Tristan wants to wait until his bones are strong, his body is fully recovered before letting him become human again, though honestly I know by the way he cocks his head to the side and scratches under his chin that whatever he becomes whenever he becomes, it will not be human.
He turns over on his back and bends his hips back and forth, his paws high in the air, his mouth open on white teeth. His tortured paws have healed, and the claws are not as sharp as they were when they first emerged. Sanded down, I suppose by running across granite. He stays on his back but stops wiggling, looking at me from his upside-down eyes. His forehead touching my leg. We were never very demonstrative. Partly because so many things hurt him. Partly because that wasn’t who I am, though it feels less strained to pat him on the belly or scratch behind his ears.
One of the pups runs up and starts to clamber over Magnus’s face. Aside from a gentle snap at the pup’s leg scraping his jaw, he does nothing while the pup sits on his muzzle and tries to catch Magnus’s ear flickering teasingly out of reach.
“Is there an oatcake with jam?” I say to Järv.
“Peach or mulberry?”
“Mulberry.”
Järv passes one down to me on the floor, then he and Ziggy launch into a discussion of mulberry trees somewhere on Homelands. How ripe they are, how abundant. Who is still small enough to climb high into the branches and jump up and down while wolves below hold out sheets and blankets waiting for the berries to rain from heaven and be turned into another batch of summer jam.
Magnus’s ear pricks up, and a second later, he flips over, trotting toward the door. Without a backward look, he puts his paw on the lever of the door, pushes his nose through, his body slithering after.
“That note,” says a voice above me. “It’s for Julia, isn’t it?”
My eyes travel upward toward the messy blond ponytail towering above me. I jump up. Don’t like being towered over.
“Yes.”
He holds out his hand for it, and as I have no skin in this game, I give it to him.
As soon as he reads it over, he hands it back. “What are you going to do with it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you going to give it to her?”
I start to wonder if the Alpha was wrong about him. It would make sense after all: a girl like Julia always needs a protector—Otho, August, Cassius, and now this man, the latest in a long line.
“Why? Do you have a thing for her?”
“Me?” He says it with his lip curled back like I’d just accused him of kissing a tapeworm. “I’m the Alpha of the 12th Echelon of the Great North. Why would I have a thing for her?”
“What do I know? She’s very…decorative?”
“Decorative?” He scratches an eyebrow with his pinkie finger. “You knew Varya?”
“We talked a little. I watched her rip orifices in body parts that don’t usually have them. But I wouldn’t say I knew her.”
“She was my Shielder. I asked her to be my mate. You know Varya well enough to understand I have no use for the merely decorative.”
His fingers go to the rubber band holding back a ponytail. When he pulls it out, his blond hair brushes his shoulders.
“I miss her,” he says. “But she was so strong that I didn’t have to be. Now I do. I’m not saying that Cassius is anything like Varya, but I do see a little of myself in Julia. Letting someone else bear the responsibility for decisions that should be hers.”
Behind him, Julia talks animatedly to Arthur, who listens closely before answering. As soon as she sees me heading toward her, she drops her eyes to the table, pushes her plate away, and sits on her hands so she won’t have to look at or take the paper with “JULIA” written clearly on the top. Maybe she hopes that it and I will go away, that I will take responsibility for the decision, so that she can say to Cassius that I never gave it to her and technically it will be true.
But I’m not her indulgent uncle or her indulgent father, and I can stand here forever with the stupid piece of paper. When she looks to Arthur, he says only, “It’s for you.”
Her lips quiver and grow tight, and when she grabs the note from my hand, she keeps the