“I feel like we should at least address the weirdness—”
“Rico!”
“Shutting up now.”
Carter and Kelly had already disrobed by the time Rico closed his mouth. Carter winked at me before he shifted, the familiar snap of bone and muscle loud in the clearing. Kelly followed quickly, and then there were two wolves standing in the moonlight, eyes orange and teeth bared in a canine smile.
They weren’t all that much different than they’d been years before. Same coloring as they’d always been. But they were bigger and heavier. They would never be as big as Thomas was, but they had grown noticeably. I didn’t know if that had to do with age or Joe. Probably both.
Mark and Elizabeth followed suit, Rico muttering about everyone being way too calm with the nudity and Chris calling him a prude.
Soon, there were four wolves in the clearing, and they rubbed up against each other, Carter and Kelly crowding on either side of their mother, wriggling excitedly like puppies.
“Go ahead, Robbie,” I said, feeling Joe’s eyes on me.
“I don’t have to,” he said through a mouthful of sharpened teeth. “I can stay with you. I can run like this. Or half shift. It’s fine.”
But it wasn’t fine. I knew the moon was pulling at him, his wolf clawing just under the surface to break free. Mark had told me once a long time ago that it physically hurt not to change with the moon, and that if a werewolf denied it for too long over too many moons, it could cause a mental break.
“It’s fine,” I said lightly. “You should get used to the others.”
He didn’t look happy about that, glancing between Joe and me. He let out a huff and started stripping. I averted my eyes as a courtesy.
Joe was still watching me with a blank look. He didn’t used to be able to do that. I hated it.
Robbie shifted somewhere behind me. He was ganglier than the others and smaller, with long, thin legs and a narrow body. His tail twitched as he came to stand next to me, watching the wolves from his pack mingle with wolves from another pack.
He looked tense and unsure. I ran my hands over his head, tugging gently on one of his ears. He nuzzled into my hand and I felt a pulse of warmth along the thread that stretched between us.
“Go on,” I said.
And I thought he would. I thought he’d join the other wolves, but instead, he turned back to the humans behind us and started rubbing up against their legs, snapping playfully at their heels to get them moving toward the trees to run through the woods.
Then it was just Joe and me, listening as the wolves sang and the humans hollered.
He spoke first.
He said, “You did good, Ox.”
I didn’t know what to do with that, so I just said, “Thanks.” But that didn’t sit right, so I added, “It wasn’t just me.”
“Oh?”
“It was all of us. They did as much for me as I did for them.”
“I know. That’s what pack does.”
I bit back the retort and pushed away the familiar curl of anger. Joe probably knew it, could probably taste the bright spark of rage before I caught it, but he didn’t say anything about it.
Instead, he said, “But don’t think it wasn’t you, Ox. If it wasn’t for you….”
I waited to see if he would continue.
“Ox.”
I looked over at him. He was closer to me than he’d been in over three years. I didn’t understand why it felt like he was still so far away.
“Thank you,” he said.