I didn’t know what to say to that, so I kept my mouth shut.
“He taught you?”
“Yeah. Yes. Everything I know.”
“How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
Mark coughed.
Marty snorted. “Want to try that one again?”
I rolled my eyes. “Eleven.”
“Your pa do cars?”
“No.”
He looked at Mark. “Bennett, ain’t ya?”
“Yes,” Mark said.
He nodded slowly. “Strange bunch.”
We said nothing because there was nothing to say.
Marty sighed. “You’ve got an eye, kid. Tell you what.”
“YOU CAN’T tell my father,” I told Mark as we walked away from the garage. “He won’t let me go back. You know he won’t.”
Mark glanced at me. “This is what you want?”
Yes. It was. It was what I needed. I didn’t know much else outside of pack life. Nothing I had aside from Chris and Tanner and Rico was mine and mine alone. Father didn’t like them and went so far as to try to forbid me from seeing them outside of school. But my mother had stepped in, one of the few times she’d ever stood up to him. I needed normal, she said. I needed something more, she said. He hadn’t been happy about it, but he’d relented. I’d hugged her for a long time after that. “Yeah,” I said. “This is what I want.” Then, “It’s another secret. Just between you and me.”
His lips twitched at that, and I knew I’d won. “I like having secrets with you.”
There was a strange twist in the pit of my stomach.
“TETHERS,” ABEL said as he sat behind the large desk in his office. My father stood at the window, looking out to the trees. Thomas sat next to me, quiet and serene as he always was. I was nervous because this was the first time I’d been allowed into Abel’s office. My arms were sore from days under my father’s needles. “Can you tell me what you know about them?”
“They help to remind a wolf they’re human,” I said slowly, wanting to get it right. I needed Abel to see he could believe in me. “They keep a wolf from getting lost in the animal.”
“That’s true,” Abel said. He spread his hands out on the desktop. “But it’s more than that. Much more.”
I glanced at my father, but he was lost to whatever he was
seeing.
“A tether is the strength behind the wolf,” Abel said. “A feeling or a person or an idea that keeps us in touch with our human sides. It’s a song that calls us home when we’re shifted. It reminds us of where we come from. My tether is my pack. The people who count on me to keep them safe. To protect them from those who would do us harm. Do you understand?”
I nodded, though I didn’t really. I looked at Thomas. “What’s yours?”
“Pack.”
That surprised me. “Not Elizabeth?”
“Elizabeth,” Thomas said with a sigh, sounding dreamy like he always did when he mentioned her. Or saw her. Or stood next to her. Or thought about her existence. “She’s… no. She’s more to me.”