Teacher's Pet Wolf

“It’s not a fucking diet.”

A diet might have carved away the softness in her cheeks but it sure as hell didn’t put the shadows in her eyes. A diet didn’t give her the haunted, hunted look that she doesn’t always manage to conceal.

Something happened to her this winter. Something bad. That was obvious from the first day I saw her again in January, but she said there was nothing.

But there’s something. Something that’s consumed her from the inside out for six months. So I figure that over the winter, she got some bad news. News that she’s sick, and that’s what has been taking a toll on her body and her spirit.

Maybe I’m wrong. But it doesn’t matter. Whatever she’s dealing with, I’m going to be there for her and help her through it.

And the truth is, I’d already planned to go. Last October, I started looking for job openings in Alicia’s area—and I’d have taken anything within driving distance of her. Even if it meant leaving the Forest Service. I never figured I’d get the district station smack dab in the middle of the little city where she lives. But I see it as a sign that it’s where I’m meant to be. Right beside her.

We load up and start off across the field, the truck bumping over the uneven ground. The windows are down and Brandon tilts his face into the wind, dragging in a lungful of air.

“Fuck me, that’s pure. You’re really going to leave all this? No people for miles, all this space to roam…it’s a damn paradise of pristine wilderness.”

“Oregon’s got plenty of wilderness.” And Alicia lives right at the edge of one.

“Not like this. There’s nowhere else like this.”

True. But there’s no one else like Alicia, either. “You don’t have to come. Stay here and be king of the grizzlies. I’ll leave word at the station that you might wander in to see a human face now and then.”

“Nah, I’ll come. I can’t think of a better way to spend my retirement than irritating the hell out of my older brother.”

Separating from the military sure as fuck isn’t the same as retirement. “You’ll have to figure out something besides that.”

“I’m not in a hurry.”

Brandon’s never in a hurry. Drives me crazy, sometimes. I’m never in a rush, either, but I also don’t wait to get shit done. If it needs doing, I’ll do it. But Brandon, he’ll put shit off until it has to be done.

Which is why I’m surprised he left the Army. I figured he’d make a career of it, simply because he’d wait so long before putting his discharge into motion that it truly would be retirement. But he just got out—and then he only spent a few days at home in Wyoming before traveling all the way up here to the Alaskan interior last week. So something’s gotten into him. But he’s in no hurry to say what it is.

He isn’t slow to shove his nose into my business, though. “She might rather be sick than be bit. They call it a curse for a reason.”

When someone’s bit instead of born, like we were. “I know it.”

“She’ll have a real beast inside her. A fucking beast. And there’s only one way to tame that thing.”

My knuckles whiten on the steering wheel. “I know it.”

Both she and her beast would have to fall in love. And the man she loves has to accept both of them in return.

“And if she doesn’t fall for you? We’re big hairy assholes. And women drool all over that shit on Instagram, but in real life, they take one look and run for the fucking hills.”

Yeah, they do. So if Alicia takes off for the hills, it’s a damn good thing I’m good at tracking. “I know it.”

“Or worse, she does fall for you—but maybe she’s not the woman you think she is after only talking to her through a computer, and you don’t fall for her.”

The truck bounces through a shallow gully, the struts screeching in protest. “That won’t be an issue.”

“You’d better hope so. Because she’ll wish you’d left her alone if her beast dies of a broken heart and takes her with it—”

“I fucking know it!” I roar up all the poisonous shit that’s been building in my chest for months. “But what the fuck would you do, Brandon, if your woman was sick? What the fuck would you do?”

He shrugs. “Take her to bed, make her come so many times she has no choice but to fall in love with me, then have you turn her into a werewolf.”

Because bears can’t curse someone with a bite. Only wolves. “So you’d do the same damn thing.”

“Nah. I’d make my woman come a hell of a lot harder than you ever could.” Yawning, he closes his eyes and leans back against the headrest. “I can’t believe you lied about that pot of honey.”