By Hook or by Wolf

“I’m ready to be with him,” she says. “I need this, boys. It’s time to let me go.”

To my mother, it’s time to go be with my dad. I know exactly what she’s saying. I’m probably the only one who does. Lee and Cody are wonderful sons, but neither one of them has ever lost someone the way I have. Neither one of them has had their hearts ripped out and shredded.

Only me.

Only Mom.

“I understand,” I tell her. “But Mom, we’re going to miss you.”

“I know,” she says, tearing up. “And I’m going to miss you, too.”

We hold her for a long time. There are going to be arrangements we’ll need to make. My brothers and I will have to organize the company. We’ll need to decide who is going to run which portion. Honestly, most of the company is an autopilot at this point. That’s how big it is. But someone will need to step up as the CEO.

That will most likely be Lee because he’s the oldest.

“Mom, we actually came here to tell you something,” Cody finally says, and I remember our real reason for coming to the office today.

“What is it?” She asks, raising her eyebrows.

“The cops came by my office today,” Lee says. “There was a break-in at the gallery.”

My mother looks unsurprised by this news. My eyes narrow. Why does she look unsurprised? My mother may be ill, but she’s also a wolf. She’s sneaky. Not a lot gets by her and something tells me that she knows exactly what happened at the gallery. If she didn’t know, she would have had a very different response than to just look at us, blinking.

“Oh,” she says, suddenly, as if remembering that she’s supposed to react to news like this. “That’s terrible. Your father loved the gallery. Was anything taken?” She looks away and reaches for a glass of water, which she sips. I glance at my brothers. Yep. Both Cody and Lee have picked up on her weird behavior.

My mother is a lot of things, but a good liar?

She’s not.

“What did you do?” I ask her carefully.

“Hmm? What’s that, dear?”

Suddenly, she seems to find her water very, very interesting.

I stare at her, silently waiting. Eventually, she’s going to crack and she’ll have to talk. Eventually. It shouldn’t take too long now. Wolf shifters are unlike humans in that we’re ridiculously patient. Most of us have no problem waiting long periods of time for someone to speak or move. It’s what makes us such good hunters.

My mother is already nervous, though. She’s definitely going to tell us what we want to know.

We might just have to wait an hour or two before she speaks. Mom is a bad liar, but she’s also stubborn, which is why Cody and Lee move to sit down in two of the office chairs. I don’t, though. I stay right where I am and cross my arms over my chest.

“Nothing was taken,” I tell her.

Her eyes dilate and she looks away quickly.

“Wow, well, that’s, um, that’s wonderful,” she says.

But she doesn’t seem to think that it’s very wonderful at all.

I’m just about to poke her, to prod about why she knows about the break-in when my brothers and I all turn at the same time and look at my mom’s elevator door.

I smell it.

Her.

The thief.

I don’t know what she’s doing here and I don’t know how she found her way here, but she’s definitely approaching the room. We all turn just as the elevator doors slide open and the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen bursts into my mother’s office. Ignoring us entirely, she looks at Mom and blurts out, “We need to talk.”