Chapter 7
Nadja had imagined a shifter council looking much like the council that had banished her to earth.
She’d always pictured a tall dais, elevating the council members high above the plaintiff and assembly, intimidating and ominous.
What she hadn’t expected was for the council to take place in what was an old summer camp mess hall.
JJ unloaded folding metal chairs off the racks and placed them in rows facing a banquet table that was covered in children’s stickers and crayon marks. When she’d asked him why they didn’t just leave the chairs out, he shrugged and said, “Zumba.”
Robbie was asleep, and she was thankful for small mercies.
His mouth was slightly open, relaxed in sleep, and she saw that his canines were longer than they had been before.
JJ had refused her help, and so she sat, nervously waiting on the couch next to Robbie, as members of JJ’s pack made their way to the hall.
Someone brought an ancient-looking percolator from what must have been the kitchen and got it started.
Soon, the smell of coffee filled the room.
Another person carried two large zip-top plastic bags filled with cookies and unceremoniously plunked them next to the coffee.
Most people were on two legs, but a few drifted in as wolves, sniffing the air and rubbing the tops of their heads under dangling hands as they passed.
One wolf slunk up to the refreshment table and nosed at a plastic bag before getting bopped on the nose by the person arranging paper cups.
“Nuh-uh, Agatha. If you want a damn cookie, you can ask. But you’re not gonna pick it up with your mouth and get your damn germs all over the rest of ’em. It’s cold and flu season, don’t you know?”
The wolf ducked its head and whined, chastised.
The person sighed but reached into the bag and took two cookies, holding them out in one hand and scratching the wolf behind the ears with the other.
The person saw Nadja watching them. They turned to her and said, “We can’t really get the flu, but it’s the principle, you know?”
Nadja smiled, so disoriented by the casual affection surrounding her.
She’d never experienced anything like it.
Even when she’d been in Hell with the Stonebreaker clan, there had always been nine layers of formality to be mindful of.
Who to bow to, who should bow to you, who appreciated jokes and who didn’t.
The list went on and on. But the wolf, who appeared to have swallowed the cookies whole, was currently lying on the floor, belly and legs up, while two young children scratched their fur and giggled.
“Agatha is JJ’s sister,” a voice said from right next to her, and Nadja jumped. It was the person from the refreshment table. They wore a sweatshirt that said “Best Grandma Ever” and had nine little wolf silhouettes beneath it. It was well-worn and clearly well-loved.
“Oh,” Nadja said, at a loss for what else to say.
“Who are you?”
“Nadja,” she replied before pointing to the huddled form on the couch. “Nadja Stonebreaker. And this is Robbie.”
“Poor bastard.”
Nadja couldn’t argue with that.
“I’m Rose.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Rose.”
It was a thing you said, whether or not you meant it.
And Nadja wasn’t quite sure if it was nice to meet Rose.
She wasn’t hostile, per se, but she wasn’t especially welcoming either.
Rose had the air of a person who knew far more than she let on—and she let on like she knew a lot.
In that respect, she reminded Nadja of Magda.
The wolf—Agatha, apparently—wiggled on her back with her tongue draping out the side of her smiling mouth as the children dug their fingers into the tan fur on her belly, perfectly at ease.
They were all perfectly at ease, Nadja noticed.
There was no apparent hierarchy, which made no sense. There was always a hierarchy.
Robbie turned over on the couch fitfully, kicking the blanket off his body and mumbling about heat. Rose clicked her tongue sympathetically.
“It won’t work.”
“What do you mean it won’t work?” Nadja said, her head whipping to look at Rose. Panic flared. “That’s why he’s here. To have a pack with him when he shifts. That’s why I brought him here.” Her voice sounded more and more frantic with every word she spoke.
“They won’t accept him.”
“What?” Nadja hissed. “Why not?”
“No unmated males. They won’t bend on that rule.”
Nadja hated the words the moment they flew from her mouth, but couldn’t stop herself from protesting, “But not all unmated males hurt people.”
Rose looked at her with the same penetrating sort of look that Magda used, the kind that made you feel as if you were under a lens and all of your seams put on display for scrutiny.
“Not all males, chicky,” Rose said flatly, “and yet somehow always a male.”
Nadja sank into a folding chair placed against the wall, dropping her head into her hands. She felt the warmth of Rose’s body as she sat next to her, quite at her leisure, leaning back and crossing her legs at the ankle.
“But…” she said, “it’s an easy enough problem to solve.”
“How?” Nadja sputtered. “How? How the hell is he supposed to shift for the first time in his thirties without a pack and without hurting himself or, gods forbid, someone else? How is that easy to solve?”
Rose examined her nails, which were buffed to a shine without polish.
“You mate him.”
Nadja blinked at her for a few moments before the laugh burst forth like a bottle rocket. Heads all over the room turned to look at the pair. Human eyes narrowed slightly and wolf heads cocked curiously.
“I told her that joke about the frog at the library,” Rose said casually, as if she hadn’t actually said the most absurd thing in the world. “She’d never heard it before.”
With nods, and a few eye rolls, everyone went back to their conversations and business.
“What the hell, Rose? Mate him? I just met him.”
“Suit yourself,” Rose said, pushing to her feet.
Nadja grabbed her wrist and tugged. “Wait.”
Rose sat down again, this time picking lint off of the sleeve of her sweatshirt.
“How would that even work?”
Rose rolled her eyes. “Well, you see, when two wolves love each other—”
“Oh, shut up. You know what I mean.”
Rose was quiet for a minute, her eyes scanning the assembling crowd. After a time, she said, “Mating is sacred. It’s a commitment to take care of each other, to hunt even when you’re tired and stand firm when you’re scared and lay at the mouth of the den between that wolf and the world.”
Nadja turned her head to look at Rose, who had a far-off look in her eyes.
“Nearly everyone came here to escape something. Some of them were running from bad decisions, family who didn’t protect them the way family should, mates…”
She let the word hang in the air. She didn’t need to say more.
“A mating is sacred, but it doesn’t have to be forever.”
“But we’re not mates. We just met.”
Rose clicked her tongue. “You’re too hung up on the details, chicky. You drove a near stranger hours away from your home to keep him safe, to help him. What did I just say about mates? Because that sounds an awful lot like protecting him from everything that could hurt him—including himself.”
Rose was silent then, looking out at the gathering pack with an expression filled with warmth and pride.
Nadja watched, too. The children now resting their pigtailed heads against Agatha’s side, the wolf’s eyes closed in contentment as her side rose and fell.
People holding coffee cups for one another while they filled napkins with cookies and poured creamer and sugar.
JJ, standing near the door greeting people as they came in, still with his pink eyeshadow and flower-decked braids, unashamed and unbothered.
This was a safe place. Nadja could feel it. After feeling unsafe for so much of her life, she could feel the difference in her bones. These were good people. They would take care of Robbie. He would be safe.
Rose placed a hand on Nadja’s knee and squeezed gently. “You’ll do what’s best,” she said before standing and ambling toward the table at the front of the room and taking a seat. JJ nodded and sat in the middle of the table, tapping a stack of papers on the table.
These collective gestures must have been a signal because everyone began making their way to a seat.
JJ cleared his throat. “I call to order the Dismal Falls’s new moon meeting. Do I have a second?”
Rose seconded.
“Excellent. The meeting is now open. Are there any burning questions before we begin?”
A voice from the assembly said, “Yeah. Do you mind to tell the pack more about your makeup look?”
Nadja tensed. JJ might have denied that he was the leader and insisted that this was a democracy, but the fact was that he was the pack leader. For someone to mock him in his own meeting? Unthinkable. This was not good.
But JJ smiled, showing his teeth good-naturedly, and said, “Absolutely. The eyeshadow shade is Sk8er Girl by Pout. The lip gloss is Vaseline with eye shimmer mixed in. And the makeup artists are Hattie and Catherine.” He nodded at the girls, who beamed back at him.
“Excellent work, girls,” the voice said. “He looks lovely.”
Nadja was floored. She’d never been a part of a family like this, though she’d heard her clients describe them.
Her life in Hell had been so structured and governed by hierarchy.
No one would have made a joke at a superior’s expense because to be reminded of your place would have been certain and agonizing.
But that had been good-natured teasing. And JJ was secure enough in himself, in his relationship with his pack, to allow it.
JJ brought the meeting back to order. Business included discussion of repairs to be made to someone named Viola’s porch.
Then there was the matter of someone, JJ said with a cough and a raised brow, not putting the power tools back in the shed correctly.
Someone named Diana accused someone named Whit of eating her rooster.
Whit neither denied nor apologized, but he did offer to buy her a new one.
They weighed the merits of restoring the pool, the need for more people to learn how to manage the compost pile, and finally, the desire to expand the wireless internet beyond the meeting hall.
The pack was vocal, and Rose took what appeared to be faithful notes on a legal pad with a pencil that she dramatically sharpened anytime someone said something out of pocket or ridiculous.
Finally, JJ said, “That brings us to new business.”
Nadja swallowed thickly. Rose caught her eye and stared at her meaningfully.
“This morning, this man”—JJ gestured to Robbie’s unconscious form on the couch—“arrived on our doorstep needing help. He’s approaching his first shift at the age of thirty-four.” There was a collective gasp, followed by whispers. “He was brought here by his—”
“Mate!” Nadja blurted, jumping to her feet.
JJ’s eyebrow twitched but didn’t lift. He looked at her, as if waiting for her to change her tune. She didn’t.
“I’m his mate,” she repeated.
JJ gave her an indecipherable look. “He was brought here by his mate.”
“She doesn’t smell like him!” The person stood after their interjection. They wore a sundress with sunflowers all over and had their hair shaved close to their head. “I was near them when I was getting coffee, and she smells nothing like him.”
Another voice chimed in, “And there’s no claiming marks. Not a single bite on her. Look at that neck.”
Nadja looked at Rose, who gave her the same sort of long-suffering look Magda so often wore. The kind that said, “Figure it out, kid. And fast.”
“We’re waiting until it’s official. We eloped,” Nadja said, the lie tripping off her tongue with ease.
“Well, ain’t that romantic,” an old man crowed. “Just like you and me, Evelyn!”
“So you’re not mates, then,” the person in the sunflower dress said, crossing their arms over their chest.
Dozens of pairs of eyes were on her, including JJ’s.
“Matings are consecrated at the full moon. Everyone knows that. That’s two weeks away,” they continued suspiciously. “So you’re not mated. You can’t make it official for another two weeks. How do we know you’re telling the truth?”
Nadja fumbled but grabbed hold of a thread that felt believable, for all that it was hastily concocted.
She gestured to his twitching form, “Robbie and I were leaving a… situation. He was very anxious about it and needed to leave.”
There. That wasn’t exactly a lie.
“We planned to elope, but then he started to shift. I didn’t know where else to take him, so I brought him here. Please, you have to help him.”
Rose cleared her throat.
“My mate,” Nadja corrected. “Please help my mate.”
The silence had weight and volume as Nadja looked out at the crowd.
But then Agatha nudged the children off of her, rose to her feet, shook her coat, and padded over to where Nadja sat.
The wolf looked at her for a long moment, studying, before dropping to her haunches next to Nadja’s knee, staring out at her pack.
Nadja didn’t understand the dynamics of this pack yet, and she certainly didn’t understand Agatha’s role within it. But her endorsement, or what felt like it, caused a hush to fall over the pack.
“Well, alright then,” JJ said, breaking the silence. “I move to allow Nadja and her mate, Robbie, to stay on a trial basis, pending their mating at the full moon in two weeks’ time. Is there a second?”
Whit seconded. Agatha yipped.
“Very well. All those in favor, raise your hand so Rose can count you.”
Hands and paws lifted. Rose counted, her pencil bobbing in the air at every number.
“All those opposed?”
Nadja closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see. There had been a lot of hands raised in support—but not all.
But then JJ said, “The ayes have it,” and her knees gave out.