Page 27 of Pack Witch
“No thank you, Julian. You stayright here.” I didn’t have an Alpha command to use, but I let my anger shape the request into a demand every bit as strong.
He blinked and nodded, setting down his plate. “I’ll… I’ll just wait here.”
The evening light was golden, coloring everything as we made our way to the orchard. Leroy was delighted at the magical protection of the garden, and at the bounty within its web, and he promised to be careful as he gathered greens.
I laid my hand on the oldest apple tree and asked it for a favor. When the apples on that branch ripened before his eyes, Leroy laughed like a child watching a magic show—which was what it was, I supposed.
“Eat all you want. I haven’t ever had a son, but I’ve heard that boys your age are hungry all the time. “
“I am, ma’am. All the time,” he mourned. “But I promise, I won’t eat your friends. By the way, are you, ah… friends with any geese?”
“Only a hawk or two, and some songbirds. I’m not sure geese can have friends. Pretty mean birds, if you ask me.”
“Pretty tasty, too.” He wrapped his arms around me in a spontaneous hug. “Thanks, ma’am.” At least that’s what he had to be saying, but his face was squished against my hair, and the wordma’amcame out sounding likemom.
Mom.My heart cracked a tiny bit, right down the middle. I knew he hadn’t called me that; I knew I’d just misheard him, but the idea of it… The merest hint of a dream I’d thought had died long ago, nudged to one side in the locked box of my past, undid me. Leroy’s hug grew tighter for a moment, and it felt like maybe his arms were all that was keeping me from flying apart.
I stood frozen, unsure what to do. I could count the number of hugs I’d had over the past twenty-five years on my hands, and none of them had been this filled with joy. It felt like a prayer I’d never been brave enough to voice, being answered.
Leroy let go, oblivious to my emotional collapse, and kneeled on the ground next to the spinach. “You ready to show me what ya need, so you can head back to Sergeant?”
I knew I couldn’t return to Julian yet. I needed to have hard words with that man, and I was in no state to do more than sob into my pillow. “Not yet.”
“Oh, thank fu—I mean, thank the moon. Watch me for a while, okay? I don’t wanna mess up your garden. ‘Specially because it’s magic and all.”
I gave him instructions on what to harvest and watched in silence until I could speak without crying. “You’re doing it perfectly. Snapping the stems just right. That’ll make a good omelet.”
“We found some mushrooms earlier, me and Bo, in the woods. He was gonna eat ‘em, but I reminded him of the time we ate some back at Southern and got the squirts so bad, we had to pretty much sit with our butts in a hole for three days. ‘Course, back then we were really starvin’, not just feeling that way like we do now.”
“Yes, it’s best not to eat unfamiliar mushrooms,” I murmured. “What did they look like?” He described them, and I let out a soft curse. “Well, they could’ve been wolf farts—that’s what the humans call some of the edible ones.” He broke into laughter, making me smile, too. “It really is what humans call them. But they also could’ve been destroying angels, which don’t kill you, but they might make you wish you’d die. Very toxic, dangerous even for shifters. I’ll take you out to see where I usually harvest edible mushrooms, if you’d like.”
“I would like.” He went quiet for a moment, then offered, “My mom died years back, when I was a kid. She used to like mushrooms, too, but she cooked ‘em with meat—when we had meat, I mean.” I didn’t know what to say, but he went on. “My dad was a toadfucking son of a bitch who got what he deserved. He cheated on my mama all the time. Lots of the males back at Southern used to do that, like they didn’t give two shits about their families. I never had any brothers or sisters, just Bo, from the very start.”
My heart was breaking for him. “He’s like a brother, though, isn’t he? And Julian?—”
“Ah, yeah, for sure. Sergeant’s the dad I wished I’d had. He’s the best. Strong and fair, and he never hits us, even if we deserve it. And Bo’s my brother, at least where it counts. At least… he was before. But what if he’s an Alpha, and I’m not? I don’t care if it means I gotta do what he says, but what if he turns bad and makes me do bad things, like our old Alpha did?”
“You think Julian will let that happen?”
He sniffled, his attention still on the plants. “Well, not if he was plannin’ to stick around. He—” He gulped audibly, then went quiet and refused to go on.
I didn’t know what he’d been about to say, but maybe I could find out from Julian. I still had more than a few questions that needed answering here. “You’re very young to have shifted, aren’t you?”
He grinned up at me. “Yeah, we both are. But Bo and I fought at the great battle at Eastern a few years back, and every shifter there got their wolf. Bo shifted first, in the battle. He was so brave—he saved me from this fuckface of an Eastern Enforcer, bit his hand clean off, then tore out his throat.”
I swallowed, slightly queasy.
“After, we all ran under the moon after the big funeral, hundreds of us. Lots of young shifters got their wolves, but Bo and I were the youngest, just kids then. It felt amazing, you know? To be a wolf at last.”
“Yes, I remember,” I whispered, rushing on when Leroy’s stricken look sank in. “It’s all right, I asked. Tell me, though. How do you know you have a mate? A shared mate with Bo?”
His smile was shaky. “Alpha Brand told us that week. He had some weird powers after the big battle. I mean, he still has some, but not as weird as right after, ya know? He could actually see into the spirit world, or somethin’. He said they were like threads shining underneath the real world, connecting shifters to each other. Some of the shifters at the battle actually touched hands and found out they’d been just feet away from their true mate all along. Brand told a few of the foreigners, the ones who didn’t fight against us, which direction to go to find theirs.”
He grinned sheepishly. “He said he got sick of seeing me and Bo sneak up on the other shifters to accidentally touch ‘em. We weren’t hurting ‘em, just checking to see if it was our mates, right? Then one of the maids stabbed Bo in the gut with a knife,and one of them hit me real hard with a cooking pot—I still have a divot, see?” He parted his hair with his hands, though I could see no such thing. “Anyways, Alpha Brand told us off and said Bo and me shared a thread between us that reached all the way out to Western.”
To Occidens. “That’s… amazing,” I finally said, when I realized he was waiting for my reaction. “Your mate will be a very lucky female.”
“Or male, I guess,” he added. “You know the moon has Her ways.” His tone was mysterious and a little ridiculous, and I was winning my battle not to laugh until he added, “But if the moon wants to stick a pecker in my butt, she and me’s gonna have words. It’d take some real strong magic to make that seem like a perfect fit.” He slapped one hand over his butt and kept picking spinach with the other.
