No, I can do this. We’ve been divorced eight years, and I haven’t even once drunk dialed her or emailed her telling her she still haunts my dreams sometimes.
Eventually, I give up on trying to get work done and close the laptop. It’s dark, and Elise’s car is gone from the driveway, but the smell of her skin lingers in the house.
I head outside without even putting shoes on. In the woods, I discard my clothes and shift into my wolf form. I run so that I don’t have to think.
For a solid half of the month, between the last quarter moon and the first, my wolf has almost no power over me. But every night after the first quarter, as the moon waxes, its influence grows until I can’t contain it, and the transformation reaches its peak.
Between drinking aconite-infused liquor and exhausting myself, I usually can calm the fervor of it some.
Shifting has felt different lately. It’s more frantic, less controlled than it used to be. Probably why I got so worried when I thought the pack had started going feral. Maybe it’s just a part of getting older and I’ve been concerned over nothing.
It’s getting to be morning by the time my mind finally clears as my wolf recedes.
The sky is a moody teal, the moon a pale orange against it. The woods and the grassy hills are a near-black outline cutting through the sky, and the house nestles into all of it almost invisibly. Only the scattered rectangles of yellow light spilling out from the windows carve its presence in the hillside, and the brewery further down the hill. I get dressed in yesterday’s clothes when I find them, only partly damp from the morning dew.
It’s ass-crack of dawn early, but Logan’s already there when I slip through the back door, his keys and coat sitting on the counter nearby.
He’s in Dad’s old office when I find him, looking less haggard by tonight’s quarter moon than I feel. Then again, he probably spent the night locked in the cellar under the brewery.
The brewery has a cellar; yes, it is creepy. I didn’t go down there often, even when I did live here. It’s the safest option, those rooms being specifically built to contain us at our worst.
Logan glances up at me, frowning instinctually the moment he sees me standing in his doorway. His long, dark hair is reminiscent of our mother’s, especially with the cold, detached air he holds himself with. If he has an issue with me running the hills instead of staying locked in all night, he doesn’t say anything about it off the bat.
We haven’t taken the time to catch up since I showed up, and by the less than enthusiastic looks he’s been giving me, I don’t really think he wants to. He’s always taken our parents’ side on the whole marrying a human thing.
I’ll keep this brief, then.
“I’m running out of aconite buds,” I tell him instead of a greeting.
“You should have stocked up before you came here,” he sighs, nonetheless pushing back from Dad’s big desk. Logan’s things are lined across the top, including a number of wedding well-wishes cards, likely from other wolf families our parents used to attend church with.
The family photos where he and I were barely more than toddlers sitting on our parents’ laps, the ones that used to siton Dad’s desk, are up on the fireplace mantle facing across from him, alongside an urn.
Can’t say I’m too bothered by our dad not being here. I finished mourning whatever respect I had for him a long time ago. What did it matter that he was actually dead now?
I scoop up a ratty, old baseball cap sitting beside it, the one he wore whenever he went outside, alongside a thick smear of sunscreen on his nose. The hat smells more of dust than sweat and grass now. I turn it inside out and hang it on the urn’s lid, just because I know it would irritate him if his ghost is watching from heaven. I don’t think he deserved to get in, but I’m sure he could have blustered his way in there.
I turn my attention back to Logan as he pushes a framed photo of the brewery some forty years ago on its hinge to reveal one of those little wall safes. His code’s changed since I last was here, I note as he punches it in.
“I did,” I insist. “I’ve just been running through my supply faster than I thought I would.”
My little trick with them hasn’t been working so well these last couple nights. Maybe it’s the stress of all the recent drama with my family and Elise that has my wolf riled up and restless. It’s only going to get worse the closer it gets to the full moon.
The safe beeps and he pulls a liquor bottle with a minimal label out. It’s sealed with dark-red wax, the Aconite Ales brand stamped into the glass.
“Don’t drink it all at once.”
Dropping a couple petals into any wine is good for a quick fix, to calm the wolf and put it to sleep, but my dad’s side of the family has been brewing a much more potent cocktail forat least a century. While Aconite Ales brews plenty of blends of floral meads for human consumption, we’ve always had a special reserve for our extended family, and a few neighboring wolf packs.
“Y’know, I am careful about some things,” I reply, because I can’tnotrise to it. “Then again, maybe I wouldn’t have to be if you didn’t schedule your nuptials for the full moon. Hell of an idea.”
“It is traditional,” he says plainly, putting the bottle in my hand and turning away.
It would be, to allow for a proper mating. Werewolf society could be positively medieval with the way arrangements were made between different families. But I suppose the way werewolf weddings end, expecting the newlywed couple to run off into the woods together to mate as wolves, tie a different knot and mark each other with a bite, isn’t too different from tying a bunch of cans to the back of the car for a human couple leaving for their honeymoon.
“You should use the shower before Aiden wastes the rest of the hot water,” he says as he gets back to his desk, and that’s as close to a heartfelt sentiment as I’ll get out of him. “Some of your old clothes are down there too.”
Aw, he does care.
