Season of the Wolf Pt. 02

Oh, she could live another century or two, but Han might beat her by a dozen more. She needs us because the sweep hand she thought had slowed to a crawl has sped up and eventually it'll stop all together. Vengefully, I think it might serve her right as punishment for what she's done to me. But, it's not just her this affects. It's Christine and Rod and who knows how many others. Perhaps, she has made her vulnerabilities known to gain Han's sympathies. Perhaps, she revealed so much as a sign of good faith. Or maybe, it's all just another way to manipulate us. I don't know.

My grandfather as a firstborn son, first generation pack, must have been incredibly powerful. It makes me wonder if he willingly gave up his life rather than kill his own son. That very well could be the weakness in him my mother exploited. Han might be in danger just because he survived the fight. He keeps his power in check around me out of fear I won't understand or that it might scare me off. I've never seen him fully let his wolf off the chain and the thought of it sends prickles over my arms.

Han doesn't flaunt who or what he is. He's as unassuming as a person can be. I've seen the way the pack responds to him. They love him. They respect him. They'd die for him and for each other. And that simple faith in him and in one another, the closeness they share is the pack's biggest weakness. Han is powerful and he's the oldest living wolf I know of. Just being who he is makes him a threat.

A protective instinct flares to life within me. I have no idea where it comes from, but I'm suddenly filled with rage and the need to protect what's mine. Han presses his hand to my thigh, squeezing the tense flesh hard to keep me in my seat. The scent of wolf musk and crisp pine fills my nostrils. It's calming and soothing. I know its Han unleashing just a bit of his magic to keep me under control. It works and I manage to stay firmly planted in my own skin.

My mother acknowledges the display with a tilt of her head and sits back casually in her seat. Christine shuffles nervously and slugs down her cold coffee. She too feels Han's magic and it affects her differently. His magic rolls over her and draws her to Han like steel to a magnet. My mother contemplates Han's power, assessing it, tasting its particular flavor, but doesn't gravitate toward him the way Christine does.

I see the fullness of Han's threat to my mother. He might not be able to pull off the parlor tricks that she can. But, he could very well take over her pack and never lift a finger or spill one drop of blood to do it. I'm curious about if it's his magic that draws Christine to him or just the power of his personality.

My mother reaches into her designer handbag and pulls a few bills out of her wallet to drop onto the table for a tip. "Well, I've given you plenty to consider, Han." She slides a card across the table and leaves it within my reach. "I trust we'll be in touch, soon." I can see it in her eyes. Her need to make physical contact with me, but she doesn't dare. Not only would I reject the attempt. I think Han would burst apart at his human seams if she tried. She stands rooted in the spot and staring at me with such longing.

"There wasn't one day that went by, Grace. Not one day that I didn't wish I'd been there for you. I kept my distance for your sake. It isn't what I wanted, but it was what was best for you. Your father, Josiah, he loved you too. What we did. Everything that happened was for you, Grace.

"We watched you grow up from behind the scenes. You've met us. I've held you. Your father kissed your chubby little baby cheeks. You were simply too young to remember. It was so painful for the both of us to hear you call someone else mom and dad. I wish you'd do me the kindness now, Grace. Could you say it, just one time? Could you call me mom? Just once?"

Hot tears of regret well up beneath my lashes. Her words are tearing me apart in a way my wolf never could. I want to give her absolution. I do understand what she did and why, but that doesn't make it forgivable. She and my father took me from the family I should have had. They are the reason my entire life has been nothing but a lie. Right now, I can't see beyond that. I can barely look at her, see myself in her features, and think past it. I shake my head and keep my eyes focused on the floor. "No," I croak. "I can't."

Han and I watch Christine and her leave. He tries to get me to nibble on a muffin to settle my nerves, but I'm too upset to think about food. I want to leave the card with her phone number behind on the table, but Han picks it up and slides it into my jeans pocket. Whether I call her or not is up to me. He has plenty of things of his own to decide. Unfortunately, neither one of us are ready to actually think about it yet.

We walk back to the hotel tightly clinging to each other's hands. Instead of going inside, he leads me out to the beach. The warm sunshine and salt air cleanse me in a way no shower could. I watch the waves break against the shore and cast my battered emotions and my worries out onto the tide. Han waits for me to break the silence between us and I do. "Han, I don't know what to think or do."

He gathers me close and supports my weight with his broad shoulder. He sighs deeply. "Can I be honest?" I nod. After all the lies, he'd better be honest. I won't accept anything less. "I don't either," he says. And I know that's the absolute truth.

Chapter 17

Grace was quiet and pensive the rest of the afternoon. After sitting for hours on the beach watching the toss and roll of the sea we headed back to her hotel room. I tried to entice her with the promise of a good meal, but we settled for tasteless food from the room service menu instead. Not that it mattered what we ate. Grace hardly touched plate anyway. I thought I could coax her out into the fresh air once more by asking her to give me a tour of L.A. But, she flopped onto the bed and refused to budge. I hoped I could at the very minimum get her to talk to me about things. But, she's scarcely said more than a couple of sentences all day.

I thought women liked to talk about their feelings. I guess Grace isn't one of those women. I want to hold her and comfort her, but I don't dare breech the distance between us. She needs her space. I do too, but I'd sacrifice my personal comfort zone of privacy for her. Grace has retreated to the bathroom and locked herself inside. I hear the shower spray striking the tile and the rustle of the vinyl shower curtain as she climbs into the tub. At least, she's doing something besides mulling things over and over in her mind.

I'm a man of action. I guess its possible I chased Grace into the privacy of the bathroom with my endless pacing around the too small hotel room. I'm making headway with her. At least, I think I am. When we returned to the hotel. She didn't kick me out of her room. I've thrown the balcony doors wide open and wrinkle my nose at the mingling scents filtering into the room on the breeze. I need the fresh air before the smallness of the room brings the walls crushing in on me.

I never thought I'd say it, but I wish I were more like Coyote. He has a way with Grace I don't think I'll ever be capable of. Most of the time Coyote is nothing more than a big pain in my...well, everyone's, ass. He lives to watch everyone trip over their feet while he casually stays one step ahead of them. Oh, he means well enough. It's just that I don't agree with his methods.

He pokes and prods and gets people moving whether they want to move or not. With nothing more than a few carefully planned out sentences Coyote is capable of twisting people around until the very suggestions he planted in their minds are branded as their own thoughts. I've warned him that one of these days he's going to poke a rattlesnake and get bitten. It just hasn't happened yet.

Somehow though, with Grace, Coyote is the only person capable of pulling her out of a tailspin once she starts spiraling. When Grace first learned the truth of what she was. Coyote was able to get through to her. She wouldn't look at me. She wouldn't talk to me. But, she talked to him and he miraculously managed to get her out of bed and onto her feet again. Coyote was the last person Grace spoke with when she left town and ran for the city. Maybe, he reached her then and maybe he didn't. I don't know. She was gone. And I can't begin to guess if that was Coyote's true intention or not.

Grace has spoken to Coyote. I know it. Otherwise, I'm not sure if I'd be sitting here on the edge of her bed or not. I owe him for whatever combination of words he said to convince her to let me in. I could use some pointers from him now. But, I'm hesitant to call him. How am I going to tell the pack that the woman we mourned isn't really dead when I'm not processing it myself?

This situation is bad for me. I can't begin to imagine how much worse it is for Grace. She's on the verge of becoming a mother herself and to suddenly realize the one person in the world who should never abandon you has. How can you get over something like that? I want to help. I want Coyote's talent for stringing words together and coming up with exactly what Grace needs to hear. Perhaps, my faltering with the right thing to say isn't really that I'm not capable. Maybe it's more that there really isn't any right thing to say.

I realize Grace is going to have to come to terms with her mother on her own and in her own time and there is no magic combination of words that is going to fix things. I want to make it better. I do. But, there's truly nothing I can do. Grace is still in the shower or at least, pretending to be. I resist the urge to knock on the door, just to check on her, and step onto the balcony for a breath of fresh air to clear my muddled thoughts instead.

Damn Angela. How could she do this to her family and to Grace? For some reason I can't bring myself to blame Josiah for his part in it. Perhaps, it's because he's dead and I'm the one who sent him to his grave. He has already paid the price. Maybe, it's because of my own guilt. The guilt I've carried over killing him, no matter how good the reason was, that has me so unwilling to place the full blame on anyone else but Angela.

I've known Angela since the day she was born. Hell, I've known her parents and her parent's parents since they were born. The woman she has become is so far removed from the girl I used to know. Being out here in the real world has changed her into someone I can no longer recognize. I mourn the person she used to be. But, that woman at the coffee shop is a stranger and in a way it's like Angela died all over again.

Angela was one of those perfect children that never stepped a foot out of line. She did as she was told, nothing more, nothing less. I watched her grow from that obedient child into a splendid young woman. She was precise in her dress and manners as was expected of a woman of the time. But, of course, as they must, times change.

The pack had such high hopes when Angela married Josiah. I clung to my hopes as well. It'd been over a century, a long, long lonely century and I'd spent it waiting. Waiting for Angela and Josiah to grow up. Waiting for Grace to come. Idly watching the time pass into months and years, and decades just waiting for the baby, for Grace, my Grace, to finally be born.

We celebrated long and hard when the news about Angela's pregnancy was finally announced. Nathaniel, God, Nathaniel was so proud you'd think he was going to be the father himself instead of a doting grandfather. The pack had grown stagnant and Grace's arrival into the world was exactly what we needed to breathe new life into us. Coyote was the last child born and forty years had passed since his birth. We thought we were done for and then Grace came, born on the heels of a winter storm.

Maybe, our expectations were too high for Josiah and Angela to bear. Grace wasn't even a month old when Angela ran and took Grace with her. Josiah took to the woods and was never seen again. For two decades I thought, we all thought, he went the way of the wolf and gave himself over to his other form out of grief. We believed he was dead. Long after the pack had given up all hope of ever seeing Angela, Grace, or Josiah again. Nathaniel still kept searching. Even after he laid to rest the body we all believed was Angela's. He never gave up on finding Grace and bringing her home.

The morning of the challenge I knew Nathaniel was going to die. I knew Josiah was going to beat his father in the battle for the rights to become pack master. Josiah had turned into a twisted version of the man he used to be. The man that was as close as a son to me was gone. Nathaniel expected to die. It wasn't that Nathaniel was weak. It was, and we both knew it, that he couldn't kill his own blooded son.

Josiah didn't hold the title more than a day. My mind was clouded by pain and loss and my wolf's need for revenge. I didn't give a thought to the possibility of my own death or how my decision would impact anybody. My wolf wanted blood. I turned off all the parts of myself that were human and let him have his fill. Now, standing here on this balcony and staring out at the beach and the purple golden twilight, I wonder what it was all for.

I don't. No, I can't regret fulfilling Nathaniel's dying wish in finding Grace and bringing her home. The purpose behind the things that Nathaniel did, that I've done, is blurred and no longer clear to me. All I can see with absolute clarity is Grace and the baby. Beyond the two of them nothing else makes sense. I don't even know or understand what made Josiah and Angela choose L.A. out of all of the places they could have run to instead. But, I think I do know how Angela and Josiah ended up here. I think I know and can't admit it to myself.

L.A. wasn't a random point on the map. Josiah was learning the secrets of the pack from his father. One day, the challenge would have been issued. Nathaniel would have been killed in the fight. Josiah would have led the pack. That's the way of things. The old give way to the young. There's only one way Josiah and Angela would have known to flee to L.A. There's only one way Nathaniel would have known where to start his search. And it's the biggest secret and lie of them all. We're not alone in the world and never have been.

I want to throw Grace over my shoulder and run back home. But, I can't do that. Hell, even if she begged me to I couldn't leave now. Not only would I never leave her behind. I can't turn my back on these people...on my family. I understand what that means. Whether I want to or not. No matter if Grace can handle it or not. I've got to go through Angela to find them.

Even though the two packs sprung from the same family tree. It's not going to be a picnic to merge the two as one. I'm not even sure if it's possible. For so long we've believed we're the only ones. And now, suddenly, we're not. I don't even know how many people are in Angela's pack or if my territory is big enough for all of us.

I feel the hurt of the lies deep in my chest. I remind myself that this truly isn't my secret to know. Nathaniel passed on the knowledge to his son. He wasn't under any obligation to tell me a thing and he didn't. Not even in the end, on the morning of the fight, did he breathe a word to me. Nathaniel certainly felt no duty to bring this pack home. He had to know what living out here was costing them. That these people, these missing members of the family, were only half of what they truly could be. And that makes me wonder why and resent the weight of the decision that has been placed on my shoulders by default.

I never wanted any of this. But, I guess that really doesn't matter. Everything I've ever wanted is hiding in the bathroom. Grace is hiding. I'm hiding. We're nursing our hurt feelings the only way we know how. We both have decisions to make. It'd probably be better to approach making them on a united front, leaning on each other for support. But, for now retreating to our neutral corners and licking our wounds in private seems to work.

Eventually, Grace will turn to me just as I will turn to her. I consider calling Coyote to get the verbal ass kicking I need to light a fire under my motionless butt. I don't call him though. How could I put into words everything I'm thinking and feeling when I truly don't want to face them myself?

Grace emerges from the bathroom enveloped in a cloud of steam and suddenly all the wrongness in my world is made right by nothing more than the sight of her. I smile and she returns the gesture with a slight upwards curl of the corners of her mouth. She comes to me and I welcome her with open arms. Holding her is a magic all of its own and the feel of her with her face buried against my chest is a healing balm. "Han," she says. "You know what we have to do."

I nod. I do know what we need to do and with her I know we have the strength to do it. "Not tonight."

She lifts her pretty face and tilts her chin to meet me in the eye. The towel she's wearing drops to the floor and she steps back to let me drink her in. Grace has a wolf's leanness, but she's also curved in a delicate kind of way. She's grasping my hand, coaxing me into the bedroom. I know what she's doing. We've retreated from reality apart and now, we'll escape it for just one night together. "No, not tonight," she agrees as she falls onto the bed and I fall with her.

Chapter 18

Han is in a dark place. His thoughts are random and building in intensity like the churning power of an oncoming storm. I retreated to the bathroom to give him time to think and space to drop the façade of his emotionless detachment. Maybe, without me around he can drop the act and the pretense of taking care of me for my sake alone. He needs to take care of me for his own benefit. I get it. And perhaps, that's why I locked myself in the bathroom and hurried into the shower. Sometimes, it's easier to take care of someone else than it is to take care of yourself.

Han needs someone to take care of him though he'd never admit it. My skin is pruned from the length of time I spent under the scalding spray. I've been locked in here the better part of an hour, washing, rinsing, repeating, drying, combing and recombing my hair just to keep out of the way. I've run out of things to do in the tiny ten by ten foot room and I still can't think of anything to say to make the level of his betrayal any easier for him to endure.

We're a hell of a pair, the two of us. Both of us wounded and betrayed by the people who should have loved us the most. We're like orphans lost and alone in the big badness of the world and we've got no one to turn to but each other. Oh, I suppose we could talk everything to death and pick at the carcass until there's nothing left but bone. But, why? There's really nothing left to talk about. The only thing there is to do is to decide what to do next. The both of us, we're putting it off, our next move. We already know what we're going to do. What we need to do. It's just that neither one of us want to deal with the person we'll have to deal with to get things done.

I've already declared that tonight we won't talk about anything. We won't delve into that unwelcome territory. Tonight we'll give and we'll take from one another. We'll steal whatever solace we can find in each other and wake up in the morning to fight another day.

I'm going to take care of Han the only way I know how. Wolves are very tactile creatures, sensuous and bound to the world by their senses. Oh, being the means of his escape from the meanness of our world won't be a difficult task to undertake. After all, in part, I'm using him as my escape as well. Everything we need to deal with will still be there tomorrow. Tonight I need the shelter of Han's body just as desperately as he needs the comfort that I can provide with mine.