38. Caleb
E mily was alive!
I’d barely dared to hope, but against all odds, she was sitting next to me in Zach’s vehicle.
I was staring, I knew that much, but I couldn’t help it. Emily had always been beautiful and alluring, but now it was like she was radiant. A vision I couldn’t deny meant so much to me.
I was a screw-up, I knew that much. I’d managed to fail her twice spectacularly. I didn’t deserve a third chance, yet there she was, leaning against me slightly as she watched the neighborhood pass by in the window.
“We’re about forty minutes out from our main community area,” Zach said from the front, reminding me other people existed in the world. “Hope you don’t mind. There’s a pretty big gap between the center of our territory and even the edge of the Black Hawks’.”
“That makes sense,” Emily said softly, her voice a tiny bit distant. Not with anger, it seemed, just lost in thought. The poor girl had everything but the kitchen sink thrown at her lately.
God, we had so much to talk about, and I needed to return her jewelry, but for the moment, it felt like all that could wait. What mattered was that she was safe and sound, right next to me, and back with her pack.
I’d never forget that feeling of finally getting to lay eyes on her again, and the bond that’d been so suddenly disconnected, I’d believed it to be a sign of her death blazing back to life within my chest. I felt renewed with four times as much strength, a surging river of relief, desire, and… love.
As much as I’d wanted to deny it for so long, I was in love with Emily. She deserved better than me, and no doubt would eventually find someone appropriate to run off with into the sunset and have her happily ever after. In the meantime, I’d cherish my time at her side as her guardian. It was more than I deserved.
With my staring, I didn’t miss the way Emily shifted and rubbed her arm, the slightest bit of goosebumps rising along the limb.
“You cold?” I asked softly, not wanting to startle her.
“A little.”
“It’s not unusual for new shifters to be sensitive to AC. We wolves run hot, even in the winter. Here, take my jacket.”
“Oh, I don’t want you to get cold.”
It made my inner wolf preen that she was so concerned about my comfort, but I didn’t let it go to my head. Emily was always considerate like that. It was one of the things I loved about her.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m much more acclimated to it. In a couple of years, your body will regulate, and you’ll also be using it in the dead of winter.”
“That’s good to know. Well, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t,” I said, already halfway out of the jacket. Some part of her may have known, but I had zero qualms about her wearing something covered entirely in my own scent. It was yet another thing both my inner wolf and I liked, even loved.
“Thank you.”
“Anytime.”
I meant it, down to my soul. Anything she needed, I wanted to provide for her, but I knew to keep my words to myself. Emily had just agreed to come with us, and I didn’t want her running off because I suddenly started spouting sonnets. Despite what a few people believed, I did have some self-control.
The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful: no semi-trucks or buses coming out of nowhere, no portals to hell opening below our feet, no mysterious shifter traffickers lacing the road with bombs. Just a nice, simple car ride with the radio softly playing.
But as we drew closer to Camp Maplewood, my nerves grew. I wasn’t welcome there, and I hadn’t been in a long time. I knew circumstances had changed, and I’d been sober for a long time, yet that didn’t make me any less antsy.
I already knew the stares. The whispers. They were a huge part of what’d driven me away. While I’d endure them for Emily, I wasn’t looking forward to them.
I did my best to keep my stress ketones under wraps and just focus on how Emily was safe beside me. Now that she was a shifter, I’d have to be much more conscious about what pheromones I exuded. Not exactly an easy thing to do, considering that every cell in my body was clamoring for her, and not just sexually, either. I wanted her affection, her laugh, her eyes to light up about something she was interested in, but I managed, or at least I liked to think so. Once she was a shifter for a while, she’d be able to call me out, but for the moment, Emily didn’t try.
“We’re here,” Keller said, the first words he’d spoken since we found out about Emily. I felt bad I hadn’t paid much attention to him, but I was sure he understood. Although he didn't have a mate himself, Keller was still my best friend and closest confidant.
“Oh, it’s like a campground,” Emily remarked, her head swiveling back and forth as she looked out the windows.
“Of course. That’s how it got its name, after all.” Keller let out a soft laugh, but it didn’t come across as demeaning, more just relieved to be back home.
“I guess I just thought it was metaphorical,” Emily said.
“It’s a lot more modern than any summer camp you went to,” I said, reaching past to open the door for her.
At that, she gave me one of those snarky expressions she wore whenever she was going to say something clever. “I went to equestrian camp for three years, where we stayed in individual dorms attached to the manor.”
“It’s a lot more modern than most summer camps you went to,” I said.
“Fair enough.”
We shared a chuckle, and although it wasn’t anything like a booming laugh, it still filled me with all sorts of happy chemicals. My mate was happy. My mate was?—
Wait.
No.
Not my mate. My charge. I knew I was in love with Emily, without question. But I was her guardian, not her lover. While we’d shared a bed multiple times, it was out of kindness so she could experience something special before a huge change. I had to keep my perspective in line.
“Come on, let me show you around,” I said, taking her hand once we were both outside. Her touch was still electric to me, racing through my limbs in a pleasant rush and going straight to my heart.
“Hold on there, hotshot,” Zach said, and I froze for a moment, ready for the other shoe to drop. I knew things had been too easy for the past hour. “There’s some important stuff Ms. Emily here needs to hear first. Why don’t you show her the way to my place?”
Relief flooded me yet again. Zach not only had no interest in separating us, he wanted peace between the packs. Not anything I thought I’d be experiencing in our lifetime.
“Of course,” I said.
“Keller, feel free to get yourself some grub. Carl, I want you to illuminate the rest of our crew on the situation.”
“Yes, sir,” the two said simultaneously, and Emily tried to cover her giggle with the most unconvincing cough I’d ever heard.
With that, our little crew broke off, leaving just the pack reject, me; Emily, the pack newcomer; and none other than Zach, the head alpha of our dysfunctional little family.
Except, the Lincoln Hill Pack was anything but little, and I saw that realization dawn on Emily’s face as we walked through the campgrounds.
The area we’d parked at was one of the lots for many of the campers and cars for visitors who stopped by, and for those who wanted to stop in the areas on the edge of Maplewood. Most likely, they were former members who’d married into a different pack, moved for another opportunity, or relatives of someone who married in our pack. Sometimes it was a traveler moving through who wanted a place to shift and run with other wolves on their journey, but that was increasingly rare. As the world shrank, most shifters tended to stick close to their packs. It was one of the many reasons my exile was particularly painful.
But it didn’t take long to come to the outer cabins. These were where most of the single folk, young adults, and other independent souls lived, and just like the people who inhabited them, they were all vastly different. Some were rustic with little decoration, some had meticulously crafted gardens. Two had workshops attached to them, one being a mechanic and the other looking a lot like a carpentry setup. It wasn’t quite a neighborhood, with no manicured lawns or hyper-specific lots, but it was clearly a community.
From there, we went towards the townhouses and other larger buildings. Families tended to take these up as they were close to the school we had at the camp, and there were the eateries and general stores. It was like its own little town, but spaced out enough through the trees that it wasn’t suffocating like the city.
I’d missed the place more than I thought, and though I tried to focus on my tour, I faltered once memories of the past drifted by, ephemeral ghosts of a life that once was. If I’d known when I was young that one day, it’d all be ripped away from me by traffickers… well, I’d have done things differently.
It was as if Zach sensed the growing distraction in my mind, interjecting whenever I paused.
“That’s our school,” he told Emily, pointing at the building. “We don’t discourage anyone from public school, but it’s quite the trek, so we have something on hand for those who want to home-school. We’re only equipped to the eighth grade, though. I’d like to expand on that, but…” Zach shook his head. “Never enough hours in the day.”
“I agree with that,” Emily said politely. To anybody else, she seemed sweet as punch, though I sensed her apprehension. She wasn’t fully on guard, but watching and learning keenly.
“I hear you’re in school, yes?”
Emily nodded. “I am. I’ve been… troubled about what this whole business is going to do to my schooling.” I heard the fear, the sorrow in Emily’s words, and my heart ached for her. She was such a driven student, and I knew the idea of having to stop in order not to hurt her fellow students hurt her deeply, but I also knew that she’d do the right thing. Emily was like that, always putting others ahead of herself.
“I understand it’s disheartening, but we’re more than happy to help you apply for a leave of absence for the rest of this semester, then sponsor you for your next,” Zach offered. “That way, any financial burden from potential loss of scholarship won’t be an issue.”
Emily stopped dead in her tracks, staring at the man. “W-what?”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to overwhelm you. If you’re not ready to discuss all of those particulars, we can table them for another time.”
Emily did a few slow blinks in our head alpha’s direction. “You’d pay for my schooling, just like that?”
Zach looked a touch bashful, which surprised me at first, but then I remembered what a low-key guy he’d been. I’d heard some stories of alphas who loved pomp and circumstance, insisting upon ritual to exaggerate their importance to the pack. But that’d never been Zach’s style.
“Only if you want. If you want to pursue something different, all of us would understand.”
“No, I want to finish my education, but what I don’t understand is why you would do that. I’m a stranger.”
Zach tilted his head ever so slightly before offering a shrug. “You’re pack.”
It was that simple. I knew it’d take Emily some time to connect those dots, but wolves were hard-wired to look out for each other, to support and protect the weakest link. Even after I’d first lost Kaia, others tried to look out for me and tried to shield me from the more judgmental folks. But I spun further and further out into a tailspin until between the drugs, the crime, and complete inability to communicate my inner turmoil to my packmates, I was fully ostracized.
So many years wasted. I recognized now that I’d punished myself, that I didn’t think I deserved to be a part of the pack, to be valued. But Kaia was alive. Not only that, but she’d survived her first shift, and she was finally home.
I supposed the question was, could I forgive myself?
“Caleb, would you like to recommence your tour?” Zach asked. “Seemed like you were enjoying myself.”
I was, yes, but I was having difficulty reconnecting to that unburdened part of myself. As if Emily could sense exactly what was going on inside me, she squeezed my arm twice. A little reassurance in the grand scheme of things, but it worked.
“Right, so after we pass this section of housing, we’re going to be coming across what I suppose is our equivalent of Main Street,” I said, moving forward again.
“I can’t believe all of this is in the woods,” Emily stated. “It’s like a whole town!”
“Not quite,” Zach chuckled. “But last I knew, our population was a little bit over a thousand, so you can say we’re a community.”
“A thousand werewolves…” Emily murmured under her breath, but naturally, both Zach and I could hear her. “Right under humanity’s noses.”
“That’s not counting the Black Hawk Pack,” I said. “They’re smaller than us, which is why they’re largely located within the city.”
“ Well, ” Zach cut in, a chagrined expression on his face. “Part of the reason they’re in the city is that they’re slightly smaller. It’s also because our ancestors came here and took a good amount of their land. Then, once the city expanded, it ended up taking over a lot of their territory since they didn’t have the protections ours did.” Zach rubbed at his stubble. “I’m sure you’re familiar with at least some of how America has treated Indigenous folks. Well, the Black Hawk Pack was originally all Native shifters, and our ancestors were French and Dutch settlers who came out here. At first, things were pretty stable, and there was harmony. We even intermarried.”
“It sounds like there’s a ‘but’ coming,” Emily said, her expression as keen as ever.
“Oh, a big one. Once Manifest Destiny took hold and English settlers came in, our ancestors took advantage of a lot of the prejudices against Natives and ended up stealing swaths of their land over time. It caused a lot of conflict, as you can imagine.”
I was proud that Zach wasn’t sugar-coating this. It was important that we fully understood the history, lest we repeat it.
“That’s why there’s a schism between your packs?” Emily asked.
“That’s what started it, but the turning point came during the Civil War. A lot of our pack went to help up north, and the Black Hawk Pack invaded our territory. They’d kidnap a child or young adult of mixed heritage, claiming they were truly Black Hawk and not Lincoln Hills.”
“Welp,” Emily said. “I can imagine how that’d do it.”
“They ended up returning anyone who wished to come back to our territory, which is why a lot of us still have Native blood, like Caleb here. But from what I understand, it took a whole lot of fighting and more bloodshed than either side wanted. Since then, the divide’s been rather stark.”
“You’re hoping to fix that?” Emily asked. “That’s why you invited Tayen here?”
“I’m certainly hoping. Not practical, but as my missus says, it’s important to be optimistic.”
Emily had a lot more questions, but I could tell she needed to think. I recalled when she pulled out that list when I first met her. I loved how detail-oriented she was. It was the opposite of how my brain worked, but I just admired her all the more for it.
We didn’t get far on the rest of the tour, however, before a woman I didn’t recognize approached us with two young kids in tow. They weren’t paying attention to us, with one yo-yo-ing like it was the ’90s and the other meticulously jumping around cracks, apparently to avoid harming his mother. But the woman’s eyes were right on Emily.
“Pardon my interruption. We were just on our way to get some maple taffy, and I noticed a new face around here!” She extended her hand, which Emily took quickly. “My name’s Wakwi, Wakwi Carter. These here are Asin and Junior. Say hello, boys!”
Both gave polite but disinterested greetings. I grinned. If I didn’t know better, it was like Emily and I were a couple back home from college.
“I know you’ve plenty to do around here, but if you ever need some fresh herbs, I had a bumper crop in my garden this year and dried more than I know what to do with. I swear, all my friends are tired of getting them on their birthdays!”
“Oh, uh,” Emily sputtered, looking taken aback. “I?—”
“I live over in that red building down on the edge of the street. Townhouse B-6! I work from home, so drop by anytime!”
“Thank you. That’s nice of you, miss…”
“Wakwi,” the woman said. “Please, just Wakwi. I gotta hurry home, but it was lovely meeting you!”
I managed not to laugh at Emily’s baffled expression while she tried to puzzle out the most cordial drive-by that had ever happened to her when an older man strolled up, his even older-looking dog beside him.
“Evening, Zach. Evening, miss. Nice to see a new face around here. Are you visiting?”
“Miss Emily will be our guest,” Zach said. “I know you’d like to sit and chat, Lonnie, but we’re on our way to eat Daphne’s cooking, and I’m not particularly keen on being late.”
“Oy, I know that! Goodness knows I miss my darling’s cooking. Married for a hundred and ten years!” He was practically shouting, but even shifters with the best healing adaptions tended to go deaf and blind with age, and Lonnie de la Croix was an elder at a hundred and thirty something years old.
“Would you like to come with us?” Zach asked him without missing a beat, reminding me then so much of my grandfather. No one ever went hungry in his proximity. Not if he could help it.
“No, no, that won’t be necessary,” Lonnie said. “Mrs. Maisel’s been hosting me for dinner the past couple of months, and I must say the company is lovely.”
Mrs. Maisel? Was that the old nurse who was gray even when I was a kid? She was in a traditional mail-order marriage, a shifter who’d escaped from Eastern Europe to try a new life in America.
“Mrs. Maisel?” Zach teased. “If I recall right, she only barely turned one hundred. Are you robbing the cradle, Lonnie?”
“Ain’t nothing being robbed but our time here on this earth! Might as well enjoy it together. You have a good night now, Zach.”
“You too.”
As Lonnie tottered off, our head alpha hurried us away from Main Street towards the path that led to leadership housing. We were still interrupted two more times, and after that, Zach tried to explain.
“Sorry for the spectacle. Word’s gotten around that we found the Garricks’ lost daughter. Your folks were quite respected around here, so there’s going to be more than a few people eager to meet you.”
“Really?” Emily said. I wasn’t surprised about people being excited, only that Zach was willing to let the word spread. Someone else had spilled the beans. Carl? Nah, that guy was about as rule-abiding as they came. He wouldn’t gossip without Zach’s express permission. That was why he was a trusted beta in the pack.
“I’ll tell them to give you some space, though,” Zach said. “You needn’t feel overwhelmed on our behalf.”
I felt something strange slither through the bond between Emily and me, an uncomfortable disquiet. Although her face didn’t change at all, I liked to think that in our short time of knowing each other, I knew her tells.
“Hey, are you alright?” I asked, moving a little to shield her out of view of the street as best I could.
“I just…” She looked from me to Zach, and I was relieved when the head alpha didn’t try to hurry her towards an answer. “This all feels surreal. Ungrounded, you know? A month ago, my biggest worry was making sure I finished all my labs. Now, not only am I an entirely different species, but I’m a part of a community where everyone knows me, but I don’t know them.”
That was completely reasonable, and I cautiously pulled Emily into a hug, making sure she wanted physical comfort. I only held her for a quick moment, but when I let go, I looked at Zach.
“Maybe Emily could read the files on her family, if there are any left? Get to know them that way?”
“Files?” she echoed.
Zach shot an appreciative nod my way. “Pack records. The general track of lineages to avoid inbreeding, as well as keep track of other important historical events. I’d be more than happy to get you those, as well as the investigation into your disappearance. I understand you were thrown in the middle of this, and believe me, we want to make this transition as easy for you as possible. We’re well aware these are not normal circumstances for a human or a shifter.”
“Thank you,” Emily said, giving one of those soft smiles I adored. Pride spread in my chest at the thought that I’d made at least something a little easier for her, but I told my wolf not to get cocky. She was wearing our jacket and grinning at us, but we still had a lot to make up for.
“Well, now that we have that settled, my place is just up around this bench. Caleb, do you mind if I take over?”
“Not at all.”
I’d been enjoying my role, yet the remaining path to Zach’s house was full of too many memories I just didn’t want to pretend were there. It was nice to have someone to cover for me, even if some of my traumatic memories included his presence. I’d never forget that look of disappointment when I was first found, blitzed out of my mind, by a truancy officer, and my grandfather had to pick me up. It took a march of shame past most of Maplewood to get back home, and I remembered how everyone had just stared.
Thankfully, the walk up to Zach’s house didn’t take long, and within ten minutes, we were standing in front of a cozy-looking, two-floor home. We were hardly even on the porch when the door opened, revealing a woman with auburn hair and a wry grin on her narrow features.
“There you are! Maribel texted me that you got here ages ago!”
“Maribel likes to stir up drama,” Zach said as he stepped up onto the porch and kissed the woman's cheek. “I promise I came home as soon as I could. Our guest here just needed a bit of a walk around, and you know how people are.”
“Everyone wanting to say hi, I’m sure,” the woman said with a laugh before her gaze turned to Emily. “Ah, hello! You must be the new member I’ve heard about. I’m Daphne! Why don’t you come in and fill your belly? I’m sure you’ve got a lot of questions that go with a nice meal.”
“That honestly sounds wonderful.”
Daphne let out a pleasant laugh and stepped to the side as Zach and Emily headed in. I was happy Emily was going to be somewhere safe and warm, and I let that feeling grow in my chest as I turned and walked away. I knew I could head right back to the edge of the campground for a traveler’s cabin. I was just going to sign it out of the registry so people knew the place was occupied.
“Where are you going?” Emily called.
I tried to affix an ambivalent look on my face. “Just gonna get my quarters arranged. Boring logistics, ya know?”
“Aren’t you going to stay and eat?”
How did I explain all of the reasons I wasn’t welcome at the head alpha’s table without going into a dissertation? I’d abdicated my position in the pack after failing the one job I had. Emily knew all the different pieces, and I was sure she’d put them together soon enough.
“Caleb?”
I looked to Zach, then Daphne, expecting silent judgment or awkwardness, but they just seemed eager to get inside.
“I’ve got a place set for you, if that’s what you’re worried about. I host enough people that I have a large table,” Daphne said, her grin still in place.
Oh.
It appeared I was welcome here after all.