My voice was small when I said, “She told me not to trust them. The wolves.”
“It’s the sickness, Gordo. It’s not her.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why is she sick?”
Father sighed. “It happens sometimes.”
“Will she get better?”
My father never answered me.
“MI ABUELO went crazy,” Rico said. “All looney tunes. He gave me candy and money and farted a lot.”
Tanner elbowed him in the side.
“She’s not crazy,” Chris said. “Just sick. Like, the flu or something.”
“Yeah,” Rico muttered. “The crazy flu.”
The sounds of the cafeteria echoed around us. I hadn’t touched my lunch. I wasn’t very hungry.
“It’ll be okay,” Tanner said. “You’ll see.”
“Yeah,” Chris said. “What’s the worst thing that could happen?”
THERE CAME a scratching at my window in the middle of the night. I should have been scared, but I wasn’t.
I got up from my bed and walked to the window. Mark stared at me from the other side.
I pushed the window up. “What are you—”
He jumped inside.
He took me by the hand.
He led me to the bed.
I slept that night, Mark curled around my back.
HER NAME was Wendy.
She worked at the library in the next town over. She had a dog named Milo. She lived in a house near the park. She smiled a lot and laughed very loud. She didn’t know about wolves and witches. One time, she went away for months. No one told me why. But she came back. Eventually.
She was young and pretty, and when my mother killed her for being my father’s tether, everything changed.
“WHAT HAPPENS when you lose your tether?” I asked Abel one day when it was just him and me. Sometimes he would put his hand on my shoulder when we walked in the woods, and I felt at peace. “If it’s a single person?”
He didn’t speak for a long time. I thought he wasn’t going to answer.
Then, “If it’s illness or disease, a wolf or a witch can prepare themselves. They can rein in their wolf or shore up their magic. They can look to another person. Or a concept. Or an emotion.”
“But what if it’s not like that? What if you can’t prepare?”
He smiled down at me. “That’s life, Gordo. You can’t always prepare for everything. Sometimes you’ll never see it coming. You have to hold on with all of your might and believe that one day, everything will be okay again.”
“GORDO.”
I was still caught in a dream.
“Gordo, come on, you need to wake up. Please, please, please wake up.”
I opened my eyes.
There was a flare of orange above me in the dark.
“Thomas?”
“You need to listen to me, Gordo. Can you do that?”
I nodded, unsure if I was awake.
“I need you to be strong. And brave. Can you be brave for me?”
I could, because he would one day be my Alpha. I would do anything he asked me. “Yes.”
He held out his hand.
I reached out and took what was offered.
He helped me dress before he led me down the hall of the Bennett house. The wood floors creaked underneath our feet. My father had left me here earlier. He’d told me he’d come back for me. I didn’t know when I’d fallen asleep.
There were men in the Bennett house. Men I’d never seen before. They wore black suits. They were wolves. Betas. Richard Collins was speaking to them quietly. Elizabeth stood near Mark. He saw me and started toward me, but she put a hand on his shoulder, holding him back.
Abel Bennett stood near the fireplace. His head was bowed.
The strange men grew quiet as Thomas took me to Abel. I could feel their eyes on me, and I did my best not to squirm. This felt important. Bigger than anything that had come before.
The fire popped and crackled.
“I have asked much of you,” Abel finally said, “for one so young. I had hoped we would have more time. That the need would never arise, not until Thomas was—” He shook his head before looking down at me. Thomas never left my side. “Do you know who I am, Gordo?”
“My Alpha.”
“Yes. Your Alpha. But I am also the Alpha of all the wolves. I have… responsibilities. To every pack there is. One day Thomas will have the same responsibilities. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“It’s his calling, much like it’s been mine.”
Thomas squeezed my shoulder.
“And you, too, have a calling, Gordo,” Abel said. “And I am afraid I must ask you to take your place at my side until the day Thomas assumes his rightful place as the Alpha of all.”
My skin grew cold. “But my father is—”
Abel looked far older than I’d ever seen. “I have a story to tell you, Gordo. One that you never should have heard in your young life. Will you listen?”
And because I couldn’t refuse him anything, I said, “Yes, Alpha.”
He told me then.
About a sickness in the mind.
How it could make people do things they didn’t want to.
It made them lose control.
It made them angry.
It made them want to hurt other people.
Mom had been kept away. Until she could get better. Until her mind could be cleared. But she’d escaped.
She’d gone to the next town over.
She had gone to the house of a woman named Wendy, a librarian who lived near the park.
A woman who was my father’s tether.
Because sometimes, the heart wanted something it should not have.
There was a fight.
Wendy died.
I was drowning.
The eyes of the strange men burned orange.
My father had felt his tether break.
His magic burst. It had made him do a terrible thing.
Later, I would see the footage on the news, even though Abel told me to leave the TV off. Of a neighborhood in a little town in the Cascades leveled to its foundations. People died. Families. Children. My mother.
My father did not.
“Where is he?” I asked numbly.
Abel nodded to one of the strange wolves. He stepped forward. He was tall and moved with grace. His eyes were hard. The very sight of him caused my head to spin. “He will be taken,” the strange man said. “Far away from here. His magic will be stripped so he can’t hurt anyone again.”
“Where?”
The man hesitated. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. It’s for your own safety.”
“But—”
“Thank you, Osmond,” Abel said.
The man—Osmond—nodded and stepped back with the others. Richard leaned over and whispered in his ear.
You can’t trust them, Gordo, she whispered in my ear.
“I will give you time,” Abel told me, not unkindly. “To process. To grieve. And I will answer all your questions I can. But we are vulnerable now, Gordo. Your father has taken your mother from you, but he has also taken himself from us. We need you now more than ever. I promise that you’ll never be alone. That you will always be cared for. But I need you now. To accept your place.”