broad expanse of water. “Teach me how to swim like that? Away?”
Oh, Evie.
“Yes,” I say, hoping my voice is neutral but knowing it’s not.
“Alpha!”
Why can’t they leave her be? Just for a moment?
“Tomorrow night,” she says quickly and quietly. “When the moon is in the Endeberg Notch.”
She leans forward, cupping her hand into the lake, then scrubs her neck and face with handful after handful of cold water. “The juveniles have made a picnic,” she says, louder this time. “If you wait too long, there will be nothing left but avocado-and-jelly sandwiches.”
The water drips down her skin and onto her shirt. Her nipples are tight underneath. I smile my unthinking smile while using my thumb to slide the crown of my immoderate cock down beneath my waistband.
Mustn’t frighten the children.
Poul is almost at the dock. The Alpha puts both hands on the worn wood, then pushes up with a sigh. I’ve never said a word to him, but that does not stop me from hating him. Hidden by the water still murky from churning feet and paws, I slip under the dock, creaking beneath Poul’s weight.
“Alpha,” Poul says. Through the slit between the planks, I see her stand utterly still while he leans in to sniff at her neck.
“Alpha,” he says again, more urgently. “You smell like—?”
“I smell like pond water.” She slaps irritably at the air near his nose, like she’s swatting away blackfly. “I’m getting something to eat.”
A little water drips from her body onto the dock, through the planks, and onto my upturned face. Through the scent of wood and wolves and forest and fur is one I haven’t smelled before. I suck it in one breath after another, trying to figure out what it is, like a word that remains just beyond my grasp, until suddenly, I know. It is granite covered by the delicate stems of bright-green moss. A forest in miniature, a fragile world growing on bedrock.
The scent of Evie imprints itself on my brain.
On the grass, the children pluck at the uncomfortable bright fabrics confining their skin. Others, in their barely contained wildness, tussle and wrestle and lick and bite. I wish I could say that there is forgiveness enough for the strange and the unworldly, but I’d be lying.
Heading back out into the water, I wait until everyone is gone and nothing is left but the peculiar avocado-and-jelly sandwiches made by these strange and beautiful children.
They are delicious.
The sandwiches, I mean.
* * *
The next morning, I take a newspaper on a long wooden rod from the bracket along the library wall that’s filled with them and settle into the sofa in front of the cold fireplace, coffee and cranberry-and-pumpkin-seed scone slathered with butter at hand.
I tap the scone on the plate so I won’t have to sweep up the loose crumbs.
There’s a serendipity to reading these physical objects and the news that is not filtered for my taste by predictive algorithms. Wolves have already marked things that they think are of use to the Pack, like the business article about tech stocks or a vulnerable state senator or a potentially worrying invasion of feral pigs into Upstate New York. At least three wolves have circled the article, adding a superfluous SWINE!!!
Before long, I hear the endlessly irritating monotone bellyaching. I brush the crumbs from my hands, put my plate in the bin, and hang up the newspaper. In the basement, I lean against the metal cage of dry storage and wait.
“What are you doing here?” Cassius whispers as soon as he sees me.
“She’s not coming.” I keep my voice neutral.
“It’s that shit Lorcan, isn’t it?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, just balls up his fist and circles around, looking for something to hit that isn’t going to hurt him back, but this is not a place of soft surfaces so he then stops again in front of me.
“That fucker won’t let me near her.” He picks at a callus on his hand. “Look at this.” He shows me his roughened palm. “You know what I’m doing? Laundry. I’ve got a fucking degree from U of T, and I’m doing laundry.”
“Elijah is a lawyer. He’s got to have at least two degrees.”
“Elijah’s a dog. He doesn’t know any better except to fetch and sit and lie down.” He finally peels the yellowed skin off. “I hear they got you banging out chairs.”
I can almost feel the crunch of bone against the heel of my palm. Feel the soft pop of eyeballs beneath