Bronx
I took it too far.
I tore out five pages before I spotted the note on scrawled on one of them.
For Madison, my baby girl. I will always love you. Love, Mommy.
Fuck.
It’s a book from her mother, and judging by the way the little human is sobbing, it’s probably from her dead mother.
Nice one, asshole, my wolf whispers to me. She could have been forgiven. She could have moved on. This could all be one big, huge, terrible misunderstanding, but there’s no moving forward after this.
Since when was my wolf the reasonable one?
Usually my human side of myself is the one that’s rational and clear-headed. My wild side can be a little…well, wild.
Not now, though.
Now I know he’s right.
The woman reaches for the last page I tore: the one with the note. Her hands are still bound, so she uses her foot to try to reach it before turning around and pushing herself backwards towards it. Eventually, she manages to reach the note and wraps her fingers around the paper.
I can smell her tears and I know she’s devastated at what I’ve done, but I’m not sure what to do now. Quietly, I gather up the sheets I’ve torn from the woman’s book and place them back inside the front cover. Then I kneel down in front of her and reach behind her for the sheet.
She shakes her head, but doesn’t say anything. A quiet resistance.
“Give it up, love,” I whisper, and that seems to do it. She releases the page and I place it back inside the book. Then I put the book in her bag and pull it over my shoulders. Once I’ve glanced around and made sure there’s nothing left here that could hurt any of my pack members, I scoop the woman into my arms and start walking.
She cries silently as we walk, but she doesn’t speak, wiggle, or try to escape. She doesn’t spit on me. She seems to be completely quiet at this point. Tired. She seems tired.
“What’s your name?” I ask her after awhile. I’m pretty sure it’s Madison. That’s who the book was addressed to. It might not be her, though. Not that I need to know. It won’t stop me from killing her, which is what has to happen now. She was hunting in the Forbidden Forest. She was hunting in an illegal manner in a place that’s supposed to be a safe haven. Even if she had some sort of permit, she shouldn’t have been using traps and poisons.
I don’t think she’s going to answer me, and she’s quiet for a long time. Finally, though, she speaks.
“Madison,” she whispers, and then I know for sure.
“Your mother gave you the book,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Is she dead?”
She cringes.
“Yes.”
You really fucked up, my wolf whispers to me.
Yep.
Yep, I sure did.
Not only did I destroy something her deceased parent gave her, but I asked her about it in a crass way. Is she dead? Seriously? Who speaks like that? Fuck. I should have worded that more carefully, more gently. I should have tried to treat her with kindness. It’s the least I could do. Yeah, I’m pissed as hell at this woman for what she’s done, but I didn’t need to treat her poorly.
“I’m sorry about your book,” I tell her gently. “I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t bother to find out, though, did you?” She snaps, and now I see her fire. Good. It’s still there. It’s not damaged or gone. I may have messed up her book, but at least I didn’t mess up her spirit. At least, not that I can see.
“You’re right.”
“Excuse me?” She stills.
“I didn’t bother to ask you about it,” I tell her. “I’m sorry. I was hasty and brash. I was wrong.”
She’s quiet for a long time when I say this. She wasn’t expecting that. Madison wasn’t expecting a lot of things. Why did she wander into the forest? What was she looking for? She seems pissed and surprised to have stumbled across me, yet she’s the one who caught me. She could have continued wandering around the forest, camping or collecting berries or whatever the hell it is humans do on their little excursions, and everything could have stayed as it was.
She wasn’t content with that, though.
She had to push me.
She had to hurt me.
And now she’s the one who’s going to pay the price for that.
I don’t want to kill the human. I don’t want to carry her back to my home and I don’t want to lock her up. I don’t want to tell my pack what she’s done. I don’t want to let them know she bested me. Wolves are scared enough of humans as it is. Do I really want the pack scared that a human might hurt them?
My brain says I should execute her for her crimes.
My heart says I need to think about this first.
“Who the fuck are you?” She finally whispers.
“Bronx.” It’s the name I was given. Most of the pack members just call me “Alpha,” but a few of them, especially the older wolves, call me by my name. That’s just as well.
“No, I mean…okay, nice name, but…I mean, who are you?” She looks up at me now and scrunches her nose up very tightly. I wonder if it hurts when she makes that face. She looks silly, but the nose-thing is endearing, as well.
I like her, my wolf whispers.
We don’t have time for humans, I tell him silently.
“What do you mean? I’ve told you who I am. You already know what I am. What is it that you’re asking me, Madison?”
“I mean,” she pauses, and then blows out a heavy breath. “What kind of guy just apologizes?” She seems confused. Is this not how human men behave? Has no one ever made a mistake around Madison and then admitted it before?
How very curious.
I think about it for a minute, but in the end, I decide to just give her an honest answer.
“A guy who isn’t trying to prove himself, love.”
That seems to satisfy her a time. She doesn’t seem to notice how she curls inward, against me, as if silently seeking my protection. I’m going to have to put her down, but she doesn’t know this yet. In this moment, she’s allowing me to be more than just her captor. She’s allowing me to be her protector.
And fuck me if that doesn’t feel really fucking fantastic.
I carry Madison in silence for a long time after that. With each step, we near my pack’s home. Each step brings us closer to the reality that’s going to close in all around us. Who is Madison, really? Why has she come to the forest? She seems to think there’s been some sort of misunderstanding, and if I didn’t witness her attack on me myself, I might dare to think she’s being honest.
She doesn’t smell like a killer.
She doesn’t look like one, either.
I’m not the expert on humans, but something tells me that if someone is a terrible person, you’ll be able to scent it. With Madison, I don’t scent evil or terror. I only seem to scent this never-ending feeling of sadness and emotion.
“I can walk, you know.” Her voice cuts into my thoughts, and I look down to see her staring up at me. She’s scrunching her nose again. I wonder if she does that on purpose. Maybe she doesn’t even realize she’s doing it.
“I don’t doubt it.”
“Afraid I’ll run off?”
“A little.”
“Afraid you can’t catch me?”
I scoff. “I caught you once already, little human.”
“I’m not little,” she protests quietly.
“Trust me,” I tell her, staring down at her. “You’re little.” She pouts slightly, but doesn’t argue further, which is good. She’s being compliant, which shows she’s smart. She’s not going to pick a fight with the person taking her away. Still, despite her calm exterior, she can’t seem to stop feeling curious. Madison is full of questions.
“You’re a wolf-shifter, huh? I didn’t think those really existed.”
“We exist.”
“Have you always been…you know.”
“A shifter?”
“Yeah.”
“As opposed to what?”
“You know, being bitten by a werewolf, or…”
Now it’s my turn to smile.
“No, love. That’s not really how it works.”
“Oh.” She’s quiet again for a minute, but Madison’s curiosity seems to know no bounds. “So how does it work?”
“What?”
“Being a shifter.”
“We’re born this way.”
“Huh.” The nose wrinkle again. I shouldn’t want to poke her nose so much, but I’m suddenly overcome with the urge to either tap her nose with my finger or to kiss it with my lips. Both of these reactions are totally, completely inappropriate for the situation. “Are you born in your wolf form, then? Or do you look like a normal little baby?”
“On rare occasions, someone will be born in their fur and then shift into their human form later. Most of the time, though, we’re born in our skin and learn how to shift sometime around puberty. I’ve heard of shifters who learn to change before they hit puberty, but that’s quite uncommon.”
“Puberty, huh? Guess that makes for an interesting high school experience.”
“You have no idea.”
“So what’s it like?”
“What do you mean?”
“Being a shifter.” She looks up at me and when our eyes meet, she seems genuine. Sincere. In this moment, I don’t get the feeling that Madison is fishing for information or trying to find ways she can escape from me. Right now, she seems almost…sweet. “I mean, being able to change into a wolf whenever you want. You can change whenever you want, can’t you? You don’t have to wait for a full moon or anything like that?”
“I don’t have to wait. That’s a rumor. As for how it feels…”
How do I put this into words?
I suppose the truth is that I’ve never really thought about it. For me, being a wolf has always just…been. I was born into a pack, raised by a pack, and now I lead a pack. I left my own people last year in order to lead my own group. I have no ill feelings toward my childhood pack. In fact, my father is still Alpha and I still visit him regularly. I always knew I needed to lead my own pack, though. There was this urge in me, this protective instinct.
You haven’t done a good job protecting the girl.
I bite the thought down. My inner-wolf is feisty today and I’m not really sure why. Why is he being so crazy about this woman? She’s just some girl. She was going to kill us, in case he’s forgotten. She was ready. Oh, she was crying about it and maybe she was a bit nervous, but I saw the weapon. I saw her.
She’s not evil.
Even if she’s not inherently bad or evil, she’s still dangerous. She tricked me. Us. She tricked me into approaching the food and my wolf into eating it. She’s obviously done enough research to know that wolves are hungry fuckers who can’t turn down a free meal.
Is that really her fault, though?
Is it mine?
And why am I flip-flopping all of a sudden?
The mark of a good Alpha is determination and consistency. I can’t let my pack think I’ll waver on a decision just because my emotions get the best of me. When I say something is going to happen, it has to happen. That’s the way it’s always been. That’s the reason I’m in charge of this pack. It’s the reason Oasis trusts me.
My wolves are all unique. They’re old and young, smart and clueless, brave and cowardly, but there’s one thing they aren’t: disloyal. They all trust me. Every single of one them trusts me completely to take care of them and to guide them.
I have to kill the girl.
I just must.
She poses a threat to me, to us, and to our way of life. What if she told people she was coming into the forest? What if she warned her friends about her journey? What if they come after her? There will be nothing but bones for them to find because this woman, this Madison, isn’t getting out of this alive.
So telling her the truth won’t hurt.
I might not be able to offer her safety or compassion, but right now, I can offer her the truth.
We can’t kill her, my inner-wolf argues, but I ignore that fucker.
“It feels like magic,” I tell her. “It feels like having the world at my fingertips. It feels like perfection.”
She sighs, a soft sound that shoots straight to my heart, and she closes her eyes.
“It sounds nice,” she says. “I could use a little bit of that in my life.”
“Perfection?”
“Magic.”