“Do what?”
He must have been distracted and looked away while Keith had shifted. “Never mind.” He shook his head. “Should we head back home? You’re probably thirsty from all the running around.”
They had gone for a run through Purple Sky together, but Keith had taken twice the number of steps as he had because he constantly bounded off and back, sniffing trees, bushes, and anything else he could find. The man overflowed with energy. He teased Keith about not making sense, and it was true, but as the days and weeks passed, he realized that some of his own confusion was due to all that energy. Keith buzzed with it and it kept him in constant motion, body and mind. Everything about him moved so quickly that it was hard to keep up. Keith had turned his orderly, predictable, calm life upside down, and Brian loved it. He was drawn to that whirlwind energy, drawn to Keith, like a moth to a flame.
“I’m good with whatever.” Keith shrugged. “If you’re thirsty, I can get you water.”
Brian furrowed his brow. “Where?”
Keith rose to his feet and took a deep breath. “This way.” Back in his wolf form, he darted to the left and ran.
Brian shifted and followed him, eventually catching up to find Keith under a willow tree, kneeling in a pile of tall weeds, one hand pressed to the ground.
“This was once a creek bed,” he said. “It’s been dry for a while but deep underground, the river still feeds it. I’ll dig a few feet and there’ll be enough to drink.”
Before Brian could process what he had said, let alone formulate a question, Keith was in his wolf form, front legs moving at lightning speed, kicking up a mound of soil. “What are you doing?” Brian asked. Avoiding the flying dirt, he walked around to Keith’s face. “Keith?” He glanced at the pile of soil and then back to Keith to find him in human form again kneeling on the ground.
“Give it a minute to run clear and it’ll be safe to drink.”
“What?” He followed Keith’s gaze to the hole in the ground and leaned over to see water seeping into it. “How did you do that?”
“I told you, water from the river runs through here.” He patted the tree trunk beside him. “That’s what feeds the tree roots. I just needed to dig deep enough to access it.” Turning his head from left to right, Keith frowned. “Not that there are all that many trees. The elevation doesn’t let much of it flow this way.”
Sure enough, the hole was slowly filling with fresh water. “How did you know that? And how did you learn to do this?”
“After the person I weirdly thought was my mate blew up the Golden Valley house and killed almost the entire Alpha family, I kind of lost it a little and spent some time camping.”
“Camping?”
“Yeah. I mean, I didn't have a tent or supplies, but I was living in the woods and on unoccupied land so I think that still counts as camping. And when there wasn’t water nearby, I listened for it and dug for it. Didn’t take me long to figure out how to find it based on the plant life. I picked up all sorts of skills.” Keith grinned.
Brian’s heart ached at how much his mate had suffered, but he kept his expression as neutral as possible so Keith wouldn’t think he pitied him. “How long did you do that?”
“Hmm.” He pursed his lips and looked up, his expression considering. “Seven, maybe eight years.”
“Eight years?” Brian shouted, too shocked to rein in his horror. “You lived alone, without a pack for eight years?” He would have given anything to have found Keith sooner, to have been able to save him before he had suffered.
“Well, I went to Green Field here and there to check in with people, but mostly, yeah.” He nodded. “Oh, and I saw Morgan Peters and some of the folks from Golden Valley several times a year.”
“You lived in Golden Valley?”
“No. I went there for the challenges. Remember we talked about that when Morgan was here? But then I fucked up in that last challenge with Morgan so I went back to Green Field figuring I may as well end where I started. The whole full circle thing, you know? I was being poetic to make up for not having made it long enough to join the twenty-seven club.”
“The twenty-seven club?” His brain was doing the slow processing thing again. Or more accurately, Keith was flitting from one topic to another so rapidly that he was struggling to keep up. Again. At least he wasn’t bored. That wasn’t possible with this man around. Needing to be closer, he reached down and brushed his hand over Keith’s hair.
“How is it I’ve lived my entire adult life in near isolation, and I know more pop-culture references than you?” Keith tipped his head back, kissed the underside of Brian’s wrist, and then rose and squinted in the direction of his birth pack. “Is the river part of Purple Sky’s territory? Because we could probably put in place a canal system to override the elevation issue. If you nurture the soil, the plants will thrive. There’d be a ton of growth.”
Brian blinked at him, his mind moving from confusion about some of what Keith said and horror at what he’d endured to awe that he had so easily come up with the idea it had taken Brian months to consider. “No, unfortunately the river is at the border of our pack but not part of our territory.” Months and a conversation with the always wise and spiritually gifted Jobe Root. “Did you say youlistenedfor the water that’s underground?” He hadn’t noticed it before because Jobe was calm and even-keeled, which was the polar opposite of Keith’s loud storm of a personality, but he now realized that, in some ways, Keith was very much like his childhood friend and birth pack’s Alpha, often talking in puzzles, sensing things that weren’t apparent to anyone else, he was even a similar size to Jobe in wolf form.
“Yeah.” Keith nodded. “The river’s not part of Green Field either. We can figure out who owns it and buy it from them.”
“How can you hear water that’s not running and is beneath us?” he asked as he cupped Keith’s cheek.
“Umm.” Keith furrowed his brow in concentration. “I’m not sure how to explain it. If it’s moving, I can hear it with my ears, but when it’s not, I use my other senses.”
The only other person Brian had heard talk that way was Jobe Root. Brian had never truly understood that part of his friend, though he’d never tried. But when it came to Keith, he wanted to know more. “What other senses? You can’t see it or hear it or smell it or… What do you mean?” He traced his fingertips across Keith’s jaw.
“Sometimes I can smell it, but you’re right, if it’s really deep, I can’t.” Keith bit his lip and squinted. “You know how you can feel Mother Nature’s power seeping into you, through you, and then you put it out into the world? It’s like that.” He looked at Brian expectantly.
