Chapter 4 #3
“I went over and nudged him, tried to get him to stand.”
Zay gave a choked chuckle. “Which would’ve worked if I could’ve. I thought this huge wolf was trying to eat me. But I was so cold I couldn’t feel my feet, could barely move. I figured I was dead either way, except getting mauled was going to hurt a lot worse than falling asleep in the snow.”
“I couldn’t lift him as a wolf, so I shifted,” Shawn said. “I hooked his arm over my shoulders, and half-dragged him two hundred yards to the Hendersons’ cow barn.”
“Hot naked man in the snow,” Zay pointed out. “I thought I was having the wildest death hallucinations in history. Not bad ones, though, spending my last minutes draped all over Shawn.”
“I was scrawny, not hot.”
“You were hot, Shawn. I know what I saw. Although I was too listless to do anything about it. He dragged me into this cow barn. There were some canvas sheets and an old blanket, and a lot of straw. He let me down in an empty stall and started trying to warm me up. Coming back to life was the most painful thing ever, but he was there for me, wrapped around me, sharing heat.”
“You still lost two toes,” Shawn said.
“You did your best. I’m here now. No regrets.” Zay turned to me. “We talked a lot through that long night. Once he decided I was safe, Shawn shifted into fur, ran home, and came back with his foster moms’ pickup with the plow blade. I have no idea how he made it through the storm.”
“White-knuckling it, mostly. I’d done a lot of driving on the farm for them, and werewolf eyes are better in dim light, even in skin.”
“The Hendersons came out on their porch, looking confused, but Shawn just stopped alongside the barn, got me into the truck, handed me a thermos of hot soup and a blanket, and we drove away.”
Shawn added, “I always wondered if they told your folks about seeing you.”
Zay shrugged, though I’d bet that was fake nonchalance. “My parents never tried to find me, that we could tell. If the Hendersons told them I wasn’t dead, apparently that was enough for Mom and Dad.”
I pointed out, “I guess that’s still better than someone’s pack murdering them on purpose. Maybe not a lot better. No wonder you and Shawn got along.”
“We just clicked, right from that first night.” Zay gave Shawn another one of those warm looks. “He was my champion, convinced his foster moms to take me in.”
“They loved you.” Shawn thumped Zay’s arm.
“Do they know too?” I asked. “That you’re a wolf?” How many humans has Shawn broken our laws with? He’d moved in with his fosters seven years ago. If there was going to be a big, nasty werewolf reveal, surely it wouldn’t have taken that long?
“No,” Dustin told me. “The ladies knew Shawn was gay, nothing else. We pretended the pack was a homophobic human cult he was running from. However, that risk of discovery was one reason I decided to move Shawn and Zay out of the area as soon as both of them finished high school. I’d spent three years praying his foster moms wouldn’t accidentally find out Shawn was a wolf.
Distance made him safer. I located this property for sale, and Shawn and Zay were willing to make a go of apple farming. ”
“I was born a farm kid and loved the life,” Zay said.
“Shawn got a taste for growing things with his foster moms. Here, hang on a minute.” He jumped to his feet and jogged to the house, returning with four glass bottles.
Once he’d set them in an arc on the table in front of me, he pointed to the labels.
“Green Meadow Sweet Cider, and Wild Meadow Hard Cider. Regular and apple-blackberry.”
“The blackberries are a bonus,” Shawn told me. “They grow wild around here. Try it.”
Zay slid a bottle opener out of his pocket and passed it to me.
I reached for the apple-blackberry sweet cider.
The last thing I needed right now was alcohol, no matter how little it affected me.
I popped the cap off, lifted the bottle to my lips, and took a sip.
Sweet fruity goodness flowed across my tongue, the flavor rich and bright as sunshine. “Mm, that’s good.”
“We can’t take too much credit,” Zay said.
“The old couple we bought the business from had everything worked out— the recipes, the bottling contract, the distribution. They’d wanted to pass Meadow Cider to their kids, but the kids weren’t interested.
A national business chain would’ve bought them out, but the corporate goons were going to change the orchard’s name and mess around with the product.
Dustin convinced the owners we’d run it exactly like they had, maintain their legacy. ”
“Dustin?” I glanced his way.
He shrugged. “The guys do all the hard work, but no one’s going to sell a business to nineteen-year-olds. I was the figurehead, paid the down payment out of the money my dad left me. They run the orchard. I stop by now and then.”
“Not often enough,” Zay said. “Quit being such a loser.”
I blinked at a skinny human calling a powerful werewolf a loser, but Dustin grinned like he enjoyed the teasing. “I’ll have more time to come by now.”
“More time?” I asked.
He stared off across the orchard. “I spent some hours here and there trying to find you.”
“Hours.” Shawn scoffed. “Months. Years. All your time.”
“Because you asked him to,” I pointed out.
“Nah. Because he felt like shit for tricking you.”
Dustin said, “Because I owed you the truth and an apology. And because… well, that was the big reason.”
I suddenly wanted to know what other reasons he’d suppressed, but a shift in the breeze brought me Shawn’s scent again, that confirmation of a brother I’d thought I’d lost. My eyes welled up and I blinked hard, downing a few swallows of his excellent cider to cover the pang.
When I felt steadier, I turned to Shawn, ignoring Dustin and my confusion for something better.
“So,” I told my brother. “Sock it to me. I want to know all about the last seven years.”