Page 121 of Feral Werewolves

Kestrel laughed.

And then Lazarus moved so that he could kiss Kestrel and I reached out to brush their bodies as they were touching each other and that felt wonderful, their connection, so wonderful.

“Oh,” said Paladin in another voice. “Seriously?”

“I just… I don’t know,” muttered Kestrel. “Look, it’s not really true, and it’s weird and fucked up, and I know I don’t heal anyone by making them give me a blow job, but—”

“It’s not fucked up,” countered Lazarus. “It was good for both of us.”

“Heal someone with a blow job?” I said in a tiny voice.

They all let out versions of embarrassed laughs.

I struggled to sit up and look down at all of them. “I’m going to need someone to talk me through this, in detail,maybe with visual aids, and if someone else could be licking my clit while we were doing that, I think that would be great.”

They snickered up at me.

“Okay, but the point is, Paladin, we did whatever we did,” said Kestrel. “And I’m not saying… I’m not saying it wasn’t the best way for all of us to cope at that point. I’m not saying I would do it differently, even, I just feel it needs to be acknowledged that it wasn’t strictly the right thing to do. And that, Paladin, we don’t want you to be…”

“We like you whole,” said Lazarus. “We never wanted that version of you. Even if we took advantage of it.”

“No, we did want that version of him,” said Kestrel. “We were very fucking hot for that version of him.”

“No, true,” said Lazarus in a chagrined voice.

Paladin sat up next to me to look down at the two of them. “Thank you for that,” he said in a low voice.

“For what? Because what I’m saying is—”

“For acknowledging, like you said,” Paladin said. “I don’t think we need to talk about this anymore either, though.”

Kestrel groaned. “Fuck.”

“No,” said Paladin, reaching over to rub his arm reassuringly. “It’s okay. I’m still working through it is all, though. We’ll talk about it again, eventually, when I have more to say. I appreciate it, though, I really do.”

Kestrel let out a very relieved breath.

Paladin lay back down.

I surveyed all of them and then I lay back down, too. “So,” I said in a small voice, “are we good?”

“We’re on the road to good,” said Paladin.

“Maybe that’s the best it gets, anyway,” said Lazarus. “Whoever met anyone who solved all their problems?”

29

clementine

I WISH ITwas easy after that.

No, that’s not true. I don’t wish it was easy. I wouldn’t trade any of the complicated or difficult things we went through for something easy. I’d rather have the mess of it, the tangles, the fear, the anger, the challenges, all of those things. Because those things were the things that brought us closer together. Those things taught us to be vulnerable with each other, to trust each other, and to become the unit that we would become. Without all of those things, we would never have been as strong together as we were.

I wish I knew the point in time to say things were finished, though, that things turned the corner and everything changed.

But the more I think about it, the more I think it was that moment in bed together, when Paladin said we were on our way to good. If there was any moment that would divide what came before and what came after, that was it.

So, I guess that’s the end. That’s the point in which it became an inevitability that the three of us would live happily ever after. Even though, in real life, no one lives happily ever after. Even though that’s just a pretend idea for fairy tales.

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