Author: Angela M. Hudson
Date: 2016-07-25 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Young Adult; retellings
Description: A powerful new YA novel by award-winning dark romance author AM Hudson. Do not go gentle into the wolf's asylum... Once every twenty years, pack alpha Luther takes a new wife. On the day of Selection, Red is chosen. Just as her family always planned. Just as she always planned. Until she met Alex Plain. Alex took Red to worlds she never imagined, where the ordinary is seen as magical, and the upright is abstract. With the help of this new friendship, Red begins to see a future for herself outside of the pack. But, unfortunately, Alex Plain came along too late. Red is obligated to marry Luther

Red: The Untold Story

Kindle Edition

Text © 2016 by Angela M Hudson

All Rights Reserved

Cover image Used Under Licence by Shutterstock

Cover design by AM Hudson

Edited by John Adriaan

License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places, events or incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to places or incidents is purely coincidental

ISBN 13: 978-0-9942585-5-7

Author Website

Other Works by Angela M Hudson

The Dark Secrets Series

Bound Series

Willa Wicked

Table of Contents

The Beginning

Part One

1. It’s Darkest Before Dawn

Part Two

1. A Remarkable Boy Named Alex Plain

2. The Selection

3. The World You Live in and How to Change It

4. Tomorrow and All the Tomorrows to Follow

5. Little Red Riding Hood, and Other Tragedies

6. The Offering

Part Three

1. Strange New Truths

2. The Illusions of Someone Else’s Eye

3. Beware the Wolf in a Man’s Clothing

4. Lady and the Slave

5. The Archetype of a (Not So) Bad Prince

6. Now You Can Fly

7. The Sheep Bares Its Wolfish Grin

8. Liberty and Justice for Some

9. Mighty Raven; Fallen King

10. Death and All His Friends

Part Four

1. After Alex: The Other After Alex

2. In the Absence of All Light

3. Tears Don’t Fall; They Crash Around You

4. Grim is the Man Who Holds His Tears

5. The Strange Birds Are the Mystery Solved

6. The Little Red Raven Girl

7. How It Ends is Never the End

About the Author

Acknowledgements

nce upon a time…

Scratch that. My story doesn’t begin like this. And it doesn’t play out like a fairytale, either. It all started with a death in my family and a tragic realization. Well, two tragic realizations, actually, and from there my life split into three parts: Before Alex. After Alex. And the Disastrous Dark Days. Not necessarily in that order.

Or maybe it was in that order, but After Alex didn’t truly happen until I “found myself” in the Dark Days.

It will all make sense to you later…

Part One: Chapter One

It’s Darkest Before Dawn

I left the bonfire feeling like an outsider. No one told me to go. No one told me I didn’t belong there. But no one talked to me, either. No one so much as even looked at me. In fact, even my closest friends deliberately walked right past me when I said hi.

Safe to say I’d never felt like such an outcast in all my life. No matter what the Elders said, the only thing that mattered to a wolf was what the pack thought. And they had cast their judgment: I was nothing to them now.

After a restless few hours trying to sleep, wishing I was out there under the full moon, running wild with the rest of my pack, I threw my covers back and climbed out my window. The night was cool and crisp with the promise of dawn and the moon had gone into hiding, as if it knew I was coming out to greet its rays. I jumped from the brick wall around our back garden and landed with a squeak in the great square park, taking a glance at the other fences—all crafted of different things, like painted wooden pickets and rendered bricks—wondering if anyone was watching from their darkened houses. It felt almost like I was the only person in the world. The only person in a very dark world. I couldn’t see a thing past my own two hands, but I knew my way to the big old tree with my eyes closed.

I took up a spot on the prickly wooden seat of the rope swing, and soared as close to the moon as I would ever otherwise get, trying to kick the clouds away from it. None of my thoughts or worries could be solved out here, but somehow, as my feet swept the tickly grass, it always seemed to absorb some of my pain.

One thing was certain though: my problems were too heavy to carry alone right now. If I hadn’t escaped that watertight box I was trying to sleep in, I’d have screamed and woken my mom. She’d have asked what was wrong, and I’d have told her. Then, she’d go nuts at my old friends for treating me that way. But it wouldn’t solve anything; it would only make them hate me more.

When I finally stopped thinking so loud after a while, I noticed the odd quiet that made every noise stand out around me. I could paint the night with those sounds, from the crickets making up the billowy grass to the silence that would be the wisdom from the stars. A rustle by someone’s gate showed where the houses bordered the park and a creak in the rope swing gave me the grayish branch it was looped around. A few hundred paces behind me, the children’s playground caught the breast of the wind and made it howl, like a wolf at the moon.

On any other night, I would’ve found it peaceful out here, but this was the first night I’d had to face the truth. It was the first night I went up to the Gathering in the forest and sat around the bonfire, pretending to be one of them in the new knowledge I had now that I was not. And never would be. It was the first night I really felt my dad’s absence.

Stuck in my own misery, as if maybe the pain of letting it all go and moving on might be unbearable—the life I was supposed to have tipping the scales of the life I was stuck with now—I didn’t notice my eyes had adjusted to the dark, and I didn’t hear the gate behind me open until a dorky guy in a trench coat popped out, his curly hair running a riot on his head.

He stopped short in front of me and closed the coat over his skinny white legs and bad pajamas, doing nothing to hide the unlaced black boots that were two sizes too big for him.

I stopped swinging and stared at him.

Part Two: Chapter One

A Remarkable Boy Named Alex Plain

“I didn’t know anyone would be out here so late,” he said in a deep but youthful voice.

A flash of white fur brushed past him then and his arm straightened out for a second before he dropped a red leash. It slipped between the blades of grass, my eyes following it to a pretty black and white Alaskan malamute.

“She needed to go,” he added by way of explanation. As if it excused his crazy clothing combination.

I nodded, not saying anything. I didn’t want him to hear the tremor in my voice and have him ask me what’s wrong. I could handle talking about it—the death; the loss, not one and the same but two different things—but if anyone asked me right now, I was certain I’d cry. He’d caught me in a weak moment. I wasn’t ready to be strong and I wasn’t ready to cry.

“So?” he said, moving behind me.

Feeling rude with my back to him, I got up off the swing for a moment to sit facing the other way.

The boy tucked one leg under him in the grass, his back to the trunk, then finished with, “What’s a night like you doing out on a pretty girl like this?”

I laughed, caught off guard by his mixed up question. And it was enough to make me forget how sad I was. For a second. Just a second long enough to choke out my terrible news.

“Do you believe in wolves? Well, werewolves?” I asked, my voice small in this darkness. He must have thought I was a lot younger than my seventeen years, because he scooted forward and came up on one knee, propping his elbow on it.

“I’d like to think they’re real,” he said in a gentle voice. “Do you believe in them?”

“I was supposed to be one,” I confessed, knowing he’d either think I was crazy or that I was making up tall stories. Either way, it got this off my chest. “My whole life, my parents raised me in preparation for turning under the full moon after my first…” I’d never said this word in front of a human boy before. It was brought up openly in conversation with wolf boys, around family and the Elders, being that a girl’s change pretty much revolved around her first period, so it wouldn’t embarrass me, but it was only after I began this portion of the conversation that I realized it would definitely embarrass this boy.

But, so what? I decided. If he was embarrassed about such a natural thing, that was his problem, so I just said it without flinching. “My first period. But it didn’t happen.”

He flinched, speaking in such a gentle voice then that I felt like I was his baby sister. “Your… uh… your period never happened?”

I laughed to myself. “No. It’s been nearly a year now since that, and I haven’t turned.”

“Oh, so how old are you?”

“I’m seventeen.” I shrugged, adding, “I was a late bloomer.”

“Oh.” He leaned back a little, giving me more space, obviously really embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I thought you were younger.”

My head moved in a no.

I used the quiet of awkwardness and the returning moonlight then to take a closer look at his face. I was sure I knew him, maybe from school. He had a wide mouth and long, narrow features, his nose crooked at the dead center, as though he’d been punched and it never healed. He wasn’t cute, and he wasn’t really ugly either. And as I looked at his ear, of all things, I realized he was that guy from school that I saw drinking from the fountain once. I’d thought he was weird because, as he turned his head, he smiled at me. I didn’t even know him and he smiled at me for no reason. I never smiled back. I wondered if he remembered that.

“Can I ask a strange question?” he enquired.

“Stranger than me asking if you believe in werewolves?”

“Maybe.” He sat back against the tree trunk again. “How do you know you won’t turn? Can’t it happen later?”

“No.” I pressed my toes into the cold grass and swung myself softly, kind of surprised he actually believed me without argument, but willing to just accept his open-mindedness anyway. “I won’t turn because you have to have the gene from both parents and, as it turns out, only one of my biological parents is a werewolf.” I hated using the word ‘werewolf’, but humans got mixed up if we simply called ourselves what we were: wolves.

“And this is news to you? You didn’t know your parents weren’t both werewolves?”

“No. I mean, yes. Both my parents are wolves, but… my dad got sick,” I said. “And I offered to donate a kidney if I was a match, but…”

“Right. That story tells itself,” he said gently. “So you’re not his biological daughter?”

“Apparently not. And apparently my bio-dad was human, so… I’m half human.”

“I’m half mad,” he offered, rocking one shoulder toward his ear. “At least, if I’m anything like my father.”

I laughed. “You have a mad father?”

“Yes. But he’s good mad.” He looked around the park for his dog and, when he saw her sniffing at a fence, he turned back to me. “Have you ever seen an upside-down library?”

“A what?”

“That’s my world. You have werewolves; I have libraries on the ceiling.”

“For real?”

The boy stood up and offered his hand. “I can show you my world if you like. It’s not as interesting as yours, but I promise it’ll make you forget that you want to cry for a while.”

I took his hand. It was soft and a bit wet. “Okay. I’m Red, by the way,” I offered. “My name, that is.”

“Nice to meet you, Red by the Way. I’m usually white, but my folks named me Alex.”

He turned his helping hand into a shake and we both smiled at each other, the moonlight of this odd night making us both look blue.

“I’ve seen you at school,” Alex added. “I think I’m a grade above you.”

“I know. Otherwise I wouldn’t be going to your house.”

“Right. Cause I might also be a serial killer.”

“Yes, especially out here dressed like that.”

“Well, I have a mad father and might also be slightly mad.” He eyes took in my pink nightgown and red sweater combo. “What’s your excuse for bad clothes?”

“I have bad luck.”

“Bad luck?”

“Mm-hm.” I nodded. “To be caught out here in my pajamas.”

Alex laughed, then turned his head and threw his voice over his shoulder. “Sacha. Come.”

***

From the square park, boxed in by backyard fences, the big blue house had always seemed to loom, but up this close I could see it was just a house. A house with no lights left on inside.

“So my father is an inventor,” Alex explained, leading me up the dark back steps. “He discovered that looking at things from a literally different perspective alters the way your brain processes the information.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that, if you hang upside-down and think about your problem, the different perspective gives you clarity and insight, makes you connect dots you didn’t see before,” he said.

“And that’s why you have an upside-down library?”

“It is.” We stepped into a long dark corridor with cherrywood panels on the lower halves of the walls and peeling emerald green paint on top. His house was large and I’d always admired its blue exterior, but over the years the bushes grew in around the bottom floor like a network of spies and you could only see the black roof tiles and the curling leafs of aged paint on the high round tower. It was always a mysterious house, and it seemed odd that such an ordinary boy lived here.

Alex took off his coat and I laughed to myself when I read his T-shirt: Your Book Boyfriend is Right in Front of You.

“Where did you get that shirt?” I asked.

He laughed like he only just remembered he had it on. “It was my brother’s, before he went away to college. I took it when I took his room.”

“Maybe you should give it back.”

“No way.” He thumbed the shirt, pulling it off his chest a little. “This is the only way I can get girls to talk to me.”

I laughed to myself, petting Sacha on the head as she brushed against my leg.

“Go on, Sach.” Alex pointed to the end of the hall, and the fluffy and now a bit dewy dog ran off, shaking the grass out of her paws all down the old carpet. She vanished into a dark room at the end. “Hungry?”

“Um…” For a moment, I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me, or the dog.

“It’s not a trick question,” Alex said, smiling.

“Uh, yeah.” I shrugged. “I guess.”

Alex flicked a switch on the wall and led me deeper into the old house. The floorboards under my bare feet creaked as we walked, and in the dim orangey light from nineteen-twenties lampshades, I realized with a sense of dread that my toes were covered in dirt and my red sweater made my nightgown sit funny around my hips. But then I looked at Alex and didn’t feel so bad. He was really tall and wiry—at least a head-and-a-half taller than me, the tallest girl in class—his neck slightly bent forward as though his thinness and height embarrassed him. Also, his mismatched clothes looked a lot worse than mine. So did his bed hair.

Halfway down the hall, my mind escaped with the worries about my appearance, noting instead that the carpet was kind of dusty, which led me to think maybe Alex didn’t have a mother anymore. There was a woman that looked like Alex in the pictures on the walls, with a man that looked too old to be his father, yet he was holding Alex in nearly every baby photo. His hair was gray-white and loosely curly, like Alex’s, but it had this kind of wild thing happening, a bit like Einstein—but Einstein with his fork in a power socket.

“Is this your father?” I asked, stopping at a picture of the smiling man by a telescope and large window. I realized, judging by the view, that it was taken from the tower in their house.

“Yes,” he said proudly. “That was when he taught me to use a telescope.”

“No kidding?” I said sarcastically. “Who’d have guessed?”

Alex gave a shy smile, not sure what to say. “Come on. We’ll fix a midnight snack and take it to the library. I’m sure my dad’ll be hungry too.”

“He’ll still be awake?”

Alex just laughed, placing his hands behind his back. “He’s always awake.”

In a large kitchen not unlike my own, with cupboards the same color as the outside of his house and the same appliances everyone had, we fixed a cheese sandwich for ourselves and brought a glass of milk and cookies for Alex’s dad. I had so many questions about the different machines and gadgets all around Alex’s house—on the table top, the counter, the shelves and even wedged in corners beside the lounge—but Alex worked quietly and even spoke quietly, so I got the sense that this was not a noisy house, and a million eager questions would not be appreciated.

He led me to a set of painted green doors, with elvish-looking words carved around them, like something out of a Tolkien novel. If they were round doors, I’d have been even more excited to see what was behind them.

“He’s a fan.”

“A fan?”

“Hobbit fan.” Alex nodded at the markings, motioning with his head then for me to get the door, since his hands were full.

“Oh,” I said breathily, fumbling with the knob before I pushed the door open. My eyes went in ahead of my feet to the large space, expecting to see shelves and books, but instead I almost fell down a straight drop onto a ceiling. I grabbed the edge of the door and pressed my back to it, looking down at the abyss below me. A ceiling on a floor—complete with a lampshade? I knew he said upside-down library, but… no way. This was too unreal.

My eyes refused to comprehend, fighting with me against the fear of falling to look upward and see what was there.

“It’s a painting.” Alex tapped the ceiling with his foot, his toe landing right where the suggested perspective said it should drop straight down.

Breathless, my gaze lifted itself to the desk on the real ceiling: a grand wooden one with a grey-haired man sitting at it—upside-down—his red dressing-gown belt hanging down past his ear. There was a lamp stuck to the desk somehow, splashing grainy light in a small circle around him, and even the typewriter he was using hadn’t fallen to the ceiling… er… ground. The bookshelves that lined every wall were all the wrong way as well, the tops of them suspended a foot or so off the ceiling where we stood, attached up there by an unseen force. The books had been stacked as if that perspective were normal, having won their fight with gravity long ago though, and sitting now with their spines up the wrong way in disordered leans where gravity demanded.

My ears tuned to the pinging sound of the typewriter as the old man completed a page and plucked it out, placing it under a rock on his desk, the edges curling in a desperate fight against normality.

“It’s magnetic,” Alex explained. “The rock. So is the desktop.”

“Oh.” I stepped in, still not sure about it all, and slightly cautious of this painted ceiling, as if it might flip suddenly and I’d fall. “For a second I thought he was magic.”

“Not magic,” said the old man loudly, in a bold but warm voice. “Magical!”

I rolled my chin up to look at his beaming, sort of wild grin. “There’s a difference?”

“Of course there is.” The old man bent down under the desk and a second later a shrill grinding sound shattered the calm in the library. The leather armchair he was seated in drew away from the desk on a conveyor belt of some kind that was hidden in the supposed floor up there, and then came slowly toward the ground… er… ceiling. No, ground. I saw the old man’s skinny legs sticking out from striped pajama shorts, gravity pulling the dressing gown apart, and as the chair did a turn around a few feet from the ground I finally met the man from a sane perspective. I instantly liked him for his knee-high white socks and brown Hush Puppies.

He unbuckled and rose from his chair, stumbling sideways a little with the obvious dizziness of blood that was unsure where to go. Closer up, his face wasn’t as old as the whitish hair suggested. I’d have placed him as being about fifty, or maybe younger but aged with laughter wrinkles. He was obviously a happy man, but a deep thinker, as the permanent lines between his brows suggested.

“The difference, my dear—” He took hold of the bookshelf beside us to steady his wobbly legs, “—is that magic requires a certain skillset, whereas anything in the world can be magical if you know how to look at it right.” His eyes moved to Alex’s supper tray then, and widened. “Ah! Sandwiches!”

“Actually, Dad,” Alex started, but before he could get a word in, the plate of sandwiches was gone and his father was already in his chair again. The smell of bread and cheese wafted away into the thick cloud of ink and freshly polished shelves, our midnight snack just a memory now.

Alex looked at the cookies and milk, then at me. “Back to the kitchen then?”

I laughed. “I think we better leave him to his work anyway.”

As we walked from the room and I glanced back to shut the door, Alex’s dad, who had not been given a name, took a bite of the sandwich, chewed it thoughtfully and then placed it onto the plate to press some sudden insight onto his typewriter. While the plate was stuck down by some force unseen, I watched the sandwich fall off without him noticing, and just laughed, wondering how he could swallow, let alone sit like that for so long.

“I like him,” I said to Alex as we reached the kitchen, the space all warm with the cluttered evidence of his father’s brilliance, or madness, stacked all around.

“My father?”

“Yes.” I sat up on the counter beside the chopping board. “He seems like a man with a lot to say.”

“More like a man with a lot to do.”

Though I took that to mean his father wasn’t ‘around’ much, I didn’t hear even a drop of spite or sadness in that statement.

“I didn’t get his name,” I said. “What should I call him?”

“Plain. He likes to be called Plain.”

“Plain. As in Mr. Plain?”

Alex laughed. “He would say, ‘Mr. Plain was my father. I am, as you will see’ —and here he’d usually bow—and add, ‘just Plain.’”

It made me smile. “So that’s your family name. Plain?”

“It is.”

“Alex Plain.” I said the words to myself, then looked at Alex, who was anything but plain. The eyes that saw him earlier as dorky and homely now saw a depth to him that they wanted to explore. “A remarkable boy named Alex Plain.”

“A remarkably unremarkable boy,” he corrected, handing me a plate. “You’re the one that’s half wolf.”

“Yes.” I thumbed the sandwich. “Which, among my people, is incredibly unremarkable.”

Alex hopped up on the counter beside me. “Then maybe you and I can be unremarkable together for now. What are you doing tomorrow, Red by the Way?”

I looked at the clock on the wall—one that was clearly made by some mad inventor. “It’s already tomorrow. So I guess I’m eating a sandwich with my new friend Alex Plain.”

He bit into the corner. “After that, we should catch bubbles from my bubble machine.”

My brow moved up judgmentally. “Why?”

“The question is,” he said, sounding just like his father, “why not?”

Part Two: Chapter Two

The Selection

Until I met Alex Plain, I didn’t know that the sun could set in a bubble. If you watch it float to just the right spot as the sun lifts over the horizon, you can see your own mini sunrise in a pearly circle. It felt like magic, and yet I knew it was simply magical. Alex, just like his father, had a way of viewing the world that altered the way one perceived things, giving them little gifts and pieces of magic where others would find only normality. It left me thinking, as I lay in my bed trying to sleep, and it was nice to finally be thinking about something other than the fact that my friends had slowly stopped talking to me. I missed them. All of them. I missed having someone to talk to, someone to call when I’m bored or a bit lonely. I just couldn’t believe they would all drop me because I couldn’t walk on all fours under a full moon. It didn’t seem fair. And yet Alex, a human, someone I had seen and never given the time of day, had plucked me from my misery and brought me into a world I never knew existed. A world that had always been right in front of me, hiding under a lack of imagination.

My ordinary pale blue walls felt flat then, and my white bed seemed as unremarkable as a name like Plain, so I shut my eyes tight and imagined it was a sleigh—that my walls were white and blue, with straight gray lines for trees and flocks of birds vanishing over a painted horizon. The carpet, I decided, would be made of wolf fur.

“April?”

My eyes flicked back open to the plain walls and the real world. “Yes, Mom?”

“Are you up? Do you remember what today is?” She rattled the door handle. “Why is this locked?”

“Because I snuck out my window last night and I didn’t want you to know,” I called, climbing out of bed. And standing up, in my room, looking across the park to Alex’s house, the misery of my ordinary life seeped back in through my pores.

Mom unlocked the door and her smiling face appeared. “Did you really sneak out?”

“Yes, and I went to an upside-down library and watched the sun rise in bubbles.”

Mom laughed. “It’s nice to see you have your sense of humor back. What are you wearing today?”

Today, today? What was I supposed to do today? With a quiet gasp my eyes went to the calendar above the pile of homework on my desk. The Selection Day.

I ran to my mirror and poked at my cheeks, horrified. “Mom?”

She turned to my panicked tone.

“Mom, look at me!”

“I am. What am I supposed to be seeing?”

“I look like a zombie, Mom. And this is my only chance to be accepted by the pack again.”

“I know,” she said calmly. “But you can’t control the outcome, April. If you’re chosen by the alpha then—”

“But Mom. Look at my face!” I turned around to show her the horror.

Mom just smiled in that loving way moms do. “You’re beautiful. Of all the girls lining up today, you, with your dark eyes and dark hair, will stand out. Luther won’t be able to walk past you.”

I sat down on my bed, cursing my all-nighter. Had I not been so wrapped up in self-pity, I would have remembered how significant today is—how important it is to be chosen as the next bride for our alpha. Now that I knew I’d never be a wolf, this was the only way to make my friends like me again. The only way to feel like less of an outsider.

“I’m sorry,” Mom said, sitting down beside me, her fluffy blue dressing gown making her look fatter than she was. “This is my fault.”

“What is?”

“When I left your father that year before he decided to marry me, I… well, if I hadn’t dated another guy—”

“Mom.” I laughed. “If you hadn’t dated that guy, you wouldn’t have me.”

She smiled timidly, reaching down to pick up my hand. “Your dad loved you, you know—even after he found out.”

I squeezed her hand back. “I know. And you know he loves you too.”

“I know.” She looked up to Heaven. “He made sure I knew that before he left.”

My eyes lifted to Heaven too, then came back down to the worry lines around Mom’s flat mouth. “I’m going to be selected, Mom, and we’re going to use that money to pay off the house and all Dad’s medical bills.”

Mom wiped her cheek and I only saw the tear as it slipped away under her hand. “I know.” She stood up. “Like I said, you’re the prettiest, funniest and cleverest girl in our pack. Luther would be mad not to choose you.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any more confident. You have to say that, you’re my mom.”

“It’s not just a mother’s eyes, April. You are a pretty girl by any standards, and I knew from the day you were born that you’d be the next alpha female. So stop worrying.”

I smiled reassuringly as she left my room, but inside my stomach was tight. I had nothing special to offer Luther, and being that I was only half wolf, my chances of being the next female alpha were slim at best. But Mom was right. I was, at least, pretty. And I was the only girl with such dark hair and dark eyes. The last three brides he chose over the past sixty years had all been dark haired and dark eyed. Everyone knew it. And everyone had me pegged as the next shoo-in; well, until news spread that I was only half wolf. Now, no one said a word to me or about me. At least, not to my face.

***

In the cold gray day, while the autumn breeze taunted thirty teenage girls in scanty dresses, all looking their best, the alpha descended from his townhouse on the hill—a place on private property away from town and away from humans, buried behind a wall of unnaturally thick forest. I’d never seen Luther of Ravenswood up close. I’d only seen painted depictions of him, and I once saw the back of his head at a party when I was five. I knew he was tall, and from what my mom had said, I knew he had that born-in-another-century kind of handsomeness you didn’t see in boys these days. He also became immortal at the age of twenty-five. The only immortal wolf and, therefore, the only wolf that could have immortal sons. No child born to Luther had been female, and when it was first suggested I offer myself as a bride, I had to resign myself to the fact that I would never have a daughter. I’d accepted it now, but for the sake of my mother, I would not accept being passed up for this opportunity.

“What’s she even doing here?” I heard someone whisper. At first I didn’t realize she was talking about me, until I felt the girls staring at me, keeping the canards behind their hands, as if I wouldn’t hear them. I was only half wolf, but my hearing was as sharp as any full-blood.

“She has no right,” I heard some old hen cluck from behind me. “She’s barely even wolf.”

“She has as much right as your daughter, Karen,” my mom snapped.

I filled with dread. Oh no. I could see it now: a full pageant-style mom war. Hair ripping. Cussing. Purse whacking.

I glanced back and saw Mom separate herself from the pack, standing a meter or so away while they all whispered about her as well. But she didn’t seem fazed—either that, or she was just taking the high road—so I didn’t let it faze me either. They’d all see. I’d do something to make Luther choose me, and then they’d have no choice but to accept us back into the fold. In fact, they would have to bow at my feet.

“Who is that man taking notes?” a girl whispered to her friend beside me. She couldn’t have been older than twelve. I wondered why her parents would offer her up so young.

“That’s his first son, Theowulf,” her friend said.

My eyes followed theirs to the tall man, of about thirty years, walking between the two lines of girls, shaking his head at some and nodding at others. Those who received a no backed away, heads bowed sadly, and ran to their moms.

The gaps in the lines closed up, and when the two girls beside me were cast away, I lifted my chin and puffed my chest slightly, determined to stay in the game.

He stopped right in front of me and his eyes became small. “Name.”

“Pardon?”

“Name. What is your name?”

He was pretty. He had jet-black hair and a short beard atop his clear, radiant skin. His eyes were sharp and unkind, his brow low and thick with intolerance, but there was a hidden warmth beneath it all. I couldn’t think for a moment, thrown off by the fact that he was actually pretty cute. Should I tell him my name’s Red or April? “Redwood,” I said. “April Redwood.”

“You’re not wolf.”

“I am. I’m half wolf. My father was human.”

“Who was your father?”

Cringe. Crud. I never asked that. “He was a great man. An inventor,” I lied. “He made sunrises in bubbles.”

Theowulf seemed amused by this, even showing a small smile before he tied it back up in a stern face. He said nothing in reply to my wild tale, but he nodded as he walked on to the next girl, and I shut my eyes with relief. I could almost hear Mom squeak with the same relief from behind me.

Far up the hill to my left, I could see Luther emerging from the green embrace of the forest, while in the distance to my right a busy and radiant little town readied itself for a long day, taking the nine chimes of the clock tower as its cue. From here, I could count the rows of shops and businesses running in six well-organized lines at the center, with two large schools on either end and a giant lake that cut the business district off from the houses and parks. It was a beautiful town, surrounded by hills that couldn’t be walked in just one day, and clean, fresh air that couldn’t be found anywhere else. I loved this town, and I knew that if Luther came down off his hill right this moment and picked me as his next wife, I would have only one month left in the place where I grew up. After that, I would belong to him. I would only see these people at parties and town meetings, if at all, but they would respect and adore me.

The line of girls had become a short selection of ten, all nervous and timid. But they looked good, standing out in their carefully chosen and probably expensive dresses.

I needed to stand out. I didn’t have money or a lot of style, but I did have eyes. I could see they were nervous. So I would be brave.

I rolled my shoulders back and relaxed my face, wriggling my toes to send all the nerves there instead. I knew I looked pretty enough in a cute woolen dress with long sleeves, my knees warm in leggings, feet warm in ankle-high black boots. I wasn’t showing much skin in comparison to the other girls—just a bit of neck, really—but I felt like my lack of skin showed my increased intelligence, given the climate. I felt like that, combined with some forced confidence, gave me a better chance than all the expensive dresses in the world.

As Luther got closer, our shoulders did too, each girl pressing into the other, a few joining hands. None of them wanted this as badly as I needed it. Not one shred of me wanted to be married off to an ancient wolf at seventeen, but if I didn’t do something soon we’d lose our home, and with the mounting debts and interest on those debts we’d be homeless and hungry. Mom might resort to drinking, and I’d never get an education and end up working a low-paying job for the rest of my life. Then Dad would cry in Heaven.

This had to be done.

“Father,” Theowulf said, smiling his greeting. “Come see what I have chosen for you. I think you will find them all to your liking.”

It was only then, as I leaned out and looked down the line, that I realized we all had dark hair. Mine was the darkest, though, with a reddish hue to it that I’d always hated, but against so many plain girls I felt like it helped me stand out. So I made a point of bringing it over my shoulder and angling it into the bleak sun so it shone.

Luther moved down the line slowly, taking a minute to study each face. He made a few of the girls turn to show their backs, leaving them in line after he passed them. He picked up the wrist of a girl two spaces away from me and studied her tattoo. That was Luca. She was in my Biology class. And that tattoo was for her dead cousin.

“No,” he said simply, and dropped her hand, walking away from her.

We all took a step sideways to close the gap as she ran to her mom, crying.

Luther stopped in front of me then, and I looked him in the eye—square eyes with sharp corners, thickly rimmed with dark lashes. I forced myself not to see how pretty he was—to see him as an equal. But we weren’t equals: he scared the H-e-double-hockey-sticks out of me. He was only half a head taller, yet cast a long shadow that flooded out all the light in my soul. I could sense his age, his wisdom, and while he was only about twenty-five to look at, I could tell he’d seen things in life that scarred him—that there was a depth to this man as deep as his strong silence. He was all wolf; a dark peppering of hair on his jaw that had grown in since he shaved—most likely this morning; a deep devil’s peak at his brow, soft dark hair flowing back in a slight wave, rippled at the temples, as though a set of fingers had run through it. It was intimidating to feel so afraid of him and yet so attracted to him. I could almost see his wolf form in the human one. But I did not falter. I held his gaze, letting him see me, see right through me. I had nothing to hide. Nothing to fear. Nothing else left to lose. But everything to gain.

“Any markings?” he asked me, his voice deep and husky.

“Markings?”

“Tattoos,” Theowulf offered from beside him.

“No.”

“Any scars?”

“No.”

He looked down his nose at me, gathering his hands behind his back. “Half human.”

“Yes.”

“That was not a question. Speak when you’re spoken to.”

“Sorry.” I bowed my head for a second, remembering then to maintain eye contact. And to only speak when spoken to.

“You’re a fiery one, aren’t you?” he asked me, the same almost-smile appearing that showed on his son’s face earlier.

“I—”

“Put her on the list,” he told his son, cutting me off.

I heard a sudden roar of whispers and judgmental sneers from behind me, making the skin on the back of my neck crawl.

“When will we hear back from you?” the Elder Aerik asked, offering me a reassuring smile from beneath his long gray beard.

“I will inform you of my decision later tonight.” Luther stepped away, and I almost leapt for joy, instead deciding to get a better look at him. In that expensive dark blue suit and his shiny shoes, he didn’t really fit this small town scene. It was as if that private house in the hills never left the century he was born in. And the way he angled his chin when he looked down at a person, any person, it was as if he didn’t have the time for them or maybe expected them to say something stupid that he’d have to correct. Despite that, I thought I might like to be married to him. It certainly wouldn’t be the worst fate. And as that thought filled up my head, I saw Alex running across my cerebral cortex, chasing a runaway bubble. I laughed, deciding suddenly, oddly, strangely, wonderfully, that I was desperate to get home and tell him about today.

***

When I got home, I went straight out the back gate to stand in the swing and look up at Alex’s house, hoping he might see me and come ask me inside. I didn’t feel right just going on up and knocking on his door. After all, we’d only been friends now for one night.

I swung for ages and ages, my feet on the wooden seat, hands curled around the ropes, watching the sun get higher in the sky at first until I heard the distant bell tower announce that it was two in the afternoon. So I swung some more until I heard it say three. Then I saw a dog. She bounded toward me with a big smile on her face and jumped up to throw me off the swing.

I landed hard in the grass, coughing on the wet kisses she plastered all over my face. “Sheesh, Sacha. If you wanted a turn on the swing, you could’ve asked.”

Alex stood above me, laughing. “Looks like I’m not your only new friend.”

“Looks like,” I said, gently pushing her off so I could see him. The sun backed onto his curls, giving them a kind of orange glow and showing all the fine hairs around his jaw. He was in clothes today—plain jeans and a blue T-shirt—and he was wearing a nice deodorant that made me think of my first crush.

“Are you busy now?” he asked.

“No.”

“Want to come meet someone special?”

“Sure.” I hopped up, dusting the grass off my red coat and my knees. “Who?”

“George, of course,” he said, and started walking toward his garden gate.

I followed, taking Sacha’s leash and then releasing her once we were indoors. Alex took it off her and mounted it on a hook, while Sacha darted off to the end of the hall and nosed a door open. The sunlight from that room spilled out into the odd darkness that never seemed to leave this space, as though it had been lost in time, Tiffany lamps and all.

For a moment, as we followed Sacha through the door, the bright sun put a glow into my eyes, so I didn’t clearly see the man at the table in the center. I saw only shelves of books and games, set against walls that had been splashed with a trillion colors, and a TV playing the news in the corner. Then I saw the wheelchair.

“Red,” Alex said proudly, pulling it out from the table and wheeling it around. “This is George.”

George looked like Alex, but slightly older. His hair was darker, like the woman in the pictures in the hall, and his eyes were deeper set, but he was more good looking than Alex. He couldn’t control the muscles in his face or hands all that well, his tongue coming out a bit as he tried to smile, but I knew he was offering me his greeting.

“Hello George.” I shook his twisted, contorted hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

George’s eyes moved onto Alex and he breathed heavily for a moment, rocking a little.

“He says it’s nice to meet you too, and…” Alex looked at George when he made a few grunts and hums. “Don’t make me say it.”

George’s mouth moved wider and a line of dribble went down his chin. Alex moved quickly to mop it up with the end of his sleeve.

“What else did he say?” I asked.

“He says it’s nice to see me bringing a girl home for once.”

“Oh?” I looked at George then back at Alex. “So you usually bring boys home then?”

I wasn’t sure, but I figured the sound George made then was laughter.

“Funny.” Alex turned George’s chair around and pushed him back into the large white table. “I can see you two will get along just fine.”

As Alex sat down with George, I took a slow stroll around the room, my hands gathered behind my back, eyes admiring all the colorful drawings in frames on the walls and the general bright, happy feel of the space. “Who did these?”

“Both of us—when we were kids.”

“Hm.” I nodded in consideration, moving on to the next picture. The unusual tones of a conversation held mostly by one person filled the room out over the newscast from the TV, and I just listened a little as I explored the space, getting a better sense of this odd boy I met last night. He seemed to have had such a normal childhood, according to the games and toys and pictures all around. What changed since then that made him so different to anyone I’d ever met?

I stopped by a smelly birdcage that housed a pretty green parrot, and peered at a stick figure drawing of a boy above it. His obvious curly hair marked him as Alex, who stood beside a stick figure of a taller boy named ‘Jorge’, also labeled as ‘best brover ever’.

I smiled, pointing to it. “This is you two?”

“Yes. I drew that for George for his birthday.”

“How long ago?”

“Last year,” he said, and I laughed.

The bird squawked then, making me jump involuntarily. “Hello there.” I put my finger to a small gap in the cage and she shuffled along her wooden perch and bent to press the tip of her beak to my nail. “And who is this?”

“That’s Mom.”

“Mom?”

“Yes.” Alex looked up from whatever he was working on with George. “She landed on my dad’s shoulder at the funeral—the only bright color in all the black—and we’ve had her ever since.”

Wow. I wish that had happened at my dad’s funeral. But if it had, I wouldn’t lock the bird up. It would be too special. “Why does he keep her in a cage?”

“So he doesn’t lose her again.”

“That’s sad.” I tapped the cage and walked away. “How did she die?”

“She didn’t,” he said simply. “She turned into a bird.”

I sighed. It was hard knowing the right way to phrase a question with Alex sometimes, and I did wonder if maybe he was half as mad as his father. “Why did she turn into a bird?”

“She was like your dad. A cruel beast came in one night and started feeding off her body. She tried to fight it, but the doctors were on the beast’s side. They gave her medicine that made her weak, and she went to sleep in a long box. Then she came back as a bird.”

I stared at him, wondering if he truly believed that. “How old were you when she became a bird?”

“Ten.” He opened a thick book with no pictures to the place it had been marked, and showed his brother. “Dad told us about the magical land she came from. It helped.”

I nodded, hugging my knees as I sat on a chair on the other side of George. I understood Alex’s story world—why he created it—but I also wondered if he understood that it was just a story.

“Red?” Alex said. When I looked up from my knees he smiled. “I know she’s not really a bird. And I’m sure my father knows that too—deep down inside.”

I smiled back.

“I thought you of all people would understand that,” he added.

“Why me especially?”

“Because of the wolves.”

My forehead moved into a frown of confusion, but he looked away, a little disappointed in me I think. “How do you know it’s not her?” I asked.

“Huh?”

Even George’s eyes moved onto me then.

“You just said you know the bird isn’t her. But how do you know?” I repeated. “Birds don’t randomly go around landing on people’s shoulders at funerals. Maybe it is her—her spirit, at least.”

Alex smiled, his eyes small and his mouth closed. “I have to admit, it was a pretty strange thing.”

“Well…” I glanced back at the green feathered beauty, the way she looked decisively at me, her curious eyes taking everything in. “She is a very strange bird.”

“Everything in this house is strange.”

“Or mad,” I joked.

“Not George,” Alex insisted with a bright face. “He’s brilliant. So brilliant that his human mind couldn’t contain the intelligence and he had to hide inside of himself.” He put the book down, much to George’s disgust. “Look at this.”

I knelt up on the chair, leaning over George a little. Alex brought a piece of paper toward him and picked up a pen, writing down four numbers with plus signs between them, all apparently equaling 555. George didn’t even look at the page, and I started to question Alex’s sanity in both thinking George could do math, and thinking that math added up.

“How do four fives equal five hundred and fifty-five?” I asked. “That equals twenty, at best.”

“Watch,” he said to me, leaning a little closer too. “Georgey. Can you tell me, Georgey, drawing only one line, how this can equal five hundred and fifty-five?”

George didn’t have the coordination to take the pen without a lot of help; his hands were curled over and brought up to his chin, but after Alex extended his arm and put the pen in the curl of his hand, he could make himself lean toward the paper. Using a breathy noise in the back of his throat to give him more power, he scribbled a messy and squiggly line down from the top of the plus sign to the edge of it, making a four right between two fives, and my eyes widened, doing the math: 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 did not equal 555. But 5 + 545 + 5 did!

My brightened eyes landed on Alex. “He’s a genius!”

“You haven’t seen anything yet. You only think that’s good because you saw the George that the rest of the world sees. You didn’t expect anything of him. But he is so much smarter than that one puzzle.”

“You’re smarter than me, George!”

George laughed, his tongue coming out as he did. He rocked back and forth for a moment, and I decided that I liked him. I liked how he moved and smiled as a pure expression of joy, without self-consciousness. There was honesty in it, in his body language and even in his voice, that I hadn’t seen in anyone else before.

“I think we should be friends, George,” I said. “If you’ll have me.”

George reached out with a curled hand, and it took him a bit, but he eventually patted my arm with the back of his wrist.

“Come on.” Alex stood up. “Let’s take Sacha outside and play catch. It’s George’s favorite game.”

“Can he throw a ball?” I asked, taking the handles of his wheelchair.

“No,” Alex whispered just to me, “but we let him think he can.”

I laughed. “It’s okay, George. I can’t really throw a ball either.”

George became distressed about something, making an “Er” sound as he motioned for Alex to come closer.

Leaning down, his ear to George’s face, Alex nodded, as if he could understand the grunting. “Teach?” He stood up again. “You want to teach Red how to throw a ball?”

George nodded his whole body, relaxing back in his chair again after.

“I’d like that,” I said. And I liked George. And Alex. And their world. As we walked down the hall I smiled to myself, but it slipped away quickly when I realized that, if I was chosen as the new female alpha, I wouldn’t ever see George and Alex again. When I thought of Alex, I saw a bright circle of light, like sitting on a rain-soaked road under a midday sun. It was glaring even in the dreary grayness of autumn. But when I thought about Luther and Theowulf and that secretive old mansion, I saw a dark circle of red with black edges. It made me sad. Were I to stay here, I just kind of knew we’d be those friends that talk about everything and hang out every weekend, which would be so awesome—to have a good friend like that—and that made my possible marriage a more looming prospect than an exciting one.

“Something wrong, Red?” Alex asked, taking George’s chair to get it over the doorway and down the steps backward.

“Does George know about wolves?”

“Do you mean werewolves? Like you.”

“Yes. But… well, we hate being called that.”

“Did you, George? Did you know Red is a wolf?” Alex asked playfully. “Since she doesn’t like to be called a werewolf.”

George didn’t answer. He lowered his hand as Sacha came forward and licked it, seeming to comfort him as the chair jostled about down the garden path. I wondered about him—about how he would be if he hadn’t gone inside of himself. Then I wondered how he got inside of himself. I wondered that more than I wanted to tell Alex about Luther, so I asked, “Was he born like this?”

“Who?”

“George, of course,” I said. “Was he born this way?”

“Born brilliant?” Alex said. “Yes.”

I sighed internally. How to phrase a question for Alex? “Was he born… inside of himself?”

“No.” Alex pushed the chair over the bumpy path, the weeds and grasses making it treacherous, until we finally reached the shady green tree where I met Alex last night. He produced a red ball, placing it in George’s hand.

For a while, I thought he would leave it at that—that maybe I should never have asked—but after a few throws, where George dropped the ball to the ground and Alex tossed a second one he had hidden in his pocket for the dog to chase, he took me by the arm and told George we’d be back in a moment.

“Where are we going?”

“Out of earshot,” he said, stopping us by the gate to his yard.

I leaned against it, and Alex did too, hands in pockets, looking sadly at the mushy grass under our feet. Back under the tree, Sacha stood protectively at George’s side.

“What’s wrong?” I probed.

“There’s reality and then there’s the fiction we make for ourselves.”

“And?”

“And I like my fictional world better.” He looked over at his brother. “I’m like you, Red. I make up stories to explain away my pain—his pain.”

“Pain?”

Alex sighed, his long lashes covering his eyes for a moment. “George was in an accident a week before he was set to leave for college.”

My eyes went wider and my cheeks softer as realization spread over them like a shadow over a hot sun: College. Brother. The shirt he was wearing when we first met.

“So he never made it to college?” I said.

“Not in this version of the story. But in here—” he ran a fingertip in a circle around his heart, “—me and George have hundreds of worlds where we live.”

I smiled, exhaling. “Do you have a favorite?”

“I don’t. I like them all. But his favorite is the one where Mom came from—the one with the strange birds.”

“Strange birds?”

“There’s one tree in the middle of a lake that might even be a sea, and there, in that world, people do nothing but swim all day. The only creatures that don’t are the strange birds. They’re normal to us, because we know what they are in this world, right? But in that world, no one has ever seen a bird, and so a cawing crow and bright parrot are wondrous creatures that reach heights the people there can only imagine. There’s no school, and so no one needs to be smart or clever. There’s only water and colorful fish, and the strange birds.”

“Can people fly? If they wanted to?”

“I know one can.” He stood from his lean on the gate. “But everyone could if they wanted, I guess, and that’s what’s great about that world. There aren’t any limitations except those we put on ourselves.”

“And George? Can he swim there, or is he in a chair?”

“Not just swim. He’s the one that can fly. If he wants.”

“But out here…”

“Out here…” Alex toed the ground, cutting a line in the grass. “Out here he’s lost everything, and I have to step away from the story world sometimes to care for him in the ways he can’t for himself, and then it hurts.”

“Why does it hurt?”

“Because it’s… awful. And I’m glad it isn’t me. And then I feel bad for thinking that.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s my brother. I should want to trade places with him. He would if it were me.”

“But you’re afraid to live in that world, because being like that is…” I didn’t want to say it.

“Ugly,” he said, ashamed.

That wasn’t the word I’d use. “Only if you look at the ugly side, but look at how pretty his smile is, Alex. And how much he loves being out here with you.” I nodded at George, who was seeing those strange birds in the sky where there were none, at least… not in this world. “Just like how I didn’t see his brilliance behind the outside of him, you forget the beauty in the ugliness of his condition.”

“That’s why we make the story worlds, and they’re infinite, Red—so are we when we live inside of them. But we can’t stay there forever. We have to come back here to the ugly place, and I cry sometimes because of it.”

I put my hand on his arm, wishing I could suck out all of his pain through my palm. “This isn’t an ugly place, Alex. It’s all about perspective, you see, because… for me, this world with you, and with my new friend George, is the most magical place on earth.”

He slowly looked up to meet my eyes, his face soft as if slightly confused. “Better than your wolf world?”

“Way better,” I said with a big smile. “I know there are ugly moments. I had them with my dad when he was sick. But, after knowing you for just one day, you taught me that there are magical moments in all the ugly ones too. You just have to keep your eye out for them. They’re sneaky, remember.”

Alex’s lip moved on one side until it pulled his whole face into a cute smile, and where I once saw something plain and dorky, I now saw something strange and unsettling. I felt my heart do a little flip, and I wanted to smile a different smile, but I smiled a friendly one instead and told him we should get back to George and Sacha.

Part Two: Chapter Three

The World You Live In and How to Change It

I never got to tell Alex about the Selection. I mean, there wasn’t much to tell, I decided, considering we hadn’t heard anything yet. Then again, maybe I didn’t tell him because I couldn’t also admit that meeting him had made me second-guess the choice to offer myself. Last night I was alone and desperately sad after having spent the evening at the bonfire with a bunch of old friends that had slowly become new strangers to me, but then I learned that there’s beauty in sadness and that, underneath it all, magical worlds and new friends existed. Doors hadn’t actually closed on me as I’d thought; they had closed for me, so that new ones could open. Without that sadness last night, I would never have been on that swing. I would never have met Alex. I would never have known I could like a human so much, and I would never have been able to view the human side of me with kinder eyes. I hated her last night. I wanted to cut her out. But now I saw the awe in what I once thought was ugly.

How could a boy so ordinary and plain make me rethink the way I saw myself in just one day?

I knew how, and I smiled to myself, repeating the words I’d said last night: “A remarkable boy named Alex Plain.”

“April.” Mom popped her head in my room, and the snowy walls and sleigh bed washed away from my imagination, sinking me back into the ugly world.

“Yes.” I sat up, ready for bad news, but her face said it all. I sprung up and flew into her arms. “He chose me! They called? He chose me?”

“He did.” She hugged me fiercely, both of us jumping up and down. “The first payment was sent through ten minutes ago, and once you accept the proposal, he’ll transfer the rest. April.” She held me out by my arms. “We can take down the For Sale sign!”

My skin crawled with happy bumps. “How do I accept the proposal? Do we call them or—”

“Theowulf will come to see you tomorrow. You’ll sign some papers and he’ll give you the Ravenswood family ring. From then on, everyone will know you’re the next alpha female.”

“Do you think my friends will start talking to me again?”

“Most likely.” She laughed. “But I don’t know why you’d want them to.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because…” Mom sighed. I could see she was searching for a way to impart her wisdom to the ‘apparently’ inexperienced mind of a teenager. “Sweetie, if they couldn’t love you after finding out you’re a half-blood, why should they get to love you now? Nothing has changed—”

“I guess…”

“They abandoned you because you didn’t fit their mold,” she added. “You’re still a half-wolf—”

“I guess,” I said in a flat tone.

Mom cocked her head. “I know you loved them, but I don’t think you truly understand that they’re not good friends, April. What happened to you this past year has been tough enough on its own, and your friends were supposed to support you, not turn their back on you.”

She had a point. “But I miss them, Mom. I miss fitting in.”

Mom sighed. “I know. It’s hard losing people after loving them all your life.”

In her voice I heard her telling that to herself, seeing Dad where her eyes landed on the empty space across my room.

“Everything’s going to be all right now, Mom.” I touched her elbow, bringing her back to the ugly gray world. “I’ll accept that proposal tomorrow, and our whole world will get better.”

She smiled at me, and I smiled back, and we stood there like that for a while, seeing the new beauty rising in our own ugly world.

***

Sacha took me on a detour to Joe’s Ice-cream Shack, and at first I just thought she wanted to visit Alex at work, but when she sat at the counter, wagging an expectant tail, I knew she had other plans. Those plans becoming apparent as I watched Alex serve the kid before us.

“One chocolate scoop in a waffle cone, and…” He narrowed an appraising eye at the dog beside the boy and picked up another cone. “I’m gonna guess it’s vanilla, right?”

“I only have enough for one.” The boy laid his money out on the counter.

Alex winked. “Dogs eat free here. But don’t tell my manager.”

The boy nodded, smiling hugely as he took his free ice-cream and left with his canine companion jumping eagerly at his side.

“So that’s why Sacha demanded that we come here,” I said.

Alex was caught off-guard for a second when he saw me, obviously not having noticed me here before. “Uh, yeah… she’s a candyfloss-sorbet kinda dog.”

“Right,” I said, taking the cone after he served it up for her.

“What about you?” He leaned on the counter, his ridiculous curls sticking out from under the Joe’s Ice-cream Shack visor. “What kind of girl are you?”

“Not the ice-cream kind,” I said. “Never been a fan.”

“Well…” He checked his watch. “I’m on break now. Are you a fan of shakes?”

“Definitely.”

“Chocolate?”

“You read my mind.”

“Okay.” He smiled with a breathy laugh. “Get a table outside, I’ll meet you in a sec.”

Sacha, imitating the previous dog and jumping up on my leg as I tried to walk, made it take longer to get outside. So long, in fact, that I lost the last umbrella-covered table to a group of kids about my age. One of them looked at the disappointment on my face as I stopped an inch away from grabbing the chair.

“Did you want this table?” he said.

Sacha jumped up and stole the ice-cream from my hands, distracting me as I sized up the two human girls with him—ordinary girls with plain ponytails and clothes that didn’t stand out too much—wondering if I should just tell them no. Tell them I was planning to sit on the wall.

“You can sit with us,” they offered. “You go to our school, right? You’re Red?”

“Yeah,” I said, kind of nervous.

“You’re a grade above us,” the guy offered. Then he offered his hand, and my eyes went up his thick arm to the school baseball team jacket, the buzz cut, and a winning smile. “I’m Ben.”

“Hi,” I said.

“And this is Amy and Denise.”

The girls nodded their greeting. It was odd, and maybe I’d spent so long hanging out with wolves that I became accustomed to the inflated ego, but these girls didn’t have an ounce of pretentiousness about them. They weren’t sizing me up or judging me. They weren’t scowling at my dorky jeans and red sweater. In fact, they were wearing the same kinds of things I was. It was refreshing.

“Hey, Alex!” Ben said suddenly, moving in to hug Alex around his milkshakes.

“Hey guys.” Alex put the shakes on the table and pulled two chairs over from the vacating table behind us. He sat down, and so I sat down too. “So you all met Red.”

They nodded.

“We hang out with Alex at school,” Amy said. “He told one of the girls in his grade to stop picking on us and we’ve been friends ever since.”

I looked at Alex.

“She’s not in my grade; she’s in yours,” he said. “Luca—one of the girls from your group, right?”

I rolled my eyes. Yep. She could be a real beast at times—especially to humans. “I’m sorry about Luca,” I offered. “She’s just…”

“Not nice,” Alex said for me, using a better choice of words than I would have.

The girls laughed.

“So what about you, Red?” Ben asked. “You seem to be the new outcast around school. I’ve seen you sitting alone at lunch a lot.”

“Yeah.” I wriggled awkwardly. “I guess I got to see their true colors recently.”

“You always do eventually,” Denise said. “We keep to ourselves now, mostly. And Ben.”

“I’m one of the nice jerks apparently,” Ben added with a big grin.

I laughed, looking beside me at Alex. He looked better now without the stupid hat, leaning back in his chair in such a way that would see him land hard on the floor if he wasn’t careful. Sacha rested her ice-cream face in his lap, receiving a gentle stroke on the head as the conversation went on. But I was lost in thought on this waif of a boy, unremarkable as he seemed, and how he had the courage to stand up to Luca. After all, she was a wolf, and humans usually feared her. Even without wolf blood, she was something to be feared.

“What’s up?” Alex said to me quietly, leaning in as if I maybe had something to say.

I realized then that I was staring. “You’re braver than you look, Alex Plain.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Luca—telling her off.”

“Why? She doesn’t scare me. I’m older than her.”

I smiled, laughing once through my nose. “She scares me sometimes.”

“You just come find me then.” He pushed one fist into an open palm. “I’ll set her straight.”

“You’d hit her?”

“No.” His eyes popped wide. “I’d give her a stern talking to. The fist was just a prop to make me look tough.”

I laughed hard. “Right. Well, I’m sure a stern talking to would set her straight all right.”

“It would.” Alex leaned back again and took his milkshake with him. “No one messes with my friends, Red. No matter how high and mighty they might think they are. Everyone can be knocked down a peg when you don’t care what they think of you.”

“And how does not caring help?”

“Because then you can stand above it all—like you’re on a building and they’re not. You see it all for what it is,” he explained, and the others listened too. “If they have a problem with you, whether you believe it or not, it is because they feel threatened by you in some way.”

“Threatened?” Denise said. “Why would Luca be threatened by us?”

Alex shrugged. “Maybe you remind her of something she hates about herself, who knows? But if you stand back from it all for a moment, you can see it, and you can use it against them.”

The others broke into a conversation about what Luca might hate in herself, and I leaned over to whisper to Alex, shaking my head in disbelief. “How did you learn that?”

Alex shrugged, sipping his shake. “My dad taught me.”

“Wow.” I picked up my shake. “Your dad is pretty darn smart, Alex.”

“Yeah, well, madness gives rise to a certain kind of intelligence,” he said, keeping his voice low and between us. “He might not be the best at balancing checks, but ask him for advice and you’ll never look at your problems the same way again.”

I smiled, because Alex was for me what his dad was for him—all that wisdom of Plain’s had been passed on, shaping his youthful mind, which in turn spread a wealth of insight over the rest of the world. I knew then how rare and how, excuse the cliché, but how special Alex was, and how much this world needed more Alex Plains.

“Good idea,” Amy said to Ben, nodding. She looked nervously at us then shrunk a bit and leaned in to Denise. “You ask them.”

Ben laughed, clearly not as timid as the girls. “So we’re going to a movie tonight. You guys wanna come?”

Alex looked at me, and I looked at him, both of us seeing if the other wanted to. Then we nodded at the same time.

“Sounds good,” I said. It would be nice to hang out with people other than wolves. I’d never had a human friend before I met Alex, but it seemed I was wrong about humans; werewolves weren’t better than humans, and humans weren’t stupid and weak. They were actually pretty cool when you gave them a fair chance.

***

We lay in the wet grass with our heads touching, feet in opposite directions, making shapes out of clouds in the sky. Alex was a master at finding the abstract in the ordinary. He’d had a lot of practice, and he could see so many more familiar things in what I only saw as whirls and puffs. That wasn’t the only thing he could do. In the week that we’d been friends so far, Alex had taught me how to make a Slinky do an amazing crawl down three flights of stairs, taken me to story worlds that no book ever had, taught me about the stars in the sky at night, and even counseled me on losing my dad. He was the only person I’d ever been able to talk to so openly about it. I was grateful to him for that because, last night, for the first time since Dad died, I didn’t cry when I kissed his picture goodnight. Alex was quickly shaping up to be one of the most interesting people I’d ever met, and maybe even the bestest friend I ever had. Even better than Zoe Farthing in kindergarten, who I believed at one time was actually my long-lost sister. She moved away in first grade, and I never saw her again, but I still always thought about her. Alex would be a friend like that, I could tell.

“One week,” Alex said woefully.

“What is? How long we’ve been friends?”

“No. Okay, yes, that’s right too. But I meant we have one week until we go back to school.”

“Don’t remind me.” I groaned to myself. But, in truth, I was kind of looking forward to seeing how my pack treated me now. What was isolation, lunches spent under the bleachers each day, and paired class projects done by myself, might possibly become newfound popularity now that I was stamped and approved by the alpha himself.

“Why do you think we’ve always had two weeks’ holidays for Thanksgiving?” Alex said, as though he wasn’t talking to me, his voice soft, thoughtful. “My cousin Geoff says he gets a week.”

“It’s because of the wolves,” I informed him. “The town mayor is one of our Elders, and what’s your Thanksgiving is at the same time of year as an important ritual holiday for us.”

“What holiday?”

“It’s kind of a lot like how you all give thanks, I guess, but we take time to thank Carne, the wolf god, and his son Luther. We call it the time of Offering.”

“Do you offer human sacrifice?”

I laughed. “No. But we do offer our daughters as wives to the alpha or, if it’s not the year of Selection, we offer fruits and other nourishing foods—things that sustain. I know some families offer sheep and cows, others money, and back in the old days, virgin women offered their blood for him to drink.”

“Yummy,” he said, dragging the word out.

“Yeah. Kinda gross.” I pictured Luther gulping blood from a gold chalice, the liquid spilling down his throat and coloring his shirt. If he wasn’t so good-looking, I might be grossed out. “I’m glad I wasn’t born then.”

“So is he a vampire?”

“No, but he believed that drinking the blood of virgin wolves gave him more power and strength.”

“Did it?”

“No idea.”

“Well, blood aside, it sounds like a fun reason to take two weeks off school.”

“It is fun. Kind of like Christmas, but without a fat guy in a red suit.”

“Do you get presents?”

“No, only the alpha does. But we all gather to enjoy a feast and bring our offerings. And Luther asks us to take a few weeks to rest and enjoy the fruits of our own labor.”

“Labor?”

“It stems from the days of farming, you know, when people worked hard for food. We used to rest and enjoy family and friends, share with them what we’d sowed before the harsh and isolating winter.”

“Speaking of harsh and isolating,” Alex said, “I should probably go home soon. I have so much to organize before school goes back.”

“Like what?”

“Well, I have about, uh…” he coughed into his hand as he said, “three assignments to finish.”

“Shocking.”

“I know.”

“See, I did all mine the first day,” I bragged, or maybe teased.

“Well, aren’t you just the golden student?”

“No, I’m just smart. My dad called it ‘hurry up and wait’, which means it’s better to get it done early and have all that free time than to be rushing at the last minute and have to do a substandard job.”

“Your dad was pretty smart.”

“He gets it from me,” I said proudly.

Alex laughed, and I thought about how smart George is and how he must have gotten that from Plain. Alex was smart, too; I’d seen small glimmers of it in our conversations, but it always felt sometimes like he dumbed things down for some reason. Not for my sake, either. More like he was ashamed of being so smart.

“So who will look after George when you go back to school?” I asked.

“Naki. She’s his carer, but she takes leave over the holidays.”

“Does George like her?” I asked, worrying for him. “Is she nice?”

Alex sat up, hugging his knees. “She’s the best person in the whole world.”

“What makes—” I coughed out the word and smiled at Alex—at the way he laughed as Sacha landed hard beside me, placing her heavy paws over me.

“Sacha.” He gave her a gentle push, but she refused to move.

“She’s okay.” I put my hand on her head to say she could stay, even though I could hardly breathe. “Anyway, as I was saying,” I started again, “what makes her the best person in the whole world?”

“I don’t know.” Alex lay back down again with the crown of his head against mine, tugging my ponytail a bit as he placed both hands under him like a pillow. “I guess it’s just because she cares for George. Or maybe because she always smiles, or maybe that even the biggest problems just aren’t a problem to her.”

I knew a few people like that. My mom was one of them. “She sounds great.”

“She is. And she’s so funny, Red. She moved over here from Africa ten years ago and her accent is still so thick that sometimes I can’t understand her.” He laughed shyly. “She teases me about it. All the time.”

“Teases you?”

“Yeah. If she’s bored, just to mess with me, she puts on her serious face and says this jumble of fake words, makes it sound really important, like George really needs me for something. And just when I start to get distressed, she flicks my ear and says, ‘What’s wrong with you, boy? Your ears don’t work?’. Ha ha ha.”

I laughed too. “I like her already.”

“She’ll like you.”

We laid in silence then for a while, lost in our own thoughts, until a flock of black birds flew overhead and covered our clouds. I counted them, saying the crow poem in my head. One for sorrow. Two for—

“I have a poem,” Alex said out of the blue.

“Oh?”

“My own crow poem. It goes up to ten.”

“There are only seven crows though.”

He aimed a finger to the sky and whispered the numbers one to seven, just to check, in case I couldn’t count. “One for luck. Two for love. Three for a gift that comes from above. Four for sorrow. Five for rain. Six for something to ease the pain. Seven is the number to call, for it brings with it the end of fall.”

I shifted in the grass, closing my hands over my tummy, and studied the sad sky. “Is it the end of fall then, Alex?”

“Soon.” He rolled onto his belly, his chest sweeping past my nose as he leaned across and picked up my hand, laying it flat down by my side. “Can you feel how cold the grass is today?”

“Mm-hm.” I nodded.

“We’ll have our first snowfall in two weeks.”

“How can you tell?”

“Aside from the change in the temperature, the Fawp also told me.”

“The what?” I laughed.

“The Fawp. Or F.A.W.P.”

“What does that stand for?”

“Freakishly Accurate Weather Predictor, of course.”

“Oh, right. Of course.” My stomach heated with chuckles. It was just whacky enough to have most certainly been named by Plain. “And how does it predict snow?”

“Ever notice that antennae sticking out of the roof at the front of my house?”

“Yeah? All five of them. And the satellites.”

Alex laughed. “Yep, well, it predicts weather the same way the weather man on TV does, but it’s always right, and it’s much louder about it.”

“Louder?” I held myself on the cusp of laughing, waiting for the next crazy answer.

“You might imagine a chicken-shaped barometer on the rooftop, but in fact, it’s a complex computer program that sends and receives data to computers all over the world and uses my dad’s insane algorithm to accurately predict very precise changes ahead. But on the Fawp, instead of showing graphs or mind-boggling data, a face pops up and, at full volume, when the first snows are only a week away, it shouts ‘Winter is coming!’” He yelled it at the top of his lungs, making me jump and cover my ears, giggling.

“Sounds annoying.”

“It is when it happens in the middle of the night.” He laughed and rolled back over, this time resting his head on the hollow of my shoulder.

I shuffled up an inch more and put my head on his, the two of us connected like a pair of puzzle pieces. In the past, I’d only ever laid like this with my old best friend Hannah, but it felt oddly comfortable with Alex, even though we’d only been friends a week. And he didn’t seem bothered by it. The only one bothered was Sacha, because she had to move her own body up a few inches to put her head back where it had been before.

“So what kind of face does it have?” I asked.

“Face?”

“Yeah, you said the Fawp had a face.”

“Oh, yeah. Have you ever seen Game of Thrones?”

“No. My mom won’t let me watch it.”

“Well, it’s a character from that show.”

“Oh.” I nodded, guessing it would be funnier if I knew anything about that show. We both sighed, a relaxed, happy kind of sigh, and moved our gazes back to the sky. Up there the clouds moved over us swiftly, fleeing from the winter I supposed. A few times, as I thought about the snow and how it closed off the path to the mansion, I almost told Alex about my upcoming nuptials, but something about saying it aloud made it seem so final. I accepted that ring last night—a gaudy iron wolf head on one end of the circle and a raven on the other, joining cheek-to-cheek in the middle—but I still hadn’t put it on. I still hadn’t truly accepted it. I wanted it so bad the other day, and now… I think I just wanted to lay here with Alex and watch fall blow away.

“Do you like winter?” I asked.

“It’s my favorite season,” he said in an informative tone.

“Why?”

“Because it lays a disguise over the world. Only those that have seen spring and summer know how magical it all is. It’s like a secret. And I like secrets.”

“You like good secrets,” I corrected. “My parents taught me early that there’s a difference between a good secret and a bad secret.”

“Yes. I like good secrets.” He was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “Do you like winter?”

“I do.” I closed my eyes and pictured my imaginary painted bedroom walls. “Sometimes I picture it while I’m lying in bed. I imagine I’m in a sleigh and there’s snowy hills all over my room, and bare, straight trees that almost touch the moon.”

“I do that too,” he said. “But I imagine I’m in space. So my dad made stars in my room.”

“How did he make stars?”

“I’ll have to show you. Words can’t describe it.”

“I’d like that.” I looked over at the tree, where a small bird was sitting with its feathers puffed up around its chest. If Alex had seen it too, he would have invented some crazy tale about where the bird had been all day and why it was feeling so cold while the sun was still out. It was colder today than usual, but not cold enough for the bird to be behaving in such a way. Maybe he just had bad news. I always felt cold when I got bad news.

“Oh, by the way, George told me not to tell you this,” Alex said, his voice soft in the calm day.

“Tell me what?”

“He says he likes your hair.”

I laughed. “Why did he tell you not to tell me that?”

Alex’s shoulders moved up, making my head jostle. “I guess he doesn’t want to scare you away.”

“Why would that scare me?”

“Because people are afraid of what they don’t understand.”

“I still don’t get it.”

“Well, see… if he wasn’t in that chair, he’d have asked you out by now.”

“Really? Me?”

“You didn’t know my brother before the accident. He dated everyone.”

“Oh. So I’m nothing special then?” I laughed.

“Nope,” he said, but I could hear a smile in his tone.

I thought about it all for a moment—picturing George in that Book Boyfriend shirt—maybe standing in the doorway with a smile like Alex’s. I liked George, but not in that way. “He’s too old for me anyway.”

“That wouldn’t have stopped him asking you.”

“Then what about the fact that I’m your friend?”

“Why should that stop him?” he said, his curls brushing my cheek as he shrugged a bit. “We’re only friends.”

“I know, but—”

“It’s the chair.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He thinks no one will ever love him because he can’t control his body, and he’s scared that if you knew he thought of you as anything other than a playmate, you’d be too freaked out to come back.”

Even though Alex couldn’t see my face, I pouted for George. He was clever and still very switched on inside of himself, but there were a few things ‘missing’ too, which I guess is why Alex and George thought no one would ever want him. George was a Sometimes: sometimes he was alert; sometimes he was the George Alex knew before the accident; and sometimes he was ‘elsewhere’. But he wasn’t lost completely. And any girl would be lucky to be asked out by him. “He just needs someone to get to know him.”

“Who would try?”

He had a point. Even I had brushed George off a bit when we first met. I didn’t realize he was still ‘in there’, and I felt really cheap and nasty for that now, especially knowing how funny and imaginative and kind he was. “I wish I could understand him as well as you do.”

“You do understand him—in all the ways that matter.”

“Yes, but I can’t understand him when he talks.”

“You will one day. You just need to get used to the way he shapes his words. It’s a bit like learning another language. But what’s important is the trying,” he said, his voice vibrating through his head and against my shoulder. “That’s what matters to George, and the doc says it’s important that George is even trying to communicate, because, according to his head scans, they can’t understand how he’s doing it.”

“As in… what? He should be in a coma?”

“Something along those lines. It’s all very doctor-ish. Dad gets it. He dumbed it down for me.”

“Okay, give me the dumbed-down version then.”

“Basically, right now, George should be nothing but a sack of meat that can eat slop, like a baby.”

“Does it mean there’s hope for him since he’s not like that?”

“It depends on what your definition of hope is. If you hope, say… that he’ll be like you and me again, then no. Not given our current medical technology. But if you hope that he can live a good life, surrounded by friends and love, then yes. There is plenty of hope.”

“What about his future, though?” I asked. “I mean, he’s brilliant. What are you doing to help him make his mark on the world?”

Alex was silent for a moment, until he took another long, thoughtful breath and let it out slowly. “He was going to be an engineer. He had dreams of participating in the Mars program.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah,” he said sadly.

“He still can, right?”

“No. He’s still smart, Red, but without being able to control his body, and with the seizures, I don’t know that he’ll ever do anything with his life.”

I rolled over to look at his face, forcing Sacha to back up and lay her head on the grass now. But she put it back down on my butt cheek instead. “Why wouldn’t he? And what do the siezures have to do with it?”

“After his last one, he couldn’t tell me what a prime number is.”

“So he’s getting worse? Not better?”

“Something like that.” His eyes came up to meet mine then, and with my head casting a shadow over his face, I could see each tiny hair poking out of his chin, ready to become a beard by tomorrow. I hated talking about George’s sad future—thinking now how he’d never shave his own beard again. But I liked thinking about Alex. I liked thinking about him with a beard, so I brought my hand up and touched his chin.

“What are you doing?” He smiled.

“Feeling your prickles.”

“Why?”

“Because, a week ago, before I met you, I would’ve looked at them and thought about the texture, but only wondered what they felt like. But… I don’t know…” I made his skin move a bit with the top of my thumb, “now I feel like life should be a series of go-for-its, not sit-and-wonders.”

He smiled, his pretty lips staying closed as if he was trying not to breathe all over me. “Do you think I’d look good with a beard?”

My lips pursed and my eyes flicked off to the left as I imagined it: the Alex with a beard grinned at me from where he stood under the tree. He looked cute. “Yes, but a scruffy, sort-of short one. Not the chiseled line of perfection that I see on most guys.”

“On wolf guys?”

“Yeah. They have such thick hair that they get these perfect lines. It’s almost too pretty,” I said, breathing in the smell of him; a rich, musk cologne and the fresh, clean scent of soap. Human boys smelled much better than wolf boys.

“And you like guys more ruggedly handsome than pretty, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Alex rubbed his chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Do you think you’d like me if I was ruggedly handsome?”

“I think I’d like you better if you were strange and unremarkable.”

He laughed, pressing his hand to the back of my head to bring it down onto his shoulder. I readjusted my arms, tucking them into my chest so I was comfortable, and just laid there with him for a while, the bridge of my nose against his neck, always half on the edge of telling him I would be married soon.

“Hey, Red?”

“Yeah?”

“Tell me more about your world.”

“My world?”

“Yes.” He angled his chin down awkwardly so he could see my face, our noses pretty much touching. “I want to know more about your wolf world.”

I laughed. The way he asked made it sound like my ‘wolf world’ was a story I’d made up. “Okay, well… let me see… So… all wolves are descendants of a god called Carne. He had an immortal son named Luther, who had a son named Theowulf, whose two sons went on to make many packs.”

“Was Theowulf immortal too?”

“Yes, but his sons were mortal, so when they turn into a wolf they don’t Shed.”

“What’s that?”

“Shedding?” I confirmed; he nodded. “It’s when their skin and flesh comes off like a coat every time they turn. It renews their human form to their youthful state—the age they were when they first turned.”

“First turned? So they don’t turn from birth?”

“No. None of us do. It sets in around puberty or sometime after. If you haven’t turned by around seventeen, it’s pretty clear you never will.” Like me.

“But you, well, the wolves that descended from Theowulf’s sons, they don’t Shed?”

“No.”

“So how do they turn? Do their clothes turn with them, like in movies?”

I laughed. “No. And they don’t rip either. Werewolves, as you all call them, aren’t any bigger than wild wolves. When they turn, if they’re still wearing their clothes, then they’re just a wolf wearing human clothing.”

Alex laughed loudly. “Sounds like a phrase, you know: wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

“Yeah.” I smiled. “It kinda does.”

“So what about the way it’s organized? You said there’s an alpha and Elders.”

“Yeah. All packs have both. The Elders carry out the day-to-day running of the pack, and the alpha takes care of the bigger things, like when a wolf breaks a supreme law.”

“Like what? What kinds of laws are supreme?”

“Killing a pack member, for one. It’s punishable by death.”

“Damn. And how many wolves are there in the world?”

“Um, I mean, there are hundreds of packs all around the world, but each pack has a different number of wolves—”

“And these are all descendants of the god Carne?”

“No. I mean, yes, but really, we modern wolves class ourselves as Theowolves, because we’re descendants of his two sons Aerik the Gray and Bayon the Black.”

“Why are they called that? The Black and the Gray.”

“Because when they were born, people didn’t use surnames. Aerik was a wise gray wolf, and Bayon was a warrior of the greatest skill. He taught our army, also known as the Black Death.”

“Army?”

“Mm-hm.” I nodded, about to roll onto my back but thinking better of it because I didn’t want to disturb Sacha again. “The army is made up of Luther’s sons—”

“That immortal dude—the son of Carne?”

“Yep. He’s also my pack leader,” —and soon-to-be husband— “and he’s super powerful. It’s why no one has ever challenged our pack. There are packs that have had nothing but war, territorial wars, religious wars, wars over money, but we’re direct descendants of the original wolves here, so we’ve had peace. Some kids my age have never known peace among their pack, so I’m really lucky in that sense.”

“I’ll say.” He put one hand under his head and looked up at the sky. “So, you were telling me about your political structure.”

“Yeah. Um, so like I said, Luther is our alpha, but we only bother him if there’s a major issue in the pack—”

“Like murder?”

“Well, no. See, in other packs, the alpha usually does take care of that, but there hasn’t ever been an issue big enough for us to call on Luther. He kind of makes the Elders handle everything—”

“How many Elders are there?”

“Four.”

“Anyone I’d know?”

“Yep. Dorian Canin, the mayor.”

“Really?” He laughed. “I guess I can see that now.”

“Mm-hm.” I nodded. “Then there’s also Mr. and Mrs. Frost—from down the road,” I said in a questioning tone, wondering if he knew them.

“Oh yeah, Agnes and Aerik.”

“Yep. And Aerik was actually named after Theowulf’s son. And um… and there’s also Cora Gray.”

“And do you all vote for them or—”

“They’re chosen at birth and raised by the Elders that are in place at the time. We go to them with any problems we have, and they also run our church.”

“Church too, huh?”

“Mm-hm.” I nodded. “We have our own religion.”

“Cool. Can you liken it to any other religion?”

“Um, yeah, it’s a lot like the Christian religion, but we worship Carne, and a lot of us also believe in the Christian god.”

“Which is okay by Carne?”

“Sure is.”

“Right. So it’s a pretty relaxed religion?”

“Yes and no. I mean, we don’t have to go to church every Sunday, but each of us must be ordained into the pack by the blood of our fathers.”

“Ordained?”

“Welcomed. Kind of like a Christening, but they pour your dad’s blood over your head and paint runes on you that you can’t wash off for seven days.” I laughed. “We believe that if you don’t get ordained then you walk the earth in solitude. A lone wolf. Never belonging to anything.”

“So that’s pretty important to wolves?” he asked. “Belonging?”

“It’s everything,” I said, feeling the weight of that statement.

“I guess that’s why you felt so isolated when you found out you’re half human.”

“Yes.” I rolled onto my back, giving Sacha a little pet with the tip of my finger when she rested her nose back on my hip. “There’s nothing more lonely than losing your pack. It’s like everyone in your family dying, and then losing everyone in your town, followed by your childhood home burning down.”

He paused for a second, then laughed. “Ouch.”

“I know, right?” I pressed my hand firmly into my chest, drowning in my own pain for a moment.

“So is Mayor Canin your main go-to guy? Like do the Elders share the tasks evenly, or is there one that’s more high up than the others?”

“Aerik is the ‘go-to guy’, if you want to put it that way. He’s a really good person, good wolf. He takes care of most things—”

“Like murderers and robbers?”

“Yes.”

“So he kills people when they commit a crime?”

“No. He has to hold a trial first, and all wolves have to agree. Then the accused has to offer themselves for punishment. We don’t just hunt them down and slay them.”

“What happens if they refuse?”

“Then they’re cast out of the pack.”

“Which is worse than death?”

“Not worse than death, but pretty close.”

“So is everything punishable by death?”

“Nah. Only things like child abuse, and murder.”

“Yikes.”

“Well, why shouldn’t they be?”

“No, you’re right. If human laws were like that, we’d have a lot less crime.” He rolled out from under my head and propped his chin up with the heel of his palm, while I laid down flat on the grass in his shadow. “And your pack, they all live in this town?”

“Yes.”

“How many are there?”

“Um… about two hundred—aside from the army.”

“Wow. Two hundred of you to thirty thousand of us. We outnumber you.”

“Mm, but we’re the biggest pack in the world. Which is owed to our army.” I nodded to the hill. There, you could just see one of the Ravenswood Mansion towers sticking up above a tree. “We’ve never even been to war. Just the fear of our army is enough to deter rogue wolves or other alphas from trying to claim our territory.”

Alex’s eyes fixed on the hill. “The Ravenswood Mansion. That’s where your army lives?”

“That’s what they say. It’s where Luther lives, I know that much.”

“I’ve heard so many stories about that place—none of them good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. When I was growing up, George and I used to make up ghost stories, and kids used to tell us they were a cult organization that ate humans there.”

“Well, I guess it might look like a cult with so many people living up there; you know, servants and the wives and the sons.”

“The wives?”

“Mm-hm.” I nodded. “Luther has many wives. Takes one every twenty years…” We were getting awfully close to the truth about what I had to do. I wondered if I’d be able to tell him. To just spit it out. “It’s how he gets so many sons to build an army. They each give him five sons, but everyone says they had more than that.”

“Creepy.”

“Yeah.” I laughed hard, rolling onto my side to hide my inner agony. “I said that when my parents told me about it.”

“So, truthfully, have you ever seen the Ravenswood Estate?”

“Yes. When I was five. I went to a party at the mansion there.”

“A party. Whose party?”

“The alpha’s.”

“What was it like?”

“Grand. We can’t see the mansion from down here, and I don’t remember seeing the outside, but inside there were chandeliers and shiny cutlery. And I remember looking out a window and seeing that the estate went on for miles. The ground is flat up there. It’s actually a hilltop set against the side of the second peak. They even have a dairy farm, and heaps of sheep.”

“We should sneak up there one day.”

“Human kids do that all the time,” I said in a tone that advised against it. “It’s actually a real problem we’ve had to deal with, because if they spot anyone turning into a wolf, or if they found someone’s Shedding around, people would discover us. So they have patrols and they keep a wide perimeter.”

“So we’d never make it?”

“Not in a million years. We wouldn’t even get close enough to see the color of the brick.”

“Drat.” He lay flatter on his side, making the sun shine in my eyes without his head there. “Well, it sounds like a pretty in-depth world.”

My lips narrowed a bit. That’s the second time he said something like that. “It’s not just a story, Alex. It’s real.”

“I know,” he said in a simple voice. “Hey, you wanna go get George and go for ice-cream and shakes?”

My stomach rumbled at mention of it. “Yes! But let’s walk and we’ll bring Sacha.”

Alex laughed. “The way you two act, someone might think she was your dog.”

“Look away long enough and she will be.”

He laughed again. “You wanna take her home with you tonight?”

“Could I?” I sat bolt upright and hugged Sacha to me.

“Sure.” He gave me a gentle smile. “But only if you promise to bring her back to me tomorrow.”

“I promise,” I said, crossing my heart.

***

Mom stood behind Alex with her arms folded, an odd look on her face, as though she wasn’t quite sure what to make of the human boy standing outside my bedroom door with two cans of paint in hand, a few rollers tucked under his arms, and a black plastic paint tray.

“Alex.” I opened my door a little wider, thankful Mom had made me clean my room this morning.

“I’ve come to free you,” he announced.

“Free me?”

“From the confines of these ordinary blue walls.”

My eyes went again to the paint cans and then back to Mom for approval.

“Go for it,” she said, shrugging. “And Alex? Nice to finally meet you. After all, you two have only spent every day together for the last two weeks.”

“And a few sunrises,” Alex added.

“Catching bubbles, I hear.” Mom winked at me, shaking her head and smiling as she walked away. I wasn’t sure she believed me about that, but I knew she wouldn’t mind. As long as I was being the sensible person she raised me to be; you know, not doing anything with Alex that she wouldn’t approve of.

I shut the door and Alex put the cans down with a certain amount of relief, lifting a satchel from over his head and placing it down too, then he pressed his hands to his hips as he took my room in with a ready sigh. “You’re right, Red. This world needs help.”

“How will you help it? What do you have in mind?”

He bent and picked up the roller. “My mom always said, ‘If you don’t like the world you live in, paint a new one.’”

It clicked, with a flutter of excitement. “The snow and the straight trees!”

“You got it.” He winked at me, looking strangely cute as he did.

I walked over and stood beside him, both of us taking in the canvas: four blue walls, a bookshelf, desk, and bed to paint behind, and one thin shelf hung on the wall by the window. I’d have to take down my Edgar Allen Poe poster and the torn boyband one that’d been there since I was ten.

“Can you paint?” I asked.

“Paint?” he said, pouring it into the black tray. “Yes. Am I artistic? Don’t know. Never tried to be.”

“Me neither.”

We both picked up rollers and dipped them in crystal white paint.

“What’ve we got to lose, right?” Alex said with a shrug.

I grinned. “Let’s do it.”

And with only insight and optimism on our side, we ran circles around the room, making rolling snowy hills like the ones that surrounded our town in winter, going up and over each other as we crossed paths, making some of the snowy hills as high as my shoulders. When we were done, Alex reached into his satchel for more supplies. We swapped out the white rollers for thick dark gray brushes and thinner ones with ochre to make light-shadows on the tall, thin trees we painted all around. When it was finished, it actually looked amazing.

“Wow,” I said, paint-stained hands on hips.

“Not yet,” Alex dug into his satchel again and drew out a fat jar of silver, placing it in my hand. “It still needs the magic.”

“The magic?” I took off the lid and the sunlight caught the shimmery sparkle inside. “Glitter?”

“Not glitter,” he said, and the ceiling fan came on. “Magic.” Alex flashed me a cheeky, kind of mad grin from across the room.

“You’re joking,” I said. “Tell me you’re joking.”

“When do I ever joke about glitter?”

Alex took the jar and flicked it toward the ceiling. A thick burst of silver moved toward the fan like a thundercloud, catching the wind there and splitting apart into a million sparkly particles. I watched as it stuck itself to the wet paint, my hair, my clothes, my floors, touching everything with that Alex Plain Magic, or maybe chaos. There was no spot untouched by it. I lifted my foot and the glitter had even managed to get in under my shoes and I was sure I had it in my bra too.

“There now.” Alex took my hand and pulled it, showing me around my room. “It’s perfect.”

“Everything is magical,” I noted, forgetting about the mess I’d have to vacuum up later. The trees glistened and the sky had stars, while the snow reflected back like a twinkly frosted blanket.

“But it’s missing something.” Alex pressed a finger to his lip, folding one arm across his waist as he studied my walls. Then he left my room and came back two minutes later with our foam dish sponge.

“What are you doing?”

“Strange birds,” he said, cutting the sponge with a pair of scissors. He squatted down and dipped it in the dark paint, showing it to me after.

“Strange birds,” I said, standing back as he stretched to the highest point his arm could reach and pressed the bird-shaped sponge to my wall, repeating the process until there was a mysterious flock of crows moving across my wall and out my window to freedom.

“Where do you suppose they’re going?”

Alex dropped the sponge in the tray. “To see George.”

“What will they tell him?”

“That he can fly now,” he said sadly, arms folded as he stood in the pale white light coming through my window. “That I’m ready now.”

“That you’re ready?”

Alex looked back at me sadly, where I stood in an inch-deep pile of glittery death; and I say death, because my mom was going to kill me when she saw it. “They’ll tell him that I’ll be okay if he does.”

I folded my arms and studied the birds, imagining them coming to life and flying right out my window, leaving my wall bare. They’d go all the way across the park to the blue house with the tall tower, and they’d find George in his study. They’d whisper in his ear and he’d stand up, sprouting wings that would tear holes in the back of his shirt. They’d be wide, green wings, all feathery and pearly in the light. He’d fly away with them, and he’d be so happy to feel the wind under his feet.

“Alex?”

“Yes.”

“What do you mean by that? That you’ll be okay? Don’t you always swim with George when he flies?”

“Not this time, Red.” Alex’s voice had a flat, deep tone to it that I hadn’t heard before, as if he was a teenager when he went to sleep but grew into an adult overnight. “George is dying.”

“What?” I felt suddenly cold.

“You remember a few weeks ago when I told you about his seizures?”

“Yes.”

“Well, see… when he had his accident, his brain had swelling. It caused some problems that no story world can take away.” And now I recognized that flat tone; it was forced maturity slipping in—the kind that stole my mom’s light when Dad got sick. “The doctor says if he has another bad seizure, he won’t wake up again.”

“Alex.” I wrapped my arms around him, even though his stayed down by his sides, and hugged him tight.

“What will I do without him, Red?”

“He’ll be okay. He has to. He’s George. He can’t leave us here alone. He wouldn’t do that.”

Alex nodded, wiping his eyes with a glittery hand.

“Is there anything that can help him? A radical new treatment maybe?”

“Not that they aren’t already doing.”

“And how is Plain taking it?”

“He’s…” Alex’s eyes glazed over and he reversed himself until he sat against the foot of my bed. “He hasn’t invented anything in days.”

This was bad. This was very bad. How could such a nightmare touch such a magical family?

I walked closer and stood with my knee touching his. “I’ll speak to him.”

“To my dad?”

“No. To George. I’ll tell him he has to live.”

“Would you?”

“Of course. And he’ll listen to me, because he likes my hair.”

Alex laughed. “I like your hair.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah.” He reached out and tugged a lock playfully, smiling for a moment until he released the hair but not the smile. “You’re a good friend, Red.”

“And you’re a good person, Alex. You don’t deserve this. Neither does George.”

“No one ever deserves what happens to them, Red. But they have to face it either way.”

“I don’t want you to have to face this.”

His mouth pulled into a soft smile again. “I can face it better if I have you.”

My elbows felt cold. I tried to smile, but the truth about my future made my lips turn down, knowing that our friendship had grown so deep in just a few short weeks and, now, not being friends anymore would be hard for us both. It was time to tell him. But there was a sadness to him today that I hadn’t seen before, or maybe hadn’t noticed, so I decided it could wait until tomorrow. We’d be back at school then, and Naki would be back to care for George, and maybe Alex could handle the news better if he didn’t feel so obviously alone.

Part Two: Chapter Four

Tomorrow and All the Tomorrows to Follow

It would be kinder to cut him off—to maybe just stop being friends for no apparent reason, as if maybe I lost interest in it. It would have been kinder to both of us if the world never let us meet. But now we had, I didn’t know how to tell him I’d be gone soon.

At school, when I saw him with his friends, I quickly walked away. He tried to say hello, but I couldn’t bring myself to face him. Being that he was a grade above me, I knew I wouldn’t see him again until lunch, so I spent the entire morning planning what I would say. Or how I would avoid it.

“You’re not wearing your ring?” Brian said, leaning forward from the desk behind to tap my shoulder. “Isn’t that an insult to Luther?”

Brian. Brian Northlake, originally of the Northlake wolves—before Luther conquered their pack seventy years ago. Big, bulky, fur coat as black as the ace of spades under a full moon. Most sought after male in my pack. Once my biggest crush.

Before the holidays, I’d have given anything to have him talk to me, touch me. Now, I just felt annoyed.

“I am wearing it.” I showed him my leather necklace. “I just didn’t want to lose it at school.”

“You should wear it on your finger.” He got up out of his chair and came to sit in the vacant one beside me. “Everyone’s dying to see it.”

“They are?”

“Yes.” He looked at the front of the room. The teacher didn’t seem too fazed about us talking, so he leaned in and I could smell his deodorant. It made me breathe deeper for a moment. “You’re coming to sit with us at lunch, right? I know you distanced yourself a bit after we all learned you were half human, but you have to know that’s in the past now, right?”

His cute eyes drew me in, making me want to tell him what he wanted to hear. It made me feel like a weakling, and also important. Because I was important. I would wed the alpha and I would bear the next generation of immortal wolves. What they thought of me before was in the past now. What mattered was what they thought of me now.

“Sure,” I said. “It’s in the past.”

He smiled hugely and leaned back, rubbing my arm softly as he did. I liked that. I liked soft touches on the arm from guys I had a crush on once. I liked feeling like a part of their world again.

When I looked away from Brian, a few pairs of eyes around the room were on me. I expected dirty looks, but as I met each gaze, smiles were offered instead. I smiled back, sinking in to the relief that my life was finally back to normal. That a few months of misery and that one afternoon of isolation that led to meeting Alex, and then the weeks of living in his magical worlds, all felt like a dream now. I felt like I was waking up and I was finally back home to where I was supposed to be. Everything would be all right now, just like I promised Mom.

As lunch started, I didn’t see Alex. I was glad, because I wanted to sit with my old friends without having to explain it to him. He could never understand what it felt like to be excluded by your entire pack. I wasn’t sure he even believed me about being a wolf. Sometimes I felt like he was humoring me, as he would a child. And after spending lunch with wolves again, with my own kind, I finally felt resolved to tell Alex what was coming. It was silly to keep it from him. It would only hurt more later. It had to happen. I had to marry the alpha for the sake of my family, and I was certain Alex would understand that.

***

The front door opened and Plain stood there in his burgundy dressing gown and Hush Puppies, loose curls wild and unkempt, frowning like he’d never seen me before. “Are you here about the Wondrous Worldinator?”

“The what?”

“Of course you are. How are you?” He grabbed my hand and simultaneously shook it as he dragged me inside. “Why else would you be here? It’s-down-here-just-follow-me-I’ll-take-you-to-where-it-is.”

I followed, amused, and also curious about his latest invention. Glad, of course, that he was finally inventing again after the bad news about George.

“As I told you in the letter I sent it’s going to revolutionize the way we experience imaginative thought from now I can’t tell you enough how truly amazing it is I—”

I wanted to tell him to take a breath, but I really found it too charming to say anything.

Still chattering away, he led me into a room with painted black walls, and adjusted a sheet that was covering a shelf. Then he went quiet, and just stood there blinking at nothing. I wasn’t sure if he was still ‘in there’, or if this whole episode had been a case of sleepwalking and if I tried to wake him he’d freak out like a turkey on Thanksgiving.

I approached with amused caution. “So… tell me more about this, uh…”

“Wondrous Worldinator,” he offered, snapping awake. “And it’s not for me to tell, but to show. See…” He squatted down by a large square machine that looked like a photocopier, only at knee height, with many thin metal arms coming out that made it look like some freaky and highly unfortunate mechanical spider. That’s when I got the first wave of worry. “My sons, ever since they were born, their sweet mother, God rest her soul, taught them… taught us all, really, to create different worlds in layers over the one we exist in.” He glanced back at me, this time narrowing his eyes as if he’d at least seen me before. “I want to make it easy for every boy and every girl to step into those worlds at any given time. With this.” Plain stood back and presented the machine, and a second wave of worry moved over me as he attached a bicycle helmet with a bunch of cables and little lights to his noggin.

“What’s the helmet for?” I asked.

“Not helmet,” he said, tweaking some buttons on his machine. “Thought processor. But once the prototype is made commercial, this little piece of technology—” he tapped the red helmet, and I noticed the faded Transformer sticker on the side then, “—will be called The Imagicapture.”

I laughed, repeating that name to myself. “What does it do?”

“It takes your thoughts—any thought, any world you can create—and it captures a single image of it—a 360˚ image—then it transfers that image to this machine—” he bent at the knees and patted it like it was a friendly dog, “—this brilliant machine, which then paints it around the room.”

“Wow.” If that was true, then Plain had actually invented something truly amazing.

“Wow? Yes, wow is right, my dear,” he said. “In fact, this machine is so amazing it is even capable of taking the thoughts of, say, a person locked inside of himself, and bringing them to the surface for people like us to see—people that can’t go into his world.”

People like George. “And you’ve tested this? On George?”

“George? No. I mean yes.” He shook his head and tapped his temples with three fingers on each hand. “Yes, George. My Georgey. But it hasn’t worked yet. Today will be the first time.”

And there I felt the third wave of worry.

“Stand right here please.” He moved me by my shoulders and positioned me in the middle of the room, passing me an umbrella. My eyes widened in great concern, and I took off my nice red coat to hide it under the sheet nearby.

“Now I’ve designed it to be a clever but also fun little machine. You see, I like all my inventions to be clever and fun. After all, what is life if it’s not fun?”

“I agree,” I said with a curt nod.

“Yes, yes you do, I see that.” He patted my shoulder. “I see that now. Perfect. Perfect.” Plain clapped his hands once and then went to run them through his hair, fumbling and fussing with buttons on the Wondrous Worldinator when the helmet stopped the progress of his fingers through his curls.

“Red?” Alex popped his head in. “I thought I heard you in here.”

“Alex, just in time, my boy.” Plain took Alex by the arm and led him to stand under my umbrella. It wasn’t big enough to cover us both, but after Plain pressed a big red button on his device, he came and huddled under the canopy with us, bending slightly at the knees as if he was too tall to fit, even though Alex was taller than him and he fit perfectly.

“Shut your eyes,” Alex said as the machine began to bleep. The bleeping got faster and faster until Plain pulled a set of goggles from his pocket and shielded his eyes. I copied Alex, shutting mine tight, and then I heard a wet pop and a cold, thick splash of paint coated my face, like someone just flicked custard at me.

Alex laughed loudly and his father cheered. By the time I cleared the paint from my eyes, Plain was rolling around in it on the floor, crowing like a madman, and Alex was standing over him, bent at the knees, laughing so hard his mouth was open really wide. They both looked ultimately mad.

“You did it, Plain!” Alex yelled, lifting his arms and spun around like he was dancing in the rain. “You’re a genius.”

“I’m a genius!” he yelled, throwing his hands in the air too.

I rolled my head back to look at the ceiling and then the walls. There was not a drop of paint on any surface but the three of us, the sheets nearby, and the floor. And none of those blobs looked like a magical world. Unless I was missing something. But I got the distinct feeling I wasn’t the one missing something.

“But it didn’t work,” I said.

They both stopped laughing and looked at me, soft smiles held in place.

“She doesn’t know,” Plain said simply.

“I’ll tell her.” Alex took my umbrella and laid it aside.

“Tell me what?”

“That the point of every failure is to celebrate being a step closer to success.”

“How is a splattered mess of paint a step closer to success?”

“Because we now know how not to do it,” he explained. “Which means we won’t waste time doing it that way again—”

“Which means more time can be spent trying another wrong way or, perhaps, the right way,” Plain added from the ground, in no real hurry to remove himself from the mess.

I smiled at Alex’s white-coated eyelashes and the way his hair sat flat to his head on one side, and then laughed.

“Red, you’re laughing at me.”

“I am. Because you look like you got pooped on by a giant bird.”

Alex laughed too. “I was going to say the same about you. Come on, you can shower in my room.”

***

Every step we took, Alex laid down a new piece of newspaper, leaving a trail all the way up the stairs until we reached a door with the words ‘George Plain’ written on it in a child’s hand.

“So you really did take George’s room,” I said.

“I took it the week he was supposed to leave. By the time he had his accident, I was already moved in.”

“And you didn’t think to give it back, you know, because maybe the familiar space would be comforting?”

“Sure I did, but until the parts for the wheelchair lifter Dad’s making come in from London, we can’t get him upstairs.”

“Oh, right.”

He opened the door and the room was pitch black, the light showing only the seven hanging planets in the middle of the ceiling, until Alex flicked a switch and a million stars peeked out from a velvety black. They covered the walls, the ceiling, and cast light-shadows onto the black floor, making it look like we were floating in outer space—the illusion broken on one wall where he’d hung death metal posters and, oddly, a Coldplay one among the mix.

“Wow.”

“You say that a lot,” he noted, laying down another sheet of newspaper as we stepped inside. On closer inspection, the stars were merely Christmas lights set behind black board and stuck on every surface, but the effect was unforgettable. It had been done in such a way, with paint and lights, that sections of it looked like galaxies, and I was certain each constellation was correct, from what little I knew.

In the far right corner there was a double bed and desk beside it, covered in papers and textbooks, a lamp half buried. On the far left was a bathroom, but other than that, he had very little clutter in his room in comparison to the rest of the house. It was a bit messy, with a few clothes on the floor and the game controllers left hanging out by a beanbag, leading away to a small TV on a stand at the end of his bed, but it was tidy enough that my mom wouldn’t be on his case if he were me, and it smelled nice. Not at all like any boy’s room I’d ever been in. Then again, I’d never seen a human boy’s room. Maybe they were all as tidy as Alex.

“The shower’s that way.” He pointed to it and then laid another sheet of paper down. “I’ll get you some clothes to put on.”

I showered and changed, and luckily my undies never got paint on them, so I at least had those, because Alex’s jeans were a bit big for me and kept slipping every time I walked. He laughed when he saw me. And I frowned at him.

“How did you get clean?” I said, taking in his wet curls and clean blue T-shirt.

“I showered in my old room.” He took a jumping backward leap to sit on his bed. “So… I didn’t see you at school today,” he said in a tone that so bluntly accused me of avoiding him, but he also smiled as he said it. “Hanging out with your old pals again, huh?”

I offered a half smile. “Yeah.”

“That’s awesome, Red, but why ignore me? I thought we were friends.”

“We are.” I sighed, moving over to sit with him. “It’s just that I have something to tell you, and I don’t want to tell you.”

Alex cocked his head in interest, leaning back to rest on his elbow. “I’m all ears.”

My hand moved to the iron wolf ring tucked inside my shirt. Alex’s eyes followed.

“You know how I told you I’m a wolf. Half wolf.”

“Yes.”

In the darkness, closed in by a million stars, I felt like the truth wouldn’t hurt so much. I felt like I’d built our friendship up to be more than it really was, and that maybe I’d been silly all along about keeping this from him. Why should he care, really? We’d only been friends for two weeks.

“See this?”

He reached over and took the ring in his fingertips, studying every angle. “It’s pretty. What’s it for?”

“It’s an engagement ring.”

“A what?” He laughed, shaking his head.

So I told him. I told him all about Luther and the Selection Day; about how I didn’t fit in and how things had changed now that I would be the alpha female; about how much this meant to me. But the more I talked, the more his smile dropped, changing at the end of every one of my sentences, and I got the feeling that maybe this was actually bad news for him after all.

“So?” I prompted. “What do you think?”

“Red…” Alex sat up and scooted to the edge of the bed, his head bowed, hands gathered in his lap. “Are you telling me your wolf world is real?”

“I knew it!” I punched him in the arm. “I knew you didn’t really believe me.”

“I thought it was a story—like the strange birds. I thought it was your way of coping with a pain you couldn’t comprehend.” His wide eyes met mine, hand rubbing his arm where I punched him. “I heard about your father dying a few weeks after it happened and then I saw you on the swing and—”

“So you knew who I was?”

He nodded. “I thought I could help you.”

“You have helped me.”

“No.” He hung his head and rested it in his hands. “Not if you’re going to marry someone just to make friends. It means I’ve taught you nothing!”

“It’s not just that. My need to feel accepted isn’t my only reason. I have a duty to my pack, to my family. Well, to what’s left of it.”

“What duty? How will your mom not survive if someone else becomes the alpha wife?”

“We need the money, Alex. It’s a lot of money. It’ll save our house.”

“Money. You want money? Here.” He stood up and dug into his pocket, flicking some notes at me. “Take it. If that’s what this is about.”

“Three dollars.” I shook my head, throwing it back at him. “It will take a lot more than three dollars to save my house.”

“But what about your soul, Red?” He knelt down right in front of me, turning my knees so I faced him. “What will it cost your soul?”

“My soul will be fine—”

“But it won’t. You don’t want this. I can see it in your eyes—”

I sighed, standing up to get away from him.

“Red, please, just think. Just reconsider for one second. Then you can go back to throwing your life away, but for just a moment, please hear me out as though you haven’t already made up your mind.”

“Okay.” I cast my arms out and dropped them back down to my sides. “I’m listening.”

Alex pressed his hand into the bedside to help him stand. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“What kind of a question is that?”

“Just answer it.”

I huffed, folding my arms. “To be honest, I haven’t thought about it.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Well, it’s not relevant now because—”

“Imagine.” He swept in to me and cupped the sides of my head, pressing his brow to mine, as though he might cast his own imagination into my head. No one had ever touched me that way, and it shocked me out of my own thoughts. “Just step into another world,” he added, “one where you’re not a wolf, and you don’t need their approval to feel whole.”

I shut my eyes and exhaled loudly. In that world, with the snow and the straight trees, I would go so fast down a hill that I could hold my arms out and close my eyes, as if I was flying. No one would laugh at me and tell me I was immature. I’d just be free. But what was at the end of that hill? What was at the bottom? I never imagined past that, but I had to, because all slopes came to flat ground eventually. I once saw myself become a wolf and get married, have many children. I saw myself… I saw myself…

“Alex,” I said, my voice tinted with panic. “I don’t know what I would do if I was free to do anything.”

“Then you’re more broken than I thought.” His hands slid down until they held my cheeks.

“What do you want to do?” I asked. “When you grow up, what do you want to be?”

“I want to leave this place, go to college in the city, and find a cure for brain damage.”

“Really?”

He opened his eyes and smiled at me, his face doubling in my vision up this close. His breath smelled like stale coffee and mint gum, and I could feel the warmth of his lips almost touching mine. I liked it. Enough that I nearly forgot to listen when he spoke. “It’ll be too late for George. I think he’ll be long gone before I ever even drive to college, but if I can at least stop just one family from going through the pain we suffered, then my life, and George’s, will have been worth something.”

“It’s worth something now—”

“Yes, but it’s how we’ll make our mark on the world. Mine will be to find a cure. George will be the reason. I’ll name it after him.”

“And here you are,” I said, taking his sweaty hand down from my cheek, “this entire life in front of you, and here I am, with no imagination. No future to perceive.”

“That’s not unusual, Red. You’re seventeen. Most people don’t know what they want at seventeen. But I can help you figure it out. Do you want to know how?”

“Yes!”

“Come on then.” He led me to his bed and we sat down side by side. “Okay… Uh… What do you like to do? When you have free time, what’s the first thing you want to do?”

“Um…” I gave it some real thought for a second; Solitaire on my phone; TV; playing dodge ball—back when I had friends; eating, and… dogs. But was that an interest? And then there was Alex. So… “Well, do you mean before I met you or now that I know you?”

“There’s a difference?” he asked, leaning out from me, a confused but warm grin hiding behind his curiosity.

“Yes.”

“Okay.” He nodded, smiling to himself. “Well, let’s start with before.”

“Okay, um… well, aside from hanging out with my friends and getting burgers, I used to sit at the park and wait for someone to let me play with their dog.”

Alex laughed. “So you like dogs. Who’d have thought?”

I laughed too, kind of wondering where Sacha was right now.

“Could you imagine working with dogs for the rest of your life?”

My heart flipped. “Yes.”

“Maybe you could run a dog shelter, or work for the ASPCA. Or be a vet.”

My eyes widened. “I never thought of that. Could I really do that?”

“Yes.” He laughed. “Which one sounds the most fun right now?”

“Um… maybe running a shelter. But how would I get into that?”

“You can find out the same way I find out everything I ever needed to know.”

“Ask my mom?”

“No.” He laughed. “Google it. Just type in ‘How to run a dog shelter’ or even ‘jobs that work with dogs’, and just see what you get. Then, from there, you find out what it pays, what you need to study to get that job, and presto!”

“You make it sound so simple.”

“It is. There is an entire world out there of unique jobs and lives to live. You don’t have to fit into a cube, Red. And you don’t have to marry the alpha. People will still love you if you don’t. And if they don’t, well…” he shrugged, “they’re not worth crying over.”

“But my house…”

“Think outside the box,” he insisted. “Find other ways to make the money, or maybe just sell it. Maybe it’ll be okay if you do. Maybe you’ll find that you can be happy living elsewhere too.”

“But I grew up there and there are so many memories, and—”

“Home is the people inside your heart, Red, not the place where you all sleep.”

He was right. I had looked at it only in black and white. But there were so many more options. And yet I didn’t want any of them. I didn’t want to see the disappointment on my mom’s face when I told her I didn’t want to marry Luther. This would change our lives so much. We would go to parties and have fine things. Even my mom’s status would be lifted by me being an alpha, and it would connect me to the wolf life I missed so much. I would never feel the wind through my fur, never get to howl at the moon with my pack, which left a hollow in me that a human life couldn’t fix. That a human couldn’t understand.

“Just think about it,” he suggested. “Just… when you go to sleep tonight, just imagine a life that goes on past this moment, one where you’re not a wolf and you don’t care about belonging.”

I nodded. “I will promise to at least think about it.”

“Thank you.” He sighed, his shoulders rounded, and then he sat tall again and smiled at me. “What about after me?”

“What about it?”

“You said what you liked to do changed after you met me.”

“It did.”

“And what do you use your free time for now?”

“To see you,” I said, as though that was obvious. “I like your world.” I laid back on his bed and looked up at the stars. “And since meeting you, my world looks different too.”

He laid down beside me, our feet dangling off the side of his bed, and picked up my hand. “And now that your world is different, can you see that translating into any other job you might like to do for the rest of your life?”

“Yes. Stories,” I said simply. “I want to tell people stories. Maybe even stories about dogs.”

He squeezed my hand. “You’ll be a good story teller.”

“I would have been, wouldn’t I?”

“Will be.”

“No. Instead I will be a good wife and alpha.”

Alex sighed. “I hope, for your sake and mine, that you change your mind.”

“Your sake?” I rolled onto my side and rested my cheek on my knuckles.

“I’ve never had a friend like you, Red. I’ve never shown anyone my world before.” He let go of my hand and waved his around to present his room. “I like that you don’t judge my death metal posters and you didn’t say a word about me wearing my rainbow Slinky as a bangle all day.” We both laughed. “My world is… it’s strange to other people, I guess. And it’s nice not being here all alone for once.”

I never thought about it before, but even though he had George and his mad father Plain, his world must have been a bit of a lonely place. Like mine was. Only, I didn’t know how lonely I was until life became a before and after: Before I met Alex. And After I met him.

“Did you know my mother was a storyteller?” Alex said with a smile.

“I did. Plain told me.”

“She wrote books,” he added, slipping both hands behind his head, a smile slipping in across his lips.

“Do you know any of her stories?”

“Only what George used to read to me. My only real memory of her is this one time in the car on the way to school; George and I were fighting in the backseat and he pipes up with, ‘If you don’t stop it, Alex, I’m gonna punch you’. And my mom just takes in this huge, shocked gulp of air and says, ‘George!’. We both stopped fighting, pretty much peeing in our pants at her tone. Then she says, ‘It’s going to, not gonna!’ Ha ha ha.”

I laughed too. “She sounds amazing.”

“She was. She always made us laugh.” He smiled longingly at the ceiling of stars. “She was the color, you know. She made the rainbows out of rain, and I miss her. And I’m going to miss George too.”

“George won’t go anywhere.”

“He will, Red. I have to face facts.”

Argh! I just wanted to hug him and make it all better. His chest was wide open with his arms behind his head, and he smelled all clean and nice, and I could see the pain in his chest like a rock resting there. But I was too chicken to just put my arms around him.

“If I go… if I decided to marry Luther, will you still be my friend?”

His eyes moved slowly from the stars to my face, making me feel exposed. “Look, Red, I know we’ve only been friends for two weeks, but… for me, or… like, the way I see it, I think we have this deep connection or something, because I’m not like this with any of my other friends.”

“Me neither.”

“I know. And I think it’s because we’re true friends, you know? The kind that you keep forever, even if they do stupid things that make you want to punch them.”

My mouth pulled into a controlled smile. “You wouldn’t really punch me, would you?”

“I’d never punch a girl. But you sure as heck make me want to.”

“You just can’t understand my world, that’s all.”

“No, Red.” He sat up and rolled onto his side. “That’s just it, I do get it. Totally get it. But it’s unfair. All of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You came into my life and you made me feel better. I was really sad that day when we met, and I saw you were too, and that’s why I felt safe to talk to you. You weren’t putting up a front like everyone else does. I could see your sadness and I let you see mine. And now I’m going to lose that. And then I’ll be sad and alone again, and so will you. And for what? Money? A house that you won’t even live in anymore?”

Yikes. When he put it that way, it felt surprisingly silly to be doing this. And it never really occurred to me until that moment that I would never live in my house again. Ever. Not even when I was old.

“So like I said, I get it,” he added, lying back down and looking at the stars. “I know you need to do this for a lot of reasons, but it’s not fair. And I know life isn’t fair, but I’m tired of it not being fair to me.”

Bravely, even though my hands were shaking at the thought of it, I reached over and pinched a loose curl, moving it off his brow. I could feel words inside of me that wanted to come out, but I didn’t know what they were. Maybe ‘sorry’, maybe ‘I wish I could fix it’, but instead I just laid down on my side, as close as I was game enough to lay, and said nothing.

Part Two: Chapter Five

Little Red Riding Hood, and Other Tragedies

The first snow came a week ago. Right on time. Right when Alex said it would. He didn’t bring up my future again after that day, and I didn’t either. The truth was, I thought about it—I thought about it all that afternoon and all that night—but from his house to mine, the thoughts changed. I felt resolved to back out of the deal… until I walked through the front door into the kitchen where I learned to crawl, and looked at my mother, who had lost so much, and I knew I was doing the right thing. It might not be right for me, for my future, but it was right by her. Now, the only resolve I had was to enjoy my time with Alex, because when the heavy snow came and threatened to fill in the pass toward the mansion, that was the traditional time of Offering, when I would be dressed in the ceremonial white dress and a red cloth of fertility, and walk through the snow until I reached Luther’s front door. There, I would partake in a short ceremony before crossing the threshold and officially becoming his wife. Officially signing my life away. Officially saving my home and my mom.

But until that day, I was at least welcome back in the forest on the night of Gathering, where the youths in my pack sat around a bonfire, celebrating the full moon with good food and good company. Well, at least, that’s how it used to feel. Now, with this ring around my neck, people bowed their heads to me—accepted me—but didn’t really interact. Until someone unlikely did.

“Hey, why so gloomy, Queeny?” Brian said, landing hard on the log beside me. The light of the great bonfire reached up to touch the highest point of the ancient trees, splashing an orange glow over everything and everyone; but right in front of me it cast shadows on Brian’s face that made him appear uglier than I ever remembered him being.

I sighed, and though the night was wild and the moon almost full, I couldn’t draw on his energy and smile back.

“Aren’t you looking forward to being the boss of us all?” he added.

“Not really.”

“Why not?” He put his drink aside, stumbling a little as he turned his head to place it down on the log. I sniffed the air to see what he was drinking. Even though I would never turn, I was still half wolf, and my keen senses told me that wasn’t just soda.

“I’m not sure what it’ll be like,” I said. “Since I signed the proposal, people have told me things about Luther that… freak me out.”

Brian gave me that look—the one I knew was telling me what I already knew was right. “Let’s see,” he said, looking at the girl across from us, “Ashley, help me out here.”

She hopped up to join the circle of conversation, the warmth of the fire leaving my face as she stepped in front of it. “What’s up?”

“I’m telling Red what I know about Luther.”

Ashley laughed, sitting down cross-legged in the dirt, placing her soda bottle in the gap between her legs. “Controlling. Old fashioned,” she said, “So forget doing anything but crochet and walking with books on your head.”

“How does everyone else know more about him than I do?”

“It started with Luca,” Brian said. “She was upset that she didn’t get chosen—”

“No, that she got cast aside for having a tattoo,” Ashley added. “So, to console her, her mom told her all this stuff. You know, stuff about Luther.”

“We don’t know if it’s true, but since we started talking to others about it, they’ve been adding their own stories—things their parents told them—and now everyone’s talking about it.”

“Yeah, I don’t know what you got yourself in to, but I’m glad it’s not me,” Ashley said. “And if I have a daughter, she’ll never be put forward for Selection.”

“But the good news is, he’s apparently wild in the sack,” Brian added. “Something some girls around here can’t get enough of.”

“So he cheats on his wives?”

“The ones that are still alive, yeah.”

“We don’t know that for sure,” Ashley said, rolling her eyes at Brian. “That’s just a rumor.”

“What do you mean still alive?” I asked.

“Didn’t you ever think about it—the fact that he takes a new bride every twenty years?” Brian said, leaning in. “Where do the old wives go with such perfect timing?”

“Yeah,” Ashley added. “When they get too old to bear children, he takes another. And then…” She clicked her fingers. “The old wife suddenly and tragically dies.”

“Except his favorites.”

“Favorites?” I said.

“Yeah,” Brian added, “the ones he brought with him to parties at the beginning of the marriage—before they had kids. That’s what my dad told me. He said if we see you at parties, Red, he’ll keep you after you finish breeding with him.”

A wave of horror spread over the night. What had I signed myself up for? “My mom never told me any of this.”

“She might not know,” Ashley said softly. “Who’d be crazy enough to speak badly about Luther? Especially grown-ups.”

“Yeah, it’s one thing for our parents to tell us this stuff to scare us, but they’d never say it to anyone else.”

“And we shouldn’t either,” Ashley added, giving me a firm glare.

I nodded, flicking my gaze sideways as a group of boys stood suddenly and howled at the moon, stripping off their jackets.

“It’s time.” Ashley stood, knocking her drink over. The liquid washed out like a wave and seeped into the hot dirt by the fire, casting off a pungent smell.

“See you on the flip side, Queeny,” Brian said, taking off his jacket as he followed her.

I pulled my knees up to my chest and watched as they took on wolf form before my eyes. No matter how many times I saw it, no matter how many times I watched their bones evolve and fur spike out past human flesh, I still felt awed, like I’d had a profound religious experience.

As the last tail broke the tree line and vanished into the black I exhaled, hugging my knees. From the base of the hill to the top, the low howls hung like a chorus over the night, killing my exclusion with spears of inclusion. I couldn’t turn. I would never walk in wolf form, but this was my pack. I was a part of them as they are of me, and soon, only weeks from now, I would be their queen. That was something to be proud of, no matter how horrendous the rumors about Luther were. I was certain that he couldn’t be all that bad. Up close.

***

I woke from my nightmare in a cold sweat, reaching across quickly to flick my lamp on. The demons in my thoughts scattered to the corners of my room, and I rubbed my hairline, talking myself down from the ledge of fear. This was too much.

Beneath the cries of wolves that I wasn’t sure were in my head or waking me from my dream, Alex had been there. He’d stood between Luther and Sacha, reaching for me. Saying nothing. Just reaching. What was my subconscious mind trying to tell me by showing Alex in my dream? What wasn’t I admitting to myself?

I threw my covers back and hopped out of bed, but as the cold of a winter that snuck in while I was sleeping grabbed my ankles, I jumped back in and covered my head with the blankets.

Alex was right. I could no more marry Luther just to save my home than I could lie to myself about it. I wanted a life. I never imagined a life outside of my pack, but now that I had, I wanted it.

I knew what I had to do.

Against every cell in my body that wanted to stay in the warmth of my bed and the proverbial warmth of plans made for me long ago, I walked down the hall to my mom’s room and pushed her door open. I hadn’t seen her sleep peacefully since before Dad got sick, and I didn’t want to wake her. Especially not with bad news. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go through with this, and I had to tell her tonight, before I chickened out and ended up marrying Luther because I was too busy laying eggs to speak up.

As I passed the chest of drawers by her door, I noticed a letter there, ripped into several pieces and scrunched on the edges. Bad news. Obviously. It could only be bad news. Another bill she couldn’t pay? Maybe. But we had money now. The check came through two days ago. We celebrated with cake and soda. So what got her so upset that she ripped it up?

I held my breath, checking to see if she’d stirred as I waltzed in, and gently lifted the pieces of paper, reeling out of the room like a rat with cheese before she could wake and catch me. In the dim light, as I tiptoed along reading the ripped scraps, the stupid floorboards creaked under my feet.

“April?” Mom called.

I stopped dead, my heart in my throat, and squeezed the edges of the letter. She was too late. I didn’t need to glue it back together to read it. My eyes brimmed with tears as it sunk in, my mind gluing the torn words into a sentence: Mrs. Redwood; regret to inform you; require your daughter earlier than planned; Sacrificial Ceremony; tomorrow at sunset.

“April.” Mom stood in the doorway. “What are you…? Oh.”

“Mom?” I turned and looked at her, holding up the ripped letter.

“I was going to tell you about that.”

“I can’t do it, Mom,” I said in such a low voice that she asked me what I’d said. “Mom.” I scrunched the note up in my fist, each tear pushing the previous out over my lashes. “I don’t want to go.”

“What?”

“I changed my mind. I’m scared, I—”

“Oh, April.” She rushed in and hugged me tight, the smell of her dressing gown reminding me a lot of Dad for some reason. “Sweetie, you can’t back out now. You signed a contract.”

“Can we get a lawyer? I—”

“No,” she said softly, leaning out to look at my face. “You don’t understand. It doesn’t work like that.”

“There has to be a way. I didn’t know what I wanted before, but now I do and I don’t want to marry Luther—be his breeding slave.” I sobbed out the last word in an embarrassing howl.

“Is that what you think?” The gentle flow of her voice made me stop crying for a moment. “Is that what the kids have been telling you?”

I nodded.

“Aw, April, if it was that bad, I would never have let you agree to this.” She hugged me tight. “Why didn’t you talk to me?”

“I didn’t want to upset you. You haven’t been this happy since…”

“April,” she sighed my name out. “It’s not your job to worry about my happiness, sweetie. It’s my job to worry about yours.”

“Then please don’t make me do this,” I begged. “I don’t care if he’s the nicest guy in the world—if he showers me with gifts and love every day—I don’t want to marry him.”

Mom’s shoulders came up as her eyelids came down, and she drew a breath that I knew would support a long, obligatory speech. “Come on. We need hot chocolate for this conversation.”

***

The same clock that had timed my homework since the first grade ticked on the wall above the dining table, bringing dawn closer—bringing that day closer when I would suddenly have to leave my family and the only life I’d ever known.

The kitchen chairs were cold tonight and when I looked out the window onto the clearing where the tree sat, I could see the snow had fallen hard while I slept. It was uncharacteristic. It had never snowed so bad this early before. No one would go to school tomorrow. We’d get the call soon that it’d be a snow day, and everyone would celebrate. While I would pack my bags.

But not if I ran away. I could go to Alex. He’d help me. He’d hide me. He was the only person in this world that cared what I wanted for myself.

“Here.” Mom broke my thoughts with a smile, and the sugary smell of hot cocoa came under my nose, the steam warming my lips. She sat down beside me and sipped hers slowly, tasting each molecule before she placed her cup on the coaster and reached across for my hand. “April. I love you. I want you to be happy, but we made this decision together, and I thought you were on board.”

“I was. But then…”

“Then you met Alex.”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “And he gave me something no one ever has, Mom. He made me see myself. He made me realize that I can have dreams that have nothing to do with our pack.”

She closed her eyes for a moment. “And believe me, I would have wanted nothing else for you, April, but we’ve made this decision now and—”

“And we can’t back out?”

Her head moved in a no.

“Mom, maybe I can run away. Maybe I can—”

Her eyes flew open, wide with worry, so I stopped speaking. She pressed her fist to her mouth and then spread her fingers out to rub her chin, lowering her hand flat to the table before her eyes met mine. “Please don’t do that.”

“Why?”

“Do you remember the story I used to tell you?”

“Which one?” I laughed a bit, because there were so many.

“The little hooded girl.”

“Yes.”

“Recite it for me.”

“Um…” I sat taller in my chair, warming my hands around my cup. “She went to the forest to visit her grandmother and was set upon by the wolf. He killed her grandmother and ate her, and then a huntsman saved them both.”

“Now tell me the pack version.”

“I haven’t heard that in years.”

“Try.”

I racked my brain. A wolf. An offering. A murder. “A gathering of crows sat outside Grandma’s cottage; a warning,” I said, rolling my eyes because this was stupid and I didn’t see how it would prove her point. “The family did not heed the warning that day. When the hunter’s daughter set off to become the alpha’s bride, dressed in a cloak of red, he could not bear to see her go.” I looked at Mom, frowning, as a fragment of the story I just accepted as child now seemed so horrific. “Ew, she was only twelve, right?”

“Yes. It was the first month after her first bleed—the age Luther traditionally took them.”

“And he’s since started taking them later to avoid issue with the law?” I added, still trying to remember it all.

“Yes. Now this is the important bit. Tell me what happened next to the little hooded girl?”

“Before her journey across the mountain pass ended, she was snatched by her father. He intended to flee the lands with his family and never return. But the wolf caught them as they ran. There was a fight, and the hunter emerged victorious, stabbing the wolf in the heart.

“He ran home with his daughter, expecting to find his family packed and ready to leave, but instead he found a trail of blood. At the end of it he discovered his wife, and their three sons. Dead. And his mother, an old woman, murdered in the bed where she’d been lying.

“The alpha presented himself then. No wounds to speak of, as if he was a different man, while his shirt hung open and torn where the dagger had earlier pierced his heart.”

“He cannot be killed, Red.” Mom leaned in and picked up my hand, squeezing it. “And this story is told as warning to all who seek to back out of a deal. You have been chosen now and there is no escape. He will kill everyone you love. And then…” her voice trailed off, and I thought about the ending of that story.

The hunter was killed, and his daughter forced to marry the wolf anyway. She went on to bear thirteen sons before he slit her throat as his last act of revenge.

Mom was right.

Alex was right.

I should be running away to live my own life.

But I could not back out of this deal. There was no running from it now.

The sun came up behind the tower on Alex’s house then, and I could see him in there, his elbows on the windowsill, looking out over the town.

“Where are you going?” Mom asked as I pushed my chair back and stood up.

“I have to say goodbye to Alex.”

***

I was distraught by the time I reached his back door. I hadn’t even put shoes on, and my toes were so cold from trudging through the snow that they hurt when I stepped into the warm house, uninvited but knowingly welcome all the same. I ran for the tower and took the spiral staircase up through the cylinder of old books, popping out and surprising Alex who clearly hadn’t spotted me coming across the empty snow-laden clearing.

“Red.” He bent onto one knee to help me up the last few steps. The room opened out up here, with the shutters thrown wide and the view going on for miles, giving a feeling of space, and for a moment I felt like I could leap out the window and fly away. “What’s happened?”

“I can’t back out,” I sobbed. “I tried. I told Mom I don’t want to do it, but I can’t back out.”

“What are you saying?”

I stopped trying to explain for a moment and looked at his face; how had I not noticed it before? How had I not seen how truly adorable he is? Even with a world of worries beneath a nest of bed hair, he was everything I would ever want. I couldn’t let anything bad happen to him because of me. I could run away with him, take my mom with me, even George and Plain and Sacha, but this was not their problem. This was not their reality. There was no running. No matter where I went, Luther would find me.

“It’s today,” I said. “They’re taking me today.”

“What?” Alex’s knees buckled and he stepped backward until his calves found the blue armchair. He slumped down, curled fist by his lips. Numb.

“I’m so sorry, Alex. I tried to back out, but it’s too late.”

He sprung to his feet, startling me. “It’s never too late! You—”

“No.” I backed away, shaking my head. “You don’t understand.”

“Yes I do, Red. I do.” He grabbed my arms.

“You don’t,” I insisted, “because you don’t have all the facts. If you did, you would never try to talk me out of going.”

Alex’s eyes changed. He searched mine for the truth I wouldn’t speak, seeing enough there though to make his shoulders drop. “This can’t be real. I can’t be losing you after we just found each other.”

“I’m so sorry, Alex.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for.” He took my wrist and pulled me closer, tucking my head under his chin as he held me tight in the cold and the worry and the fear surrounding us. “I will always be here, Red. No matter where you are or what you have to do to survive. This will always be your story world, your escape, and you never have to be sorry here.”

I cried into his chest—into that stupid book boyfriend T-shirt he had on when we first met. I wanted to go back to that, to tell myself then that things would feel so different after meeting Alex and leave a warning not to put myself forward as an offering. But unlike in the story worlds, there was no going back. There was no time machine to erase all the bad decisions. I had to face them head on.

Alex held me close, hands open on my back, and let me sob for a while. The sun was up fully in the sky before either of us moved, icy and stiff when we finally did. It felt as though my skin might rip away from his, not just because of the frost but for the reluctance to leave.

“I have to go,” I said regretfully. “I have a lot to prepare for.”

Alex swept my hair back behind my ear, taking in my face. “I knew it was too good to be true.”

“What?”

“That a dorky, awkward guy like me could ever be friends with a girl like you.”

I laughed. “You are not dorky and awkward, Alex.” I reached up, my face crumpling as I realized this would be the first and the last time I ever told him this. I tugged a lock of his hair and let it spring back up, tears escaping that had no permission to. “You’re beautiful, Alex. And I think maybe I love you.”

Alex couldn’t bear it then. His eyebrow came down on one side and his lip trembled, clear eyes holding my gaze as though to break away would be to give in to the pain.

“I have to go.” I backed away. “Tell George I love him too, and say goodbye to Plain. And Sacha.” My lungs wouldn’t release her name without shaking. I would never see a dog again—unless Luther liked me and let me live as a normal wife would—free to go to parties and visit people in town. Wolves weren’t partial to dogs, and dogs did not often like wolves. If I was trapped there at the mansion, animals would never be a part of my life again.

“I will,” Alex said, nodding as though it would make him strong. “And, Red?”

I stopped as I placed one foot down on the stairs.

“I know it won’t matter now, but…” He walked one step closer and made himself stop. “I….”

Whatever it was he needed to say, it wouldn’t come out. A thick lens of tears filled his eyes like overflowing pools and he just shook his head apologetically.

“Take care, okay?” he said.

“I will.” I nodded, watching my bare feet take each step down from the tower.

Part Two: Chapter Six

The Offering

It was official. Today, I could no longer call myself April Redwood aka Red; I was The Offering. “Put this corset on The Offering!”; “What has The Offering done to her hair?”; “How much longer until The Offering is ready for the Sacrificial Walk?” was all I heard all day, and in a few hours from now I would make that walk. It sounded so final, maybe even brutal, calling it a Sacrificial Walk, but I had no time to think about it. There were preparations to be made, other than packing, because tonight, I was told, I would lose my virginity. No one seemed to think it would matter that I had my period, either. And that made matters worse. More horrific. Who wants to do that for the first time, with a stranger that’s thousands of years old, while they’re on their period? Gross, and painful and scary and awful. Just awful. And did I say gross?

I sobbed the moment the ladies arrived from the mansion to dress me. I was still sobbing as they cleaned me and bound my body into a tight corset, a dainty white dress with pink flowers embroidered on the base, and a thick woolen cardigan—one worthy of a walk through an icy tundra. I howled loudly when they took my suitcase from my dreamy room with the snowy walls. And I was dried up, numb, by the time they let my mom in to see me.

“April.” Her hug made everything worse. I thought I’d feel better if I could just have her here beside me, but I wanted her to save me. I wanted her to come to my rescue like she would when I was little and I’d get hurt. But no one could save me. And crying in her arms would only make this so much worse for her. So I sobered myself up and forced myself to stop crying.

“I’ll be okay, Mom. I’m okay now.”

“Liar.”

“No, I really am, Mom.” I smiled, growing a kind of wall inside that gave me strength. “He’s cute, at least,” I offered. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe he’ll be nicer than everyone says.”

Mom nodded, her face contorting around so many mixed emotions. “This is a proud day, April. A happy day. You have the respect and adoration, and jealousy,” she added with a laugh, “of your entire pack. And they’ve all gathered by the pass to see you off.”

“Are they chanting?” I’d only been told stories about the chanting ritual, how it marked the beginning of the ceremony, but from what I’d heard it was quite a sight—one of those profound experiences, like seeing a cultural dance or a Māori welcoming ceremony.

“They’ll begin in a moment. When they’ve been given the sign.”

“The sign?”

“Once you arrive at the pass and they see the red of your cape.” She turned and nodded at the box sitting on my bed. “That’s when they know it’s time to call to Carne and ask for his blessing.”

I smiled, thinking about them—how they would all look at me when I stepped out in my white dress and the long red velvety cape. I looked beautiful, I knew that. I’d never seen a Sacrificial Walk before. I wasn’t even born when Luther took his last wife, but I knew people would talk about it for years to come.

“Come on, let’s get your cape on.”

I followed her to my bed and we both looked down at the square box sitting there: it was old, or maybe ancient was a better word, the dark brown edges black where age had withered the leather it was made from, while a rune marked the center—one that meant fertility.

“So you know this cape is red because it’s supposed to bring the blood of life down from the house of the gods and nourish the woman’s womb?” Mom said, opening the box.

I could smell mothballs and old leather, and as she lifted the cape out from its resting place, I could sense its age. It was like I could feel the soul of the very first wife within it, maybe even the one from the story. And one day, another new wife would be able to feel me within its folds. Which was saddening, because, aside from the children I may or may not have with Luther, that ‘feeling’ would be the only real proof that I ever existed in this world. The only thing I left behind. My only mark.

“April?” Mom prompted. “Are you all right, sweetie?”

I looked from the cape to her. “You won’t forget about me, will you, Mom?”

“Forget about you?” She dropped the cape back into the box. “How could I forget you?”

“I just…” I held my eyes still on that cape, frozen and fixed as if it was the last piece that would topple over the rickety tower. “What music I like, how I smell, how snappy I get before my morning shower… the posters on my wall.” I looked over at Edgar.

Mom looked too, and her brow twitched a little. “The little things,” she said, nodding. “I won’t forget the little things.”

But we both knew she would, just as I’d forget them about her, just as we both had about Dad.

“You know, you might be surprised just how nice Luther is, April,” Mom offered. “I know you’re afraid because of what you’ve been told, but Luther is known to be a great man, and no matter what anyone says, he has never mistreated his wives.”

“It’s not just that…” I picked up the red cape and slid my thumb across the velvet, letting the furry feel ground me. “It’s that… I’ll most likely never see you again.”

“Don’t say that.” Mom wiped a tearstain from my cheek with her thumb and smiled. “You’ll be one of his favorites. You’ll be at all the parties and you’ll come to town once a month with Theowulf when he comes to see Aerik.”

I nodded, smiling, though my cheeks hurt to do so.

“And April?” Mom said, a coating of awkwardness moving over her. “Things will happen tonight, after the ceremony—”

“I know, Mom.” I laughed. “I know what happens on a wedding night.”

She nodded. “You don’t have to be afraid of it. You are wolf, even if only half, and it’s very instinctual for us.”

“Mom.” I felt my cheeks go hot. “Please don’t make this any worse.”

She laughed, nodding. “Okay. I’m sorry. I just…”

“I know,” I said, handing her the cape. “Will you do this for me?”

Mom took it and leaned around me to wrap it about my shoulders. It swathed me like a thick warm blanket, surprisingly heavier than it looked. When they dressed me in woolen underlays thick enough to make me an inch fatter, and boots lined with wolf fur, I thought I might get hot on my walk through the snow, but with the red cape as well, I was certain I’d be sweating by the time I got to the top of the hill. Maybe sweating enough to just slip right back down to town and away from Luther.

“There,” she said, fastening the tie under my chin. “Let me get a look at you.”

I stood back and let Mom take me in with proud but also regretful eyes. I could tell she tried to imagine an elegant white wedding dress in place of these ancient cloths, because being that I was her only daughter, walking the proverbial aisle dressed in ten yards of sheep was really not what she had in mind.

“You look beautiful,” she said.

“I look like a sock puppet,” I remarked, spreading my arms out.

Mom laughed, moving in to hug me. “I’ll see you soon, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, but if Luther didn’t favor me, we both knew that would never happen. After all, I had never laid eyes on his last wife. Only a few people had at the very beginning of their married days, but then she must have pissed him off because she vanished.

“And he likes his girls old-fashioned,” she added, pulling away. “If I can give you one piece of advice, it’s to be like the girls in those old Jane Austen movies we used to watch together.”

“Super.” I wiped my eye. So what Ashley said was true. “I’m going a hundred years back in time.”

“A little more than a hundred,” she said with a smile. “But you will be all right. You’re resourceful and mature, April. I know you’ll find the strength in yourself to do what must be done and that you’ll not only survive this life, but make it your own.”

My heart felt warm then and I smiled, because she was right. I had inner reserves that I knew I could call on when I needed to. And without my mom, without the safety of this old house where I grew up, I’d be forced to mature from a seventeen-year-old high school student as I left my old front door, into an adult ready to be married by the time I arrived at my new one. That walk, that snowy trek through the pass, that was my crucible. That was where I would find myself—the me I had to be from now on.

The bedroom door opened and one of the “ladies’ maids” sent to prepare me entered. “It’s time,” she said. “You must complete the walk by nightfall.”

Mom stepped back to let me pass, but anyone could see it took everything she had to make herself move. I envied her then, and I adored her. I could see her strength and it reflected back on me, making it easier for me to walk right on past her, past the maid, and out of my bedroom door.

***

Just like the painting on my walls, a glistening white blanket lay over the hills beneath the mountain pass, and two lines of naked trees gave passage to the new life beyond them. I hesitated in the middle, my feet cold and my skin tight with worry, trying to find that strength I had back in my room.

Voices of the many rose in a chant to the gods around me, calling on them to bless this union and offer it many fruits. Fruits being babies. The word babies made me cringe. Having kids was always a distant future for me, like after I was forty, so to be staring down the barrel of motherhood at my age was unnerving. Way too real. I wanted them all to shut up before Carne heard them and zapped me with fertile blood.

I glanced back at the pack, those in wolf form mixed among those in human form, watching, waiting; and placed a veil between them and me, closing off the old from the new; my old life from my obligation. It helped me fight the urge to see if Alex was running up the hill from town to stop me. I wanted to see that as desperately as I didn’t, because as much as I wanted to be saved, I was also afraid of the big, bad wolf. I would not want an end like the hooded girl—to lose everyone I love and still be forced to marry Luther. This was the lesser of two evils.

The Elders moved in to stand behind me, and joined hands, chanting the rites of wolf union, while the pack howled at the sky. I thrust my shoulders back and held my head high. No matter what now, I would be the alpha female. There was strength in that, and Luther, kind or evil, would have to respect that. According to Mom, Luther thought he’d purchased his next Jane Austen submissive, but he’d get me instead. And he’d get more than he bargained for. I would not be bullied into submission. He would conform to this new society that he’d been hiding from all these years, or he would have a fight on his hands.

I was sold to him, but I was not lost to myself.

With that, I lifted my foot and took that impossible first step. I found it so much easier than I ever imagined. So I walked, ten feet tall in this moment, as though nothing could touch me. Not once did I turn back, cry, or even think about home. Everything that consumed my thoughts built layers around me, creating a world where this was the best decision I ever made, while in my heart, the other me—the one that met Alex and made a different choice—split away and built her own world. She would exist there with Alex for the rest of her life, going off on a path I was never able to walk. She would be so happy, living her days laying in the grass with George under the tree, Sacha at her feet, and Alex’s hand in hers. There would be sunshine and warmth and endless clouds to shape with new perspectives.

Above me, a crow cawed, and the warmth of the story world slipped away. I stopped dead, the cold air making visible circles in front of me, my hands stiff and contorted with the chill. I could no longer see the town behind me, and my hair was peppered with white flakes of snow that had closed over my trail as I walked, so lost in my world that I hadn’t realized how far I’d come.

The crow made his point loudly again, and Alex’s little poem came to mind:

One for luck. Two for love. Three for a gift that comes from above. Four for sorrow. Five for rain. Six for something to ease the pain. Seven is the number to call, for it brings with it the end of fall.

“One,” I counted to myself, taking the presence of each crow as a sign. “Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.” I stopped in front of the sixth one, watching as the silky black wings of a seventh came down and landed on the bare branch beside it, his steely black eyes bringing a message. His head turned then and he watched as another black bird landed in the snow, right in my path.

“Eight?” I asked it. “What does eight mean?”

“Eight is a warning, do take heed, for it brings with it an evil deed.”

I spun around to the voice, my heart shattering open and gluing back together a million times larger. “Alex!”

“I’m not here to stop you, Red,” he confessed quickly, putting both hands up and taking a step back as I went to run for him. He looked weak and yet strong and so solid and so real.

Sacha came up from the slope then, her doggy tracks covering Alex’s, and ran to my side. I squatted down and swept my arms around her, pressing my cheek into her furry head.

“Hi,” I said, my voice high like a child’s. “Hi, girl.”

She licked my face, whimpering.

“So why are you here if you’re not here to stop me?” I asked, on the brink of crying again. But I’d spent so long building my walls; they would tear down now if I let the grief back in.

“I came to give you this.” Alex held out his hand, a silver chain dangling from his closed fist. “In case you need to protect yourself.”

I laughed, standing up and patting my leg to make Sacha walk with me. My eyes took in Alex’s face to see if he was joking, and then moved back down to the small silver dagger on the necklace, about the size of my pinky, with a wolf head and purple stones for eyes. “The dagger might be a bit small to hurt a wolf?”

“Yes, but even the smallest things can be mighty. Plus it’s silver. Pure silver.”

I tried not to smirk. “You know silver doesn’t kill wolves, right?”

“That’s what the guy at the shop told me.” He pushed his gift toward me. “But I guess, in some ways, I see it as a kind of talisman, you know—like maybe… like maybe the way I feel about you will live inside it and protect you.”

“The way you feel about me?” I asked in a soft voice, taking the chain.

“Red?” He looked up from the ground and sure eyes met mine, empty but full. “I should have told you this morning, but I… I was too dumb to admit it.”

“Admit what?” I fastened the chain around my neck and tucked it away so no one would see it.

Alex didn’t speak. He couldn’t speak. Whatever he wanted to say was stuck in his throat.

“It matters,” I offered. “I know you think it doesn’t, because I’m leaving to marry someone else, but it matters. I need you to say what I think you’re trying to say.”

His jaw came forward and I watched as he built his own walls, fortifying his emotional fortress. “I’m not like you, Red. I don’t let people in as easily.”

“And?”

“And I love you… as a friend.” He cleared his throat. “That’s all I wanted you to know.”

“That’s how I love you, Alex,” I confessed, even though I knew it could be more if I let it. He made my entire heart fill up when I was around him. I wasn’t sure what kind of love that meant it was, or could be, but I knew it was love of some kind. I was happy with plain old friend love if that’s all it could ever be. “And, Alex, I need you to know that, even though I’m living with the wolves now, the version of me that you know has already left this world behind.” I touched my heart and made a circle with my finger. “You can find me any time with the strange birds.”

Alex nodded, his eyes shrinking with sadness. “I’ll be there too. So will George.”

I nodded, giving Sacha one last pet on the head, my heart aching for her. “I wish I could take you both with me.”

“You are.” He made the circle around his heart.

I made it again too, nodding as I turned away. I walked on then without looking back, because I didn’t want to see him waiting for me, and I didn’t want to see him gone.

Part Three: Chapter One

Strange New Truths

It was everything I feared. Nothing like I remembered.

I’d been here when I was child, and I could still recall the wood paneled walls, glowing red in warm firelight, and the many pretty dresses with swooshy fabric to hide behind. I did not remember this.

In broad daylight, the mansion might have been a grand place. I might imagine Luther pulling up on a horse-drawn carriage and taking the dual staircase to the grand front door. But as the last vestiges of the sun made the snow pink, the almost darkness left a grainy haze over that mansion, giving it a haunted look. It seemed to rise up out of the ground like black stone; or maybe not rise up. Maybe it was as if it had been carved right out of the mountain, the agony of smashing rock leaving it angry and resentful.

My worries were drawn upward then to the spired towers on either side, wondering if that’s where he kept the wives that were still alive, while between them, many rooms made for many windows, all dark and seemingly empty. No light to calm me, like coming home late in the night and feeling safe seeing a lamp on. Then again, it was still quite far away and not completely dark yet. Maybe I’d see lights in the window once I got closer. It wasn’t fair to judge a place from this far back.

Like a line of soldiers barring entry, the high brick wall that wrapped the estate eased its grip around a pair of grim iron gates, a decorative LR marked in an oval archway above them, with piercing black spires stabbing the cold sky in a seemly elaborate pattern all the way along. If these gates could talk, they would tell me stories of princes and kings that once dined here in the glory days, but to look at them now, with the stains of a ghostly past, I might hear instead the tales of tortured wives and screaming children. I hoped it was just my imagination running away with me, but the anxiety inside me kept suffocating my hopes.

The gates parted by way of unseen things, and I drew a deep breath, learning then that I was a lot smaller than I ever thought I was before. If I was shivering on my lonely walk through the forest, it became violent trembling now. I toyed with the iron ring on my finger, using its cold solidity to give me strength.

A freshly cleared path had been cut in a dead straight line from the gate all the way to the mansion through thick snow, a line of evergreens channeling a dry breeze toward my terrible fate. I wasn’t standing in front of a mansion now; it was standing in front of me—a living, soulless thing, holding on to dark, morbid secrets.

My eyes flickered with fatigue, and Alex appeared beside me—the Alex I saw by the tree that day, with the scruffy beard. He took my hand and motioned to my dress, both of us watching as it changed from a sensible woolly outfit to a dainty blue gown, like Cinderella. Behind me, my long, dragging red cloak became a sparkly train, and my weather-worthy boots were elegant glass slippers. The dark mansion transmogrified into a grand palace, with flowery vines dancing the white walls like whispers, and wide, open windows revealing classy ballrooms and crystal chandeliers inside. I was going to meet my prince, that’s all. I’d get to the door and instead of a mean wolf I might find a boy that looks just like Alex—not necessarily cute until you get to know him, but kind and warm and interesting.

My imaginary world kept me warm until I reached the wider area of gravel right before the stairs, where two lines of people awaited me on either side, their clothes white and clean beside the dark, grayish stone of the manor. No one made eye contact. No one smiled when I tried to greet them. All were human.

I stopped in front of them and total silence moved over the estate on all four sides. All the animals stopped moving and even the trees stopped whispering. The moon looked away as it rose in the sky, and the last of the sun slipped behind its own hands, as if it couldn’t bear to watch.

My heart beat so hard in my chest I could feel it in my throat. I swallowed the nerves and fought through the shaking in my limbs to take the first step, the cloak heavy behind me as it touched dry, gritty steps. When I curved back to tug it along, I had to at least admit that it did look elegant—the way it poured over the stairs behind me like a bleeding heart. It wasn’t a blue dress, and this wasn’t a palace, but it wasn’t all that bad up close, either.

My husband-to-be stood in the gentle orange light coming through the doorway with his hands behind his back, watching me come toward him, a hard look on his face. I was embarrassed by my probably red-tipped nose and my shaking knees, when he seemed to be so calm, maybe even a little bit princely standing there in a double-breasted blue coat, short in the front to reveal the high waist of his black pants, but longer in the back, like something out of a film. Despite that classic wolf look of sharp eyes and refined features, and the apparently old-fashioned ways, he was unshaven today. I liked him with more hair on his face, and if I had to look at that face while I lost my virginity, on my period, then I was sure as heck glad he was at least cute, even if he was a few centuries older than me. Another gross thing to put out of my head.

I stopped in front of him, a full head shorter even though I was the tallest girl in class, and I couldn’t help but note that Luther was a bit shorter than Alex.

Aerik, who seemed to arrived here out of nowhere, stood suddenly behind me with Agnes, nodding forward when I looked back at them. I pulled myself up, and turned to my fiancé again, offering a smile he didn’t return. In fact, I’m pretty sure he looked down his nose at me.

Agnes picked up my hand and laid my wrist over Luther’s, binding them with twine and a layer of white silk. She spoke words about fertility and the influence of the moon, then Aerik bound our wrists in red silk. An echo showed each hollow in the design of the forest then as our pack howled, and as bad as I wanted to howl with them, I kept my throat tight, doing everything Luther did—which pretty much meant standing still and looking disinterested. I was good at that.

The sly alpha made eye contact with me then. I thought, or maybe hoped, I saw the ghost of a smile there. When the wolves hushed, Agnes stepped back in offering, and Aerik gave a single nod to Luther. It was all very silent and formal. I listened to see if I could hear a pin drop, but what I heard instead was a whisper about being hungry and something to do with a feast—the same feast my new husband and I were supposed to miss because we’d be consummating our silently made vows.

As was tradition, our hands were then unbound and Luther bent to pick me up. I almost squealed but reminded myself not to, staying instead as poised and composed as he was. He carried me over the threshold into a large, airy place with too-high walls and dark corridors on three sides, all splashed with an overuse of decorative weapons and animal skin rugs. It was a place that looked both grand and scary at the same time, as though there was once a warmth to it but was gnawed at over time until all that remained is an echo, a memory. There was sadness here. Too much of it. But who it belonged to, I couldn’t tell.

Out of the darkness of the corridor to my right a sturdy silhouette approached. A part of me was scared, but a bigger part wanted to run up the steel spiral staircase in the middle of this room and explore all the nooks and crannies this mansion would have.

When the front door closed, Luther practically dropped me to the floor, taking a long stride away and dusting his hands off. “She smells like a dog. And she’s bleeding. Clean her up and tell her the rules; we will finish this ritual in a fortnight when she’s fertile enough to conceive a son.”

I couldn’t believe my eyes as he stalked away and vanished into the darkness. I couldn’t believe my luck as my ears made sense of what he just said. No consummation tonight! No icky period grossness! I wanted to jump for joy, but Theowulf was looking at me. It was an apologetic look.

“You’ll get used to him,” he offered.

“It doesn’t matter to me if I don’t.”

“Why is that? Have you not just now become his wife?”

“Yes, but from what everyone says, I’m not a wife. I’m a Give Birth Barbie—Regency Edition.”

Theowulf laughed loudly, his head going back to reveal wolfish fangs. “My goodness, what rumors must circulate out there.”

“Then it’s not true?”

“April.” He reached out kindly for my hand.

“It’s Red. No one calls me April but my mom.”

“Red,” he corrected, taking my hand when I didn’t give it to him. He closed it inside both of his and patted it, creeping me out. “Welcome to the family. Officially, and please, take some time, settle in, and try to disregard what you’ve been told by those who have never seen inside these walls.”

“Okay,” I agreed, stealing my hand back. But I would be hesitant to see this as anything more than a sad, dangerous prison. One thing was certainly true so far: the Regency thing. Even Theo was dressed in a coat similar to Luther’s, but black, showing white high-waist pants. And they all seemed to have high collars, too, with scarf things and brooches hiding their throats. I wondered for a moment if they were vampires with scars to hide.

Theowulf cleared his throat. “Come. I’ll show you to your room and you can… freshen up.”

“Are you saying I stink?” I turned my lip up at him. “I showered before I came.”

“And you have touched a dog since,” he said, his lip lifting a little too. “We’re not partial to the smell here.”

I sighed, rolling my eyes.

“Don’t do that,” he warned. “He does not like that.”

“Who?”

“His Lordship. It will be in your best interest to refrain from modern acts of teen rebellion henceforth.”

I stopped walking and purposefully turned my body to face him, giving my eyes a big, slow roll.

Theowulf smiled, shaking his head. “I see my father got more than he bargained for.”

“Believe me, you have no idea,” I said sassily and walked past him. “Which way?”

He pointed to the right corridor. “Your private quarters are in the west wing. There’s a staircase down the end of this hall.”

“Private quarters?”

“You will have your own room—”

“But—”

“His Lordship will visit you when he wishes to mate. There will be no need for you to share a room.”

“Sweet.” I had not expected that. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.

I ran my hand along the wood-paneled walls as we walked. They were smooth, framed by intricate carvings—stories being told in decorative works of art, wasted where no one would ever care to observe them, as if they were placed here to insult the artist—and unlike the warm redwood panels in the entrance, these were dark and aged, suffocating the mansion.

When we reached a wide staircase, which looked more like a main entrance staircase should—unlike the one I saw when I first entered, as if maybe this was once the front of the mansion—I followed the curve and up to the next floor, where a very long corridor and many doors greeted me. Theowulf walked in companionable silence until we reached a pair of heavy wooden doors with iron hinges.

“Each wife has her own room,” he instructed, taking a heavy key off his belt. “And each wife is to keep to her own room.”

“How many wives are left?” I asked, looking nervously at what I suspected were the doors to the mansion tower, and possibly a stone room with iron bars on the windows. “No one ever said.”

“It’s not for me to say. Or anyone, for that matter.”

“How many children does he have?” I added, half stalling and half curious. “Where are they?” Considering this was a puppy mill, I was surprised not to see children’s toys, or at least one or two of them running past me.

“The children live out on the farming estate.”

“They what?” I stood in front of him as he went to put the key in the giant keyhole. “But you said the wives have rooms here.”

“Wives do not raise their sons, Red,” he said almost routinely, with only a slight hint of regret. “On the sixth day after their birth, they are taken to a well-guarded facility and raised to adulthood there, until they are sent to join the army.”

“So…” I felt my brow pull tight, felt it age a little and wrinkle in place. “You just take away our children?”

“They will not be your children. They are his children and yes…” he pushed me aside to unlock the door, “you will live apart from them.”

That hit me like a hard blow. I wouldn’t tolerate that. At all. Things would need to be discussed with Luther if he thought for a second that I would take that lying down.

“So what about you?” I put my hand on the door to stop him opening it. “You’re one of his sons. Were you raised by your mother?”

“I was. For a time.”

“And what happened?”

“As you well know, as all wolves know, she died.”

“Actually, we don’t know anything about her except that she died, but I don’t know how old you were when that happened.”

“I was ten.” He picked up my hand and moved it off the door, a cold look in his eye. “Now if you don’t mind, I would like silence.”

He got silence, but only because I started doing the math. If Luther was immortal and all his sons were too, and each wife gave him between five and thirteen sons, then he must have hundreds of children running around that were born only in the last century, each somewhere between infancy and adulthood. So if we didn’t get to raise them, who did? And where?

How had I never asked the right questions about this?

How had I been so complacent that I never got curious about the alpha and all his business?

Then again, most wolves didn’t care about this world much until after they turned for the first time, and even then, we were taught in school that the business of the alpha was never discussed. He was just this overlord that we all bowed to, but no one ever said why. Kind of like monarchs nowadays. I just grew up knowing Luther was like our king, and never questioned it. I wasn’t sure I would ever have questioned it, any of it, if it weren’t for Alex.

I moved my hand to the wolf-head dagger inside my dress as the bulky lock clicked and the hinges released the door, finding comfort knowing Alex was with me.

“This is your room.” Theowulf pushed it open and the stone mask of fear on my face turned to surprise. “You will take meals in here, and all your daily activities will be done in here. You may wander the gardens, but if you are caught in any other room of this mansion without permission from His Lordship, you will be flogged. Clear?”

“Clear,” I said, not sure I just heard that correctly. Cold, weak, and tired from a long, emotionally taxing day, I practically tripped into the room. It was wide and long, rounded where the tower protruded out from the greater mansion, but as high as the tower was the ceiling in here wasn’t that high. It was grand high, but not evil tower high, and white, with soft downlights, kind of like a hotel room. Pastel colored walls and handcrafted furnishings gave it a regency feel, and I knew that when daylight broke, floods of natural light would spill over the giant four-poster bed where I’d soak it all up.

“It’s not what I expected,” I noted, running my fingers over the marble top dining table and then pulling out a chair, admiring the silky pattern on the seat cushion. I was never a big fan of Jane Austen, but my mom was, and I knew she’d love this room. If I ever got to show her.

“You will be happy here,” Theowulf said, but something in his tone made me look over at him. “And I do apologize, but His Lordship requires all new wives be locked in on the first night.”

“In case we try to escape?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

That sent a chill down my spine.

“Supper will be sent up shortly,” he finished. The door slammed shut behind Theowulf, and I heard it lock into place. It didn’t bother me though. Nothing could bother me tonight. I had just inherited this massive room and a whole two weeks without worrying about Luther’s ancient hands on me. And who knows, maybe if I didn’t ovulate at all, ever, he might not ever want to ‘visit my bed’.

With a little squeal of relief and happiness, I stripped off my red cape and took a giant leap onto the bed, sinking into the feathers. It was perfect. If I had to suck it up and accept my life, at least it was cozy. If not a little cold.

My head turned to the fireplace with a mantle as high as my shoulders and a large mirror set over the top. In the corner beside it was one of those old-fashioned writing cabinets with the drop-down desk, like something I might find in Alex’s house.

I got up and pressed the button by the fireplace, igniting it into a roaring flame, and sat down at the desk. This was my new life. And while I missed Alex and my mom, and I would never live my newly discovered dream of running a dog shelter, I could at least make up worlds. That was something no time, or place, or circumstance could take away from me.

Pen set to paper under my determination then, and “The Strange and Remarkable Worlds of George and Alex Plain” sprung to life under it, taking me home again.

***

Two days passed. On the first day I received three square meals, a high tea, and a lesson on cross-stitch, followed by a new wardrobe that had been plucked right out of 1811—corset and all.

On the second day, despite the time-hop of day one, I was given a laptop and Wi-Fi access. But when I tried to join Facebook, it was blocked. It seemed I had access to news, books and movies, and oddly, YouTube, and that was all. But it was enough, for now. I was just happy to escape Regency Britain for five minutes.

Day three started the same as one and two: a skinny young ‘slave’, as she called herself—dressed in a worn beige dress with a clean white apron and bonnet—entered my room at six and woke me with breakfast. I was then dressed into a pretty floral yard of fabric atop a tight corset and weird long knickerbockers, then left alone again as the slave took my breakfast tray and my bathroom bin on the way out the door. I wondered for two days why she took that bin when another slave took my paper bin and cleaned my room.

Today, I finally asked.

She looked shocked, as though she didn’t know what to say, and I thought maybe she was taking my used tampons and eating them or something, based on the look on her face. As bad as that idea might have been, her response made my whole face burn hot with mortification.

“He has someone monitor my cycles?” I repeated.

“Yes, Miss.” She bowed her head a little, not making eye contact. I wondered if she was embarrassed too, or if she just wasn’t allowed to look me in the eye, considering she never actually had. “His Lordship needs to know when your cycle starts, ends, and when you ovulate.”

I sat down hard on the bed, reminded cruelly by the corset that I couldn’t slouch. This truly was a puppy mill. I wasn’t here as a wife, to talk with him and keep him company; it was as I’d suspected: I was here purely to breed with. And yet I would never be allowed to raise my children. Then there was the issue of the baby girls; I’d been told once that Luther only had sons, but statistically, that was impossible. Which begged the question: where were they? And if I did have girls, and they weren’t allowed to be soldiers, would I get to keep them? And if wives kept their daughters, there must be hundreds of them running around here somewhere. But the lack of noise or presence of children creeped me out.

When my servant left, I decided to investigate.

My door creaked as if it hadn’t been opened in a week. I tensed at the noise, poking my head out into the cold corridor to check if anyone was around. As usual, this mansion was wrapped in total silence, with only pale, musty light coming from two windows at the ends of a T-junction somewhere down the corridor. When a shadow changed the light for a moment, I popped back into my room, heart in my throat as I waited a second before poking my head out again.

Coast clear, my silk slippers making me light-footed, my Emmy-worthy dress lifted so I wouldn’t trip on it, I ventured out into the unknown for the first time. Last time I saw this corridor it was dark, and the oil lanterns on the wall were lit, giving little light to see by. Now, in the grainy light of day, this mansion revealed itself as the perfectly preserved piece of history it was. I walked with my chin angled to the sky, taking in the high walls, the gilded mirrors and the intricate carvings around each square wall panel, lost in a state of awe.

Eventually my meandering led me to the Great Hall, an open space with exposed beams across the ceiling and a thick wooden table running the length of the room, large enough to seat a hundred people. Heavy-framed paintings of various sizes and crafted of different wood were hung in a disorganized pattern on every wall, like the way Alex hung his posters, and each woman in them had the same sadness in her eyes, even the ones that were forcing a smile. They were all dark-haired and slender, like me, wearing the same iron ring that was resting right now on my ring finger. And it occurred to me: they were the wives.

With that realization, I did a turn on the spot and looked for the oldest portrait. The girl from the story—the hooded girl—would have lived here too. Her portrait might be on the walls. I was interested to see her. But all my searching led to nothing, unless she was the child in the oval-shaped frame in the middle of the longest wall. It was a tiny portrait, and she looked way too young to be a wife, but thinking of the fact that she married Luther young, there was a possibility that it was her. I really hoped not. I know times had changed but… ew. I don’t think I could bring myself to do anything physical with him if he really did marry a girl that young.

Toward the head of the hall I noticed a large chair, carved out of what seemed like a single block of wood, with intricately detailed wolves as the knobs, howling at the centered moon. It was a beautiful chair, overlooking a grand layout of gold cutlery and sparkling crystal glasses, everything so shiny and fancy as if there was a party on soon. I so badly wanted to attend a party, but to do that I would have to be in Luther’s ‘favor’. And to be in his favor, I’d have to spend time with him. But how could I spend time with him if I never saw him? This whole stupid situation was frustrating.

“What are you doing in here?” The deep voice echoed through the room, making it feel empty in here.

I turned, my heart leaping when I saw my husband. “Am I not allowed to wander?” I asked, instead of saying, ‘Investigating, got a problem with it?’. It was hard, but after watching so much Jane Austen, I think I managed to sound older than I actually was—or from a different time than I actually was. He liked that, because he smiled softly and walked forward, saying nothing until the giant gap was closed.

In this setting, with old-fashioned clothes and a backdrop to match, he looked like he stepped out of a book himself. If I distanced myself from it all and looked at him as a reader might, he was, what Jane might say, dashing. My stomach fluttered when I put my eyes on him. Add that to his confident stride, his holier-than-though countenance and those steely but also kind eyes, and it was a recipe for a girl to lose herself quickly if the man in question was also a kind, warm man. Thank Carne he wasn’t.

“You are not a foolish girl,” he said, the stern tone contradicting the half smile. “You know the rules, so do not play me for a fool. Now, why are you walking around here by yourself?”

“Why aren’t I allowed to? Am I in danger?”

“Danger is not the issue, Miss Redwood—”

“Miss Redwood?” I scoffed, showing him the iron ring. “Aren’t we married? Shouldn’t I be Mrs. Reave of Ravenswood?”

“You will never be called by that name!” he growled, his voice husky and sharp.

“Father?” Theowulf spoke cautiously, paused there in the doorway. “You’re needed in the library.”

He gave me a cold look before he stalked away, waving his hand in the air at his son. “Talk to her! Teach her some respect.”

I shrunk as Theo came at me. He grabbed my arm hard enough to leave impressions and dragged me to the other end of the room. “What are you doing out here?”

“I was curious about my new home.”

“Curiosity gets you flogged, girl.” We stopped walking and his eyes flicked to the slave—the same one that came to my room every morning—as she stopped on the cusp of the Great Hall and bowed out quickly when she saw us, not turning her back until she was quite far away.

Theowulf looked back at me, drawing his hand off my arm as though he only just realized he was hurting me. “What are you curious about?”

“Do you care?”

“I care that it led you from your room. So please, let me ease your concerns and we shall have none of this wandering again.”

“Why did your father get so upset when I told him to call me Mrs. Reave?”

He sighed, bowing his head. “Because that was my mother’s name. Only my mother’s name.”

“So none of the other brides took his name?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because to share one’s name, it… well, it is an honor he reserves only for those he loves deeply.”

“Love?” I scoffed. “So he is capable of love?”

He arched a brow that said it all.

Good. There was hope for us all yet. “Who are all these women?” I motioned to the paintings. “Are they the wives?”

“Yes.”

“Why does he take so many? Is he trying to replace your mother?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

“Because he is a god, Red. Have your parents taught you nothing?”

“I know they all say he’s the son of Carne, but I don’t see why he needs so many wives and sons.”

“It is his right to be survived by many sons. It’s a badge of honor which, I suppose, if you were not born in his time, you might not understand.”

“Okay, so… many sons, that’s fine. But why so many wives?”

“Because they age and die.”

“Oh.” Well that made sense. Duh. But how sad? Each one of these women had become an incubator to grow his badge of honor. It didn’t matter that we had lives, feelings, futures, before we came here. Once we arrived, we were nothing to him, and we clearly never would be. “How ’bout you?”

“Me?”

“Do you have this many wives?”

He gave a sweet smile. “No. I have no wives.”

“Why not?”

“My human wife died, and now I work hard to operate the pack—run things for my father. I haven’t had time.”

“No one has time for love,” I said, my cheeks spreading as a smile moved in. “It just happens. Are you telling me you haven’t been in love since your wife?”

“Have you ever been in love, Red?”

“Maybe.”

“Then you know it is not easy to fall in love, and it does not likely come around more than once in a lifetime.”

He had a point. “I guess.” I shrugged.

His hands came down on my shoulders and pressed them firmly. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Shrug.” He removed his hands. “It’s an innocent gesture to you, but if my father sees it, he will slap you hard across your face. Take my word for it.”

My lip pulled into a half smile. “Lemme guess? You shrugged once?”

“Once,” he said with a breathy laugh. “Never again.”

I nodded, relaxing a bit then and placing my hands behind my back like Theowulf and Luther did, and I could see why they did it. It was pretty comfortable. I took in the room at my own pace then—the floods of pale light making rectangles on the floor and the polished gold cutlery on the table, going back in my mind to when I was a little girl and we came here for a party.

“Is there a party here tonight?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Can I come?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you cannot be trusted yet.”

“Trusted? With what?”

“Red, we keep many secrets here. It is why you haven’t been allowed to send letters yet.”

“What secrets? I don’t know any secrets.”

“How about the fact that your sons will never be raised by you? If our people were to learn this, they would not put their daughters forward for Selection. There are things that cannot be said to others, and until you understand this, we cannot allow you to interact with anyone.”

“Then tell me how I can win his trust. How can I make him love me?”

“He will not love you, Red. Ever.”

“Ever?” My voice trembled a bit as all my grand plans died before me.

“I am sorry,” he offered, sounding genuine. “You seem like a very nice girl—”

“Why won’t he ever love me? There must be something I can do. I can’t live my life like this—alone.”

“And yet you will; and for your own good, Red, I must advise you not to appeal for his affection.”

When his eye went to my chin, I felt a cold tear there. I couldn’t believe I was crying. Over this, of all things. I wiped it off and stiffened my lip. “Why? Why is he so cold?”

“I would not say my father is cold. Merely distant, which is for a good reason.”

“So that he won’t love anyone?”

“So that he won’t hurt anyone.” He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “He loved my mother, Red—more than he loved the breath he takes to keep him alive—and I am only telling you this so you do not feel as alone, thinking you’re to blame for this loveless life—but my father is cursed.”

“Cursed?”

“Yes. Before I was born, my mother took steps to make herself immortal, and there are consequences for that, prices one must pay. That’s all I can tell you for now, but you must understand that it is why he will never, can never love a woman.”

“I find it hard to believe he was ever capable of love.”

“He loves in his own way. And he shows love in other ways, too. You will see. Soon.”

“When? I never even see him.”

“You will soon enough. And one day, when you bear him a son, you will join my mother and the other wives here on the walls of the Great Hall—immortalized in paint.”

“But why would I want to?”

“Red, it’s a great honor to mark the walls of the—”

“No, why would I want to bear a son? I’ll never get to see it, raise it. Why does he have to take them at birth?”

Theowulf looked around, lowering his neck and placing his hands behind his back. “You are not to ask such things.”

“Why?”

“For the same reasons I am not to speak of them.” He severed the conversation with a quick turn and exit, calling back with, “Return to you room, Red. For your own sake.”

***

After Theowulf—now named Theo, because he didn’t seem that far removed from this century, and a name like Theowulf just didn’t suit him nowadays—left me, I thought stuff it! Why go back to my room just because he says so? If they want me to stay in there all day, then they’d have to bring me some friends, or at least let me go on Facebook. I’d go insane sitting around on my butt all day. And to think, a few weeks ago that’s all I wanted to do. Mom would call me down to do the dishes and I’d beg for five more minutes. There was nothing worse in this world than dishes. Or folding laundry. Now, all I had was books and time and chairs to sit on. I needed conversation. I needed activity. Shoot, I’d even be happy to do the dishes right now.

Dreading the boredom that awaited me back in my room, I went in search of the other wives—what might be left of them—a journey that was dangerous and involved stealth. Luckily I’d been watching plenty of spy movies in the last twenty-four hours—anything to avoid sad stories about happy families, or even romantic comedies or, worse, creepy wolf movies that were so far from the truth that I cringed the whole way through. So I felt well prepared for a bit of sneaking and even a bit of hand-to-hand combat, if the situation called for it.

After having another look at the portraits and the dates in brass below them, I’d decided to hunt for Greta, who’d be sixty now if she was still alive, and Anne, who’d be almost forty. She at least had to be here somewhere.

I opened every door that wasn’t locked, but all I found was a drawing room, a study, a library—with someone in it—and a few empty bedrooms. It seemed hopeless. I’d searched for an hour and found nothing. Although, I still had another entire wing of the mansion to search. Maybe he kept the other wife in the east tower, but getting over there would be hard. It was one thing to tiptoe around the halls in my own wing, but going down the stairs, across the lower level and up the east staircase would be risky. Someone would see me, report it to Luther, and then I’d be flogged.

Then again, not many people probably knew who I was or what I looked like. If I messed my clothes up a bit, and took off my ring, I might be able to disguise myself as a servant.

I went back to my room, after getting a bit lost, and pushed the dresses in my closet apart, diving in headfirst among them to find something plain. My servant had been dressed in beige this morning, with an apron, so I found a dress that was… kind of cream, and after a bit of frustrated wall-kicking and pillow bashing when I couldn’t get the first dress off or the second one on, I opened a YouTube tutorial on how to dress Regency style. Thanks to my new friends there, I managed to get it on and then hid the pretty embroidered flowers on the skirt with a shawl from the end of my bed, tied around my waist like an apron. My hair was tucked up into my night bonnet, and then I dug my hands into the pot plant to give my dress and shoes in a bit of natural color.

After examining myself in the mirror I decided it would do, after I removed my wedding ring.

The kitchen, I gathered from the movies and documentaries I’d watched about this time period, would be on the lowest level, so I only needed to find a passage or door that led to it. Most likely, I realized in a moment of brilliance, a door coming off the Great Hall, since they served food in there.

I snuck back in, giving the wives a small nod of greeting, and felt around for a loose panel. Sure enough I found one, and when it opened up I expected to see a dark stone passage that smelled like garlic. Instead, it was a white staircase with carpeted steps and I could see people with gold trays rushing past down there. It was a busy time, obviously in preparation for this grand party I was not invited to, and I wasn’t sure how I would get down there without being spotted. But the challenge gave me a rush.

Without being noticed, I closed the door behind me and reached the bottom of the stairs, picking up some napkins from a pile on a table there just to look busy. It was much better down here than it was up there. Everyone had something to do, somewhere to be. It was noisy and smelled like hot soup, and I could hear a comical old woman shouting orders at everyone.

The corridor broke off into three sections at the base of the stairs; one to my right led to what I guessed were bedrooms; the one to my left got darker the further my eyes went, the walls made of stone, not covered by plaster like the other corridor; and the one dead ahead, obviously, led to the kitchen.

“Mrs. Potter, where are the wine glasses?” A dull man asked in a slow voice. His shadow appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, so I ducked into an archway beside an empty barrel. It almost looked like it was once a doorway that had been bricked up and plastered over.

“Bethany was polishing them last I heard,” an old woman said in a hurried voice. “Go on and hassle her, Mr. French. I haven’t the time for it today.”

The man groaned, and I peeked out from behind the barrel to watch his shadow shrink around a corner I didn’t know was down that corridor. I wanted to go into the kitchen and ask if I could help, but something about that woman stopped me; she sounded switched on and kind of like that old school teacher that smacked my hand when I was five. If anyone would recognize me as a wife it’d be her, even if it was purely by my modern mannerisms. So I followed the dull-sounding man instead, just to see what was down there in that seemingly hidden corridor. If History class taught me anything, there were probably food stores or preparation rooms. Either way I might find something fun to eat, or maybe a bag of flour to make some play-dough out of. My boredom was getting the better of me after only three days here. I couldn’t even imagine what twenty years would do to me.

Right beside the kitchen door I pressed my back to the wall and risked a peek around. A plump old woman in the standard servant wear was squatting down by a giant iron stove thing, tucked neatly into a brick nook. With her dress lifted up to her knees, she leaned toward the roaring flames like she was dropping a poop on the ground as an offering. I chuckled to myself and slipped past, unnoticed, but when I got around the corner and looked down the narrow stone corridor the dull man was gone. It ended just up ahead, with only two poorly made wooden doors marking rooms on each side, so unless one was unlocked and bigger than a broom closet such I could hide in it, he’d see me if he suddenly reemerged. But which room did he go in, and which one should I go in?

Back up the corridor behind me, a door slammed and everything went silent. I listened for a moment, but even though my hammering heart wanted me to believe that they’d discovered me down here and were just waiting for me to turn around, I was sensible enough still to know that everyone had just gone to the Great Hall to set up. The silence was deafening though, and with my wolf ears I could hear things I didn’t want to hear, like heavy breathing and lips slapping together behind the door closest to me. Is that where Mr. French went? He didn’t strike me as the type.

I pressed my shoulder and my ear to the chipped blue paint, covering my giggles. Whoever was in there with him was really enjoying that game. I decided to leave them to it, although I did think about rapping really hard on the door to scare them, but as I went to move away the door swung inward suddenly and the secretive pair screamed.

A tub of potatoes toppled over beneath my flailing hands and a bag of flour burst open, puffing up on my landing and covering us all in white powder.

“What is the meaning of this, Red!” Theo yelled, grabbing my arm to lift me out of my own stupid mess.

“I didn’t mean it. The door just fell open.”

“What are you even doing down here? You’re a mess. Look at you!”

But as I righted myself with the help of Theo’s floured hand, I looked past him to my personal servant instead, and the color of her face. She was a simple girl with narrow features, a patch of freckles dotted over her nose and cheeks, but I saw in her an entirely different girl when I realized that she was the only one in here with Theo.

Theo stepped forward. “Red, remember what I said about secrets?”

I quickly brought my fingers to my lips and locked them with an imaginary key, handing it to him. My eyes were so wide with disbelief and concern that I must’ve looked like a startled white rabbit.

Theo laughed. “Look at us. All of us.”

I took a better look down at my dress, and though they weren’t as coated in flour as me, they were very powdery. We all looked like kids dressed up as ghosts for Halloween.

“Come, Katy.” Theo took her by the arm. “We need to go before we’re seen.”

“Why?” I said. “What does it matter if you’re seen together?”

“She’s human, Red,” he explained. “And a slave.”

“And this is the twenty-first century.”

“Not here. Not in this mansion. If my father were to learn of my affections for Katy, he’d…” Theo looked down, softly letting go of her as he took a step back.

“He’d send her away?”

“Worse.”

“Kill her?”

Katy nodded, averting her eyes.

“Where I come from, people don’t get treated like that,” I said, folding my arms.

“Really?” Katy’s eyes narrowed in curiosity.

“We don’t have slaves,” I explained, “and everyone is free to love anyone they want.”

“That sounds wonderful,” Katy said shyly.

“I’m surprised Theo hasn’t told you all about it.” I gave him a hard glare, narrowing my eyes and lips to make it extra cold.

“Theo?” He laughed. “Since when are we on such informal terms, Miss Redwood?”

“Since I decided I like you.”

“You like me?”

“Well, I did. Because I thought you weren’t like Luther. But now I find this.” I presented the naïve slave girl he’d been fondling. “How could you? She obviously doesn’t know any better—”

“Red, what do you think is going on here? Do you think I’m using her merely to satisfy my own primal needs?”

“Well.” I refolded my arms. “Isn’t that what you’re doing?” Since you said you never fell in love again, I wanted to add, but didn’t, for Katy’s sake.

His shoulders loosened and he let a breath out through his nose, adding softly, “No.”

“Oh.” I unfolded my arms, reading a truth on his face that he tried to hide. “Well, in that case, I still like you.”

They both smiled.

“But I don’t understand something,” I added.

“What do you not understand?”

“If you… if this is more than just primal needs in a closet, why do you keep her here at the mansion? Why not take her away?”

“If only it were that simple—”

“I think it is.”

“And you clearly do not understand what kind of man my father is—”

“I—”

“Enough,” he said firmly. “I will not discuss this with you here.”

“Fine.” I folded my arms again, taking that to mean he might discuss it with me elsewhere.

“We have to go,” Theo said. “All of us. Now.”

“I’m going,” I said. “But—” I spun around swiftly to stand by Katy, linking arms with her, “—I’m bored up there by myself. I think Katy should come hang out with me.”

“Oh, Miss, I’m not allowed to be—” she started, but Theo nodded kindly at her.

“It’s all right, Katy. You have my permission.”

She nodded back once, smiling.

“She doesn’t need your permission,” I spat.

“But she does,” Theo advised me softly. “It is the way of things here. Now, Katy.” He leaned in and kissed her head. “Go help Miss Redwood get cleaned up. And be sure no one sees her like that on the way back to her room.”

“Yes, Master.” She curtsied.

He closed his eyes, pressing his mouth tight. “Katy, we’ve talked about that.”

Katy bit her lip. “Sorry. It’s a habit.”

“I know,” he said, opening his eyes. “I’ll see you tonight.”

My jaw was left hanging open by the exchange, even as Theo checked the corridor before he slipped out and scuttled away. “Nice job, Katy. He’s actually not so bad once you get to know him.”

“And he’s a great kisser,” she said.

I looked at her then, kind of shocked that just came out of her mouth, and we both laughed.

Part Three: Chapter Two

The Illusions of Someone Else’s Eye

The party in the Great Hall went on without me. I could barely even hear it from my room, and all I could see from my window were a few headlights as cars pulled up in the dark. But I did have the elegant pictures in my imagination to keep me company: the warm light and finely dressed members of our pack; the shining gold cutlery and the table laid with a gourmet spread. People would stand around with wine glasses, chatting about things by the fire. When someone asked Luther where his new wife was tonight, he would not be the type to give some lame excuse and say I was ‘under the weather’ or something a normal imprisoning husband would say, he’d simply look at them sternly, grunt to himself, and walk away without explanation. People would learn not to ask after that, and they’d take that home to mean that I was not one of the wives he favored. Yet.

A part of me wondered if my mom had been invited; if she was right below me, drinking and eating the same food made in the kitchen that served my food. I missed her so much my stomach hurt and I couldn’t eat my dinner. It’d be nice to know she was that close to me right now.

For a while, I sat in my window seat, running my thumb over the silver dagger Alex gave me, trying to picture a world with the two of us. But I couldn’t see his face. I wasn’t sure if I was tired or if maybe I’d never known what he looked like to begin with, but it was gone. All of it. And it made me feel like I’d been buried in a wooden box.

When the darkness became too much to bear, I got up and carefully crossed the room to turn on the lamp, but there was no switch or cord anywhere on it. Not even a light globe in the center. It was odd. I thought for a moment that maybe it was an oil lamp, but there was no wick, not even a candle. The lampshade wrapped a decorative wooden stand, and when I touched it, it spun.

“It’s a zoetrope,” said a voice from the doorway.

I jerked around, gasping. “You scared me.” I laughed. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Sorry, Miss,” Katy said, curtsying as she went to walk out, my dinner plate in hand.

“Wait,” I called, desperate not to be left lonely in the dark again. “What’s a zoetrope?”

“Um…” Katy, obviously second-guessing her decision to speak up, came back into the room and put the plate down on the table. “It’s moving pictures.”

“Moving pictures?”

I watched as she reached for the actual lamp just behind the zoetrope and lit up the room, making me feel sort of silly. “Look,” she said, pointing to the slotted holes in the card. “When it spins, if you look through here, you can see the pictures moving.”

Katy gave it a spin, and though the slotted holes also spun, whipping around so fast I wasn’t sure I would actually be able to look through them at all, I shut one eye and bent down and, sure enough, the wolves were running.

I stopped it, standing to look inside from the top. A sequence of wolves had been painted around the inside in slightly different positions, so when it spun fast, moving from picture to picture quickly, it looked like wolves running.

“Wow,” I said.

“That’s what I said the first time I saw a TV.”

I laughed.

“Would you like to see something even more amazing?” she said.

“Sure.” I looked at my plate and then the door. “If you won’t get in trouble?”

“Not unless Miss has another request of me.”

“Nope.” I shook my head and sat down at the marble table, the chair cold under me.

Katy sat down too, bringing a candle with her from the drawer where the zoetrope was. “Do you have any paper?”

“Sure.” I ran to my desk and gathered up some paper, grabbing scissors and tape as well when she added those to the list. We sat silently for a while then as she cut and taped shapes together, making what looked like a circular bowl of trees. And when I felt like that silence lingered too long, I chanced a conversation—telling her all about Alex and our strange worlds, and how much I missed him and my mom. She didn’t seem to be listening at first, but I kept talking anyway, and eventually she started nodding and even smiling when I told her things.

“They sound like truly wonderful people,” she said, her smile sitting radiantly beneath her soft hair. I could see what Theo saw in her then. Without a face full of cake flour she was very pretty, and had a sweetness to her not seen in other girls these days. “But now, all those worlds you miss,” she added, “you can create them right here. Just like with a projector.”

“A projector?”

She placed the candle in the middle of her creation, the finely cut trees a work of art on their own. “I got the idea from playing with my praxinoscope.”

“What’s a praxin… thingy?”

“It’s a later model of the zoetrope, but it uses mirrors to show the image in the middle, so you don’t have to bend down. This here…” she showed me her tree bowl, “this is like all of them combined. Look.” Katy lit the candle at the center and then got up to turn out the lamp, and when she did, I drew a breath of awe.

“Wow.”

“Yes.” She nodded, satisfied. My entire room from floor to ceiling looked like a forest, the candle projecting the light past the tiny paper trees and making giant foresty shadows. It reminded me of Plain’s Worldinator, but without the paint.

“Katy, you are amazing.”

She blushed shyly. And from that moment on, I knew we’d be the best of friends. Katy, while she might not have a modern view of the world, did have a unique one, and without that unique view she might never have come up with the tree bowl and I might never have known such magic existed. Okay, so it wasn’t literally magic, but it was magical. And it was just what I needed.

Days turned into weeks quickly after that, and each one passed in the exact same way: breakfast, get dressed, wander in the snow-coated garden with Katy behind me, cross-stitch, watch movies with Katy before dinner, eat dinner, watch movies with Katy until I fell asleep. Wake up. Rinse. Repeat. Nothing changed. Not even the status of my virginity.

By the time the delivery truck came in on Sunday with this week’s supplies, I’d spent so many days on repeat that I now knew how many trees were naked out there and how many had needles to cover them. I knew the driver’s name, though I’d never seen his face, and how many spots of rust were on the top of his green truck. I knew how many paces it was from one side of my room to the other when I walked in boots and when I walked in slippers. Which was different. Somehow. I was still working on my theory as to why. And I had also gotten remarkably good at math, thanks to a ‘For Dummies’ blog. When you’re dead bored, see, you find things to do that you would never otherwise have done, like making a science experiment of room pacing, or attempting to make soap from all the used bars around the mansion.

One afternoon when Katy came to hang out with me, I’d decided it was time for her to learn a new skill. She stood there and gave me a funny look as I tied my dress up around my waist, and turned the laptop screen so we could both see it.

“Come on.” I motioned to her dress, taking off my shoes. “It’ll be fun.”

“I’ve never danced before—”

“And I’ve never learned the steps to Thriller before, so we’re in this together.”

“But, Miss…” She looked at the screen, one eyebrow getting a worried dip across the top. “I don’t like the looks of them people. Are they dead?”

I laughed loudly, until I realized she was serious. “Katy. It’s makeup! Look—” I took both of her hands and stood her beside me. “Once we’ve got the first five steps down, I’ll show you ‘the making of’ video. Okay?”

“The what?”

“Just dance.” I hit play. “It’ll be fun, and then we can show Theo.”

Her eyes went wide and a flush of color came up under her freckles. “Oh no. I can’t show Theo.”

“Why not?”

“He will laugh, Miss.”

“It’ll be one of those affectionate laughs, like your mom and dad have when you do a silly dance as a kid.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t have a mom and dad.”

“Who raised you then? I bet they laughed at you when you did something silly.”

“Oh.” She nodded, laughing. “Yes. Like the time I wet my bed while I was sleeping and they made me walk around in my bedclothes for the day.”

I stared at her blankly, horrified. “Not that kind of laughter. The kind where you find something cute, even if it’s silly.”

She returned my blank stare.

“Hasn’t anyone ever loved you, Katy?”

“Theo says people love here in different ways to your world.”

That made me pout. Poor Katy. “Hey.” A big smile shoved my pout aside. “I know what you need to do. The Holiday!”

“Holiday?”

“It’s a movie. And in it, there’s this old man that gets Kate Winslet to watch a certain list of films so she can become a better version of herself and stop letting her boss-slash-on-and-off-boyfriend walk all over her. That’s what you need to do, Katy. For personal growth.” I pressed pause on our video. “I’m gonna make you a list of movies, and you’re going to watch them all—”

“What would I watch them on? I don’t have a computer of my own. And I wouldn’t know how to use one,” she added with a shy laugh.

“Will Theo help, do you think?”

“He might.”

“I’m sure he will…” Unless he liked her being ignorant and old fashioned. There weren’t many girls like Katy around these days. Maybe he found it charming, or something.

“He did offer me a computer, if I promised not to let Mrs. Potter find it, but it isn’t worth the risk I told him. I’d be flogged and accused of stealing, and I couldn’t tell her Theo gave it to me, or he’d be flogged for befriending a human in His Lordship’s house, or maybe worse, being that I’m a slave.”

That entire sentence irritated the snot out of me. I had so many counter statements, but instead I decided to skip it all and find another way to make her understand how much was wrong with her life.

“Fine then.” I unrolled my dress and sat down on my bed, patting the spot next to me. “I’ll just have to watch them all with you. Carne knows I could use a bit of gumption myself.”

“Gumption?”

“Gumption is… well, do you remember how we watched that movie ‘Mrs. Potter’, and you thought it was about your Mrs. Potter in the kitchen?”

“Yes, the one with Renée Zell…”

“…weger, yes. And remember how you said you liked that she held her head high and never let what the ‘men’ thought of her get her down. She kept doing what she loved, chose not to marry when society deemed it right to, earned a living as a writer, even though her world frowned upon it all?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s gumption. Spunk. Guts. Common sense. Kind of being strong-willed.”

“It means all those things?”

“Yep. And we’re going to get you some.”

“How?”

“By showing you strong examples of women. And not the ‘Hollywood’ version of strong, where a girl can kick and hit and is soooo much smarter than all the boys. The ‘real life’ version of strong, where she can overcome her emotions and fight all the uphill battles in life, beating back society’s definition of her, so she can be anything she wants to be.”

“Oh, but not me, Miss. I can’t be—”

“Shh,” I snapped playfully, patting the bed again. “Gumption. Now!”

Katy grinned and sat down beside me, and as the first film on my list started, we both tucked our feet under the covers and snuggled up. It was nice not to feel alone so much since I met Katy, and in a lot of ways, I imagined this is what it’d be like to have a sister. I liked having a sister.

***

Katy arrived early to dress me. As I finished my breakfast, watching the snow fall outside my window, my bones felt restless and my stomach felt tight and sore. I had blisters under my arms from that corset and I was sure I had a bruise on my hip—the really deep kind that doesn’t show up for a few days.

I glanced back at her as she laid out my floral dress on the bed. “I can’t do it. No, actually…” I put the last of my toast down and stood up. “I won’t.”

“Won’t what, Miss?”

“I won’t wear that today.”

“Oh.” She quickly picked it up, shaking her head apologetically. “I’ll get the blue one then?”

“No. I mean I’m not wearing those clothes. I’m wearing my jeans.”

The familiar horrified look dusted her features.

“Don’t worry, Katy.” I patted her arm as I walked past. “What’s the worst he can do?”

“Oh, Miss, I must advise against it. His Lordship is in no mood today for rebellious wives.”

“Why?”

“It’s the waxing moon, Miss.” She nodded to the window. “As you know, His Lordship can only turn under a full moon and the two days either side of it, so today is—”

“So does that mean he’ll take off for a few days?” I asked. “Some of my pack do that—”

“Yes, Miss. Four days, at best.” She followed me across the room. “But it puts him in a right sorry mood before he leaves.”

“Why?”

“On account of the pain—that’s what Mrs. Potter says.”

“Pain?”

“The turning, Miss.”

The Shedding. Luther was one of very few wolves that shed his flesh each time he turned. I guess it never occurred to me how painful that might be. I felt a little sorry for him, even though I didn’t know him. Or like him.

I walked back over to the window and looked out onto the morning. A powdery blanket of snow erased the struggling reach of the dying grass that was there last night, and frost clung to the steps in sparkly blades. It was pretty out this morning, and I could feel the energy of the moon rising. Luther would leave for four days, which meant that if I felt the need to step outside and howl at the moon, he wouldn’t be here to stop me. Or laugh at me, since humans weren’t really invited to howl. And that gave me a renewed surge of energy, and resolve to wear my jeans. It’s not like he’d be here to catch me, right?

From a door somewhere under this tower Luther appeared, making deep impressions in the snow as he walked. He moved swiftly, nimbly, making his way over the grounds at a speed that even I found impressive. And he was dressed in almost normal clothes. Gone were the regency pants and jacket, exchanged instead for a smart, modern suit. I felt the same flutter in my chest that I felt the day I met him, and a part of me wished that he’d complete our wedding ritual tonight.

A fancy black car pulled up then and he opened the door, turning his head to look right at me before he got in and closed it. I wondered where he was going dressed like that, and it made me mad that I didn’t know. I was supposed to be his wife. I was supposed to know this stuff about him.

“I’ve been here for a month, Katy,” I said softly, my brow against the glass. “Why hasn’t he come to me yet? I haven’t even spoken to him.”

The car door opened again and Luther hopped out, the bright sun reflecting in an orb off the black paint, blinding me as I tried to look down at him. He stood with his hands by his sides, looking right at me again, obviously in very deep thought. So I waved, and he started walking toward the tower.

“Oh crud!” I ran away from the window.

“What? What is it?” Katy gathered my clothes off the bed and hugged them, panicked.

“I think he’s coming up here.”

“Quick.” She shoved a dress at me. “Put this on before he sees you.”

“No.” I threw it back at her like a hot potato. “I’m making my stand. I have a life to live, too, Katy.”

“Please, Miss. I don’t want to see you flogged.”

“I’d like to see him try,” I said, clenching my jaw. “All those Jet Li movies we’ve been watching will come in handy if he does.”

Katy watched in horror as I walked to my closet. I pulled on my jeans, taking off the stupid nightdress and putting on a glorious comfortable modern bra and normal red sweater. With my silver dagger hidden safely under my clothes so Luther wouldn’t see, I made it back out to my room just as he threw the door open and ordered Katy to leave.

Slipping back into ‘Slave Girl’ mode, Katy curtsied and ducked out, realizing only as she reached the hall that my dresses were still in her arms. She went to turn back, but thought better of it and ran away with her proverbial tail between her legs.

I stood tall, my chin up, looking my husband square in the eye.

“What are you wearing?” he asked.

“Clothes.” I gave him a judgmental look. “What are you wearing?”

His stern face held firm, but one eye slipped into a softer look. “My son warned me that you were a handful.”

“Theo hasn’t seen anything yet.”

“Theo?” he said, brows going up in interest. “And how is it you come to address my son in such an informal manner?”

“It’s the time we live in, Luther,” I offered, remembering not to shrug or do anything else normal for my age. “I’d shorten your name but there’s not much I can do with Luther.”

The one eye that seemed to smile narrowed, taking the other one with it. He studied me for a moment and then sniffed the air. It was a subtle sniff, but I noticed it. “Have you turned yet?”

“Turned?”

“Have you taken on wolf form?”

“I’m half human, I can’t—”

“You can.” He considered me at length, adding, “But clearly no one has taught you how.”

“Wait… are you saying…”

“I suppose it is lost to our pack,” he cut in, as though I hadn’t started talking. “We have had several generations of pure-blood to pure-blood breeding, but there was a time when most wolves were part human.”

“There was?”

“There was.” His face softened. “Wear something warm tonight. I will take you to the forest and teach you.”

“Why?” I said as he turned away.

He stopped. “Pardon?”

“Why would you do that? You obviously don’t care about me, so why would you—”

“I cannot breed with you until I am sure you are at least part wolf. Not to mention—” he put both hands behind his back, angling his chin up, “—I am your alpha, and I say it is not natural for a wolf-blooded human not to turn.”

“But once I have, will you keep me locked up in here in case I assume wolf form and run away?”

“Would you run away?”

“No.” I wouldn’t risk my family being killed.

“Then I should have no reason to lock you away. Unless you give me one.” He took an irritated breath and readjusted his stance. “I am not a beast, Miss Redwood. All wives are allowed two supervised trips per month to the forest to engage in this ritual, as stated in the contract. And that supervision is to protect you from assassination. You will be vulnerable as you change to wolf form.”

“Oh.” I unfolded my arms. “I guess… being half human, I didn’t bother reading that bit.”

“Well, consider yourself informed.” He bowed his head and turned on his heel. “I shall see you tonight.”

As much as I wanted to jump up and down and squeal with excitement—not just for the fact that I could actually become a wolf after all, but for the fact that my husband not only spoke to me and was actually kind of nice—I stood remarkably still and composed, watching him leave my room. Then I squealed and jumped around, punching the air.

Part Three: Chapter Three

Beware the Wolf in a Man’s Clothing

Tonight couldn’t come soon enough. I’d been here a month without seeing Luther. A month with nothing much to do. And now the lifetime of human form I once had ahead of me was slipping away for the possibility that I could turn into a wolf. I apparently just needed to know how. If that was true, Luther would fast become my favorite person in the whole world. He’d have no choice.

Katy walked in with a heap of garments over her arms, and winked at me, closing the door with her hip.

I got off my bed and stood with my arms folded, shaking my head until she finished laying out the dresses and looked my way.

“What?” she said, stopping on the spot, about to touch her face as if I was staring at a globule of breakfast there.

“You’ve got it, Katy,” I said.

“Got what?”

“Gumption!” I grinned.

Katy gave a shy smile, but it changed as she turned away; took on a more knowing form. Anyone could see the change in her. She wasn’t as timid or jittery, and as if that wasn’t enough she hadn’t just stopped being the oppressed slave girl; she also stood taller, questioned things, looked people in the eye. I liked that. I liked that I’d showed her how to be that way.

“Okay, come on.” She waved me over to her. “We have to dress you warm, but you won’t need a corset if you’re heading out to turn tonight. You might be best in a simple dress and cloak, but you need to look your best if you’re to win the heart of the alpha.”

My eyes went to the cream frock with simple blue flowers and vines embroidered on it, then to the heavy powder-blue cape on the bed beside Katy.

“He likes blue,” she said.

“Cool.” I took off my modern sweater. “Then I’ll wear it. But only because I think it’s pretty.”

Katy laughed. “Of course. I mean, it’s not like you’d want to impress your husband.”

I smiled, hoping this dress might give me a fighting chance of doing just that.

When the sun set, Luther sent one of his freaky-looking henchmen to fetch me. The way the man glared at me, you’d think he should’ve brought a collar and leash to walk me out.

In the cool, crisp night, my toes curled over in their silk slippers and I drew the hood over my head to keep the gentle breeze off my cheeks. Already I could hear wolves howling at the sky, breaking free of their human form and running through the greater forest surrounding us. A part of me hoped my mom would be out tonight—that we might even cross paths. If I were her, and my daughter had married the alpha, I’d run up here with the hope of seeing her. But then again, Mom didn’t know I could take on wolf form, so she wouldn’t expect to see me out here.

The entire time we walked through the mansion grounds and toward the large pair of iron gates I lost myself in thought, wondering what color my fur would be, and what color Luther’s was. Typically, modern wolves, because we don’t Shed our human skin, would have the same color fur as their hair—roughly. So mine would be dark brown, almost black. A redhead might be dark with a red sheen, and blondes were usually greyish wolves, or even champagne. But Luther Shed, so there was no saying what color he might be.

The henchman stopped dead once we reached an opening in the sky, where the thick trees broke apart for a seemingly steep drop just ahead. I came to stand beside him, moving my eyes to where his rested on the slender man taking up residence on a rock by the cliff. He stood tall, legs slightly apart, watching the moon as though it whispered secrets to him. It was silent out here tonight, the powdery snow muffling almost every sound but the labored breaths from us walking in such cold.

In a subtle shift of his head, so small I barely noticed it, Luther made it clear that he knew we were behind him. The henchman bowed to him, then to me, and backed away, his crunchy footfalls becoming distant before they disappeared altogether. Luther stayed up there on his rock by the backdrop of flat black sky and basked in the gentle rays of the moon’s light. There were few stars out tonight, or maybe I just couldn’t see them so well because of the clouds. They’d moved in over the sky like fingers hiding a secret, low enough not to cover the moon but to reflect its bluish glow.

“Take off your cloak,” Luther said in a deep, formal voice, keeping his back to me.

I pushed the blue hood off my head, a little disappointed that he didn’t even see me in my awesome clothes, and unfastened it from around my chest. As it dropped to the ground, exposing the low neckline of my dress, I was really glad that Katy reminded me to leave the silver wolf dagger in my room.

“Now your dress,” he said coldly.

For a moment, a flush of shame rushed through me and made me hot. I didn’t want to be naked in front of him, but it was more about the icy cold air than that the man might see me. After all, wolves had never been all that modest, given that they sometimes danced naked around fires before they turned. And, around our bonfire on summer nights, quite often fornicated in plain sight.

Reluctantly, I untied the strings at my shoulders and slipped off my dress, turning my feet inward as it landed around them. A soft breeze moved in to touch my nakedness and I covered my chest with warm hands.

Luther turned then and leapt down off the rock, walking over without so much as giving me a second glance. I’d at least expected him to see what he’d purchased, so the disinterested look in his eye made me feel… unworthy. I hated that he made me feel that way about myself. It made me want to punch him.

“You lack the strength to turn at will. You, like me, will need the power of the full moon to take on wolf form,” he said, slipping a leather chain over my head, the round stone on the end falling against my chest bones, warm where it had been in his hand. “And even then, you will need this.”

I picked it up, keeping one hand over my breasts, and studied the strange carving on the pearly surface. “What is it?”

“It’s a moonstone, and this bine-rune helps it draw on the power.” He lifted a hand to the moon. “Without it, you will not be able to draw enough power yourself to turn, so do not lose it because I will not give you another. Bine-runes take weeks to produce.”

“Why?”

“Because they involve certain rituals that take time. I had this made for you when you signed the contract, in case you lost your own. But it never occurred to me until today that no one had made you one in the past.”

“Well, no one knew I could turn.”

“As you said earlier. Which, of course,” he said with a cute, kind of breathy laugh, “explains the shame I saw on your face when we first met and I asked of your heritage.”

I lowered my face, feeling that shame heat my head.

“Do not do that.” He tilted my chin upward. “You must at all times remember that you are my wife—the alpha female of this pack. And even without that title, you are Wolf—the most powerful and majestic creature on this earth.”

I smiled, committing his gentle and warm touch to memory. It wasn’t what I expected at all. I think maybe I imagined slimy wet hands and cold fingertips. But he was… kind of lovely.

My nakedness became more apparent then as his eyes moved down my body, soaking it up, his fingertips gently smoothing the length of my arm to pick up my hand. “Come,” he said. “Bathe yourself under the light of the moon.”

I followed him, slipping off my shoes as I stepped away from my clothes, and as my bare toes touched the shallow snow they felt immune to the cold I expected. It was there; I was aware of it; but it didn’t sting. Luther helped me onto the rock and I sat down cross-legged, feeling a connection to the power of this night that I’d never felt before.

He pressed himself against my back and swept my hair away from my shoulder, bringing his lips to my ear. “I want you to do something for me.”

“Okay,” I whispered, losing myself a bit.

“No matter what you hear, do not turn around.” He cupped my cheeks from behind and turned my face straight, aiming my nose to the greater valley below. “Close your eyes and imagine the moon’s light entering your heart and moving throughout your limbs.”

“Okay.”

“When you see me next, I will be in wolf form. Do not be afraid.”

“I won’t.”

“Good.” He gently drew his body back from mine, and the cool air rushed along my spine in his absence. I blocked it out and shut my eyes, feeling things change in me that I hadn’t felt before, like the muscles tightening deep in my limbs and under my ribs. Luther didn’t say what would happen when I imagined the moonlight inside of me, so I didn’t expect to feel the way that my bare skin touched the rock change. The gristly feel against my freshly shaved legs became a smooth, fluffy feel. I felt it where my wrists rested against my thighs, too, and every one of my senses became sharper. I could hear each animal in the forest nearby; the birds, the ants, the wolves. I suddenly knew how many wolves were out there tonight and I could smell each one; Brian, Ashley, Mom. My heart skipped a beat. She was a mile to the south. Exactly. I felt excited and scared, unsure how I knew that, but I could feel her spirit too, I think; she was joyful. That’s what it felt like—that same feeling you get as a kid in a bouncy castle. Mom was always like that after a run on the full moon, as if it recharged her soul.

I drew a deep breath and let my beating heart wander through my limbs, doing its thing. It was instinctual. With the power now inside of me, my body seemed to understand how to do what it was supposed to do, like riding a bike. But the excitement that it was even possible to turn seemed to almost slow the process down. I tried to relax, but as I took some deep breaths and tuned into the night again, I heard what Luther had warned me about. I smelled it. And it made me want to throw up my dinner.

Blood. A warm, sour-milk smell. Dead flesh. For a moment I thought he’d killed something, even thought that he was dead, but details licked my mind and showed me images that I’d conjured up after being given descriptions of Shedding. An entire body of human skin and flesh; the face, the dull expression; limbs emptied of bone, like clothes left in a pile; a spreading circle of blood melting the snow.

It was painful for him. I always thought it would be, but hearing him grunt and whimper made it obvious, made it real. Made me pity him and also feel closer to him. I wondered if he’d ever shared this with anyone before. As much as I could tell that he tried to fight the pain, the sound of sheer agony ripped at my heartstrings, raw and husky and high-pitched at the end, until it all stopped. Dead silence ensued.

I waited, wondering if he was dead too.

Then a plush, soft tickle of fur brushed against me a moment later and I opened my eyes, even though he told me not to, meeting with the stark glow of moonlight on a black wolf. He held my gaze, as if he was telling me all his secrets in that one look.

“Wow,” I said, reaching up to touch him, but as I moved my arm I saw the half-altered human skin there. I reeled it back in and cupped it in a tight hand, running my thumb over the fur sticking up out of each of my pores. It just felt like the hind of a half-shaved dog when its fur started to grow back.

Luther hopped up on the rock beside me and nuzzled at the moonstone with a slightly wet nose, so I closed my eyes, holding on to the stone tightly, and forced myself to relax—to let my body do what it was born to do.

A rush of sharp bile raced up my throat and a tight feeling squeezed my navel. I felt dizzy as my height changed, like dropping suddenly as you swing high and come back down in a playground. The cliff drop opened out in front of me until I felt too much space, and my eyes flew open in fear of falling, but everything looked different. The colors had changed. It made perfect sense to me, all of it. It wasn’t black and white or even blue. The trees weren’t just trees. The rock beneath me wasn’t just a rock, because none of it mattered to me in the way it did before. It was information. Every smell, every sound—it all told me a story about what had been. I could smell Luther beside me and I could smell his presence here long ago. Maybe weeks ago. I could smell his fears and his concerns, even though I couldn’t mark them down to say what they were exactly. I just knew he was worried about something last time he was here. I knew so much more in this form than my human one. Things I never even thought I needed to know, like the obvious distance of that tree behind me to the other one.

I tuned my ear to the forest then to listen for my mother, but she was long gone. The only trace was a hint of her scent on the breeze. I didn’t know it before, but I could smell her—all my life I could smell the joy, but I just didn’t know I’d been smelling it. Now, it all made sense to me on a different level. I could even smell the difference between me and Luther, and I wondered how my dad had missed it: how did he not know I was half wolf all these years?

Then again, unless you were looking for it, you might just think I smelled different. No one would have guessed why. It could be for any reason. But once you knew, once you recognized the smell of a half-blood wolf, it was easy to pick up. That’s why Luther found it so easy, and why none of my pack knew until I told them. None of them had ever seen a half-blood before.

I turned my wolf head and fixed my eyes on Luther. I would say ‘looked’ at him, but it wasn’t like that. I didn’t need to see him to ‘see’ him. I fixed my eyes on him as a kind of statement. I wanted him to show me how to run like the other wolves—how to move through the forest without touching it.

He took off, and I got to my legs, feeling the strength and the force and the power not only within them, but beneath them. My paws were thick and heavy, and they didn’t feel the cold like my human feet did. They hit the snow with certainty, sinking lightly before finding footing on even the slipperiest surface.

I took off behind Luther, seeing the branches long before they became an obstacle. No matter how thick the brush or how low the beam I dodged it, running behind him as if I’d been doing this my entire life. I understood the joy then. I understood why my mom laughed so much after a run. I could feel the cold air move through my lungs and the heat of the speed ignite my limbs. I never wanted it to end. I could live in this form for the rest of my days and be completely happy.

Stepping away from my own thoughts then, I looked ahead to Luther, his slick black tail swinging cheerily behind him. I never understood how anyone could fall in love with him, but seeing him in wolf form I could now see how it was possible. Of all the wolves I’d seen run and play in the wild, either werewolf or natural wolf, I’d never seen anything like Luther. The first wolf. Son of Carne. I wanted to run beside him, but a part of me stepped up to say I had no right, so I quickly reminded that voice that I was his wife. I had every right. I was the only one in the pack that did.

He glanced at me as I pushed my shoulder against his, running at his speed, but he didn’t bite at me or growl. It made me feel included, accepted. We ran like that, as equals, for the longest time, never getting tired, taking in the night and the smells and the sounds, until we came to another steep drop and he stopped suddenly.

My sensitive nose took in the situation and assessed it. We were here for something. Luther had something he needed to do.

I hung back as he jumped up on a rock, placing two heavy paws on the edge and puffing his chest up as he measured the night. He looked majestic in that pose, royal, and I just wanted to be beside him.

Keeping my head low in respect, I jumped up beside him, looking down on the empire he’d built. Below, several wolves gathered in a clearing, more arriving by the minute. The darkness stepped aside down there for the brightest moonlight, reflecting off the snow and showing the remarkable coloring of each wolf: grays and blacks, champagne and patched coats, like my mom. We had a beautiful pack, and until now I’d never had the chance to truly appreciate that.

Luther took another slight step onto the edge and then sat down, angling his snout to the sky. I knew what this was. I knew that pose. His chest expanded and mouth narrowed as he let out a long, haunting howl.

I closed my eyes and sat down beside him, filling my lungs with air before letting it out in a deep, longing cry. Everything I’d felt, everything I’d suffered, everything I’d lost came out in that sound for all to hear, and the spirit in me felt like the moon heard. It felt like Carne would take that message from the moon. That he understood. That he would do something.

Below us, the pack joined the chorus and others from all around the forest and further into town called back, offering tales to the night that no other could understand. I felt unified, connected in a way I never had been before, and my whole heart knew it owed this to Luther. How could I ever look at him the same again?

I could feel the respect and adoration of my pack rising up in subtle pulses from below, and it wasn’t just aimed at Luther. They knew now. They saw me for what I truly was. Half wolf or not, I was one of them. I had been accepted back into the fold in the truest way. I was enriched by it.

Luther stopped howling then, his head shifting slightly as he looked to the outer rim of the gathering below. Then he pressed his shoulder to mine and jerked his head. My eyes followed. And there she was: grey and white, with a kind of gracefulness to her that instantly marked her as female. I wanted to call out to her. I wanted to dance around and say ‘Look at me, Mom! I’m a wolf!’ But she saw me. She knew.

Mom lowered herself into her front paws, tail down. It was a wolf show of respect, a bow. And as others noticed her, they too lowered themselves, until at last the entire pack bowed before us. Luther lowered one paw in a half bow, and I did the same, my heart racing in a unique way to what I was used to. I just wanted to yell out to Mom and tell her I was okay, that Luther wasn’t so bad and my life really wasn’t all that terrible, but something in the way she’d looked at me said she already knew that. I was in wolf form; how could I not be okay now? What else in this entire world mattered now?

When Luther rose beside me I did too, watching until the last of the pack had done the same. In the distance smoke from the great bonfire at the gathering fingered its way toward us, mingling with the icy air and making me think of marshmallows and melted chocolate. Luther didn’t strike me as a S’mores kinda guy, so I doubted we’d meet up for post-run snacks at dawn, and it wasn’t until now that I realized how much I missed that—even as a human, that part of the ritual had always been my favorite.

Luther turned away then and hopped down off the rock, leaving me alone up here, wondering if I should follow or stay put. But he stopped and looked back at me when he reached the thick tree line, as if he was waiting for me, so I leapt down and, with a bounce in my step, my whole body alive and overjoyed like a dog out on a walk, trotted to his side.

I’d seen it before, watched the wolves in my pack play and frolic, but when Luther opened his mouth as I approached him and lightly bit my shoulder, I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by it. Until he jumped up, linking his front paws around my neck and biting my ear. He wanted to play. How cute!

But I had no idea how to play—what the rules were. Any of them.

I thought back to when I’d watch my mom and dad play in wolf form. Mom would always lie on her side and let Dad tackle her first, the two rolling around on the ground. But they knew each other so well and nothing she could ever have done would offend Dad. But what if I bit Luther and wasn’t allowed to? Or if it was my duty as a wife to submit to him in play—to let him win? I had no idea, but then I’d never been a wolf before, and Luther knew that. Surely he’d go easy on me if I broke any rules.

I flopped down under Luther and made a sweet, playful growling noise. He must have played like this with wolves before, because he did exactly what Dad used to. It felt kind of tickly as he sunk his teeth into my fur and shook his head, trying to get a good chunk of skin up in his playful bite. I wasn’t going to let him, though. He was the alpha, but I wanted to be top dog tonight.

I rolled out from under him and rested my paw over his back, trying to push him down. He wouldn’t go. He was determined to prove his status against mine. Unfortunately for him, he’d bought himself a headstrong wolf, not a pussycat.

I leapt up a bit and placed both paws on his shoulders, forcing him into a roll as he swept around to get out of the submissive pose. As he landed on the ground, I tackled him, setting us into a tumbling battle for the alpha position. He was strong, and fast, but the cold air around us, the twigs sticking into my fur, and the smell of wet dirt and snow just made me feel more alive. Stronger than I ever had before. It was my first night in wolf form, but either Luther was going easy on me because of that, or I was equally as strong as him.

We came to a jolting stop in a ditch against a rock and I quickly assumed alpha position, all four paws over his body, pinning him down, my teeth in his neck. He yielded, panting heavily, and if I didn’t know better I would swear he was laughing. It was how I felt. I couldn’t actually laugh like a human laughs, but my mind, my skin and my lungs felt like they were.

Having established now that I was a better fighter than him—or maybe that he was kind enough to let me win on my first night—I backed off a bit, staying on top of him but releasing my bite. I could feel small pellets of fur all down my throat, but it didn’t bother me the way it did in human form.

In this darkness, the moon hiding beyond the canopy of trees, it felt like we were the only two wolves in the entire world. I fixed my eyes on his, lost in the oily blue depths of them. I could see my reflection a little there, not enough to see what color I was, but enough to know I was a lighter color with darker patches, like my mom.

Luther seemed to be studying something in my eyes, too—maybe his own reflection—but I couldn’t grasp the emotion that was coming off him. I needed to know him better first. I wanted to know him better.

And in that moment, as I felt a deep connection to him, he rolled out from under me and moved to sit a few feet away. I got up and sat on my haunches, looking at him. Thinking about him. I loved Luther in wolf form. I could easily fall for him thinking of him like that, and suddenly my life sentence here didn’t seem so awful.

He took off at a run then, a playful glint in his eye. I won the last round of Top Dog, but he wasn’t done proving himself, so I followed, eager to beat him again. As I charged through the forest, neither of us really trying to outrun the other, I finally understood the true meaning of frolic.

I finally understood what it felt like to be a wolf.

***

As I pulled on my dress and blue cloak again, Luther went deeper into the trees to Shed, and I couldn’t help but wonder about him. In that form, as a wolf, or as the kind man that gave me something so profound as the ability to turn, he was amazing. I mean, if I were out there in the real world, I would never even speak to a man that murdered people because a girl refused to marry him. And yet, in here, the rules didn’t seem to apply. Without much choice and in seeing a different side to him, I felt like maybe one day I could look past the bad and be in love with the good—maybe love the human Luther as well as the wolf. But, love as it may one day be, I’d never love him like I might have one day loved Alex. Ever. That was a different kind of love, not born out of necessity. It was real love.

I thought about the strange birds for a moment, and how far removed the wolf world felt in comparison. I once liked exploring different worlds, but found most of my mind-wandering these days was into the normal world, which I guess stemmed from being stuck here in another century. I mean, what was the deal with the regency era?

Theo’s explanation—that Luther was living a lie; that he never moved on past his true wife’s death and wanted to remain frozen in that time—didn’t make sense. I knew it was a lie because Theo said she died in childbirth when he was ten, but his sons Bayon and Aerik were born in the 1700s. Which means his mother died well before this time period.

There were too many lies surrounding this place, and none of them seemed necessary.

“Are you decent, Miss Redwood?” Luther called from the tree line.

“Yes.” I glanced over my shoulder to see him walk toward me. He did look good in those corny clothes, as much as I hated to admit it, and in the dawn light his blue eyes looked almost electric.

“What are you smiling at?” he asked.

“I don’t know what to make of you.”

“What to make of me?” He stood beside me, both of us overlooking the rising day.

“You’re not completely unlikable,” I confessed, and he laughed. “But I think maybe you’re insane.”

“Insane?” He jolted forward with disbelief, smiling. “Whatever makes you say that?”

“This whole different era thing is weird.” I presented my clothing as exhibit A. “Why do you make us live like this?”

Luther sighed, offering his gaze to the horizon as his hands went behind his back. “Do you truly want to know?”

“Yes.”

He glanced at me with eyes only, not moving his head, reading my face and taking it all into consideration. “What I am about to tell you stays between us.”

I nodded.

“Very well then.” He moved away from me and leaned against the rock, his back to the steep drop. He looked like a painting—one where you’d see a Beagle and a hunting rifle at the man’s side—his white high-waist pants and tall riding boots completing the picture. “I loved again—after my first wife Anora.”

“You did?”

“Yes. Anora died tragically in childbirth when Theowulf was just a boy, and though I married many times after that, I never truly classed any of them as my wives. Until I found Freya.”

“What was she like?”

“She was a lady. Kind, good-hearted and, as you may assume at this point, I knew her in a time when men were more civil than they are today. Or than they were in the time I was born, for that matter.”

“So, what?” I said, tucking my cloak in under my butt as I leaned on the rock beside him. “You’re saying your second wife lived in the early 1800s?”

“The second wife to take my name, my heart, yes,” he said sadly, swallowing hard. “And she died then, too.”

Right. So Theo didn’t lie. I just didn’t understand the whole truth as I do now. “Can I ask how she died?”

His jaw stiffened. “Childbirth.”

I rolled my eyes to a close. “I’m sorry.”

“It happens.” He stood up, gaining some distance. “It doesn’t have to make sense to you, April.” My heart skipped as he used my informal name. “This place—this estate—is a sanctuary for me to live in her memory. The world out there—” he lifted his arm high to present that world, dropping it weakly by his side after, as though it had defeated him, “—it’s a cruel place. She would not like it if she were alive today, and I do not like it either. I need a place to come home to where people are civil, where women are ladylike and where the meals served are a reflection of effort and study. I can no more live in that world out there than I can bear to live in this one without her, but at least, here, I feel her spirit with me.”

Wow. Sweet and romantic. Also insane. Someone should’ve given him grief counseling after she died. “How long were you together before… she…”

“Only two years, I fear.” He sighed, his whole body seeming to shrink for a brief moment before the alpha stepped up to claim it again.

“Is that why you haven’t… you know, slept with me yet? Are you afraid that will happen to me?”

“Far from it.”

“Oh.”

“I see no point in sharing your bed if we are not aiming to conceive, April. You do not love me and I do not love you,” he said harshly. “This is an arrangement; one that is supposed to benefit both parties.”

“And yet you keep me locked up.” I got to my feet. “I can’t have friends, see my family—”

“It is the way things are; how they have always been.”

“Why?”

“Property, my dear. You are and always will be, as every one of my wives before you, my property, and—”

“But we’re in a new world, like it or not. And I have rights. Marking me as your property it’s…” for lack of a better word, all I could come up with was, “barbaric.”

“Barbaric?” He turned his head so our eyes met, and something cold flashed under them that scared me, but he seemed to draw it away as if reminding himself to be civil. “Yes, I suppose it is, by modern standards. But there are things that can change and things that cannot. And you will do well to accept those quickly and move on.”

I sighed to myself. Winning him over was going to take a lot more work than I thought. How had this gone from deep-and-meaningful to spiteful-and-snappy in such a short time?

“I want you to be happy here,” he added, his face angled to the moon as it faded into the morning. “I see that you are not, and so I will arrange a gift for you.”

“A gift?”

His eyes moved on to mine. “I hope that it will keep me in your good graces until the time is right that we should complete our union and have a son.”

“When will that be?”

“When the runes give me a sign.”

If he was a normal guy and this was a normal situation, I would have stood next to him and asked what my gift was. But I kind of felt like he’d tell me to wait and see, like a good little submissive wife. He was equal parts kind and cold, and I was never sure which one was going to surface. In fact, I decided he mustn’t be a wolf at all; he was a bi-polar bear. Angry and mean yet cute and almost cuddly sometimes. Only, I’d seen enough documentaries to know that if you tried to cuddle a polar bear, you might lose your arm. And Theo’s warning came to mind then: “Do not seek to ‘whatever’ his affection”. I don’t know. However he put it, all formal and old-sounding, he warned me not to try to win Luther over. I was smart enough to take that advice on board and wait until Luther was ready.

Part Three: Chapter Four

Lady and the Slave

Luther’s second wife had a lot to answer for. Well, her era did. I felt insanely sorry for the girls that grew up then, with no comfy underwear and stupid fur-lined puffs—that were like carrying around a cylindrical pillow with openings on both ends—to keep their hands warm. They were cute in theory, but not at all practical, and so once I was dressed and ready to go on my morning walk my modern era got the better of me. I changed into jeans and my red coat, regretting that decision as soon as my suede boots went inches deep into the powdery snow and it chilled my calves through my soft denim jeans. Despite being uncomfortable, Luther’s stupid regency clothes were better designed for this weather than jeans and suede boots. But it was too late; I was outside now and I wasn’t going back up to change.

The day was strangely beautiful under the chilling frost, even the sticky clumps of ice that clung to my knees and my sleeve just looked pretty today. If I didn’t pinch myself I’d have thought I was lost in one of Alex Plain’s odd worlds.

From a window in the east tower above me I could sense a pair of eyes looking down. I wasn’t sure who was watching, so I figured it was a good idea to play my role—be the ladylike epitome of the alpha wife Luther wanted, in case it was he watching. I just hoped he didn’t notice my modern clothing.

“Katy!” I demanded loudly. “Slave girl. What is wrong with you? Hurry up.”

Katy giggled to herself, trudging through the snow behind me with a picnic basket. She was such a sweet girl, and a hard worker. I could see a better life for her beyond these walls, if I could only get her out of here. I wanted to help carry the basket, or at least the picnic rug, but the old fashioned standards would have none of that so we trudged along, freezing but fresh, as if we weren’t friends at all but Lady and Slave.

We found a tree in the rear estate gardens, its boughs large enough to trap the snow before it could reach the ground, leaving it dry in a large circle around the thick, coarse trunk. Katy laid the picnic rug, the china and the teacake out, while I stood holding my beanie, taking in the darkish day. With heavy clouds overhead threatening a storm, the frozen pond in front of me, the snow capping on the trees and the frosty carpet, had all taken on a kind of blue hue. It was quiet, too, as if no one was around for miles. Which lent the illusion of being closed in, like sitting up talking late at night; it made me feel safe.

In spring these gardens would be so colorful. I was looking forward to seeing what flowers grew here on the sticks and twigs left behind by the blossoms. Not that I was much of a garden person, but with little else to look at from my window but a blanket of white snow and dense forest, it would be nice to see some bright greens and reds and even yellows.

“Tea is served, Miss Redwood.”

I turned around and put my cold hands into my pockets, shuffling my way over.

“Not so fast,” Katy warned, pointing to my shoes.

“Oh. Sorry.” I flicked the crystals of snow off before I stepped onto the rug, then sat down, taking the delicate floral teacup and the brass spoon to stir my sugar in. Tea needed a lot of sugar. I started drinking coffee six months ago, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to the watery dullness of tea.

As I laid the spoon down on the saucer, the liquid gathered in the curve of it, gold and thin, it got me thinking.

“Is he afraid we’ll steal it?”

“Steal what?”

“The silverware.” I nodded at the brass spoon.

She looked confused. “We don’t have silverware. Only brass and gold.”

“Why aren’t we using gold then? I’m the alpha wife. Shouldn’t I be using his finest?”

“His Lordship only uses gold for parties. Real fancy stuff.”

So many elegant pictures came to mind, all sparkling and pretty. “I need to attend one of those parties, Katy,” I said, sipping my tea. “Which wives did he take to parties in the past?”

“The last one, Miss Cooper. But he locked her away after she gave birth to a girl.”

“What?” I almost spat my tea out. “So he does have daughters?”

Katy nodded, not meeting my eyes.

“Where are they all? And why did he lock her away for having a girl?”

“To punish her.”

“As if the gender was her fault?”

“It was her fault, Red.”

“How so?”

“’Cause she made the choice—”

“Choice?”

“She chose not to have a son to spite him. It’s always up to the woman.”

“No way!” I put my tea down. “Don’t you know anything about science?”

“Science?” she said, confused.

“It has nothing to do with the mother’s desires. The sex of the child is determined by the father.”

“No.” She shook her head, lowering her teacup to the saucer.

“Yes.” I shuffled closer. “We have an egg with the X chromosome, and the father has sperm with either an X or a Y, giving the child a gender—”

“No, it’s a ritual. The whole process. He knows when the time is right, and if the woman wants it, her child will be born a boy.”

I laughed. This whole place was ridiculous. Stuck in the past! I wanted to punch some sense into that man and everyone he’d tainted with stupidity. How could we, a powerful and noble pack, have let him rule for so long?

But then again, he didn’t rule, did he? He had others do it for him, while he lived the high life of parties and daily breeding rituals.

“Katy, let me tell you this for certain: no matter what lies Luther tells you, it is completely up to nature what gender the child will be born. Never the mother’s will.”

Her wide eyes seemed stuck to mine for a moment. When they shifted, she looked almost apologetic.

“Argh.” I sat back against the tree, folding my arms. “I hate this place.”

“It’s not so bad—”

“No, it is.” I just wanted to cry. It was so frustrating to be around people that had never been taught any better. She bought what Luther had sold her, everyone here did, and since he kept them all locked away from the real world none of them would ever question him. I once wanted so badly to evaporate and live in one of Alex Plain’s story worlds, and now I’d give anything to live in the real world again—away from all this crazy.

“Katy?” I said quietly.

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to live here anymore.”

“Did you ever?” She smiled.

“No.” I smiled back but it withered away. “I only came because of the stories.”

“Stories?”

“About Luther killing the family of the girl who tried to back out of their contract.”

“Oh.” Katy nodded, casting her eyes downward. “I’ve heard that one.”

I nodded. “I wish I could go home. I wish that every day.”

“But if you went home, who would I talk to?”

“I know.” I sat up and took the hand she offered me. “But I miss Alex.”

“And his story worlds?”

“Yeah.” I laughed to myself, nodding. “I miss the way he made me feel; you know, like anything in the world is possible.”

“I can’t even imagine feeling like that.”

“I wish you could.” I let go of her hand. “Don’t you feel that way with Theo?”

“With Theo?” Her eyes narrowed in confusion.

“He loves you, right? Won’t he take you away from here one day?”

“Not likely.” She laughed, shaking her head. She busied herself with food preparation then, as if she meant to leave it there. Until she thought better of it. “He can’t love me, Red. Even if he does, he can never say it, and we can never truly be together.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m a slave. I was born into slavery and I’ll die a slave too.”

“Katy, if he loves you, Theo will never let that happen.”

“But he will.” She poured me another tea. “He has no choice. His father will never allow him to love a human, a slave nonetheless, so what hope is there?”

I grinned. “Love makes anything possible, Katy.”

“Does it?”

“It does.” I sipped my fresh tea. “Just wait and see. One day, Theo will do something to prove his love. They call it a grand gesture, and his grand gesture might just be to sweep you up and run away with you—far from here.”

“And what about you? What will you do without us?”

“You won’t worry about that,” I said. “Because I won’t let you. There’s your life and there’s mine, and just because I signed up for a lifetime of misery, that doesn’t mean you should have to as well.”

“We’re friends, Red. We’re in this together.”

I shook my head. She could say what she wanted, but if it came to the crunch I would not let her stay here because of me.

***

The early morning arrival of the old green delivery truck marked this as another Sunday. A whole week and two days had gone by since my run with Luther and, so far, I was starting to wonder if the gift he said he had for me was just more time as a virgin.

In my time here, I’d become pretty familiar with all the sounds, the comings and goings of wolf and animal and person alike; the birds on the feeder in the garden at six in the morning, the padded sound of voices after a heavy snow, and the scraping of shovels on ice to allow cars up the driveway. But I’d never heard the delivery truck stop outside the front of the mansion.

I threw my covers back and ran to the window just in time to see Luther take a large box from the driver and thank him, then he ducked away under the entrance and I didn’t see what he took. Something told me that might be this elusive gift I was just thinking about.

I darted into the bathroom and pinched my cheeks, tidying my hair quickly before I leapt back out to my room and climbed into bed as if I’d never gotten up. Sure enough, Luther burst in a second later. His two henchmen stayed out in the hall and I was glad when he shut the door on their harsh faces.

“Are you awake?” he said, but it was obvious I thought.

I stretched sleepily and looked at him, squinting in the bright light. “Good morning.”

“I have something for you,” he said, but before he got to tell me what it was I smelled it.

“A puppy!” My covers flew back so fast that they came off the other side of my bed. I ran to the box and snatched it from Luther’s arms, laying it carefully on the floor. Inside, as I drew the cardboard flaps apart, a tiny, almost pathetic ball of fluff looked timidly up at me, whimpering. He had a white chest and paws, and a small dash of white on the right side of his nose, but the rest of him was a mix of beige and black, tiny hints of orange around one eye and in patches over his back. He was so small he fit in the palms of my hands, his fur wiry and scraggly, but he was so trusting.

“I had him sent over from the shelter. He was the runt of his litter—abandoned by his mother, they say.”

“He’s beautiful,” I said, accepting his wet kisses all over my chin and neck. He whimpered, nuzzling into me, and my heart just grew three times larger. “I love him. Thank you, Luther.”

“You are very welcome.” He squatted down with us, but didn’t touch the puppy. He looked cute squatting, very human and more from this time. I liked him like this. “I know you’re unhappy, April, but I want you to know that I am willing to try, at least, to see that you live a good life here. And if that means putting up with a rancid smell, then so be it.”

I smiled up at him, basking in the warmth of the little guy on my chest.

“Just do not walk it around the manor, and if I call you to my bedchamber, be sure to shower first.”

“I will.”

“Good.” He stood up, rubbing the grossness of a dog into his hands. “And another thing.”

I looked up to the changed tone of voice.

“If you think for a second that I did not see you outside in the common attire of your modern time the other day, you are wrong. This is your final warning, April.”

“Can you call me Red please? I hate being called April.”

“Did you just listen to a single thing I said?” he asked, a slight smile on his face.

“Yep. Got it. No more jeans.”

“April,” his tone commanded my attention. “This is not a joke. No more modern attire, or I will have you flogged. Do I make myself clear?”

“As a bell.”

“The correct response is ‘Yes, husband’.”

“Yes, husband,” I said distractedly, giving all my attention to the adorable little puppy as he jumped from my arms, eager to explore his new world.

“Good. See that you remember that.” Luther backed away and without prompting his goons, they opened the door for him. A larger box slid into the room then and Luther toed it. “Supplies,” he said.

The door closed and I crawled over to inspect the box, since I couldn’t be bothered getting up to walk. My new canine friend came complete with a bowl, but no food, a brush, some dog shampoo and a towel, and a square of fake grass on a tough plastic tray thing. I studied it for a moment, reading the name on the packaging: The Doggy Doody?

Oh. Right. I understood. I decided to put that one in the bathroom, then I took his bowl and filled it with water, placing it down by the bedroom door. The puppy followed me around the room as I worked to set things up, stumbling and tripping over his giant paws. I could tell he’d be a big dog one day, but he had a lot of growing to do until then, and I would be here to love him and squeeze him and snuggle him the whole way through. They say dogs can live for about fifteen years, and since Luther took a new bride every twenty years, I hoped this little guy would be around for at least as long as I would.

He whined then, pawing at my bare foot. I bent down and scooped him up, my whole world brighter and warmer suddenly. “What shall we call you, huh?”

The name Alex came to mind, but I needed to forget Alex. I’d never see him again and I didn’t want to say his name every day, and yet a big part of me wanted to honor my friendship with him and the love for my mom by using their names for my new best friend. But who would call a dog Mom? Or Mom Alex? Or Alex Mom? Or Malex?

The puppy had a scruffy, kind of street-smart look to him. He needed a doggy type name, a kind of cute but sassy name I decided, but what?

I held him up in the air to get a good look at him. “What’s your name, little guy? You’re not an Alex, are you? And Mom isn’t a good name for a dog. But what can I make out of Mom and Alex?” I said those two names to myself again and again until my mind put the two in the air in front of me, and split them apart like ‘Mom and Alex’, and I saw it. MoM And AleX.

M. A. and X.

“Max! Hey, Max.” I rolled him onto his back and cuddled him like a baby, my hand warm on his belly, like a fluffy glove. “You are the best thing that’s happened to me since I came here, Max.”

Part Three: Chapter Five

The Archetype of a (Not So) Bad Prince

Katy was busy, and Max yelped every time he was more than a foot away from the fireplace, so I took to the fresh air and the morning chill alone. And because I was appreciative of Luther’s sweet gift, I decided to follow his rules today—sort of—and wore the hundred stupid layers of regency clothing, but added my warm red coat to it. I still passed as a Jane Austen character, so when I spotted Luther playfully crossing swords with a man in the garden I walked over to watch, rather than panicking and hiding behind a tree. It was about darn time I got to know my husband better. I had grand parties in mind and some semblance of a decent life to live—both of which required that my husband actually like me. There was good in Luther, after all. I’d seen it. I mean, he bought me a puppy, how bad could he be? So, I decided, it was my job to draw the good Luther out of him. It was my job to walk over and say hello.

In the soundproof inch of snow around us, Luther’s grunts and roars as he danced back and forth with his opponent didn’t reach my ears until I stood by a park bench closer to the cleared circle around them. They made a dizzying spectacle of themselves, getting all sweaty and breathing heavily, even in loose shirts gaping open at the chest. Their swords were thin and light, with elaborate gilded hilts that shielded their hands, making high pinging sounds as they connected across the divide. It was beautiful, the entire scene. One of my favorite movies, The Count of Monte Cristo, had become so because of the sword fighting, and standing here in this time hop, watching it happen live, I started to wonder if my hair might be messy or my cheeks too pink from the cold. He’d finish soon, and then he’d walk back over to where his jacket lay neatly on the bench and I’d get a chance to talk to him. To be in his presence.

If someone had told me last month that I might one day be standing here worrying if I looked pretty enough to impress my alpha, I’d have flicked them in the ear and laughed. Suddenly, the old feelings I had for Alex held nothing in comparison to this, and I felt silly for thinking I loved him.

Luther won the round and left his skilled opponent clutching the scrape on his arm as he walked away, a victorious grin sweeping his lips up and revealing all of his teeth. He threw his sword to the ground and started unrolling his sleeves as he approached, and I stepped back so he could get to the bench without asking me to move.

I liked his hair that way—messed and curled with the damp of exertion—hanging in his eyes a little. It made him seem younger, maybe by a century or two.

He stood by the bench and put on his vest and coat, not giving me so much as a glance, then he sat down and laughed once to himself, shaking his head as he relived each glorious strike in his own mind.

“Hello,” I said, trying to decide if my hands should go in my coat pockets or by my sides, or maybe folded. I opted for propping them behind my back, then thought better and let them hang loosely by my sides.

Luther looked up at me, a thin ray of white sun making his face bright, reminding me of his wolf form and the way the moonlight lit his fur. His dark lashes narrowed around interesting eyes, reading this moment of silence between us and converting it to thoughts, opinions maybe.

“You are bold, girl.” He slid sideways to make room for me. “I will give you that.”

I sat down on the very edge of the seat, my knees turned slightly to face him. “What’s so bold about saying hello to my husband?”

“Our marriage is a formality,” he said. “I am not, by any definition, your partner in this life and therefore I do not owe you so much as a greeting. You know this.”

Gosh, could he make it any more impossible to like him? I was starting to feel like a bi-polar bear: I like him; I don’t. I like him; I don’t. Sheesh. “Well… you say that now, but… you kind of have to be my partner in at least one thing.”

“And what, pray tell, is that?”

“Making babies,” I stated, raising one brow. “Unless you plan to do that alone, too.”

He cracked a half smile and released a short puff of laughter through his nose.

Satisfied that I’d reached him in some way, again, I sat back beside him and folded my arms, taking in the mile-high trees framing the garden and the block of ice that was once a pond.

Luther’s hand came up in my periphery then and he pinched the sleeve of my coat. “What is this?”

“It’s cold, Luther,” I reasoned. “I know it’s not your style, but I hate walking out here in those scanty jackets, freezing my butt off.”

He hadn’t expected me to be so defensive, I could tell from the way he flinched and averted his eyes. “I am sorry. It did not occur to me that you would require clothes for walking in winter.”

“Did you expect me to stay indoors all year?”

“As all my previous wives have preferred, yes.” He nodded, smiling. “But I shall order the dressmaker to return and design something warmer, if it would please you.”

“I’d appreciate that. And a pair of gloves.” I stuffed my hands in my pockets.

“You do not have your—” he stretched his hand apart to shape my muff, as if he couldn’t think of the name. “Your muff?”

“Those things suck.”

Luther laughed, his sharp teeth showing in the cute half-smile. “Very well then. Gloves.”

“Thank you.” I nodded once, satisfied. “So does that mean that I can wear my coat around until the dressmaker delivers my new warm clothes?”

He didn’t want to say yes—given that it was against his rules—but he spat it out, reluctantly. Coldly. Which I knew was because, though he had his rules and his ways, deep down inside he was good. He had to be.

In the awkward silence that followed, the cold vibe extended past his words and rested between us on the seat, making me feel like I should leave. I made myself stay—to fight through it to reach him. I would spend my life here with him, and I was certain we could at least be friends. Not master and property. Like with Theo. I still respected him enough to obey him—most of the time—but we could still laugh and talk and make jokes with each other.

But to build a bridge with Luther, it wasn’t enough for me to look past the hard exterior and see how good looking he was, or how his eyes crinkled when he smiled, and how warm it made his whole face. He needed to see that in me. I needed to figure out a way to make him attracted to me, to care about me. To relate to me. And yet he was stuck in the 1800s. How could he ever relate to me?

He did say once that he hated that world out there—that it was a cruel place. Maybe people had been unkind to him. That, I could relate to. But how would I get that message across?

“I can feel you thinking, April,” he said, keeping his eyes on the empty trees across from us, a hint of amusement coloring his tone.

“And what do you think I’m thinking?”

His restrained smile tried to creep out again. He flicked his eyes sideways onto me for a split second and then allowed the smile to warm his face. “Others have tried before you. They have never been successful—for long.”

“At what?”

“Winning my favor.”

Well, they weren’t me. I had ways of making him like me. I just had to… figure them out. “But why? Why won’t you let yourself love anyone? You might actually enjoy it.”

“There is little to be enjoyed with love, April. You are mortal. I am not…”

“And if you fall in love, you eventually lose that person.” I nodded to myself. That would certainly be enough to make me avoid love. “Well, what about being friends?”

His eyes moved onto me again, this time lit with curiosity—the kind he obviously tried to reason away in his mind.

“I mean, life can suck sometimes, right?” I offered. “People can suck. But what if you had one close friend that you could tell anything, and she would never judge you for it?”

I’d reached him. Bingo! I saw the idea move in through his ears and trigger something inside of him that stretched out, connecting with me. “And what if this friend were to hate me for the things I told her?”

“What if she made a promise not to?” I used the smile in my eyes to make them sparkle. “Ever.”

Luther’s jaw tightened. He rolled his chin down and drew a long breath through his nose. I watched, waiting for his reply as he unfastened the gold button on his blue coat and parted it, revealing the intricate details of his nineteenth century vest and high-waisted pants. He drew out a pocket watch and checked the time, flipping the case closed and dropping it into a small pocket in his vest after.

“It’s time for my walk.” He stood.

I sighed despondently, regretting that missed opportunity to connect with him. It would be another lonely few days before I saw him again, I figured, and I dreaded it deeply; dreaded the loneliness and the isolation. Dreaded not progressing with my husband. Until I saw his hand, palm up.

“Would you care for a walk, Miss Redwood?”

I placed my small, cold hand in his and stood up cheerily. “I’d be delighted, Mr. Reave.”

As we walked in each other’s company Luther didn’t talk about his problems, but he did stroll along beside me in anticipated delight as I told him of the story worlds I’d written about in my room. He didn’t care much for the modern details of those worlds, but he liked the idea of being someplace else. And I liked that he liked that.

“It sounds as if you might one day have made a marvelous writer,” he offered, stopping beside a bushy tree, its naked friends clothed in snowflakes beside it.

“I still could,” I suggested carefully, and when Luther didn’t immediately reject the idea my heart leapt with hope. Until he crushed it.

“I cannot allow that, April. I am sorry.”

“Why not?”

“Because you are my wife, and wives do not… it is not ladylike to work.”

Oh boy. And I thought for a moment that he could be reasonable. Maybe it would just take more time. “But you will ‘allow’ me to write as a hobby?”

“I will,” he said with a nod, moving both hands behind his back as he stepped under the boughs and out of the lint-like snow.

Well, I sighed to myself, it was better than nothing. For now. Small battles, right? “Would you like to read one sometime?”

Luther looked right into my eyes then: not the Luther whose heart was broken and lost in another century, but the Luther who had never been stuck there to begin with. “I would. Very much so.”

I smiled. He smiled too. And I liked that he smiled.

“What?” he said, sweetly nervous as he took in my expression.

“You have a nice smile,” I offered, heart fluttering as my eyes went to the right corner of his mouth, deeply indented to form a sort of shadowy inlet. There was personality there—maybe even a modern personality—and I wanted to know more about it.

The smile grew, showing teeth shyly for just a moment before he tightened it again, revealing a much younger version of the alpha wolf—like maybe he really was only twenty-five. Not a few thousand years old. Or like maybe he was at college studying drama, and had a knack for seventh-century prince archetypes.

“Well,” he said shyly, looking down at his boots for a moment before meeting my eyes again. “I won’t say I haven’t been told that before, but, strangely, it has not mattered to me in years. So… thank you.”

His words warmed my icy cheeks, and my lip flooded with blood as I bit it, feeling my eyes shine. The red coat, his blue coat, and the cyan glow of a dark day on snow painted a strong image in my mind of us standing here under the tree. It captured itself as a memory, and I knew that no matter what grew between us, I would always think of this as that sweet moment I saw the real Luther. I would hold on to that, as tight as I could.

“We should get back.” He cast his eyes downward from my prying gaze and seemed to grow smaller in front of me. “A storm is on the way.”

The sky gave no indication of such, but then Luther was a much older wolf than anyone alive today, and I knew to just trust it when a wolf said the weather was changing. I couldn’t feel it myself, but I could feel the strange tingle of dread coming from Luther.

“Will you come back to my room—read one of my stories?” I asked, and a part of me actually wanted him to. On one side, the strategizing me was testing the waters and mapping out this future where I was on his arm, not locked away; and on the other side, the stupid, malleable young girl inside me was trying to fall for him—despite how deeply evil she knew he was. If the stories weren’t enough—marrying little girls, killing families—the ‘something’ about him screamed it from the mountains. So when he agreed to return to my room, I was filled with an equal mix of dread and excitement.

***

He was in my room. I couldn’t believe it. He, who I had grown up hearing about, wondering about. He, who I had dreamed about ever since my parents and I decided I would be put forth for Selection. He, who I had married and still knew nothing about. He was in my room, right across from me at the marble dining table, flipping through page after page of my first ever novel.

A breath of consideration lifted his chin and he looked at me, slowly closing the final page over. “You have had no formal training?”

I shook my head.

“Speak when you are spoken to,” he demanded harshly.

“Um…” My voice croaked because I hadn’t used it in so long. “Um, no. Only what I learned at school.”

Luther laid the handwritten novel flat on the table and sat back, pushing it gently away with two fingers.

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked, sliding it closer to me. It still smelled like him—an ancient scent of lavender and roughly cut sandalwood mixed with paper and ink. “Don’t you like it?”

“Just the opposite, in fact.” A fist sat at the entrance of his mouth, narrowed eyes sitting on my face. “You have quite a talent, April.”

I couldn’t help but smile.

“You can wipe that look off your face,” he said, standing up. “It means nothing. It can mean nothing. Talent or none, you will never publish a book.”

But the look didn’t wipe off my face. Not even a little bit. Luther could never understand. I was young. Modern young. And so I had an aurora of hope and possibility teeming around me like a second soul from the day I was born. Nothing was ever impossible. Not if it was true: if my little book was actually good.

He jumped involuntarily when he looked to find me suddenly at his side, loose sheets of paper in hand. I didn’t wait, or ask, I just threw my arms around his neck and hugged him. “Thank you.”

“Why are you thanking me?” he asked, trying to pry me away. “In fact, why are you embracing me? I just told you no.”

“Yes, but you also said you liked it.” I finally let go and took a step back, eyes going to his chest—to where I felt the solidity under my body as I’d hugged him. He worked out. He had a very good physique, and that malleable girl inside of me got a sudden and very raw rise of adult emotions—like nothing I’d ever felt. Primal urges. The kids at the bonfire talked about it—the attraction of wolf to wolf. Of wolf to alpha. It was real. And it was awesome.

Luther exhaled heavily and shut his eyes, shaking his head.

“What is it?” I put the novel down, stepping in to him to feel that… pressure again. “What’s wrong?”

His hand lifted slowly to my shoulder, moving down smoothly over the length of my arm. “You are a remarkably sweet girl, April.”

I took that to mean I was in his favor, but I wasn’t going to push it by making him aware of it just yet. It had to be a secret—even from him. If I pointed it out, it’d be like he was standing on a rope over a cliff and then suddenly realized he was afraid of heights. He could not be made aware that he was falling for me.

“You know, I kinda think you’re pretty sweet too,” I offered instead.

Wrong thing to say. He whipped his hand back and cold eyes opened in place of the warm ones, that bi-polar bear surfacing again. “This has gone too far.”

“What has?” I asked, eyes pleading as he backed away.

“This is why I cannot be friends with my wives, April.” He opened the door. “I cannot allow this.”

“Allow what?”

“Take this as a warning, Miss Redwood.” He stalked briskly closer, leaning so it looked as though he towered over me, his eyes and voice like the cold edge of a knife. “If you make another attempt to win my heart, to so much as even befriend me, I will have you tied naked in the courtyard and flogged. Do I make myself clear?”

I tried to speak, but only a squeak came out. In the bathroom Max barked loudly, sensing the same awful tension in the air that I could feel. I just nodded instead, about to cry, and covered my mouth as Luther left my room, slamming the door.

Part Three: Chapter Six

Now You Can Fly

When another near-full moon came around, there was only one person I trusted to look after Max while I was out on my run. He probably didn’t need a sitter, but I wasn’t willing to risk getting on Luther’s bad side when Max chewed up the toilet seat again.

Luther, apparently, wouldn’t be coming with me this time, and I’d have the two ugly henchman on my tail, literally, so I wasn’t free to run anywhere I wanted; and yet there was something so profoundly freeing about being in wolf form that none of it mattered to me. Not tonight.

When I came out from my closet, Max and Theo were still lying on the floor where I’d left them, playing like two puppies. Theo wasn’t a dog person last month, but I think Max had managed to convert him.

“Has my father come to see you?” Theo said, picking Max up to cuddle him. He bit Theo’s hand playfully, giving it all he had, but was still no match for the wolf.

“No. Why?”

“His previous wife Anne is due to have her last child any day now. Once it’s born, he will call you to his bedchamber to complete the union.”

“Great,” I said sarcastically, sitting down on my bed. “Just when I was starting to think he hated me enough to never touch me.”

Once, I feared the completion of our union, but now I saw it as a way to get closer to Luther again, to at least be in the same room as him. I just wasn’t sure I could forgive him for threatening to flog me, though—for meaning it. My head was still spinning from our last moment spent together, and as much as I looked forward to that intoxicating feeling of the primal connection I’d felt that day, my feelings were still a bit raw and hurt. Despite that, and as messed up as it was, I knew I needed to forgive him and try to find a way to love him for the sake of my future.

“It had to happen sometime, Red.” He put Max down and laughed a bit when the heavy paws spread too far apart on the slippery floor, taking Max down with them. “But, for what it’s worth, I think you won him over.”

Yeah, for, like, two minutes. And what good did it do me? As soon as he realized we were getting along, he fled. “How does winning him over make anything better?”

“Because he hasn’t cared for someone since Freya. I know he told you about her.”

“That was the wife from the time period we’ve all been stuck in since she died, right?”

“The very same.” He smiled, reflective. “Maybe you can change his heart, Red—bring him into this century.”

“What if I don’t want to?” Anymore.

“It would be in your best interest to try.”

“But you told me not to try to win his affections.”

“And yet you seem to have done just that.” He motioned to the puppy, as though he was proof.

I sighed, offering Max my silk slipper when he came to my foot. He chewed on it a few times and then laid down, head on his paws, exhausted. “He threatened to strip me naked and flog me if I tried,” I told Theo.

He cleared his throat, an awkward silence dangling in the air. “Right. Uh…”

“You don’t need to say anything. Just forget I told you.”

“You would do well to take your own advice, Red. He won’t hurt you. He has had plenty of opportunities to punish you for insubordination, and yet he has not taken action. Perhaps you frightened him—connected him to emotions he has not felt in a century,” he suggested, and he was dead right. That’s exactly what had happened. But that didn’t make it okay. “Now, on a more joyful note, where will you run tonight?”

“Wherever the goons let me.”

“Goons?” He laughed.

“Flotsam and Jetsam.” I jerked my head to the door, as though they were out here, even though they weren’t. Yet. “Why won’t Luther run with me tonight?”

“He’s a private man. He prefers to keep this time sacred.”

I guess I could understand that, especially since he’d been forced to show me a more vulnerable side of himself when he cried in agony as he turned last time. “Does that happen to you?”

“What?”

“Do you Shed?”

“Yes.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Do your sons Shed?”

“No.”

I bit my lip. “So... will my sons?”

A flash of sadness flickered in his eyes for a brief moment. “I do not know. You are mortal, so most likely they will not, but one can never be certain.”

I lay back on the bed, sprawling out. “I don’t want to have children if that’s going to happen to them.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

“I do,” I said passively, studying the details in the ceiling. “Luther can’t force me.”

“He can, Red. And it wouldn’t be the first time.”

“What!”

He shook his head, sighing. “Look, you are his wife. He won’t tolerate disobedience. At the very least, if you threaten his bloodline by refusing to reproduce, he can threaten people you love.”

Yep, then there was that. I sighed too. “My life sucks, Theo.”

“Yes,” he said, standing above me with Max in his arms. “But tonight it doesn’t have to—just for a while.” Theo grabbed my hand and made me get up. “Now go,” he added. “I’ve given up my night in wolf form so you can run and forget everything for a while, not so we can stand around talking about the inevitable.”

His kind face softened a little more when I smiled at him. “Thanks, Theo.”

“Any time, my darling stepmother.”

I laughed, putting on my bine-rune and giving Max’s head a rub before I left.

***

A post-run morning felt like how Mom described a hangover. I groaned when Katy came in, cursed the Sunday delivery, and pulled the covers back over my head. Tonight would be the last phase of the full moon, another chance to run, but right now I felt like I could easily sleep through it.

I stuck my finger in my mouth, feeling the furry sensation, and groaned, recalling the taste of the rabbit I ate last night. It seemed like a great idea at the time. Now, I just felt dirty. And kind of murderous.

“Come on, up we get.” Katy whacked my leg through my covers, bustling about my room. “Time to be human.”

Even Max didn’t agree. He lifted his head only enough to growl at her as she tried to shoo him off the bed.

“His Lordship will expect you to be on your best behavior today. There’s talk he may call on you tonight—if he decides to stay at the mansion.”

“What?” I sat up, cold with that sudden waking.

“Mm-hm.” She nodded, opening my curtains. “On account of Miss Cooper having had her babe last night. A girl, poor thing.”

“What’s wrong with it being a girl?”

“His Lordship don’t like the girls, Red. Remember? Everyone knows that.”

“Oh, right.” I pouted. That poor baby. “Katy, what happens with the baby gir—”

We both started at the hard knock on my door then. Katy, hand over her thumping heart, laughed as she opened it. A stony man with a big nose stood there. I took it by his weird suit and the high angle of his chin that he was the butler. He pushed a brass tray into the room and Katy took a letter from the top, closing the door after.

“What is it?”

“Mail.” She handed it to me, leaping out of her skin when I flew off the bed to snatch it.

“It’s from my mom!” I ripped it open, tearing the top as I did. When I drew it from the envelope, I had to hold the torn bit of paper back on awkwardly to read the first words:

April,

I want to tell you that I’m fine—that I haven’t missed you and this house isn’t empty and hollow now that you’re gone—but that would be a lie. I know you miss me too and I know I should be telling you to be strong, so be strong. I’m happy that you’re happy.

I got the letter Luther sent; he told me you’re doing fine. That he got you a dog! So I know you’re happy now, if not before.

I’m doing fine too. Aside from missing you. I just started a new job at the local hospital, so no more long commute every day. Yay! I work with a lot of old people, but they’re so calm and sometimes so reflective. I feel like I’ve learned a lot about life in just the past few weeks there.

It’s hard to believe you’ve been gone for two months.

They told me not to write you for the first few months, but they have allowed it on this one occasion due to the circumstances. I’m not just writing to tell you I love you, April. I saw Alex in the churchyard yesterday.

My heart skipped a beat. I could picture his face so clearly now after seeing his name written down, but it shattered when I read the next words:

I’m sorry, sweetie. George died.

“No.” I dropped the letter, my flesh going cold all over my body. I didn’t need to read the rest. I didn’t want an explanation or a reason, and yet I felt I knew already. The seizures. The seizures took him.

The rage and sadness built up inside of me until it made my fingers into fists. I ran for my bed and buried my face in the pillows, gasping for air as the weight of the news bore down on me, crushing my lungs.

“Red, are you all right?” Katy asked.

I couldn’t get the words out. Alex’s face kept flashing into my head, as if all these months forgetting what he looked like had damaged my brain, and now it was all I could see. Poor Alex. How could George have left him like that? How could he get through this without me?

I needed to be there. I just needed to be with him right now, and there was nothing in this world that could make that happen.

As I bawled my eyes out into the pillow, I heard Katy pick up the scraps of paper and then gasp. A second later, she climbed onto the bed beside me and put her arm across my back.

“I’m so sorry, Red. This is awful news.”

***

After a while, my pillow wet and my toes numb with cold, Max’s heavy paws pressed the backs of my legs and he scampered up my body and sat on my butt, making me laugh for a moment. And in that moment, as I forgot my pain, I remembered the strange birds again.

“He can fly, you know?” I told Katy.

“George?”

“Yes.” I rolled over, much to Max’s disgust, and wiped my cheeks as I got up. Outside the day could not have been grayer, as if maybe it was crying for George too. But there, swallowing the sky in a black flock, birds gathered over the sun.

Maybe it was a sign. Maybe it was a random occurrence—just birds out hunting. But if Alex had taught me anything, it was to take the randomness of life and find the magic in it. No, to believe the magic in it.

George became just a memory for me the day I left. I knew I would never see him again, but somehow, knowing he was no longer in this world was more unbearable than knowing I’d never see him again; and yet somehow, knowing where he went made me feel lighter.

I ran to my desk and took out my inkpot and two quills, meeting Katy by the window and handing her one. We didn’t say a word to each other then. I put my wrist against the wall and drew a bird, and Katy did the same, both of us working in companionable silence until the morning sun sat higher in the gray sky. Each bird I drew, for me, was a memory I had of George—bringing a smile as I left it there on the wall, a permanent reminder of a life that once was.

George was gone now, but he still mattered to me. Alex still mattered, and I hoped that I still mattered to them. I wanted to go to Alex and tell him that I was sorry—I wanted to remind him that George could fly. That he never had to come back to the ugly world again. And that was a very small consolation to be taken from such a tragic death, I know. George could have had a good life and I hated my thoughts for trying to find any positive in this. Truth be told, there were none. None at all.

“Do you really believe it?” Katy asked, laying her quill down and wiping her inked hands on her apron.

“Believe what?”

“That George is with the strange birds now?”

I wanted to, but as I walked to the windowsill and looked outside, the tears of truth blinded me for a moment. I had no idea where George was. Those worlds were only stories, and they all seemed so far away now that I wasn’t sure any of them even happened. I wasn’t even sure Alex was real. But the pain was. Knowing George was gone and knowing I couldn’t be there, that was real. Death was real. Were the strange birds real?

“Red,” Katy said with a sense of urgency.

I glanced back, eyes following her finger to the other window.

“What is it?” I asked, moving to stand beside her. But as my gaze followed the crudely drawn birds to the other open window and went past them, outside, my shoulders came down from their high, tense perch, forcing a release of tears.

“That is a mighty strange occurrence,” Katy said.

I watched a large murder of crows lift away from the gutter outside my window and flood toward town. Standing here, it almost looked like each bird had peeled right off the surface of my wall, taking a wish, a memory over the horizon with them.

“They’re going to get George now, aren’t they?” Katy asked.

“I think so.” I put my head on her shoulder. “But who will tell Alex?”

“I don’t know,” she said in a hollow voice. “Maybe he already knows.”

I hoped so. It was all I could do.

Katy moved to the window then and leaned on the ledge to watch the birds. They thinned out, one by one, until they were just a distant flicker. Then she turned to me and smiled. “Red?”

“Yeah?”

The smile grew. She leaned out the window a little and waved her hands at the crows. “Fly, my pretties,” she shouted in a snarly voice, then cackled like an evil witch. “Fly!”

As sad as I was, I couldn’t help but laugh. “Thanks, Katy.”

She touched my arm, offering me an understanding smile. “You know, it might not mean much coming from me, but if George really was trapped in his body, it must be nice for him now… being free.”

“I don’t want to do that,” I said softly, watching the birds become a pin of black in the distance, while Luther and Theo stood out in the drive, obviously as confused by the event as we were.

“Do what?”

“Find a reason for this. It happened. It sucks. But sometimes things just suck, Katy.”

“I don’t want it to suck.”

“And yet it does, no matter what reasons we give ourselves.”

“That’s sad.”

“Yes,” I said, thoughtful. “It’s very sad. But it just has to be sad, because if I try to make it anything else, I’ll never get over the being sad.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” she said. “But how can you get over being sad?”

I thought about that for a moment, shrugging one shoulder when it came to me. “Cry, I guess. Until all the sadness cries out of me.”

Katy offered me her arms and a shoulder, so I put my head on it again and let the sadness out.

***

There was a difference tonight. Last night, before I found out about George, running without Luther—essentially on my own, save for the goons tailing me—I felt a sense of freedom I’d never felt before. Like being allowed to catch a bus to the city by yourself for the first time. I think, in a lot of ways, I truly grew up last night when I assumed wolf form and tore through the forest, and I think, hearing about George today, I was finally shown the reality of what growing up meant.

Tonight, even though Flotsam and Jetsam kept a good fifty paces behind me as I ran, I struggled to feel the excitement. I thought nothing could taint the feeling of being a wolf. But I was wrong.

Jaded by the lack of enthusiasm in my run, I slowed to a walk and put my nose to the ground, searching for a familiar scent. In times like these I needed my pack. I needed to feel united. I needed my mom or, if not her, maybe my husband. If I could find him tonight—after he’d turned—he might be willing to keep me company for a while.

In the distance I could hear the pack howling to the call of their alpha. I knew Mom would be wondering where I was if she went to the valley and looked up to see Luther alone on the rock. I hoped she’d break off in search of me when she saw I wasn’t there. She’d be worried, most likely—especially knowing her letter would have arrived.

All around me trees seemed to claim this part of the forest, sticking for dear life to where each of the four hills of Ravenswood met. I felt small here, and insignificant, but the loneliness wasn’t completely awful. The air was fresh—cold and wet—the promise of rain making the dry snow seem like just a passing phase. I stopped by a rock and shut my eyes, letting the sheer height of the trees express the magic of Mother Nature.

A twig broke behind me then and I jerked my head around to scan the night. I could just see the outline of the two goons sitting in the shadows where the moonlight couldn’t reach. Very little snow fell here in this spot, the trees thick and born close together to keep out all light, maybe even rain, as if they hated the world and just wanted to be left alone. I knew how they felt sometimes.

When another twig broke a bit farther away this time, Flotsam and Jetsam made themselves visible for a moment before darting into the forest to investigate. I stood still as a deer and quietly sniffed the breeze. And then I caught it. A scent. Mom.

I took off at an excited run, my tongue hanging out as if it would make me run faster, jumping rocks and fallen logs and ignoring the sharp sting of twigs sticking between my toes. Her scent was different tonight; worried. It was almost as if she brushed up against every tree down the slope of the hill, marking it with an emotion. The scent got stronger as I heard the river rushing. Just over the next rise between the two steep hills there was a valley drop and a giant lake. Forbidden territory. Human territory. Hunting territory. Surely she wouldn’t be silly enough to go down there.

I proceeded with extreme caution, my senses on high alert, taking in every smell, every sound and stopping at the slightest rustle or whisper of wind. I could smell her here somewhere.

The scent led me down to the rushing waters where the river ran off the drop and poured its sorrows into the great lake below. Light was permitted here in the parting of the trees, and though the waters ran hard and fast I could still make out wavy reflections of a pure white moon closer to the banks.

I stood for a moment, waiting. I knew she was there; I could feel it. Then, in the dim shadows, from among the trees across the other side of the river, a crystal white wolf with darker patches stepped out hesitantly.

Mom, I whined, not aware until right then that wolves could communicate. It wasn’t a language or even mind-reading, but it was an… understanding, of sorts.

She kept her head low, skulking shakily forward, eyes scanning every inch of the forest behind me. I wanted to leap over the water and run to her side, but something about her body language told me not to.

I shouldn’t be here.

I narrowed my eyes at her, not sure if she spoke to me or if I imagined it. I couldn’t call it a voice that I heard; but again, I understood it.

Why are you here? I asked.

I needed to make sure you were okay.

I’m okay, I assured her, even though it was a lie.

A deep, menacing growl started behind me then and another rumbled on my right, a pair of teeth-baring wolves creeping up defensively along my sides. I tried to tell them that she was my mother, but as they shot forward and ran to the water I realized they were only too aware who she was. Mom stood her ground, barking like a rabid dog, warning them not to cross those violent waters.

She’s my daughter. Let me see her.

It is against the rules. Take it up with Luther.

She needs me. She’s grieving.

She is not your problem now. Leave.

Leave or be challenged, Flotsam added.

Mom looked at me apologetically. It wasn’t worth it. I knew what a challenge meant: fight to the death. She would never let me see something like that. She would never be so naïve to think she could win.

I love you, April.

I whimpered, approaching the banks, but the goons turned their heads and bared their teeth at me, sending me skulking away to the safety of the tree line. I love you too, Mom, I thought, feeling worse now than I did before. I wished she hadn’t come. I wished I hadn’t followed her scent. Now, it would only make it hurt more, like a scab had been picked clean open.

The goons made a show of force with a firm buck into my shoulder, one jamming his snout into my rib to make me move, so I followed them back up the slope and into the dense forest again, where the light couldn’t reach us. I didn’t know wolves could cry real tears until I had to leave my Mom behind again, but it felt like maybe the saddest thing in the world to know that we could.

***

Last night, although it didn’t feel like it at the time, it did help to run. And it did help to see my mom for a moment and know she was okay. But when day broke and the usual routine played out, I just couldn’t bring myself to function. It felt wrong, like I was betraying George somehow.

I stared out the window, numb, stroking the tassel on the edge of the pillow I was hugging, while Max chewed my dangling left foot.

“Can anyone go there when they die?” Katy asked in a soft, reflective voice.

I looked at her where she sat opposite me on the window seat, hugging a pillow too. “To the land of lake and sea?”

“Yes. When I die, I think I’d like to go where George went.”

“Of course you can. You can go now,” I said.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Close your eyes and picture a world under water—with grand gold castles and parties every night.”

“Oh!” Katy gasped so loudly that my eyes flew open, the land of sea stripping back for the stark white sun reflecting off a cold day.

“What is it?”

She grinned, her eyes shut tight, head angled as though she was looking at something beside her. “I can see it. Just like you described!”

I laughed. “Are there green birds above you?”

“Yes, with red on the tips of their wings—just like you said.” Her hand landed on my knee. “Oh, Red, I’d love to see such strange birds.”

“You mean you’ve never seen a parrot?”

“Only ravens. And crows.”

With that, I hopped up and grabbed my computer from the marble table across the room, then sat back down in the window seat beside Katy and fired it up. I couldn’t search up too many things on the Internet, but I was sure Luther’s Net Nanny program would allow birds if it allowed YouTube.

I brought up images of parrots and chose the nicest one, turning the screen to show Katy. I’d expected to see her face light up, but it dropped and she looked shocked, leaning closer to the computer.

“They’re real? Like, really real?”

“Yes.”

“I want to touch one.” Her finger softly brushed over the screen. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful and colorful in all my life. Except for you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, when I saw you come here in your red cloak, I thought you might be the color that fell from a rainbow, and then they told me you were the new wife.” Her head moved slowly from side to side. “I heard Luther say it himself. You’re the prettiest bride he’s had. You remind him of Mrs. Reave—that’s what Theo told me.”

“Really?”

“Mm-hm.” She nodded. “Have you seen her likeness in the Great Hall?”

“No. I was too busy trying to figure out which wives would still be alive.”

“Only Miss Cooper. But she took ill giving birth, and Mrs. Potter doesn’t think she’ll live the rest of the week.”

I didn’t know Anne, but I wanted to cry for her then. “Can you take me to see her?”

“No way. It’s against the rules.”

“So is wearing jeans, but…” I showed her my jeans and red sweater.

Katy smiled, rolling her eyes at me. “I can take you there. But why? What does a new wife want to see an old wife for?”

“Look around, Katy. I got bad news yesterday. I lost someone very dear to me, and yet, instead of crying alone on my bed, you brought me tea and chocolate cake.” I grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze to thank her. “But if it weren’t for you, I’d be all alone. This would be one of the worst days of my life. If Anne is dying, she’d be scared right now. And I doubt Luther is there to comfort her.”

“I know he’s not,” she said, eyes wide. “He’s packing his things.”

“Why?”

“He always stays well away when a wife has a girl.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. He just does. He goes out hunting for a few weeks.”

“In wolf form?”

“No. He can only turn on a full moon, remember?”

“Oh yeah, that’s right.” It was just so odd and unnatural, almost as if he wasn’t really wolf. He was so much like the myths and legends it was hard to believe he wasn’t also allergic to silver bullets. “So has he left yet?”

“No. We thought he might stay to finish your union tonight—or even last night—but when I went to the kitchen to get the cake, Mrs. Potter told me he’s leaving at sundown. Why do you ask?”

“Because I’m going to see Anne if I have to sniff out her room myself. When he’s gone, you have to take me there.”

She paled.

“Please?”

Her shoulders dropped, softening her face. “What if Theo finds out?”

“I won’t tell if you don’t.”

“It’s not that simple, Red. He can read me, and—”

“Do you think he’d care?” My voice pitched high in desperation. “From what I’ve seen of him so far, he isn’t like his dad—”

“He’s not. He’s open minded and—”

“He adapted with the times. I know he doesn’t agree with what happens here.”

“Yes, but he’s powerless to do anything,” she said. “Did you know he was sent to flog you last week?”

“What?”

She nodded. “Luther saw you in the kitchen, and not only is it against the rules to mingle with servants or to be in any room but your own, he saw you in your modern attire, Red. Theo was sent to flog you, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it, so he told his father he spoke with you instead and you’d learned your lesson. Only… he didn’t speak with you, did he?”

I shook my head. “He came to my door the other night, but I was about to go to bed, so he said he’d come back another time.”

“Well, consider this me warning you. If Luther sees you in those clothes again, he’ll make sure you don’t forget the rules.”

“Why doesn’t he just throw them out if he wants me to stop wearing them?” I asked, folding my arms.

“Because that’s not his style. He’d rather you have the temptation and choose to follow the rules out of respect for him. Either that, or you would choose to break them and he might enjoy punishing you for it.”

“Is he really like that?”

“He is a complex man, Red. You should never feel safe. Never feel like you understand him.”

“Believe me, I don’t feel safe, but I do think I’m getting to know him. He taught me how to take wolf form so, in my book, he’s pretty cool.”

Katy smiled. “Maybe you’ll be the one to bring him back from that darkness.”

“The darkness?”

“Theo says his father became a cold man after his wife died, that before that he was kind and loving. A good father. Good man.”

“So he wasn’t born with this god complex?”

“I don’t know what that is, but I know Theo is unhappy with his father. He grows more unsettled here as each decade rolls by.”

“Decade?” I wiped my cheek where the stale tears had dried. “It’s only taken me two months to feel like that.”

“I wouldn’t know any different. I’ve never been outside these gates.”

I bit my teeth together, shaking my head as the anger filled me up. “It shouldn’t be this way, Katy. I should have been there for my friend George when he died, and for Alex and Plain. You should have gone to school and grown up like a normal kid, and when I have my first baby, I should be able to raise it. Things around here have to change.”

“They won’t. They never have.”

“I don’t care,” I said, resolved to do something. “When Luther leaves today, I’m going to see Anne, and then I’m going to start thinking of ways to make things change around here. If he isn’t willing to accept this new era, then I’ll just have to force it.”

Part Three: Chapter Seven

The Sheep Bares Its Wolfish Grin

Luther came to my room with his angry face on, and I thought for a moment that he’d caught wind of my plan to see Anne, but when his ugly goon waltzed in behind him and shut the door my cells froze up and stopped all thought going through my brain.

“Luther?”

“Sit down,” he insisted as I went to stand.

I hadn’t fully adjusted my height, so I just rolled back down the way I stood and pulled Max to my lap.

Luther gave a half-glance back at the man and then thrust his head into a short nod. The goon limped forward and snatched Max from my arms, stepping away without turning his back to either of us.

“What are you doing? Why did you take Max?”

“Who is Alex?”

“Pardon?”

“Answer the question.”

“He was my best friend before I left home.”

“Did you see him last night?”

“Last night?” My eyes widened, heart in my throat. Why would he think that?

“When you went running last night, did you, or did you not escape custody for a period of time?”

“Um…” I looked at the goon. “I wasn’t trying to escape, I...”

“April, my men have no reason to lie to me. I want the truth. Now.”

“No. I didn’t escape, and I didn’t go see Alex. I swear! I followed a scent and—”

“I don’t believe you—”

“Why? What reason have I got to lie?”

“What reason have you got to lie?” he repeated, incredulous. “What reason do you have not to, knowing what I will do to you? The fact is, that boy was found skulking around here—”

“Alex was here!” I stood up.

“Sit down,” he said so firmly that I immediately sat down.

Luther’s eyes went to my red sweater and jeans. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “What are you wearing, April—after everything we have talked about?”

When I swallowed, it went down like a loud gulp.

“I have repeatedly asked you, my son has repeatedly asked you, to refrain from partaking in modern behavior whilst under this roof, and yet I repeatedly find you doing so.”

At this point, I also double-checked that my silver necklace was tucked away. It was. “So are you taking Max? Is that how you’re going to punish me?”

“I do not give things to take them away, April.” He put such a cold touch to my name that I knew our bond was broken. I’d disobeyed him and obviously insulted him. “You will keep your dog but you will learn a hard lesson about me.”

“Which is?” I asked timidly.

“I am not generous, nor am I kind. I do not have to be. I am your master and I own you. I give kindness so that I can use that kindness to hurt you when you displease me.”

My eyes shot to Max and my lungs thrust themselves into my jaw. “No!”

“Dreyfus,” he demanded. “Show Miss Redwood what will happen if she sees that boy again.”

My fingers almost grabbed Max as I flew to my feet, but Luther was quicker, reaching out and yanking me back by my ear. I yelped loudly, hearing a desperate cry from my sweet Max at the same time, but I didn’t see what Dreyfus did to him.

“No!” I yelled. “Please don’t hurt him.”

Max whimpered, struggling and fighting to break free. He was so tiny against such twisted, scarred hands. I just wanted to sweep him into my arms and make it all better. He trusted me. Trusted everyone. I’d never met a more sweet and innocent dog in all my life. He couldn’t understand what was happening right now and every cell in my body was desperate to get to him.

“Again,” Luther said, tugging my arm as I rushed in to defend my baby, screaming for them to stop. Max cried out, a short, sharp yelp that broke my heart, making me fold over.

“No,” I whimpered, meeting Max’s pleading eyes.

Luther threw me to the floor and I landed hard on my hands and knees, coughing the wind from my lungs.

“Now, next time I see you, you will be dressed in appropriate attire, and you will conduct yourself in a ladylike manner. None of this running about chasing that mutt; no more laughing loudly and befriending slaves. You will act as I expect you to act. Do I have your understanding, Miss Redwood?”

“Yes,” I whispered, my voice so fragile as the night closed in, making it dark in here with no lamps on to greet it.

“Again!” he said firmly, and Max yelped. I got to one foot before Luther’s hand came down hard on my shoulder. “Yes, what?”

“Yes…” My eyes flicked to the tiny puppy. “Yes…”

“Yes what!” he yelled.

“Yes, um… sir?”

“Again!”

Max yelped and I covered my face, crying into my hands, my chest shaking hard.

“Yes what?”

“Yes sir—”

“Again!”

“I don’t know what to say!” I screamed, hitting my knees. “I don’t know what to say!”

“Yes what?” he yelled at me again and I just shook my head, holding my breath as hot tears rolled off my chin. He sighed. “Again.”

“No!” I grabbed his pants, tugging them. “No please don’t hurt him anymore—”

“Yes, what?” He squatted down and cupped my chin firmly. And as I looked into his eyes, hating him, hating this arrangement, even hating my mom for letting me marry him, it occurred to me.

“Yes, husband,” I said, eyes wide, the message finally sinking in.

He stood tall and the goon put Max down. My sweet boy circled on the spot, getting down low and whimpering to himself.

“See that you remember this lesson, Miss Redwood,” Luther said coldly, slamming the door as they left.

I couldn’t see Max through the tears, so I crawled over blindly and gently scooped him up, pausing when he yelped.

“What did they do to you, Max?” I whispered, rolling him over to check every inch of him. I couldn’t see any actual damage to him, not even any blood. He whined when I pressed his belly a little, so I just cradled him under my chin and kissed him, whispering that I was sorry over and over again.

***

Max didn’t fight. I didn’t fight hard enough for him. And I was so sorry for that. We both went into flight mode, and no matter how many Jet Li movies I’d watched, nothing could have prepared me for that. I kept going over it in my head, seeing all the places I could have done things differently. Except, I was powerless now to go back. I could only relive it in every waking thought, wishing I’d done things differently.

But, I knew what it was like now to feel completely helpless, and I would never ever let that happen again. I learned a valuable lesson from it all, Luther made sure of that, but it wasn’t the lesson he intended.

“There’s a better world, Max,” I said numbly, as we lay in a square of moonlight on my bedroom floor. “One where no one hates dogs, and girls are allowed to wear jeans. But better than that, there’s a world where libraries hang from the ceiling and your imagination can paint pictures on the walls.”

Max took a deep breath and it shuddered out of him. He was feeling better. He didn’t whimper as much when he breathed now, but it had taken two days for that to happen; two days without food, only water, for both of us.

“You’d love Alex,” I told him, kissing his furry head. “And Sacha. And you would have loved…” I sniffled, “George.”

I missed them all so much my tummy hurt. I missed my mom and my bed and my snowy walls. I wondered if she’d painted over them, maybe turned my room into a home gym. It made me feel forgotten. Lonely.

Every emotion that drove me to accept this proposal was now a permanent part of my life. A brief period of sadness, which became an even shorter moment of extreme happiness after I met Alex, had been exchanged now for a lifetime of hopelessness. I wish I could go back and choose the other path, but all the wishing in the world couldn’t take it back now.

I thought about the other part of me that left before I arrived here. I looked in on her from time to time, watching her swim with Alex, while George flew above. She was there right now, as was Alex. But as much as I wanted to stay there and play with my friends, my mind kept leaving to wonder about the Alex in the real world. In a few days it would be Sunday again, and I’d watch the green truck come in with the supplies and the mail, and hope that there’d be a letter from him. I needed to know he was okay. I needed to be there with him. I needed to know why he tried to come to see me, after I told him how impossible it is. All my thoughts now had become worries. Very few voices in my head had anything good to say.

And then there was Mom. One letter so far. Just one. I needed something more. I needed to hear from them, hear all about their days. School, housework, TV shows. I’d give anything for a boring letter about all the stuff I once hated. I’d give anything for someone to make me do the dishes or vacuum a floor. I’d give anything to sit on that rope swing and make up stories with Alex, or see George’s smile again. I’d even give anything to sit in English class with dreary old Mr. Wilson and listen to him talk about Shakespeare.

As Max and I fell asleep on the floor, hungry and cold, I found comfort in replaying the last biology class lecture I could remember, knowing that, out there, somewhere, the world went on the way it always had—that Alex was okay and that teachers still bored kids to sleep. I probably got all the information from that lecture wrong, but it was just mundane enough to help me sleep here in a world that didn’t allow me a moment of peace.

Part Three: Chapter Eight

Liberty and Justice for Some

“Is she alive?” A voice entered my head and a pin of sunlight blinded me as a cold thumb lifted my eyelid.

As my sleepy eyes focused, the blur rasterized into a thin face. I looked past Katy’s warm smile to Theo’s.

“My father has left for a few weeks,” he said, bending to take my arm and make me stand. “We’ve brought you some food.”

I looked around in a panic for Max, instant relief sinking through me when I spotted him at his bowl, wolfing down his breakfast.

Theo lifted me in his arms and carried me to the bed. The warmth felt almost aching at first, as my cold limbs adjusted to the softness from the hard floor I’d been on all night. Katy brought a tray over and laid it on my legs once Theo pulled the blankets up. I tried to thank them both, but my voice wouldn’t work, and my lips were so dry they cracked when I smiled.

Theo leaned over me and his eyes softened, his closed mouth pulling out into a kind smile. “I have to go, but Katy will stay with you today.”

I nodded, which he knew was my silent thanks.

He kissed Katy’s head as he left, pulling the door closed quietly behind him.

Katy sat in the chair across the room and pulled Max into her lap, inspecting him the way I had after the goon hurt him. Satisfied, she let him snuggle up under her chin and sat looking out the window while I ate every last skerrick of my breakfast.

After that she cleared my tray and left, promising to be back in half an hour. I barely even noticed she was gone. The light reaching me from my windows did nothing to make me feel awake today. There was no excitement for the day ahead, nothing to look forward to. No reason to get out of bed ever again.

The door swung open on that thought and Katy shut it quickly with her butt, walking over and tossing an armful of dirty brown garments on my bed.

“What’s this?” I said.

“Your disguise.” She put her hands on her hips, considering the pile as if maybe she forgot something. “I didn’t bring shoes, but no one will see your feet.”

“See my feet? Where are we going?”

“To see Anne Cooper.”

I pushed my covers back, sitting up a bit. “She’s still alive? I thought she was dying.”

“She’s still alive.” She smiled. “And her baby is with her.”

My smile mirrored hers. I climbed out of bed then and dressed myself up like a slave, for once feeling comfortable in these old-fashioned clothes. I even took off the ugly iron ring that bound me to Luther—in case anyone noticed it—and it felt so good to be free of it that I almost jumped out the window, convinced I could fly.

On the way out the door I locked Max safely in the bathroom so he wouldn’t chew up my room, hoping also that he wouldn’t bark and alert anyone of my absence.

The whole time I walked behind Katy, ducking into corners and shadowy spots in the corridors when anyone passed, all I could think about was George. I wondered if his spirit came to see me after he died. I wished I could’ve felt his presence so I could say goodbye.

Among the sadness and weakness from not eating for a few days, though, I felt angry. So, so angry. Luther had no right to imprison me here so that I never got to say goodbye—never got to hold onto Alex and stop him floating away in the thin air of grief. And all that anger left me empty, fueling my quick steps at first as we moved through the mansion and then up the stairs in the east wing; but by the time we stopped outside a pair of doors just like mine the emptiness had taken over, maybe even becoming apathy.

“Here it is. Be quiet.” Katy put her finger to her lips. “The baby might be sleeping.”

We pushed the door open and stepped inside. As my eyes took in the room—an exact copy of mine—I realized we were standing in the east tower and that I’d been right all along about Luther keeping his wives locked up like Rapunzel.

A pair of frightened blue eyes popped open and a frail woman in the bed snatched up the infant sleeping beside her. It screamed at the sudden shift, the cries muffled as Anne cradled her tightly to her chest.

“No. Not yet. Please not yet.”

“Shhh.” I put my finger to my lips and shut the door. “What are you talking about?”

“Please don’t take her yet. He promised me one week and it hasn’t been a week yet.” She sobbed, rocking back and forth, her cheek against her child’s head.

“I’m not here to take your baby.” I stepped closer. “My name is Red; I’m the new wife.”

She looked up with wide, brimming eyes, taking in my clothes with a bit of confusion. “What are you doing here? Have you come to see your future?”

“No. I…” I lifted my skirt and bent my knee to climb up on the bed, kneeling beside her. “They told us you’re dying. I came to be with you. In case you were afraid.”

She looked at me for a moment and then laughed once to herself, the sound turning quickly into a cry.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I’m not upset, I just…” She looked at Katy then back at me. “No one has ever been so kind to me—not since I came here.”

“How old were you when you married Luther?”

“Fifteen.” She wiped her cheek, and even though I calculated her to be about thirty-five now, she still looked fifteen. She was small and her skin was flawless. She’d suffered a lot, though. It made her eyes old, and I wished I could reverse time and be here with her. But I couldn’t, so I chose to cheer her up instead.

“Can I see your baby?”

She pulled her possessively closer.

I leaned back a little, taking that as a no. But from what I could see, she looked like a perfectly healthy, even chubby little thing. “How big was she? What did she weigh when she was born?”

“I don’t know,” she said softly, moving the blanket down to look at the little round face. “They don’t weigh girls.”

“Why not?” I laughed.

“Because they never let them live long.”

“Pardon?” I leaned my ear closer, not sure I heard her right.

“You don’t know?” She looked between me and Katy. “You haven’t been told?”

“Told what?”

“Luther’s first wife died giving birth to a girl. The supposed immortal witch,” she added spitefully. “So he blamed the baby for it—said she was cursed. He killed the child, and he takes the life of every daughter he’s had since that day.”

Katy sat down heavily on the chair in the middle of the room, and I just felt cold and kind of shaky.

“That’s why I yelled when you came in. They’re coming for her,” she sobbed, trying hard to compose herself. “They promised me only one week with her, which is more than I’ve ever been given before.”

“Before?”

She nodded, sniffling up her tears.

“But she’s perfect.” My eyes darted over the bundle, trying to find a reason why they’d kill a perfectly healthy baby.

Anne buried her face in the blankets, crying tears so hard I wanted to catch each one in a jar and make a magic potion that would kill Luther.

“It doesn’t matter.” Her chest shuddered and jerked as she forced herself to stop crying. “I’ll be with her soon enough.”

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked delicately. “Why are you dying?”

“I’m not dying,” she said, insulted. “I’ve outlived my usefulness. I’m to be killed just after my daughter.”

“What? Why?”

“According to Luther, I’m too old to bear children and, as it stands, most of my children were girls anyway.” Her mouth pulled down sadly and her voice cut out. “Why would he want to keep me?”

My mouth was stuck open. I couldn’t comprehend what I was hearing.

“I’m going home to them,” she said, nodding to herself, “every beautiful little girl that he took from me.”

If I was mad before about losing George and not being there for Alex, I was a hundred times madder now. “It doesn’t have to be this way! Who does this? Who makes decisions about people’s lives like this and gets away with it?”

“Luther,” she said simply.

“But the Elders, surely they—”

“They think he’s a god. They think he’ll rain fire upon them if they don’t do as he says.”

I rolled my eyes, folding my arms. “Is he a god? Is it true he can’t be killed?”

“No.” She leaned closer, making her voice very low. “Look under my mattress. Right there, on the corner.”

Katy got up and reached under, feeling around blindly until her expression changed. She pulled out a leather-bound book.

“It belonged to one of the wives from 1811. She hid it in a panel in here and made the next reader promise to add entries to it.”

Katy passed it to me and I flipped it open, stuck on the cursive handwriting. It looked like another language.

“What does it tell you?” I asked, embarrassed that I couldn’t read it.

“Luther isn’t a god,” Anne said. “He’s a liar. His wife was a witch.”

“A witch? Like… a real one?”

“Yes. Their love was apparently so strong that they couldn’t bear to be torn apart by death, so she created a spell that made them both immortal. Each full moon they would shed their human form and walk the earth as wolves, and when the moon passed they would reenter their human form, but it would be unchanged, renewed in the state it was when the spell was first cast.”

“Wow.” I ran my fingers gingerly over the page.

“They heal from near-death,” she added, “and they do not suffer disease. They thought it would be forever. Until she died in childbirth.”

My eyes scanned the pages as I listened, stopping on a paragraph that wasn’t too hard to read. “It says here that he declared his daughter was a demon. That all daughters born to him would be evil.”

“Yes,” Anne said, as though she’d read that single line a thousand times. “He believes it’s the price to pay for immortal life.”

I looked at the little girl in Anne’s arms. “So he sees her as a curse?”

She nodded, kissing her daughter.

I thought about Freya—the second wife that he’d loved. She also died in childbirth, maybe delivering a girl and probably further cementing his already insane notion that his children were cursed. And in those times, with little knowledge about anything, he might truly have believed it.

I snapped the book shut. “We have two choices.”

“Choices?” Anne said.

“Yes. We can either educate Luther, or we can skip that and get you out of here—away from him.”

“Pardon?” Anne said.

“Hmm,” I hummed to myself, making the decision for her after a second of thought. “Nope. That’s it. You have to escape.”

“I can’t,” she cried, but I saw the hope in her eye. “Where would I go? How would I ever get off the estate? It’s large and the forest surrounding it is endless, haunted they say. I wouldn’t make it very far, and my chances are even slimmer in the winter, with a newborn.”

I looked at Katy. “Tell me there’s a way.”

She shook her head slowly, and my heart sank, until her brow lifted and her mouth popped open. “Wait,” she said, standing up, “the supply run.”

“The green truck?” I said. “Do you think it’s possible?”

Katy got up and looked at the clock on the mantle. “The empty potato crates. A friend of mine snuck out once inside of them. Maybe—”

“It’s worth a try.” I got up off the bed. “If it’s still here.”

“It is. He won’t leave until eleven,” Katy said.

“Then we have an hour.” I drew my eyes away from the clock and looked at Katy. “Go get my jeans and a sweater. Oh, and a coat. We need to make Anne look like she’s from town.”

“What’s the plan then?” Katy asked.

“I’ll go down to the kitchen and find out where the truck is now, then I’ll come back up for Anne and the baby.”

“Do you really think this will work?” Anne asked, lifting the baby to her shoulder.

“It has before,” Katy said with a nod.

“Did your friend ever come back?”

“No, Miss. But we got a letter from him. Mrs. Potter burned it right away in case anyone found out he ran away. But he made it.”

I smiled. “Then we need to hurry. We don’t have much time left before the truck leaves for the week.”

***

Anne wasn’t given clothes for her baby, and with no other children in this mansion I couldn’t find anything in any of the rooms to dress her in. So we wrapped her in my red sweater to keep her warm, and placed her in a cane picnic basket, covering Anne’s modern jeans and coat with servants’ attire in case anyone saw us. We didn’t have any money or anything else to offer Anne for her journey, and none of her family were alive anymore, so I told her about women’s shelters and how the police would help her, as long as she never told them her name. In a wolf town, someone would be sure to recognized the name, if not her face.

We made it to the ground floor without being seen by anyone, except for a servant that passed behind us, but if he happened to have noticed three slaves walking with a picnic basket he wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Still, if the baby so much as even grunted, it would stand out like a woman in modern clothing around here. The last baby to be born into slavery was Katy, more than twenty years ago, so it just wasn’t a sound anyone was used to hearing.

When we reached the Great Hall Katy walked on ahead, carrying a pile of ruse sheets while Anne stayed behind me, stiff and slow, jumpy, as though she hadn’t been out of her room in a decade. I was confident that we wouldn’t be seen, which kept me calm, but I think I held my breath the entire time. I’d mapped it all out on my dummy run down here. As long as no slaves came up to the second floor, I knew we could reach the ground floor without too much of a problem at this time of day; but once we reached the kitchen, getting from the stairway to the back door and onto the truck without being seen would be tricky. Lunch would be served in an hour, which meant there were staff all over that floor.

Katy pushed the panel open that led to the kitchen and staff quarters, and nodded back to say it was clear. This was the tough part. Tiny hammers pounded at my throat and stomach as I readjusted my hold on the basket and walked on, trusting that Anne was right behind me.

We waited at the top of the stairs while Katy went down and checked each corridor, then we descended them quickly and pressed our backs to the wall, right beside the old bricked-up door that had now become a barrel storage zone.

Down the short hall to the kitchen, shadows danced in the square of sunlight beaming through the doorway. I wasn’t sure how many people were in there, but from where we stood it looked like one, maybe two.

I shut my eyes, taking a tight breath. If anyone stepped out of that kitchen and came this way they’d see us for sure. We were sitting ducks right now. “We need them to go to the storage rooms, Katy.”

“I know.” She motioned for us to move to the wall opposite the barrels, and then peeked around the corner.

“Ah, Katy dear!” someone said.

Not missing a beat, Katy stepped around and stood like a bollard, stopping the woman from progressing to the T-junction.

“What are you doing down here?” the woman said. “You’re supposed to be cleaning out fires.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Potter. Mr. Barkley asked me to bring him clean sheets.”

“Then where in the Lord’s name are you going, girl? His room is that way, not in the kitchen.”

I felt a profound sense of pride in Katy after what she said next.

“Yes, Mrs. Potter, but he asked for a glass of water too.”

There was a moment of silence. No one thought Katy was a very clever girl. After all, she hadn’t really been educated. She’d never even been read stories or taught to use her imagination. So no one expected her to be smart enough to lie.

“Very well then,” Mrs. Potter croaked. “Hurry yourself up.”

“Yes, Mrs. Potter.” Katy moved back a step and the portly old woman stepped into the crossway just as two men started down the stairs. I panicked, stepping right then left, not sure where to go or what to do. Mrs. Potter, thankfully, moved down the other corridor, her back to us as she went, but those men coming from the Great Hall would see us without a doubt.

Katy, cool as a cucumber, pushed Anne into the nook with the barrel and then dropped the pile of sheets to the ground, shaking the top one out and handing me a corner. I caught on right away, stepping back and spreading the sheet wide across the nook.

“See?” she said to me. “I got that stain out with a bit of baking soda and… hello.” She bowed her head to the man-slaves as they passed. They each nodded, but their eyes went to me, obviously questioning my place here. That was all, though. They were raised with no more education than Katy was, obviously, and just didn’t have the mind to think anything other than what their eyes told them to. We were just two slaves discussing stains.

“You’re so clever, Katy!” I almost hugged her, but we still weren’t in the clear. The baby grumbled in her carry basket, so I passed it to Anne and hooked my arm around hers, dragging her toward the kitchen. I could feel her reluctance to accept this new journey, but her feet moved by sheer will to rescue her baby.

Just as I’d hoped, the coast was clear—the kitchen empty as all the slaves tended their masters in preparation for lunch.

My stomach did flips as Katy pulled the heavy door open and I saw the truck outside, its engine running, filling the small stone courtyard with smog.

Anne and I pinned our backs to the wall behind the door while Katy stepped out to see if anyone was watching, calling Mrs. Potter’s name, as though that’s why she was out here.

“Who are you looking for?” a jolly voice said.

“Mrs. Potter. Have you seen her?”

“Sorry, luv.” I heard a car door open. “Not since she barked at me for my muddy boots.”

I laughed to myself.

“Okay, thank you,” Katy said.

The car door closed and the purr of the engine changed. I poked my head out around the door.

“Katy?”

She looked at me.

“Is the coast clear?”

“Yes.”

I waved the back of my hand at her. “Distract him!”

At first I didn’t think she heard me, but her mouth moved in an “Oh” and she ran to the driver’s side. “Oh Mr. Ellis. I forgot…” she started, and I grabbed Anne’s sleeve and tugged her along. We ran like the speed of the wind from the safety of the stone doorframe to the back of the old tuck. I ducked slightly as if bullets might rain down on me, making the skin on the back of my neck crawl.

The truck only had a half-door, so it was easy to throw Anne over. She handed me the basket for a moment, but in her haste it hit the side of the truck and the baby screamed. Loudly. I flipped the lid and stuck my pinkie in her mouth, shushing her gently, while Anne stood frozen.

“Go!” I whispered gruffly. “What are you waiting for?”

Anne pressed her hands to the steel door and hoisted herself up, flipping a leg over and then climbing into a potato crate. “How can I ever thank you, Red?” she said, reaching back for the baby.

“Live.” I lifted the basket. “Be free. And never let Luther find you.”

She smiled, scooping the floppy little infant into her arm. “I will,” she promised.

“Thank you,” Katy called loudly, making it pretty obvious that was a sign for me to get back. I threw a tarpaulin over Anne, and as she ducked away my heart felt sad, knowing I would never know what becomes of her and her little girl.

“Anne?”

“Yes.” She popped her head back up.

“What will you name her?”

Her face went blank, as though that never occurred to her before. Then she smiled. “Red,” she said. “How can I call her anything but Red?”

She grabbed the tarpaulin and hid under it again, mouthing ‘Thank you’ one last time before she disappeared.

As the truck pulled away, Katy and I darted back inside and closed the door, forgetting the picnic basket in the middle of the courtyard. My heart was in my temples, in my wrists and even in my knees, making them shake. I couldn’t believe we’d just done that, and as Katy and I laughed I also couldn’t believe we didn’t jump in the truck with her.

“We should have gone,” I said, wondering if it was too late.

“No.” She shook her head. “You wouldn’t make it far, Red. Anne has no family left out there, remember—no one for Luther to hurt. But you do. And he won’t just stop at your family, he’d hurt Alex too.”

I exhaled the adrenaline and let it calm me. She was right. “But I don’t want to have babies with him. I don’t want my sons to be sent away to join an army and my daughters slain for the crime of being a girl.”

“Then we need to come up with a plan.”

“What plan? Kill him?”

Katy gasped, covering her mouth. “I was thinking of hiding a contraceptive pill in your food, Red. Not killing him!”

“Well, why not? If there was a way, I would kill him, Katy,” I promised. “He’s done evil things and he has to answer to someone. If he’s above the law here, then maybe he should be put to death so he can answer to Carne.”

Katy looked worried, but I felt strong with resolve now. Luther would return soon to find his wife had escaped. He would most likely hunt her down. Who knows? We might have even made things worse. Luther had to die. If not for the sake of me and every other girl that might marry him one day, then for sake of Anne and little Red.

Part Three: Chapter Nine

Mighty Raven; Fallen King

So much time had passed now since I left my home and family. So much time had passed since George died; and yet so little time had when I really thought about it. Alex would be in the phase of grief now where you have to start accepting life again; where everyone expects you to cry only at night, alone in your bed, and really has no time to listen to you talk about how sad you are. He would need me more now than he did before. Or, at least, he’d need a friend. If I couldn’t be that friend, I just hoped and prayed to Carne that he had someone.

My thoughtful meandering led me to a part of the estate that I hadn’t seen before. The gardens here were unruly, the trees high and accompanied by many friends, making it feel closed in and shaded like the greater forest outside these walls. Whatever this place was, it clearly wasn’t out of bounds. Last time I stepped even one foot out of bounds, several wolves had come at me, growling and snarling until I turned around.

Up ahead I could see a brick wall of some kind, but couldn’t tell if it was a fence or a building. The trees were so thick above me that the canopy drowned out what little light the winter offered, making it hard to see.

I pulled the hood of my powder-blue cloak over my hair and took a not-so-subtle look around for guards, pressing my left thumb to the iron circle on my ring finger.

“It’s sacred ground,” said a deep, familiar voice from behind me.

Even though the voice painted his face for me, I still jumped out of my skin, jerking around defensively. A day had gone past and everyone was gossiping about Anne’s escape, so I was just waiting for them to figure out who helped her and come to hurt me. Just waiting to be snatched by the arm and dragged to the flogging post. Or worse.

“Hi Theo.”

“Red.” He said my name by way of greeting, the snow crunching under foot as he came to stand beside me. He nodded at the forest and the wall up ahead. “It’s where we lay our dead.”

“That’s a lot of dead then,” I noted, “Judging by the size of whatever that is.”

“It’s a mausoleum. Well…” he sighed, taking a step past me, “more like a charnel house now, I suppose.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on. It’s time for you to see what you’re up against here.”

I followed Theo through the thick forest, not realizing until I skidded on a pile of pine needles that very little snow actually landed here. There were no patches of light coming in through the canopy, and though he said this land was sacred it felt more like it was cursed. I wondered if that’s why no wolves patrolled here. I wouldn’t, if I were them.

“Red, I know what you did,” he said, his deep voice calm. I couldn’t detect even a hint of anger or judgment.

“Oh.”

“He will eventually find out. Your scent, and the baby’s scent, are all over that picnic basket.”

“I know.”

Theo didn’t say anything else after that. As we came upon the mausoleum a great wave of sadness washed over me. I didn’t know any of the people that would be buried in there, but I felt a deep connection to them.

“Ancestors?” I asked.

“Yes. Once, that is what this place was for. But when the estate graveyard was overrun with corpses, my father had them exhumed and cremated—the ashes brought here to keep them hidden.”

“Hidden?”

He climbed the stone steps and opened a big heavy door, revealing behind it a clean, modern space. If I expected spider webs, old stone and a musty smell, the marble floors and straight walls with brass plates in them were a shock. It smelled like incense and sadness in here.

Theo led me to the middle of the room where two white marble tombs lay side by side, both embossed with a rose, the stem snapped in the middle leaving the full bloom to dangle.

“My mother and my stepmother,” he said, touching the tomb closest to him.

“What’s with the snapped rose?”

“It’s a symbol,” he said. “The flower represents the age they died—in full bloom—while the stem symbolizes that their deaths came too soon.”

“Right.” I nodded, lifting my eyes to take in the rest of the spacious room. “And who are all the other people?”

He rolled his hand out, angling his head as if to say ‘Take a look’.

So I did. I pushed my hood off my hair and walked over to one of the brass plates:

Luther II

8 Days Old

I bit my lip, feeling an immense cloud of grief. “He lost his son?”

“Yes.”

My eyes flicked absently to the brass plate beside that, the sorrowful expression becoming a frown when I read it. “Luther III.” I ran my fingers over the plate. “He was eight days old too?”

Theo just moved his head in aim at the next brass plate. I pulled my eyes away from him reluctantly, knowing, from the look on his face, that I wouldn’t like what I read there: Luther IV. 8 days old.

I walked along, reading each name and the age they were when they died. After Luther V, the names changed and became random—indicative of their time. Things like Horik and Augustus, until I got to the end of that wall and the names had become slightly more modern, like Jonathan and Gregory.

Panic tightened my chest. I stood back to take in the sheer mass of the wall and then the one behind me, noting the changed brick where he’d extended the mausoleum decade after decade. 8 days old. Every one of them a boy.

“What is this?” I asked, my voice coming out shaky.

Theo put his arm around my shoulder. “You started something here, Red. When you helped Anne escape, you set things in motion that cannot be undone.”

“What are you saying?”

“I needed you to see this. I needed you to know that none of them lived. Not one of my father’s sons, aside from me, ever lived past eight days.”

“Why?”

“We don’t know.” He removed his arm. “I was the product of two immortals—carrying the blood and therefore the strength of them both. But alone, without an immortal partner, my father cannot, it seems, recreate life.”

My eyes narrowed as his words turned the cogs inside my brain.

“And if it were possible for any of them to live,” he added sadly, as if it were an admission to himself, “he might have taken that chance away with his own foolish superstitions.”

“What do you mean?”

“You see, Red, I need you to understand that the man you married is a lie. He was not born immortal, the son of Carne, but rather made by witchcraft—”

“I know,” I said. “Anne told me.”

“How did Anne know?”

“There was a journal in her room—”

“So it surfaced.” He nodded to himself. “We searched high and low for that journal, but Freya hid it well.”

“Freya?”

“It was hers—”

“Then she wasn’t as in love with him as he thought,” I said to myself, frowning as I swept all my loose thoughts into one basket, making sense of them.

“It would not surprise me,” Theo said. “She may have been once, but when she learned of his dealings with the devil—what he did to his daughters—I’m not sure she truly ever looked at him in the same way.”

“What he did to them?”

“Killing them.”

I frowned, confused. “Why did he kill them if none of them would’ve lived past eight days anyway? And why would his lack of an immortal partner mean all his children die?”

“I have only theorized thus far, and all I have come up with is that he needs to mate with an immortal woman. Perhaps, since my father is an abomination, nature will not permit him to mix his seed with a pure, mortal lifeform. Perhaps, unless he mates with another abomination such as himself, every life born from it will perish, as if it were a defect that mother nature must correct to restore the natural order of things.”

“But they were just babies. It’s not their fault.” I touched a nameplate delicately, wondering about this massive army we were supposed to have. “So… none of them survived?”

“Not one.”

“Then there’s no army?”

“No. The rumors of it are enough to deter others.”

My hand dropped back to my side and a hot rage filled me. “Then why does he keep having more babies?”

Theo’s face opened up in surprise at the volume of my voice. The words echoed for a moment, carrying around the room like the rage of the oppressed.

Reverently, almost too calm, he shook his head. “Last week, I confronted him with my new knowledge—that he was not born the son of Carne. And he did not deny it. He told me simply that he prays to Carne, offers sacrifices so that he will forgive him for taking on immortal form.”

“So, what… he thinks Carne is killing his babies to punish him?”

“Yes. And he will not listen to reason. He will not take a scientific explanation.” Theo started getting louder. “He will keep taking wives in the hopes that their blood may be the next to bear a living son, and the closest we’ve gotten to him accepting that he must breed with a unique type of woman is when he chose you. A half wolf.”

“He thinks I can make a difference?”

“Yes. But you won’t. I know that now. He needs an immortal woman. Most likely one made from the same spell he was.”

“Can we find him one?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because there are no witches left, Red. He killed them all—at least, every Raven witch.”

“Raven witch?”

“The Ravens were a coven that once owned these lands.”

“What?”

Theo’s shoulders sunk and he pressed his lips into a thin smile. “Come on. It’s time you learned the truth about your pack.”

***

People were edgy. Any day now Luther would return to find his wife gone, and someone was going to pay. I knew I should be edgy too, but I just didn’t care after what Theo told me. He didn’t scare me. The Great Luther Reave of Ravenswood was just a manmade wolf with anger issues and very little modern intelligence. I could probably convince him the next eclipse was a result of my supreme imaginary power.

The afternoon sun sat at the peak of the west tower, right above my room; and for a moment, before we entered the door underneath it, I could see my lonely face looking out, wishing for a better life. Somehow, a part of me felt like I was on the cusp of something better, but I didn’t know why.

“Theo?” I said softly in the quiet of the west entrance. There were no staff around, no one even passing by, but I still kept my next words hushed. “You never answered my question before.”

“Which one?”

“Why did Luther kill all the baby girls if they were going to die anyway? And why aren’t they buried with the boys?”

“They are not buried with the boys because there is nothing left of them to bury.”

“Nothing left of them?”

“He didn’t kill them, Red,” he added, closing the front door. “He sacrificed them to Carne.”

I stopped dead, taking hold of the wall and focusing on my cold, wet toes to stop from passing out. I could see them all—hundreds of sweet-faced babies on altar tables… “Why would he do that?”

“When you lie to yourself for so long, eventually, you start to believe it.”

“What do you mean?”

“It began with the death of my mother and the murder of my sister, and became what I am now certain is madness.” Theo walked, so I followed, but instead of taking a corridor or the stairs, he stopped right in front of the decorative wall panel with its artistic carvings that formed a two-inch thick frame around each one.

“You think he went mad after he killed his own daughter?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, but you’re not mad. So why didn’t you have him committed or something?”

“I may not be mad, Red, but I was undereducated—kept here away from the world just as you have been. I never questioned him until more recently, because I never realized there was a need to.”

“How could you not—”

“The world makes sense to you in a different way, because you were given an education from an early age. A modern education. Science. Medicine. Religion. For me, it has only been blind faith and curiosity. I believed inward and outward that my father was a god, and I believed every one of his daughters was damned to kill its mother—an act, my father told me, of revenge; a curse placed on him as he killed the Raven Lord and all his family.” Theo lowered his head and his voice shamefully. “I believed that every apparently cursed daughter he sacrificed would bring him happiness in the form of a living son.”

“So what changed?”

He pressed his mouth into a tight line, angling his head to the panel as he brought a finger up to a carved depiction of a winged woman. “I looked beyond what I could already see.”

“What is that?” I came closer and got on my toes to look at it properly.

“My mother. Daughter of The Raven—a man who was both Lord of the Raven witches and the former king of these lands in a time at least a century after all werewolves had been wiped off the earth, and barely a decade before they returned. He was not a great king, but a mighty one. An even mightier warrior. Respected and revered.” He slid his finger along the carving to show a king with the head of a raven, sitting on a throne with carved beams of light shining out of his hand. “And, as I told you earlier, also a member of a powerful witch family.”

“Real witches?”

“Yes.”

Things started making sense. I could see shape to Luther’s past, knowing he was made by a witch.

“My father came from a wealthy family, who owned many lands. But The Raven raided those lands and killed his parents, taking everything for himself.”

“And he vowed revenge?” I said with a half-smile, because it was just so typical of the times.

“That he did, little Red. His vengeful undertaking led him to a land across the sea, where he sought out this Raven witch and challenged him to a duel—the victor taking everything the defeated owned.

“It was laughable that a young man could hope to defeat a powerful warrior, and witch at that. But my father’s heart was filled with vengeance—a potent and powerful emotion—and little did anyone know, he had been trained by the great warrior Bayon Black, who I named my firstborn son after.”

“So Luther won the duel?”

“He did.” Theo pointed to a carving of many little soldiers with their swords at their feet. “See, Luther did not fight the warrior, the king, or even the witch; he fought the foolish man’s ego. All my father had to his name at the time was a lucrative tanning business, but he risked it all for the sheer joy of finishing what he started a decade ago. Win or lose.

“After The Raven Lord’s bloody death—” he pointed to another carving, “—all his lands and all the riches he’d stolen became Father’s, as did the people. Father killed all that were loyal to the old king and Lord, keeping the daughter alive for his own amusement.”

“The winged girl? Your mother?”

“Yes. But he fell in love with her. And then, rather than tearing this mansion down and making it his own, he built on it, both literally and metaphorically—as he did with my mother.” Theo turned and nodded to the colored glass window overlooking this corridor. “You can see in which time period each wing of this mansion was built by studying the embellishments.”

Up there, preserved eternally in glass, a mighty raven sat above a forest, and in the window beside it was a king with a raven’s head and wings, but a man’s body.

“Did they have wings—the Raven and his daughter?”

“No.” He laughed. “The raven was merely a symbol—a bad omen, you might say—representative of the destruction, the fear he brought on his neighbors and all who crossed him.”

“So… Raven, and woods.” It clicked. “I always thought we were the Ravenswood pack because there’s a lot of Ravens in the woods here.”

Theo laughed again. “I suppose many believe that. But no, we are the Ravenswood pack because my father married a Raven witch and she, later, cast a spell that made him an immortal wol—”

“How did she do it? I mean, what made her choose to make him a wolf?”

“A conqueror, in those times, was often referred to as a wolf. You might see a wolf on his family crest if he had had many victories, so it was only natural that they would choose such a powerful and majestic beast to bind the spell. However, she did not use wolf blood for her own immortality spell.”

“What did she use?”

“Raven blood. In honor of her defeated family. And after that, the union of the wolf and the raven, they became known as the Ravenwolfs.” He lowered his head sadly. “But time changed that.”

“How?”

“After Mother died, Father became somewhat of a recluse. He sold off many of the lands he’d won in the same kinds of battles that got him the Raven lands, and he hid away long enough for fact to become myth, and for no one to remember his name. Sometime in the seventeen-hundreds, he grew bored of his loneliness and left his self-imposed prison to gather a pack.”

“Gather one?”

“Yes. I had always been by his side, the ever-faithful son, and when my sons had sons, and those children went on to have sons, and so on—eventually forgetting their Ravenwolf roots—moon beasts had become great in number and somewhat out of control. Father brought law and order, established packs, taught them to hunt game instead of humans. He rebuilt his empire, but with his heart torn by my mother’s betrayal—her death—he could not bear to speak the old pack name, and so we became the Ravenswood Pack.

“Time moved on then, and as his fortune grew around him so too did the number of dead sons and wives, and his madness, or what I now know to be madness, grew deeper. Then, after his second love Freya died in 1814, he once again became a recluse—divided the packs and sold off lands, keeping enough money to sustain him for a few centuries—hiding away here in the Ravenswood mansion.” I watched his fingertip make a line from one portion of the carvings to another. “All of this is written right here for anyone to see, if they so cared to do so. But no one ever has. No one has ever questioned him, not even I.”

“Don’t feel bad,” I offered, both of us breaking apart for a moment as a slave passed, apologetic, and scurried away to the other corridor. “Most people never do question their parents. Not even those educated from birth, like I have been.”

Theo nodded gratefully. “I appreciate that, Red.”

I offered a regretful smile. Poor Theo. After all these centuries, knowing what he knows now, thinking with a more modern head, he must feel like a stupid idiot. As much as I liked Theo, he was kind of an idiot for believing Luther, but that judgment came from a place of higher education, so it wasn’t fair to him really.

“So why did your mother die?” I asked, exhaling to release all the pent-up emotion. “I mean, if not even a knife to the heart could kill Luther, how could a baby kill Anora?”

“My baby sister didn’t kill my mother.” He walked away, stopping in front of the stained glass window, the reds and blues leaving colored squares over his face. “Women die sometimes in childbirth. It happens. But it is never the child’s fault.”

“But he thinks they’re all cursed—”

“Because he thought she was immortal. They had not tested the bounds of their mortality at that point. But there were things that could kill them. Both of them.”

“Like what?” My ear tuned eagerly in to this response.

Theo laughed once sardonically, but didn’t look at me. Didn’t answer me.

“Is that it?” I asked, grasping at straws. “Can his daughters kill him? Do they have like, magic blood or—”

“No. Nothing like that,” he said with another, this time gentler laugh. “Those babies were just babies. Nothing more. He killed my sister because he was enraged, believed it to be her fault Mother died when, in truth, mother was never truly immortal to begin with.”

“She wasn’t?”

“Not to my knowledge.” He lifted his hand and pressed the sturdy ring there between two fingers, rocking it around.

“What’s that?”

“This?” He sighed, curling his hand inward to look at it. “It’s our old family crest—the one from when I was a boy—consisting of a running wolf with a raven set upon its back; the circle is the moon by which they draw their power.” He held up his hand and showed me the ring. At first I couldn’t make out the raven; it just looked like the wolf had wings. But she was there, set against its back.

“Ravenwolf,” I said to myself.

Theo nodded. “What my father did not know then, and will not admit today, is that my mother did not truly love him. To save herself from her captor’s cruelty she played a role, won him over with false love. She knew she could bear a life with him, but not an eternity. So she lied about her reasons for using raven’s blood in the spell in order to disguise the fact that she was creating a potion for herself that cured illness and age, but not injury. That way,” he added sadly, “she could control at least one thing in her life.”

“That one thing being her death,” I said with a nod. And wow. A huge portion of me just felt kind of sorry for Luther. Until I thought about the sacrifices, and then I was glad Anora did that! If she were here, I’d have high-fived her.

I turned back to the wall panel and studied them with my arms folded. All of this truth had been here for centuries—carved out for anyone to see. And now I knew what Theo meant earlier when he said, “I looked beyond what I could already see.” I mean, wow, when he realized the truth, that must have been like a profound brain bomb going off.

Dead now, the beautiful winged Anora would forever look out from the wood frame, perhaps one day a reminder to all that there were ways to escape your captors, or even the proverbial confines of a sheltered or sad life. You just had to be clever. You just had to fight.

I took from that message that I had to rise above it, not let it take me down, and I was resolved then to fight. To choose a future for myself that didn’t have Luther in it, no matter what threats were imposed against me.

He didn’t own me. I wouldn’t sit by any longer and let him.

I glanced back at Theo and as I took in his sadness, I saw a small boy there instead of the strong, fully grown man. His whole world had just fallen apart for him recently, and he was busy reshaping his reality. I knew it would take time, but I also saw in him an ally now, even more so than before. I just wasn’t sure how wide his bubble of disdain extended past himself, toward his father.

“So, when did you realize the truth?” I probed, motioning to the carvings. “And what do you intend to do about it?”

“It was shortly after you arrived.” He walked over and leaned on the wall in front of me, his hands behind his back. “Katy said the gender of a child’s birth was not owed to the mother’s desires, but rather to science. Of course I didn’t understand that then. How could science determine the gender of one of God’s or Carne’s creatures? So I opened a computer for the first time and, after some awkward navigation and a few soul-changing images scaring my mind, came across an encyclopedia within the world of the web—”

“The internet. Or world wide web, you know… www-dot.”

“Right. Is that what that stands for?”

“Yep.”

“Well, I spent three days reading. Researching. Looking at myself in the mirror and wondering how I was ever so blind and downright foolish.”

“Without ever being taught, how would you know? How would you even know you didn’t know?”

Theo laughed. “That is what I’ve told myself. And what the kind people of the forum told me also.”

“The forum?”

“There is a place where one can ask any question they desire, no matter how insane, to which kind people come to answer it, in often,” he said with a laugh, “bold and cruel ways, almost unreadable ways.”

I laughed hard, my cheeks filling with warmth and removing some of the winter sting. “Don’t blame yourself too much for not knowing, Theo. This place is pretty far removed. Look how much Katy knew, and look at her now.”

“Yes.” He walked over to a banner hanging on the wall and touched the tassels. “I will live a long life of regret for some of the things my father has done—things that happened while I stood by, ignorant—”

“Then tell me you’re going to do something about it.” I rushed forward to stand beside him, desperate to catch this whisper of remorse and shape it into action. “You can fight him; you can—”

“I’m no match for him, Red. And his followers are loyal and—”

“They’re not,” I demanded. “I bet if you look into the eyes of each slave, of each goon and each wolf, you’ll see that they don’t love him all that much.”

Theo’s face changed, as though this was a revelation.

“Theo, he is a horrible man. He has done unspeakable things. I know it’s dangerous for you to even risk disloyalty, but just ask around. Just put it out there. You might have a few more supporters than you think.”

“Supporters? Supporters of what, exactly?”

“A coup.”

“A hostile takeover?” He backed away from me in one broad step as though I was diseased. “Are you mad?”

“What else can be done? I—”

“Red, this ends here.” He wiped the air clean with one hand. “I only told you this to make you aware—so you weren’t fighting some son of a god in your mind, but rather a very old and jaded man. Fight him with wit and will, girl. Not a sword.”

I shook my head. “He needs to be stopped—”

“Then reason with him!” He grabbed my arms and shook me. “He is my father. He is the only family I have left.”

“And what about all the families he’s torn apart—and for what? More sons, when he has a perfectly good and loyal one right here.”

Theo let go of me, closing his eyes as he turned away.

“Just think about it, Theo,” I said, but he shook his head and left through the front door. A cold winter chill moved in and blew the edges of the tasseled parchment on the wall, and I looked up at the modern family crest above a coat of arms: a lone wolf howling at the moon. A statement, I was certain, that Luther was the alpha; the one and only, the remarkable and godly son of Carne. But I saw it for what it was: a lonely wolf crying for help. Yet there was no one to help. Everyone he loved was dead, and anyone that loved him would soon enough see his true face and betray him as Anora had done. I’d make sure of that. With or without Theo’s help.

Part Three: Chapter Ten

Death and All His Friends

Luther returned, bringing with him an invitation to dinner. And with that came a spear of worry. Tonight he would ask me to his chamber, and our union would be complete. But I needed more time. Only three days had passed since I spoke with Theo, and I still hadn’t come up with a plan. Worse still, Katy was nowhere to be seen this afternoon, so I couldn’t ask for advice; and since it wasn’t Sunday, I couldn’t run to the green truck and escape. I had to face it: I would dine with Luther tonight, and after I would return to his chamber.

Knowing this, even though my hands were shaking, I dressed well in a lilac silk gown and fastened the silver dagger around my neck. It was my only hope. Luther was not a god, which meant he could be killed, and it didn’t go over my head the fact that there was no silver anywhere here in this mansion. I was certain he was allergic to silver, and I’d have tested the theory on Theo if he’d been around—on a small, unnoticeable patch of skin. Despite not knowing for sure if silver would kill him, I had to try. I would never give myself to Luther now, but I was smart enough to know that he would not tolerate defiance from his property. It was commit, or die. Was I scared? Heck yes! Would I take this lying down? Only over my dead body.

When I met Luther in the Great Hall and took his hand, painting on a smile, my heart went around the room to all the portraits of the past wives, gathering support. I had to believe each one was watching over us tonight, on my side. I knew Anora would be, and so she, with her portrait overlooking the room, became my icon of hope and strength.

Luther looked as gorgeous as ever; his hair brushed back, a five o’clock shadow grown in wildly over his jaw, making him beastly and sexy in a way I’d never noticed before. It was almost a shame to kill him. If only he was as pretty on the inside as he was on the outside. I tried to push back memories of him fencing and smiling as I plotted out hurriedly, frantically how this tiny silver dagger would kill him.

“It is lovely to see you, Red.”

The informal name caught me off-guard. I played it cool though, sitting down when he pulled out my chair. “You’ve been gone for a while,” I said, by way of asking where he’d been.

“I had business to attend to a few counties over.”

I nodded, laying my napkin in my lap. Luther sat at the opposite end of the table to me—fifty seats away—instead of the place set out beside me. I rolled my hand out to it, projecting my voice down the room. “Are we expecting company?”

“My son will be joining us.”

Thank Carne! “Where is he?”

“Late.” His voice echoed all the way down to me. “He had a matter to attend to for me earlier, and I believe the mess it left took some time to clean up.”

“Mess?”

Luther smiled reassuringly, laying his napkin in his lap. “Nothing to worry about, Red.”

My worried gaze shifted to the largest portrait in the room, taking cues from her. Anora didn’t look at all worried, so I mimicked her face, my heart thumping with eagerness to get this dinner over with, get back to his chamber, and stab him. If he didn’t die, I’d be as royally screwed as a wing-nut. Maybe even dead. But so be it. If I went out trying to take the most vile beast known to man off this earth, then it was a noble death. And if it did nothing more than inspire a coup, it would be a worthy outcome. If it did nothing at all, then the journal I left hidden in my room would hopefully inspire future wives to fight for freedom.

Luther said nothing as the slaves moved about the room serving our dinner. I knew some of them, had seen them plenty of times, but tonight they looked as if they’d seen a ghost, their hands shaking as they served soup.

I pushed the disconcertion aside and started in on my food. After all, I’d never dined with Luther. Maybe the slaves were always like this in his presence. Either that or they were forced to poison my food and I’d be dead any second now. But that wasn’t Luther’s style. He’d be more likely to serve Max up to me first. Thankfully, my beautiful little guy was sleeping safely on my bed.

“How is your soup?” Luther asked.

“Good,” I said, not meaning to sound so icy.

“I have news for you.”

“Mm?”

“Tonight, we will make a son.”

I rolled my eyes to a close for a moment to compose myself, fighting the urge to give him a biology lecture. “And how do you know that?” I said casually. “It might be a girl.”

“The runes have foreseen it. The time is right. Provided you lay with intention to bear a son.”

“Right, so my thoughts will determine the outcome?” I said sarcastically. “And science has nothing to do with it?”

“Whether a woman has sons or not has nothing to do with science, April. It is magic,” he demanded, his oration stilted with conceit. “A child conceived under the full moon, in the right conditions, will be born a boy. If it is not, it is because the mother did not want it.”

“So what you’re telling me is you’ve found yet another way to blame women for everything?” I put on a hatful of sass as I said that. “Adam ate the damn apple too, Luther!”

“What on earth are you talking about, woman?”

“Facts.” I hit the table with my index finger. “Cold, hard facts. I got an A in biology. The moon and the woman’s intentions have nothing to do with the gender of a baby. And anyone that thinks so is grossly undereducated.” Grossly? Wow, all those century-old books were rubbing off on my vocabulary.

Luther was either lost for words or preparing a counterattack, so I headed him off with a massive probe.

“What happens to the girls?” I said.

“Pardon?”

“They don’t become soldiers. They aren’t ever seen. What happens to them?”

I could tell from his face that he didn’t want to answer, but the gate had been swung wide open. If he were to keep me here, willingly, he had to say something.

He put his fork down and cleared his throat. “They become ravens.”

“What?”

“Deep in their ancestral blood, there is the blood of a shifter—from human form to raven. They turn at eight days old, and they do not turn back.”

I knew where that raven blood came from, but he made it sound like it was a natural occurrence when he used the word ‘shifter’. So I played dumb. “What do you mean? How?”

“My wife was the daughter of a great king. Known as The Raven for his ability to transform into one.”

Which was a lie. Another big fat lie to make himself and his spawn look like gods. His wife could become a raven because she used raven blood in her spell. She was no ‘shifter’.

“And, as such,” he continued, “all my daughters transform unwillingly into ravens.”

My bones flooded with lead. Considering how many ravens we had around here, there could actually be some truth to that. But what about the sacrifices? And what about Anne’s daughter? Would that happen to her?

“The wife that escaped?” I started, treading on dangerous ground. “They say she took her daughter—”

“Yes, and without me there to give that child the kindness of death, it will be left to live its life as a black winged creature.”

My heart broke for Anne, but it made sense: that’s why he only let her have a week with the baby. Was he sacrificing them, as Theo thought, or was he showing mercy? “You kill them—all of them?”

“Not until after they turn.”

“But how do you know they can’t turn back?”

“They are cursed, April—with my first wife’s blood and the sins of her heart. They will walk this earth for the rest of their days as a miserable omen, whether they can turn back or not.”

“And the boys?” I said. “Do you kill them too, when they turn into wolves?”

He cleared his throat. “They do not turn into wolves until their sixteenth year.”

I bit my tongue, a rush of rage away from telling him what I knew: what I had seen in that tomb. But this had to be played cool. I had to end this tonight. And yet I couldn’t get Anne and little Red out of my thoughts. The baby would have turned by now. Anne must have been so scared. And what happened to her after that? Did she die? Did she turn back?

I would never know. Anne had run far away from here, never to be seen again.

We sat in total silence then as the slaves cleared our starters and served steak. I ate quietly, consumed by my own thoughts until, as I soaked up the last dredges of the creamy sauce and swallowed it down, Luther broke that silence.

“How is your steak, by the way?” He held up his fork, making a point then of putting a large bleeding glob of it in his mouth and chewing thoughtfully. I liked my meat rare, but not that rare.

“It’s um… delicious,” I said, nodding to my empty plate.

“The chef cooked it especially for you,” he said in a lilting voice. “He even named it after someone very dear to you.”

“Oh?” I said as a prompt to make his point already.

“Yes.” He sipped his red wine casually, holding his glass up with the kind of grin that should accompany a singular gleaming tooth. “He called it Steak à la Katy.”

My throat tightened. I dropped my fork hard on the china plate, the clank reverberating throughout the room.

“I know you helped Anne escape, April. And if you’re wondering how far I will go for revenge, if your mind hinted on the idea of cannibalism, you are spot on my dear; now eat up.” He motioned for a slave to slop another serve of Katy onto my plate.

I looked at the undercooked meat, trying to make sense of what he just said. Katy had been gone all afternoon. I thought she was kept busy preparing for the dinner tonight. I could never have imagined…

I tugged at my corset, trying to loosen its grasp. It was too tight, stopping my lungs from expanding. I wanted to get up, but the heavy chair caught on the rug and I couldn’t stand.

“Sit down,” he demanded.

I sat, taking deep, hurried breaths as the weight of her dead body tried to inch its way up my throat, hot and sour and tight.

“Eat!”

I looked at him coldly, biting my lip to force back the raging grief. “You can’t make me eat this.”

He just smiled into his glass. “Then it will be served to you for breakfast, and lunch, and every meal following until you are starving enough to eat it.”

My lip trembled, seeing Katy’s generous smile and the way she loved Theo dance around in my memory. How could anyone destroy something so beautiful? Everything about her was sweet; everything about their love was perfect. My heart broke for the pure unadulterated sadness of it all. “Does Theo know?”

“Know what, exactly?”

“That you killed Katy?”

“Now why would my son care what happens to a slave?” He put his glass down, but before it touched the table something must have clicked. Something he’d seen or heard, and it flooded him with rage. The fury was only visible in the changing color of his head. He bottled it up skillfully, displaying an ultimate, scary kind of calm instead.

“Mr. French?” he said docilely.

The butler appeared at his side.

“Has my son returned yet?”

“He has, Your Lordship.”

“Bring him to the drawing room. Have him wait until I’m finished with my wife,” he said, casting a cold look my way, one that creeped and crawled with bad intentions.

“Very good, Lordship.” Mr. French bowed and backed away, and Luther stood, unfastening his cravat.

“Leave us!” he demanded.

I wasn’t sure who he was talking to, but when he repeated it, louder, the men on the exits and a few slaves clearing food fled the room. I leaned back in my chair, racing blood carrying adrenaline, and watched with wide eyes as he slowly, calculatedly walked the length of the table, removing his vest and coat.

“What are you doing?” I asked, losing control of my voice.

He turned my chair out and cupped the arms, leaning right into me. “Consummating our vows.”

“No,” I said, my voice coming out steadily through caged teeth. He expected me to submit. He would use his experience with me—in my room, when he tortured Max—as a measurement for how I’d react to violence. But he was wrong. I’d learned from that, and I would never resort to flight mode ever again.

I screamed involuntarily as he ripped me from the chair and threw me toward the table, my arms and chin hitting several dishes and knocking food all over the floor. Sauce and wine soaked straight through the pink silk and muddied my skin, a few shards of broken glass cutting my forearm. I swiveled around and slipped out from under him, dashing for the door as it slammed into place behind the last servant.

“It is no good,” he called in a relaxed voice, picking up my wine glass to refill it. “They are locked. As are the windows.”

I looked at the windows, high and thick, pressing my back to the door as I calculated my chances of survival in here versus jumping out there.

“You are not the first wife I’ve had to take in this manner.” He put the glass down and took off his shirt, revealing the full impact his inner wolf had on his human form. “And you will surely not be the last.”

“Stay away from me,” I warned. “I said no. If you touch me now, that’s rape!”

“It is not rape. You are my property and I have every right—”

“I am no one’s property!”

Luther just laughed, standing tall as though he was showing off his hairy, muscled chest—as if I was supposed to be impressed. I wanted to throw up. Nothing about him would ever impress me again.

“I’ll make you a deal,” he added, walking toward me, “if you do not fight me, I will let your mother live. Do you submit?”

“Over my dead body,” I said through my teeth.

“That can be arranged, Miss Redwood. You would certainly not be the first corpse I’d—”

“I’m warning you!” I yelled as he got closer, clutching my silver necklace.

It didn’t deter him. He stalked over to me with a sickly look in his eye, and I just wanted to punch him in the throat. I could see it. I could see every sick thing he’d done to these women in the past and the horrible thing he did to Katy. I hated him for it. I hated him for taking me away from my family and for killing all of his daughters. It was a pure hate—like nothing I’d ever felt before.

As he stood in front of me, everything slowed down. I saw his hand reach for me, his hip swing forward as he mapped out how he’d sleazily press it against me. Reflexively, I knocked his hand away. As it flung back, throwing him off, my fist shot up and it was in his throat before I’d fully committed to the punch. There was no turning back now. The plan to kill him had become necessity. Here and now, or never.

My fist only winded him slightly, even though it nearly broke my hand, giving rise to a raw kind of anger that drank the last vestiges of kindness in his eyes and bled out a lifetime of hatred. It was the ultimate betrayal—a disobedient wife—and if I didn’t make my next hit count, he would discipline me to within an inch of my life.

I lifted my hand to hit him again, but he caught it and shoved it downward, my entire body sweeping around uncontrollably until I landed on my hands and knees. The thump jarred me for a moment, so I didn’t notice him grab my arm until I was on my back, crying out as his knee pushed down hard on my stomach.

“You think me a villain, April,” he spat, his face bright red, foaming around his mouth. A squeal of agony ripped around the room as he bent my hand back, leaning closer, his weight forcing my backbones into the hard ground. “You take what you hear and you make assumptions about me, but did you ever consider for one moment that I’m not the bad guy? Did you ever think that maybe you’re the villain in my story?”

It was so ludicrous that it called on enough new anger to black out the pain. “I’m the villain. And yet you’re the one on top of me right now, trying to hurt me.”

“Hurt you?” he said, incredulous. “Hurt you? You’re the one that hurt me, April.”

I stopped fighting for a moment and actually looked at him, seeing past the rage and the spit to the tears in his eyes.

“You came in to my life and changed what I felt—changed how I saw the world, and opened me up to another century of suffering should you die. And then you betrayed me.” His voice trembled with hurt. “You broke my trust and, with it, you broke my damn heart.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, because I was sorry. Sorry for how it all turned out. Sorry that I couldn’t reach him, keep his better side around longer than his evil side. Sorry I had to do what I’d spent this last minute mapping out.

“Sorry for wh—” he started, but he didn’t finish. He coughed out as I rolled up, using the full force of my head to butt his skull. My ears rang and the dense pain dropped through me like an elevator falling, but I got up, flipping him onto his back in his moment of agony. He fought at me, trying to get his hands around my waist to flip me off, but my rage was complete; like a health bar in a video game it was running through me and fueling my strength now. The wolf inside of me, suppressed, brought to life only by Luther’s good intent, surfaced. She guided me, supported me, honed my senses and made it easy to do what I did next.

Everything slowed down; I could hear the slaves outside, whispering, concerned for me; I could hear footfalls at a run, heading this way; I could smell the mix of meat and wine tarnishing the newly polished floorboards, noting that Katy’s dead body smelled remarkably like beef. And finally, I saw my chance. Luther’s face looked ugly as he fought me, his mouth gaping wide as he screamed my name. I needed little wit or intelligence to gently yank the chain from around my neck and in a moment of clarity, jam it into his mouth. His eyes rounded in surprise, jaw loosening to release the object, but I shut my eyes and brought my elbow up, dropping it down on his jaw with the mighty strength of the alpha female.

I didn’t stay to see if it worked. I spun around on top of him and got to my feet, running so fast for the door that it felt like slow motion—like being trapped in those dreams where you’re flying and can’t get off the ground.

My silk dress and the tight corset stiffened me, making it impossible to breathe. I gasped and whimpered as I fled to the other side of the room, feeling him hot on my trail, his fingers an inch away from my neck. But as I hit the door and hammered it hard, screaming for help, the absence of his reaching touch stopped me.

I hadn’t noticed the deathly, panic-induced silence until all sound suddenly flooded back to my ears. I glanced across the room, eyes widening when I saw Luther rolling around on the floor where I’d left him. I wasn’t sure from back here, but it looked like he was choking. As if smoke was billowing out of his mouth in the way it would when cold water’s thrown over a hot pan.

My brow contorted and my shoulders relaxed. I walked closer, but not too close, and watched for a moment.

He writhed and wriggled, clawing at his throat with tightly curled fingers, but the silver dagger was wedged tight; the only sound he could vomit out was a pathetic and almost inaudible “Ga-ga-ga.”

I squatted down, hugging my knees in my stained silk dress, and prayed to Carne that he’d die.

His face swelled up right before my eyes and his head went redder than when he realized that his son loved a slave. As the struggling died down and his hands left his throat, grasping and scratching at the ground now in a final attempt to win his life, I looked up at all the eyes looking down on him, as if the souls of the women depicted had been painted into each portrait so that at this very moment each one that he’d hurt could look down and watch him suffer.

“This is for them,” I said.

He rolled his head up, twisting his body to look at me. “C-c-c,” he said, and I smiled the smile of a deeply satisfied woman.

“What’s that?” I put my hand to my ear, angling it to him. “I can’t hear you when you talk with your throat full.”

He gave up then, and his whole body went floppy, aside from his chest. But after a moment, even that gave up the fight and the alpha lay there, hopefully dead.

A moment passed, like the suction before a blast or the rush of a wave being dragged out to sea. I was keenly aware that I’d killed him, and yet it didn’t feel like murder. It felt like justice.

I tugged the iron ring off my finger and tossed it onto his corpse, glad to be rid of it. Glad to be rid of the need to feel accepted. Glad that it was finally all over.

“Well, I might only be fifty percent wolf, but I am one hundred percent badass right now,” I said to myself, kind of wondering what to do next.

The door burst open on the other side of the hall then and I screamed, backing away on my bottom and hands.

Theo marched toward us. “Where is he?” he yelled. “Where is my father?!”

He didn’t see him on the floor behind me until he was right upon us. His steps slowed then, and the anger burst away from his face, leaving him bent over his knees as he saw the steamy, bloodied mess around his father’s mouth. “What did you do?”

“I did what you should have done a long time ago,” I said simply, terrified of him for the first time.

Theo turned his head and waved his arm. “Out! All of you!”

The doors closed with a heavy thud that echoed around the faces of all those women that came before me. They looked at peace now, as if the fake smiles that were painted there before had changed.

Theo knelt down, and I thought he was going to inspect his father, but he picked up my hand instead, patting it softly. “Are you all right, Red?”

I shook my head. I was fine. I fought my battle and won. But Katy…

My lips turned down and trembled uncontrollably. “He killed Katy.”

Theo covered his jaw with a flat palm, trying to get something out, but he couldn’t speak.

“Theo, what is it?”

“No.”

“No what?”

“He only thought he killed her.”

“What?” The new breath left me dizzy.

“He wouldn’t have a clue who is who around here, Red. The fool sent me to kill the slave girl you’d befriended.” He laughed, his eyes lensed with springing tears. “Did you really think I’d kill her?”

I laughed too. “Then she’s all right?”

He nodded. “She’s gone. I had to help her escape quickly. There was no time for goodbye.”

I jumped up on my knees and hugged him, ignoring the fact that my armpits were really sweaty from all the stress. “I don’t care. That is the best news I’ve had all week!”

Theo laughed, patting my ribs as he drew away. He looked at his father then and closed one eye in consideration.

“Are you upset with me?” I asked timidly.

“Why would I be, Red?” He lifted his eyes to mine. “Not when I came here to do the very same myself.”

My face opened out in disbelief.

“He crossed a line, asking me to kill the girl I love, and you were right.” His brow went up as though he still couldn’t believe it. “When I was asked to serve her up for dinner, I sought help, and that help was only too willingly given.”

“Help from who?”

“Mrs. Potter, among others.” He stood up and looked around the room, walking over to the wall when he spotted what he needed. “So, if anyone asks, you didn’t do this, Red. I did.”

“You did?”

“Yes.” He took down one of the many decorative swords from the wall and inspected the blade. “If one kills the alpha—”

“He becomes the new alpha,” I said, eyes wide as I got to my feet and moved quickly away from the body.

“So you can either inherit his empire,” he said, holding the sword out to me, “run it as your own, or you can go back to your normal life.”

I almost cried, covering my mouth and nodding instead. “I wanna go home.”

“I thought you’d say that.” Theo gave one good swing into the air and I covered my ears, turning away. As much as I hated Luther I didn’t want that image in my nightmares. The way he choked on that necklace would be enough to haunt me for the rest of my days. No matter how evil he was, it surely had to leave a mark on the soul when you take a life. Which led to another thought.

I whipped around and looked at Theo. “Who did they serve?”

“Pardon?” he said, hiding his father’s head behind his back so I wouldn’t see. But I saw the thick pool of blood all around his feet, new drops joining it by the fours. I chose not to look.

“If they didn’t cook and serve Katy, who did they serve?”

“Florence.”

“Who was she?”

“An old black cow.”

“A cow?”

“As in ‘mooo’,” he said with a laugh.

My legs went weak. I moved to the chair and sat down, allowing myself a moment to make sense of everything that happened here tonight. No wonder Steak à la Katy smelled like beef.

“Things are going to be different around here from now on, Red,” Theo said gently. “You have my word.”

I smiled, jumping as the doors burst open again. Theo lifted the severed head of Luther and held it up for Aerik and Agnes to see. They stopped in their tracks and stood defensively as they took in the scene.

“As you can see, I have killed my father,” Theo said boldly. “Bow to your alpha or challenge me, if you will.”

They looked at each other and didn’t hesitate to drop to one knee.

I stood up proudly beside Theo, averting my eyes from the greying head. “Can I go home now?”

He nodded. “Of course you can, Red.”

Part Four: Chapter One

After Alex: The Other After Alex

With all my belongings packed into the one suitcase in the trunk, and with Max on my lap in the front seat of Theo’s car, we headed back to my old life, as if I’d never been there in that mansion to begin with. I didn’t feel even a pang of sadness as we drove away. I just felt numb and confused, like any moment someone would spring out of the dark and say “April Fool’s!” Then they’d take me back to that tower and lock the door, and I’d never see the light of day.

I was wrong when I said my life could be divided into three parts. Because, back then, I never imaged there would be an After the Darkness. Free now, on my way home, it didn’t feel like I always imagined it would. A part of me wished I’d stayed one more night at the mansion to get my thoughts in order. I wanted to see Mom and Alex, but I was also afraid. What would I tell them? What would I say had happened to me there at Ravenswood? How would I face the shame in my pack that Luther still, to his dying day, had not consummated our vows? They’d take that to mean I was unworthy of the alpha. And you see, these thoughts were worse than the fact that I killed him. I was so messed up right now that I actually cared what people thought. So messed up that I was worrying about still being a virgin two-and-a-half months into marriage. Really, had I not learned anything about life in all this time?

No, I decided. I had. I would push those thoughts to the back of my mind and tell people the truth. Luther was not worthy of me. He never had been. He’d never been worthy of our pack. And now, there stood a more worthy alpha than any before him, and our new alpha female would not even be wolf. She’d be a human slave girl. I wasn’t sure it got any cooler than that. It was unorthodox; it wasn’t in keeping with tradition; but it was better.

As the forest released us and backed away solemnly, the town center came into view, its modern lights and the giant cinema bustling on such a clear, crisp night. I looked at all the warmly dressed people as we passed, in hopes I might see Alex, but he wasn’t there. A few old friends were, but they didn’t see me.

After that, each familiar street became more familiar as we neared my house. Theo didn’t say a word the entire time, and Max, excited to be in a car, stood up on his hind legs, paws on the door, his breath making circles of fog on the window. A part of me worried that Mom might send the dog back with Theo. After all, I’d only begged for a puppy my entire life. Why would she say yes now? But that concern was far at the back of my mind. My biggest now, after the dinner conversation with Luther before he died, was Anne and her baby girl.

“Theo?”

“Yeah?”

“They all turn into ravens,” I said softly in the darkness. “You left that bit out.”

He nodded, his shadowed face lit by an oncoming car. “I didn’t think it was necessary.”

“Why?”

“I guess…” He looked down at his hands, lifting one off the steering wheel to thumb away a sliver of blood that had been left between his fingers after his shower. “I didn’t want you to feel like you made a mistake helping Anne escape.”

I nodded, looking at the thinning snow and for some reason comparing it to the cold in the hills; it was still like mid-winter up there, but down here the last rainfall had melted a lot of the snow away, leaving it patchy and muddy along the sides of the road.

“What about Anne? What will happen to her daughter?”

“I don’t know,” he said, his deep voice calming somehow. “But I’ll find her and I’ll help her if she’s alive, I swear to you. That little girl is, after all, my only sister.”

I looked up and smiled at him. “That’s right. I didn’t think of that.”

He smiled back, eyes moving to Max then, the smile growing. “He looks happy.”

“He’s going to love home,” I said, stroking his back.

“He’s grown a lot. He’ll be bigger than you before month’s end.”

I laughed. “Not that big. But he’ll be bigger than Alex’s dog.” I got a flip in my heart then, thinking about seeing Sacha. “Did you know?”

“About what?”

“That Alex came to the mansion?”

“Yes. I drove him home.”

“What?” I sat up taller in my seat. “Was he okay? Is he—”

“He was fine. No one hurt him.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“No. He had nothing to say.”

“Did you tell him you knew me? Did you tell him I was okay?”

“No.”

“Why? Theo, you knew how much I—”

“Because he needed to forget you, Red. I didn’t know then what would happen. As far as I knew, life would go on as it always has, and to offer him hope, news of you, would only have been to torment him—to torment you, should I have told you about it.”

I sat back, sullen. He was right. But I hated that Alex had been so close and I had no control over what was said or done from there.

Theo slowed the car as we came upon the front of my house, and I leaned forward, as if I could jump right out the window and land in my mom’s arms. It was dark, all the lights out but the porch light, but I knew she’d be home, most likely still awake.

“Do you want me to come in?” Theo asked.

“No, it’s okay.”

“Okay.” He pulled up along the sidewalk and put the handbrake on. “I’ll just get your suitcase then.”

“Okay.” I smiled. “And Theo? Thanks.”

“No, thank you Red.”

We exchanged gazes for a long moment, maybe seeing the future that would have been if I hadn’t killed Luther tonight, haunted by it. By rights, since Theo overthrew his father’s reign, he technically could have killed me too. Or kept me for entertainment. When word spread, people would ask questions. They wouldn’t understand that Theo was just good through and through. They might accuse him of an ulterior motive.

“I’ll see you soon, Red,” he promised, touching my knee. “I’ll bring Katy to see you when the dust settles.”

I smiled. “Tell her I love her, and I’m so glad I didn’t eat her tonight.”

“I will.” He laughed, then shifted a nod to the beam of light that met us at the sidewalk. I looked to see my mom’s silhouette in the doorway, creeping out curiously to see who was here.

My whole body tightened up, as though everything I’d suffered all these months hadn’t hurt until right now.

I passed Max to Theo as I pushed the door open and ran up the path, hearing her cry out my name as I slammed into her arms. My legs couldn’t hold me anymore. I let them take me down to the ground and Mom came with me, kissing my head and wetting it with tears.

Amidst our loud, tearful reunion, Theo’s shadow appeared over us. I buried my face in my mom’s blue dressing gown, breathing in the smell of her and the dad that seemed now like only a character from a book I once loved.

“Things will be different now,” Theo told her, standing there with Max in his arms. “With great thanks to you for the offer of your daughter, I am pleased to present her back to you, untouched, of course.”

Mom cried harder, wiping her mouth. She looked so young like that, almost more like a sister than a mom. “But why? What about the agreement—”

“Luther is dead,” he added, “and I am your new alpha.”

I felt Mom shift. As the shock wore off, she went to get up and bow, but he stopped her.

“Please,” he said in that deep, soft and kind voice. “There’s no need to bow to me. I will forever be in Red’s debt, Mrs. Redwood, and as such, in yours.”

I looked up at Theo as he bowed to us, smiling softly after.

“You are to keep the payment you received for your daughter’s hand in marriage,” he added, passing Max to me, who whimpered and licked my face as if I’d left him for a year, “and there will be another large one made in remuneration for her courage and ingenuity.”

Mom looked at me as if to say ‘what on earth happened?’, eyes going then to my fluffy, shivering puppy.

“Red.” Theo squatted down and touched my shoulder. “Get up out of the slush. Go talk with your mother. Tell her of your adventures.”

“All of them?” I asked, making sure I had permission to say everything.

“As you see fit,” he said with a nod, taking his hand down from my shoulder. “Provided it stays between the two of you.”

I nodded, looking at Mom with melted eyes as I fought hard not to sob. I’d lived a terrible, lonely existence at that mansion these past few months, but it wasn’t so awful that I needed to sob like a baby, and yet I just needed to so badly.

She helped me get up as Theo pulled way, beeping his horn as a farewell. I waved, knowing we’d meet again very soon. Knowing that, when he arrived back at the mansion, nothing much will have changed for him. He had always run the pack for Luther. The only difference now is that he could run it as he saw fit, without answering to anyone—maybe free all the slaves, or at least pay them for their service.

“I can’t believe I’m actually home,” I whispered softly.

“Good thing I kept your room for you,” Mom said.

I looked at her. “Really? Why?”

She shrugged, but it was the kind she did when she only pretended not to know something. “I’m your mom. You’re my daughter. No matter how far away you are, I’ll always keep a light on, hoping you’ll come home.”

I put my arm around her waist and hugged her. “Is it okay if I keep Max?”

Mom laughed, scratching his head. “How can I say no to that little face.”

“Whose? His or mine?”

Mom just laughed.

***

The distant ring of the old town clock solemnly chimed three. In the morning. It was only then that I finally wiped my cheeks, my fingertips freezing around my stale hot chocolate, Mom frozen around the terrible truths I’d shared. I expected her to know what to say—to smile and tell me it wasn’t that bad. So when she burst suddenly into tears, I did too.

“Mom?”

She didn’t say anything. She just reached across the table and pulled me into an awkwardly positioned hug. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

I nodded. “Me too.”

“I should have been there. I should have—”

“Mom,” I said in a rolling tone. “Don’t do that. Don’t torture yourself. I’m fine. I’m strong—”

“But what if you weren’t? What if—”

“Please.” I shook my head. “Don’t.”

“I’m sorry.” She wiped her cheeks with two graceful hands and forced a smile. “I don’t mean to make you feel incapable, but I’m your mom. I just… I’ll never stop feeling the need to protect you.”

I thought about Max and how Luther had hurt him, and for the first time, I completely understood where Mom was coming from. “It’s okay. I actually do get it.”

She smiled at me, taking in every inch of my face. “I’m so proud of you, April.”

“Proud?”

“Yes, and for what it’s worth, I’m glad you met Luther.”

“Why?”

“You’re a wolf now.” Her hands gathered in to her chest. “When I saw you that night by the river, and for the first time on the rock, I couldn’t believe how beautiful you were. And if it weren’t for Luther, we would never have known you were capable of the shift.”

I smiled too. “I know. And I’ll always be grateful to him for that, but...”

“I know,” she whispered, reaching over then to thumb the sore spot on my lip. “You’ll have a bruise by tomorrow.”

I touched it with my hand. “I didn’t even know I got hit.”

Her face crumpled again but she controlled it, staying strong for me. “So he was never a god, huh?”

“Nope.” I made the ‘p’ pop as I said it. “Just a scared little boy that wanted to keep himself alive forever.”

“Lot of good that did him. Guess he never counted on you.” She snorted. “Maybe he should’ve written a return policy into the contract.”

I laughed hard. Harder than I probably meant to.

“Well done, April.” She cupped my hand, meaning that. “I said it before and I have to say it again: I’m so proud of you.”

“Proud of me for killing someone?”

Her lips pressed in tight, and I could see her fighting through the deep waters of exhaustion for something insightful to say. “We’ll need to talk about that—at length. But, in that moment, for what happened and was going to happen, you did the right thing fighting for your life.”

I nodded. She was right. I could sleep tonight with that nugget of truth.

Mom took a deep breath and sighed it out. “We should get some sleep.”

“Yeah. I’m kinda looking forward to being in my old bed again.”

“Well, not tonight.” She stood up and pushed in her chair. “You’ve been gone, and I thought I’d lost you forever.” She tried hard to control her voice. “So tonight we’re going to pretend you’re five again and scared of the dark.”

I smiled, going back in time to when I’d snuggle in between Mom and Dad in their big, cozy bed, where none of my troubles ever seemed so bad. “Thanks, Mom.”

Her smile pushed back for a serious face. “But the dog stays down here.”

Max lifted his head from where he slept by the hearth, and whimpered once, as if to say that was fine by him. Mom and I laughed, the exhaustion making the sound weak.

***

After we talked until dawn, I slept off the stress and the adrenaline until the following night, so it wasn’t until Monday morning that I finally got a chance to go see Alex, except I had to wait even longer, because I knew he’d be at school. Mom was at school, too—making arrangements for me to go back tomorrow and hopefully get some catch-up work—but she was gone before I got up, leaving only a note to say she’d be back after work tonight.

On my first night home, Mom and I decided that, as far as the humans in town were concerned, I’d gone to live with family for a while after suffering a breakdown from losing my dad, and now I was back. I knew the teachers would be compassionate when I came to school, and allow me time to catch up. My friends, old friends, however, would shun me. I was the cast-off that the new alpha didn’t want. I could never tell them I killed Luther and gave my new empire to Theo so I could come home. They’d only know I’d never consummated my marriage vows, which they’d all attribute to the alpha finding me repulsive. And you know what? For some reason, I just didn’t really care.

Amazingly, nothing around here had really changed that much. The snow had never fallen as heavily in town as it did on the hill, so if anything it seemed warmer and not so icy, as if spring were closer here. The snow didn’t pile up into mounds like it did around the mansion, and when I looked out my window this morning—in a room that also hadn’t changed at all while I was gone, even down to my Edgar Allan Poe poster on the wall—the rope swing in the tree was still hanging from its strong leafless branch. There was a small layer of snow over the seat, freshly fallen as I slept, but it didn’t look so muddy in the clearing that I’d stay inside today. So, right after breakfast, I put on some jeans—glorious jeans—a sweater, plenty of thermal layers, and my old blue coat, and headed outside, leaving Max by his new friend, The Hearth.

Even out here, not much had changed. Everyone’s gardens were a bit dead and lonely, and with spring not too far away the snow had lost its magical appeal—making everything wet and muddy instead. I could see the ground through the white patches now, and my boots squished into slushy ice in places too, especially under the swing.

Just off to the side, Alex’s house was exactly the same as it was before. Unruly greens still hugged the walls and had even spread to the roof now, like a disease. But from here, with its cheery but chipped blue paint and the shiny tower window that reflected sun, it still looked magical. Unbroken. No one would know how much grief had visited there only recently, and to look at it, to be here on this swing with the fresh air of home igniting my memories, I found it just so hard to believe George wasn’t there anymore.

I looked away. I didn’t want to feel such emptiness in a world that was once so dear to me.

After a while longer on the swing, reliving the past few months and coming to terms with it all, I decided that if I couldn’t see Alex until the afternoon I should at least check in on Plain. He’d probably be in his library, strapped into a chair on the ceiling, an empty plate beside him and no idea who ate his sandwich when he wasn’t looking. It warmed my heart to remember him that way, and before I’d made the decision to go see him, my feet were moving toward the gate.

But it was locked. It was never locked.

I gave it a shake and put my hand to my brow to block out the sun, staring up at the tower and the other windows to see if anyone was home. I wasn’t about to jump the gate. Maybe a few months ago I would. I’d even have walked in without knocking. It was just that way with Alex and Plain, and George. But too much time had passed and I didn’t feel right doing it now. So I walked around the front. I had to go back through my house and out my front door into the street to get around there, and as I trudged down the slushy drive I thought about the night Theo dropped me home. I wondered how he was doing now as the Big Bad Alpha. I hadn’t heard any chatter, but then, I hadn’t really been anywhere to hear anything, other than what Mom told me. People were wary, that’s all I knew, but changes had already been made. I only knew about some of them because Mom said a bunch of people had moved into town that had no idea what the internet was or how to use bank cards. I knew then that the slaves had been freed.

All the way to Plain’s I thought about Katy, and Anne. I thought about little Red and if she’d become a raven, or if she turned back after. I even thought about Luther, and how maybe, if he had’ve been given modern knowledge about things, he might have been a better person. I knew there was some good in him, but it was too late now. He’d done too much wrong, and yet I still knew I’d regret playing judge and juror for the rest of my days, wondering if it truly was my decision to make. Of course I knew it wasn’t, but then I also felt like I’d done the right thing removing him. He was dangerous.

When I arrived around the other side of the block at Plain’s front door, a giant collection of scattered newspapers and an overstuffed mailbox greeted me. I stopped in front of it, heart sinking. This couldn’t be good. Had they moved? With no forwarding address, would Alex ever know I came back?

Part Four: Chapter Two

In the Absence of All Light

Being careful not to trip or slip up the steps, I climbed over all the papers and rapped on the door. No one answered.

I called out. No one came.

I tried the handle. It was unlocked.

When the door opened it creaked loudly, making me cringe in case Plain might be sleeping. Then again, it was obvious no one had left through this front door in a while, or the back—at least not this morning, because the webs across it would’ve broken. So either they weren’t home, or they’d been sleeping since George died, which meant it was more than acceptable to wake them with a creaky door.

The daylight from outside showed a world lost in gray, illuminating the sadness here, as though it was a thing that could be touched. The air was thick and wrathful, and smelled like cold snow and wet newspaper.

I shut the door and felt oddly relieved that the light was gone, standing still for a moment to take it all in. No clocks ticked in the house. The refrigerator didn’t buzz and there was no news playing on George’s TV. It was empty, and I wondered for a moment if maybe they all died when George did. If maybe the heartbreak was just too much. It didn’t make sense—any of it. Where were they? And if they were here, then why did everything look so bad? How could a light in a world so bright just go out like that? How could it all be gone?

“Plain?” I called softly. Maybe he was just sleeping. Maybe they’d taken some time to grieve and would get up today and life would go on as normal.

I waited, hoping he’d call back in a cheery voice from the library, or anywhere in the house, but the total absence of any sound moved through me like smoke and hurt my heart.

I wandered through the old house, pushing doors open, the creaks and groans further proving no one had moved around in here for ages. There was nothing left here now but ghosts, it seemed.

I checked the kitchen, the bathroom, then the library, stopping at that dark room for a moment. But the only life in here were a few mice gnawing at the remains of a chicken leg, which had clearly fallen from Plain’s plate up there on his desk. Books were strewn all over the floors, as if he’d either been in a hasty search for something or in a fit of rage; I couldn’t tell. But without the lighting to create the mood, and without his mad mind talking of magical things, the room had no life.

I closed the door on the musty smell of stale books, swallowing my broken heart as it inched up my throat.

At the end of the corridor George’s door was ajar, floods of thick darkness leaking out from behind it. No light came through the windows in there. There was no TV on. No life. As I walked slowly toward it, even the photographs down the hallway held no clues, no one watching on to see how this ends.

Carefully, over piles of broken inventions and shredded papers, past nests of mice that smelled like dead flesh, my boots crunched broken glass and metal. It was like a storm had broken loose in here, tearing everything apart. At the end of the hall I peeked in through the narrow gap of open door and took in the room. George’s chair was still there, and for a moment my heart skipped a beat seeing a head and shoulders in it. And when the smell hit me, I froze on the spot. As much as my mind wanted to tell me I was imagining a person in that chair—seeing George where he no longer was—my eyes knew better. It wasn’t moving. Whatever it was. Whoever. And judging by the unmoved pile of junk all around, whoever was in that chair hadn’t moved for some time.

I was about to cry. My chest and stomach contracted rapidly, a million thoughts planning out what I would do, how I would act in the minutes to come. Call 911? Check for a pulse? Stand and stare at whoever it was and try to see them as they were?

But the person moved then, sat up a bit and turned his shoulders.

“Hello?” he said.

“Plain?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice lilting on the end. “That is me. What do you want?”

“It’s me.” I pushed the door and a pile of junk moved back with it. “It’s Red.”

“Red?” He said it like he didn’t know who I was. “Oh, Red. Alex’s little friend.”

“Yes.” I offered a smile, but I wasn’t sure he could see it. All I could see was the shadowy outline of broken things.

“It’s nearly morning,” he said, turning away in his chair. “I’m sorry, but I can’t stay and chat. A lot to do, you know. The funeral is today.”

But I knew the funeral had happened months ago, when my mum ran into Alex at the church. I wasn’t sure what to do or say to that. Nothing in my life had ever prepared me for this.

My eyes went to the birdcage where Plain kept Mom, half expecting to find a dead bird, but it was empty from what I could tell. It was pretty hard to see in the dark.

“You’re right,” I said. “It’s time to get up and get ready then. Would you like me to turn on the light?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I’m not completely mad, little Red. I know what’s there when the light comes on.”

“What’s there?” I asked.

He sighed, the whole top half of his body lifting as he did. “I know he’s gone.”

“Who?” For a moment, I wondered if the funeral he was talking about was Alex’s. It was the only way any of this chaos would make sense. Where was Alex? If he was here, if he was okay, he’d be taking care of Plain, wouldn’t he?

“Go on then,” Plain said. “Turn on the light. See it for yourself.”

My hand shook as I reached for the switch on the wall and flicked it. Plain shielded his eyes in the crook of his elbow, while yellow light smashed down on the defeat around him. It showed it all. I saw every inch of agony he’d lived through: the empty bottles all around him, glasses abandoned long ago without any decorum. Stale food, weeks old, half eaten until, at last, he’d obviously given up eating completely. I knew this because he was so thin I could see the outline of his bones through his dressing gown. His hair had fallen out in patches at the back of his head, or maybe it had been pulled out. He’d obviously been in the same clothes for a very long time, and even his beard was an indication that things had gone terribly wrong.

“Plain.” I pushed the mess forward with my feet to move over to him. It didn’t matter now who had died. If Alex was gone, it was irrelevant to the fact that Plain needed help. Now. “It’s time to get up.”

“I know.” He sat back in his chair, his hands flopping lazily on the arms as his eyes adjusted to the light. As I got around the piles of a broken life and took a better look at Plain, a wash of relief emptied my chest. He wasn’t so bad. He still had some meat on him. He smelled bad, and he needed a shave and a good soak in some laundry detergent, but I wouldn’t need to call an ambulance.

He cocked his head when he looked at my face, and even managed a smile. “Alex will be happy you’re home.”

“So Alex is okay?”

Plain nodded, his eyes glazing over as he looked down to the right, lost again in his dark world.

“What’s wrong?” I said, sitting against the desk where I once watched George solve a difficult puzzle. “Why have you given up?”

“What am I good for, little Red? I failed him,” he said. “What kind of a father, what kind of an inventor am I that I couldn’t do it?”

“Couldn’t do what?”

He looked at me, eyes misted. “I never finished the Worldinator.”

“How did that fail him?”

“We were going to imagine worlds together,” he said, looking around the room as though all those worlds would still be there. He lowered his head again and shut his eyes, unable to take the reality. “And now it’s too late.”

“It’s not too late.” I picked up his hand. It was cold and greasy. “George is still here. In your heart, influencing every world you imagine.”

“Then he’s lost in darkness, little Red, because I tried.” His voice broke and he cried. “I tried hard, but all I see now is sadness. Everywhere I look.”

“It hurts, I know.” I touched my heart, trying not to cry. Trying to think of anything useful to say, but all I could tell him was, “It really hurts.”

“Yes,” he said in a whisper.

“But you didn’t fail George just because you didn’t finish the Worldinator.” I remembered the bicycle helmet and the machine that was supposed to paint a room of your imagination, and smiled, thinking about the worlds I’d created when I was at the mansion—all that they gave me, and the one thing they didn’t. “Don’t you see?” I added. “You couldn’t bring his world out here for him, but you gave him something no story world ever could.”

He looked at me, eyes clear for the first time since I arrived.

“Love,” I said. “You gave him love.”

The words moved through him, meaning nothing at first, but as memories connected with emotions in his heart, it became apparent on his face. It was as if I could see all those memories too, and the love. He felt it. I knew he did. It filled up his heart and made him smile.

But then it withered away. Maybe because the love now had no place to go, or maybe because he understood then that perhaps that love had been more important than the inventions he gave his time. I knew from when my dad died that no matter how much time was spent loving them before they died, every moment you didn’t sit by them felt like a waste once they were gone. And it made you question it all—made you wonder if they knew how much they filled up your heart. And then, no, you knew it was never enough. You knew each time you went out with friends or watched TV had been a betrayal to what was more important, because they were gone now and you would not have those moments back. No matter what anyone tried to tell you—no matter that looking after yourself, getting on with life when someone you love is dying—is of great importance to your mental wellbeing; once they left, who cared what was supposed to have mattered?

Plain folded over and cried then, pinching the bridge of his nose. I got off the table and patted his shaking shoulder, offering a comfort that he clearly hadn’t been given all this time.

“George was amazing, Plain,” I said. “And I will miss him forever too, but you can’t do this to him. You can’t let your world become a dark place just because he’s gone. What would he think to see all the magic gone?”

“Magic?” He looked over at the birdcage. “There was never any magic, Red. I was a silly fool of a man. It was all in my head.”

I smiled, the full warmth of it coming out in my eyes. “That’s where magic begins, Plain. You taught me that. And from there, you spread it all over your life. Give it to others, like you gave it to me.”

He shook his head.

“It’s true.” I pulled his hands away from his face. “And yes, the sadness is there too—inside you. It will never ever go away. But you have to choose which one comes out and paints your life.”

“I can’t choose,” he said. “My heart chooses for me.”

“Your heart hurts.” I cocked my head, taking in his sadness. “But it will always hurt if you don’t look for the magic again. And that would be too sad, Plain. This world is ugly, but we already lost George. We already lost one amazing person. What will we do if we lose you too? Who will finish the Worldinator?”

“I don’t need it anymore. George is gone. I can’t reach him where he is.”

“But what about other boys like George?”

He looked up at me.

“They don’t have amazing inventor dads like George had. They have no hope, Plain. Your machine can take images from their mind—”

“But it can’t paint them.”

“Who says it has to?” I said, thinking about the zoetrope and the homemade tree lantern in my room at the mansion. “What if it could project them?”

“Pardon?”

“You always say, If you don’t like your life, paint a new one,” I said. “But what if you changed that? What if you said, If you don’t like your life, project a new one.”

He sat taller, head angling to the left as his thinking hand came up to his chin. “Project a new one…”

“George is gone now,” I said, “but you’re still here because we need you. This world needs you.”

Plain lifted his eyes from the world of invention and stared at my face, as if he’d just forgotten who I was, or maybe just remembered I was here.

“Plain,” I tried, my heart beating a bit faster in my chest as I approached the next difficult question. I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer. “Where is Alex? Is he at school?”

“Oh, Alex.” He sat back, shaking his head. “Alex doesn’t go to school anymore.”

“What?”

“He was expelled.”

“Why?”

“He tried, Red. I saw him trying, at first, but it was all just too much for him. He stopped doing his work, started being disruptive in class—”

“Didn’t anyone try to help him?”

“At first, but then all that pent-up grief became anger, I suppose, and he started getting into fights.”

“That doesn’t sound like him.”

“No, I suppose you’re right. He only ever fought with his brother.” He touched a finger to his nose. “Cost him a permanent bump here when he was twelve.” His eyes moved reflectively away from mine and he sighed heavily. “Poor George.”

“Poor George? What about poor Alex?” I stood up. “What have you been doing to help him?”

“I’ve tried talking with him, but he…” That reflective gaze took over again. “He doesn’t talk anymore.”

My heart had already left my body and bolted up the stairs to Alex’s room. I couldn’t feel it in my chest as I backed away from Plain, disgusted but also understanding. Alex needed help. And he needed it now.

“Please tell me he’s at least here? He hasn’t left, has he?”

His hand lifted to point a finger at the ceiling. “In his room, I suppose.”

I wanted to throw up. I wanted to evaporate and appear in his room so I wouldn’t waste the time running. What would I find up there? Would Alex be in as poor a state as Plain? And where was Sacha? Had they neglected her too? Was she under this pile of junk, emaciated? I didn’t even want to think about that.

Part Four: Chapter Three

Tears Don’t Fall; They Crash Around You

The stairs creaked and moaned at me in protest as I ran up them. There wasn’t as much junk in the way up here, but when I opened Alex’s door, expecting the same stale smell I found in George’s room, the fresh icy air shocked me. There was no light, aside from what came through as his curtains blew apart in the breeze. It was below freezing in here, or at least it felt like it, and a pile of snow had obviously gathered there under his window before melting into the floorboards. The room was exactly as it was last time I saw it, and I half expected not to find Alex in here, so when my eyes brushed past his bed and saw a shape, all my cells moved toward it at once, panicked. He didn’t move. He looked frozen solid, curled up in the top corner against the wall, face buried in his knees. His hair was longer, wilder, and even though he was wearing a sweater, his legs were bare and I could see how thin he was.

I hated myself for spending so long right outside his window today on the swing, when I should have been in here with him. If only I’d known.

“Alex?” I said cautiously. If he was dead, I didn’t want to touch him. I wouldn’t survive it.

He moved his head a little and then laughed once coldly. “Why do you keep taunting me?”

“What do you mean?” I moved toward him.

“You’re not here,” he said in a weak, husky voice. “It’s just my mind playing tricks on me again.”

I exhaled a dizzying breath and rubbed my brow. I didn’t need to ask what his life had been like lately. It was obvious. He was weak right now—and probably hypothermic. I walked slowly to his bedside and picked up a blanket, laying it over his knees. I wasn’t sure how long he’d been here in the cold, or how long it’d been since he’d eaten. I thought maybe I should call an ambulance, but without seeing his face I couldn’t decide if it was needed.

Alex didn’t smell, like his dad did, or at least I didn’t think he did until I climbed up on the bed and sat with my back against the wall in front of his feet. His armpits were a bit stinky, but not so bad that I needed to cover my mouth.

Alex looked at the dip in the bed between us then and wriggled his toes, frowning as he moved his eyes up to my face. He swallowed hard, fighting back obvious tears.

“I’m not a hallucination,” I offered, holding my hands out and grinning. “But if you haven’t been eating or sleeping, then I’m not surprised you’ve been seeing things.”

“How are you here?”

I tried not to make it obvious, but his breath really smelled. I wanted to be nice and just answer his question, but I laughed instead.

“I’m really glad you’re alive,” I said. “Can I hug you?”

He nodded, unwinding his arms from the tight curl around his knees, the blanket slipping off him. I got up on mine and wrapped my arms around him, using the strength of his squeeze and a rub of my hand down his back to assess him. He didn’t need a hospital. He just needed a good meal and a pair of sweats over his bed shorts.

“Aren’t you cold?” I said.

“I don’t notice it so much anymore.”

It felt so good to hear his deep voice. I drew back and sat down, pretty much on his feet, my elbow over his knee like he was an armchair. “So why aren’t you at school?”

“I just…” He leaned back against the wall, angling his face to the ceiling. “I couldn’t be there anymore.”

“Why?”

His bony shoulders came up. “Because it makes me wanna cry.”

“Hm,” I said to myself, not sure what was wrong with that. “Crying is good for you. I’m sure no one would mind.”

“George would,” he said.

“George?” Okay, I didn’t expect that. “What do you mean?”

“He made me promise,” he said, his chest shaking once before he controlled it. “He made me promise not to cry.”

“So you… you haven’t cried. At all?”

He shook his head, and it all suddenly made sense. When my dad died, he made me promise to be strong so, naturally, I thought that meant I shouldn’t cry. When I told my mom, she took me straight to our elder Agnes, who also happens to be a psychologist, and she told me there is nothing more important than crying. Tears, she told me, are like little watery cases that take all the hurt and the pain and carry it away from your heart. If you don’t let them do their job, the pain will stay around for a long time, and might even turn into anger.

“Alex, he didn’t mean it like that,” I insisted, looking at the tight, pent-up boy in front of me. “You need to cry. Like, now, before you spontaneously combust.”

“Why? What good does it do to cry; how will it change anything?”

“It doesn’t change the outside world, silly. It changes the inside world.” I laughed softly, getting up on my knees to be closer to him. “It releases all that pressure so you can find the strength you need to get up, to eat or sleep, or take a damn shower.” I pinched my nose to make my point. “George wouldn’t want you to be like this.”

“Like what?”

“Look at yourself, Alex. You’re consumed. No,” I softened my tone when I felt my voice getting higher and faster, “worse than that, you’re dead. You died with George, and it’s not fair! Because he doesn’t get to go on. He didn’t get to make that choice for himself, Alex. But you do.”

He folded his arms and shook his head.

“Look, when I was locked away at that mansion—”

“Locked away?” His arms unfolded and for a moment he came back to me—the old Alex from inside the shell.

“It doesn’t matter right now. Just listen,” I said quickly, trying to get my point out before I forgot what it was. “I’d have given anything to have the freedom you have. You still have a life ahead of you, and losing George hasn’t changed that.”

“It has.”

“How?”

“I stopped studying. My grades dropped—”

“So you can talk to your teachers. Ask them to help you. They’re there to help you if you want it and, believe it or not, no matter how bad you think things are right now, they get it. Your dad gets it. There’s not a person in this world that wouldn’t help you right now if you asked for it.”

He shook his head, still seeing himself as a lost cause.

“You know, you’re still a normal, healthy teenager right now, but if you wait a few years until you’re malnourished and your brain cells have depleted, or maybe you turned to a life of drugs, they won’t care as much. Use your youth as a platform to stand on and say, I’m young. I screwed up. Help me.”

Alex laughed. “Use my youth, huh?”

“Yes! People love helping kids that’ve lost their way. You’re still salvageable.”

“And what, when I’m twenty I’m no longer worth saving.”

“Yes, but I guess people care in a different way when you’re an adult. I dunno, maybe it’s the nurturing instincts, but if you come downstairs with me now, talk to your dad, talk to the teachers, we can get you back on track. You don’t have to have a sad ending, Alex. And who knows, maybe they’ll tell you to repeat a year.”

“Repeat? How would that be a good thi—” His eyes widened. “Oh. We’d be in the same grade.”

“Yeah.” I laughed, finally risking a soft touch of his hand. “I’m back now, Alex. I have an amazing story to tell you and I can promise on the moon and stars that I will never have to leave again. I’m here to stay.”

The pain moved back into his eyes, but it was a different pain to the one I found when I walked in. “I came to see you.”

“I know.” You got my dog hurt as a result. “I told you not to.”

“I needed to.”

“Why?”

“I just…” He hugged his knees, clamming up again. “I needed to share my pain with you.”

I put my hand on his forearm. “I wish you’d made it into the mansion. It broke me pretty bad—the news about George—and I thought about sneaking away to see you too.”

His lip trembled, and I thought for a moment that he might finally cry, but he fought hard and won.

“Hey, you wanna know something cool?” I offered.

“Sure, why not?”

“When I got the letter—telling me about George—I painted a hundred black birds on my wall, and after I was done and I stood back, the strangest thing happened.”

“What?” he asked, like a child waiting for the climactic end of a story.

“A massive cloud of birds that hadn’t been there before suddenly flew off the roof outside my window. It was as if they’d come from the pictures on the wall, and then they flew away—over the town.”

“And you think they came for George?”

“Maybe, or maybe they were just birds. It’s up to you to choose what you believe.”

“I don’t know what I believe anymore.”

“Well, I think they were George’s birds. It feels better when I believe that.” I smiled. “Warmer.”

“Well… wait.” He sat up a little more, looking at his door. “Do you think that’s who took Mom?”

“Took her?”

“She was gone one day—her cage was empty. No windows were open, the cage door was closed, no one had been here.”

I smiled. “Maybe. I guess, again, it’s up to you to choose.”

Alex looked numb then—the kind of numb that makes you tingly after you hold an electric toothbrush in your hand for too long. He smiled a little. “I hope she’s with him right now.”

“I know she is.” I touched my own heart. “It’s like I can feel it.”

Alex’s mouth turned down. “I can’t, Red. I can’t feel anything but pain.”

“What do you mean? Like… physical pain?”

He nodded, holding out his shaky hands. “It’s like the pain is in my blood.”

“Is that…” I touched his fingertips and inspected the nails. “Is it because you haven’t been taking care of yourself?”

“No.” He drew his hands back gently and shook his head. “It’s because my heart is broken.”

“Well, the only way to release that pain is to cry. You need closure.”

“Closure, huh?” He smiled instead, pressing his lips in as his eyes wandered to a memory. “You know, it’s funny; the day before George died, I heard an old man on the radio talking about his life and how he became a writer. He said that a significant event for him in his childhood—one that changed everything, changed the dynamic in his family—was when his sister died. He didn’t go to her funeral and he said he just never stops thinking about her because of it—that he never got the closure, and so his life was altered by her death. It went from one clear path off on another. And even though it’s a good path now—becoming a famous writer—it’s still sad. And I knew that sadness, Red.” He curled his hand in to touch his chest. “When he said not one day goes by where he doesn’t think about her, or dream that she phones him up and asks how he is or even begs him to come get her, I just thought, that’s gonna be me. When George dies. It’s going to alter the course of my entire life.”

“In what way? Good or bad?”

“Neither. It’s just… with him, I was Alex the Fish and Alex the Ringmaster and Alex the Surfing Champion. Now I’m just Alex.” His voice trembled. “And I don’t have a brother anymore.”

“I know,” I whispered, tears leaving my eyes without permission. “And I’m so sorry for that. I’m so sorry for your pain.”

“It isn’t fair.” He sniffled and looked away, blinking hard to fight that sadness he promised George he wouldn’t feel. “They took everyone I love. They took Mom and George and you, and I can’t lose anyone else, Red. I’m so scared and I’m so tired and I just hurt. In here.” He patted his ribs. “All the time. I feel like someone inflated a balloon inside my chest and I can’t make it pop.”

I parted Alex’s knees and knelt between them, lifting his face with my cold hands. “Listen to me Alex Plain. George loved you. He was a light in all of our lives, but you aren’t honoring him, honoring his love, by fighting the grief. You have to grieve. You have to release it all to move on.”

“I don’t want to move on. If I move on, who will remember George?”

“I will,” I said, squeezing his face, fat hot tears running into my mouth. “And Plain will. And you will, even if you cry. Even if his face fades, his memory never ever will. He is in our hearts, Alex. Deep in there. So deep it’s making you hurt. And if you don’t release that hurt, right now, it’ll never go away.”

“Why does it need to? What’s the point of even trying to live if we all just end up where George is?”

“Honestly, I don’t know.” I laughed; so did Alex. “I haven’t figured out what the point of anything is, but I do know that there’s so many awesome things in life that make it kinda worth living.”

“Like what?” he said dismissively. He didn’t really want an answer, I could tell, but he needed one.

“Like your favorite foods,” I offered, “and rides at a theme park, and songs that make you feel things, and books that tell you things you never knew before; colors on pictures that make you think about things you never thought about before. And there’s love.”

“You keep trying to give me all these reasons to move on, Red, but love? Come on. What the heck is the point of that? It doesn’t heal; it doesn’t save the world; it doesn’t do anything people say it does, except hurt and make you feel really alone.”

“Yeah.” I sat back, nodding as I thought about that—thought about how I’d felt all these months without Alex, and how much the love for George hurt now. “But it also gets you through. It makes you believe there’s something better when you’re in a world that really sucks. And when love isn’t busy being sucky, it’s a pretty awesome feeling too.”

Alex finally looked at me again, this time like he understood what I understood.

“You were gone,” he said.

“I know.”

“I needed you.”

“I needed you too.”

He pressed his lips into a line again and sniffed hard. “Why are you back?”

“I killed my husband, and his son set me free.”

“What?” He wasn’t sure if I was for real. “That sounds like one hell of a story.”

“It is.” I got up and walked over to his window, tired of my hands feeling stiff and my cheeks cold. “And I’ll tell it to you when you finally let yourself…” As the window shut into place and the cold cut off, taking the noise of the wind with it, I heard him. It was so quiet at first that I held my breath, but then it got louder as the sobs took control of his body and used his voice to express their agony. He cried loudly, rolling away when I came back to sit down with him, so I just wrapped my arms around his waist, pressed my body to his back, and held onto him while the grief made him tremble.

Part Four: Chapter Four

Grim is the Man Who Holds His Tears

Sometimes tears can make us stronger. And sometimes they can make it all hurt worse for a bit. But there’s always another side. There’s always a dark tunnel you have to walk through that eventually does come out on an open field. You don’t feel better, necessarily, and you can’t go back to what was before because hurt changes us, but without the tears you’ll never notice the so-called greener pastures on the other side of grief.

Alex cried for a very long time. After a while, he didn’t even notice I was there. Then, when he was done crying, he went numb all over. He stared at the wall for so long that I got scared. Scared enough that I called my mom. She left work right away. She looked him over and covered him with a blanket, taking my hand and telling me to leave him be.

As his door closed into place, Mom took a good look around for the first time since her initial reel in shock when she walked in the front door. “Where is Alex’s dad?” she asked.

“Downstairs. In the room that used to be George’s.”

“Why hasn’t he been taking care of Alex?”

“Because he’s not in a much better state,” I said simply.

A worried expression crossed Mom’s face. “Take me to him.”

We passed back down the creaky old stairs, minding our steps around smashed-up inventions and bags of rubbish, left there on the sidelines of this sad life as if someone had once tried to improve things but gave up soon after. When the old playroom door opened and darkness met us, Mom did the same thing I had earlier, taking the smell and almost breaking down the contents with her wolfish nose and gathering a few facts about Plain’s health based on what she smelled. But unlike me Mom didn’t hesitate to enter. She rushed to the shape in the chair by the desk and knelt down, touching his hand. At first I thought she was comforting him, until I realized as I got closer and my eyes adjusted to the dark again, that she was taking his pulse.

“Mom?”

“April.” Her voice had a hint of restrained tension. “Go get my phone out of my purse—in the car.”

I backed out of the room and rushed into the harsh bright light of day, shielding my eyes to see as I tripped my way down the newspaper driveway and got into the car. My hands were shaking by the time I handed the phone to Mom. She took it and stood up, crossing one arm over her waist as she dialed three digits. My heart caved in on itself.

“Yes, I need an ambulance,” she said. “It’s 26 Jacob Street in Wilhelm.”

“Mom?” I said again, this time in a more panicked voice, standing by as she gave the operator more details, using her ‘nurse’ lingo.

“Two minutes,” she said, hanging up the phone. “There’s one in the area.”

“What’s wrong with him? Is he okay?”

“He’ll be fine, sweetie.” She put her arm around me and pulled me close. “He’s just dehydrated, maybe a bit malnourished.”

“But they can fix him, right?”

She nodded, kissing my head.

I drew away to squat down by Plain, touching his cold, dry wrist. He looked up suddenly and smiled.

“Oh, Red. It’s you.”

“Hi,” I said, whispering because it felt wrong to talk in a normal voice here.

“It’s been a long time,” he said, hazed.

“It’s been an hour,” I corrected.

“I’m s… I’m sorry, Red. But Alex isn’t here today.”

I looked up at Mom. She frowned, concerned.

“Yes he is…”

“No, he went with George—to see the birds.”

“No, Alex is upstairs,” I insisted. “Sleeping.”

“He is?” Plain’s brows moved into a tight frown, his eyes drifting off to the left. “Maybe I dreamed it then.”

“Dreamed what?”

He ignored me and looked across the room, nodding at something. “Mom left.”

I glanced back at the empty cage. “I know.”

“Everyone left,” he added more solemnly.

“Alex didn’t. Alex is upstairs—”

“No. Alex left too, Red. And Sacha.”

My heart leapt with worry. “Where did she go?”

He didn’t answer.

“Plain,” I said, shaking him gently awake as he drifted off.

“April.” Mom stopped me. “It’s okay. Sacha’s probably fine.”

“How do you know?”

“She was picked up by the ranger last week. He must have seen the state of this place and decided not to bring her back this time.”

“Back?”

“Oh right, you wouldn’t know. Sacha’s the talk of the town. After George died, she went to his grave every day and lay on it.”

“Really?”

Mom nodded. “It was in the papers.”

“Then, if the ranger was here, why didn’t he do anything about Plain?”

“He probably didn’t realize how bad things were, sweetie.” She looked around. “Unless he came inside, how could he?”

I nodded, figuring that maybe the last time he came to drop Sacha home Plain didn’t answer the door. But how could Alex not be worried about her? Then again, he probably wasn’t aware of much outside the radius of his agony right now. Who could blame him? He might have even thought Plain was caring for Sacha, and maybe wondered why he hadn’t been caring for him.

The ambulance arrived a few moments later. After assessing Plain, they took him away immediately, with tubes and a mask and worried faces. He wasn’t conscious when they loaded him onto the gurney. He didn’t even wake when they pricked his skin to get fluids into him.

“He’ll be fine,” one of the guys said to me, giving me a reassuring smile. “He just needs some rest.”

I nodded, watching then as they drove away, lights on. “What now?” I said to Mom.

“Now.” She glanced up at the old blue house. “I’ll go down to the supermarket and get some vegetables. Carne knows there’s probably none in that house. And you can go find some garbage bags. It’s time we cleaned that mess up.”

While Mom was gone, I used all the love in my heart for Alex and Plain to work faster and harder. A part of me felt like maybe, by fixing what was broken in the heart of their home, I might be able to fix the heart itself. But it was just so sad here now that my own heart almost couldn’t take it. I could literally see the phases of grief Plain went through in the chaos about the house: anger, apathy, maybe even bargaining. So many of his inventions had been smashed up, and some had even been partially repaired, the scars of that damage still lingering. Photos of George were laid face down in places while others were in odd spots, like the freezer and under Plain’s pillow on his bed.

Their world had clearly fallen apart without George, but I was determined to put it back together.

***

I wish I could say that only days passed until Plain came home; that only days passed before Alex noticed anyone in the room with him again. But it was weeks. We cleaned up their house and Mom took leave to care for them, cooking meals and making sure they ate every day. We even managed to track down Sacha and free her from the pound, hoping she’d reach Alex, or even Plain, in some way. But she was just a fixture at their sides—one that kept running away to sit with George again, trying to bring him back.

I only saw Alex for a few hours after school, but other than accepting his homework and handing me what he’d completed, he didn’t really say anything. When he cried that first day something broke in him, as if maybe George knew that would happen and that’s why he asked him not to cry. Mom told me it’d be fine. She said Alex had a lot to work through in his head right now, that not being cared for properly—for which she even tried to blame herself—had made both Plain and Alex worse than they might have otherwise been, and when he was ready he’d join the land of the living again. In the meantime, I just had to focus on my studies—working really hard to catch up so I didn’t have to repeat a grade like Alex did. We’d graduate together if all went well from here, and I was looking forward to that day.

I was looking forward to the day Alex would return to school. I hadn’t made any new friends yet, but despite that I’d abandoned my old ones because, truthfully, Mom had been right all along. They were never good friends. And now that I’d returned as the supposedly defeated alpha female, no one would even look at me. Thing is, though, I had such little time left here at school; and I knew that when I graduated I’d most likely never even see any of these guys again. Their opinion of me didn’t shape my opinion of me anymore and so nothing they said behind my back mattered the way it used to. I stopped trying to live up to their impossible expectations and instead set clear ones for myself. Held accountable only to myself. The pack still didn’t like me. I still spent most lunch times alone, most paired projects done on my own, but I felt better about it now than I did before. Any friends I made from now on would be real friends—like Alex. Friends that accepted me as I am: a perfect wolf or a half-wolf; a chaotic, opinionated, sometimes wrong, sometimes right person; sometimes forgetting to call and sometimes being the best friend ever. Alex taught me what it meant to have a true friend, and I’d never settle again. I knew now to my core that I was worth more than that, no matter how anyone else measured my worth. And it occurred to me, as I sat alone eating lunch, that the entire ugly world I left behind was still exactly the same; the people, the teachers, the school, my home, the plainness of it all. But I had changed. Remarkably. And so I saw it all through remarkable eyes now, and I smiled to myself because it felt like I was upside-down and they were right-way-up, or maybe in reverse: it was the same world, but looked at now from a different perspective.

After school I rode straight home through the mucky remains of winter and grabbed Max, running across the community park to Alex’s back door. He never left his room, and Plain never left his study, so I didn’t expect to see either of them pass through on their way into the library—but they did.

I shut the door behind me, my eyes adjusting to the dim light, and put Max down. He started running to find Sacha before all four paws were on the ground, nosing apart the partially open door to George’s study and letting out the flood of light and the noise of the TV tuned into the news again. It almost felt like George was still here.

From the kitchen I could smell Mom’s pancakes cooking, and thought about asking her first if I should follow Alex and Plain. But this was once my world—one I didn’t have to share with anyone—so I decided for myself and opened the library door. They both looked up at me as I stepped in, and for a moment my eyes expected the usual forced daylight that flooded through the windows after Mom told Plain he wasn’t allowed to have the curtains closed in the day. He’d sit in his chair by that window and think all day. Well, we assumed he was thinking, since he did nothing but sit. But today, he was up and about, and the curtains were closed.

“Shhh,” he said to me, pressing a finger to his lips. He waved me over and I shut the door, checking the hall first to see if Mom was coming.

“What are you doing?” I asked, walking over to them.

“Look,” Alex said, and when he stood back, I saw the Worldinator. But it looked different. Instead of all the spindly arms and wires it was now a spherical device about the size of a fitball, with a flat base so it didn’t roll away, and several circular lenses all over the top. The only reason I knew it was the Worldinator was because it had been painted on the side in tacky handwriting.

Plain followed a cord to a computer screen on the floor by his leather armchair, and sat down to type something.

“Imprints,” Plain said. “I couldn’t make the Worldinator paint what it saw—that was its flaw. But copying the image from one’s mind—” he tapped his temple, “—it never did have a problem with that. And I, insightfully, took George’s images before he died.”

The machine started up with a gentle hum and lights flickered within its core.

“And then an angel came to me in my dream,” he continued, “and she told me to project it.” He laughed once, as though it was madness. “Project it.”

“So that’s what this new machine does?”

“It does,” he said, nodding. “But not like a normal projector. In fact, I got the idea for this version from the sun.”

“The sun?” I laughed.

“Yes, the sun,” he insisted.

“It... does it talk to you?” I asked, wondering about his mental state.

“Of course,” he said pragmatically. “There is wisdom in everything, if you stop long enough to listen.”

“Even in a dog poop?” Alex challenged playfully.

“Yes, and a leaf on the ground or a bird on your shoulder; from even the smallest child to the old man that’s past his expiry date,” Plain added, motioning to himself. “But what you hear is not a reflection of what they have to teach, my boy—” he wagged his finger at him, as though this was the key point, “—but of what you have to learn.”

Alex and I exchanged glances. It was nice to see Alex out of his room, looking human in a pair of jeans and death metal T-shirt. There were no Slinkys on his arm or odd phrases on his shirt, but he was still Alex, I was certain.

His eyes went past me then and a raspy breath made him cover his mouth. I looked around the room as the Worldinator spat seamless projections over the walls and the ceiling, each one from a different lens, all joining up to make one 360˚ image.

“The land of lake and sea,” I said, turning to take it all in. It was just as Alex described it: a single tree for all the birds to sit in at the middle of a lake that might be a sea, and clear blue skies.

“This was his vision,” Plain said, standing between us, his arms over our shoulders. “This was George’s wonderful world.”

It felt like a crying moment, but there was something so supreme and so pure in the joy of seeing inside George’s head, even though he wasn’t here anymore, that it made me smile instead. I looked at Alex, and he was smiling too, his eyes lost in the wonder of another world.

“You did it, Plain!” I exclaimed. “You’re a genius.”

Plain nodded. “I did it for George.”

Alex’s brow pulled then and I saw something flicker behind his eyes, an unreadable kind of determination setting behind them, like a sunrise in a bubble.

“Alex?” I said. “Are you okay?”

“This can never happen again,” he said.

“What can’t?”

He walked away, not saying a word.

“Alex?” I called.

“Alex,” Plain tried.

Alex stopped at his father’s command.

“Son, what is it?”

“I made plans, Dad.” He turned to face us, his eyes wet. “Is it too late?”

Plain’s worried expression softened to a smile. “It’s never too late.”

Alex looked at me. “Red, can you help me?”

“Help you what?”

“Get my grades up. I gotta go to college.”

I felt the smile brighten within me, heard Alex’s voice from the past as he told me he wanted to cure brain damage, in George’s name, but I tried not to show how core-deep happy I was to hear him say that. Instead, I just nodded.

“Sure. You have a lot of catching up to do, Alex, but it’s not impossible.”

“Nothing’s impossible,” he said, looking back at Plain, who closed his eyes and smiled as he nodded to himself.

Part Four: Chapter Five

The Strange Birds Are the Mystery Solved

All Alex and I had talked about for the past few weeks was schoolwork. Alex was set to return to school on Monday, and life would go on—both of us altered beyond our previous states—but as yet we’d not spoken about my time at the mansion. The one time I started he asked me not to. He said that if I’d been held ‘captive’, as I told him when I first came home, then he wasn’t ready to carry that weight as well as the weight of missing George. So I never even told him that I could change into wolf form now, which meant I couldn’t explain to him why both Mom and I had to go out tonight. So instead I told him we were going to catch a movie. I wondered if he wondered why we didn’t invite him. Then again, he’d have declined even if we did invite him to our fake movie date. It’s not like he ever left the house for anything these days.

All that was forgotten though as Mom and I stood on the lip of the forest in our wolf form, eager to feel the wind beneath our feet. Eager to run away from the day’s frustrations and be nothing but a simple element of nature.

Behind us the bonfire burned bright, and hot-headed teens stripped down to rush off into the night. I’d never brought Mom to the bonfire before—afraid she’d shut it all down when she learned that most people drank alcohol before a run—but she didn’t react the way I thought she would. Instead she took a beer when it was offered and simply gave me ‘the look’, making a statement that if I ever even thought about drinking alcohol before I was twenty-one, she would skin me alive and use my fur to keep her feet warm.

I decided it was pretty cool having her here, even cooler that I could now join everyone on their run instead of sitting back and feeding the fire until they returned at dawn.

As the trees waved bare branches overhead we stood looking into the darkness deeper into the forest, the crisp wind moving our fur softly. Then, in a voice that was neither words nor thought, Mom told me to meet her at the clearing—where we’d howl with the alpha later on—but for now, she needed to run alone. And so did I. It was the best way to clear out all those old ghosts making the heart go stale.

Once Mom was a mile or so ahead I burst into the tree line like a playful puppy, bounding over rocks and branches, ducking low and jumping high as I soared through the forest. Under the elation of a wild run I was also half nervous and half curious about what my pack would do when I waltzed in to the clearing as their equal. Most of them saw me on the peak that first night I turned, so all knew now that I could take on wolf form, but I hadn’t yet run with any of them. Word had spread quickly after my first shift, bringing out of the woodwork more parents admitting their children were half wolves. As a result, Mom now had a rather lucrative side business making bine-runes. At least ten people had half-wolf kids, some even coming in from other packs to buy our runes. No one judged me for it now, but they still judged me for no longer being the queen of them all. After all, this had never happened in the entire history of our pack.

A few feet on either side of me I could sense other wolves, lingering out of curiosity but not coming near enough to seem a threat. They wanted to get a sense of me—of what I was and what I’d been through—as much as I wanted to keep it all a secret. But nothing ever stayed secret in this pack, and eventually they would all know how I felt about what happened at the mansion. They would all know its horrors and they’d be glad it didn’t happen to them.

For now, though, I would keep it to myself, so I ran on, harder and faster than any of them dared to go.

I arrived at the clearing, cold in the nose and with energized paws, just as the moon sat at the highest point. Up on the peak, Theo stood overlooking the night, his shiny black coat gleaming, a human beside him. My heart skipped when I realized it was Katy, safe and well and standing tall in modern clothes, with one hand resting on her companion’s head. He was making a statement by having her here, and it incited a lot of fuss around the pack members standing beneath them.

I pushed through them all and came to stand at the head, my eyes shooting in a direct line to the alpha. He looked right down at me, the distance meaning nothing to us, and bowed his head. I bowed mine in return, rolling my snout up then at the moon as Theo howled. Rightfully, the Elders should have been the first to howl after the alpha, but as if making a statement to my pack I opened my throat and let it out into the night. No one challenged me; not Theo, not the Elders, not even my own mother; they simply joined the chorus, taking my stand to mean what it was supposed to: I was no longer their queen and alpha, but I would forever hold firm footing at Theo’s side. I would forever stand taller, be placed higher than any of them, and for that I deserved respect. For ending our barbaric traditions and saving future generations of young girls, I deserved respect. And I would demand it.

When the howling ended with Theo taking leave, I sat back on my haunches and lifted a paw in a very human wave at Katy. She smiled and waved back, turning away then to follow Theo. I wished I could go with them, but bold as I might be I was not so disrespectful as to engage in an uninvited run with the alpha. At least, not tonight.

Mom came up behind me then and bumped me softly with her shoulder, sitting down after.

Where to? she said.

I remember you and Dad talking about those hidden falls. I want to run there.

I’m not sure I’m ready. I haven’t been out there since…

Since he died, I said for her.

She lowered her snout.

I got up, wagging my tail. Come on. It’ll be fun.

But she didn’t move. I lowered my head and trotted back over, sitting down in front of her.

Mom, I know it’ll be sad seeing the falls again without Dad. And I know that’s why you haven’t gone back, but I bet you always imagined going back alone, right?

Mom looked up at me, her eyes clear even in the dark.

Bet you never imagined showing them to me.

If wolves could smile, then she surely just smiled. We both took off running then, like two dogs that heard a chocolate wrapper in another room, and after a while I let Mom take the lead, since I had no idea where I was going. It felt great to run with her—to be free and let loose, not bound by borders and restricted areas and ugly goons on my trail. This was the best run ever, and as much as I knew now that there were no fences around me any longer, tonight was the first time I truly felt it.

***

As I headed back to the bonfire the sun reared its warm head, touching the hills with soft, auburn light. But before I reached the smoky dirt surrounds I caught a scent on the breeze. A familiar, doggy scent.

I switched course and headed sideways toward the cemetery, following the smell. Whatever Sacha did when she visited George’s grave we still weren’t sure, but I had assumed she was pining for him. Until now.

Her scent, I realized, was a happy one. She was excited as she trotted her way to see George, and when I arrived on the fence line to the cemetery, the old church steeple blocking the path of the sun and making it easy to spot her across the way, Sacha’s ears twitched. At first I heard a low, guttural growl, but as I approached her with my head down, the ears came up and the tail wagged. She came over to me, snout to the ground and licked my nose cautiously, testing the waters.

What are you doing here, girl? I thought. And as it was with wolves, words didn’t translate quite like human words did, and it wasn’t like she could read my mind, but there was still the ability to understand.

She turned her head and looked at George’s gravestone.

I looked too, waiting to see what it was she had to show me.

It’s just a stone, I thought, disappointed.

Sacha sat down, tongue out, her happy face on, as though she was just waiting for George to break the ground and surface to play. I didn’t want to disappoint her, but if ever she was to learn that he wouldn’t come back, now was the time. In this form, I could make her understand.

As I went to move around and sit in her line of sight, she stood up like a puppy waiting for a treat, giving one soft bark. I followed her eyes to the gravestone again, and there, touched lightly by the morning sun, was a green bird with red-tipped wings.

My hairs stood on end, the whole world coming to a standstill around me. I got up too and whimpered at the bird, staying back though, like Sacha.

A moment later another green bird came down and landed beside the first—a strikingly familiar bird, with wise eyes that fixed on us from across the way.

Wolf and dog side by side; two green birds side by side. We stared at each other for the longest time, my thoughts racing, wishing Alex was here to see this. It was uncanny. Too uncanny. I knew I could rationalize it away, but instead I chose to believe that maybe that bird was the spirit of George, and beside it his mom, returning from the land of lake and sea to say goodbye.

I turned away. With the rising sun and the waning power of the moon I’d shift back soon to human form. I didn’t want to be naked in a graveyard when that happened. I needed to make it to the bonfire before I changed, but first I needed to go get Alex.

No, scratch that; he was already here.

“Sacha!” he called, running down the slope through the iron gates. His eyes scanned the graveyard, hand pressed to his brow where the rising sun blinded him. He didn’t see me in front of him until he got close enough to almost step on me. He stopped dead, staring down at me, half scared, half awed. “A wolf.”

I whimpered and lowered my head to show I wasn’t a threat.

Alex, in his boots and shorts and a long trench coat, squatted down before me. “Hey there, girl.”

I walked slowly into his hands and let him rub my neck, even though I really didn’t like that.

“Hey, are you human?” he said. I lifted my head and his eyes went to my necklace, widening. “No way.”

As if to say ‘Yes way,’ I sat back on my hindquarters and panted softly—smiling.

“Red?” he said to confirm. But he already knew.

He looked over at Sacha, who came up slowly and sat beside me like a dog in trouble for running off again. I really wanted him to look at the headstone and see the birds—before they flew off—but he couldn’t understand my gestures.

Sacha, I said.

Sacha moved her eyes onto me.

Show him.

She turned away then and I followed, sensing Alex’s presence behind us as he followed too. He knew we had something to show him, but he didn’t notice the strange birds there on the stone until I licked his hand and jerked my snout in their direction.

“No way,” he said breathily, getting down on his knees beside me. He looked at Sacha and laughed. “So that’s why you’ve been coming here?”

Sacha sat down with a whimper and Alex looked at the birds again, a new kind of smile flooding his face. He believed it, I could tell. He could have rationalized it away with anything in the world, but he chose to believe it instead, and I was proud of him for that.

The two birds took flight, passing low over Alex’s head as they went. He laughed, ducking down, and then watched over his shoulder as they flew away.

“Go on, George!” he yelled happily as he stood, waving his arms like a marooned man on a beach. “Get out of here! You don’t belong here anymore.”

Sacha got up and barked at the birds and I just sat and watched Alex cheer, jumping around like a wonderful, beautiful lunatic. I decided then that perhaps he was a bit mad, but I also liked it.

“Aw,” he said, squatting and roughly wrapping his arm around my shoulders. “If that’s not closure right there, then I don’t know what is.”

I turned my head and licked his face, making a mental note to tell him how not to hug a wolf. Also making a note never to hug Sacha like this ever again.

A willow of dread slinked through me then as I felt the change begin in my bones. I looked around the cemetery for prying eyes, wondering if I had enough time to dart into the trees before it happened. But like a rush of bile up my throat with little time to get to a bucket, my form began to shift. A freaked-out wail left Alex’s throat and he scuttled back against George’s headstone, wide eyes grasping for explanation and yet failing to comprehend.

I kept his gaze, wishing this hadn’t happened, watching his face go from horrified to curious to revolted and, finally, as I crouched naked in front of him, horrified even more. He ripped off his coat and walked over to me, eyes shut.

I stood up and took it, hiding myself under its warm folds.

“I didn’t see anything, I swear,” he said.

“You better not have.” I punched him softly in the arm. “What’s wrong with you? You couldn’t look away?”

“Could you if you saw that?” he retorted.

I rolled my eyes. No, I never had. I was always fascinated with the change. Now, I felt like a circus freak.

“You didn’t tell me,” he said, eyes scanning every inch of me. “Why didn’t you tell me you could turn?”

“You weren’t ready to talk about it all.”

He put his hands in his hair, pushing it off his face, then he sat back down against George’s stone. “I’m ready now.” He swallowed hard. “I mean, holy crabsticks. You have to tell me everything now.”

I laughed and sat down beside him, my knees and ankles cold in the icy morning. “Crabsticks?”

“Yes. Crabsticks! Now…” —he shook his head in disbelief— “what happened up there on that hill?”

I sat back, looking up at the peak of the tower rising just over the trees—the one where I used to live—welcoming Sacha’s warm body when she came to sit on my legs. “Where to start?”

“At the beginning—from the moment you arrived at the mansion.”

“Well…” I started, remembering it all for the first time since I explained it to Mom. “The mansion wasn’t anything like I remembered it…”

Once I finished my story—a quick version, so we didn’t freeze and die by the final act—Alex shook his head, rubbing his cold hands together between his bare knees. “You had it worse than me.”

I thought about Max and what Luther had done to him. I didn’t, of course, tell Alex it was kind of his fault. I told him it was because I refused to wear anything but jeans, which wasn’t completely a lie, but other than that, and the obvious horrible ending, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as losing a sibling. “No,” I offered, “I definitely think you had it worse.”

“But admit it,” he said, “I was right about the silver.”

“You were,” I confessed, trying not to get emotional. “You saved my life, Alex.”

“No. You saved your life,” he said with a smile. “Because you’re totally badass.”

I laughed. We both sighed then and sat back against George, looking up at the clear blue sky as the oncoming day breathed new life into us.

“Do you think it really was George?” he asked.

“The green birds?” I said, looking to see if they were still nearby. “No. But then also I think yes. Because who knows?”

“Right,” he said. “Who are we to say it either is or isn’t?”

“I concur.” I gave a very Plain-like nod of the head. “I mean, if I can change into a wolf, why shouldn’t George and Mom be birds?”

Alex smiled. “You’re a pretty amazing wolf, Red.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You’re really…” He swallowed hard, clearing his throat. “You’re actually kinda beautiful.”

I sat back again, looking down at my bare, icy feet sticking out from under Sacha’s warm belly. “I haven’t seen myself yet.”

“When will you turn again?”

“Tonight, on the last vestiges of the moon’s power.”

Alex bit his lip, eyes narrowing. “Could I…?”

“You wanna come with me?” I asked, nodding. “Sure. Why not?”

Alex smiled, picking up my hand and holding it. “Thanks, Red.”

“For what?”

“For being here. For rescuing me. For being patient with me.”

I squeezed his hand, feeling a layer of sweat slick between our palms, my nerves making my heart race. “You’re my best friend, Alex. I’ll always be here for you.”

He nodded, his brow drawing in and making his face look sad. “Red?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it okay if I cry on your shoulder for a bit?”

I sighed sadly for him, turning my body in a little and letting him put his face down on my coat. “It’s all going to be okay, Alex. You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice crackling. “I know.”

Part Four: Chapter Six

The Little Red Raven Girl

I charged down the stairs from my room and slammed into the tall man at our front door. “Theo!”

He laughed, hugging me tightly like a bear. “It’s good to see you too, Red.”

“It’s been so long.” I stood back and slapped his chest playfully. “Why has it been so long?”

“I’ve been busy.” Theo stepped aside then and brought forward a fuller looking Katy, with bright rosy cheeks, a chubbier face, and a small round belly.

I screamed, and she screamed too, and we both jumped up and down, hugging.

“I’ve missed you so much!” I squealed.

“Me too,” she said, and even her voice sounded different. It wasn’t as timid, as if every word she spoke held the confidence of the female alpha. The queen. The mom-to-be!

“Aw, look at you.” I leaned back a bit to see her belly beneath her pretty pink top. Modern pink top.

“How far along are you?” Mom asked, stepping aside purposefully, as if to hint that I should back off and let them get in the door before imposing the full inquisition.

“Twenty weeks,” she said, making an eye at Theo.

“Oh, right. I almost forgot,” he said, angling his shoulder to his car. He waved his hand then and the door opened. “We’ve brought a visitor, if that’s okay with you, Mrs. Redwood?”

Mom said it was, of course, more than fine.

I didn’t recognize her at first, her hair short now and dyed black, but when she turned back and then stepped out of the car with a baby in her arms, my stomach leapt up into my throat.

“Anne!”

“Red!” She put her arm out as I ran in to hug her. My speed and over-excitement scared the baby a little and she cried, clinging to her mother.

“Aw, I’m so sorry,” I cooed, laughing.

“She’s okay,” Anne said, readjusting her on her hip. “Red, I’d like you to meet Katy.”

“Katy?”

She nodded. “I tried to register her as Red, but apparently Red isn’t a real name.”

I laughed, letting little Katy take my finger. “I like Katy better anyway.”

Anne smiled.

“How is she?” I asked, my smile dropping for a face of concern. “Luther told me that…”

“Yes.” She nodded, her eyes going dark. “It was a terrifying few weeks after she first turned.”

I watched silently as those horrors played out in her eyes.

“But she obviously turned back?” I said.

“Yes, after a while. And I nearly lost her in that time.”

“Lost her?”

“I left a window open…”

“Oh no,” I said, covering my mouth to hide that I almost laughed. It wasn’t funny, but it also kind of was. “Has she turned again?”

“Not yet. But I’m not letting her out of my sight in case, which made it hard to find work.”

“So what are you—”

“Theo.” She smiled, glancing back at the house where they all stood, trying not to stare at us. “He took me in.”

“So you’re back at the mansion now?”

“Yes, but not as a captive. And,” —she motioned down at her modern attire— “things are very different around there now.”

“Different how?”

“No more regency era—TVs in every room, light switches and steam showers.” She grinned. “It’s like a hotel. A grand one—with high-paid staff, and a pool! And even new menus every week for room service.”

“Wow.” It almost made me want to go back. Almost. I smiled at little Katy and this time she smiled back, hiding her face in Anne’s shoulder a second later. “She’s adorable.”

“Yeah.” Anne looked at her like she was the most precious thing in all the world. “She takes after her mother.”

I laughed, glad of that. I couldn’t see much of Luther in her at all, but she did have Theo’s kind eyes.

“Come on inside, you three,” Mom demanded. “I’ve made cake.”

“Oooh, cake,” Anne said to Katy, who looked up, interested.

“Is she old enough for cake?” I said, walking them up the path.

“Of course she is,” Anne said. “You’re never too young for cake.”

I laughed. “Does she even have teeth?”

“You don’t need teeth to eat cake. But yes, she’s eight months now. She has teeth.”

“Well, just don’t eat my cake,” I said to the baby, tickling her belly.

At the front door Theo waited until last to walk inside, letting everyone go ahead of us, then he put his arm over my shoulder and stopped me. “How are you, Red?”

“I’m good.” I nodded.

“Are you?”

I let him look right into my eyes to see the truth, because it felt like he was the only one that truly understood what I’d been through. He was the only one that could truly understand why I wasn’t a mess over it. “It isn’t what you think,” I said. “I know you and Mom are worried about me after I killed Luther, but it’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s Alex.” I exhaled, relieved to say that aloud. “He… he still isn’t really okay. I mean, he’s better, and he’s back at school now, but things just aren’t like they used to be.”

“In what way?”

“I feel like some of the magic is dead now.” I checked around to see if anyone else would hear. This wasn’t sensitive material, but it was deeply personal. “Or maybe not dead. It’s just… things… I don’t know. Maybe I feel like Alex is deliberately being too normal now.”

“Are you sure that’s not just a part of growing up?”

“Maybe.” I shrugged. “Or maybe we’re growing apart.”

“So you’re still in the friend zone?”

I chuckled. “Yeah. I think we always will be. I don’t think Alex feels the way about me as I do about him.”

Theo grinned to himself. “Give him time. He’s got a lot to focus on right now, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah, but…”

“But?”

“I love him, Theo,” I said sadly. “Like, it’s grown even more over the last seven months, and I don’t know if I should tell him.”

“You don’t want to ruin the friendship?”

“Yeah.” I stepped out of the way so Theo could shut the door. “We’re great friends, you know. And we have a blast, but I wish I could hug him in a different way, and maybe…” I added with a shy shrug, “Maybe sometimes kiss him when I get the urge.”

Theo laughed. “Have you tried doing just that? It might surprise you to find he doesn’t mind all that much.”

“Or he will, and then he’ll stop being friends with me.”

“Ah.” He sighed, wrapping his arm around me. “I don’t envy you, being a teenager. It’s all very complicated.”

“Yes,” I said, shaking my head to release my tension. “Which is why I think things need to stay as they are for now.”

“Well, Red, one thing I can say about boys is that, if they like you, they will eventually let you know.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” He nodded, laughing once. “If you’re not brave enough to speak up, just give him some time. And if anything like that comes up in conversation, be brave. Let him know without actually saying it that you’re open to being more than friends.”

“Nup.” I shook my head. “There’s no way I could do that. I’m a total chicken.”

“No, you’re a wolf. And a brave one at that.” He sighed again, seeing he wasn’t getting through to me. “Look, you don’t need to actually say it. Sometimes, just not denying it is enough. Trust me. Teenage boys, if they like a girl, will analyze everything—every moment, looking for clues.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I was a teenager once, remember.”

“Yeah, but in a different time period.”

Theo laughed again. “It makes no difference what century he’s from. Instincts are still the same.”

I smiled. He was right. And I knew I could at least do that much—refrain from denying my affections. Hopefully, Alex would catch on. Otherwise, I wasn’t sure I could bear being friends with him for much longer.

“Now, come.” Theo led me toward the kitchen. “I have a lot to tell you.”

I grinned, so eager to hear about that old Ravenswood Mansion now with a more modern man running it. “How are things up at the mansion?”

“Better than ever,” he said. “Like all the sadness and emptiness died with my father.”

That’s good, I thought, but I did feel a twang of regret for having taken his life. He was evil, yes, but now I was a murderer, even if it was for a good cause. One day I would reconcile with that, but for now I was battling with it. Silently.

“And, you’ll be the first to hear this,” Theo said, “so keep it to yourself for now, but we will be officially returning to the Ravenwolf name as of next month.”

“Really?”

He nodded once, his warm smile showing a dimple. “Katy and I will be married after the baby is born, and I wish for both the marriage and the child to enter a new era, in which the legacy they might leave behind is not tarnished by my father’s old ghosts.”

I linked arms with him, leading the way to the kitchen. “I think that’s a great idea. But what about the army?”

“What about them?”

“Your children won’t be immortal and without growth in the army, who’d fear our pack now?”

“The fear remains, Red,” he insisted, nodding another greeting to my mom as we entered the kitchen. “Our army is supposedly immortal and chillingly large—large enough that we no longer need to expand.”

“Nothing has changed on that front, Red,” Katy added, taking Theo’s hand when he sat beside her. “As far as anyone is concerned, the only thing that’s changed is our leader. And when enquiries have been made as to why the army did not fight for Luther when he was killed, it was said simply that Theo was trusted. Who would have thought he would slay his own father behind closed doors?”

I smiled, nodding. “Clever.”

“Yes.” Theo lifted his hand and placed it back down in one of those manly affectionate pats on Katy’s. “I’ve been at this game for a very long time. Did you ever doubt my ability to run things smoothly?”

“Not for a second,” I said with a wink. “And for what it’s worth, I’m proud of you, Theo. Of both of you.”

“You’re proud of us?” he said with a laugh.

“Yes. A teenager can be proud of an adult,” I stated. “Because you guys have really changed things up. I heard the slaves have finally integrated into modern society—with your financial assistance and guidance—and I haven’t even heard a whisper of remorse for Luther being gone.”

But there was one whisper of remorse—it was there in Theo’s eyes. I had to remind myself to be careful what I said from now on. Luther was, after all, Theo’s father.

“Well, I think we should toast,” Mom said, placing a tray of coffee on the table. We each grabbed a cup and raised it, ready.

“What shall we toast to?” Theo asked.

“To the alpha, and his queen to be.”

“Salute,” I said, clanking my glass playfully with Katy’s.

“And may our son be born with his father’s immortal blood,” Katy added, rubbing her belly.

“Son?” I said. “So you already know what you’re having?”

“Of course.” Katy smiled at Theo. “After all, I did lie with the intention to bear a son.”

We all roared with laughter, and as the afternoon carried on then with that same playful and joyful air I realized that, if for no other reason than to see Katy so happy, I was glad that I killed Luther.

***

I was right that day when I told Theo that the magic had died. Things never were the same at Alex’s house again. Plain went on to invent more crazy ideas, most of them failing, and as we came into senior year Alex got serious about school and college applications. So serious that there was very little time for days in the park by the tree. So serious that his grades were better than mine. So serious that some days he said we couldn’t hang out because he had too much study to do. I didn’t take it to heart at first, but as we neared graduation day and a whole week went by where I didn’t see Alex, it was pretty hard not to feel a bit… forgotten.

At lunch I’d been so lost in conversation with our little group of human friends—the ones I’d met that day at the ice-cream shack before I left to marry Luther—that I didn’t even see Alex walk past. I only knew he did because Amy made a snide remark about him not saying hello.

“Yeah, what is up with him lately?” Denise said, leaning in as if to keep this private. “He hasn’t returned any of my calls—”

“Give him a break,” Ben offered, stealing Amy’s milk. “The guy’s been working his butt off and it’s not like he’s got it easy at home.”

“What do you mean?” I said, a bit snappier than intended.

“Have you met his dad?” he asked rhetorically, because we all had. “He’s mad as a March hare.”

The girls laughed.

“So what?” I said. “That doesn’t affect Alex’s ability to study hard.”

“Are you kidding?” Ben sat forward a bit, bringing his voice down. “The old man keeps him up at night, banging and hammering. I can hear it from my house. And if he’s not keeping him awake, he’s getting him up to see his stupid inventions that no one cares about. My dad says he’s a few sandwiches short of a lunchbox.”

A few sandwiches short, yes, since he was always losing them off his plate, but he wasn’t that mad. Not enough to have mentioned the lunchbox.

“I told him he should move out,” Ben added.

“What? Why?”

“How’s he supposed to get through college with that old man driving him crazy?”

“That old man is his dad,” I spat. “And Alex doesn’t have a problem with his mad father. He loves him.”

“That’s not what he told me.” Ben shrugged. “We’re looking at apartments.”

My heart broke for Plain. How would he cope if Alex moved away? It was one thing to go to college, but to move out permanently just because his father was mad would break Plain’s heart. And if Plain had gotten worse, why didn’t Alex say anything to me?

I glanced around the room until I spotted Alex at a table on his own, books laid out, food pushed off to one side.

“Where are you going?” Denise called as I got up.

“To talk to him.”

Alex jumped out of his skin when I sat down heavily on the seat next to him, shocking him out of his studies. “What’s going on?” I said.

“Huh?” He just looked confused.

“Ben says you’re moving out of home—because Plain’s gone mad. Well,” I corrected, “madder.”

Alex glanced back at the group and then at me, lowering his head.

“Alex, talk to me.” I grabbed his arm and made him look at me. “What’s going on?”

His head sunk a bit more, ducking shamefully into his shoulders. “They told everyone,” he said quietly. “Now the whole school knows my father’s insane, and people make jokes about him.”

“Jokes?”

He nodded. “And I… I joked along with them,” he admitted. “I didn’t really know what else to do, and now I’m in this big mess because Ben thinks I want to move out with him.”

“Why didn’t you tell them to shut up?!” I squeaked. “He’s your dad, Alex.”

“I know, but…”

“But what? Does it really matter to you to fit in that much that you’d—”

“That’s not what it is,” he cut in. “I just… I didn’t know what to say. I got…” He fought with his vocabulary for a way to put this. “I never let anyone into my world before, Red, you know that.”

“Yes, and now I see why.”

He nodded, putting his pen down, which was such an odd thing for him to do lately. He seemed almost fed up with it.

“So is it true? Are you moving out with Ben?”

“No.”

“Then why did he—”

“Like I said, he thinks I am. I mean… I didn’t say yes, but—”

“But you didn’t say no.”

“I didn’t know what to say. It hurt, okay, if you must know.” He folded his arms, shaking his head. “No one’s ever said those things about my dad before, and it… I was thrown off by it.”

“What did he say?” I asked in a softer voice, sliding a bit closer.

“He said he was insane.” Alex’s voice broke. “Not the good kind of insane, but like he should be locked away.”

I cocked my head, pouting.

“He said his inventions were stupid and that no one would ever buy them,” he continued. “I… growing up, I believed in my dad. He was like a god to me, you know—a brilliant mind. I thought the world would fall just as in love with him as you did. But… it was just a shock, that’s all.”

“What was?”

“To see the truth.”

“Truth?” I jerked my head around to look back at Ben and the girls. “What truth? No, whose truth? Because, as far as I can tell, Plain is brilliant, Ale—”

“But it’s all about perspective, right?” he said sarcastically, shaking his head at me before he picked up that darn pen again.

“Yes.” I snatched it. “Because Ben might not see in Plain what we do. But that’s not because it isn’t there. It’s because he’s not ready to see it.”

Alex didn’t speak, but I knew I’d reached him. I saw a sprinkle of thought across his brow, and a very tiny smile appeared. “Do you remember what my dad said about the sun?”

“The sun?” I said, narrowing my eyes in confusion.

“That it gave him an idea—that what message you heard from something wasn’t a reflection of what it had to teach, but what you had to learn.”

“Yes! I remember now. And?”

He smiled. “And maybe you’re right.”

“I know I am.” I gave him back his pen. “Just because Ben isn’t ready to see the brilliance and magic in Plain doesn’t mean the rest of the world can’t. So don’t listen to him, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And on another note,” I added, choosing my words carefully, “I get why you haven’t been talking to those guys, but why have you avoided me? I called you, left messages—”

“I couldn’t hang out with them, Red—”

“You didn’t have to—”

“I did. If I was to see you, I’d have to see them. You guys do everything together—”

“Then why didn’t you tell me what they said—”

“How could I? You’re happy. You have real friends for the first time in your life. I wasn’t going to take that away from you.”

“Real friends?” I scoffed. “Alex, they said bad things about someone I care for. In fact, they didn’t just make observations either, they made jokes and teased him. I hate that. You know that. If you’d told me then—”

“Then you’d stop being friends with them and it’d be my fault—”

“How?”

“Because gossip is like—”

“It’s not gossip if you told me what they said. It’s… I dunno, informing on them.”

Alex laughed, his easy smile opening his face. “Informing?”

“Yes, because I have a right to know what my friends are saying about my best friend’s family. You come first, Alex. Always.”

“I don’t want it to be that way.”

“Why?”

“Because, if it’s true, if my dad really is the bad kind of mad, why would you want to be friends with me?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Don’t you get it, Red? My uncle went mad. My grandfather went mad. Maybe…” His eyes averted slightly, shoulders curling around to make him smaller.

“You think you’ll go mad too?”

He nodded.

“Great!” I laughed; Alex looked up like I was insane. “Plain is the most amazing, brilliant-minded man I know. If you grow up to be anything like him, then we’re gonna have the best time!”

A half-smile leaked out, but he drew it back in. “I don’t have much time, Red. My dad started going mad around thirty—lost his job by forty. If that’s all the time I have then I need to work harder to find this cure. For George.”

“Then I’m with you on that,” I promised. “All the way. From genius to madness. Don’t shut me out.”

Alex sighed, looking over at his untouched food.

“Have you been eating?” I asked.

“Not much.”

“Why?”

“I dunno.”

I studied him for a moment. I knew why. I knew it was because his heart had been broken, his world shattered when an outsider came in and tried to make sense of it with outsider eyes.

“Alex.” I waited until he looked at me. “You are remarkable. Even now that you’re all plain and boring with this ‘all-work-no-play’ business,” —Alex laughed— “but your boring life is still my magic world, and I miss you.”

“You miss me?” He laughed again. “I haven’t gone anywhere.”

“But you have. In here.” I made a circle around my heart, and it took Alex back to the worlds we used to create. I could see his eyes move up and along the cafeteria walls, seeing strange lands of lake and sea for the first time in so long. “Just don’t go away forever, ’kay?” I finished.

“I won’t.” When he touched my hand, my skin tingled because it’d been so long since we’d touched. “I just have to get through these exams.”

I nodded. “And I’m here to help you if you need it.”

“Thanks,” he said, and picked up his sandwich. I thought about walking away—going back to the table with the others—but after what they’d said about Plain I could now see how narrow-minded and unremarkable they all were. I didn’t feel like talking to them. So I stayed by Alex’s side, even though I got the sense that he wanted me gone.

As the bell went, after we’d sat in total silence for the remainder of lunch, I stood and pulled my bag onto my shoulder, a little disappointed that I didn’t think of anything to say to strike up a conversation.

Alex stopped me, making real eye contact for what felt like the first time in forever. His eyes were so pretty in the daylight, even though they were ordinary and a kind of plain muddy color, but when I looked right into them from up this close I could see worlds within those worlds, and I wanted to keep staring at them all day.

“It’s my turn to cook tonight,” he said. “You wanna come for dinner?”

“Sure you’re not too busy to spend time with me?”

“Yeah, I am busy, Red,” he confessed, and it seemed like, even though he looked at me, even though our eyes connected, this was the first time he’d actually noticed me. His face softened then. “But I miss you too.”

“Then I’ll come over straight after school.” I decided. “Maybe we can study together.”

“I’d like that.” He smiled again, and another first happened: the first time he noticed my heart flutter when he smiled. He looked confused by it for a moment, and then I saw his face change as it caught on—saw the ghost of a triumphant grin slip in across his lips as he bent to pick up his bag. He liked that I liked his smile. And I didn’t even try to deny that I did.

***

Late one afternoon I came in to find Alex on his bed, shirtless, arms behind his head. With his earphones turned up so loud he didn’t notice me come in until I was standing right above him.

“Hi.” My mouth broadened with a beaming grin, watching the horror move in over his sleepy eyes.

“Shoot.” He rolled up, ripping his headphones off, and reached for his blanket. “What are you doing here?”

I gave a little hop and sat on the bed beside him, laughing at the way he covered his nipples with the blanket. “What, I can’t come see my best friend?”

“I just…” His eyes went to something beside him then and he grabbed it, stuffed it under his covers so fast that I didn’t see what it was. “It’s fine. I just didn’t know you were coming.”

“You want me to get you a shirt?” I offered, smirking.

“Uh… yeah.” He nodded across his room. “Second drawer.”

“I know.” I got up and walked over, but at the last second, when his guard was dropped, I spun around with wolf speed and flew at him, sweeping my hands under his blanket until they connected with what he hid: a book.

“No!” he cried, chasing me off the bed. But I was too fast. I darted across the room and flipped the book open, angling it into the ray of sunlight streaming through his window. “You’re invading my privacy, Red.”

“Too bad.” I laughed, turning away from him and arching my back as he tried to grab the book. His fingertips caught a page and almost ripped it, but I shifted it away just in time. Then I stopped. I stopped fighting and even breathing, letting him snatch the book.

“You weren’t supposed to see that,” he snapped, shaking his head at me.

“Alex.” I followed him, my stomach tight and my blood running really hot in my ears. I felt that same build of deliciously intoxicating pressure inside of me that I’d once felt with Luther—when we were close in my room, before I knew how evil he was. “Why did you draw a picture of me naked? And how did you even know what I look like naked?”

“I’ve seen you shift, Red. What, you think I didn’t look at you?”

Well, yes. Naïvely I had thought he didn’t look. And now I was pretty embarrassed, but also flattered. “Can I see it?” I nodded at the book.

“No—”

“Please.” I gave him my best puppy eyes.

“Argh. Fine,” he said, flipping the book open and showing me the image. “Just… don’t hate me.”

“I won’t. I couldn’t,” I noted, walking over to touch the sketch. It was a simple sketch in black and white, shaded in areas to make it look almost real. And he’d gotten it so right, even down to how many of my ribs showed. It made me feel a little dirty, but also beautiful. Everything I hated about my body, he’d captured in perfect light with eyes that obviously didn’t see a thing wrong with the way God made me. But what did it mean, if anything?

I felt my eyes go to his nether region and my cheeks filled with extra blood. He was a teenage boy, right? So, yeah, he probably had thought about having sex with me. It didn’t mean anything. Or maybe it did. But I wasn’t willing to challenge this friendship right now—not while things were still fragile and exams were just four days away. I wanted him to admit that he thought of me that way—maybe even take this friendship to another level—but it would have to wait until the graduation dinner.

“Red, I…”

“It’s okay.” I took the book and closed it, noticing a sketch of me as wolf when the pages turned.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” he said timidly. “I wasn’t trying to be a pervert—”

“I know. I mean…” I shrugged. “You drew me as wolf, too, right? And you drew me human. It’s just art.”

“I’d never show anyone though, Red, you know that—”

“So it was just for personal use?”

Alex laughed, knowing I was joking, although I did take a half-glance around to see if there was a pile of tissues where that book had been sitting on his bed. There wasn’t. Thank heavens.

With the tension easing back a bit I walked away and sat on his bed, leaving him to get his own shirt. It smelled like him here, and I just wanted to lie down on his pillow and be close to the unguarded version of him again. I missed him so much. I missed the magic and the connection we used to have. I missed feeling like, at any moment, I might be able to tell him I love him and have him say it back.

“So is that what you do now?” I said. “I mean, because you could not draw like that six months ago, so have you been teaching yourself?”

“Yeah.” He came over in a white T-shirt and sat down right next to me, our legs touching. “I needed something to distract me from homework once in a while and, well…”

“And I couldn’t be that distraction?”

“Not really.” His mouth pursed in a sweet, shy smile. He ran a hand through his curls then and laid back on the bed, chest open, as if inviting me to lay there.

“What does not really mean?”

“It means I’m… I’m a guy, Red.” Alex lifted his head a bit to give me a cheeky grin. “I’d never disrespect my dad by looking up porn on the Internet, but, you know… guys have needs.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I coulda used a dad that would buy me dirty magazines—or at least have some under his bed. But my dad is mad, so…”

“And so… why does that mean you couldn’t let me distract you?”

“Because I needed a ‘certain kind’ of distraction, Red—the kind you don’t do with your best friend.”

My mouth rounded as my eyes did, and I nodded. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.” He laughed, reaching up to slap my arm. “So, no hard feelings, ’kay?”

“’Kay.” I laid down beside him, wanting to lay on his chest but choosing the bed instead. “So why not draw someone else—or an imaginary naked person?”

I felt him shrug beside me, but he didn’t answer.

“So… did you… um…” I laughed. I couldn’t say it and keep a straight face. “Did you use a box of tissues when you drew that—”

“Red!” he said loudly, rolling up onto his side to express his distaste right in front of my face. “You can’t ask me that.”

“Why not? I think I have a right to know what’s happening with naked sketches of me.”

“I think you’d rather not know.”

I scoffed out my high-pitched disbelief, smiling.

“Don’t take it personal,” he said, getting up on his knees, hands pressed firmly into the bed beside my shoulders. “I’m a teenage guy. We pretty much do that over everything.”

“Even Mrs. Labroke?”

Alex laughed deeply in the back of his throat. “Okay, so maybe not everything.”

With him this close to me, no parents around to walk in on us, it would have been so easy to tell him right now that I think about him like that too—that it wasn’t because teenage girls thought that way about everything, but because I loved the way his shirt pressed against his chest to show the ribs, and I loved the way his hair fell in his face when he looked down at me like that, and I loved the stubble that’d gone from growing only on his chin last year to down his neck now, and I loved how warm his hands were and I wanted them pressed to my hip. My bare hip—my top lifted slightly so he could see my skin. It was the wolf in me, maybe; she was all animal and sexually mature. But I wasn’t. Neither was Alex.

“We better, uh…”

“Yeah,” he said, taking the hint. He slinked back away from me and I quickly averted my eyes when I saw the proof that he wanted me bulging in his jeans. But I reminded myself that it was four days until exams. Neither of us needed this kind of distraction right now. Like I told myself a moment ago, it would have to wait until the graduation dinner.

Part Four: Chapter Seven

How It Ends is Never The End

Graduation came around so fast I could barely remember the chaos of my exams. Looking back tonight it seemed like my entire life had been made up of extreme moments that felt like the most important and never-ending events; every fight, every tear, every assessment, every lunchtime even. Now they were just fleeting memories that never really held that much importance—or at least not as much as I placed on them at the time. I don’t know, maybe I was just wiser now that I’d officially graduated, or maybe I was just feeling mature being back here at the mansion after avoiding it for so long.

I looked along the crowd of wolves, all seated elbow-to-elbow in the Great Hall for the first annual graduation dinner. Theo sat at the head, with Katy right beside him, their son in the cradle right behind them. They looked so happy. In fact, tonight everyone looked happy; Mom, Anne, Plain. Even I was happy. After all, we’d just gotten the best news today: Sacha and Max were expecting puppies. What better graduation present could I want? Well, maybe aside from Mom buying me a car. It was a rust-bucket, and needed a lot of work, but it was the best present ever. Certainly better than what Plain gave Alex.

I laughed to myself as I looked at him, seeing his face again as he opened the box and saw the old pocket-watch on the chain—something given to Plain on his graduation day from his father. Alex hadn’t ever expected a car, but I wasn’t sure he really knew what to do with a pocket-watch, either.

He tried to smile back at me when our eyes met, but it was so forced that I looked away. By the time dessert had been served and the guests dwindled away to the louder part of the mansion, where music played and disco lights had been set up, Alex was gone.

I went off in search, and eventually came up on him in a window seat on the second floor. His knees were tucked up to make himself small, his hands cupped tightly over a pair of headphones, the music so loud I could hear it coming up the stairs. I stood for a moment, waiting for him to notice me.

“Sometimes you just need to be wrapped up in it,” he said, taking off the headphones and smiling awkwardly at me, as if he’d been caught talking to himself.

“In what?”

He offered the headphones. “Music.”

I took them and pressed them over my ears, feeling the tune weep inside of me. It made me sad and yet somehow it made me feel free. I felt what Alex meant then, wishing I could take the waves of this song and throw them over me, wrap myself up in it, as if maybe the sadness within it would be okay in there.

I looked out over the blackness of night for a while, just listening to the song, connecting with Alex on a new level to before. When it ended, he pressed pause so the next song wouldn’t play.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

“Is that what you listen to these days?”

“Yeah.”

“Who is it?”

“Luke Sital-Singh. That song was ‘Benediction’.”

I nodded, sitting back on the wall opposite him, my feet touching his. “Do you like it because it makes you sad?”

He twitched in thought, shaking his head when he caught the train he was searching for. “I like it because it understands my sadness.”

That admission moved me, altering my opinion of Alex a little. Not in a bad way, but I felt like maybe I understood him better now too; understood that maybe he didn’t go looking for things to be sad about, but instead looked for sad things that he could relate to. “You were quiet at dinner.”

“I didn’t feel right being there.”

“Why not?”

“They’re all wolves.”

“Katy’s not. Plain’s not.”

“Yes, but… the rest are.”

“And you’re an honorary wolf,” I said with a smile. “This is your graduation party too.”

“I know. I just…” He looked out the window again. “I don’t feel much like celebrating.”

“Any reason?”

“I think I’m in more of a reflective mood, I guess.”

I smiled, tucking my knees in closer to my chest. “Yeah, I kinda know what you mean.”

We sat silently again for a bit, listening to the party going on downstairs without us. I thought about the conversation between Theo and Mom at dinner—how he offered to fund my dog shelter, to which Mom said no. Apparently it was something I needed to work for, save for, strive for. Earn. So now I had ahead of me a long few years of crappy jobs to save a few bucks, but at least she offered to match me dollar for dollar. So there was that. But I would rather have taken Theo’s offer. And then, on the other hand, I was sort of excited about earning it on my own. Owning it because of that, and not owing anyone for my success. It’d be hard, but it’d be worth it.

When I came up from my thoughts Alex was looking at me, a soft smile underneath the permanent pain in his eyes. I wanted to ask him if he was still sad about George, and then I realized something; he wasn’t sad about George. Alex had always been sad. Even on the first day I met him. It was just a part of who he was deep inside. It wasn’t like he was permanently on the brink of tears, but he was in a constant state of reflective thought. He felt so much more sadness in this world than anyone I knew, and he felt it for a lot longer too, and I couldn’t fix that. It couldn’t be fixed. I couldn’t talk it away or wish it away. And as his best friend, I couldn’t just sit around and wait for it to end. It was a part of him—a forever part of who he was—and he needed me to love him sad as much as I loved him happy.

I reached over and took his hand, stole it I guess, because he tried to keep it to himself when I touched him. “Are you scared?” I asked.

“Of what?”

“College. Leaving.”

His eyes went down to the ground, head moving in a nod. “You know why, right?”

“Because of George,” I suggested. “Because he never made it.”

Alex nodded.

I shuffled a bit closer, and boldly, unafraid of how he’d react, I parted his knees and turned my body, pressing my back into him and closing his arms around my waist. He exhaled heavily, resting his lips on my head, his breath warm and tinged with mint gum.

“Maybe I can drive you,” I offered.

His arms tightened around me. “I’d like that. I wouldn’t be so afraid if I had you with me.”

I slid my fingers down his arm and linked them over his, letting myself believe that this embrace meant things had evolved between us. “Will you ever come back, do you think?”

“Come back?”

“When you leave, when you finally invent that cure, will you ever come back here to live?”

When he didn’t answer I took that to mean exactly what I knew it did. And it hurt. Deeply. But Alex needed to know it was okay to leave here and do what he needed to do. For him. For George. I’d survive it, even though the sadness would eventually leave my bones and live on my skin for a very long time; I just needed him to know we’d all be okay.

“I’ll take care of Plain,” I said. “I promise.”

He drew a deep breath of me through his nose again and let it out into my hair. “I know.”

“And I’ll miss you.”

“Don’t say that,” he whispered softly.

“Why?”

“Because I won’t go if you say things like that.”

“Yes you will. You can separate yourself from it, Alex. You’re good at that.”

“From what?”

“From what you feel and what needs to be done.”

“Is that what you think?” His arms came away from my waist. I felt unwanted there in his circle then, so I shifted away, sitting opposite him again.

“It’s how you are these days,” I explained. “I don’t see why you’re so offended.”

“I’m offended because it means you don’t know a darn thing about me, Red.” He got up.

“What don’t I know?” My eyes followed him to the other side of the hallway. He leaned on the wall and put both hands in his pockets. “Finding this cure,” I added, “is the most important thing in the world to you. I get that, and—”

“Just…” He put his hands to his ears. “Just shut up, ’kay?”

I did, but only because I was hurt that he told me to shut up. Deeply hurt.

He looked up from the ground then and shook his head when he saw my face. “I can’t measure it, Red.”

“What?”

“What matters. I can’t measure what matters in here against what matters… out there.” He pressed his hand to his heart and then stretched his arm straight to present the world. “And you don’t get it. And I can’t… I can’t tell you.”

“Can’t tell me what? And why can’t you tell me?”

“Because you won’t understand.”

“What won’t I understand?” I got up, but he put both hands up, shaking his head at me.

“I don’t want to tie you down—to me. To my father. You’re great,” he said, teary eyes showing his defeat. “You’re so great, Red, and you’ll be wasted here with us.”

“What do you mean?”

He looked at his watch, dropping his wrist after. “It’s late. I need to get Plain home.”

“Alex.” I started after him.

“Just… don’t.” He turned back, hands up. “I can’t talk about this tonight. I need to think.”

“About what?”

“Everything.” He sighed, shutting his eyes for a moment. “Just give me time.”

“Time?” I was utterly confused. “Time for what?”

He didn’t answer, though. He just turned and walked down the stairs, leaving me alone up here with his headphones still on the seat where we’d been sitting.

***

Work made my legs tired. I got it. Totally. Mom wanted me to fight for my dreams, and that meant not accepting the silver platter Theo offered me. But man, it would be so much easier to have said yes.

I laid down in the lush grass by the swing, stealing the shadow of the tree to hide my tired eyes. Two days. I had two free days to do whatever I wanted, and if I never saw Joe’s Ice-cream Shack ever again it would still be too soon. Two days just wasn’t enough. I wished now that I’d opted for college and a part-time job. Eight hours a day scooping ice cream was not my idea of how things were supposed to turn out. But, I had to remind myself it was a means to an end. And I did at least have Mom matching me dollar for dollar. In two years, I’d be able to pay my first six months’ rent on the building I’d chosen for the shelter.

Laying here like this, without Alex, without George, without even Sacha or Max, I had a lot of time to think. So I thought about Luther for some strange reason. A part of me still saw hope for him, even though he was dead, and I realized I still hadn’t come to terms with what I did. Or that I was now technically a widow. I was okay, mostly, but every now and then I felt really bad for killing him. I knew it would just have to be one of those shadows I pushed behind me, but then sometimes I would also just have to acknowledge that I felt bad. It was okay to feel bad. I did a bad thing. There was no escaping that.

I rolled over and pressed a fingertip to a sharp stick, breathing deeply the scent of wet soil and deep sunshine. I thought about how cool grass is—every tiny, miraculous detail—and, from that how I was made; not the whole birds and bees thing, but what happened after that—what shaped me into who I am and how I feel about things. What was it that made me see things the way I did, the way Alex did, when others had come into our world and poked fun at it?

In my mind, in my heart, I thought it meant Alex and I were right for each other—that we were the same and that maybe we should always be together. But he distanced himself from me. And I hadn’t seen him since that day I arrived to drive him to college and was told instead that he couldn’t go. He didn’t give me a reason. He said he couldn’t talk about it yet, and when I asked why, he simply looked right into my soul and said that if I didn’t already know that then it was even more reason why he shouldn’t say anything.

I wanted to think it was because he had fallen deeply in love with me and couldn’t bear for us to be apart, but if that were true then he would’ve returned my calls. So then I thought maybe it was because he needed to be here for Plain. But I was here, so he didn’t need to be. And then I figured maybe he didn’t want me to get tied down caring for Plain when he wasn’t my ‘responsibility’, which would explain the ‘wasted here with us’ statement he made at the graduation dinner. Or maybe it was all because Alex might one day go mad. Maybe he thought there was no point trying to become great when it would all come to an end so soon.

Mom, of course, believed it was because he loves me. And if that was true, she’d said, it was a waste of a brilliant mind to let him stay here just for love. But I disagreed. If he loved me, and that’s why he was staying, how was that a bad thing? I mean, yes, he wouldn’t go to the best college in the whole world, but brilliant minds were brilliant no matter where they went to school, right? He could do great things still. He could just do them here, closer to me.

As I rolled over and my eyes happened to sweep past his house and past his bedroom window, I caught him looking out at me. He slinked back into the shadows quickly, embarrassed, so I got up and walked over to his fence.

“Alex!” I called, cupping my hands around my mouth. “Alex, come down!”

The back door opened a few seconds later and Alex just stood there looking at me, a Slinky on his arm, his hair wild.

“Hi,” I said, moving to the gate.

“Hi.”

“Wanna come out and look at clouds?” I offered.

He ducked his head a little to look at the sky past the trees in his yard. “There aren’t any.”

“We can imagine some.”

He thought about it, then he eventually nodded and closed the door as he came down the steps toward me. My whole body sung with joy, but I remained calm and collected.

“So, is everything okay, Alex?” I asked, staying about a step ahead of him. I sat down on the swing and he planted himself in the grass, unable to look at me.

“Not really.”

“What’s wrong?”

“A lot. But there’s one… there’s this one problem that’s been plaguing me for nearly two years.”

About as long as we’d known each other. I hugged the ropes of the swing, hoping I wasn’t the problem. “What’s that?”

“Red, I don’t know what’s gonna happen in the future,” —he looked up at me, squinting in the harsh light— “or how I’ll feel even a year from now, but I wanted you to know that, in this moment of my life, right now…” he looked down shyly at the ground, plucking a blade of unfortunate grass to distract from his emotions, “I love you.”

I choked on that for a breath, and when I went to speak, he stopped me with a raised hand and a sweet smile.

“I don’t need you to say anything, ’kay?” He got up and walked behind me. “I just wanted you to know.”

As he wrapped his hands around the ropes of the swing, I angled my head back to look at him, a bright gold sun sitting like an orb in the leaves above him, giving his curls an ochre halo and making the leaves a pale, sort of sunny green.

I knew I’d remember this moment for the rest of my life. Not just because it was the first time a boy said that to me—and meant it in the way I wanted him to—but because of the colors. Every time I saw orange light through pale green, I’d think of Alex now, no matter where our paths took us. And as I swung high into the air, feeling his hands press lightly against my back each time I came down, I smiled.

He said he loves me.

And I knew that when he said he didn’t need me to say anything back, it wasn’t because he didn’t need my love in order to admit his own. It wasn’t because he didn’t care if I loved him back; it was because he already knew that I did.

“Why didn’t you just tell me how you feel?” I said. “We could’ve stopped avoiding each other months ago.”

He laughed. “Probably the same reason you didn’t tell me.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense when you put it like that. So… is that why you’re not going away to college?”

“Kind of. But it’s not just that, Red. You know my dad needs me.” He gave me a good push and then stepped away, coming to stand where I could see him. “He’s getting worse.”

“How so?”

“I find him sometimes in the dark, talking to Mom like she’s still here, and when he sees me he asks me why I’m not at school today.”

I pouted, digging my toes into the grass to stop the swing.

“Besides,” he added, “I realized something after I had this super long conversation with someone yesterday. See, I’ve been thinking like maybe I’ll have to go to the local college so I can be with Dad, you know, maybe just become a teacher or something like that, but…” —he sat down in the grass, patting the spot next to him— “this person… she said that someone very important to me had given her a piece of inspiring insight.”

I sat down cross-legged near him. “Which was?”

“She said that brilliant minds can be brilliant anywhere,” he said, holding my gaze. “And I realized she was right; that I can go to a local college, still be here for Dad, and still do amazing things to help the world.”

I grinned. “So you’ve been talking to my mom, huh?”

“Of course.” He laid back, his chest open to the sky with his arms behind his head. “How else do you think I got the guts to just come right and tell you how I felt? But,” he added, “she actually came to me, so don’t get mad at me for talking about you with her.”

“She did? Why?”

“Because apparently you’ve been as miserable without me as I’ve been without you. So—” he shrugged, “—someone had to do something, right?”

That’s it! I was going to have firm words with her when I saw her tonight. “She could’ve ruined everything,” I said.

“How so?”

“What if you didn’t feel the same and you stopped being friends with me?”

“Red, it’s not like we’ve exactly been friends lately.”

“True. I guess.”

He sat up a little and looked at me, his lazy curls hanging loosely in his eyes. I loved him even more then, for no real reason at all.

“And the magic isn’t gone, by the way.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean, I know you think it died when George did, but it didn’t. I’ve just been shutting it out.” He laid back down. “But I have a confession to make.”

“What’s that?”

“I read your story.”

“My story?” My blood ran hot and then cold all through me.

“Yeah, and I realized how stupid it was—to shut out something so harmless, you know? The magic in my life didn’t cause my pain; it didn’t take George; but it did give me you.”

“Um… okay, hold on. Rewind. How did you get that story? I wrote that when I was living at Ravenswood, and I hid it in my room!”

“No, you left it in your room at the mansion, and when Theo returned a box of your stuff one day while I was at your house, it was on the top. I saw it. I stole it. So shoot me.”

“When?” I crawled over and leaned right above him, shadowing his face.

He bumped one shoulder up. “I guess I took it about a year ago, put it away for in case you felt like destroying it to forget the pain. But I didn’t read it until a few hours before graduation.”

“And?” I waited, my heart thumping. “What did you think?”

He opened one eye and rolled it up to look at me. “I think you should stop trying to save money for a dog shelter, Red. I think you should send that book to a publisher and write a million more like it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” He sat up and then spun around on his butt until he was facing me, arms around his knees. “I mean it. You gave me back the magic. It’s like I showed it to you, and you held onto it, kept it safe all this time until I was ready for it again. And then you gave it back to me.”

I smiled, not sure what to say; wishing I could reach out and grab hold of this Alex, keep him here forever.

“And I was thinking,” he said, “now that I know how you feel about me, instead of telling you to go to some fancy college in the city and become a writer, I think maybe you should go to Grimmtown Community College—with me—study writing there.”

Oh man, that sounded so appealing. The passion for a dog shelter just wasn’t driving my long days at Joe’s Ice-cream Shack right now. I loved dogs, but lately I’d been thinking I’d just be happy to have a few of my own—maybe six or seven. Ten, even. “How do you do that?” I said.

“Do what?”

“How do you completely turn my world on its head and make it all gleam like glitter?”

Alex laughed, moving his chin shyly toward his shoulder. “I guess I just know you better than you know yourself.”

“But how? How can we be like this with each other? It’s…”

“Magical?” he offered, scooting a bit closer and closing me up between his knees and his arms. “Maybe we were just made for each other, that’s all.”

“I thought the same thing once.”

“And now? Do you think differently now?”

“No. Now, I don’t think we were made for each other. I’m pretty certain we most definitely were.”

He laughed sweetly, but then his eyes drifted away in deep, brooding reflection. “So you really don’t mind that I might one day go mad?” he said. “Because that’s kinda been holding me back for a long time, too—makes me think maybe I should leave your life now and save you all the grief—”

“Alex.” I sighed, frustrated because I didn’t know how to make him understand. And then I thought of some lyrics from a song, and in a roundabout way it helped me explain it to him. “If you go mad, it’ll be hard for me, and might feel empty and alone sometimes. But I’ll feel just as empty if I leave you now for a supposedly better life. Don’t you get it? Whether we get a day, a week, a month or a century together, mad or sane, that’s better than my life without you in it.”

Alex fought hard to hide just how much those words touched him, brushing it off with, “As long as you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.” I made a circle around my heart with the tip of my finger. “You’re my world, Alex. The only world that feels real anymore.”

“Well,” he said, smiling sarcastically, “technically this is the only real world.”

“And you know what? Corny as this sounds, my real world is kinda better than all the story ones now.”

“Mine too.” Alex pursed his lips in thought; I waited, knowing he had something else to say. “But aren’t you scared, Red?”

“Of what?”

“What happens next?”

“What does happen next?”

“That’s just it,” he said. “I don’t know.”

“Isn’t there adventure in the not knowing?”

“I guess.” He sighed. “But there are some things that are certain, and they scare me.”

“Like what?”

He bumped one shoulder up shyly. “Death. Madness.”

“Madness doesn’t scare me.”

“Does death?”

I had to think about that. “No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” I said, but secretly I think I was beginning to understand.

Alex kissed my head then, and as the urge to kiss his mouth rose inside of me, for once free to roam as it pleased, I angled my face up and let my lips touch his. They were soft and so inviting, his cool hands grasping my jaw like he’d waited his whole life for this. It wasn’t a kiss to end all kisses, but it was our first kiss.

Our get-to-know-you kiss.

Our never-gonna-be-the-last kiss.

It was perfect in that moment, and as all moments usually are, it was infinite—it held the hope of things to come, even if those things were sad. What happened after that kiss wouldn’t matter until we looked back on it all in the future because, for now, as we were today, this was love. And love was consuming. Love was pretty darn awesome. Better than all the story worlds coming together, because it was real, no matter what happened from here—happy, sad, insane, or insanely unremarkable—our lives were finally on the same path.

And I wouldn’t want to miss a thing.

I once thought my world was made up of only Before Alex and After Alex, and the nightmare in between, but now I could see something else in both the looking forward and the looking back. Now, I could see so many paths within each path, and so many divisions within each division, that I suddenly didn’t feel the need to split my life into sections or chapters to make sense of it all. Life was not a story. And for that it never truly made sense, or needed to make sense, until you looked back on it; never truly showed its chapters until we created them with new knowledge of how things turned out. Never truly needed “The End”, because as long as you love someone, and they love you back—whether it lasts or ends or maybe you die—you live on in that love, like characters in a book.

And that’s why death didn’t scare me, because I had love, and so our story would never truly have a conclusion…

Other Works by Angela M Hudson

The Dark Secrets Series

A thought-provoking series about the multitude of changes and fears a human faces when mingling with vampires.

Available in paperback and ebook

Also Available:

Bound Series

Willa Wicked

About the Author

AusRom TODAY Author of the Year 2015 and Best Established Author nominee AM Hudson.

This internationally successful author has captivated fans all over the world since her Dark Secrets series was released in 2011. Known for her character-driven novels and twisted plots, her epic stories will confuse you, draw you in, make you feel something, including a strong desire to slap the protagonist.

When she’s not making people fall in love with her works, she spends time sorting a mountain of laundry for her four sons and drags shoelaces around the house for her Ragdoll cat Pudding to chase.

Acknowledgments

With Love and Appreciation…

A novel, I have learned, is never created by just one person. Like it is with raising children, it takes a village to produce a well-rounded novel, and I’d like to first thank everyone who has offered advice, read my early manuscripts, answered questions and queries for me on Facebook, and had my back when I’ve suffered bouts of major depression.

To each fan that comments on my posts and cheers me on, throwing encouragement and support at me throughout the process, thank you.

To everyone that put their hand up to join the Beta Teams and Review Teams, thank you.

To my friends, especially those I have never even met face-to-face, thank you. You girls are my Book-loving Warriors and I could not do this without you.

To my mum and sisters for offers of babysitting, even if I don’t take them, thank you.

To my mother-in-law, Pat, who always seems to send a little message of encouragement at just the right time, thank you.

Special thanks to

Julia Summers, and the Street Team at AM Hudson’s Ladies of the Knight. What can I say? I get goose bumps just thinking about all that you girls have done for me. I see my books plastered all over the place now and it makes me smile every time, knowing how hard you’re all working. Thank you for being so damn awesome.

Julia, you work tirelessly and I will admit right here to all reading this that your position is unpaid ever since I fell on hard times. I offered for you to come back and work for me when my finances improved, but instead you stood in your warrior pose and chose to continue on without pay out of true passion. You will always have a place in my circle of friendship, Julia, and when I do make the A List and start making the big money, I can’t think of anyone else I would rather have as my PA. I don’t have enough words to thank you for all that you do, but I hope one day I can find a way to show how much I appreciate you.

Ren, for your absolutely marvelous feedback and editorial advice, and for some perfect chapter title suggestions. Part Three: Chapter Eight, Liberty and Justice, is dedicated to you. I said it before and I’ll say it again, if I get rich enough to make beta reading a paid position, you will be one of the first to be hired.

Dawn, thank you for your support and wisdom; for your eager and readily offered advice and feedback on each book. You’re a true friend, and I’m still convinced you’re my USA doppelgänger.

To my Beta Team. You guys have been my rock through so many books. You know I think of you all as friends, and we’ve all been through so many things together. It’s nice to know we have a little home to come to in our group, and loving support, friendship and advice for all things when needed.

To my Phase II Beta team, and to my Red ARC Spotter team. You guys were fantastic and you helped shape this good book into something great. I literally could not have done it without you all.

Thanks to my editor John for your ever-insightful comments and quips that keep me entertained as I slug through the dreaded corrections.

Thank you to Gloria Jimenez for naming Plain’s weather predictor “The F.A.W.P. (The Freakishly Accurate Weather Predictor)”! I had a good laugh when I saw it on Facebook after I asked readers to name the machine, and I just knew it was a name Plain would give to his invention. Perhaps there is a little Plain in all of us.

And last but not least, thank you to my four boys and husband Mike for all the nights of takeout, the messy house, the late mornings when we rush out the door because I spent all night working on my manuscript and can’t get up the following day. I take solace in the hope that children whose parents work fulltime and are often made to do their own laundry and occasionally cook turn out to be better adults. So at least that’s something you can say I did for you, even if I hardly ever did all the other mum stuff. But who needs clean socks anyway? Or if you do, wash them yourself. Love you all.

God bless.