2 #2
It’s sweet and bright and addictive. Instantly I want more—it makes all the hair on the back of my neck rise. My teeth weld together, and it feels like sweet relief for a moment, the only comfort I can find against the anxious prickle at the back of my neck.
Worst of all, I know this scent. It’s the one that keeps me awake at night, ever since I first caught a trail of it at the wedding.
So much of that day, and the ensuing evening, remains a blur to me. The scent that heats my blood is all I can hold onto.
She’s carrying our aconite delivery; there must be something else in her truck that’s causing this. My wolf itches to follow, to sniff out its trail, but after the last full moon, I’m not about to let it.
“I think my boss usually does the delivery run here, anyway,” she says, picking up and tossing aside a rusty set of bolt-cutters before she tugs a second crate of packaged flowers out of the truck bed.
“Most of what I do is setting up displays and arches, but I don’t think enough people live in Mystic to support an events-only business structure, y’know? ”
I stare as she pulls out a third crate, stacked on the other two. I think she might be trying to unload the entire delivery in the parking lot. Her chatter doesn’t register over the restlessness itching through me.
I roll my jaw to try to loosen the tension straining through my bones, feel the joint on the left side pop and skid, bone over bone. I still need to make that appointment with the TMJ specialist.
It doesn’t make sense to feel like this in the daylight, when the full moon has passed, but I need to get out of my own skin, claw my way out if possible.
I click the pen and put the signed clipboard back on her driver’s side seat. It comes out a little too clipped when I tell her over my shoulder, “You should know we only take deliveries from the loading bay out back.”
Just as the glass door into the main entrance of the brewery swings closed, I catch a glimpse of her re-loading the crates she took out before into the truck.
“Just as rude as the first time,” she mutters under her breath, before slamming the tailgate shut.
I stop, watching her until the truck drives off. We haven’t met before, I’m sure.
I don’t want to care what strangers think of me, but my pulse spikes. I feel hot all over, but especially down the back of my neck. There’s too much energy leftover from that little interaction; the need to pace finally tears me away from the doors.
I stalk back to my office, shutting the door.
After a few moments, I find myself fidgeting with a small safety pin, the frayed ribbon’s still tied to it, the mysterious chunk of yarn that I’d found lodged between my teeth.
I haven’t been able to throw away the pin I nearly swallowed that night.
It’s a simple, impersonal thing, a sharp end with a simple metal backing and a hinge, a few flower buds still bound to it.
It’s one of the dozens of little corsage things that were at the wedding, or at least, what’s left of one after a night being lodged in my wolf’s mouth.
It’s the one tangible thing I have from the night I ran wild under the full moon, unable to contain myself any longer.
My tongue keeps finding the puncture it made in the back of my lower gumline, my hand keeps finding the tip of the pin, pressing into it just to feel how sharp it is. I don’t want to reopen the wound just to prove it was there, but I don’t know how to stop myself.
I start to reach for the bottom drawer of my desk, pausing only to check my watch. Ten thirty in the morning is too early to start, but my wolf is too agitated for this end of the moon’s cycle. I need something stronger than what we brew for humans, the original Aconite Ale.
Drinking during the day hadn’t been a habit until the last few months. The tradition of keeping an open bottle in the desk had been my Dad’s, but like the house and the brewery, the family recipe and all its burdens were my inheritance.
There’s a knock at my office door, interrupting that thought. After that altercation in the parking lot, I’m not in the mood. I open the door a crack, already telling whoever it is, “Now’s not a good time, I’m about to get on a call—”
But it’s Celine Carrington.
I stop, mid-sentence.
She doesn’t look like a jilted bride. She looks like herself—eternally immaculate.
Her hair is a bright shiny blonde, never a strand out of place, her nails are always done, her posture straight as a ruler.
Any idiot could call her beautiful, but what she is, who she is at the core of her being, is composed.
“Hey, Logan,” she says, voice hushed against the backdrop of the brewery’s equipment on the warehouse floor. “Make some time for me.”
“Yeah, come in.” I nod, stunned. I haven’t seen her since just before we almost got married.
She slips inside and shuts the door behind her. “I haven’t heard from you. Thought maybe you’d forgotten me.”
“I wouldn’t forget.”
It’s been almost a week since I ruined the relationship between my family and the Carringtons. They’re our neighbors on the New Hampshire border, and as far as werewolf-pack territories go, it’s not wise to make enemies so close. Hatfields and McCoys, all that.
Celine waits for me to say something, drifting a few steps around my office, taking it all in. If I knew what to say to her, I would have called her before.
I don’t know how to explain what happened, that it wasn’t about her. I don’t know that I could clarify what it was about either, though, and she deserves some kind of understanding. At the same time, I don’t think any apology could ever be enough.
Her gaze falls to the photo of her I have on my desk. Her brows draw together, as she glances at me, a skeptical look in her eyes. “That’s a little too sentimental for us, don’t you think?”
At least once in a blue moon, Celine does make me smile. It’s more than most people.
For the first time in a week, some of the tension eases in my shoulders, leaving its own ache behind.
I sigh, and glance at the graduation photo that Celine would never have chosen to represent herself.
“If it makes a difference, your mother gave me the photo and the frame. I think she left it here as a warning.”
“My mother does have a way with unspoken threats. My brother too.” She sighs.
“What is family for, if not upholding ancient rituals of honor?”
She smirks at that, rolls her eyes. We’ve had a lot of conversations about family.
Celine and I are two of a kind, the sort of kid that overly strict families always churn out. When the rules are so tight you can’t make small mistakes without fear of repercussions, you figure out how to evade like your life depends on it. She knew how to lie to my family, and I to hers.
“Well, speaking of threats and ancient rituals, officially I’m just dropping by because my mother wanted to invite you to go to church with us next Sunday,” she offers after a few beats. “She’s not thrilled to hear that you’ve lapsed.”
Church was where I’d originally met Celine. CCD, to be exact. In a room full of other kids our age—all of them loud with sticky fingers, asking stupid questions—she’d been a bastion of peace and quiet.
We might have been in grade school when we first decided it would be a smart match.
As we aged, the reasons only increased—we would both get things we wanted out of it.
Her family had a lot of reach and connections to other werewolf packs; it would be good for the brewery.
Her father had made a number of offers to buy the brewery over the years, but mine had rejected them.
He had wanted to keep the business within the family, to continue to build its legacy.
Celine had been excited at the idea of us getting married.
She’d had a number of ideas for the business, and she wanted to move far enough away from her family that she wouldn’t have to see them more than a few times a year.
We knew how to be good to each other, which already set us up better than either of our parents’ marriages.
And besides, it would make our families happy. Everyone wins.
I watch her twist her engagement ring. Her mother’s displeasure wasn’t the sort of message one needed to drive a few hours out of the way to deliver.
“So, what was the real purpose?”
She wrinkles her nose the way she always does when I’ve figured her out. She doesn’t like feeling transparent.
“One of my old sorority sisters is having a bachelorette party not far from here. My family never liked her though, so they wouldn’t approve of me going.
She’s a little too wild for them.” Celine sighs.
“I wasn’t planning on going before, but now, well, I thought it’d help take my mind off of things. ”
She continues to twist the ring as she takes a turn around my office, and I get the creeping sense she’s getting ready to pull the rug out from under my feet.
“My mom has this story about how when she got married, one of the altar boys was wearing light-up sneakers. The way she talks about it, you’d think it was the end of the world.
Ruined their otherwise perfect day.” Celine smiles, rolling her eyes with a fondness that carries an exasperation I know all too well.
Even the smallest detail out of place could set families like ours off.
If light-up sneakers were ruinous, I wonder how she’ll tell the story of a werewolf groom shifting and attacking his brother right before the ceremony. Maybe it’ll be a funny story someday, just not any time soon.
“My grandmother told me not to marry you. ‘That family is too riddled with scandal,’ she said.” Celine looks at the photos of family I have on my walls. “Your aunt, your brother . . . and now this.”
I swallow. It doesn’t escape me that she places my aunt going feral on the same level as my brother marrying a human. Shame is shame.
“I told you, my family’s cursed.”
She nods. “You did.”