Page 76 of Hungry Like the Wolf

“I’m glad you left, Agatha,” Robbie said. “You’re really brave.” She shook her head, but he protested, “No, you are. You took charge of your life and went some place he can’t ever hurt you again.”

She looked him in the eye then. “You’re brave, too.”

Now it was his turn to snort a bitter laugh.

She shook his hand gently with hers. “Your fated mate was taken away from you yesterday, and yet you got out of bed this morning.”

“JJ barked me out of bed,” he clarified.

“But you’re here. Broken heart and all. That’s brave.”

He nodded, staring at nothing in the middle distance.

“And you’re pack now. So you don’t have to go through this alone. Some days, the pack was the thing that saved me. The pack and my girls. They helped me keep going when I didn’t know that I could.”

Pack.

He looked to the front of the room where JJ had two braids with neon green ribbons tied to the ends. He looked at the table of elders, who saluted him with their coffee mugs. He saw Rose loading the percolator onto the wheeled cart to take it back to the kitchen. He smelled them, all of them, a chaotic jumble of scents that were all different and yet somehow belonged together. He heard the pups running and playing outside. He heard music and off-key singing.

Just then, Agatha’s daughter, a ten-year-old he now knew was called June, approached her.

“I’m hungry, Mom. Can we go home and eat?”

Agatha smiled at her. “Of course we can, baby. Let’s go.”

Robbie watched as Agatha pretended to need June’s help to stand, groaning like a bear as June pulled her up, and then pretending to fall forward. June laughed as she steadied her mom, and Agatha’s smile was brilliant.

He’d be in agony forever. He’d miss her forever. But there would be belly rubs from Rose and hugs from JJ that threatened to crack his ribs. There would be wrestling with pups and running under the full moon. There would be cooking. There would be pack.

It would take time and it would be hell, but someday, eventually, maybe, there might even be a laugh that took him by surprise

Rose was coming out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a paper towel.

“How about lasagna for dinner, Rose?” Robbie asked, his voice grating like sandpaper but stronger nonetheless.

“Sounds delicious, Robbie,” she said.

“I second!” shouted one of the elders, making the rest of the table laugh.

It wasn’t a smile, but Robbie felt the slightest twitch at the corner of his mouth. His legs shook and ached and his heart was still broken, but he stood up and walked to the kitchen on slow feet.

He had work to do, after all. His pack needed to eat.

CHAPTER 32

Music played from the CD player on the shelf by the sink. JJ was working on the internet and phone issue, and according to the word amongst the elders, someone would be coming at the end of the week to install the necessary hardware. He’d be able to get a new phone then.

Robbie didn’t know how to feel about that. With internet and cell service came social media and connection with everyone back home. He’d never had a chance to see if Nadja had a presence online, but once he had access to it, he knew he’d be scouring the web for any trace of it, just to see her face.

He dreaded that—it would reopen all of his barely healed wounds—but he also knew he wasn’t strong enough to avoid the lure. Even though she was gone, taken back to Hell, he’d be able to look at her pictures, to grasp at the lingering fragments of her mortal life. It was the most masochistic thing a person could do, and yet he knew he’d do it just the same.

Whit had found him a box fan that was set up on a crate across the kitchen to cool it off. The large, industrial oven was heating up, and Robbie was rolling out pastry crust to top enough chicken pot pie to feed an army battalion. He was making his grandma’s recipe. He’d been making more of her recipes lately, the muscle memory of cooking them a soothing balm to his ravaged heart. Something about cooking her food now made him feel like she was with him, comforting him now when not much else could.

His life was so bittersweet. He loved his pack. He loved the elders and the pups and everyone in between. He loved cooking for them, feeding them, chatting with them over plates of food that he’d made. He loved helping out when a packmate needed something. He loved running with them. He’d had three full moon runs since Nadja had been taken away.

He was getting stronger, his body changing week by week, the muscles layering over one another in a way he’d never been able to get them to do before, no matter how much creatine he drank or protein he ate. His hair was long, past his chin now, and he had to pull it up in the same sort of little topknot that Hank had had when Robbie had first seen him in the gas station a lifetime ago. Most surprising of all, however, was the beard.

Robbie had never been able to grow a beard before. His buddy Kev had called him Patches for a whole summer after he’d tried. But since that first shift, his beard had grown in quickly. He could have kept clean-shaven, but he would have had to shave in the morning and at night, and he couldn’t summon the energy for it. Besides, what did it matter what he looked like or how big his beard got? There wasn’t anyone to complain.