredulous than I should have. “You’re aware you’re a shifter, right?” Although us shifters came in all sorts of shapes and sizes, we were all stronger than the average human by a considerable margin. We were faster, had better hearing and sense of smell, and healed incredibly fast. That last part was less a specific power and more a positive aftereffect of our incredibly fast metabolism and high caloric needs.
Of course, that made some people think that shifters could never be fat, which was funny to me. Just like some animals had bodies designed to hold a lot of fat on them for survival, so did shifters. We were just as varied as humans. We had alopecia, albinism, neurodivergence, and all.
I shouldn’t be all that surprised that Keller wanted to work out a little. We were all different.
“You forget that I sit at a desk for way longer than I used to,” he pointed out. “Not all of us can just ride around on our hogs, doing what we please, shifting whenever we want to go for a run.”
Ah, yes. That was fair, too. As rough of a time as I’d had, I was incredibly grateful that I’d never had to be locked within the four walls of office life. There were just some things I never wanted to do, no matter what.
“Right, sorry,” I said. “Yeah, I’ll take a cup of coffee.”
“Black, right?”
“You betcha, unless you got some of that hazelnut creamer.” I normally didn’t like sugaring up my drinks, but there was something about the rich, welcoming taste of hazelnut that shot my coffee from a good drink into something downright indulgent. I deserved to be pampered from time to time.
“Nah,” Keller said. “Fresh out, sorry. Do you mind picking some up today if you have time between all this cloak-and-dagger stuff you’re doing?”
I nodded, chuckling at how easily he saw through me. “I’ll make sure to do that.”
Keller went about brewing while I tried and failed not to think about the kiss. THE kiss. The one I’d never expected, but was most certainly grateful for.
Emily’s lips were so soft, and the scent that she’d been exuding... oh, it was good. It filled my nose and coated my tongue: jasmine, lavender, and fresh moss, the sky when night was just turning to dawn, the first day of spring after the bitter clutches of winter.
I had absolutely no doubt that more and more shifters would find her, thanks to that delicious scent. Then, they would close in on her innocence, her naivete. Those thoughts made me lose the growing arousal within. There was nothing appealing about someone hurting Emily because I’d failed her a second time.
Well, that was generous—I’d already had at least a baker’s dozen of fuck-ups under my wing when it came to her. I needed to change my tactics, because what I was doing was obviously not working.
“Keller?”
“Almost done, hold your horses. You’re awfully impatient for a couch-crasher.”
“It’s not about the coffee. Can I talk to you for a second?”
Naturally, my closest ally and confidant could tell there was something serious in my tone. He returned to his small living room and shot me a quizzical look.
“What’s going on?”
“I, uh... well, about that cloak-and-dagger stuff…”
“Are you finally gonna clue me in on what’s going on?” Keller flopped onto the loveseat opposite me and grinned broadly. “Come on, brother, lay it on me.”
His reaction indicated he thought I was going to tell him something salacious, but this wasn’t anything like the old hijinks I used to get into.
“What if I told you something impossible?”
“Impossible? We literally turn into wolves at will.”
“Right. Well, uh... what if I told you that Kaia is alive?”
The grin slid off Keller’s face like eggs from a greasy plate, and I watched as the color drained from his face. That reaction was actually subdued compared to what I’d been expecting.
“You want to run that by me one more time?” he asked.
“Kaia is alive. I’m ninety percent certain.”
“ Ninety percent? ” He jumped to his feet and paced. “That’s not something you want to be wishy-washy about, Caleb! Something like that requires one hundred percent certainty.”
“I’m as certain as I can be without any genetic testing.”
Keller paced some more before flopping into the same chair, then getting right back up again. “Explain.”
“Do you remember that girl at BLX?”
“You mean the one you ran after like a bat out of hell?”
“Exactly.” At that, understanding spread across my friend’s features, and I could practically see his mind connecting the dots. “I didn’t realize it that night, but once I found her again, I put it together. Her scent has changed in a few ways, but it’s still Kaia at heart. Everything about her screams pack to me.”
“Fuck, man, you realize what this means, right? Not saying I don’t trust you, but this is…”
“It’s a lot, I know, but I’m completely serious about this. I managed to have a one-on-one conversation with her, and, well, things didn’t go well.”
“What do you mean?”
“She didn’t even know about shifters, Keller. Literally zero idea.”
Keller shook his head. “Shit, I hate when that happens. Did she believe you?”
“Not really. But believe me, she’s getting dangerously close to her first shift.”
“So what did you do?”
“I showed her.”
Keller shot me a look, and I did my best to stare at the wall past him. I knew that particular stare, and I hated it. “Showed her what and how?”
“I, uh…” What was I beating around the bush for? “I showed her my wolf.”
“You shifted for her?!”
“Well, how else was I supposed to prove I wasn’t insane?”
“I dunno! Make your teeth big! You can’t just show someone your full-blown wolf form to someone who had no idea that shifters exist!”
“Yeah, I’ve figured that out by now,” I groused. “Aren’t you going to head to the gym and then work?”
“Gym and work can wait. Pack comes first. The real question is, have you told Dalton?” I winced at that and shook my head. “Gods, Caleb, why do you always insist on doing everything in the most complicated way possible? Do you like making things worse for yourself?”
“No,” I muttered, wondering when that blasted coffee would be done. “I wanted to be sure.”
Keller took a long, long breath before letting his head fall back onto the loveseat. “Sorry, that wasn’t helpful. I just can’t believe you managed to find her after all this time.”
“You believe me?”
“You may be many things, Caleb, but you’re not a liar.” I shot him a skeptical look, and he chuckled. “Well, you never lie to me. ”
Fair enough.
As much as I worried about the ramifications that would come from someone else knowing Kaia was alive, it felt good having a fellow wolf in on what was happening in my life. It was like a weight had been lifted off my chest. Besides, Keller had such a great head on his shoulders. It wouldn’t be the first time that he’d hauled me out of a mess, and it wasn’t going to be the last, either.
“So what are our options here?” Keller asked.
I supposed I had a vague idea of what could happen, but those were disordered variables and worst nightmares all floating around in a miasmic cloud. I knew what Keller was doing—organizing everything so we could make the most informed decisions, which was for the best. It was going to affect Kaia’s life.
Emily. Her name is Emily now, I reminded myself. No matter how complicated my feelings and memories tied up with the girl she used to be, I needed to respect who she’d grown into.
“Alright, so option one,” Keller said. “We could call Zach.” A warning rumbled from my chest, and he held up his hands. “Hey, it was just a suggestion.”
“Yeah, a suggestion that could end with them snatching her away for her first shift, then indoctrinating her because she won’t have anyone she trusts or knows near her when she turns.”
“She won’t have anyone like that if she turns around you, either.”
“She knows me,” I said, conveniently leaving out the part where she seemed to be terrified of me. Whoops. “Besides, I can’t help but notice you skipped over the indoctrination part.”
“Hey, I know Zach can be pack-heavy and a little forceful with his community, but I wouldn’t really call it indoctrination.”
“Whatever, man. I still want to avoid it unless it’s the last possible option. What else can we do?”
“I suppose you could always help her with her first shift. Who knows? If you did that and then were able to prove to the pack that she’s Kaia, you might actually be able to regain footing there.”
That was a thought I’d certainly had more than once. It would be nice to be welcome with the pack, instead of a banished pariah keeping his distance, but that option seemed too selfish in some ways, like I didn’t deserve a happy ending. Didn’t deserve to be welcomed back into the same pack I’d been on poor terms with for so many years.
“Okay,” I said. “What else?”
“Hmmm, I guess the third option would be that the worst happens: she’s completely alone and goes on a feral rampage. Likely, since you were the one to first find her, you would be the one charged to dispatch her.”
I swore my stomach flipped several times at that idea. I could no more raise my hand against Kaia in purposeful violence than I could fly. It was just physically impossible, and the idea of her being utterly alone, during one of the scariest times for a new shifter, also went against the very core of my being. I may have been her disgraced guardian, but I still felt the drive to protect her.
Besides, if I let her shift alone and hurt her family, I’d have failed her twice over. Something my soul couldn’t take.
At least she had an inkling of what was going on and knew I was a wolf like her. That had to help. I was hoping a night of being able to digest everything she heard and saw would make her more amenable to my aiding with her first shift.
“So I’m guessing out of all of these options, we’re partial to the second one.”
“The third one sure as hell isn’t on the table,” I said more harshly than I should have, but it seemed all of my emotions were dialed up.
“Yeah, I got that,” Keller said dryly. “But I’m still not so certain that we shouldn’t tell Zach. She's gonna need pack, you know. Pack beyond you.”
“I know she will eventually, but that’s down the line,” I said. “Right now, she’s a young girl fighting her way through college who just found out that there’s an entirely different world right under her feet and that she’s a part of it. I figure instead of just dunking her into the deep end and forcing her to swim, it’d be better to microdose her.”
“Of course you’d use the term ‘microdose.’” That stung, but Keller was right. “Are you sure you’re the right person to guide her through her first shift?”
I frowned. “I’m detecting reproach, and I want to know what you mean by that.”
“It’s just the way you’re explaining this whole situation to me, it doesn’t sound like it’s exactly going swimmingly. Look, I am fully aware you’ve never gotten over the Kaia incident, and you feel obligated, but this woman is... what was her name again?”
“Emily.”
“Right, this woman is Emily, not Kaia. No matter what her origins might be.”
“I know that.” Did I? “I’m sure that if we can just get her over this final hump of fear and shock, everything will be fine.”
“Hey, if you’ve been scaring the pants off her on the regular, I can always give it a try.”
“Give what a try?”
“Talking to her. Trying to show her that we mean her no harm.”
I laughed. I didn’t mean to be dismissive, but Keller wasn’t an alpha, nor did he have a connection to Kaia’s past. Not like I did. The only reason she even came to the bar to talk to me was because some buried part of her remembered me from her childhood. “I don’t think you would get very far.”
“Why? Because I’m not some Casanova like you?”
“Because you’re not her guardian!” I bared my teeth, then almost immediately regretted it. There was no reason for me to use such aggressive displays in front of my best friend.
Thankfully, Keller didn’t so much as bat an eye—the benefit of being raised around a bunch of hot-headed wolves his entire life. “You are?”
“What do you mean? Of course I am!”
“Eh, are we absolutely certain on that? Guardians are supposed to be around their charges from the earliest years possible to build that bond of protection rather than self-gratification, so when their first terrifying shift does happen, you can be a guiding light for them. A haven. A shelter in the storm.”
“I know what a guardian is supposed to do! I never lost that. I assure you, I’d rather cut off my own hand than ever harm or take advantage of Emily.”
“Okay,” Keller relented. “Fine, then. I won’t talk to her, but you need to change something about your approach. Whatever you’re doing now isn’t working.”
“I know, but I don’t have a lot of time.”
“Worse comes to worse, you could always go with the Dalton method: zip ties and thick blankets.”
I growled at that. It wasn’t funny.
“Sorry, sorry. Just trying to break the tension.”
“I’m not kidnapping her,” I said.
“Look, that’s very noble of you, but you may not have a choice. The closer she gets to that very first shift, the more erratic her actions will be. It will be difficult for her to think clearly, and when she’ll be going through the most violent part in a matter of days.”
“I know, I know. Trust me, I am fully aware of the implications of all of this.”
“Alright, then.” Keller looked like he was going to say something else, but my phone rang again and cut him off. “You certainly are Mr. Popular today,” he remarked.
“You’re certainly going to be late for the gym and drinking burnt coffee.”
“Huh? Oh, shit!”
With that, Keller rushed into the kitchen, leaving me to look at my phone. I expected it to be the same number as before. But no, it was unknown.
Just like it’d been unknown when Emily called me the first time.
I scrambled to answer, nearly dropping the phone in the process, but thankfully, I managed to catch it and answer before it could go to the third ring.
“Caleb?”
God, I could’ve kissed someone. It was Emily! I knew that voice anywhere.
“Emily, I?—”
She cut me off, her tone like steel. “We need to meet.”