7. Seven
Seven
March 2022 - Present Day
Connor Kelly
A fter the small ceremony, Phoenix and I head towards the treeline. The branches are still bare, but the tiny daisies beginning to bloom in the grass show spring is right around the corner. I strip down quickly so I can shift and burn off some of the pent-up anxiety pumping around my nervous system. My insides feel raw and exposed, and I desperately want to get to wherever we’re staying tonight so I can lock myself away in the dark.
I’m calmer as a wolf; all my swirling thoughts slow down and become easier to manage and process. Phoenix pads towards me on all fours; he walks slowly, his head bowed slightly in submission.
“Cee. Follow me. I’ll show you my home. Please follow me. I missed you.” The stream of thoughts startle me; it never even occurred to me that the ceremony would create a pack bond between us. A jumbled rush of emotions crashes into me at the thought of a tangible bond between us, but I can’t deal with that right now. I nod at him again without responding, knowing he'll sense my messy feelings down the bond and not wanting to reveal so much of myself to him.
He sets off running, and I easily match his pace; a stubborn part of me is unwilling to follow from behind, so I stay on his right-hand side, hearing nothing but the rhythmic thud thud thud of our paws hitting the ground as we run.
“Are we alone tonight?” I brave sending the thought after we’ve been running for almost an hour. Anxiety over potentially spending even more of the day around strangers overcomes my desire to give Phoenix the silent treatment.
“Just us tonight. Wedding night,” he replies.
I falter at his thoughts and stumble over a large tree root, tumbling over my front paws. If I were in my human form, I would not be able to hide the blush on my face. I’ve never been so grateful for my dark grey fur.
Phoenix slows down and nudges my face with his own, checking I’m okay.
“Didn’t mean it that way. Family tradition. We’ll stay in my home, not my family home.”
I right myself as his thoughts come tumbling into my mind; there’s an amusement behind them, clearly finding it funny where my thoughts went when I heard 'wedding night' . I should probably be more embarrassed than I am. But given Phoenix has witnessed almost every single one of my most raw and vulnerable moments, it seems a pointless endeavour.
We keep running until we reach what appears to be a small farmhouse on a hillside overlooking a lake. It's weird stepping foot on Campbell territory; I always assumed I’d sense I didn’t belong, yet there’s no denying the beauty and calm here. The sun is setting in the sky, making the clouds glow in stunning shades of orange and pink.
I pause at the gate, taking in my surroundings. Phoenix’s home is a small, slatestone cottage with a sheltered veranda added on. It blends in beautifully with the landscape, and I can’t quite believe I’m really here.
Phoenix must have shifted back quickly because he’s already wearing low-slung jeans with a big rip in the knee, not the kind you buy ripped, the kind that are soft and torn from being well-worn. He walks towards me, holding out a pair of running shorts. I take them from his hand with my mouth, and he turns so his back is to me while I shift back and put them on.
“You saw me naked the day we met. Turnin’ away to preserve my modesty seems somewhat redundant, don’t you think?” He swivels back to face me, his shoulders drooping as though he’s carrying the weight of the world on them.
“Today was hard, Cee. I don’t have it in me to spend the rest of tonight in a verbal sparring match with you.” He sighs deeply, sounding more exhausted than I’ve ever known him to be. I don’t think he even looked this tired during his teacher training year.
“It’s Connor, not Cee,” I reply like an arsehole. I can hear how petty and unreasonable I’m being, but I can’t stop the word vomit from pouring out of my mouth. The need to get the last word in always overtaking any fucking common sense I possess.
Stomping ahead of him like the overgrown toddler I’m emanating today, I go full steam ahead, up the steps and onto the porch and then turn the door handle—the locked door handle. I huff irritably while waiting for Phoenix to catch up. He nudges a plant pot by the front door with his bare foot and retrieves a key from underneath.
Once he’s unlocked the front door, he lets me walk in ahead of him, and I can’t fight the overwhelming urge to sniff the air around me. Phoenix's scent is embedded into his home, and it gives my chest an unwelcome ache. Unable to help myself, I run my hands over the furniture, needing to add my own scent into the mix.
It’s not very different from the pictures he showed me when he first moved in. It must have been around two years ago. It’s fully furnished and has obviously benefited from a lick of paint. Most of the walls are a neutral cream colour, but the far wall is a deep navy blue, and a comfy-looking, large, dark green sofa pushes up against it. There’s a wood-burning stove with a bookshelf to the right. I run my hands over the spines of the books, fighting a small smile at the endless history books. At least that hasn’t changed.
“If you like any of the furniture, we can bring it to the new place. Or if you’d rather bring your own furniture, that’s fine too. Or we can get new stuff,” Phoenix rambles.
“I don’t have any furniture. Bring whatever you want.” Phoenix’s brow scrunches in a confused expression. Still, I don’t elaborate on why I no longer have any of my own. It’s embarrassing, and I’d rather he didn’t find out.
“It’s a nice place. I suppose you wouldn’t have wanted to bring your new wife—sorry, I mean my sister —to an ugly home,” I lash out at him again.
“Stop,” he says firmly, “You know she was never going to live here, so just stop, okay?”
“Where am I sleeping?” I ask, ignoring his reply.
“There’s only one bed.” Because, of course, there is. I assess the sofa to decide whether it’s big enough for me to sleep on, and I quickly deduce that it most definitely is not. Sighing in defeat, all the fight drains out of me like a deflating balloon.
“Fine, lead the way,” I say quietly.
We manoeuvre around each other carefully, taking turns to shower and get ready for bed with minimal interaction.
Settling into bed, we’re both lying on our backs, side by side but not touching. Our breathing sounds loud and harsh in the silent room. I'm bone tired, but my whole body is wired and alert to the fact Phoenix is lying right there. It could be minutes, or it could be hours later when Phoenix breaks the silence.
“Connor? Are you still awake?” he whispers. I take a minute... I know I told him to call me Connor, but now he actually is—I hate it.
“Mm.”
“This is weird, isn’t it?”
“You’ll have to be more specific; everythin’ about this day has been weird.” He goes silent again, and I wonder if he’s fallen asleep.
“Of all the times I spent picturing the day you’d finally be in my home, lying next to me in my bed, I… I never pictured this,” he chokes out the last part.
My eyes burn as I try to hold back the tears which have been threatening to spill all day. If I say anything out loud at the moment, I’m very much in danger of sobbing, and once I start, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to stop.
Maybe it’s the emotional day I’ve had or the lateness of the hour, but I reach out my pinky finger and brush it against his hand, interlocking it with his. It’s not much, but right now, it’s the best I can do, a tiny little olive branch to let him know, me too.
Phoenix Campbell
I scrub my hand over my face as I wake up and take in my surroundings. I’m in my own bedroom, but my left arm is completely numb. As I dip my chin, I’m suddenly reminded of why. Cee is curled around me, using my bicep as his pillow; his arm wrapped around my waist and his thigh thrown over mine.
Taking a deep breath, I let the scent of lightning and heather fill my senses. I allow myself to enjoy the brief tranquillity while it lasts. It’s been over a year since I woke up to this, but as much as I want to cling to the moment, I know as soon as he wakes up, the spell will be broken. I have just enough self-preservation to discern I can’t handle the inevitable rejection. I don’t want to witness the moment he realises his unconscious mind sought comfort in me, and he immediately pulls away. Untangling myself from his heavy limbs, I move slowly and carefully so as not to disturb him and head downstairs to make some coffee.
As I scoop coffee grounds into the filter in the top of the machine, I can’t help but dwell on how I ended up in this mess. The toilet flushes upstairs and the hot water pipes begin to squeal, alerting me to the fact Cee is awake.
If someone had told me a year ago that one day, Cee would be in my house, having spent the night sleeping in my bed, as my husband, I would have probably cried with relief. It’s hard to feel that at present, though. It’s a cruel irony he’s finally here, existing in my space, and yet he despises me. I laugh, but it’s ugly and bitter.
“I think laughin' to yourself might be one of the first signs of madness.” Cee's voice startles me. I must have been entirely in a world of my own not to hear him walking down my creaky staircase.
“It occurred to me I don’t know how you take your coffee, four years together, and I’ve no idea if you take milk or sugar; how bizarre is that?” I’m trying to hold back the laugh because even to my own ears, I sound slightly hysterical. I remove the full jug of coffee from the machine, enjoying the bitter aroma that fills the kitchen.
“If you had to guess, how do you think I take my coffee?” he asks.
This feels like a test.
“I’d guess you take it with a splash of milk and maybe one sugar?”
“You’d think that by now, I’d be less surprised you’d get it right on the first try,” he snorts. “It’s as if you know me or somethin’.”
I’m relieved, as though somehow passing this stupid coffee test is a good omen. I think I needed the reminder that while we’ll never know every single thing about each other, he’s right, I do know him.
I whip up a quick breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast, and we sit opposite each other at my tiny kitchen table, eating and sipping coffee.
“What’s the lake your house overlooks?” Cee asks.
“It’s Lake Coniston.”
“Does your family live near here?” I’m so on edge around him at the moment that I find myself looking for the trap in anything he asks me.
“Um, not too far. My parents and Alf live north of here in Glenridding, which is on the edge of Ullswater. Jasper, Jade, and Henry live East near Windermere. The rest of the pack are pretty spread out.” He pauses before responding.
“You have a beautiful home.”
“Yeah, it’s nice. It’s not very big, but it suited since it was only me here.”
“You know, you don’t have to leave your home behind,” Cee says.
“What do you mean? Of course I do? We can’t live on this land,” I reply, confused.
“What I mean is, although we’ll have to have a house in Yorkshire, the agreement never stated we had to live there all the time.”
“No… the agreement states we have to start building a pack on the Yorkshire territory. I’m not sure how you think we’ll do that if we don’t even live on the land. Why would you even want to live here instead?”
“I never said I would live here instead.” The penny drops.
“And there it is,” I say, exasperated.
“There what is?”
I theatrically look at the non-existent watch on my wrist.
“Less than twenty-four hours. I’m actually kind of impressed it only took you this long to come up with an out.” I can feel my nostrils flare in anger. Running a hand through my hair, I tug at the roots in frustration, the slight sting momentarily distracting me.
“You honestly thought that after everythin' that’s happened, we’d sign on the dotted line and live happily ever after in Yorkshire? I’ve always known you were an optimist, Phoenix, but I didn’t have you pegged as completely delusional. This whole thing, ” he gesticulates his hand between us, “Is a sham. It’s nothin’ more than a very fragile peace agreement. It’s not exactly a love marriage,” he chokes out the word love as though it’s a dirty word.
“If we can’t make this work, Connor, I can promise you that a lack of love won’t be our downfall. It’s never been hard to love you; living with you, however, when you’re so pig-headedly determined to act like a vicious little cat, it's another matter entirely.” My voice is raised, and I’m white-knuckling the fork in my left hand. He looks stunned; I’ve only ever lost my temper once, in the entirety of our relationship, but I’ve lost every shred of the control I can usually keep a tight lid on. Cee knows how to get under my skin, unlike anybody else, not even my brothers.
“I am not a vicious little cat,” he snips back. Grabbing his plate, he scrapes the remnants of food into the bin before dumping it into the sink and storming out of the house. A blur of dark fur flashes past the window as he sets off running down the hillside.
“Excellent work, Nix. You really kept a level head there.” I sigh, shaking my head. “And now you’re talking to yourself; that’s a healthy sign, I’m sure.”
Cee becomes a tiny grey dot in the distance. It’s rare to witness someone both figuratively and literally running away from their own feelings.
After I’ve done the washing up, made the bed, and cleaned the already spotless bathroom, I grab my laptop and start the marking I’ve been avoiding. It’s the Easter Holidays, so I have almost two full weeks off work before I’m back to reality.
Cee's words from earlier play on a loop in my head, confirming all my fears over him having one foot out the door. When I return to work after the holidays, I’m due to tell the Headteacher at my school I won’t be continuing to work there from September. Suddenly, the idea of starting a new job in a new town, while Cee searches for the nearest exit, fills me with dread.
It doesn’t take long before the boredom of reading the same answers to the same questions makes me want to smash my head against the table. There’s still no sign of Cee. It’s crisp but sunny outside; spring finally making an appearance.
Grabbing a book I keep picking up and putting down on the wolf packs of Scandinavia, I sit on the veranda outside, waiting to see if Cee will even bother coming back.
I haven’t been reading long when the weather takes a sudden turn for the worse and the heavens open up. Thick sheets of rain pour from the sky relentlessly. Fortunately, the veranda has a roof, so I can enjoy the white noise of the heavy rain from my dry and comfortable chair.
As I finish a chapter on the Ulberg pack in Norway, the oldest known wolf pack in history, I lift my head in time to see a large, soaking wet, grey wolf leaping over the gate and landing on the path with a loud thud. Cee stalks towards me with a surprisingly impish expression, his tongue lolling out.
“You are not going in the house like that; you’ll make the whole place smell of wet dog,” I say to him sternly. He tilts his head and there’s a playfulness to his eyes I’ve not seen in a long, long while. He continues to prowl towards me slowly, like I'm prey he’s trying not to spook. I stand up from where I was sitting and block the doorway. Leaping suddenly, he pins me to the floor before licking up the side of my face and getting my clothes all wet from his damp fur.
“Ughhhh, you are disgusting,” I say while laughing. One thing to know about Cee, though, is he’d sooner choke on his own tongue than apologise out loud; this right here has always been his way. He’s always found it easier to be in his wolf form when he’s all up in his feelings.
He lies down on top of me, his deadweight knocking the breath from my lungs. His head rests on my sternum, and those deep green eyes of his tell me everything he’ll never say out loud.
“I know, Connor, I know,” I say to him, and he lets out a low, unhappy whine. “You want me to call you Cee again?” He yips his agreement. I bring my hand up to scratch behind his ear, and he pushes his head into the touch. I know this moment won’t last, but I think the only way I’ll survive the times he pulls away and lashes out, is to remain present in these soft moments. I need to fill up my cup with these, albeit brief but tender interactions and hope they don’t remain too few and far between.