Chapter Seven
~Leo~
“I’ll get it,” I offered when Kalo didn’t immediately move towards the door.
He looked like he would have preferred to ignore the knock, and I would have too.
We were finally having a real conversation, the first one that wasn’t about strategy or pack business, and it frustrated me to have it interrupted.
A Gamma’s life is never fully his own, Silo reminded me in my head. I’d repeated the mantra to him often enough when he would have preferred to spend the day outdoors rather than cooped up in my office.
Are you mocking me?
I could never fully be sure. Picking up on sarcasm wasn’t my strong suit.
Before he could answer, I pulled the door open to find Felix and Calista standing on the other side.
Both blond-haired and tall, they could have passed for siblings to a casual observer, though I’d never mentioned to Vaughan that his Luna shared more than a few physical characteristics with his Beta and best friend.
Somehow, I didn’t think he’d appreciate having it pointed out.
“Hi, Leo,” Calista greeted me, tilting her head in curiosity as her eyes darted beyond me to where Kalo still sat at the desk with the uneaten remainder of our breakfast. “What are you doing here?”
“Checking on our guest,” I replied. That wasn’t the whole truth, but it wasn’t a lie either. “What do you two need?”
“We came to talk to Kalo about genies,” Felix supplied.
“He’s barely settled in,” I couldn’t help pointing out, and Felix shrugged sheepishly.
“We were too excited to wait,” he admitted. “It’s not every day you get to interview a near-mythical being. But if it’s a bad time, we can come back later.”
Behind me, Kalo rose from his chair. “It’s fine. I don’t have any plans. I can talk.”
“Fantastic.” Felix bounced on his heels, looking more like an excited child who just got permission to go and play than a Beta werewolf. “I have so many questions. Leo, can you let Vaughan know where we are when you get down there?”
“No,” I replied bluntly, and Felix’s grin faltered just a little. “I mean I’m not going down right now. I’ll stay here with you.”
Confusion clouded Felix’s features as his eyes darted behind me to where I could feel Kalo stepping closer.
I could actually feel his nearness. Huh. I hadn’t expected that.
Watching Felix’s face carefully, I clocked the exact moment that his gaze landed on Kalo’s neck and the mark visible there.
I watched as his nostrils flared, picking up once again on the change in my scent that he’d remarked on the night before, and his eyebrows shot up as realization snapped into place.
“Oh, fuck,” he breathed.
Calista, meanwhile, hadn’t moved past confusion as she looked at the three of us in turn. “What? What am I missing?”
Since she’d only received her wolf recently and was still adjusting to her new werewolf identity, it didn’t shock me that she didn’t put the pieces together on her own. Thankfully, Felix explained it so I didn’t have to.
“They’re mates,” he announced, pointing between me and Kalo. “Kalo’s been marked.”
Naturally, Calista’s eyes immediately sought out my mate’s neck for confirmation, and once again, I could feel Kalo tensing behind me, though he still remained fully out of my line of vision.
“Congratulations,” Calista offered, smiling first at Kalo and then at me. “I had no idea.”
“It wasn’t a choice,” I snapped, my tone more prickly than I intended. “He was dying and I marked him to save his life. That’s all.”
An awkward silence settled over our small group while Silo growled in my head.
Why did you say it like that? It sounds like we don’t want him.
That’s not what I meant. I just don’t want him feeling pressured, or like he has to pretend to be excited. I should probably send out a pack-wide communication so he doesn’t have to explain anything.
You’re an idiot, was my wolf’s only reply.
Kalo was the first to break the silence as he cleared his throat. “If this discussion doesn’t need to be indoors, could we go for a walk? I’d like some fresh air.”
“Of course,” Calista immediately agreed, gratefully accepting the change of topic. “Fresh air sounds perfect.”
Kalo grabbed the dark wool coat I’d provided for him, and together, we all made our way downstairs. Felix linked with Vaughan along the way to let him know where we’d be. Beside me, Kalo inhaled deeply the moment we stepped outside, as if he’d been starved of fresh air and open space.
“There’s a trail in the woods beyond the pack house,” I told him, pointing to the forest that rose beyond the yard. “It’s circular, so it’s hard to get lost.”
“Sounds good,” he murmured.
Pine sap and damp soil hit my werewolf nose as we reached the trees, a warm and comforting smell of home. From the trailhead, I could see my office window, one square of glass out of many on the house’s back side.
Normally, my office was my haven, a reminder of responsibility and order, and the place from which I kept the whole pack running smoothly. Most days, I couldn’t wait to get in there and begin the day’s work.
That morning, I barely felt the pull of it. Being near to Kalo mattered more.
Calista matched her pace to Kalo’s, the two of them taking the lead as the trail narrowed while Felix and I fell in behind them. After a bit of small talk about the weather and the pack lands, she got down to the reason for our walk.
“I’d love to know how you became a genie, to start off with. I’d never been entirely certain if genies were born or made, but you were human once.”
“I was,” Kalo agreed softly. “A long, long time ago. And I’m sorry to disappoint you, but there’s no great mystery to me becoming a genie. I simply wished for it.”
“From another genie, you mean?” Calista asked, and Kalo nodded.
“That’s fascinating,” Felix said, and I tended to agree. “Are all genies made that way, I wonder? Where did the first one come from?”
“I have no idea,” Kalo admitted. “I never asked the genie who made me, and I’ve never met another one since.”
His gaze drifted towards the treetops as sunlight filtered through the branches, catching in his white hair.
Although I’d only intended to listen, not participate in the discussion, I couldn’t help asking what seemed like the obvious follow-up question. “Why did you wish for it?”
Before he could answer, Felix abruptly stopped walking. I fell back after another step, turning in time to see his head whip to the right, his nose twitching as he inhaled deeply. Instinctively, I sniffed the air too, searching for whatever had caught his attention.
It didn’t take long to pick it up.
Calista and Kalo had made it even further before they realized we’d stopped, and they circled back to us a moment later.
“What is it?”
“Do you smell that?” Felix asked her, and both she and Kalo took a deep breath in. From him, there was no reaction, but Calista’s brow furrowed in a way that made it clear she’d smelled it too.
“What is that?” she wondered.
“I have no idea,” Felix replied. “Leo?”
I shook my head. “I can’t place it.”
It definitely didn’t come from a werewolf, or human, or fairy, or any of the other creatures we’d encountered over the past few eventful months. Nothing in the woods naturally bore that scent either; in more than twenty years of living on this land, I’d never smelled anything like it before.
It smelled of something rotting, like overripe fruit left too long in the sun, yet cloyingly sweet. Honey with a touch of mold, perhaps, or flowers that had been poisoned. Appealing and off-putting at the same time.
My gaze drifted back towards the pack house, still visible through the trees, and to the glass of my office window, glinting in the morning sunlight.
If whatever caused that smell had been standing in that spot, they would have been able to see the light from my office. The strange prickle down my neck from last night, and the sensation of being watched, came flooding back to me.
In the next instant, my gaze darted upwards, to the guest floor, and Kalo’s bedroom window, also visible from this spot.
I swallowed hard. “Maybe that alarm last night wasn’t false after all. Maybe there was something here that left this scent behind.”
All of us turned in the opposite direction, looking deeper into the forest where the shadows between the trees suddenly seemed thicker than they had before.
If that were true, maybe whatever it was had never left.