“The White Wolf was the greatest alpha ever to live. Not just up here in the mountains. In the mountains, on the plains, in the desert, and near the sea. He was the greatest alpha of any place and any time. His coat was pure white. Snow white. Whiter than white. His wolf was bigger than any wolf before him or ever since. He cared for his pack as if they were his children. Because of him, they flourished and grew strong. He protected them all the days of his life.” She paused dramatically. I knew that at this juncture, I could ask a question to prompt her, but I didn’t have to. She was committed. At that point in the story, she’d continue no matter what I said. “He was so powerful, he could reach into a man’s chest and pull his heart out, without dropping a claw.” Now that I didn’t believe. It impressed and terrified me as a child, but when I really thought about it, it didn’t seem remotely plausible. I must not have looked overly impressed, because she added something new to the story. A new little nugget. Something I’d never heard before. “He was so powerful he could force other wolves to shift. He could shift an entire pack with little more than a growl.”
“Is that true? How could that be true? How would that even work?”
“It’s magick, Sully. That’s how it works.”
“But, but . . . don’t we shift using the power of the moon and our own free will? Isn’t that how we do it?”
She smiled, winked, and tapped her finger to the side of her nose twice.
I knew I wouldn’t get another word out of her, and I was annoyed with myself. I’d fallen for her tall tales again. I was seventeen goddamned years old, and I was still falling hook, line, and sinker for her bullshit.
3
Itwasthelastweek of the summer vacation. I was at my wit’s end. On the one hand, I was hopeful that Jules would be back any day. On the other, I hadn’t had a postcard from him for a while and I knew in my gut if he didn’t get back before the start of the school term, I was going to have to face the fact that the Blaines had left the pack. It happened from time to time. Not just with Jules’s brothers. Sometimes whole families packed up and left with little or no notice. Usually, it was from what my mother called “a difference in opinion” between the family and Dalton. I wracked my brain trying to think if I’d noticed anything unusual between Dalton and the Blaines in the days and weeks before they left. I couldn’t think of a thing. The Blaines were both betas. They were as beta as beta could ever be. I couldn’t imagine a circumstance that would cause them to question Dalton, never mind disagree with him.
I considered trying to ask Dalton if he knew when Jules would be back again. The last time I asked, he’d shrugged and seemed a little annoyed by the question. I headed down the hill to the pack house but when I got there, I noticed that none of the omegas were on the grass under the cottonwood tree, and the double doors at the entrance were firmly shut. I decided it was best to leave it be.
By the end of the day, I was sitting on our porch, staring aimlessly up at the jagged blue outline of the mountain behind Mrs. O’Malley’s when she peeked her head out of her door.
“Yoooo, boy,” she called across the way. “Look alive. The wind’s about to change.”
I leaped to my feet and leaned over the balustrade, peering up and down the hill to see if she was right. Sure enough, I saw it. It was so far in the distance, it looked like little more than a rusty red dot, but I saw a vehicle approaching.
“Jules is baaaaack!” I yelled to no one in particular.
People started making their way out of their houses. We all gathered outside the Blaines’ place. Even Dalton and the omegas left their posts to form part of the welcome committee. When the van pulled up, we surrounded it, all of us scrambling to get our hands on the Blaines. I pushed through the crowd and got to Jules first. I almost knocked him clean over. He nearly went down but recovered his balance quickly. He threw his arms around me, and I lifted his feet off the ground and swung him around, making a high-pitched sound that embarrassed me when I thought of it later.
Jules’s eyes were on stalks when I set him down. “Holy shit,” he said, reaching up and ruffling my hair. “What’s the weather like up there, big boy?”
The pack helped the Blaines get their things out of the minivan and into their house. Jules’s parents pulled out bottles of booze and trays of peaches and the like and handed them out to Dalton and The Brothers and then to the rest of the pack.
“It’s all from Auggie,” they said over and over. “He sends his best.”
Dalton twisted open his bottle and took a big swig. One or two of the Brothers tilted their heads back and let out long, exaggerated howls. Dalton took Jules’s dad, Teddy, under his wing and raised his bottle to the pack. “To the return of the Blaines!”
“To the Blaines,” we all chorused back.
“Come on, everyone to the packhouse. We’re going to celebrate like it’s our last night tonight.”
My chest felt full and tight. Everyone was happy. Dalton, my parents, Jules’s family—all happy. The whole pack was together again. Everything was right with the world.
The food was always amazing at the pack house and that night was no exception. I was stuffed by the end of the meal. Everyone was trying to get a piece of the Blaines and I spent most of the time tagging along behind Jules, trying to piece together bits of what he was telling everyone about his vacation. The adults were becoming rowdy, and it wasn’t long before Dalton came over to us and said, “Why don’t you boys head into town for a spell? See if you can get yourselves into some trouble.”
He pulled out a twenty and handed it to Jules. We knew it meant the pack was going to shift, and Dalton wanted us to make ourselves scarce. Usually, it bummed us out in a big way that we were excluded from that side of pack life. We knew we’d get to participate once we shifted, and we’d been told a hundred times that the mystery would make it a million times sweeter, but still, it was upsetting. That night we didn’t mind. Neither of us did. We walked down the narrow foot path, passed the wild jasmine hedge, and headed to the creek, where we sat on the grass under the willow tree. Jules kept looking up at me, smiling and shaking his head now and again.
“What?” I said.
“You must have spent the whole damn summer outdoors.”
“Huh?”
He nudged me with his shoulder. “You know what happens when wolves play outside.”
I rolled my eyes at him, but my shoulders started shaking. I was laughing. For the first time in months, I was really laughing. It wasn’t even as if it had been a good joke. It was just that Jules was the one who’d made it.
“Tell me everything,” I said when I stopped laughing.
“It was a long drive. Like seriously long. We were on the road for days. On the way there, I started to wonder if it was going to be worth it. The van was packed and all three of us were crammed into it. My mom made us listen to ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)’ over and over andover. I nearly lost it. If you were there, Sully, you’d have lost it for sure.”
