Gordo didn’t laugh. I didn’t expect him to.
“They’re fucking werewolves!”
“Yes, Ox.”
“You’re a fucking wizard.”
“I’m a witch,” he said with a scowl.
“Why the fuck did you keep all of this from me!” I roared.
It wasn’t meant to come out like that.
It was meant to be reasonable. Calm.
But I was scared and angry and confused and reality was shifting. Things made sense, so much more sense now, but they didn’t. At all. The world was not full of monsters and magic. It was meant to be mundane and marred with little broken pieces of fucking retard and you’re gonna get shit, Ox.
And it wasn’t just meant for Gordo. No.
It was meant for all of them.
The wolves. The witch. The fucking tethers.
Don’t make me regret you too, my father had said, and for some reason, all I could think about were the motes of dust in their (her) room, dancing in the sunlight while I touched the curved stitches that spelled out Curtis, Curtis, Curtis.
But that was then and this was now.
Because I was (not) twelve anymore.
I was (not) a man.
I was (not) pack. I was. I was. I was and the tethers. Holy god, the tethers, I could feel them pulling and—
Gordo was in front of me.
Suddenly I was surrounded by wolves. All of them.
They growled in unison as Gordo grabbed my arms. He ignored them.
“Ox,” he said. “You need to breathe.” He sounded hoarse.
“I’m trying.” It came out high-pitched and broken. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t catch my breath. It was stuck somewhere between my throat and lungs. Little flashes of light danced across my vision, and my fingers felt numb.
One of the wolves whined at my side. I thought it was Joe, and wasn’t that something? That I could already recognize him as a wolf even though an hour ago I didn’t know such things existed?
Little things. Slotting into place.
Pack and the touching and the smells and the howls deep in the woods. The family nights where I wasn’t allowed to follow that always came when the moon was white and round. The stone wolf in my hand. The way they moved. The way they spoke. The bad man. The bad man who took Joe. It had to be because of—
Joe whispered, I’m going to be a leader one day, and didn’t I feel a fierce pride at that when he said it for the first time? Didn’t I just glow with it even though I had no idea what it meant?
There were facts I was aware of.
Simple truths.
My name was Oxnard Matheson.
My mother was Maggie Callaway.