39. Emily
I stared at the quagmire of paperwork in front of me, some pages yellowed from the years’ onslaught while others were a newer, crisper white. Yet, despite the range of dates, it was all about me.
Well, my family.
Ugh, that word sounded strange when it came to being a shifter. Whenever I thought about “family,” it was my mom and dad, the couple who raised me. Yet, as I looked over the papers, I found the story of the people who’d birthed me and dreamed of raising me themselves.
It was… bizarre. I knew the tale spread out across the room was a tragedy. It merely felt so detached from my story as I’d experienced it. I’d had issues with bullying, anxiety, and an eating disorder, but on the whole, my story was a happy one. I grew up with parents who loved me, who got me help once I admitted I needed it, who were two of my closest friends. I had so many brilliant memories, like when I was eight and had fallen off my bike, and my father had cleaned my scraped knee, patched it up, then popped in E.T. to distract me. When I’d come home with my first one hundred on an important test, and my mother hung it on the fridge and proceeded to call a couple of her friends, bragging about me.
Was it strange that I wished the Garricks, who had suffered such heartbreak, had met Mom and Dad? I felt they would get each other. My parents had longed for children for so long, jumped through so many hoops and turned their lives upside down to find me and provide a good home. It was becoming apparent that my biological parents did much the same to try and get their little girl back.
But they never did, and now they were dead.
I couldn’t imagine the pain they’d gone through. The heartbreak. The hope slowly withering and dying as each lead came up empty. It made me want to weep for them, these strangers, and it also made me feel like the bad guy.
I pulled the jacket I was wearing around me, Caleb’s scent flooding my senses yet again. Just a day ago, I felt abandoned by him, furious and alone, but now that I’d learned someone had forcibly kept us apart, well, that changed things. Even with that shift in my perspective, it was odd to feel so affected by the remnants of his scent.
One more thing to get used to, because that’s what I was now: a real, bona fide werewolf.
Not exactly something I could put on a diploma, but life-changing regardless. There was always going to be a before and after with my first shift.
I snuggled deeper into the jacket, enjoying how oversized it was on me, and stuck my hands in the pockets. I wasn’t as cold as I’d usually be in the winter, yet my palms were still cold from all the paperwork. Zach and Daphne kept their home appropriately warm downstairs. The upper floor, however, was breezier, and none of the wolves in the house noticed.
I just expected to be cozy. What I wasn’t prepared for was to feel something cool and metallic against my fingertips.
“Huh?”
I was surprised when I pulled out my missing necklace. I hadn’t given it much thought, all things considered, but everything that happened before my shift came back to me.
Why did Caleb have my necklace? Had he stolen it, like my friends had insinuated? But if he did, why were they in the pocket of a jacket he’d handed over to me with no qualms?
Something wasn’t matching up at all. Was it possible the necklace had fallen out of my bag at his place, and he’d given it back?
“Ah. That’s not how I planned on this going.”
I jerked up towards the door, surprised to see Caleb leaning against the frame. He looked as handsome as ever, but there was a seriousness to his face.
“This is my necklace,” I said flatly, which it was, but also duh.
“It is.” He pointed to the chair near the small vanity in the corner of the room. “Mind if I sit?”
I shook my head, my heart suddenly thundering in my chest, my mind going off in a million different directions. “Go ahead.”
He did, his movements stiff like he wanted to run away but wasn’t allowing himself. Each second felt like an eternity, but I didn’t rush him. I could sense the heaviness of whatever he was about to tell me.
“I did steal your necklace.”
Oh, wow. We were right out with it. I could only stare dully as the words of my former friends played through my head. Was I a fool, or did I have the worst taste in men? Stealing a necklace wasn’t anywhere on the level of what Gavin did to me, but it still was a huge violation of my trust. How was he going to be my guardian if I had to watch out for him with my things, let alone such an important gift from my parents?
“It was wrong of me, and I am sorry,” he continued. “I was between a rock and a hard place, and instead of talking to you, I retreated into my old ways. I’m telling you this now because you should have the choice whether you want to continue with my guardianship or not. But I swear to you, it was a moment of weakness. I went back to the pawn shop as soon as I could and got it back.”
The apology seemed genuine, and I could feel the pain and shame radiating off him in waves. Still, I was stuck in a state of shock as I tried to catch up with everything that’d happened. “But… why? ”
“Believe it or not, I did it to protect you. At least, that’s what I thought I was doing.” Now that sounded like bullshit, and Caleb could read that all over my face, because he continued. “There’s a shadow from my past. Remember the drugs I threw into the river? Well, someone needed to pay for them. I ended up inadvertently lifting a car from a man I never should’ve crossed. His name is Gray, and though he can be patient, given what he is, he’s also ruthless… and he found out about you.”
“Me? How?”
“I don’t know, truly, but he told me I had to pay what I owed him or he’d take you as collateral. At that moment, I froze. I didn’t know what to do, except I had to take whatever measures necessary to save you. I was wrong, and I know that now. I should’ve gone to Zach for help, though I didn’t know I could. No matter what, I should have talked to you. I may be your guardian, and I like to think of myself as your protector, but that doesn’t mean I get to decide on matters of your own agency.
He sighed. “I am sorry, so deeply sorry. I’m also sorry we’re having this conversation like this. I’ll admit I romanticized the idea of how this went down in my head and was paralyzed by finding the perfect way to bring it up to you. There isn’t one. I fucked up, not for the first time, and that’s the plain honest truth.”
I stared and stared at him, then added a little extra staring for good measure. I knew I looked like an idiot, slack-jawed, my eyebrows raised, but I couldn’t quite stop. Eventually, my mouth started moving, coherent words finally escaping my lips.
“He sounds like mafia.”
“He’s about as close as you can get without being Cosa Nostra , yeah,” Caleb said with a bitter laugh. “I thought I was slick, dodging him for so long while I worked to get the last chunk I owed him, but in the end, he had me over a barrel.”
“I…” I licked my lips and considered. “You took my necklace to stop them from taking me?”
“I did. I thought pawning it would give me a chance to give it back to you before you even noticed it was missing. But even if I did manage to swing it back, it still would’ve been wrong.”
I knew some people would say to leave Caleb high and dry right there. But given the circumstances, his past, and the fact that my impending shift had made everything a ticking time bomb, I saw how it had all unfolded.
“What you did was wrong, and I think this is something we have to talk about more thoroughly when adrenaline is a little less high, but I’m glad you told me,” I said. “You could’ve just made up an excuse right now about how it got into your pocket, and I wouldn’t have known. You messed up, and if you do it again, I’ll fire you as my guardian so fast, your head will spin. But right now? I’m ready to say I forgive you.”
“That easily?” Caleb seemed shocked, as if he’d expected to be fully chastised for his mistake.
Maybe I should have. I just didn’t care.
Caleb and I had gone through so much together, including him saving me from my own boyfriend’s assault. I’d never forget that, and when it came time to choose someone to experience my first and last consensual sexual encounter as a human, I’d chosen Caleb and Caleb alone.
“Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “This was bad, really bad. But I understand, or at least I think I do, and for the moment, that’s enough.”
All the tension radiating from him tapered off, leaving a flatter energy in the room. I wasn’t sure what to say after such an important and emotionally charged conversation, so I fell silent as my gaze drifted back to the spread of files I thought I’d organized into loose but sensible piles. Now it looked more like a haphazard whirlwind of paper.
“Are these the files?” he asked.
I was certainly ready to talk about anything else. “Yep,” I said before admitting what plagued me ever since I started spreading them out. “I’m trying to empathize with these people, but it’s hard for them not to feel alien to me. I love my mom, I love my dad, and I’ve always been fine with being adopted. I never felt like I had a real family waiting for me in the wings, because my parents are my real family.”
“I get that,” Caleb said quietly, but there was something in his words that felt leaden. Glancing at the statements again, I felt a strange sliver of emotion come over me, like it’d transferred from his body to mine.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It’s funny, or just sad. You’re their daughter, but to you, they’re complete strangers, just words on a page. To me? They were about as real as they could get, my pseudo aunt and uncle, and when I became your guardian, I saw a future with all of us together. An interconnected family that depended on each other and helped out the pack whenever they could.”
At that, my heart ached. He’d been through so much. It was awful that he’d lost my biological family along with everything else, and it touched me how much he still cared about them.
My voice was soft when I spoke. “Would you tell me about them?”
“You truly want to know?”
I nodded, putting as much sincerity in my voice as I could as I reached out and rested my hand on his arm. “Make them human for me, please?”
“I can do that.”
He looked around the mess, his keen eyes scanning impossibly fast before they landed on a half-open file. I recognized the report on the Garricks’ car still being filled with gas when Kaia’s father was found dead, his shifter healing unable to keep up with the sheer amount of liquor he’d downed to try and cure his broken heart. Whoever had written it had evidently known him, because far more empathy and detail was included than any outside state trooper could give.
“Ah, I remember when Daniel bought this car,” Caleb said. “It was a real junker, and everyone thought it was a weird hobby. But we figured there were worse things in life for a shifter to get into.” he chuckled, and I enjoyed the softness in his tone, the fond crinkle in his eyes. I was getting to see a glimpse of the Caleb of yesteryear. A young man I’d never meet, but hopefully learn a lot about.
“Daniel put tons of work into it every weekend, even taught me a few things about mechanics—not that they stuck. A couple of years later, he had a fun summer car he’d just drive everywhere. ” Caleb tilted his head. “I wonder what happened to it.”
“I hope whoever has it now can feel the love put into it.”
“I hope so, too.” But his eyes were moving again, telling me he was looking for another tidbit. The next thing he found was about Rosie, how when she was pregnant with me, she had the strangest cravings for raw caribou dipped in cut onions and soy sauce, the meat being something she usually only ate when in wolf form and the accoutrements being entirely out of left field. Then it was back to Daniel. Then Rosie again. Then even a little tale of his grandfather.
It wasn’t an exhaustive biography, but these were lovingly rendered brushes of paint across the canvas, Caleb delivering the words with the care of the world’s most passionate artist. I could tell he loved them, and that love made them feel so much more real to me.
“Thank you, Caleb,” I said, meaning every damn syllable with all my heart. We’d been through a lot already, and done some stupid things, but I knew at his core, Caleb was a good man and wolf.
“You don’t have to…” he trailed off as his eyes slid to the door. I followed his gaze and saw a little face just peeking out from the edge of the doorframe.
“Hey there,” Caleb murmured, grinning broadly. “You’re Simon, right?”
Simon! My first dinner at the campground was overwhelming, but I did remember meeting Daphne and Zach’s young son. He hadn’t said a word beyond “please” and “thank you” to his parents when they put food on his plate, but it didn’t seem like he was afraid of strangers. More like… cautious. I was putting too much on the kid, though, as some children just had a solemn demeanor.
As if to prove my point, Simon sped off, and I was surprised by how well I could hear the little patter of his footsteps. Shifter senses were wild.
“He reminds me of you at that age,” Caleb said with a chuckle.
“What, really?”
“Even as a baby, those big eyes of yours were always watching everything. I felt like I could see information going straight to your brain. They say that babies take a while before they connect via eye contact, but I swore with you, it was only a couple of weeks max.”
“It’s still so strange that you knew me as a baby.”
“It is,” Caleb agreed. “I’m lucky enough that I’ve gotten to meet you for the first time twice. You’ve grown a whole lot.”
“I’d hope so, as it’s been literal decades.”
“It has, hasn’t it?” A strange expression crossed his face, then those deep umber eyes were on me again, looking right down at my soul. “You’re incredibly brave, you know that, right?”
“Huh? What?” That was out of left field. “No, I’m not!”
“No, you are. Undeniably. You’ve been through impossible situations, yet you’ve thrived. Here you are, sitting in the middle of a stranger’s home, in the middle of a wolf pack you’ve only just found out existed, on top of a mountain of other things.”
Okay… he had a point. Once, when I was young and defined myself by my waistline, something as simple as having an extra two carrots at dinner would send me into a spiral because of the extra calories and “sugar.” That girl, while I loved her, wouldn’t have survived the last year of my life at all. I had come a long way. I had a whole lot longer to go, and I’d like to get into therapy once I wasn’t a threat to the people around me, but that didn’t mean both Caleb and I couldn’t recognize how far we’d come.
I was so deep in thought, I hadn’t realized how I’d turned to Caleb, leaning towards him. But once I was aware, our eyes locked, and I was caught up in him yet again.
This time, it didn’t feel like a gravitational pull that I was caught in, unable to resist. Instead, it was like the soothing, warm welcome of a lazy river: inviting, wonderful, and most importantly, my choice.
It was my choice, too, when I leaned in further and kissed him. It was awkward at first, my spine twisting, then I turned fully and rose. I draped my arms around Caleb’s shoulders and let myself just sink into it. Sink into us.
I thought I knew how to kiss, but locking lips as a human was a whole different animal from doing it as a wolf—pun absolutely intended. Caleb’s scent filled my senses so much, it was like I could taste the sandalwood and musk on my tongue, but there was more to it than that. It was like my body was physically reacting to everything my nose experienced, making my blood boil pleasantly within my veins while my panties quickly grew soaked.
What started off so soft, so tender, quickly got more heated. My fingers were dripping in the back of his shirt, his hands resting on my waist, their weight promising things I hadn’t even known I was missing. However, it didn’t go much farther before someone cleared their throat by the open door.
Right. I’d never closed the door after Simon’s peeping.
“Carl,” Caleb said, voice full of chagrin.
“Caleb,” the man said blankly. Did I sense animosity in the room? “There’s a gathering. You two should come.”
Then the man walked off without another word. Not exactly a chatty customer.
“He’s like that,” Caleb said as we started picking up the paper maelstrom. “There’s a lot of pack members who want to meet you.”
“Let’s hope you’re right,” I said. “I don’t think I can stand any more drama.”
“You and me both.”