Brothersong Read online

  Kelly nodded.

  He fell asleep before I did, his hand still on Joe’s chest.

  I was about to follow when Joe’s heartbeat started tripping and stuttering. He made a wounded noise that sounded broken. I pressed Kelly’s hand down harder against his chest and put my mouth near his ear.

  I said, “You’re here. We’re with you. You’re safe. You’re home. We won’t let anything happen to you again. We’re your big brothers. We’ll protect you. We’ll always be here for you. I love you, I love you, I love you.”

  Joe’s heart slowed.

  The lines on his forehead disappeared.

  His mouth untwisted.

  He sighed and turned his face toward me.

  I watched him for a long time.

  IT WENT LIKE THIS:

  Boxes.

  All these boxes.

  As I stood among them, I heard voices coming from up the stairs.

  And it was then I learned the sins of my father.

  “Are you sure?” Mark asked Dad.

  “Yes.”

  “Have you…. Did you call Gordo?”

  Dad sighed. “No.”

  “He won’t like it that we’re coming back.”

  “It’s not his territory,” Dad growled. Then, “Shit. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

  “It’s too late for what you should or shouldn’t have done,” Mark said, sounding angrier than I’d ever heard him. “You really think that he’s going to welcome us back with open arms? That you won’t have to face him? Green Creek is small, Thomas. You’re going to run into him sooner rather than later.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Dad said, and sweat trickled down the back of my neck. “Tell me. Please. Just tell me what to do. Tell me what’s right. What should I have done? What should I do now? Should I have done more to save Dad? Should I have been able to stop the hunters from destroying our pack? Or perhaps I should have been able to keep Robert Livingstone from murdering all those people. I’m sorry, Mark. I’m sorry for everything I’ve done. All the mistakes I’ve made. Please. Tell me how to fix this. Tell me what I should do so that my child doesn’t scream himself awake because a man I once trusted shattered him into pieces before I could find him. You should have been my second. Not Richard. I should’ve never listened to Dad when he said that—”

  “Fuck you,” Mark said coldly. “I never gave a shit about that, and you know it. We’re broken, Thomas. We’re broken, and I don’t know how to fix us. I followed you even when every part of me was screaming to let you go without me. I left my heart behind because you said it was for the greater good. And for what? What has it gotten us? What kind of Alpha are you that you can’t—”

  “Enough.”

  It rattled the walls.

  I couldn’t move.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  But Mark wasn’t finished. “What are you doing? Do you even know? You’re spiraling, Thomas. People are talking. They think that you’re not going to come back.”

  “We will.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe you’ll be coming alone.”

  “Fine. Then I will. Michelle is more than adequate. She’ll do well in my stead until I can figure things out again.” He sighed. “I need to put my children first. I need to put Joe first.”

  Mark laughed bitterly. “Oh, if only Dad could hear you now. What was it he always said? For an Alpha, the needs of many outweigh the needs of a few. Pack and pack and pack.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?”

  “And what about Richard? It’s not over.”

  “I know that too.”

  “Do you? What happens if he comes again?”

  “I’ll tear his head from his shoulders,” my father snarled, Alpha filling his voice. “Let him come. It’ll be the last thing he ever does.”

  “We can’t keep doing this,” Mark said, and he was pleading with my father. He was begging him. “We can’t go on this way. We’re destroying ourselves, and I don’t know how to stop it. I love you, but I hate you too for all that you’ve done.”

  My father didn’t respond.

  They were silent. I could imagine them on the other side of the wall, facing each other, arms crossed, never meeting each other’s gazes. Two stone statues, carved and unmoving.

  I was surprised when my father spoke first. “The family. In the blue house.”

  “What about them?”

  “The boy.”

  And Mark said, “Ox.”

  “Yes. You said… you met him. And his mother.”

  “In the diner. It was his birthday. He was… I don’t know. There’s something different about him. I don’t know how to explain it. It was like being struck by lightning. I’ve never felt anything like it before.”

  “Magic, maybe. A witch?”

  “No. I’ve never heard of Matheson witches.”

  “We’ll have to be careful. Having them so close…. It could be dangerous.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have sold the house.”

  I heard my father move.

  Mark said, “Don’t. Don’t touch me.”

  Dad said, “When you were little, I used to carry you on my shoulders. Do you remember?”

  “No.”

  “Lie. You would put your hands in my hair and tug until it hurt, but I never stopped you.”

  “Get off me, get off me, get off—”

  “I never wanted this to happen,” my father whispered, voice muffled. “Any of this. I wasn’t ready. For all that it would entail. Being an Alpha, it’s….”

  “Hard,” Mark said begrudgingly.

  “Yeah. It is. And I’m not a very good one. It should have been you.”

  Mark sounded like he was choking. “Stop. Please. Stop.”

  “I know you hate me,” Dad said. “And you have every right. But I did what I thought was good for all of us. I thought Gordo would—”

  “Don’t. You don’t get to say his name.”

  “I thought he would be better off without us. That he would get to live a life free of—”

  “You abandoned him!” Mark cried. “You didn’t give him a choice! Get the fuck off me, you bastard. How dare you. I know what you did. I know you thought Livingstone did something to him, I know you thought it was in his tattoos, so don’t you dare try and spin this away.”

  “How did you—did Lizzie say something to you?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Mark retorted. “This isn’t about her or anyone else. This is about you. This is all on you. You always say we’re pack, but I don’t think you have a goddamn clue what that actually means. Fuck you. Fuck the Alpha of all.” He sucked in a sharp breath. Then, “Maybe it’s time for the reign of the Bennetts to end.”

  “You can’t mean that—”

  “I do. I mean every word. Let Michelle stay in charge. Let Osmond be her lapdog. You say you want to put Joe and Kelly and Carter first, then this is how you do it. Joe’s broken, Thomas. He’s broken. And believe me, I know what that feels like. You didn’t lift a fucking finger to help me. Don’t do the same to him.”

  Mark stormed out of the office. His footsteps were loud as he stalked down the steps. He didn’t even notice me as he left the house, slamming the front door behind him.

  Above me, my father stood still.

  And all I felt from him was blue.

  IT WENT LIKE THIS:

  Mom was setting up her studio.

  Dad was putting books on the shelves.

  Mark was upstairs, locked in his room.

  Kelly and I were on the porch, his feet in my lap. He was reading. I closed my eyes, taking in the scents and sounds of the old-growth forest around us. In the driveway in front of us were three cars. Two trucks. An SUV. Two thirty-foot moving trucks. We were supposed to be moving more stuff in, but there was plenty of time for that later.

  And then a voice came, one I hadn’t heard in a very long time.

  He said, “Do you have your own room?”

  My chest hitched.


  Kelly sat up, eyes wet. “Is that—”

  “Shut up. Listen.”

  A deeper voice said, “Yes. It’s just me and my mom now.”

  “I’m sorry,” Joe said, and his voice was rough and gravelly.

  “For?”

  “For whatever just made you sad.”

  “I dream. Sometimes it feels like I’m awake. And then I’m not.”

  Mom and Dad burst out onto the porch just as Joe said, “You’re awake now. Ox, Ox, Ox. Don’t you see?”

  “See what?”

  “We live so close to each other.”

  My father put his face in his hands. Deep within us all, crashing and colliding, came three words.

  packpackpack

  The shadows stretched as the afternoon waned.

  Mark came out onto the porch, demanding to know if that was Joe, was that Joe, was that—

  They appeared around the blue house.

  There, on the back of a large boy, was Joe, eyes alight.

  My father dropped his hands and took in a shuddering breath.

  We never looked away from Joe.

  From this stranger who watched us with wide, dark eyes.

  They stopped before us.

  “Mark?” the boy said.

  Mark smiled. “Ox. How lovely to see you again. I see you’ve made a new friend.”

  Joe dropped from Ox’s back, stepped to his side and took his hand, dragging him toward us. Something was shifting, and I didn’t know what. It was massive, and I was overwhelmed. It felt like the day Kelly was born. The day Joe came back to us.

  And Joe.

  Joe, Joe, Joe.

  He said, “Mom! Mom. You have to smell him! It’s like… like… I don’t even know what it’s like! I was walking in the woods to scope out our territory so I could be like Dad and then it was like… whoa. And then he was all standing there and he didn’t see me at first because I’m getting so good at hunting. I was all like rawr and grr but then I smelled it again and it was him and it was all kaboom! I don’t even know! I don’t even know! You gotta smell him and then tell me why it’s all candy canes and pinecones and epic and awesome.”

  We were all stunned into silence.

  We didn’t know then what he would become.

  Had I known, I would have done everything I could to push him away. To tell him that the Bennetts were cursed, that he should stay as far away from us as possible. He was misunderstood. His daddy said he was going to get shit all his life. His mother, a woman underestimated in her own right, might have survived the coming of Richard Collins.

  What would he have become without the wolves?

  I thought about that a lot.

  Once, long after my father had returned to the moon, it was just Kelly and me. We were too old to be sleeping in the same bed, but here we were all the same.

  He lay facing me, his knees bumping into mine.

  He said, “It’s all inevitable, isn’t it? Everything.”

  I wanted to tell him no. I wanted to tell him that there was no such thing as fate, that we could carve our own paths, that a name was nothing but a name.

  He knew what I was thinking. He knew what was in my head and heart. He said, “A rose by any other name….”

  I closed my eyes and dreamed of wolves running under the light of a full moon.

  IT WENT LIKE THIS:

  I was seven and Kelly said, “I want to be big like you.”

  I was three and my father picked me up in his arms, holding me close.

  I was ten and I chose my tether.

  I was twelve and Joe sat on my shoulders wearing a wolf costume our mother had made for him because he wanted to be a wolf like me. We were walking through the woods, Kelly’s hand in mine, Joe tugging on my hair, saying, “Faster, Carter, go faster.”

  I was four and Kelly took his first steps, reaching for me, always reaching.

  I was eleven and the moon was calling me, it was singing, singing, singing, and my mother said, “Here, my son, here, let it wash over you, feel it calling. I won’t let it hurt you. I won’t let it take you away.”

  I was sixteen and close to murdering boys in a bathroom at school who dared put their hands on Ox.

  I was thirteen and Kelly shifted into a wolf for the first time, and we ran together as fast as we could, the earth beneath our paws, the wind in our fur.

  I was twenty-three when a monster came to town and tore a hole in our heads and hearts. My father died before I could get to him. The last thing he ever said to me was “Protect your brothers with everything you have.”

  I was twenty-seven, bursting out of a bar filled with humans, claws popping and fangs gnashing, and there was a wolf there, a timber wolf bigger than any I’d ever seen, and it came for me, it came for me, and the moment before we collided, the moment before its body struck mine, I smelled something unlike anything I’d ever known before.

  And I burned.

  waiting for you/say my name

  It was dark.

  I was cold and stiff. My neck had a crick in it, and my head was pounding. I groaned and rubbed a hand over my face, trying to clear my head. I pushed open the door to the truck and stumbled out. My knees were weak, and I almost fell. I caught myself on the door.

  Before me was farmland. In the distance, set on a hill, was a house. The porch light was on, but the windows were dark. I walked away from the truck, my boots crunching against gravel. I unzipped my pants so I could empty my bladder. I sighed as I looked up at the sky, the stars like chips of ice.

  Once I finished I went back to the truck, pulling my coat tighter around me. It was getting colder again. I didn’t know exactly where I was. I thought I’d crossed into North Dakota before finally pulling over to get some sleep. I’d gotten used to spending the night in the truck.

  I shut the door behind me.

  I was tired, but I knew I wouldn’t get any more sleep. The sun would rise soon, and I didn’t want to get caught here.

  I glanced at the picture on the dashboard. The edges had started to curl. I left it alone.

  I pulled my duffel bag across the seat. In the side pocket was a cheap phone, a burner I’d picked up before I left Green Creek. It was something Gordo had taught me when we’d been on the road after Richard Collins. I doubted he’d ever thought I’d have use for one again after we’d come back.

  I hit the Power button, stretching my neck as I waited for it to turn on. I winced against the bright light in the dark. It was just after five in the morning.

  I tried to ignore the date in the upper right corner, but it was almost impossible.

  Saturday, November 6, 2021.

  It’d been eleven months since I’d recorded a video in a house at the end of a lane.

  And I had nothing to show for it.

  I dropped the phone back in my bag before I crushed it in my hand.

  After a moment’s hesitation, I reached over to the glove compartment and popped it open. I told myself I was being stupid, that I’d just looked at the contents the day before. They wouldn’t tell me anything new, and it was pointless to dwell on them.

  But they were all I had.

  I pulled out four pieces of paper, each featuring blocky words I’d long since memorized.

  The top page—the last one I’d gotten a couple of weeks before in a nothing town in Kentucky—read:

  STOP FOLLOWING ME. GO HOME ASSHOLE.

  “Fuck you,” I muttered. “You goddamn dick.”

  The other three notes were similar, each of them blunt and scathing, threatening me with bodily harm, telling me he wanted nothing to do with me. I closed my eyes, remembering the way he’d looked when he snarled at me, telling me I was nothing but a child, that he didn’t want anything to do with me, that he wasn’t pack.

  His heart had held steady and true, but I still thought him a liar.

  Because I’d felt it when he’d stood before his father, a witch turned impossibly into an Alpha beast, one eye socket empty, the other red and b
lazing. I’d felt it when the bond that had stretched between us—a bond I’d been blind to—snapped in two.

  He had been one of us.

  He had been pack.

  And he’d given himself up to Robert Livingstone.

  To save us all.

  I couldn’t let that go.

  I couldn’t let him go.

  I owed it to him.

  To find him.

  To do whatever the hell it took to bring him back.

  I should have seen it for what it was. In the couple of years he was by my side, all the times I’d scowled at him and snapped at him to leave me the fuck alone, I should have seen it. From the moment I’d faced him outside the Lighthouse when the hunters had come to Green Creek, I should have known.

  The third note read:

  LEAVE ME ALONE. GO HOME OR I’LL HURT YOU.

  The second note read:

  I DON’T WANT ANYTHING TO DO WITH YOU.

  The first note read:

  ARE YOU TRYING TO GET YOURSELF KILLED?

  Though I fought against it, I smiled. I’d only heard him speak a few words, and they’d been grunted more than anything, but somehow, it fit with who I thought he was. I wasn’t allowing myself to think of what he could be to me. When I tried, my chest felt tight. We weren’t Ox and Joe. Or Kelly and Robbie. Or even Gordo and Mark, though the fuck you vibe was apparently a family trait.

  Gavin.

  The brother of Gordo Livingstone.

  The son of Robert Livingstone.

  I put the notes back in the glove compartment, unable to look at them anymore.

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

  Kelly was there in the dark. He smiled at me and held out his hand.

  Though it wasn’t real, I was grateful for it. I took his hand in mine, and for a little while at least, I could pretend he was with me. That he didn’t hate me for leaving him behind. Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

  He said, “Hey.”

  I said, “Hey” and “Hi” and “I’m so happy to see you.” And I meant every word.

  “All right?”

  I tried to be strong for him, this Not-Kelly. But he was a figment of my imagination, and I was alone. I said, “No.”

  He squeezed my hand. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”