Page 16 of Wolf Bane (Marked #3)
“Not the way you’re worried it is,” I said after a long moment.
“I know you remember how it was for me growing up. At least a lot of it. Cleverly…” My breath hitched.
Ever take a drink of iced tea on a hot day and accidentally swallow a chunk of ice?
That painful, frozen feeling while you gasp for air and think this is it, this is how I die until you can dislodge it, or it goes down to sit heavy and cold in your gut for a few minutes?
That’s what it felt like to say her name, to speak out loud about the woman who helped turn me into a lab animal for Bluebonnet. For Garrow.
I had my suspicions that she turned my parents over to them, too, despite what I’d been told over the years about how they abandoned me.
First my father, chasing a high that could never be high enough while throwing money at games, sure things, and good odds.
Then my mother, allegedly too distraught, too depressed, then too sick to care for a toddler.
Cue Aunt Cleverly, stepping in like the superhero she was lauded to be by the community, by her church friends, even by strangers who heard our little story.
All the while, shuffling me to one appointment after another, trying to make sure my asthma, my allergies, my ADHD, all of it was taken care of and managed so I could have the best life possible.
Appointments masking what was really going on. Letting my little body get altered, mutated, used to prove some theory.
Cleverly Babin getting paid to let Garrow and his team play Build a Were with not just me, but dozens of children.
“Hey.” Ethan’s sudden touch on my hand, his low, quiet voice, made me jerk back.
“Sorry,” he soothed, stroking my wrist, down to my fingers, and back again.
“I haven’t forgotten how you came back to Belmarais.
Or… or into my life,” he added, almost shyly.
“For the past week or so, the idea that you might feel I’m using you, or treating you like garbage because I’m working with the ICW now, it’s been gnawing at me.
And I guess it was just easier to be snappish and push away than ask you flat out…
Landry, am I making you unhappy? Is our relationship not good? ”
I gnawed my lower lip for a moment, reluctant to say the words that were bubbling in my throat. Finally, I just melted into it, sighing them out. “If I said I was unhappy, what would that mean for us?”
“Would you expect me to quit this job now?”
“No.” Of that, I was certain. “I don’t know what I’d want.
But… Ethan, I am unhappy.” God, it felt good and terrible to admit that.
“But it’s not unfixable. And I think… I know…
it’s on me. It’s on me, okay? I keep trying to live like nothing’s changed.
I want to live like nothing’s changed. But my entire world got turned inside out and upside down not that long ago and I’m holding on by my fingertips here, trying to claw back the way things used to be. ”
Ethan’s grasp on my wrist tightened, an affectionate and loving squeeze, before he let go and slipped his fingers down to mine, meshing us together in an uncomfortable sort of tangle against the mattress I wouldn’t have broken for all the money in the world.
“When I decided to go into law enforcement,” he began carefully, weighing each word, “it was because I wanted to help people. Especially people here, in Belmarais. Most especially, well, weres. And I was young and dumb and had an idealized vision of what it meant to go into that role and what it would look like for me and for everyone around me. That got ripped away pretty fast. The only reason I stayed as long as I did was because I didn’t know there’d be another option, another way to help weres and shifters.
To make us safe without resorting to that job.
The council isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but Landry…
” His gaze was a mix of helplessness and excitement when he turned it on me, and I could only nod in return.
I may not understand it entirely, but I couldn’t deny that Ethan had been moving with more pride, more certainty lately.
That he’d been energized in a way I hadn’t seen since before I left for university over a decade before.
And I had to trust him. Trust that he wouldn’t do anything that would hurt me. Hurt us .
“I want to talk to you about what I’ve found. About what I’ve been told,” I added in cautious tones, not sure if Ethan’s pride in his new position extended to ratting out Cullen.
“Landry—”
“I’m not asking you to give me information,” I rushed to add. “I just… I rely on your feedback, you know? And I can’t ask you to get yourself in trouble?—”
“You kind of did the other day,” he muttered. “But sure.”
“Fuck.” I flopped back on the bed, still gripping his fingers. “I need to know right now, Ethan, if I keep digging into this, what are you going to do?”
He pulled his hand away, getting to his feet to start pacing. “What do you mean? Are you asking if I’ll, what, turn you in or something? If there’s some sort of werewolf jail for people who get nosy? What the fuck, Landry?”
“Whoa. That response isn’t proportional to what I’m asking,” I shot back, popping to my feet to block his progress back and forth across the room.
“I just want to know if you’re going to try and keep me from doing it, or I don’t know, get mad at me or something!
” Jabbing his chest, I added, “Not everything I ask is a jibe about your job, or some backhanded commentary on ICW, okay?”
He shook his head, the tiniest flicker of a smile tugging at one corner of his lips. “Not everything, huh? Just some things?”
“Ass.” But the word lacked heat. “I’m exhausted, okay? And you’re dragging ass too. Can we just… table this fight till the morning?”
He hesitated, then nodded, letting me tug him back towards our bed. “I promised Tyler I’d go to a clan meeting tomorrow morning. Well. This morning, I guess. Some bullshit about property rights between a divorced pair of weres.” He yawned. “Fucking hell.”
He toed off his socks and curled up behind me. “Big spoon,” he muttered when I tried to turn towards him. “Let me, huh? I’ve missed this. Missed you .”
Tears stung the back of my closed eyelids, and I felt his breath hitch in his chest against my back. “I missed you too.”
* * *
When I woke up, the house smelled of coffee and toast and clean laundry. I knew Ethan was already gone for the day before finding his note, stuck to the top of the coffee pot.
Love you. Be home by 4.
Grinning like a teenager with a crush, I stuck the note to the fridge next to another one he’d written me over the summer, a silly line drawing of a cartoonish werewolf and a human wearing a lab coat with a heart around them both.
Our fight (well, not really a fight, but our whatever that was) the night before had been uncomfortable and nowhere near done, but it felt so much lighter afterwards, waking up knowing Ethan was home for now and that we’d at least made a bit of headway in this barrier that’d sprung up between us.
I grabbed a cup of coffee from the still-warm pot and popped some bread into the toaster.
I was just contemplating eggs when my phone shrilled with Waltrip’s ringtone.
“You busy?” he said as soon as I hit accept .
“Does no one ever say hello anymore? You’re the second person in a day who just started talking when I answered.”
“Hello, Landry. How lovely to hear the melodious sounds of your mellifluous voice once more. Now, my day can truly begin.”
“Fuck you. I take it you got my message?” My toast popped up, so I switched to speaker phone so I could grab a plate and the jar of peanut butter.
Waltrip grunted agreement. “Yeah. What the hell is going on? Can you not seriously go a week without seeing my handsome face or something?”
“Sounds more like a Mal problem,” I teased. Mal had been making cow-eyes at Waltrip for a while now, but Waltrip hadn’t noticed.
I think.
Ethan seemed to think Waltrip was playing it cool, but I argued there’s a difference between hard to get and not interested .
Mal didn’t seem bothered, though. He kept cow-eyeing and Waltrip kept Waltripping.
“Anyway,” Waltrip grumbled. “I don’t know how much help I can be right now. I’m heading to Forth Worth for a client.”
Ooooh, maybe?
“Lobo Medical Research?” When he didn’t respond right away, I added, “I asked Tyler to look into something possibly related to Garrow, and I had a patient whisked off there yesterday.” I did a little happy hopeful dance as I slathered crunchy peanut butter on my toast. Maybe this week wouldn’t be such a slog? Not if Waltrip was already on it?
“Huh? No. Not everything in my line of work is about cloak and dagger mad scientist shit. Just your basic skip trace for a law firm. Tyler didn’t mention anything about a Lobo Medical Research when I spoke with him this morning.”
“He may not know what it’s called. He was following up on something through the ICW.”
Waltrip’s growl was low and a tiny bit scary. “Fucking ICW. Can’t get away from those assholes.”
“I talked to Tyler the other night about some of this and he was going to start doing some digging for me, but I was hoping?—”
“Can’t.”
“Uh. Okay?” I hesitated at that. “The thing is, it looks like someone might be screwing with some of the were populations and?—”
“Like how?”
“Like… maybe spreading an illness,” I said slowly, wincing. “I know. I know. It sounds weird, but I was looking into some stuff last night after I called and there might be a pattern here. ICW?—”
He swore, leaning on his horn before speaking again. “Look, I’ll do what I can when I can, but in the meantime, I’m stuck on this skip trace and then I have a court appearance on Tuesday, so it may not be any time soon.”
“Wait, you don’t even know what I’m asking,” I yelped, toast momentarily forgotten. “I didn’t say in the message, just that I had some questions that needed answering!”