So, we sat and ate. I was oddly hungry, but the peaceful quiet had taken on a kind of eerie quality now. Jack watched my eyes search the bower, cataloguing every change he and Hawk had made, and then finally, he put his food aside with a sigh.
“Women, you’re as curious as cats.”
“This comes from your extensive experience?” I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth, too similar to the stupid shit the guys back at the mess shed were saying. His reaction was interesting. Rather than hardening, his eyes went soft and unfocused. He nodded and reached around, pulling out a primitive-looking spade that looked like it’d been carved from a piece of wood. He tested the ground in the centre with the point, until he found what he wanted.
I watched the muscles shift under his flannel shirt, then he threw the spade to one side once he hit what he was after. He scraped the dirt away from a metal box with his hands and then pulled it free. He tried the lid, and when it didn’t come away, he pulled a pocket knife out and used the blade to prise it open. He laid the lid, scarred by rust and covered in dirt on the ground and then reached in.
The stuff that had hung from the nails had been collected and stored here. Ripped pieces of paper and photographs, torn fabric and crushed dried flowers. He placed it all on the dirt, like some kind of offering before looking up at me.
“If you’re serious, if you really do want us like you say you do, you need to know. This place, Hawk and I built it when we first started having feelings for each other. We used to come out in the forest and fuck. Our mums knew what we were up to, a lot of young blokes go through a bit of a phase when they’re teens, working out what you can do with your dick other than piss. Everyone turns a blind eye to it, boys will be boys and all that, and what with so few girls, no one says anything. We can’t get pregnant, so there’s no lasting damage, right?”
He set the box down, brushing the dirt from his hands.
“Mum noticed first that things were moving beyond just youthful exploration. We were with each other every second of the day. Initially, it was because we were good mates, and he had a mouth like a silken glove. We couldn’t get enough of each other, but people, they don’t tend to fuck the same person over and over without developing something, not unless they put a whole lot of mental effort into it.” He sighed, patting his pockets for a cigarette before realising he’d left them in the car. “Started to be that I wanted to see that smile of his. Y’know, that almost shy one? Like he knows what he fucking does to you, but can’t bring himself to rub your face in it. Like he was just... happy you knew he was there. I wanted to talk to him about Mum and her fucking matchmaking. I wanted to talk to him about the things I saw, the bullshit the matriarchs were pulling. I wanted him to hold me when the arguing with Uncle Max started. No, I just wanted him to hold me, hold everything I was in those beautiful fucking hands of his and keep me there forever.”
He reached down and picked up a torn p
hoto. It was creased and yellowed now, but I could see fragments of a very young Hawk and Jack. He tossed it back in the tin. “This place, we made it like a fucking shrine. I took photos of him after we’d been fucking in the dirt and then pinned them up here. I wrote him letters and poems.” More pieces of paper were tossed back in. “I’m pretty sure there was a fucking ode to his cock. I kept the first flower he gave me, and the second, and he did the same for me. We created this.... whole other world here, away from Sanctuary and Mum and the matriarchs and the whole fucking thing, and for a while, it was the most beautiful thing in my life.”
He picked up a small well-thumbed piece of paper that had been folded many times. When he slowly, painfully opened it up, I could see many stick figures with speech bubbles there.
“This is Hawk. At his core, this is him. This was his dream, what he thought he’d have by now. A mate.” His finger brushed over a primitively drawn woman with the kind of outrageous curves teenage boys think are the height of sexiness. “A pack.” The childish drawings showed a muscular Jack with stiff blond hair and Hawk, holding the woman within their arms. “And a child, or probably a whole pack of them. He comes from a big brood, his brothers all have big families.”
He passed the drawing to me. “Jules, if you don’t want this, if you don’t want Hawk’s arms around you as you grow big with our child, if you don’t want him to build you something like this, if you can’t protect him when he does, then for fuck’s sake, let him go. I’ll bond him, no matter what. You’ve helped me see what I’ve been doing, and I’m not proud of it. He does deserve that, from anyone who’s with him.”
“What happened here?” I said, my voice barely more audible than the breeze.
“Nothing as sinister as you’re thinking,” he replied. “They just tore it down. They strode in here and ripped it all to pieces and laughed as they did it. I found them at it, launched myself at them like a savage animal.” He laughed at that, but there was no humour in it. “I was a savage animal. It was my first shift into Tirian form, but it didn’t matter. The boys, they were bigger and older and more experienced. Had me on my arse in a second, Sonny’s teeth around my throat.” He looked up at me, and it was then I saw how close his beast was to the surface. Even in the murk of the forest, his eyes glowed like bright beacons. “It was then I knew that I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t protect him. I loved him, but I couldn’t take the target from his back. They beat me to a fucking pulp, then and afterwards, for daring to make something like this. It wasn’t hard, anonymous fucking in the heat sheds. I raised him up in my heart beyond anything any woman could compete with. He was the fucking sun, and I just wanted to orbit around him.”
He leant over and picked up every piece, placing it back in the box, only pausing when a brittle dried flower began to crumble in his hand.
“I thought if I drew the heat, they’d just lash out at me. I was plenty cunty already, growing up with Kelly as my mum, but I refined that shit to an art form. Didn’t work. They beat me, beat Hawk, held me down and made me watch as they rearranged his face. We had stepped outside the norm of Sanctuary, where no one was going to save us, and so mob rule applied. It took me a bloody long time to talk to Mum about it. I was getting desperate. Animals, they need to be held in check by something. Pack rules, stronger opponents, something, and there was nothing. We lived in the big alpha residence, and Mum was the daughter of the alpha. Someone had to intervene. It ended up being what brought on the challenge that put Mum in power. Nan was going to step in and do something, and Mum wouldn’t have it. No son of hers was going to set up his own pack.”
He placed the box back into the hole and pushed the dirt over it, patting it down.
“Mum won, we were to be split and put in the next petition for mates. I left the house that day, got a place in the singles accommodation and asked to be placed with some of the bigger guys. When I started my first job, I got into a fight with the biggest bloke there and made sure to put him down. If this place is to be run on dominance, I was gonna show it. It broke Hawk’s mum’s heart when he left, but he came to my place and lived in my room, getting a job in fencing, same as me. I made friends—allies really—like Shaun, and collected them, keeping them around Hawk.”
He rubbed at his face, the dirt smearing across his skin.
“He’s not a kid, he’s a fucking hard man. He’s had to be. If you see him fight, he’s like some kind of swordmaster of old. Pure grace and deadly efficiency. But even the toughest bloke is vulnerable, and I’ve sworn never to let him be in that position again. I like you, Jules. If it was just me, I’d let this go and see how things develop. You’re hot, you don’t get caught up in the bullshit here, and you seem calm headed enough to rein me back. Just what Nan always wanted for me. But I can’t, I hope you see that. It’s too early, you and I have barely spoken a word to each other, but if he’s gonna stay, if we’re gonna stay, I need to know. Will you give everything you’ve got to protect him, keep him from this shit, keep him from the cunts who see something beautiful and just want to break it?”
“Yes.”
The word was out of my mouth before I’d even thought about it. He’s right, this was stupid, and we did barely know each other. But for some reason, that didn’t matter. I jerked down the neckline of my shirt until he could see my sternum, see the glow there, and I knew if I pushed his shirt from his shoulders, I’d see an answering light.
There is strength in your number. Together you are enough.
I heard the Great Wolf’s words, and I knew he did too. He frowned at me, looking fucking destroyed. I moved to him, kneeling at his feet and wrapping my arms around him. He slipped free of it, clawing at my clothes, yanking me until I was hard against his body.
“You are pack, Jack. You and Hawk. We have all the time in the world to see where we want to take things, but even if that doesn’t work out, you are pack.”
I could hear the twitter of birds and the hush of rustling leaves, the crackles of animals moving through the undergrowth and the rattle of his breath, a harsh wind in my ears.
“Fucking hell, Jules...”
We stayed like that for some time, and only broke apart when Buddy bounced up and shoved his muzzle between us, wanting to be the meat in the sandwich. We laughed and I saw the suspicious shine in Jack’s eyes before he busied himself packing up the basket. He looked at me when we were ready to go, just seeing me for a moment, before he took my hand and lead me out.
The world looked weird when we emerged, the space Hawk and Jack created had a power to it I’m not sure they sensed. Prosaic things like unlocking car doors and putting on seat belts seemed endlessly fascinating.