“Um...excuse me...”

The man that turned to face Josh wore an expression of genuine puzzlement. Judging from the mohawk, heavy makeup, and tattoos, he didn’t get many people who just walked up to him and tapped him on the arm.

I can understand being confused. I can’t even believe I’m doing this.

He had that thought a lot now. Only a week after he’d returned from his trip to the Lakeman Orchard, he found himself unable to sleep and had gone for a drive. His body seemed to move of its own accord as he parked in front of a bar and got out. The bartender kicked him out after only five minutes for making a nuisance of himself because he was asking the patrons uncomfortable questions about if they knew anyone who’d been arrested recently.

As it turned out, that wasn’t the best way to start a conversation. He figured that out after a few days and thought long and hard about a new strategy. This one yielded more results, though those results were still negative.

“What do you want, kid?” the mohawked man asked. He scratched hard at a mass of swelling that protruded up beneath a fresh tattoo near his inner elbow, sending flakes of ink and scab drifting onto the tabletop. He seemed unaware of what he was doing, though the ruined state of his many other tattoos suggested he did it often. “I’m busy here, huh?”

The man was sitting alone by himself in the back of a filthy bar, illuminated only dimly by filmy strands of red Christmas lights. Of course, Christmas was over now and the New Year had gone by—he didn’t celebrate either one—but a place like this wasn’t a punctual one. In front of him were three empty bottles of cheap light beer, and a half-empty mug of something else that glowed scarlet with false festivity.

Josh stayed standing. Sitting down uninvited made people very angry at him. “I just wanted to ask a few questions, if that’s okay. Can I sit down?”

The man looked at him with bloodshot eyes. “If you’re a cop, I don’t know nothin’. If you’re sellin’ shit, I don’t want nothin’. If you’re preachin’, you can go stuff it.”

“None of that.” He lowered his voice. “My boyfriend skipped out on me. I’m trying to find him. Think you can help me out?”

The other man regarded him for a moment longer, then shrugged. “I had that happen before, ‘cept she was my girl. You gays are a lot like women.”

“What does that mean?”

The man picked up his glass and took a deep swallow of the liquid inside, which made him shudder as if it burned on the way down. “You all want more than just a lay, you know? You want feelings. I betcher boy ran off with someone else with more feelings.”

“He owes me money.” This, he had discovered, was his ace in the hole. Men like these could ignore a whole hell of a lot, but when it came to money, they were all ears.

“Really? Well, fuck. How much?”

“Enough.”

“Give you two minutes. Pop a squat, you’re attractin’ attention to me and I don’t like that.”

Josh sat down gratefully. He was more than a little aware of the way the other patrons in the bar watched him, knowing he didn’t belong in their midst.

“So, what’s your boy’s name?”

He knew by now how to get around this question. The first few times, stalling had almost gotten the police called on him. “His name’s not important. Not much use anyway. He’s not a big player, you know?”

The other man shrugged and wiped his mouth. “Sure, sure.”

As quickly and succinctly as he could, Josh described the man he’d seen in the well. At first, the man remained distinctly unimpressed but then he straightened up a little. His drink was forgotten between his hands as he listened. “I don’t know him. But I think I know someone who can help you.”

Josh’s heart lurched and then soared even though he tried to keep a grip on his hope so this wouldn’t get out of hand. “Really?”

“Yeah, maybe. I know a guy. Little fuckin’ weirdo. Like, real weird. Acts almost like an animal sometimes. His name’s Irwin. He runs with that kinda crowd that it sounds like your boy’s in. Not me. I like my fun on the less-illegal side.” The man let out a strange bark of laughter. Josh forced a chuckle but he hardly knew what he was laughing at. His thoughts raced. He knew two things now.

The person named Irwin was a shapeshifter.

And the man he’d seen in the well liked to do illegal things. That was self-explanatory from the fact that their first sighting of one another was through the window of a police car, but he’d been hoping it was some kind of fluke. Apparently not.

“How do I find Irwin?”

“He works at the Commodore. Concessions or tickets is all I ever see him at. Can’t miss him. Genuine redhead. You know the kind. Tell him Jinx sent you.”

“Jinx?”

“That’s me,” Jinx said. “’cause I’m one unlucky fucker. Your two minutes are long up, bud.”

Josh slid out of the chair immediately. “You were a great help. Thank you.”

But the other man was already deep in his glass again, blocking out the entire world.

The next day, he went to the Commodore Theater in search of Irwin. Never much of a movie person, he picked one at random so he could get inside. As luck would have it, he didn’t need to.

Once he got up to the front of the ticket line, he saw a red-haired, skinny young man. It was exactly as Jinx said. He was a true red-head, a real carrot top. His face and arms were covered in a sea of freckles.

“What can I help you with?” the freckled young man said, his voice coming tinny through the speaker.

Josh pulled in a deep breath. “Are you Irwin?”

“That’s what it says on my nametag, sir,” Irwin replied. He said sir almost sarcastically. “Were you by any chance interested in seeing a movie today, sir?”

“I...Jinx said I could talk to you.”

“Ji...oh. I see. Um. If it’s really that important, you can wait out here until my break.”

“Thanks,” Josh replied, and moved away so he wouldn’t be holding up the line. Irwin hadn’t said how long it would be until his break but now that he was so much closer to the answer, he would gladly wait all day.

Half an hour passed like an eternity as he leaned against the wall, twiddling his thumbs and trying not to appear suspicious. Eventually he caught a whiff of wolf-scent and turned to see Irwin striding towards him. The redhead walked with a graceless shamble, as if he hadn’t grown into his gangly limbs yet.

He’s an omega.

“Thank you for...”

Irwin cut him off. “First of all, I don’t have long so don’t waste my time, okay? And call me Fox. I hate my name.”

“Fox? But you’re...a wolf?”

“Apparently I’m annoying and yappy.” Irwin -Fox- shrugged, then yipped out a high-pitched laugh. “I don’t really care. It’s better than Irwin. What do you want?”

Josh struggled to reclaim his footing, having been thrown off-balance by this development. “I’m looking for someone. Jinx told me you might be able to help me find him.”

“I can tell you if I know them,” Fox said. He looked around warily, thin shoulders hunched up. “But that’s about it. Okay?”

Agreeing, he once again described the person he saw in the well. He had hardly finished speaking when he saw Fox bare his teeth a little at him. He took a step back, uncertain what he’d done wrong.

“Why do you want to find him?” Fox snapped. His hackles were up, his gaze and stance defensive. Josh knew that posturing. This was an omega with some sort of loyalty to the person he was looking for.

“Uh...that’s kind of not really your business.”

“Yeah? You’ve made it my business. So you either answer the question or get out of here before I get my manager to call the cops on you for loitering.”

With his back to the corner, nothing else could be done for it. He had to answer. “I...saw him the other day. A while ago. And um...I was...you know. I wanted to try to find him to...talk?”

Fox just watched him for a long moment, then let out another of those sharp laughs. “I get it. Slave to your instincts. You make the rest of us omegas look bad, you know?”

Josh said nothing.

“But yeah, I’ll tell you where you can find Blake. He’ll just turn you down. He’s not gay. You’ll have to find someone else to pine after.”

Josh closed his eyes, trying with everything he had not to slump against the wall with relief. He didn’t want to show just how much this meant to him, though he was certain Fox could smell it on him. “Where can I find him?”

Fox eyed him for a long moment, then nodded. “You really don’t seem like a threat to me, but I’m not going to send you right to him. You’ll have to go to his pack.”

Great. If there’s anything I enjoy more than asking strangers questions in bars, it’s questioning strangers in crowds.

“It’s one of those weird gated communities. You know what I mean?”

Even better.

“It’s called Magnolia Haven. He lives in the Dahlia Complex. You can’t miss it. You can see it right from the main entrance. If you try anything, you’ll get torn down faster than you can say ‘please shoot me.’ They’ve got security. The kind that won’t just shoot, you know?”

Josh knew. Their security would be made up of wolf shifters with combat training. If he ran on the wrong side of one of those wolves, he’d wish he was only shot.

“Thank you. Um...do you know...when he’d be there?”

“No. He’s always in and out.” Fox looked around, then spoke curtly. “We’ve talked enough. I’d like to take the rest of my break in peace, so I’m going to leave now. Okay? Good luck with whatever you’re doing.”

“Thank you,” Josh said.

I hope I am lucky. I have been these past two times. Let’s keep the streak alive.

He couldn’t go anywhere for the rest of the day or the next because he had a meeting with his parents’ accountant. After that, he simply didn’t want to do anything and it took that long just to get himself ready to go anywhere. The sense of stagnation was returning, despite the fact that he’d kept busy for the past couple of weeks. He needed to find this wolf named Blake in a hurry.

Finally, he managed to get in his Mustang again and followed the GPS on his phone to Magnolia Haven. He had no idea what to expect and had done his best to look presentable, if not attractive. He wore a sweater but, this time, he was wearing the right size so what muscle definition he had—mostly in his arms and shoulders from dealing with heavy dough—pressed against the fabric and strained gently at the seams. His jeans were form-fitting but not skinny, since he was of the unpopular opinion that you didn’t need a wedgie to have a nice ass. He’d trimmed his hair, shaved again, and even put on cologne. In short, he’d done everything he would have done casually two years ago but which was now so effortful it bordered on dressing up.

He was able to get in the gate with no problem once the guard realized he was a wolf and an omega. They let him pass with a warning he didn’t need, and then he was inside.

On the horizon, glimpsed in the split between a stand of trees and the nearby mansion, was a purple building with white accents. He had no doubt this was the Dahlia Complex and headed for it.

Not all wolf shifters lived in a communal area like this. His own pack didn’t. What was important about having a pack was being able to gather in one place if necessary. Some communities were indeed composed entirely of wolves, but there were also packs who formed clubs, or who ran a business, or who gathered at a specified meeting place which might or might not change depending on the situation. These could be in plain sight or hidden away underground, safe from prying human eyes.

A gated community of wolf shifters seemed a bit suspicious to him, but what did he know? Humans were so willing to look the other way for so many things that were right in front of their faces.

Magnolia Haven was a charming place, at least. Keeping with the fashion of a community that held itself with pride, there must have been strict regulations in place about what could and couldn’t be done with a house, and how to keep said houses in top shape. The yards were all dead and so were the plants, robbing a beautiful place like this of some of its color, but he could tell these things had been taken care of quite well in the other seasons.

The absence of flowers and full trees really didn’t have much of an effect upon the community in general because so many of the houses were painted in vivid hues that would be otherwise extinct in a city so grey with skyscrapers and water. Josh suspected this was because of the flower scheme. No matter whether a house was red, blue, purple, or yellow, they all had lighter accents that made the main color stand out all the more.

The Dahlia Complex was a rather large and beautiful apartment building, though the insides belied the exterior. Josh stood in the lobby of a building much like the others he’d been inside before, where functionality was valued over grandeur. The only difference was how much cleaner it was.

The guard, a beta with a thick neck, regarded him carefully from behind the desk that separated them. “You aren’t one of us,” he said.

“I’m not,” Josh agreed. He felt absurdly calm, like he was on a runaway train and in the middle of accepting his unfortunate fate. “I’m here to meet with someone. I was told he lives here. His name is Blake? He...”

The beta held up one hand. “Don’t need anymore. I know exactly who you’re talking about and he doesn’t live here anymore.”

“Oh.” The sound came out as a soft gasp. The calm was gone, replaced with one last jab of terror as his runaway train barreled right off the edge of a cliff that he hadn’t even seen coming. “Oh. Um. I...”

No words would come. All he could do was stammer, his thoughts malfunctioning. What did he do now? What could he do?

The beta squinted at him. “You okay?”

More helpless stammering.

What do I do?

“Okay, look.” The beta looked alarmed, his eyebrows drawn up together to form one entity. “I can’t have you having a meltdown here in my lobby. You’ll find him down at the Daisy Apartments. Room 205. He got...Well, he’ll tell you himself. Just get out of here and don’t tell anyone I told you that. If I find out you did, I’ll hunt you down and give you something to think about. You got that?”

Josh nodded dumbly and was still nodding as he got back into his car. He couldn’t believe his sheer luck, couldn’t believe all these breaks he was getting. Could it be that fate was finally letting up on him? Or was it something to do with the way he was acting? He didn’t know.

Daisy Apartments wouldn’t come up as a result on his GPS, so he went off and drove around. He passed plenty of people out on the street he could have asked for directions but he was gathering his strength, saving up his resources for when he finally found Blake. The trail was hot. He was almost at the end of his search.

After ten minutes of aimless wandering, he left the neighborhood of mansions behind and entered in a sort of sub-area which took a huge leap down in quality. Though the buildings were still colorful, they were dingy, either in need of cleaning or a fresh coat of paint. Off in the distance, he caught a glimpse of an off-white building with dull yellow accents around the windows. It could only be the Daisy Apartments, unless he didn’t actually know what a daisy looked like.

Heart in his throat, Josh parked on the street because the parking lot was marked off with a sign that stated it was for occupants only. He got out, noticing the air here smelled more strongly of smoke than wolves. He entered and encountered another beta, who gruffly informed him Blake had left the building not five minutes ago and that Josh should be able to follow his scent if he really wanted to see the alpha.

“He reeks like shitty cigarettes,” the beta said, laughed, then broke into a coughing fit that signaled he smoked quite a bit himself.

“Thanks,” Josh replied, and left hurriedly. With the scent of smoke so thick and obscuring, it was almost impossible to tell who had been by and when. Fortunately, omega wolves tended to have stronger senses than alphas, and he quickly picked up on the musky odor of an alpha male who had been by only a few minutes ago. He hurried off after the trail, hoping and praying the wind wouldn’t blow it all away.

Maybe fate was on his side after all, because the wind dropped down as soon as he gave chase. He ran against the flow of most of the other pedestrians, pushing by them as politely as he could. The further he went, the fewer people he encountered until it was only him in front of a park that had seen better days. Everything was rusted, broken, or on its way to be broken. The football field and soccer field had no lines marked on them at all and were covered in sprigs of untamed, dead weeds.

And then he heard it. A soft, pained grunt, like someone had been hit in the stomach.

Josh whirled around and stared in the direction of the sound, ears up and hearing strained as hard as he could. From behind a maintenance shed covered in cobwebs, a man emerged.

The man.

Blake.

But it wasn’t Blake as Josh had been envisioning him, as perfect as he was in the vision. No, this Blake had seen better days, and he was bent over holding his stomach, greased hair falling loose of its collective mass and brushing against his eyebrows.

Another man emerged from the shed, face red, fists swinging. He was an older wolf with gray and white hair, breathing raggedly and swearing something incoherently, over and over. He took another swing, catching Blake down low in the middle of his back. The alpha grunted and fell, transforming into his wolf as he did, but his back legs hit the ground wrong and he staggered to the side. The older man fell upon him, fangs flashing.

Josh froze, watching those fangs click together around the back of Blake’s neck. He couldn’t breathe. To come this far and have it all taken away from him...it wasn’t fair. He didn’t even know why they were fighting and now he would never have the chance to know.

No.

Before he knew it, he was dropping down to land on his paws on the sidewalk, already sprinting out across the stretch of grass towards the battling alphas. Deep in the back of his mind, he knew this was a suicidal endeavor. He should have gone for help, but by then it would be too late. He could see those jaws tightening, blood leaking up from puncture wounds, soon to spray out when the main veins there were severed.

“Stop it!” he shrieked, and threw himself against the old wolf’s flank.

The old alpha grunted and tumbled to the side, jaws parted in a comical expression of surprise. Josh twisted as they landed, trying to stay on top, praying his youth would give him the advantage here. However, he was to be disappointed. It couldn’t be that easy. The moment he crashed into the older wolf, he could still feel the strength in those ruined muscles, beneath the shaggy pelt that hung from his bones. The old wolf twisted and kicked out with his hind legs, catching him squarely in the chest.

The ground became the sky, and the sky went away altogether. Josh couldn’t breathe, couldn’t feel the need to breathe. The world was many different colors, pulsing like the speckles in his vision when he looked into a bright light.

I’m dead. I’ve died. He stopped my heart.

Somewhere, he felt his heart hammering away but that seemed like an unimportant detail. Pain raked across his side now but it was distant, equally unimportant. His eyes closed.

How much time passed before he opened them again, he didn’t know. A few seconds. An eternity. Snarls clashed through the still park air, echoing off abandoned playground equipment.

Not knowing how he managed it, Josh turned on to his stomach and pushed his paws beneath his body. His legs quivered when he tried to stand, making it quite clear that was out of the question. In a way, it was a relief. In another, it was the most terrible thing to experience, being incapable of anything when he needed to. Blake and the old wolf were grappling, their jaws locked, their front paws flailing as they clashed, trying to knock the other down. The first to fall would be the one to...

The one to what? What sort of fight was this? Who started it? From what he knew about Blake, which was very little, Josh couldn’t rule out his potential mate had started this confrontation. What was he supposed to do, even if he could stand?

Suddenly, Blake dropped down onto all four paws and wrenched his head sideways. The old alpha was tossed aside like a sack of potatoes. He lay there, winded, struggling.

Blake advanced, his face a dark mask of fury. He lowered his head, ears pressed back, a snarl curling on his slavering lips. The old alpha managed to get up again, though he held one paw against his chest as he did so. “Haven’t seen the last of me,” he coughed out, then turned and fled on three legs.

Josh sagged against the ground beneath him, then tried to stand again. Though he shook all over, he did manage to sit. His lungs ached and his breath rattled, coming in shallow heaves, but when he looked down he was relieved to see he hadn’t been gouged. He was only going to have some nasty bruises, and he could live with that. He’d lived with worse.

“What the fuck were you thinking? He could have killed you! Goddamn omegas, thinking they’re all high and mighty! Who even are you? You’re not from my pack.”

I have no idea if I’m up to transforming, but I can’t talk to him like this.

He settled for silence, trying to figure out what he would do or say.

After a moment, Blake knelt down. His eyes were fiercely dark and wary, still rimmed with bloodshot white from his fight. “How hurt are you, anyway? He break a rib? I saw you go flying.”

“I’m...fine,” Josh managed to growl out.

“Then turn back so you can explain to me just what the hell is going on.”

I’d like an explanation, too.

Transforming took the last of his remaining strength. He stayed sitting, looking up into those wild eyes.

Blake took a step backwards. “I recognize you.”

“And I recognized you,” Josh wheezed. God, he hurt. He pulled the collar of his sweater away from his chest and peered down. Sure enough, there were some nasty red marks on his chest that were turning purple and black even while he watched. “That’s...why I came.”

“You couldn’t even have known I was a wolf. What did you do, ask around until you randomly found someone who knew me?” Suddenly, Blake’s gaze went even darker. “That’s exactly what you did, isn’t it?”

Josh agreed. In as few words as he could, he explained the long process he’d gone through to try and find him. At the end of it, the alpha only stared at him with a puzzled expression on his face. All the anger was gone. His shoulders were relaxed. He didn’t even seem to care that the back of his neck was still bleeding from the savage bite wound he’d been given

“Okay, but why?”

And here it was. The question he’d imagined being asked a thousand times but had never found an answer for. “Because I...You’ll think I’m insane.”

“I already think you’re insane and have a death wish,” Blake growled. His growl was much deeper than Josh’s, rumbling around in his broad chest before finally emerging from his throat.

“I saw a vision of you in a wishing well that shows shapeshifters who their true mate is.”

There. It was out.

Blake stared at him. Josh stared back, looking deep into that dark gaze to try and decipher all that he saw there. He felt as if he could keep looking and looking for an eternity and never find the answers he was looking for, but that it would be an experience he wouldn’t ever regret.

“I was wrong before, thinking you were insane. You’re a fucking psycho is what you are. Delusional.”

Josh stood up. The surge of pain that lashed down from his chest was like a lightning bolt, spreading out to encompass every part of him inside and out, but he struggled through it. Desperation drove him on. They were here, both of them together. He couldn’t let this go. He couldn’t let it end. He had to keep going. “But I saved your life.”

“I would have won that fight,” Blake said. He reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and brought out a cheap pack of cigarettes. Josh looked at the name but his eyes weren’t quite up to focusing enough to read just yet. All he noticed, as the alpha lit up a cig, was that his fingers were shaking like crazy. “I had weight on him.”

Josh sucked in a breath. “He had his teeth in your neck.”

“I would have thrown him off.”

“No, you wouldn’t!”

Blake rounded on him, gesturing so wildly with his cigarette that ash scattered in a circle. “What do you know? You’re soft! Look at you! What mental hospital did you escape from?”

Taken aback, Josh wondered just how bad he really looked. He’d eaten pretty well in Abingdon and felt as if he was regaining some strength but he hadn’t exactly been kind to himself these past couple of weeks. Portsmouth wasn’t the largest city in the world—far from it—but there were more than enough bars and taverns and similar shady places to make his search all that much harder.

“You’ve never been in a fight before, from the looks of you. Hell, I bet the last tussle you were in was as a pup. And everyone went easy on you because you’re an omega.”

Josh remembered thinking that exact same thing not all that long ago. Did this mean his and Blake’s minds were already connecting or was it just a coincidence? “I might not have ever been in a fight but I paid attention in school. Sure, the real big veins you want to protect are in the front but you’ve got a ton of smaller ones in the back. Plus, there’s your spine. Lots of important muscles and ligaments back there. I saw what was happening. That guy had you good and he was going even deeper. I’ve got no doubt that you could’ve thrown him but he would have taken half your neck with him. You’d be dead already.”

Blake looked at him, then snorted and shook his head. “I have to get home. I’ve had enough of this sort of shit for one day.”

Blake turned and walked away, cigarette raised between his lips. Through the cloud of smoke, he didn’t notice the truck roaring past despite the deep rumble of its engine.

“Blake!” Josh shrieked. He wanted to close his eyes so he didn’t have to see what was about to happen, to watch as the alpha went flying. He would have given anything to not have to hear the dull thump of contact as metal collided with muscle or the screeching of brakes.

He saw himself running forward, uselessly trying to grab onto the other to prevent that from happening, but he could see himself missing by a fraction of an inch. Even worse, his fingers just barely grazing the leather and slipping away.

But that wasn’t what happened. Something came alive inside him that he hadn’t even known existed, a wild urge, a strength from deep within his marrow. He threw himself across the strip of grass that separated them, the world a blur around them. This was wolf-speed, the kind a human body wasn’t prepared for no matter if they were a shapeshifter or not. He wrapped both arms around Blake’s bicep and yanked backwards with all his might. The alpha yelped in surprise as Josh, half his size, pulled him backwards off his feet. They fell into the gutter as the truck blared its horn and screeched past. The driver threw a middle finger at them through his open window, but then he was gone down the nearby hill without even a pause to check if they were okay.

I should have checked the license plate, Josh thought dully. It was only him and his thoughts for the moment. There was nothing else in his mind, no awareness of his physical body in relation to anything else that was usually so important. It had all gone away, as if he didn’t even have a body anymore.

Gradually, though in reality it only took a few seconds, he slid out of his mind and back into the real world. His ass felt bruised from the fall they’d taken and he was struggling to breathe through the constant pain in his chest, but he was alive.

And so was Blake. The alpha was smoking, puffing contemplatively. His dark eyes were now blank, empty holes in the earth, absolutely hollow. “That’s twice now I’ve almost been run over,” he said. He didn’t growl, didn’t seem to have the strength for it. “That’s two times too many, if you ask me.”

Josh swallowed hard, but he was in too much pain to mince words anymore, too tired to do anything but say exactly what he meant. “I would have saved you from the first time too, if I’d known you then. The...the way I see it, you owe me at least a little bit of understanding here. Half an hour to talk. That’s all. You owe me.”

Blake pursed his lips and breathed out a short stream of smoke, which formed a circle before drifting up into empty air and slowly dissipating. “You can’t expect me to believe any of the weird shit you were just spouting.”

“You can turn into a wolf, but you can’t believe in anything else weird, is that it?” Josh replied, scathingly.

The alpha didn’t answer. “I saved you from that wolf.”

“Yeah, and I saved you from him first. So you still owe me one.”

Blake finished his cigarette in silence, then nodded and let out a soft grunt. “Okay. Yeah, sure. Whatever, man. We’ll talk. But not here. I don’t want that creep coming back, and he only got me because I went for a walk. I’m going back to my apartment. You can follow along if you really want to. Or not. Shit’s all the same to me.”

Josh hesitated. No matter what he had seen or thought he’d seen, he was still talking to a delinquent. Did he really trust this random stranger enough to go back to his apartment with him, where anything could happen?

But it wasn’t really much of a question because his hesitation soon passed, and he was hurrying after Blake, trying to keep up with him.