“I…what?”
“You didn’t know what you were saying?”
“Mal, I’ve never seen a bonding ceremony. When we were kids the adults in the pack were all happily single or already bonded.”
His chest rumbled. “Interesting.” Then he cocked his head toward the truck. “Stay put. We’re leaving.”
“Trevor?” She couldn’t hold in her grin. “He heard me.”
“And he wants to know if I might just happen to have the handfasting cord in one of my pockets. Fate, you know.”
Kelsey waved to her mate through the windshield. He looked absolutely ill and absolutely giddy. “Simmer down, wolf. We’re doing this right. I want to date you for a few seconds, and I want my new in-laws at the ceremony.”
Malachi rumbled a quiet laugh. “Ann would be crushed if she came home and found you two bonded.”
“Exactly. And we don’t crush Ann Sterling. It’s not done.” Kelsey made a shooing motion toward the truck. “Get yourself on home, Trevor. And get well.”
The fever broke early the next morning, and Trevor woke ravenous, hardly able to tolerate the hunger while Ezra fried up a big batch of eggs and bacon. From then on he was constantly famished, in a way he hadn’t been since he was a newly-changed pup. On top of that, the cracked rib was now the only source of pain in his body. Such relief was a shock he kept snagging on, going about his usual routine, brought up short when he noticed as if for the first time that his chest didn’t hurt. Had it been that bad? So bad he’d had to train himself to forget and ignore?
The weakness lasted three days, acute and humbling, forcing him to sit for a minute every time he crossed a room. He didn’t expect to see his mate again until he could drive to her, but for those three afternoons Sydney or Ember showed up at Maggie’s, and Kelsey came to Trevor’s place.
He managed to show her around, though the tour left him winded and rubber-limbed. He savored the admiring noises she made in every room. She ran her thumb along the carved edges of the kitchen table, the guestroom wardrobe. She turned a slow circle beneath the master bedroom’s skylights. She bounced up on her toes over the sage green walls of his kitchen.
“I love it all,” she said at last, and then she sat with him while he caught his breath.
By the time his strength returned, his folks were back in town and less than a week remained until the full moon. He’d extracted promises from Sydney and Ezra that he be allowed to tell Dad and Mom in his own time. They agreed, but they gave him a deadline. Two weeks. If he hadn’t come clean in two weeks, the promises were void.
So he had to tell them, though he’d rather go on with his life, his folks spared the knowledge. The fading should continue to recede, if Arlo knew his stuff. Dad and Mom didn’t really need to know about what was finally past. Except Ezra and Sydney weren’t having it. So he had to tell them. And he would. Within the next two weeks.
The days approaching the full moon were both strange and good. He kept up with his contracting jobs, got a brand new referral from a human in town, and spent every non-working hour at Maggie’s house…dating Kelsey.
They baked cookies and allowed Maggie to mix the dough at her insistence, though Kelsey had to slide the cookie sheets into and out of the oven. (Trevor’s only role in the task was to eat the finished product.) They played countless rounds of Jenga and old-fashioned board games from Maggie’s collection, including days-long games of Risk that reminded him how Kelsey could be competitive as a Sterling when she felt like it.
The pack had sent a new care package, though Maggie’s freezer still contained a few servings of something or other from the first one. One night he helped Kelsey prepare a pot roast with the replenished supply of venison, as well as fresh market veggies included by Ember.
“What’s with Malachi and fresh meat?” she said while salting and peppering said meat.
“Oh, he’s our butcher.”
Kelsey blinked, and her hand went still around the pepper shaker. “Your butcher?”
He chuckled at her scandalized expression. “Yeah, you know, like the vocation. Not like a serial killer.”
“So he…sells fresh meat? That’s his vocation?”
“Yep. He hunts wild game, butchers it, dresses the meat, adheres to all the food safety stuff. Half the town buys Malachi’s meat, and all the pack too.”
Kelsey added potatoes and carrots to the crock pot, her mouth turned down in thought. “He wouldn’t need a bow or a gun. Just hunt and kill…with his hands.”
“Ezra went hunting with him once, Kels. He told me about it. Mal’s kills are clean, instant. The animals never know he’s there. His method’s kinder than an arrow or a bullet.”
“None of which surprises me,” she said. “And I do remember most processed food tastes awful to wolves, especially processed meat. I just never thought about it, where all this good clean stuff in butcher paper comes from. Huh. Malachi Fuller, the butcher of Harmony Ridge.”
“Well, that sounds like the title of a horror movie. He’d growl at it.” Trevor grinned. “I told him he had the best name for his trade. Malachi’s Meats Leave You Fuller.”
Kelsey bent away from the counter as her laughter filled the kitchen. “That’s so terrible.”
“He thought so too.”
