16. Caleb
I arrived at the mall, nearly bristling as I headed for the food court. I didn’t exactly do well with large crowds of humans. Did I wish that Emily hadn’t insisted on us meeting in very public places? Yes. Did I understand why she asked for such accommodation? Of course. So if I needed to suck it up and put on my big-boy pants, I would.
I spotted her almost instantly, her scent practically hovering in the air. God, she was beautiful. It really was amazing. I got to see how my charge, whom I thought I’d failed, had actually blossomed into an intelligent, well-rounded woman.
And it was unfair, because I couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss.
Fuck, that kiss. I was grateful that it had happened, but it had really thrown me for a loop. True, I’d been attracted to Emily since the moment I first laid eyes on her. That was mostly an afterthought, though, with my main concern being ensuring her safety. Still, ever since I felt the soft velvet of her lips against mine, those thoughts weren’t so far away anymore.
Calm down, wolfie, I chided myself, willing my thoughts to block out the natural attraction Emily and I shared.
“Hey,” I said as I approached her, unable to miss how she was stabbing the straw into her cup over and over again. I wished I could tell whether she was feeling nerves or anger. Once I got to know her a little better, I’d be able to tell, but for the moment, all I could smell was the bitterness of stress ketones.
“Caleb,” she said as I moved to sit across from her. Her tone was completely unreadable, which seemed so unlike her. I liked to think I’d gotten the picture of what an expressive person she was. She certainly had no issues telling me what was on her mind.
“How are you?” I felt for her, I did. There had to be so much confusion and terror going on in her mind. She really was handling it beautifully, but I was sure that if I said that to her, it’d fall on deaf ears.
That was all right. I’d have time to earn her trust, and for the moment, I needed to focus on her needs.
While Emily didn’t answer outright, she fiddled with a folded piece of paper, twirling it with her fingers. I sat across from her, trying to appear as unthreatening as I possibly could.
“I’m glad to see you’re safe,” I said, trying the softer approach Keller suggested. Mentally, I tried to exude comfort and assurance via my pheromones, willing Emily to know she could trust me.
But instead of answering, Emily just looked me right in my eyes and took a deep breath. “I have some questions.”
That was a lot better than running away crying and screaming. “By all means, ask away,” I said.
There was a pause as Emily cleared her throat. The truth was, I found her rather adorable. Not exactly an appropriate thought, but it was true: she was smart as a whip, that much was obvious, and her somewhat rounded features and wide eyes gave her a natural pixie look.
“Alright,” she said. “First of all, why are you so fixated on me? Don’t tell me you’d go through this for any shifter. I can feel that—” she cut herself off, like she’d thought better of what she was going to say, but I already had a strong feeling I knew the exact words about to come out of her mouth.
“That we’re connected,” I finished for her. She didn’t say anything and just stared at me, so I continued. “While I’d try to help any first-time shifter in need, yes, you are special to me.”
“How? You did say you weren’t my brother.”
I noticed the alarm in her tone and wondered what exactly was going on in that pretty head of hers. “I’m not your brother. I’m your guardian.”
“Guardian? Is that like an official position?”
“Yes, and a borderline sacred one at that.”
I couldn’t blame Emily for looking surprised. There weren’t any well-known werewolf myths mentioning guardians.
“You see,” I continued, “a first shift is already a scary and painful thing, but it’s also… vulnerable.” Should I sugarcoat it more? Was I being too blunt?
“Vulnerable?”
“Yes. As wolves, we don’t imprint, but we have a natural inclination to fall into packs. It’s just how we’re wired, and not all packs are created equal. Not all alphas are created equal.”
“You used that word before—‘alpha.’ I’ve only ever heard toxic dude-bros use it.”
I had to laugh at that, because I was well aware of exactly the type of humans that’d co-opted the phrase. I found the discrepancy somewhere between insulting and hilarious.
“You know,” Emily said, “real wolf packs don’t even have alpha wolves. That behavior was only present in a small sample of captive wolves, so…”
“I’m impressed you know that,” I said with a nod. “Wolves in the wild usually have a dominant male and female pair, their offspring, then non-breeding adults. Some larger packs have more than one adult female leader, but no, they don’t have alphas, either. I think somewhere, shifter vernacular was influenced by human vocabulary, and we started calling ourselves alphas. At least in English. I know other packs to the south and north who have different names for themselves.
“But to answer your question, for us shifters, we tend to fall into different designations,” I continued. “There are alphas: shifters with a natural inclination for leadership, the ability to exude specific hormones to calm or embolden a pack, and the alpha voice, which is a type of influenceable subharmonic we can put into our communication.”
“Let me guess, you’re all big strapping men?” There was a terseness to her voice I didn’t quite understand.
“Alphas can come in any gender and sex, though many are male, or at least male-presenting, yes.” I tilted my head, wondering what was going on behind those eyes of hers. Emily’s scent read as interested, cautious, but there was a sting to her voice that didn’t match up with anything positive. “I realize you have no way of knowing this, but just about every shifter in this entire tri-state area is Native American or some form of Indigenous. While we haven’t been able to completely avoid colonization, we still have two spirits, third gender, fourth gender—a whole spectrum. It would make no sense for every single alpha to be what medieval Europe would accept as a male.”
I took satisfaction in how surprised Emily looked. I hadn’t lived on the rez since I was a teen, and I’d been in exile for years, but I still took a lot of pride in my heritage. I hated how werewolves had been so thoroughly whitewashed.
“You’re right,” Emily said. “I did not know that. Okay, so... I think I’ve lost track of things. Why were we talking about alphas?”
“Because you have to know about them in order to understand the need for guardians.”
“Ah.” Emily’s fingers twitched, and the corner of my lips went up in a smirk. “What’s so funny?”
“You want to take notes right now, don’t you?”
She flushed at that, and God, it was so much more adorable that it had any right to be. I wasn’t really one for taking pictures, but I was tempted to capture the moment. Thankfully, I knew that would be inherently creepy and shut down whatever rapport Emily and I were building.
“Yes,” she admitted.
“Do you have a note-taking feature on your phone? I use my notebook app anytime I have to accomplish any tasks.” She raised her eyebrow as if she didn’t believe me. “What, you think just because I turn into a giant wolf that I’m allergic to technology?”
“Let’s just say that everything I’ve read up about werewolves is incongruent with the idea of you running around the woods, checking your social media.”
“Hey, now. I didn’t say that I have social media. I’m simply awful at remembering more than three things at a time.”
“Honestly, same,” she said almost absently. Perhaps it was strange, but the simple phrase made me feel like we were finally standing on some common ground. Regardless, I didn’t interrupt Emily as she opened her phone and started typing. “Alright, so I got a handle on alphas, and I’m assuming you’re one.”
“I am.”
“Okay, so first shifters need protecting because not only can they accidentally hurt people around them, but they can also be taken advantage of by other shifters?”
“Yes, that is correct. I tend to call it indoctrination, but there are other risks, especially if you have the ability to produce offspring. Some packs have struggled to keep their numbers up, either because of inter-pack violence, lack of interest in the younger generation in having pups, as well as lots of us leaving the country for less populated areas. After all, America doesn’t exactly have the best history with us Natives.”
“Pffft, you’re not kidding on that part.”
“So, yes, it’s not entirely unheard of for predators to nab fertile, impressionable new shifters and encourage them to... to breed. While having pups is certainly encouraged among our kind, we prefer that everyone is fully cognizant and coherent when they do.”
“That’s a good policy.”
“I like to think so. Now that you know what alphas are, you’ll understand why it’s usually us who are chosen to protect certain new pups. It’s a huge honor. Like I said, a sacred duty. Now, it’s not a hard-and-fast rule that you must be an alpha, but that’s the general trend.”
“What certain pups?” Emily asked. “What makes them special?”
“It’s different in each case. Maybe a pack shaman—though we don’t have one of those, by the way—said a pup’s destiny was incredibly important to the longevity of the pack, or they could be the child of important pack members. Even just a sick pup who needed the extra care of a relative or trusted family friend.”
I thought back to when I was a young boy, when Henry had approached me, saying that Daniel had specifically requested I be the guardian for his soon-to-be-born daughter. I couldn’t believe it. To be thought worthy of such responsibility when I was only a teenager was amazing.
“So you were my guardian?” Emily asked.
“I am your guardian. It’s not a temporary thing. Even if we were... separated.” I could see her mind calculating, and I had no doubt that she was going to ask what happened to her parents, but I just wasn’t ready to dive into all of that yet. I hurried on before she could question too much. “But I was there when you were given your name. I got to hold you when you were welcomed into the pack. I used to come over after school twice a week to hold you, get to know you, and become a known figure in your life.”
Emily stared at me with wide eyes, and there was something wounded in her voice when she spoke. “Why don’t I remember any of this? I know I was young, but how is it all gone?”
My heart ached, and I felt that overwhelming urge to protect surge up within me again. I wanted to bundle her up in the softest of fabrics and make sure nothing ever harmed her again.
But that wasn’t how life worked. Even if I were somehow able to stop anyone with ill intentions from ever approaching her again, there were still emotional and mental pains that couldn’t be avoided.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I wish I had more to say, but I don’t.”
“Okay, well... is there anything else I need to know about what’s going to happen to me leading up to this change of mine?”
“Those flu-like symptoms you’re experiencing will happen more often, and you’re going to release an insane level of pheromones that may attract the wrong character.”
“Like that one guy who approached us at the outlet mall? The one you got into a fistfight with?”
“Yes, exactly.”
She shuddered, and I couldn’t blame her. “Any new allergies I should worry about?”
“Uh, you experienced the most typical one, actually. The big ones to worry about are silver, wolfsbane, and you could possibly develop an intolerance to caffeine.”
“To caffeine?! You do realize I’m a college student, right?”
“Hey, not all of us have it. Consider lactose intolerance in humans.”
“Let’s hope my luck holds out. Anything else?”
I paused, wondering how exactly to phrase it without sounding like I was fear-mongering or being uncouth.
“You see, whenever you hesitate like that, I know you’re going to say something I don’t like,” Emily said.
“It’s not that you won’t like it—you’ve probably already experienced it. I’m just trying to think of the best way to explain. I’m not exactly a professor.”
“Believe it or not, I put that much together.”
Was she joking with me? Well, that was certainly a welcome change.
“Observant. But basically, I guess you could possibly experience, hmm… behavior outside of your norm.”
“You realize that’s the vaguest thing ever, right? Come on, what bush are you beating around?”
Well, if she wanted direct info, I wasn’t going to treat her like a child. “You might become more violent. Irritated. Quick to anger. You could become euphoric, even exhibit some strange levels of wanderlust, and... your libido will be affected.”
Having a high sex drive was a natural thing, and Emily had nothing to be ashamed of if she did, but I figured it’d be a failure on my part not to warn her there could be a sudden and dramatic increase. I remembered back when I was a wee little lad, I’d practically wanted to rip my own skin off between the pure rage, the need to run, and the desire coiling in my belly for... well, there wasn’t a specific stimulus. It was more like even the simplest breeze could turn me on.
“My libido? ” Emily repeated.
“Yes.”
She paused. “Oh.”