Chapter 4 #2
Off to the left, past the house, two men had been working among the trees with some kind of sprayer. Now, they both turned our way as we approached. One of them had blond hair, a slim build, and stood poised for action— Shawn!
I slammed on the brakes, scrambled out of the car, and began running.
Shawn flinched for just a second, then I saw recognition hit.
He dropped the canister he was holding and sprinted toward me.
We met in a collision almost hard enough to knock us over.
I grabbed him, yanked him close, his scent in my nose, his living, not-dead, really alive body crushed against me.
I breathed against his hair as my throat closed down. Shawn, alive, here, alive.
Shawn grabbed me back, his arms clamped tight around me. “Wade! God, Wade,” he muttered. “It’s you.”
I struggled for words. “It’s me.” Nothing else came.
I hugged him tighter until he choked, then let go and pushed him back enough to look at him.
That was my brother’s face, older, sure, but still my little brother.
Shawn blinked hard, and I put out a trembling hand to trace his skull, his shoulder, his arm.
“Dustin said you were hurt, off that cliff. Broken bones.”
“I’m fine. That was long ago. Wolves heal.” He shook his head, his eyes damp. “I never imagined Dustin was bringing you with him. I asked him to find out where you’d gone. I didn’t think he’d succeed.”
You asked him? I was glad my brother wanted me found, but somehow, a twinge of disappointment hit me that Dustin’s reappearance in my life was only because of Shawn.
Fool. Did you really think he spent all that time tracking you down for your own sake?
I shook my selfish thought off. Here at last was my little brother and nothing could make this moment less than wonderful.
I peered into Shawn’s blue eyes, so like my own.
Almost on a level with my own… “You’ve grown.
” That simple realization punched me in the heart with all the years we’d lost, all the years I’d thought he’d never have.
In my imagination, he’d been frozen at fifteen, eight inches shorter than me, scrawny as a weed—
A sob racked my throat, and I yanked him close again.
“Hey,” Shawn hugged me. “Hey, now.” He rubbed my back as I teetered out of control.
One minute. Just one minute of holding onto Shawn, and I’ll believe this. My heart needs to catch up with my brain. I muffled another sob against his shoulder, gritted my teeth, and took a dozen slow breaths.
“Sorry.” Reluctantly, I let go, stepped back, and dragged my sleeve across my face. “How’ve you been? What are you doing here? Tell me everything.”
The other man down by the trees had been standing frozen, watching us, but now he set down his equipment and approached.
He was a human, about Shawn’s actual age— early twenties— red-headed, shorter and slimmer than Shawn, who was already small for a werewolf.
No threat at all. He reached Shawn’s side and stopped there, his cool gaze on me. “You okay, Shawn?”
“Better than.” Shawn grinned. “This is my big brother, Wade. Dustin found him.”
“Is he like you?”
I had a second to wonder what the guy meant before Shawn said, “Yeah, he’s a werewolf too. Wade, this is my good friend, Isaiah.”
My question of who this man was to Shawn got lost in my shock. “You told him? A human?”
“He found out. He’s cool. He won’t say anything.”
“Found out?” I glanced over my shoulder at Dustin, who’d gotten out but was leaning against his car, not approaching. “Does Dustin know?”
“Yeah, Dustin’s well aware.” Shawn waved at Dustin who came toward us with an easy stride, casual, not like here was a human with whom Shawn had broken our most fundamental commandment.
I couldn’t help moving between Dustin and Isaiah.
Dustin stopped a few feet away. “I see you’ve met Zay.”
“Zay?”
“My nickname,” Isaiah said. “I promise you, the last thing I want to do is hurt Shawn and people like him.”
“And one of the last things I want to do,” Dustin drawled, “is hurt Zay. So you can relax.”
Relaxing was not happening. My entire body vibrated like a bowstring.
If Zay knew about us, he could betray us.
If the authorities believed him, centuries of running under the radar would end.
Werewolves would be arrested, hunted, captured, studied— I was sure of that.
I knew how humans treated anyone different.
Zay was an unacceptable danger to wolf-kind.
Except I didn’t want Dustin to hurt someone my brother cared for. “How can I… I don’t…”
“We need to talk,” Shawn said. “I want to hear about your life. I want to tell you about mine.” He glanced around. “Come on. We put a picnic table under the trees over there for nice days. Come sit down.”
“I’ll fetch some food,” Zay said. “If you’re anything like Shawn, you’re always hungry.” He turned and headed toward the house before I could stop him.
“Are you sure?” I whispered to Shawn. “It’s such a risk.
He’s not a bonded wife.” Wolves sometimes waited years to tell their wives what they were.
We kept the secret of our race until we had bonded a wife to the pack with indelible links that wove our joy and pain into theirs.
A bonded wife was safe at last to know the truth about her man, bonded to her husband and his Alpha, but another male human could never be truly safe.
“I’m sure.” Shawn’s expression was serene as he led the way to the tables. “He’s known from the start and it’s been four years. I trust him.”
“Believe me,” Dustin said. “I spent a lot of time watching him at first, very closely, for months.”
“You did?” Shawn turned a frown on him.
“Of course I did. Some random guy knowing you were a wolf? He could have been anyone, anything, cruel, greedy, stupid. I gave him some initial leeway because he’d been persecuted for being gay, and he was falling for you, and eventually, he gave me enough confidence in his harmlessness to go away and leave you to your lives. ”
“I didn’t even see you hanging around, not after that first week.”
Dustin grinned. “How incompetent do you think I am? I chatted up a nurse from the clinic he had his surgery at for any issues there, had your foster parents’ phone line tapped, kept my binoculars on him. I watched from a distance. It was not a comfortable month.”
“Why not?” I asked as Shawn led us to a wooden table set under the trees.
“Winter. More snow than I enjoyed in skin.”
Shawn waved me to the bench on one side and took the other. Dustin sat at my right with fighting room between us. I didn’t read too much into that. Habit, no doubt. Shawn said, “It was the beginning of winter when I met Zay. This was back with my foster folks.”
“Foster?”
Dustin told me, “Shawn was fifteen when I pretended to kill him. Badly injured. I couldn’t stick around for his full recovery, and he couldn’t pass for eighteen.
He couldn’t live on his own. I had a couple of homes picked out, for just-in-case refuges.
I got Shawn settled in one of them, paid them to raise him. They had reasons beyond the money.”
Shawn’s smile looked fond. “They were lesbians with unaccepting families of their own. They loved sticking it to authority and anti-queer cults, so a gay runaway with fake ID was no problem.”
“I want to hear about them, to know more, but Isaiah first. Tell me.” A human knowing about werewolves triggered a drumbeat of alarm deep inside me, no matter how calm Dustin and Shawn seemed.
Shawn nodded. “I was eighteen, out running in the woods the night of the first snowfall of winter, and I came across this young man trudging through the snow in far-too-light clothes—”
“And crying.” Zay set a bowl of dinner rolls and another of fruit on the table and sat beside Shawn. “Don’t forget that.”
Shawn folded Zay’s hand in his and squeezed. “I’ll never forget.” The look they exchanged squeezed my heart the same way.
Zay continued the story. “My parents found out I was gay, found the muscle magazines I’d hidden under my mattress, and other stuff.
They told me I had to repent and swear to go straight or leave their home forever.
I was seventeen. I told them I couldn’t change who I was.
I didn’t realize they meant I had to leave right that moment, after dark, with nothing.
Dad grabbed my arm, hustled me to the door, asked me if I was ready to fall to my knees, accept Jesus, and repent my sins.
I said no, I couldn’t. He shoved me out the door in my socks and indoor clothes, and locked it behind me. ”
“Damn.” I turned to Shawn, who’d gone through even worse. He just kept his gaze on Zay, his eyes shining.
“We’d kept a pair of old rubber boots in the barn, a rain slicker, work gloves.
I put them on and started walking to town.
” Zay’s tone was surprisingly steady. “I’d walked that four miles before.
An hour, perhaps less if I jogged. But it started to snow hard and the temperature was dropping.
One of my boots leaked. My feet were freezing.
I started looking for the turn to the Hendersons’ place instead.
They went to the same church, but they’d let me in so I didn’t die.
I was pretty sure. Unless they called my folks. Except I got lost in the snow.”
Shawn lowered his hand to rub Zay’s back in small, slow movements.
Zay closed his eyes for a moment, then said, “Perhaps I didn’t make a real effort to follow the drive. Perhaps I didn’t care…”
Shawn interrupted, “It was snowing hard enough for anyone to get lost, even on a short road. Well, any human. I was out there romping in fur, having a good time miles from home, when I smelled a man out in weather no smart human would walk in. I spotted him barely a minute before he fell into a drift and didn’t get back up. I couldn’t leave him there, Wade.”
I didn’t say that wolf law insisted, yes, he could. And should.