Chapter 19 #2
Everybody eats, or pretends to eat. Savi fills her plate with mashed potatoes and acts as if she’s never tried them before. Then she and Briar dig into the vegan platter that Ty keeps looking at from the corner of his eye, like he thinks it might attack him.
Everyone might be awkward, I think, but the more we sit around the table, the less awkward it feels. Or maybe it’s so awkward that it circles right back around to okay.
Maybe it’s the drinks.
We don’t talk about anything important. No discussion of death goddesses or Crater Lake floods or slasher rituals, because Briar is here. No talk of doom in front of a civilian no matter how much fae blood she might or might not have. No pack politics for those who don’t need to know our business.
Especially when someone already knows too much about our business.
“Don’t you get bored up there on your mountain?” I ask Savi, to distract myself from the things I’d rather not think about. “It seems lonely.”
“I am never lonely,” Savi replies airily. She lifts a brow. “I have entirely too many minions for boredom, Maddox.”
Ty and Ariel are talking about combat and sparring styles, digging deep into what sounds like archaic forms and systems that, of course, they both seem to have studied. Extensively.
Winter and I talk about high school.
“Remember junior year?” I ask her. “When there was all that curious so-called flooding that closed the school down that spring, even though it was a dry year?” She nods. “Succubus infestation.”
Winter makes a face. “What about that ridiculous blizzard in May when we were in sixth grade?”
“Dragons,” Savi interjects blandly, clearly not inspired by the combat chat. “Not the inspiring kind. Salamanders with delusions of grandeur. They needed to be frozen out.”
“What about you?” Winter asks Briar. “Where did you grow up?”
It almost seems to me that she flickers, as if she’s here and then not here, like old TV static—but maybe that’s the wind outside that we can hear buffet the house every now and again. Or the introvert in her dying a little because she was both perceived and addressed.
“When I was small we had to work,” she says, quietly, but sounding less awkward than usual. “But I liked it.”
“Where did you say you grew up?” Savi asks. “The place where I was born no longer has a name in any language you would understand.”
Briar blinks, and then reaches up to tug her usual beanie down more securely over her ears. “We moved around a lot.”
“Military family?” Winter asks. She knows perfectly well Briar isn’t from a military family. But it’s probably genius, because it gives Briar a way to talk about things it’s clear she doesn’t want to talk about.
“Yes,” she says, sounding . . . more careful than unsure. “Every time we were . . . relocated, it was challenging.”
We all gaze at each other.
“What was your favorite place you ever lived?” I’m afraid this is feeling like an interrogation, so I lean in and smile, because the reality is I’m just nosy. “I lived in New York for a while. I loved it.”
“I like it here,” Briar says, simply, and there’s something about the way she says it. It makes my skin feel tight. It makes my throat constrict.
I realize that she makes me want to cry, and I couldn’t even say why.
“In fact,” Briar says, but stops and clears her throat.
She looks down. Once again she reaches up and rubs at that space below her throat, and I realize that she has some kind of talisman there.
It must be what’s on that necklace, and I wonder what kind of talisman a funny, private creature who doesn’t smell like anything gravitated toward. A protective rune? A knife?
“In fact,” she starts again, looking up with her gray gaze something like resolved, “I like it so much that I’m going to throw my own party.
You did Christmas,” Briar says, and smiles at Winter.
“I—uh—I want to do New Year’s. It will be great.
We can wish in the new year together. Like I said, you’re all the closest I have to friends.
” She commits to a scowl then. “If you want, I mean. It’s fine if you don’t. So.”
I find that I can breathe easier when she returns to the abruptness I associate with her. That I feel less like I might cry. Like her awkwardness is somehow as endearing as it is off-putting, though I bet she would try to swing on me if I said that to her.
“That sounds amazing,” I say.
“Yes,” Winter murmurs. “So amazing. Love New Year’s. Love counting down to another year while hiding in the house and keeping the zombies away. Can only improve that with friends.”
“Good,” Briar says. She looks down at her mostly untouched plate and seems to crumple a little. “Good.”
Now as I look at her, I don’t see a surly goth girl. I see the bones in her face, suggesting she isn’t eating even when she’s not having an uncomfortable holiday meal with people she barely knows. I see her anxiety and her helplessness, socially anyway.
She still makes my chest hurt. I still can’t fathom why. I just know she makes me want to protect her. Even from herself.
After dinner, we sit around some more. Savi lazily waves a few fingers, and that’s the entire cleanup operation.
Briar mutters things, chews on her fingernails, and then disappears—but not without smiling pretty big before she goes.
A while after that, Savi, Ty, and Ariel end up in the den, talking in low voices but not as if they care if they’re overheard.
Winter and I sit in the chairs in the dining room, staring at the tree we put up the night before.
“It really is pretty,” I tell her. “I might be a convert.”
“Consider my Christmas tree your Christmas tree,” Winter says, and smiles at me. Then, after a moment, the smile fades from her mouth. “I hope he’s okay tonight.”
It’s snowing outside. It blew in when Briar left, rushing out the front door and letting it bang behind her. I think of Augie, huddled in his prison.
“I think that he’s better off where he is now than where he was before,” I say. Carefully. Kindly.
Winter nods. “That’s not a small thing. I know that. I . . . It will have to be enough.”
We sit there for a moment. There’s a fire in the fireplace. My belly is full. I can hear the rumble of Ty’s voice, and it soothes me. Everything is changing, but I’m not unhappy with that. I’m not anything close to unhappy with the changes.
It’s the traitor who’s been sandbagging us, the traitor I never saw despite all the complaints about disruption along our routes—but I shove that away.
“I miss so many people,” Winter tells me in a hushed voice. “But I’m also okay with this. With us. With this night, no matter why we did it. It felt . . .”
“Like family,” I murmur.
We look at each other, then away. We don’t hug or anything too sappy, but when I feel myself smiling, I know she is too.
Much later, Ty and I go outside and stand there in the snow, letting it swirl around us. I set my hands on his hips and I hold my head back so I can catch snowflakes on my tongue.
I should tell him, but I don’t. I rationalize it. I tell myself that he has so few nights like this, where he doesn’t have to be the king of everything. Where he can just be himself. Why should I let some asshole traitor take that too?
“I told them I’d be coming back tonight, but they know where I am,” Ty says, looking down at me with that light in his eyes that I love the most. “Do you want to spend the night in your cottage?”
I smile at him. “I love my cottage.”
He looks more serious than I think he should. “I know you do.”
I don’t want him serious, not now. Not when I know what a gift it is to have time with him away from the den. Away from the pack.
I take his hands in mine and draw him backward, then turn so I can lead him across the yard toward my cottage. The snow keeps coming, and it’s cold. Refreshing. It’s in my hair and on my eyelashes, and I can feel the cold wet of it in the places we touch.
As we get near my cottage, I’m not sure if I see something fluttering at the corner of my eye or if it’s just more snow—
“Stop,” Ty growls out, yanking me back flush against him.
Not in a cute way. It’s an order.
I freeze there where he holds me. All I can feel is his heart in his chest, and mine keeping time. But I don’t protest.
In the next moment, I see it, mostly hidden by branches laden with snow until we stop. Until we look.
A figure in the trees, and all around him, steaming entrails melting the snow.
His back is toward us. I don’t understand how he doesn’t know we’re here, this figure in black crouched over his work.
I quickly realize it’s because he’s making noise. He’s chopping with an axe, again and again, and a quick scan makes it clear that there have to be the remains of at least five animals in front of him.
Something else is clear too.
I’ve been thinking he since I saw him. Now I can study the figure, and that confirms it. He’s big. Wide.
Ty is growling, low and long. I’m pressed against him, but my entire body is wired and ready. I can feel my fingertips splitting open to let the claws out.
The figure leaps to its feet in a fluid, athletic, smooth motion—
And both Ty and I know him immediately.
I feel Ty’s body go stiff. I think I might whimper. How . . . ?
But it’s like we’re frozen.
In utter disbelief. Maybe something closer to despair.
We watch him tilt his head, clearly scenting the air, and then he turns around. His eyes are gold against the dark, announcing that he’s a wolf—
But we already know that.
“Connor,” Ty grits out, sounding as winded and sucker-punched as I feel. If a whole lot more furious. “What the fuck?”