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More silence. He swirled the Scotch in his glass, frowning at it.
"Yes, you need ice."
A bark of a laugh. "No, that's not what I'm thinking. Good try, though. And ice would be nice."
"See? I wasn't reading your mind. I was predicting future thoughts. Even better."
A tiny smile. "As you are, apparently, still building your mind-reading skills, I'll have to tell you what I'm thinking. It is about that vision. I should tell you about it. Or maybe not so much should as want."
He went quiet again.
"You wanted to join the Pack," I said. "When you were young."
A slow nod. "Ironic that now, almost forty years later, I'm in it and uncomfortable with the idea."
"The instinct probably felt stronger at that age."
"At the time, it seemed obvious. That's how werewolves should live--as part of a Pack, growing up with Pack brothers, building a home and defending your territory. I blamed my father for dragging me from place to place, living in rooming houses and hotels. I blamed him and I hated myself for it."
I knew how much Karl had loved his father. Shortly after we'd met, I'd made the mistake of commenting on a father who'd raise his son to be a thief, and it had been the first time I'd seen Karl's composure ripple. He'd been as quick to his father's defense as I'd been when he'd commented on a mother who set her daughter up with blind dates. After that, we'd come to an unspoken agreement: taking potshots at one another was fine, but our parents were off-limits.
Karl's father had raised him as he thought best, into the only life he knew for a lone werewolf.
"That afternoon I showed you was the only time I actually saw someone from the Pack," Karl said. "We were in Vermont, working, at a resort, and the Pack arrived for a vacation. I only caught that glimpse before my father whisked us out of town. I don't think I'd ever been so angry with him. He'd always made them sound like monsters. That's why we had to keep moving--he said they'd kill us if we stayed. But seeing Jeremy and Antonio..." He shook his head. "They looked like ordinary young men, joking and teasing and hanging out. I saw that and I wanted it so badly. But, when I got older, I started to resent them because they kept us from settling down."
"From holding territory."
"Testosterone kicking in, I suppose. Joining them wasn't as important as showing them we weren't afraid. When I was sixteen, my father came to the motel we were staying in and told me we had to leave because a few Pack wolves were in town. But that day, I decided I wasn't going anywhere. I thought..." A bitter laugh. "I thought all my father needed was some encouragement. If I forced him to stay, he'd either see that his fears were ungrounded or he'd learn to fight for his place in the world. So I used the one stalling tactic I knew would work. I'd been Changing for a few months, and at that stage, it's very difficult. When the urge comes, it can't be denied."
"So you said you had to Change."
"I did. He took me into the woods behind the motel, and I did my damnedest. Eventually, it started, but even then it didn't go very far. My father stayed outside that thicket, encouraging me, for probably half an hour. Then he heard something and told me to stay still. A few minutes later, Malcolm Danvers found me."
"Jeremy's father."
"Malcolm found me, stuck in mid-Change. I don't know what he would have done, but helping me clearly wasn't on his mind. I heard my father calling Malcolm, luring him away. As I managed to Change back, I could hear Malcolm taunting my father. He kept trying to convince his two Pack buddies to challenge my father, saying no one would because he wasn't worth anything--he didn't have a reputation. Malcolm killed him. Snapped his neck, tossed him aside and went after me. I escaped. There was nothing else I could do, not at that age. Years later, when I was ready, I went back for Malcolm, but it was too late. Someone beat me to him."
I tried to think of something to say. I'd known his father had been killed by a werewolf and now I knew how. And, maybe, I knew why he struggled so hard with being in the Pack. Anyone who'd been involved with his father's death was long dead and no son could be less like his father than Jeremy, but still Karl had joined the group that killed his father. Accepted as Alpha the man whose father killed his. A death I knew he blamed himself for.
It would do no good to point out to Karl that he'd been young. I wouldn't be telling him anything he didn't already know. But what I'd felt in that glimpse inside him had been a cesspool of guilt and remorse--the memory he'd chosen when he'd needed to show me the worst one he had.
"I'm sorry."
It was the only thing I could say, but I meant it with all my heart, and he leaned over to kiss the top of my head.
"I want you to know," he said after a moment. "If I push you away, if I fight getting close, if I'm selfish, it's because that's the lesson I learn
ed about myself. Let someone get close and..." He shrugged. "Maybe that's not a good idea with someone I care about."
"You were sixteen, Karl."
"I didn't say it was a rational fear. But the worst fears aren't, are they?"
He met my gaze pointedly.
"I don't think my fear is irrational, Karl. When I stood in that room, whatever would keep a normal person from wanting Troy to die was gone. Not buried. Not overshadowed. Completely nonexistent. It was like..." I cupped my glass between my hands. "I don't even know what it was like."
"Like a starving werewolf stumbling across dinner on two legs?" He took my glass and set it on the table. "What you're afraid of, Hope, is that someday, just for a few minutes, the thing that you are will overtake the person that you are, and someone will die because of it. A werewolf deals with that from the day he first Changes."
