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Spring Fire

Reuben’s face was ruddy after a hard few hours of making repairs on his family’s thatched roof in preparation for the incoming spring rains, and sweat had stained the pits of his plain-weave shirt.

But he smiled above his chin-to-chin beard when he saw me coming and gave me a little covert wave.

However, before I could reach him, he gave the subtle signal: a tilt of his head toward the abandoned community barn, letting me know he wasn’t so glad to see me that he actually wanted to be seen with me.

My heart dipped, and a little of the happiness faded from my step.

Only for a few more months , I reminded myself.

Reuben had promised we’d go public after the she-wolves left for the Bridal Exchange.

“That way I can tell my parents you’re the only option I had left,” he said.

Not exactly the most romantic thing I’d ever heard.

And I knew Naomi would have something acerbic to say about his reasoning—which was why I hadn’t told her about my secret relationship with the mail steward’s son.

She wouldn’t understand.

Despite St. Ailbe’s dismal population statistics of three she-wolves of claiming age to every eligible male, she’d been fighting off unwanted attention since her teens.

As much as I admired her willingness to tell people off and always speak her mind, I suspected she’d developed her infamously acerbic personality to keep eager shifters from asking to court with her.

But in my entire twenty-three years on this earth, Reuben was the only male who’d ever looked at me twice.

So I didn’t mind our secrecy.

Not really.

Affixing a happy smile on my face, I slipped into the quiet, shadowed barn, as instructed, two minutes later.

To find Reuben lying on his side with his head propped in one hand.

He’d already pushed his leather suspenders down and unbuttoned his trousers.

“Quick. Come lie down. We’ve only got a few minutes before my parents get back from the community meeting.”

He waved a hand of invitation over the bare patch of floor in front of him.

“You didn’t bring a blanket?” I asked, eyeing the dusty hardwood floor.

“Didn’t have enough time,” he answered, even though I’d spotted a quilt hanging to dry at his place when I saw him on the roof and offered to deliver the mail for him today.

My wolf made that strange sound it sometimes did inside of me.

Not quite what I’d call a canine growl.

It was lower. Grumblier.

Like some distant thunder rattling behind my ribs.

Violent and angry. And my fingertips were tingling again, with a sensation that made me think of my nails suddenly turning into claws.

Though that was silly.

Wolves couldn’t partially shift, and anyway, turning outside of a full moon was strictly against the rules of our Ordnung.

I tamped down all the weird sounds and sensations swirling inside of me.

This is fine , I told myself, gingerly lying down in the space Reuben had indicated.

It wasn’t like a blanket made things that much better.

Relations, as my mother called the act that went against several Ordnung rules when performed before marriage, had been just as tedious and not-that-bang-up-fun as she’d promised.

She would kill me if she ever found out about what I was doing with Reuben to prove to him that I would be a good wife and to douse the Spring Fire that had lit up inside of me.

Every year around this time, forbidden desires stole over me, driving me to touch myself in ways I planned to go to my grave without ever confessing.

Premarital relations with Reuben didn’t exactly quench those naughty feelings inside of me.

But at least he was something, even if his particular brand of something was way too quick.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be quick,” Reuben promised, rolling to lie on top of me after I laid down.

“Actually, I was wondering if you could?—”

“ Aua !” Reuben’s yelp of pain cut off my tentative request for him to go a little slower.

He reared back up and glared down at my apron, before pulling out the basswood stick I’d slipped into its large front pocket.

“What is this?” he demanded, turning his narrowed eyes on me.

“Oh, that’s, um…” My cheeks went hot.

“Just a stick I picked up.”

“A stick?” He squinted at it the same way my mother looked at ants before ruthlessly exterminating them with her homemade bug spray.

“For what? The only things around here to be scared of are us wolves.”

“It’s for whittling,” I admitted.

“I saw it on your mail route and thought it’d be perfect for carving. I’m going to make a wolf pup with it—you know, for luck.”

“Luck?” He went still.

“Luck like the voodoo they warned us about in church? Is this some kind of devil spell from Africa? Something your mother taught you?”

“What? No!” My stomach twisted, and I sat up on my forearms. “Of course not. My mother’s from Jamaica—not Africa. And she would never. She’s the most devout wolf in St. Ailbe. Why would you think that?”

Reuben eyed me suspiciously.

Was he having second thoughts now?

What would I do if he decided I wasn’t worth his courtship?

In a panic, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small package wrapped in brown paper.

“I brought you some zucchini bread,” I offered quickly.

“I made it this morning with the last of our winter stores.”

“ Wirklich ?” Reuben’s mood changed in a flash.

He tossed the stick aside and took the slightly sweet treat I’d actually been planning to eat as an afternoon snack from me.

He unwrapped it right there, taking a big bite, without thought of the crumbs spraying down on my apron.

I gritted my teeth and tamped down another thunder growl.

“Best zucchini bread in St. Ailbe,” he mumbled with a full mouth.

“This is why you’ll make somebody a good wife someday. Doesn’t matter what those other folks say.”

I froze.

“You mean I’ll make you a good wife,” I said softly.

Reuben blinked. “What?”

“You said ‘somebody,’ and ‘someday,’ but you meant right after the Bridal Exchange she-wolves leave, right?”

He finished chewing and swallowed in a way that made me fear he was going to say something I wouldn’t like.

But then he grinned and agreed, “Ganaw. Nachurleek .”

Yes, of cours e.

His words should have made me happy, but my stomach remained tight as he hiked up my skirt and settled between my thighs.

And as I stared at the wooden ceiling above us, a single thought wormed its way into my mind.

Is this really what love is supposed to feel like?

“Un-un-unnnhhh!” Reuben abruptly stopped squirming on top of me and spilled his seed with a shudder.

“That was great,” he panted.

Then he kissed my shoulder.

Not my lips. He never kissed me on the lips.

Is this really what love is supposed to feel like?

The bad, doubtful thought echoed even louder.

“I’ve got an idea,” I said when he lifted up from on top of me.

I made my tone a little bit more chipper to suggest, “Maybe we could meet up again tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday.” He frowned down at me and pulled up his suspenders.

“My parents will be home after church. They’ll smell you on me.”

“Not if we just eat and talk,” I pointed out, pushing the skirt of my plain blue dress down.

“We could have a picnic. Out by the lake, where no one will see us.”

“Just eat and talk,” he repeated with the same expression he’d used on the stick.

“ Ach ja , Sadie, I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?” Sitting on the barn’s cold, hard floor, I couldn’t quite tamp down my annoyance.

“What about my suggestion that we actually spend time together eating and talking feels like such a terrible idea to y?—?”

“Reuben? Reuben, where are you?” someone called from beyond the barn doors, cutting off my question.

“Amanda Smucker said she saw you come in here.”

It sounded and faintly smelled like Marta Weitzwulf, the building steward’s nineteen-year-old daughter.

Reuben’s face fell. “Oh no! Get up! Get up! We’ve got to get you out of here before she finds us.”

The panic in his eyes made me grab the stick he’d tossed aside and scramble to my feet to make a quick dash towards the barn’s back doors.

This wasn’t how I wanted people to find out about our secret relationship, either.

But I didn’t move quickly enough.

“Reuben!” The barn’s front door opened to reveal a shocked Marta.

She took in the scene, her mouth gaping open—until she snapped it shut to demand, “What are you doing in here? With Stinky Sadie Schaduw?”

Ouch.

I hadn’t been called that nickname to my face in years, but it still hurt like it did when I was a teenager.

“Marta, listen to me. You can’t tell anybody about—” I started to plead nonetheless.

Reuben moved in front of me to block her from my view before I could finish—well, partially.

I was a few inches taller than him, so I could still see Marta’s angry expression over the top of his head as he told her, “It’s nothing, I swear.”

“Like when you swore to my father that you wanted to court and marry me?” Marta’s voice shook with fury.

“And convinced him to forbid me from signing up for the Bridal Exchange?”

What?

! My entire body trembled with a new fear beyond being found out by the rest of the village before Reuben was ready.

“Reuben? What is she talking about?”

“I was just practicing,” he blurted to Marta without so much as a glance back at me.

“I knew we’d be getting married soon, and I didn’t want to be bad at it on our wedding night. That’s why I practiced with Sadie. To be ready. For you, Schatz . My real wife.”

Each word cut into me, gutting me like the boning knife my mother used to clean the insides of the fish I’d brought back from the river yesterday.

The world went fuzzy as the real story came together in my head.

Reuben had claimed to be secretly courting me.

But he’d asked Marta’s father to court her in real life.

He’d gone to her family.

Begged the building steward to make her stay.

He’d been practicing with me.

But planned to actually marry her.

Oh, mein Gott.

Somewhere in the distance, Reuben assured Marta in Wolfennite, “I would never choose Stinky Sadie Schaduw over you. I swear it on my soul. This was only for me to become a better husband to you.”

Suddenly, the river wasn’t outside the village but filling my ears in a rush of noise, shame, and regret.

How could I have been so gullible?

So stupid?

Without thinking, I ran.

And ran. Until my legs cramped.

And I still didn’t stop.

Not until I reached the two-bedroom cottage I shared with my mother and ripped open the door.

A shower. I needed to light our stove for a scalding-hot shower before my mother got home from the community meeting?—

“Sadie! Sadie Ellis!” My mother’s voicebroke through the icy rapids of shame and betrayal rushing through my head.

“What are you doing? Why do you smell like that?”

I froze.

And that’s when I realized two things with regrettable tardiness.

One: Of course my mother—who would not even let me go to the college in the neighboring city—would opt out of the community meeting with an international Bridal Exchange at the top of its agenda.

And two: After months of sneaking around with Reuben behind her back, there was now nothing I could do to keep the woman who stood at the counter in our small open kitchen from finding out that I’d broken the 3rd rule in the St. Ailbe Ordnung: Thou shalt not engage in marital relations outside of marriage.

But I reeked of the male who’d just shattered my only hope of being able to get married and raise a family in St. Ailbe.

Surrounded by the pungent plants and metal pots she used to make medicine bags, the person I was most scared of in this entire world stared at me with rage glittering in her eyes.