Chapter 6
“That was eventful.”
I snorted at Sienna as I adjusted the leather toy Duncan was chewing on. We were spread out on the bed in the room that she and Matti had been assigned for “their short stay”—those had been the exact words of the elders. So they didn’t get any ideas. It wasn’t like I didn’t know this time with them was temporary. I was used to living hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away from them at almost all times.
That’s just what seemed to happen to real best friends. It was like the universe knew when there was a bond so strong that nothing—not distance, time, children, or responsibilities—could come between it. So, it proved it to you.
Life couldn’t be too good all the time.
And like that saying warned, nothing good comes easy. Everything I valued in my life required work. This was just one of those things. My best friends and I had to put in effort to make our friendship still thrive after so many years. If things between us had only been one-sided, we never would have made it to this point.
“Tell me about it. That didn’t go like I’d thought it might,” I agreed with her, moving the toy from side to side as Duncan tried to lazily snap at it. If I had to guess, he was putting in about 5 percent effort. I could tell by the way his eyes drooped that he needed a nap. I dropped my voice. “I think I got a couple of gray hairs from the anticipation they made me go through thinking they were going to say no to us staying.”
Sienna fluffed the pillow under her head as she lay on her side with Dunky between us. “They dragged that out, but you know how it is. It’s an older werewolf thing. My grandparents are the same way any time they have news to share. They start off in this tone that sounds all doom and gloom, and then they tell us they’re going on vacation and can someone come by and water their plants? It’s a power play. They’re bored.”
I hummed and nodded, taking in her freshly washed face and wet hair. Did her skin color look a little off or was I imagining it? I wanted to ask if she was feeling all right but figured she had to be fine. The rooms had warm-colored light bulbs. Maybe that was it.
“Are you relieved they agreed to the trial period? Matti was telling me while I was showering that he forgot all about that part,” she kept going.
“I get why they require it.” I bit my lip and met her familiar gaze. “I’m hung up on that satyr woman this afternoon. I might be overthinking it.” Or I might not be.
My best friend said nothing as she stroked a finger down Duncan’s back. He paused lazily snapping and peeked at her over his shoulder for a moment before going back to it. “Don’t mind them. They’re herbivores. It’s instinct for them to fear anything that might hurt them.”
“I don’t have sharp teeth. I can’t hurt anyone like that,” I whispered.
Light-colored eyes met mine, and even they seemed different than usual. Dimmer. “I know you wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
I wouldn’t. There was no reason to let it bother me too much. Her son—if that’s what Shiloh was—had liked me, and that was enough. Kids were good judges of character. If I’d listened to Duncan like I should have, I would have been on high alert around those people who had tried to take him before things had escalated.
That was the last time I was ever going to ignore his instincts. Or anyone else I knew with a fantastic nose. Which then got me thinking….
I lifted my head to see that the door to the en suite bathroom was still closed. It was. Franklin, the elder with the glasses, who I thought had been acting kind of weird, had explained while he’d given us the tour of the second floor of the main building—or the “clubhouse” as he’d called it—that each room on the second and third floor had its own bathroom. There were five rooms in total for “guests,” and he’d stuck us in two right next to each other. They were comfortable, big enough for a king-sized bed, a nightstand on each side, a dresser, and a television across from the mattress. The bathrooms were identical with a large walk-in shower with some kind of stone tile and timeless accents that really tied in with the rustic and homey feel of the entire building. It was nice without making me nervous to damage something.
And while I would’ve rather stayed in my travel trailer, that had been one of the rules the elders had laid out during the final parts of our meeting.
We had to integrate, and apparently, my camper didn’t count, but staying in the clubhouse for the next three months did.
It was fine. We had room for activities, and it would be nice to not be cramped in the tiny shower that worked just fine too. And from the way Duncan had been so attentive, he seemed to like this place already. The elders had given him a wide berth, but I wanted to hope it wasn’t out of fear. There was a lot of new stuff going on in such a short time, and maybe they were giving him space before overwhelming him with attention. They had seemed interested enough there for a minute.
Except for….
“Matti?” I raised my voice, knowing he was listening from the bathroom.
He didn’t let me down. “Yeah?”
I had to word this right. “What do you know about that elder with the glasses? Franklin.”
My oldest friend took his time before answering. “Not much. I didn’t spend any time with him when I lived here.”
Hmm.
He kept talking. “There’s no hierarchy with them, but Henri mentioned once that they all seem to give him more of a say than anyone else. He looks the same too. I wonder what kind of skincare routine he has.”
Freaking Matti.
It was only rude to ask someone what they were to their face, there was nothing technically wrong with wondering about it behind their backs.
“Do you not know what he is then?” I asked.
“I’ve got no fucking idea,” he called out. “I bet Henri does.”
“Why?” Sienna asked.
“I might be imagining it, but I thought he was acting kind of different from everyone else,” I tried to explain.
She shrugged like she hadn’t noticed. I guess that was a good thing.
Moving along, I decided to change the topic. “What’s up with Henri?” I asked Sienna. I was rolling the dice talking about him in here in the first place, but I didn’t care enough to be discreet. I wasn’t planning on talking bad about him.
“What do you want to know?” she whispered.
There was a reason why I was asking her and not Matti. Sienna didn’t love gossip as much as he did, and I wasn’t sure if she knew about the crush I’d had on him when we’d been younger.
“Matti never talks about him, and you’ve only seen him… what? Three times in all these years? What’s he been up to?” That wasn’t the question burning a hole in my brain, but considering she and Henri barely knew each other, I was well aware she wasn’t the person to interrogate about why he wouldn’t want me living here.
I needed to ask him directly because that betrayal stung almost as much as when he’d taken Matti away without a goodbye.
“I’ve seen him for about half an hour three times in six years, Nina. Matti knows more because he’s seen him more often than I have when he’s had to come to Colorado for work and Henri’s met up with him, but all I know is that he lives here, he works for the sheriff’s department as deputy, he’s bad at texting Matti back, and”—I had to read her lips because her whisper was so low—“he doesn’t have a mate.” She raised her eyebrows.
Hmm.
Her mouth formed a very flat smile. “You don’t remember that I know?”
“Know what?”
Her lips moved, but nothing actually came out of her mouth. “That you had a crush on him.”
I guess I had told her everything. I laughed. “When I was ten!”
She wasn’t done. “I saw you check him out.”
I rolled my eyes so hard as I laughed. “ Yeah, because he’s the size of a Jeep, and I haven’t seen him in almost twenty years.” And because I couldn’t lie to her, I didn’t. “He’s really good-looking, but come on.” That wasn’t exactly a mystery, and I wasn’t going to pretend otherwise and come across as even more suspicious.
“Ha!” She tapped the tip of her nose, and I knew what she was saying. She’d smelled my attraction to him.
Which meant chances were, so had he, dang it.
Unless he’d been too preoccupied, or had shut off his senses then, I could only hope.
The urge to argue that it meant nothing was on the tip of my tongue, but then I remembered exactly how I’d treated her after she’d met Matti and been all goo-goo-gah-gah over him, and I had picked on her relentlessly.
She could have this, mostly because it meant nothing. It had been a long time since I’d given her any kind of ammo to tease me with.
“Eh, he’s all right. Matti got the good looks in the family,” Sienna said after I stared at her for a minute. “He’s too intense for me. He’s kind of scary, don’t you think?”
That made me laugh some more. “Henri? Scary? Why? What do you have to be scared of?”
Her eyes went squinty. “Did you not see the size of him when he was about to rip your face off?”
“He wanted to, didn’t he?”
“Matti said he wouldn’t have, but I don’t believe him.”
“He was not going to rip your face off, Nina!” Matti hollered from inside the bathroom.
“Quit eavesdropping!” I said in a normal volume as Duncan got up and did a little circle on the bed before plopping down with his toy in his mouth. He looked so tired, it made me smile. Anyway. “Once he knew it was me, I don’t think he would have either, but when he didn’t know? Definitely.”
“I didn’t know you knew him that well,” Sienna went back to whispering. “Why does he call you Cricket?”
Before I could answer, a weird sound came from the bathroom that had all three of us turning toward the door. I raised my eyebrows at my friend, and she did it right back before calling out, “Babe? You all right?”
There was a short pause before he shouted, “Fine!”
Whatever that was hadn’t sounded fine to me, even though I couldn’t tell what it had been. It hadn’t exactly been fart-like. But Si and I shrugged at each other, and I answered her question. “I don’t know him that great. You know, he spent the summers with us, and then he moved in with them for a about a year after he graduated.” No one had ever mentioned why he’d done that. “He was always polite, and sometimes he was nice—nicer to me than Matti, but that’s probably because I’m a girl and he didn’t want to hurt my feelings,” I explained, and she nodded. “Maybe he felt bad I was adopted?”
Sienna nodded. “But why Cricket?”
I grinned. “Because I talked a lot?—”
“You still do!” Matti shouted, still not minding his own business.
I groaned. “Yes, yes, I still talk a lot, but back then I talked a lot . I had a chirpy little voice, and once I got going, there was no stopping me. So, Cricket was born, and it stuck.”
She grinned. “That’s cute.” She made a funny face suddenly. “I’ve never heard him call Matti anything but his name.”
“‘Dumbass’ is the only thing that comes to mind.”
She nodded slowly like she agreed. Then she shrugged. “At least you know someone here, right?”
Someone who had made me moving here a little harder, but sure . I rubbed Duncan’s soft ear.
At least I knew someone.
* * *
It was no surprise I couldn’t fall asleep after we left Matti and Sienna’s room. Neither one of them stayed up late. Under normal circumstances, they both woke up early to go running before starting their day. Duncan and I were the complete opposite; we were usually outside playing at midnight.
My mom used to tell me all about how, when I’d been a baby, I wouldn’t sleep during normal hours and how she and my dad would have to take turns every other night keeping me company. You never cried, Nina. We would find you sitting up in your crib, and later on in your toddler bed, looking out the window. Sometimes you looked so sad, we wouldn’t be able to sleep it broke our hearts, so we started staying up with you.
It made me want to choke up thinking about how good they’d been to me. I’d gotten so lucky that of all the people I could have ended up with, it had been them. Two older werewolves who had never had children of their own, with hearts bigger than the state of Alaska.
Continuing to love others in the way that they had shown me by example was the most important thing I had learned from them. It was the best way I could honor their thousands of sacrifices. By raising Duncan.
And that’s why, when the screen on my phone said it was eleven thirty, and I could sense my pup starting to get restless as he rolled onto his back on top of the bed of the room we were assigned to, I figured maybe now we could restart our nightly routine. We hadn’t been able to do it since his physical changes. The risk of getting caught had been way too high.
I gently pulled his tail as his legs and paws stretched toward the ceiling of the room that was an exact replica of the one my friends were in. Duncan had crawled under the bed and checked everything out under there when we’d come in.
“Wanna go outside for a little while?” I asked.
A black head rolled toward me, his bright eyes so intelligent. “Yes.”
It didn’t take long to slip him into his harness, put my fanny pack on, and grab a leash I rarely needed. I helped him off the bed. As quietly as possible, I opened the door and went out first with Dunky-Dunk right on my heels, nightlights set up along the hallway at every outlet lit up the unfamiliar space.
Fortunately, as big as the building slash clubhouse was, the layout was mostly easy. It had seemed intimidating when we’d first walked in, but whoever had designed it had set it up to make a lot of sense considering its size. Franklin, or as I had called him in my head “Glasses,” had given us a brief tour after we’d left the meeting. On the first floor, he’d gestured one direction and explained that the kitchen was there, along with other bedrooms—he didn’t say whose. If you went the opposite way, there was a nursery and offices, along with a laundry room and supply closets.
Apart from the five spacious guest bedrooms on the second floor, with us taking up two of them, the uptight elder had explained that some of the community members lived on the third floor, but he didn’t take us up to it or explain who those people were either.
At the staircase, I picked up Duncan again and went down them, taking in even more nightlights. He was still just slightly too small to take stairs easily. The front doors were down the hall, and we crept out, the building so silent.
I thought it was a little strange that they trusted us enough to let us stay on their property without supervision so soon after meeting us. I hadn’t seen a single camera inside, and I wondered if there were any around the perimeter. There wasn’t an alarm system set up either, I’d noticed when the four of us had gone to get our things from my truck. They must be really confident in who they allowed around here. That or maybe they had more faith since Matti had lived here in the past.
That had to be a good thing, I decided, as I cracked the door and Duncan snuck out first.
My donut waited as I closed the door. His head was tipped back. The moon was full tonight. I took a deep, deep breath.
My lungs expanded like I’d gotten a hit of that good oxygen casinos pumped through their systems.
My skin tingled.
The forest and village around us were mostly silent, other than an owl hooting nearby and a cool breeze moving through the trees.
It felt so good here.
What was it about this forest that felt like this? I wondered as Duncan backed up enough so that his butt settled on my foot, and for a few, quiet, calm moments, we took in the sweetness in the air that shouldn’t have been so noticeable to me considering I didn’t have a good nose. But that seemed to be the magnitude of this place.
Trees rustled.
Something big howled in the distance.
And my little donut gave me a loaded look over his shoulder right before he took off running into the evergreens.
* * *