“Wes?” I didn’t even turn to him as we climbed the second flight of stairs.
“Yeah?”
“What are your experiences like with you telling people about your wolf?” Ingrid’s reaction still haunted me.
He laughed, the sound short. “Honestly? I don’t tell anyone, so I have no experiences. Or all my experiences are good. Depends which way you want to look at it.”
“You don’t tell anyone at all?”
“Well, shifters already sense each other, and humans have no clue, so I’ve really never found a human I trust that much. And why would they need to know, really?” He shrugged, and his tone held no real emotion one way or the other. He was simply matter-of-fact.
We reached the top of the stairs and I opened the door into the attic. Light filtered in through the small windows.
Wes shrugged again. “The way I see it is this: we’re shifters, sure, but that’sourbusiness. And I’m not about to go broadcasting the fact because why would I want to give people any reason to look at me differently or treat me any differently? If they like me as I am, great. But I don’t see the point in borrowing trouble or giving people an excuse to attack me or do anything else to me because they’re scared that I’m different. People don’t understand differences very easily, and it isn’t really my job to educate them or be their punching bag if they don’t want to learn.”
I nodded. That made sense. But the memory of just really wanting to share an element of myself with Ingrid teased at my mind. I’d wanted to be accepted by her for all that I was. I wasn’t sure I’d ever find the sort of acceptance I craved now, though. Probably Wes was right. It was far simpler to keep our secrets to ourselves.
I glanced around the attic space, looking for what had changed since I’d last been up here. There was a new box and a couple of new crates, so we’d need to start there. At least things didn’t look as bad as they had at Dad’s office. I’d had no idea he worked in such chaos.
“You know what, though?” Wes looked thoughtful. “And I don’t mean to harp on about it, but telling people about my wolf has never been hugely important. I mean, it might bother me more if I hadn’t grown up in a huge pack, but the Crescent Blue pack has a large presence on the west coast and in Seattle, so there were always plenty of people who knew exactly what I was without me having the additional worry of hiding or not hiding.”
Something inside me sighed. My wolf. I’d always been a little bit fascinated with packs. The sense of belonging appealed to me, but I also believed we didn’t need one. I’d been raised to believe that, after all.
Wes sat on one of the nearest boxes. “People understood me already — I never had anything to explain, and when I got the urge to travel and see a bit more of the world, I had the connections to make that happen. I started as an assistant to a grunge rock shifter.” He laughed at my raised eyebrow. “No, really.”
“So how did you get here? It’s not exactly the music biz.” I gestured vaguely around the attic, but really I meant Carwyn City and Gold Moon Inc. Everything Wes currently found himself part of.
Well, I understood Gold Moon. But what had he done to make his way to me?
He laughed. “It still kind of is music-based if you count your mom singing and dancing up a storm downstairs.”
I laughed, too. “Yeah,ifyou count that.”
“It was just a couple of moves, really. Everything is only a couple of degrees separation in life from everything else, don’t you think? So I moved on to working for a music producer who hooked me up with his accountant, and before I knew it, I’d moved to the east coast and Rosary hired me for you.” He stopped and looked at me. “We’ve never talked about any of this before?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think we’ve discussed much about our pasts. Do you regret leaving your pack?” I couldn’t help but be curious. Pack life was still such a mystery to me.
There was something almost like a fairy tale about the built-in family aspect of it all.
“Some days, I miss it,” he admitted. “But I know I can always go back if I want. Being part of a pack gives me both the freedom to travel and do what I want and the security that I can go home and be safe and accepted.”
I nodded. All of that made sense. But to ask him too many more questions about his pack seemed like a bit of an invasion into his privacy. After all, packs were family, and no one liked an inquisition about their family.
“We’ve never been in a pack,” I said. And that sounded strangely lonely. Like maybe that was a bigger admission over being a shifter.
He lifted an eyebrow. “You sure? Your mom definitely has.”
“Oh, yeah.” Sometimes I forgot that part. She rarely talked about them, and when she did, it was more with a sense of wistfulness and regret than anything else. “She never says much about her history there. I don’t know anything about them.”
He nodded. “Okay…but that smell thing she does? That’s sort of a pack gift, if you like — a sense of smell that acute. If she doesn’t like Parker, I’d listen.”
“Believe me, I plan to.” But I filed away what he’d reminded me about Mom having been part of a pack. Maybe that was something I could discuss with her at some point in the future.
“I don’t like Parker, either,” he said. “And I totally agree with her assessment.”
And Wes had also been in a pack, so that made sense. Still, we weren’t here to discuss Parker, and that I couldn’t let thoughts of that man waste our time.
“Where should we start?” I said instead.