Page 58 of Ravaged Wolf
IZZY
I don’t meanto be a drama queen. Back at Moon Lake, when I hid in my room, everyone would pretty much leave me alone, so I didn’t feel like I was a hassle. Here, I had more visitors in one day than I think I ever had for the whole time I hibernated back home.
Rosie came first to make sure I was okay, and then there was a procession of food. Nia brought tea and cookies. Flora brought turkey sandwiches for lunch and ate with me, and then a little less than an hour later, Enid, the blonde in the bikini from the pool, brought me a lemon bar fresh from the oven.
A little after Enid leaves, my wolf senses a disturbance in the force and yips, but her agitation is short lived, and I don’t investigate too closely. I can’t handle anything else jump-scaring me from my subconscious. Not today. Tomorrow, I’ll decide to pull myself together, but I’m giving myself today.
Drona, Rosie’s older sister, brings dinner along with her daughters Avalon, Sara, and Kadi. The girls seem to think I’d been gone longer than overnight because they spend the whole meal catching me up on the gossip, starting with howRosie yelled at Cadoc to hunt me down when I wasn’t back by nightfall, and how Cadoc refused, and Rosie was so mad she shifted, and her wolf’s head banged the den ceiling, so Cadoc commanded her wolf to shift back, and then he made Rosie wear an ice pack until she threatened to spend the night in the female dorm and fall into a coma from a concussion in her sleep and die, so Cadoc finally let it go.
The girls then recount every argument between Rosie and Cadoc from the very beginning when Rosie rejected Cadoc for being too snobby, so he slept on a ledge outside their trailer in the bog until she gave him a chance, which he then screwed up. Drona doesn’t say much. She just listens to her girls, bemused, and plays with her bracelet, a child’s craft with bobbins, corks, and bottle caps as charms.
I’m stuffed and exhausted by the time Rosie pops back in with a cup of chamomile tea, and I’m asleep before any of the females who bunk in the dorm turn in for the night.
My wolf wakes me up. At first, I think I’m having one of those lucid dreams that I can’t really remember in the morning, but the seams on the plastic mattress are too pokey, and the air is too thick with very specific female scents for me not to be awake. Old Den females don’t shave, and they prefer things all-natural, so when they gather together, things get a little organic, for lack of a better term.
My wolf is on her feet, her tail swishing like a metronome on 200 BPM. She senses her mate.
I can’t smell him, and I might not know him well, but I’m sure he would never come into the female dorm without invitation, and honestly, I can’t imagine him doing itthen, either. He’s kind of bashful, but in a masculine way, like a cowboy in a movie who’s been out on the range a long time.
My stomach does a weird flip, catching my wolf’s excitement. I lean over the side of the bed and crane my neck to see if I can make anything out through the beaded curtainthat serves as a door to the dorm. The corridor seems empty.
My wolf whines and paws at our insides. He’s out there. She’s certain.
It can’t hurt to check. If he isn’t there, I can just take a trip to the latrines. Decision made. I slide my feet into my slippers and pad down the aisle between the bunks, my heart picking up its pace. I feel like I’m sneaking out, but there isn’t the nagging dread of when I was younger, creeping through my parents’ apartment, only the swirl of anticipation in my belly.
Iwantto see Trevor. I’ll be disappointed if he’s not there. The lightness I feel isn’t just excitement. In a way, it’s also relief that maybe everything isn’t ruined or lost, not yet.
I part the curtains, peek out, and my heart soars. He’s there, a few feet away, sitting on the ground with his back against the wall, his forearms braced on his bent knees. He was staring down, but as soon as he hears me, he lifts his head and gives me a rueful smile.
He holds up a soda can. An offering.
Oh, it’s not just any soda—it’s the kind with a cherry on the can! Where did he get it? In the planning of Operation Soda Pop, Nia asked me if I wanted to bring him “brown soda” or “clear soda.” Those were the choices.
I pad over, and before he can stand, I sink down beside him, stretching my cotton sleep shirt over my knees, creating a cocoon for modesty.
“Hi,” I whisper.
“Hi,” he replies softly, pops the top, and passes me the can. As I take a sip, the fizz tickles my nose, and I remember the stairwell, his pinky close to mine but not touching, and how it felt like electricity was arcing between our hands.
We’re closer now than we were then. My arm rests against his. I’m sitting cross-legged in my cocoon, and mybent knee is tucked under his bent leg. The closeness feels different. I’m hyperaware, but there’s also all these other feelings, good and bad and mixed, inexplicable and barely suppressed. He belongs to me, but he’s a stranger. He hurt me, and I’ve missed him. Terribly. It’s an irretrievably tangled knot, but it isn’t a hopeless ruin.
“Where’d you get it?” I ask, nodding at the can.
“A human settlement. About an hour away.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Finding you a cherry cola.” He flashes another bashful smile. His smoky lashes dip, brushing his cheeks. He’s so beautiful, like Michaelangelo’s David, but with sadder eyes.
“Thanks,” I say and take a bigger sip. It really doesn’t taste anything like cherry, and it’s not nearly so good since I’m not dying of heat, but it’s still sweet, all the same.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “For earlier.”
I stare at the can gripped in my hand. “You didn’t do anything.”
We’re quiet for a minute because we both know he did, but that’s not what we’re talking about, but also, itis, isn’t it?
This isn’t the time or place. It’s late. We’re sitting in a public corridor. Anyone could walk by. And why dig up the past now? What good can it do?
