Page 17 of A Very Armitage Christmas
I swallowed hard. Interesting. Interesting?
“Interesting?” Arik said.
Janet looked up. “Well, zombies are always interesting. Or were they revenants?”
Arik visibly brightened. “Yes! Thank you! I kept telling Matthew they weren’t zombies, but he didn’tlisten.”
“Oh, they never do,” Janet said nonchalantly. She nudged the foot with the tip of her boot. “John!” she called. “Go check the garage for the snowblower. Matt and Ian left these two cleaning up revenant bits with rakes, of all the things.” She turned back to us. “Where is everyone else, anyway?”
“Most of them are dropping the bodies off at the cemetery,” I said. “Everyone up to it. All the kids are inside watching movies, and some of the parents are watching the kids. That just kind of left us.”
John pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, lit one, and waved at us. “Nice to meet you. I’ll get the snowblower. Rakes are the stupidest possible way to do this. No offense.”
He ambled off around the other side of the pack house, presumably heading for one of the compound’s several garages, leaving us gaping after him. I hadn’t even known we had a snowblower. I bet Matthew and Ian didn’t either. Luckily. Ian probably would’ve tried to race it or something.
“Don’t take it personally,” Janet said soothingly. “He’s not very tactful. One of many reasons he didn’t last as pack leader, and thank God for that, because I hated it. I do yoga naked in the woods now. No one around for miles. Complete silence. And when John joins me, we can make love right there on the deck and howl as loudly as we want.”
Arik and I both stared at her. For once, neither of us had a single word to say. Janet and John. My mate’s parents. Making love on a deck. In the woods.
Naked. Howling.
My brain stalled out, stuttering to a complete halt like an overloaded snowblower.
Janet smiled at us, shook her head, and said, “Don’t be such prudes, boys. Really. Now, who’s responsible for the candy canes?” Arik mutely pointed at me. “Good for you, Nate. Someone around here needs to learn how to loosen up a little. Let’s get all the groceries out of the car and go inside and see the rest of the pack, and then you two can take nice hot showers and we can figure out Christmas Eve dinner, hmm? John can get Matt and Ian to snowblow the rest of this mess.”
***
Hot showers and fresh clothes — mine borrowed from Arik — later, we stood outside Arik and Matthew’s room, eyeing the stairs. Neither one of us moved to actually go down them.
Loud laughter and cheerful conversation and the squeaks and howls of tiny werewolf children echoed through the house. Apparently everyone had missed the pack matriarch, even if they hadn’t missed John’s incompetent leadership. Just in the half hour we’d been upstairs, the house had started to smell like pumpkin pie spices and apple cider and — was that what ahomewas supposed to smell like at Christmas? I glanced at Arik, standing there chewing his lip and looking like he was two seconds from diving out the nearest window. Yeah, no point in asking him. My childhood could’ve been a PSA about parental neglect, but his had been more like a horror movie.
A burst of static echoed up the stairs, followed by the scratchy but recognizable sound of Bing Crosby singingWhite Christmas.
“Was he also dreaming about having detached fingers all over the yard?” Arik asked. His voice sounded tight and tense as hell. “Or an infestation of in-laws popping up out of nowhere?”
I looked at him for a minute, pondering the mystery that was Arik. I didn’t even know his last name, or if he had one, for that matter — other than Armitage, which he went by now. He’d never mentioned a parent of any kind. I knew he’d had a brother, sort of, and that was all I knew, because getting Arik to open up about anything personal was kind of like trying to open an oyster by tickling it. If the oyster could kill you for saying the wrong thing, anyway. A really, really dangerous and angry oyster.
“Hey, Arik?”
He glanced at me. “Yeah?” he asked. Defensively. Seriously? All I’d said wasHey, Arik. NotHey, Arik, you raised a whole cemetery full of revenants, you’re a freaky cat shaman who tried to kill us all at one point, and your mother-in-law’s downstairs, how do you feel about that?
I cleared my throat. “I’m terrified too.”
Arik’s face twisted into a snarl, but his eyes looked so glassy and lost. “Like fuck,” he spat at me. “You’re — you’re normal. I mean, you — you’re a local, and you’re — you’re not —”
“Not what? Not a cat? Arik, my father cheated this pack, murdered Ian and Matthew’s cousin — you know, Janet’s nephew? And then tried to set them all up for a pack war with the Kimballs and get us all killed. And yes, you were in on that too, but not the way my dearly fucking departed dad was, okay? I’m human. And a warlock. At least you’re a shifter!”
“Fuck you, Nate,” he said, and turned his face away.
My mouth opened. Horrible, shitty, unforgiveable words rose up in my throat and tried to launch themselves off the tip of my tongue.
But maybe I’d grown as a person, because I bit them back. A year before, before Ian, I’d have said them. All of them, and more, and maybe I even would’ve felt justified. But that was before. Before nine months of being loved, and cared for, and honestly kind of cosseted and spoiled, though I never would’ve admitted that to Ian. He might stop if he knew I’d noticed how much he catered to my every whim.
Now I knew better, and I knew Arik didn’t mean it…or maybe he did. Yeah, it was Arik, he meant it. But I could let it go. Because that wasn’tallhe meant.
“I’m sorry,” I said, instead of all the shit I could’ve said to hurt him. It felt strange, acknowledging that Icouldhurt him, that he cared enough about me tobehurt. But dammit, it was Christmas. Candy canes. Pie. Not being a total dick to your dick brother-in-law, and optimistically hoping he actually did care. Personal growth. Actually caring about your dick brother-in-law, in spite of what a dick he was.Fuck. “It’s not the, like, who’s more scared of meeting the parents Olympics, okay? We don’t need to compare. Neither of us are hot, fertile werewolf women, right?” Arik let out a shaky laugh, but he didn’t look at me. “But the pack likes us. They trust us. Ian and Matthewchoseus, and they love us. And.” I stopped. Fuck, fuck, fuck. “I trust you. I like you. Okay? I mean, maybe I don’t count, but…you know. For what it’s worth.”
Arik turned his head just enough to peek at me with one bright-green eye, half-curtained by his long hair.
