Chapter 6
SIX
Foster
Rhodes doesn’t even try to hide the sympathy in his eyes when I walk into the council room the next day. Camden and Cyrus are already there, papers spread, radios clipped to belts, the usual small-town authority in a wolf’s clothing tableau. Today, it feels like an intervention.
“How’d it go?” Camden asks carefully, like the question might spook me.
I drop into my chair and scrub a hand over my face. “She locked herself in the bathroom. Told me to go.”
Rhodes exhales roughly.
Cyrus winces. “Penny or Selena?”
“Penny,” I confirm. “She’s…hurt. I spent all day trying to talk to her yesterday, but no luck.”
“She’ll be hurt until she decides not to be,” Camden says wisely. “What about Selena?”
My wolf’s ears prick at her name, alert. Mine.
“She understands,” I say. “Too much, probably. We agreed to stay away from each other until I fix things with Penny.”
“And how’s that going?” Cyrus asks.
A sound rips out of me that’s more animal than man. Not a word. A growl vibrating through my chest.
Camden’s mouth twitches like he’s trying not to smile at the thought of me being trapped by my noble intentions.
Rhodes leans forward. “Your wolf?”
“Livid. Insistent.” I don’t say starving because that makes me sound like a teenager. I’m not a teenager. I’m an Alpha who’s drawn to his mate like a magnet, especially with the full moon close enough to taste in the air. “He wants the bond now.”
Cyrus whistles softly. “Full moon’s tomorrow.”
My wolf snarls, pacing faster. Tomorrow. She has to be ours tomorrow, he growls at me.
“I have a plan. I’m going to keep busy. Worst-case scenario, I’ll leave town for the day.”
“And if that doesn’t work?” Cyrus asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit.
Camden’s gaze softens. “Penny will come around. She knows the difference between being used and being chosen by fate. In the meantime, stay away from your mate.”
“Fine.” I push to my feet. “I’m going to do a border check. I’ll see you guys later.”
“Good luck,” they call.
The forest greets me like an old friend. South of town, the trail narrows, pines shouldering closer. It smells like sun-warmed sap, damp earth, and rabbit trails. Beneath all that is the thrum of home.
My pace is brisk as I run around my Pack’s land. My wolf is on high alert for any signs of danger or anything out of the ordinary that might need our attention. I’m trying to distract myself. It works for about an hour.
Then the wind shifts, and every plan I have burns to ash.
Vanilla sugar and something like summer rain on flagstones. Sweetness I could find blindfolded. My head snaps up. My wolf lunges.
Mate.
I don’t run to her. I stand very still until the first stupid surge of need dulls enough that I won’t do something reckless like scoop her up and throw her over my shoulder. Then I go down the trail because not going would be worse.
She appears around the bend a breath later, a splash of red hair and flushed cheeks, a backpack slung over one shoulder. She sees me and stops, as if we planned this, as if the path was always meant to bring us together.
“Hey,” she says, her blue eyes wide.
“Hey.” My voice is rough. It always is around her now. “You okay?”
She laughs without humor and looks toward the canopy like the trees might have advice. “I thought a hike might help. Clear my head.” She tips her head. “You?”
“Border check,” I say, because admitting I was also trying to outrun my need for her feels too honest. “Mind if I walk you?”
She hesitates for a fraction of a second. Not because she doesn’t want me there; I can smell the want on her skin and the answering throb in my bloodstream. No, it’s because she’s brave enough to keep making the hard choice.
“Yeah,” she says finally, her smile lighting up her face. “I’d like that.”
We fall into step like we’ve been doing it all our lives. The trail narrows and widens, the forest playing its usual games with light. Our shoulders brush once when the ground tilts, and we both freeze, the way you stop after lightning strikes too close.
“Sorry,” she breathes.
“Don’t be.” My hands are fists at my sides, so I don’t reach for her.
We walk. We don’t talk much. That’s new for her. Selena is quiet, but she’s not empty. She has a knack for noticing wildflowers I’d never see and frogs whose throaty croaks rise in a steady rhythm from the reeds.
“Penny texted me,” she says finally. “She’s acting like everything is normal, but if I mention you, she gets kind of cold.”
My heart aches. “Same.”
We go quiet again. A jay scolds us from a tree above. A chipmunk darts across the trail in front of us.
We continue walking for a few moments, an air of helplessness engulfing us.
“I thought about leaving,” she says after a while, the words thin. “For real this time. Packing a bag and getting on a bus to anywhere that isn’t here.”
Every cell in me snaps to high alert. “Don’t,” I say too fast, too sharp.
She glances up, her chin tilting bravely. “I won’t. Not unless…” She doesn’t finish. She doesn’t have to. But I know what she was about to say. Not unless Penny makes this a life sentence.
“She won’t.” I make it a vow so I don’t have to taste the fear under it. “She’s hurt, not cruel.”
Selena nods. She’s known Penny almost as long as I have. Longer, if you count the way best friends braid a lifetime into an afternoon when they’re six and say forever like it might be true.
We come to the overlook where the trail breaks out of the trees, and the town lies in the cup of the valley. General store, barber pole, the roof of the diner glinting, the tiny square of the bookstore where she works.
We stop. The wind tugs at her hair, splaying it across my shoulder. I resist the urge to turn my head and inhale deeply. This is what restraint feels like: heat under my skin with nowhere to go.
“Do you remember when you taught me to skip stones?” she asks suddenly. “I was terrible. You kept saying ‘Again,’ like a coach.”
“I remember that day. It was fun.”
She looks at me like she’s memorizing everything about me. I can feel the moment we realize we’re standing too close because the air changes. Warmer. Denser. The bond pulls. My wolf surges, his claws scraping the inside of my ribs.
Now, he insists. Take.
It costs me everything, but I step back. “Let me walk you home.”
She studies me, then nods. “Okay.”
The return path feels shorter. Or I’m holding my breath.
We reach town before the light fades, which my sensible brain notes with approval.
The rest of me is aware of everything else: her hand brushing the strap of her backpack, the pulse at her throat, the way people on Main Street glance once and then twice like they can feel the current between us without knowing its source.
At her door, we stop. The world goes quiet in that big, cinematic way it does when something important is about to happen. A dog barks two streets over. Someone laughs near the diner.
“Thank you for walking me here,” she says softly.
“Always.”
We stand there. I tell myself I’m going to leave. Then she sways closer, and I realize leaving might be the one thing I can’t do.
Her eyes drop to my mouth.
Mine do the same.
Traitors.
The space between us shrinks until the rules we made for ourselves blur. I can feel the warmth of her breath. I can smell vanilla and the faint, clean scent of the soap she uses, and it is suddenly very easy to imagine how her mouth tastes.
My wolf shoves. I bend until our foreheads almost touch, and the sound I make is a low ache.
“Foster,” she whispers my name like a lit fuse.
“Selena, we can’t…Penny,” I say hoarsely, my sister’s name a hand on my collar.
I see the war in Selena’s eyes: love, loyalty, hunger. The same emotions I know are reflected in mine.
We step back at the same time. It would be funny if it didn’t feel like losing the best thing we’ve never let ourselves have.
“Tomorrow’s the full moon,” she says, a reminder and a warning.
“I know.”
“What will you do?”
“Work. Run. Stay out of rooms that smell like you.” My words shock me, yet the truth steadies me. “Maybe…leave town for the night.”
Her eyes flash with pain. “If that’s what you need.”
“I don’t want to,” I tell her, and it’s the most honest thing I’ve said today. “But I need to, so I can keep my promise to Penny.”
She swallows. “What would you want? If you could?”
I look at her mouth before lifting my gaze to her eyes. “All of it,” I reply, because neither of us deserves half-truths. “All of you.”
She exhales like my words hurt and heal. “Go,” she murmurs. “Before I forget I’m a good friend.”
I nod and do the hardest thing I’ve done in a long time: I turn and walk away.
When I get home, Penny has dinner ready for us. She smiles at me as I walk in, and I try to smile back, but it feels dim and forced.
“It smells good,” I compliment.
“Everything is ready. Take a seat.”
I sit across from her, and we both dig in.
Dinner with Penny is a practice in pretending I’m not someone else’s gravity. She sits across from me at the worn kitchen table, spaghetti between us like a cartoon of the family we used to be. Her hair is in a messy knot on top of her head, and tension brackets her mouth.
“I made too much,” she says, avoiding my gaze.
I pretend everything is okay, like the discovery of my mate and the upcoming full moon hasn’t affected my appetite. “We’ll eat it.”
My voice is even. I am proud of it. My wolf is not. He paces, tail swishing.
We go through the motions of eating. I twirl noodles I don’t taste.
Penny picks at garlic bread and stares at something over my shoulder that only she can see.
The house is full of ghosts: our parents’ voices in the hall, last night’s fight, the birthdays stacked like rings in a tree.
I want to say I’m sorry for all of it, even the parts I didn’t cause.
“How was work?” she asks finally.
“Busy. You?”
She huffs a breath. “I reorganized the spice drawer.”
“Riveting.”
“Shut up.”
We lapse into uncomfortable silence. I watch her, seeing the way she’s building a wall brick by brick, not to keep me out, but to make a safe room to cry in. I can’t knock it down. I can only sit outside and wait.
“I’ll be out late tomorrow,” I say, my tone neutral. “Border runs. Keeping the younger wolves…occupied.”
“Right.” Her mouth wobbles slightly. “Keep them from doing something stupid.”
I smile without teeth. “Yeah.”
She puts her fork down. When she looks at me, I see my sister, the one who threw a punch at a girl who made fun of my hand-me-down jacket in seventh grade; the one who still leaves a nightlight on for nightmares. “I’m still upset,” she says simply. “I don’t know how not to be yet.”
“I know.” I fold my hands so she won’t see them shake. “I’ll be here when you do.”
“What if I never do?”
I swallow. “It’s okay. It will be okay.”
Something in her breaks at that, some brittle thing. Her eyes go shiny, and she looks away. “I hate this.”
“Me too.”
She stands abruptly, scraping her chair back. “I’m going to bed.”
“Night, Pen.”
She pauses in the doorway, as if the house is holding her there. “Night.” She doesn’t say I love you. But she didn’t say nothing.
I clean the dishes because motion is mercy. Hot water, the squeak of a sponge, the small, human acts that keep my feral instincts in check. When the counters are bare and the kitchen looks like itself again, I climb the stairs to my room.
The moonlight coming through my window is brighter than it should be a night early.
That’s how close we are. I stand there for a minute, looking out at the dark line of the trees and the silvery river.
I feel the hum of the Pack in my bones. And I feel her, a brighter thread braided through the rest.
Leave, I tell myself. Just for a night. Put distance between want and ruin.
Stay, my wolf snarls. Guard. Claim. Ours.
I sit on the edge of my bed and put my head in my hands. My promise to Penny is a weight pressing on my shoulders. The pull to Selena is a current in my blood. The moon is a clock, and it’s almost done counting down.
“I could go east,” I tell the dark. “Run onto the state land. Come back at dawn.”
Coward, my wolf snaps.
Protector, I argue.
Both ring true. I think of Selena on her porch, the way we stopped ourselves because my promise to Penny still means something.
Will my sister and I be able to sit at the same table tomorrow without her flinching every time she looks at me?
I’m trying to walk a line between two people I love. No, not a line. A knife-edge.
I stretch out, finally surrendering to the mercy of sleep. My last thought is of red hair and blue eyes and the whisper of her breath a heartbeat from my mouth.
Hold on, I tell myself. One more night. Just one more night.
My wolf curls inside me, not happy, but watchful. The moon climbs. I breathe. And somewhere between wanting and duty, I fall under, dreaming of my mate smiling up at me.