“I’m trying not to let my pessimism reach quite that level yet.” My brother’s shoulders slumped. “But I’m not doing a great job at it.”
“I’m the last person who can judge you for being a cynic when it comes to finding a mate. It’s not as though my odds are any better than yours.” My wolf huffed inside my head as though he thought his human counterpart was an idiot.
“That fucking curse,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Our family has paid more than enough for whatever bad luck they earned way back when.”
“Damn fucking straight,” I agreed. “It pisses me the fuck off that Aaron is going to suffer for the rest of his life when he’s never done shit to hurt anyone.”
Cason leaned back in his seat and stared up at the ceiling. “Do you think he’ll ever come back?”
“Fuck, I hope so.” I scrubbed my hands over my face and sighed, shaking my head. My gut told me that the odds of Aaron returning to Timber Ridge were slim to none. As much as I missed my brother, I didn’t blame him for leaving. Living the rest of his life without his fated mate was tough enough, so spending time in the place where he had been rejected would be like a knife to the gut every day.
“Yeah, neither do I.” Cason sat up, guzzled his beer, and crushed the can with his fist. He tapped the top of the carving I had been working on. “What’s this?”
“It’s going to be a tiger.” For some odd reason, my wolf was feeling territorial over the piece. When I felt his fur brush against the inside of my skin, I snagged the chunk of wood off the table and clutched it in my fist.
“Relax, dude. I’m not going to steal a half-finished carving.” Cason held his hands up, palms facing me. “Are you making it for Tane or one of his pups?”
That was a good guess since I often gave my finished pieces to members of our pack. Usually when I started a new carving, I had someone specific in mind. Not this time, though. I’d planned on a completely different design, but once I’d gotten my hands on that chunk of basswood, it had felt as though each stroke of my blade along the wood was guided by my wolf. The sentiment was strange as fuck, considering my inner animal had never been interested in my hobby. But the tiger I was whittling sure as hell had his attention. “Nope, I think I’m going to keep this one.”
My brother’s head jerked up, and his eyes widened. “Really?”
His surprise was understandable since I’d given away every single carving I’d made over the years. I whittled because it relaxed me, not for any emotional attachment to my pieces. Once they were done, I was ready to hand them off and get to work on something new. But not this time. The thought of anyone other than me owning the tiger I was creating pissed me the fuck off. “Yup.”
“Huh.” He craned his neck, trying to get a better look at the carving clenched in my fist. “That doesn’t sound like you at all. Why are you keeping that one?”
“Because I want it.” I didn’t have a better answer for him since I didn’t have a clue what was different about this piece.
Cason quirked a brow before standing up and walking over to the trash can to toss out the cans he had crushed. “Alrighty then. Now that you’ve cleared that up for me, I guess I’ll leave you to your whittling. Maybe you’ll be a little less touchy about your carving once it’s done.”
“Sorry,” I grumbled, loosening my hold on the partially completed tiger to set it on the table. Now that my brother wasn’t sitting across from me, my wolf relaxed a little over his proximity to the carving. I needed to get the damn thing done soon, and then maybe I could figure out why it was so fucking different from all the other pieces I’d done.
3
Trinity
As I headed toward the car rental area in the airport, I sent a quick text to my sister to let her know my plane had landed. I didn’t make it much farther before her ringtone sounded from my cell phone. “Hey, Tab.”
“How was the flight?”
I sidestepped around a family with two kids who were barely moving before answering, “Longer than it should have been, stinky, and loud.”
“See, springing for a first class seat was worth the cost,” she boasted.
I wasn’t a big fan of being trapped in small spaces with hundreds of strangers, so I tried to avoid flying when I could. But I didn’t have much of a choice for this trip since I hadn’t been able to leave the city early enough to drive all the way to Timber Ridge. Riggs had been understanding about me using some of my vacation days, but he’d still expected me to take care of a bunch of stuff before I headed out of town. When I’d complained to my sister about the flight, she’d talked me into paying the upgrade fee so I’d be more comfortable. “It’s a good thing I listen to you sometimes. You have no idea how happy I am that I forked over that extra cash.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Worse.” I shuddered at the memory of the baby who’d cried for an hour straight. Luckily, I’d brought my noise-canceling headphones with me, and the family had been seated farther back in the economy section. “I’d be way more irritable if my seat had been smaller and the flight attendant hadn’t brought me free beer before we even pulled away from the gate.”
Tabara laughed, making me grumble under my breath. My annoyance only made her crack up more, and she didn’t pull herself together enough to speak until I’d made it to the back of the line at the car rental counter. “I’m surprised they had a brand you were willing to drink. You’re such a beer snob.”
“That’s fair.” My lips curved up in a small grin. “I was shocked when she told me that their options included Fat Tire Belgian White and a Sam Adams seasonal.”
“If I was placing money on it, I’d bet that you just had to try both,” she guessed.
“You know me well,” I murmured as the line slowly moved forward.
“I do, which is why I called to check on you,” she admitted softly. “What with being stuck on a plane for a couple of hours to visit your favorite place in the world.”
I stretched my neck to the right and then the left, trying to work out the kinks in my muscles. “I might as well be headed to Timbuktu.”
“Nah, Timbuktu is way bigger than Timber Ridge,” she disagreed with another laugh. “There are more than fifty thousand people who live there, but our little brother’s hometown is what...maybe a quarter of that?”
I rolled my suitcase in front of me and released the handle. Pinching the bridge of my nose, I thought about all of the things I would miss during this trip. “Not even.”
“You could’ve said ‘no’ when Tane asked you to go babysit the kids,” she reminded me.
“True,” I conceded as I shuffled forward again. “But he made me an offer that was nearly impossible to refuse.”
She snorted in disbelief. “You’re making our baby brother sound like a mafia boss or something.”
“As if.” It didn’t matter how much bigger than us Tane had gotten, Tab and I would always remember him toddling after us when we were younger.