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I pick up speed, racing through the underbrush, weaving between tree trunks with grace, letting my wolf roam freely. I run until my body feels electric, until the endorphin high floods my brain.
When I stop, I scent the familiar potpourri that joins together all the aromas of my home.
Home.
It’s still hard to believe it’s real.
My fur shrinks back into skin, paws rearranging themselves into hands and feet. An instant later, I’m back in human form. Grasping my clothes, which had been tossed on a tree branch nearby, I dress. Then my legs carry me back to the dirt path that leads into town.
When I emerge from the woods, I’m shocked by the undiminished awe I experience at the sight of it. Home looks handsome with its new constructions, houses and storefronts lining Main Street, specially built by and for the Blood Pack.
As I mosey along the sidewalk, I’m greeted by a series of warm smiles, the contented expressions of my packmates in their new lives.
Though it may look much like our old life, as though we’ve restored our town to the brick, it is decidedly a new one. In the air hangs the ghosts of our past, not as a haunting, but as a reminder. I feel them surround me as I approach the statue in the center of town. From the melted metal of our demolished homes, we constructed a memorial. Wolves meld together in a bronze tongue of flame. Imprinted around the marble base are the names of our fallen.
Kneeling beside the monument, my fingers trace the letters that form two important names to me. Those of my mother and my sister. “I miss you,” I whisper. The words thread my breath, which follows the curves of the statue into the sky as a prayer to the fallen. The ancestors, who we all one day join.
A wet, slobbery tongue lashes across my cheek. I take Trouble’s head in my hands and give him a good rub. “Good morning, Trouble,” I say. “Are you enjoying yourself today?”
He responds with another round of face licks.
I laugh. “That’s good to hear. I am, too.”
A frisbee soars past and Trouble launches himself after it. A child, a survivor of the initial attack whose parents perished, occupies Trouble with a grin carved ear to ear. We are one family now, caring for each other as siblings, parents, children, without walls. We leave our doors unlocked — but remain vigilant as ever. To ensure no tragedy ever befalls our community again, we’ve developed a guard system in which everyone participates. The Enforcers, after learning that our connection to dark magic had been severed, had given us their blessing and a promise to watch over us, but we politely refused their offers of assistance, choosing instead to live self-sufficiently. Allies, not watchmen.
I continue on my meandering route home, making a pit stop at Simon’s place down the block. He lives in a rowhouse between two women about his age. This setup has yielded endless jokes, innuendo, and outright encouragement from my men, who pester my brother about settling down with a mate of his own. “Perhaps taking multiple mates runs in the family,” Braxton has suggested on a few occasions. Orson offers to write love letters for him, while Max mostly snickers while watching Simon interact with his neighbors.
Admittedly, Simon is a little awkward around them. But I have faith that, in time, fate will guide him and the woman he’s meant to be with together. Or women. Hell, maybe it does run in the family.
I rise the four steps to his front door and rap my knuckles against it. “Come in!” he calls out from the other side. Shoving the door open, I find him lounging in his sunroom at the far end of the hall. “You know you don’t have to knock, right?”
I cross to the sunroom and reply, “I don’t want to drop in when you might be…entertaining.” I roll my eyes to either side to indicate the two pretty girls living next doors.
He blushes and shuts the book in his hands. “Asha?—”
I throw my hands up. “I’m not here to pester you like one of the guys.”
He shakes his head. “Actually, I was going to say how much I like that you just drop in. I miss it when you and the guys are on missions.” He smiles. I smile. “It’s really nice.”
“I love you, Simon.”
“I love you, too, sis.”
“Everything good?”
He takes a beat, appraises his frame of mind. Simon’s changed from the fun-loving rascal he was in his youth. His enslavement at the hands of the Blood Mages no doubt altered his personality, but he’s still Simon. Still my same brother. And while he’s a little quieter, a little withdrawn, he’s not out of reach. And he’s adjusting well to our new life. “Yeah,” he says, “everything’s good.”
“Good.”
“You?”
“Also good.”
“Good.”
Sometimes it’s the simple exchanges between siblings that mean the most.
“Alright,” I say, “I just wanted to say hi. I need a shower after my morning run, but I’ll see you tonight for dinner.”
