Wolfsong (Green Creek 1)

Why are they still with Ox?

WE NEEDED a bigger lunch table.

Or maybe just a bigger bench.

I was surrounded by Bennetts. Kelly on my left. Joe on my right. Carter on the other side of him. They’d herded me to one side of the table, pressing in as close together as they could, Joe talking about this and that and everything he could even possibly think about.

Jessie looked amused, sitting across from us. I thought there was something else buried in that smile, too, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

I’m sure to anybody else in the cafeteria, it looked odd. The four of us and her.

I didn’t care.

Joe talked and talked and talked. To me. To Carter. To Kelly.

Never to Jessie.

He gave me an apple slice.

I gave him some potato chips.

He said quietly, “I’m happy I’m here. With you.”

I said, “Me too.”

“DID YOU love him?” I asked Mark one fall afternoon.

“Who?”

“Gordo.”

He said, “Don’t,” and walked away.

I didn’t follow.

I MADE Gordo drop the wards around the house and the Bennetts came over for dinner at our house one Sunday.

At first, he refused. “It’s not safe.”

I said, “I belong to a pack of overprotective werewolves who live next door. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t be safer.”

“Christ,” he muttered. “Remember when you didn’t say much at all? Those were the good old days.”

That hurt. More than I thought it would. I must not have been able to keep it from my face because he sighed and said, “Ox.”

“Yeah?” I looked down at my shoes. I knew I didn’t always say the best things or the smartest things, but I thought I’d been getting better. I was trying.

His hand curled around the back of my neck and there was a pulse of something between us. It wasn’t as strong as it was with Joe or the pack, but it was there and it was warm and kind and it felt like home. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

“I know,” I said, trying to brush it off. “It’s okay.”

His fingers tightened. “No,” he said. “It’s not okay. No one should ever make you feel like shit. Especially me. It’s unacceptable.”

“I know.”

“I’ll be better, okay? I’m not the best, I know. But I’ll do right by you. I swear.”

“I know.”