30. Thirty
Thirty
November 2022
Connor Kelly
M y noise-cancelling headphones block out most of the background noise on the plane, and a member of the cabin crew is demonstrating how to put on a seatbelt.
Last week, Noah got a phone call from our great-grandmother, Orla, requesting both of us to come and visit at our earliest convenience. Given she’s ninety-eight, we figured we probably shouldn’t put it off.
Aside from a few summers as a teenager, I’ve never spent much time with Noah because he was raised in Northern Ireland while I was raised in England. We never visited for any considerable length of time until after Mum died, and Da would leave us with my maternal grandparents for a chunk of the school holidays. Raising three teenagers on your own with an entire pack to look out for, let alone a pack at war, wasn’t an easy feat.
Me: Is Alice with you yet? x
Fee: Yes, my babysitter is here but you should withhold the tip because she drinks like a fish. Very irresponsible ;)
Me: You and Alice are going to make me go grey prematurely. Setting off now so I’ll text when we land. Love you x
Fee: Mmm I think I could be into the silver daddy look :p Have a safe flight, love you too x
After I’ve put my phone on flight mode, I shuffle to try to get comfy. However, this tiny tin can of a plane was not designed for two fully grown men to sit next to each other. Mercifully, the journey is short, but I already know I’m going to get a cramp in my legs.
Twenty minutes into the flight, I glare at where Noah’s leg is bouncing against mine. Thankfully, he spots my annoyed expression and places a hand on his knee, stilling it. Noah took the flight with me instead of teleporting so I wouldn’t be travelling alone, but when he starts fiddling with the air conditioning nozzles overhead, I wish he’d just met me there.
He eventually settles down, pulling his phone out. I’m bored, so I peek at what he’s doing on there, just scrolling through some messages, but when he spots me looking, he quickly locks the screen and places it in the pocket in front of him.
Me: Just landed. Have you and Alice done the perimeter checks?
Ever since the fire in our old house, I’ve been justifiably paranoid. Noah put up some wards around the perimeter of the land we own, as well as some additional ones for the new house. I only agreed to come on this trip to see Orla on the condition that Alice stay with Fee while I’m away.
Now I’m Alpha, I find myself avoiding anything that takes me off the Yorkshire territory. I’ve been twitchy as fuck ever since taking off from Leeds and Bradford.
As we stand in the car park waiting for the lady from the car hire station to return with a set of keys, I get increasingly agitated the longer Fee doesn’t reply to my text. Noah rolls his eyes at me but doesn’t say anything. I’m about to try and call him when I finally get a response.
Fee: Yep, we just got back. All clear babe xx
I let out a sigh of relief.
“Here are your keys; it's the blue Ford Focus just over there.” She points to the parked car in question. “If you could take a quick look at the vehicle and then sign here to confirm it's in the condition as stated, please?” Noah nods and grabs the keys. Once we've completed the paperwork, we get on our way to Mourne.
Noah drives since he grew up here and is familiar with the route. We landed in Belfast so it's only an hour and a half drive to Orla's house.
I fiddle with the stereo so I can connect it to my phone and put on a random indie playlist.
“Thank fuck,” Noah says.
“Huh?”
“When I was stuck in a car with PC Plod a few months ago, he played the Archers!”
“I didn't even know the Archers was still going.”
“Neither did I. He must be their only listener this side of retirement.” Noah sounds utterly disgusted and I snort a laugh.
When we set off, it was a grey, drizzly day, but the closer we get to Orla's, the brighter it's beginning to look. The sun shining on the autumn leaves decorates the landscape in stunning shades of oranges and reds. I forget sometimes how beautiful it is here.
“Do you ever miss living here?” I ask. Noah lived with Orla from around the age of four, so this is very much his stomping ground.
“Not especially. I miss Orla sometimes. There's not much around here if you're not a shifter.” The loneliness leaks from his voice, and guilt settles like a pit in my stomach. I'd never for a second considered what it must be like to be surrounded by a pack but always an outsider. With the exception of Orla, his entire family is made up of wolf shifters.
We sit in silence after that. Which is common around Noah, but this silence has a weight to it.
Noah parks on the street and leads the way as we walk down the stone path through Olra’s wildly overgrown garden. He steps inside without knocking, and I follow behind.
It’s been almost seven years since I last visited Orla, and her home is as remarkable as I remember it. It always creeped me out how every step I’d take in the house would cause the floorboards to creak, yet Orla moved around the place silently. It seems Noah learned some of her tricks because he steps through the house ahead of me like a ghost.
It’s strange being here with Noah because where I’ve always been a guest, this is the home he grew up in. After our conversation on the drive over, I can't help but wonder what his life was like here. My da never really explained how Noah ended up living with Orla. Shortly after I was born, my Uncle Rowan—Noah’s da—left our pack and joined the Limerick pack. And for some reason, he didn’t take Noah with him. Nobody knows who Noah’s mother is, as far as I’m aware, so Orla took him in. I suppose it was the best place for him, given he’s a witch and not a shifter like his da. Still, I can’t imagine either of my parents letting anyone else raise me.
We find Orla grinding some herbs that smell suspiciously of weed with a pestle and mortar at her dainty wooden kitchen table. She grins mischievously when she spots us. Noah bends down to kiss her on the cheek in greeting before taking a seat next to her.
“Come over here and give me a hug, Connor,” she says, and I oblige. “Gosh, you really do have your mammy’s eyes, don’t you?” She sounds a little wistful. It’s something both Niamh and I have heard all our lives, so I nod and smile. “Go on, take a seat while I finish up with this.” I take one of the empty seats at the table.
“Why are we here?” Noah asks bluntly. It would sound rude coming from anyone else, but he just tends to cut out any preamble, and Orla must be more than used to it by now.
“Some things have been set in motion, and some other things need to come to pass in order for us all to stay on the right path,” Orla replies cryptically.
“What’s been set in motion?” I ask.
“You have, my dear.” My eyebrows scrunch together in confusion. “There were thousands of paths, but then you became an Alpha, and now there are less than a hundred paths. Out of the remaining paths, only two see you reach your thirtieth birthday.”
My mouth gapes open.
How can that possibly be?
I became an Alpha to save Phoenix; how can it lead to my almost certain untimely death? A really terrible part of me is hoping Orla’s a bit senile and doesn’t know what she’s talking about; she’s almost a hundred after all. Noah’s facial expression remains as stoic as ever, giving nothing away.
“Where do I come into this?” he asks, narrowing his eyes at her.
“I’m gonna tell ya right now, son, you’re not gonna like what I tell ya,” Orla replies, but Noah doesn’t say a word, waiting for her to go on. “You have to become the pack witch for Connor.”
There is a pregnant pause before Noah finally responds.
“Connor, can you give us a minute?” His voice is as cold as ice. I’m still shocked by what Orla said, so I just nod and numbly make my way outside for some fresh air.
When I pull my phone out to check the time, I see a text from Fee, attaching a selfie of him, Alice and Magnus sitting on the sofa eating popcorn. Even with a smug smirk on his face, he looks cute, so I save the photo into an album of pictures he’s sent me over the years.
During our time apart, I must have deleted and restored this album literally hundreds of times. Periodically, I’d get smashed and scroll through the photos just to make myself even sadder. Regardless, now things are good between us, I’m glad I kept all of these. Scrolling through the photos, looking at little pockets of our shared history, only sharpens my resolve to refuse to die before I’m thirty. We still have too much life to live together.
Noah’s voice is raised inside the house, and moments later, he storms out and stomps past me.
“Where are you going?” I call out after him, but he ignores me and keeps going.
“He’ll be back. Come inside and have a cuppa while we wait,” Orla says cheerily from the doorway, where she silently appears.
Orla moves so gracefully around her kitchen as she boils some water, you’d have no idea of her age.
“He’s always been hot-tempered, a lot like you from what I hear.” I blush because she’s not wrong. It’s odd, though, because I always thought Noah seemed quite closed off. He hardly seems to react to anything.
“Thanks,” I say, accepting the cup of tea she hands me.
“Fancy a joint while we wait?” Orla asks, waving a rolled-up spliff in the air. I let out a huff of laughter, but fuck it, how many people have the opportunity to get high with their ancient great-grandmother.
“Sure. May as well if I’ve only got a two-path chance to live another four years.”
“Don’t worry, Noah will do the right thing, and I have a feeling once the decision is made, there will be plenty more paths again. You and your Phoenix bird will get many more years together, I am sure,” she says, and I’m slightly more reassured. I take a pull on the joint and chuckle at the mental image of Phoenix as a bird.
Olra and I sit companionably, passing the joint back and forth as she tells me stories of my mum as a child. I’ve heard them all before, but there’s still something comforting about them. After she died, it was a few years before Da would even talk about her. He and Mum were mates, and he was so destroyed that it sometimes felt as though he might pine away and follow her into the afterlife like a heartsick swan.
“There we go. I knew my boy would make the right choice,” Olra says, seemingly out of the blue. A few minutes later, Noah walks through the door and glares at her.
“Get it over with then,” he says through gritted teeth, his jaw pulsating with tension, but Orla just smiles at him knowingly. She briefly leaves the room and returns with a rather crude-looking knife. Are there any rituals that don't entail slicing me open?
“Left hands, palms up,” she says to the both of us, and we do as requested. Without any preamble, she slices a shallow cut across my palm, right where the scar from the binding ceremony is, and then does the same to Noah’s. The knife is sharper than it looks and leaves only a brief sting. “Quickly, before his hand heals itself,” she says to Noah, who grips my left hand with his own, causing our blood to mix.
“I vow my life to your pack and any Alpha who succeeds you. I vow to put the best interest of the pack before my own and will put your life before mine. I will be your witch, to utilise in the manner you see fit to ensure the safety, well-being, and future of the pack. That is my oath.”
When I pull my hand away, the blood is gone, but the silvery scar remains. Even brighter, somehow. The blood in my veins is thrumming with magic, like electricity flowing through me. I’ve never been told exactly what it entails to be a pack witch, and I had no idea it was an actual blood oath. It’s difficult to tell how much I’m still buzzed from the weed and how much it’s the magic Noah transferred into me.
An hour or so later, we get up to leave. Noah still hasn’t said a word and mutters goodbye under his breath as we leave the house.
“Get back here right now, Noah,” Orla says firmly. Noah’s back straightens abruptly, and he turns around to come back. “How would you feel if that’s how you said goodbye, and I died tomorrow?”
“Are you goin’ to die tomorrow?” he asks, arching an eyebrow at her.
“It’s unlikely, but stranger things have happened. Tell me you love me and be on your way.” Orla turns her cheek for him to kiss it, and he mutters what sounds like ‘love you’ and then stalks off back to where he parked the car earlier. Right before he gets inside, I swear I hear him say, ‘manipulative old hag,’ and I hope for his sake Orla’s hearing is a lot worse than mine.
“You’ll be pleased to know you have many more paths ahead of you, my dear Connor. Just don’t make the mistakes your forefathers made.” I nod, not that I’m entirely sure what she means by that, but agreeing seems like the right thing to do. When I reach down to hug her goodbye, she whispers, “And make sure you look after my boy,” before letting me go. Glancing over my shoulder at where Noah is sitting in the car, I tell her I will before joining him so we can make our way back home.
While I’m itching to return to Fee, to return to the land that makes my blood sing, I’m apprehensive, too. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Archie was killed and our home was set on fire, trapping Fee inside. There’s a reason he almost died the same way the Yorkshire pack were killed fifty years ago. And why, without Noah becoming my pack witch, did it almost guarantee my death?
'You aren't safe here'. That's what that witch's note said. I assumed the note was about Archie after what happened to him. But maybe it was meant for all of us?