Wolfseeker (Wolfseeker Trilogy #1)

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

CALEB

Wednesdays were the worst because my dad worked from home.

Mom was always home, but she and I had reached a silent, mutual agreement to avoid each other as much as possible.

My father, on the other hand, seemed to seek me out deliberately.

Maybe he enjoyed the inevitable confrontation.

Hell if I knew, but he never failed to appear just as I tried to sneak out.

“Caleb,” he called from the kitchen.

I stopped in the hallway leading to the front door, my stomach an instant bundle of knots. “Yeah?”

Silence reigned, the air thickening with my father’s displeasure. When he spoke again, his tone held a sharp edge. “Could you come in here so I can see you when I speak to you?”

Sure thing. Swallowing a snarl, I hitched my backpack higher on my shoulder and rounded the corner.

My father stood at the island, his salt-and-pepper hair, firm jaw, and black, square-framed glasses giving him the look of a conservative politician or superhero in disguise.

I wasn’t sure if he ever had aspirations of being the former.

He’d been the latter when I was a kid, before I learned that his love was contingent on me being a proper son.

As luck would have it, I almost checked all the boxes on his list of criteria.

But the almost was a big fucking box. Empty. No check.

“Yes, sir?” I asked, avoiding the urge to examine my reflection in the glass sliders that led to the deck. I looked fine. My hair was fine. My tie was fine.

“Your tie is crooked,” my father said, wiping his hands on a paper towel.

A package of uncooked bacon sat on a plate in front of him, the plastic tinged pink with blood.

The scent hit my nostrils and filled my lungs.

Saliva flooded my mouth, and my insides quivered like a plucked guitar string.

Next comes anger, a voice of warning whispered in my head.

The rage got worse each time. Yesterday, I’d ripped a blanket in half.

One of the thick ones my grandma made before she died.

I spun and headed for the front door.

“Caleb!”

My father’s rebuke froze me in place—and made me clench my jaw against the fury that rose hot and thick in my chest. Swallowing, I tightened my grip on my backpack strap. “I’m gonna be late for class.”

Footsteps. The scent of blood grew stronger as my father approached and stopped just behind me.

Other scents joined the blood. Lemony shaving cream.

Mint toothpaste. The body wash my mother had been buying in bulk since I was little.

The scent never used to bother me. Now the chemicals underneath the lavender seared my nose.

The edge in my father’s voice sharpened. “You were supposed to meet with the dean about your internship this afternoon.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. Mistake. Losing my vision cranked up my olfactory system by about a thousand. I opened my eyes and stared at the sliver of front door visible at the end of the hallway that ran from the foyer to the kitchen. “Yeah,” I ground out. “Hence the tie.”

My father’s stare bored into the back of my head. “I don’t like your tone.”

“What else is new?”

His swift intake of air was like a gunshot in my ears. “Face me like a man or you can hand over your phone for the next week.”

The anger flared, taking my blood pressure with it.

At least, I assumed it was my blood pressure.

During summer two-a-days, Coach Gannon made the whole team wear a monitor during workouts.

He claimed it was for safety reasons, but I think he was just trying to avoid anyone puking on the weight room floor.

The pounding in my head now was similar to the intense, disorienting feeling that swamped me after hours of running plays in the July heat.

Face me like a man. The silent part—the assertion that I was no such thing—was just as loud as the spoken part.

Slowly, I turned around. “What do you want?” I asked, my voice rumbling in my chest.

Behind his glasses, my father’s eyes widened slightly. He was a big man, with broad shoulders that filled the hallway. Until a few months ago, I had to tip my head back to look him in the eye.

But no longer. Not since August.

For a brief moment, the disdain in his eyes flickered to something that might have been fear.

But he covered it quickly, his expression going hard as he lifted a sheet of paper.

The letterhead was emblazoned with Hale Valley Christian College’s gaudy red-and-gold crest. Dean Welch’s signature scrawled across the bottom, the blue ink like an accusation.

The letter was addressed to me, but my father had no qualms about tampering with the US Postal Service.

Not that it mattered. A copy of the letter had landed in my inbox two days ago.

“What do I want?” my father asked, shoving my question back at me.

He shook the letter. “I want to know why your grades continue to slip.” Another shake, and the paper flapped, sending a gust of blood-scented air eddying around me.

“I want to know why you’ve missed three days of lectures in the past two weeks and where you went when you were supposed to be in class. ”

My heart thumped harder, each beat pushing more anger through my veins. “I haven’t been feeling well. I went to the park and lost track of time.”

“Garbage,” he snarled, and if the situation hadn’t been so serious I might have laughed at his inability to cuss like a normal person.

He’d called me every slur under the sun.

Called me names that made me feel lower than dirt.

But he drew the line at bullshit. Good Christians might threaten to send their sons to “sexual wellness counseling,” but they never stooped to saying the F-word out loud.

Well, not certain F-words, anyway.

He pointed the letter at me, and the paper brushed my chest. “I don’t know where you’ve been going, but I will not have another repeat of your little jaunt to the city.”

Ah, this again. My short-lived gay Rumspringa. Never mind that the event in question had taken place four years ago. He was never going to let me forget it. I’d lost my phone for three months after that trip. My parents hadn’t appreciated the photos I’d texted them during my stay in the Big Apple.

I kept my eyes on my father’s throat, my gaze snagging on a tiny nick he’d probably given himself while he shaved.

“I haven’t been going to the city,” I said.

“I don’t have any money, remember?” Which was a situation that absolutely had to change.

Now that I wasn’t playing football, I could get a job.

I’d flip burgers if I had to. Anything to stop relying on my parents.

They doled out cash like characters in a Dickens novel, tracking every fucking penny.

I’d saved enough money from my grandmother to buy a decent car, but I couldn’t spring that plan until I was ready to move out for good.

Because once I left, I knew I could never return.

My father spoke as if he hadn’t heard me, his tone matching his agitation as he wielded the letter.

“Pastor Mark says your mother and I are supposed to tolerate certain things from you. Well, I’m tired of tolerance.

I’ve kept my mouth shut. Let you have your way.

I didn’t say anything when you quit the football team, although that didn’t really surprise me.

I think it’s pretty obvious why you couldn’t get along with your teammates. ”

Red flickered over my vision. I balled my hand into a fist at my side. “You’re wrong—”

“But academics are another matter. You think you can do as you please, but that is not the case. Not while you live in this house. Your mother and I pay for your phone. We bought you all new clothes after your growth spurt this summer. We agreed to pay your tuition. We paid for private tutoring when you fell behind. We don’t have to do it, but we want you to succeed. ”

I clenched my jaw to stop the rebuttal that sprang to my lips.

My parents didn’t want me to succeed. They wanted me to be someone else entirely.

Sure, they paid my tuition, but only because I agreed to attend the Christian college that was practically in my backyard.

And the tutoring was a problem of their own making.

If they hadn’t insisted on homeschooling me with materials they bought on some megachurch website, I wouldn’t have struggled so much.

They’d never admit it, but I knew the state got on their asses about my test scores when I hit my teens.

When my parents finally enrolled me in public high school, the guidance counselor had dropped enough hints to let me know the New York State Education Department wasn’t impressed with my “faith-based” education.

But my father was right about one thing: I couldn’t do as I pleased.

Not just yet. Because I couldn’t afford Hale Valley’s tuition, let alone groceries or rent.

I’d struggle to afford either of those things without a college degree.

Not that a degree was some golden ticket to financial freedom, but it wasn’t like I had any marketable skills.

I didn’t delude myself that a piece of paper from Hale Valley would land me in a penthouse, but it was better than the alternative.

If I could keep my mouth shut and endure my dad’s taunts and open hostility until next May, I could collect my prize and get the fuck out of my parents’ house.

My father stared, unspoken threats bristling between us.

He could kick me out. I was twenty-three years old.

His job as a parent was done, never mind that he’d failed miserably at it.

Sometimes, I wondered which one of us wanted me out more.

But at the end of the day, Michael and Jennifer Lawson couldn’t quite bring themselves to toss their only son into the street.

What would the neighbors say? What would the ladies at the church socials think?

My parents wanted the picture-perfect family life.

Farmers’ markets and Little League games.

It was the reason my father had moved us from the city to upstate New York when I was a toddler.

Then I hit puberty and ruined everything.

My father was never going to forgive me, but he’d pay for my phone and private college because appearances were everything.

Still, I couldn’t take any chances. Before August—before the jogging trail—I might have fired back a smart-ass reply.

Told my father exactly what I thought about his grand plans for my future.

But things were different now. I had to get through my meeting with the dean.

Get through my internship. Get through the rest of the semester and the semester after that.

But first, I had to get through my father’s determination to make everything more difficult than necessary. Eyes on the prize. I’d made it this far. I could make it until May.

I stuffed down my anger and slammed a lid on top of it. “You’re right, sir,” I said, my gaze on a random spot over my father’s shoulder. “I won’t miss class again.”

He waited, his regard like a magnet tugging at me. Daring me to meet his eyes. When I didn’t, he huffed—a smug, humorless sound I’d heard countless times over the last few years. “Straighten this before you go,” he said dismissively, brushing the letter over my tie with his blood-scented fingers.

Another rush of saliva filled my mouth. The rage thumped harder, syncing with my heartbeat like bass pumping in a car at a stoplight. Boom, boom, boom. It urged me to act, to eliminate the threat before me. Somewhere in my brain, “eliminate” had a specific, unambiguous meaning.

Before I could acknowledge it, I straightened my tie and left.