Before I’ve finished it, I’ve shoved another piece in my mouth. It’s delicious. There are only two pieces left on my plate. I want an entire plate of this crispy meat.
I taste the fluffy bits. They’re good. Not as good as the bacon, the fruit sauce, but as nice as the fried bread. I’ve eaten bread. Bread was something I ran out of quickly when Uncle left me during that time of uncontrollable shifting.
The bread was raw then, dry and bland, not savory and textured like this.
I catch her smiling when I look up. She’s barely made a dent in her food, but I’m nearly done. I guess I was ravenous. And it’s delicious.
“What sand tastes this good?”
She frowns. “Sand?”
“That sand.” I rise and move to the counter and see the label. Oh. Brown sugar. “Never mind. Brown sugar. I thought it was sand you were cooking with the colorful bits of food.”
She giggles as she lifts the pot from the stove and pours water into two brown cups that have been around since, always, but that I’ve never used. If I’ve been thirsty as man, I’ve turned the water on and stuck my mouth under it.
She adds something from a small jar shaped like a bear with a spout on his head and brings the cups to the table.
“The tea just needs to steep a bit.”
“What did you put in it?” I ask.
“Honey.”
I take another bite of the eggs. She pours milk into each cup on top of the steaming water.
“Why is the jar shaped like a bear? Shouldn’t it be shaped like a bee?”
She laughs.
I like that sound.
I smile. Uncle used to drink the water with those little sacks in it. Tea. He drank a lot of it. He often put whisky into it, too.
“Bears like honey. There’s a brand with a honeybee on the jar, too.”
She eats another forkful of the fluffy food and then her face changes.
“So, you live alone and that’s why you stayed in wolf form?”
“Yes. My uncle died a few years ago. It was just us two since I was a baby. He told me he rescued me when the pack we were in went mutinous and killed my parents.”
She gasps. “That’s so horrible!”
“Riley Savage came today and said he’s in my blood family and that my mother isn’t dead. That Cornelius lied and stole me. That he was responsible for my father’s death.”
“Oh. Oh my God.”
I watch her use a spoon to squeeze the tea sacks against the side of each cup, before lifting them out and putting them on the side of her plate.
“Riley said I’m their top alpha, that I belong there,” I add.
Her mouth opens into an adorable o as she listens raptly to me.
“He could be lying. Uncle told me they’re liars.” I take another bite of egg bread.
“What does your instinct tell you?” she asks.
I stare.
“Listen to your instinct. It usually knows.”
A wolf’s instinct was all he had. It drove him to eat when hungry, to rest when weary. To protect himself from the elements, from enemies. As a wolf, I’d fought off a bear twice. I’d killed poisonous snakes three times, once to save the life of Cornelius who slept as an old wolf that would’ve perished several years before he did if not for that instinct I always lent to him. His wolf aged much faster than his man form did.
What if that instinct had failed me where he was concerned? What if all this time, he’d been the enemy?
What could he have gained from taking me from my family and living alone with me? Teaching me to be wolf, to be man? I couldn’t comprehend it.
Except… he regularly used my senses and some childhood memories were surfacing about things he gained from them on the errands we took. The money in the garage. The man he had me rip apart. How he couldn’t hunt well and continually found himself in peril where I’d get him out of it.
I didn’t want to think about it. Not now. I wanted to focus on her. On Ivy. My Ivy.
“Gonna help me with the dishes?” She stands. She’s only eaten half her food.
“You’re not done your food.”
“I’m done. Can’t eat another bite.” She puts her hand on her flat belly and inhales deep then blows out a long breath with force that makes her cheeks go fat for a moment.
“I’ll eat it,” I reach for her plate.
“Go for it,” she says and rises.
I watch her put away the dishes she’d already cleaned and then she begins to wash the pans. I finish everything but the tea and bring my empty plate to her as well as my knife and fork. She smiles and passes me a towel.
“Start dryin’.”
I dry the dishes carefully and put them away. When we’re done, she cleans all the countertops and scrubs the stovetop. She grabs our cups of milk and honey tea and takes them to the sitting area by the wood stove. She sets them down on the table and sits.