“I don’t want it.”
She huffed and looked stern.
“I mean it. I can’t. I can’t—” Then another thought struck me and caused goose bumps to prickle along my arms. “Did you know?”
She cocked her head at me. It wasn’t an answer.
“Did he know?” I demanded.
Not Joe.
But she knew who I meant. I could feel the gentle wave of sadness run through her.
“Answer me!” Because the thought that they had known since the beginning, since that very first day when they’d stood on the porch of the house at the end of the lane was all I could think abo
ut. It wasn’t true, it couldn’t be true, but what if? What if all of this had been to get to this moment, this fucking realization? Did anyone have a choice in this? Did Joe?
Did I?
Mark came over then, sitting next to her. He pressed his nose against her ear before looking back at me with an identical expression on his face.
Robbie came too, but he was moving slower, as if unsure of himself. His shoulders were lowered, his ears pressed to his skull. His tail was curled between his legs. He looked spooked, as if he thought he’d be rejected if he moved any quicker. He kept his eyes averted as he sat next to Elizabeth.
“What the fuck is going on?” I heard Jessie ask from behind me.
“They’re recognizing him,” Chris said quietly, and it was another blow to whatever wall I’d hastily constructed in the face of this damning recognition. If they felt it, then—
“As what?”
“Why?” I asked as a last resort. My voice cracked and I could do nothing to stop it. “I am not anything. I am not anyone. You shouldn’t be doing this. This isn’t what was supposed to happen! It’s supposed to be him. He’s going to come back, okay? He’s going to come back and you need to—”
There was the telltale sign of a shift, the creak and groan of bone and muscle. The wolf took human shape.
But her eyes remained the same.
She said, “Ox.”
“So… this is a thing,” Jessie said faintly. “Mrs. Bennett is naked and this is a thing.”
We ignored her.
I waited for Elizabeth to speak again, because I had nothing left to say.
I didn’t have to wait long.
She said, “Sometimes, it’s not about being able to shift. Some of us are already born with a wolf in our heart. The color of your eyes doesn’t matter. The fact that you are human does not matter. What matters is that you have taken your place like you were meant to.”
“I didn’t ask for this,” I told her, desperately so.
“I know,” she said softly. “But you are what we need.”
“My father….”
Her eyes hardened. “Your father didn’t understand the value of who you were. Of who your mother was. I’ve seen you in his shadow. I know the words he spoke to you. But you don’t belong to him. The moment my son found you on the road, you belonged to us.”
“Did you know? Even then? Did Thomas know? Is that why you did all of this? Is that why Joe…” gave me his wolf? But I couldn’t get the words out. Because the thought of Joe being forced into something that he didn’t have a choice over, that he didn’t even want, made me cold.
She knew, though. She always did. “No,” she said quietly. “We knew you were a remarkable young man. Ox. Kind and caring. We knew that from the very start. And that you’d make a wonderful addition to our pack. But the rest? This? Ox, this is something we never thought would happen. You can plan for life, but life always has plans of its own. If Thomas hadn’t died, if your mother hadn’t died, if Richard Collins hadn’t escaped or even focused on our family to begin with. If, Ox. It’s always about the if.” Her eyes flared orange and I felt the pull like I’d never felt before. “But it’s not if now. Now it’s something else.”