Chapter 45

"Ethan called," my stepmother Cricket informed me, passing the news (and the mashed potatoes) down the long table that was loaded with food and lined with shifters.

Over the last half hour, the dining hall had filled with excited chattering and laughter as we settled into a weekly community dinner. In fact, the number of bodies present barely fit within the largest room of the dairy-barn-turned-bachelor-quarters that the yahoos had taken over after moving into Haven, clear proof of the event's success.

I was proud of the sight since this was exactly the type of scene I'd hoped for when I'd first begun merging our two disparate clans together. But we'd achieved our goal in a different way than I'd originally imagined.

Since my father had ruled Haven with an iron fist, I'd initially thought it would be necessary to do the same in order to bring my unruly relatives around to my point of view. To that end, I'd considered making community dinners a mandatory part of pack life. But Wolfie—older and wiser in the ways of pack leadership—had talked me out of the decree.

Instead, we'd turned the yahoos loose on the project, and they'd risen to the occasion with their usual vim and vigor. Under Fen's capable leadership, the young adults had quickly made their weekly dinners so delicious that even my most hidebound relatives began trickling in to join us after a week or two. Nowadays, nearly everyone attended voluntarily, and young-adult shifters who had grown up in Haven had even begun moving into the spare rooms being built out of what had once been animal stalls around back. The Barn, as the building had been dubbed, had become Haven's entertainment central for young and old alike.

Not that there weren't flareups between the two packs, of course. Which is why it took me so long to parse Cricket's words. I'd been monitoring the attendees, hoping that the dissension I sensed at one end of the long table wouldn't escalate into outright violence. Yes, I was micromanaging to some extent. But wouldn't we all be happier if none of my cousins got into a knock-down, drag-out fight with the yahoos like they did last week? Wouldn't it be better to nip any issues in the bud before a minor disagreement turned into a brawl?

"Your brother," Cricket elaborated, reaching over to place her cool hand over mine and bringing my attention back to the shifter beside me. "School's out for the summer, and Ethan wants to go to Australia with a friend instead of coming home. What do you think?"

It felt strange for the woman who had mothered me during most of my childhood ask for my opinion about her own son. But I knew what Cricket was really asking. Was it safe for Ethan—who was only three-quarters werewolf by blood and who had never developed the ability to shift into lupine form—to return home to Haven at last? Was our merged clan stable enough now to protect a pack mate who my less kind relatives had dubbed "meat" and who my father had sent away to boarding school for his own protection?

Yes. Yes, we were. If there was any point to this slow-but-sure campaign to pull my relatives into the twenty-first century, it was to ensure that unconventional pack members like Ethan could consider our village the Haven it was meant to be. Together, Wolfie and I would help my brother fit in as well here as he did in the human world and we'd keep him safe from any unruly shifters who got their tails in a twist over his heritage.

So, I answered both Cricket's spoken and unspoken questions at the same time. "Ethan should definitely come home for the summer," I said reassuringly. "When were you thinking of going to pick him up?"

"I wasn't," my stepmother replied, neatly turning the tables on me. "Actually, I thought you might do the honors."

Now my attention was finally dragged fully away from Glen, who I was pretty sure was pouring gravy into the pocket of the next shifter down the line. "Me?" I backpedaled. "No, I don't think that's a good idea. If you don't want to go, we could send Tia or some of the yahoos...."

Actually, I was just being polite with my evasions. In reality, Cricket's suggested course of action was a very, very bad idea. What I really wanted to say was: "No way am I going to pick up that ornery little brat."

The trouble was that, during our shared childhood, Ethan had been Haven's heir apparent and my father's beloved right-hand boy. He was the most spoiled four-year-old I'd seen either before or since, and I'd royally detested the kid who held all of the power I craved within his sticky little fists.

Which is why I hadn't inquired too deeply into my brother's well-being after Cricket informed me that Ethan was happy at boarding school and wanted to stay on. The truth was, I was willing to do whatever it took to make my only remaining sibling happy...but I had hoped to do so from a healthy distance.

No, I didn't want to spend five hours in the car with someone who I'd never met in my adult life. And who I didn't particularly want to meet again either.

"Yes, you," Cricket said firmly, ignoring my trepidation. My stepmother was such a quiet shifter that it wasn't until these infrequent flare-ups that you remembered her backbone was made of steel. (Metaphorically only—or at least, so I assumed.) "It's high time you and your brother got to know one another as adults."

"He's not an adult," I mumbled under my breath. Although, now that I did the math, I guessed my sibling had attained his majority in werewolf parlance during the preceding winter. At a baker's dozen years younger than me, Ethan would now be fifteen, the same age as Keith and past the time of his first shift (if he'd been able to change shapes, that is). For the sake of comparison, my brother-in-law Dale had recently let his son move into the Barn for the summer, and Keith seemed to have grown into the responsibility of that independence admirably. So who was I to say that Ethan was any less of an adult than my fast-growing nephew?

"Do you want me to come along?" Wolfie asked now, his low rumble breaking into what I had assumed was a private conversation between myself and my stepmother. But that was one of the things I loved most about my mate—his wolf always had mine at the forefront of his thoughts, so my current trepidation wouldn't have gone unnoticed. The bloodling must have been paying attention to our conversation all along, but Wolfie only stepped in when he thought I really needed help. And, as usual, I completely agreed with his assessment of the current situation.

Still, I was trying not to lean so much on my co-alpha. And my stepmother was right in one respect, at least—if Ethan was going to return home for the summer, I'd have to get to know him eventually. So I shook my head rather than taking Wolfie up on his kind offer, I grabbed Ember before she could nose dive into the bowl of green beans, and I assumed the mantle of power that my mate always donned so effortlessly.

"No, that's okay," I told him. "I'll talk Keith into coming along to keep me awake on the drive, and I'll bring this rascal too so you can enjoy a day of peace. We'll go pick up Ethan tomorrow."

***

"No way in hell I'm coming home with you."

"Language, Ethan," the headmaster chastened. But the older man eyed me consideringly as he spoke, clearly not willing to relinquish his charge into the dubious care of a sister who aroused such ire in one of his students.

The current scene wasn't at all the reception I'd expected. Sure, I had reservations about getting to know my kid brother again after eleven years spent apart. But I'd assumed Ethan would leap at the chance to return to Haven, whether or not he shared my insecurities about our problematic relationship.

What I hadn't expected was a punk whose hair style and stance promised that he was tougher than anyone else in the room. Ethan probably would've been wearing a leather jacket if the school uniform code had allowed it, and I wasn't entirely sure the full-arm tattoos were even legal for someone under the age of eighteen. When it came right down to it, my inner wolf was amused to see what our kid brother had turned into...but my human half was appalled.

Figuring out what had prompted Ethan to don such an extreme new image would have to wait though. For now, the issue was talking the troubled teenager into coming home so Cricket wouldn't look at me and my empty car with that disappointed expression on her kindly face. I could stand up to a lot of things, but distressing my stepmother always did me in.

So I did my best to allay my brother's concerns by explaining recent changes to our childhood home. "Haven isn't the same as it once was," I said, speaking carefully so as not to give away too much in front of the headmaster. But I could tell that my use of the pack home's title had only made the older man wonder whether I lived in a cult compound and was dragging his student into a dangerous situation.

Which begged the question—why was the authority figure present at this meeting in the first place? Did Ethan expect me to simply command him to leave the way our father might have done? Was his headmaster here as a failsafe in case things went terribly wrong?

Actually, as I peered into the kid's scared eyes, I figured that's exactly what my relative must have predicted. So, despite my memories of Ethan as a bratty little despot, I forced myself to soften toward him. Averting my gaze, I gifted my brother with the werewolf gesture of relinquishing control.

Even though he possessed no inner beast of his own, Ethan had clearly spent enough time among shifters to fully understand what I was trying to say without words. Sure enough, when I glanced back in his direction, I saw the tension in his jaw ease as one eyebrow raised quizzically.

"Maybe we could take a walk and talk about it?" I said, the sentence rising at the end in an auditory question mark as I attempted to capitalize on Ethan's loosening stance. "Our nephew Keith is waiting in the car with, um, Ember."

No way I'd be able to explain my wolf-pup niece in front of this stern headmaster who had been adamant about a no-pets-on-campus policy. But I hoped the little bloodling would be able to work her magic on my brother and would prevent me from going home to my stepmother empty-handed.

"It's your decision, of course," I added. "But I'm hoping you'll give me a chance to at least try to talk you into it."

Ethan was silent for long enough that I was pretty sure he was rejecting my offer, and in the end he only spoke after the principal gave him a verbal nudge. "Well, Ethan, what do you say? Are you comfortable taking a walk with your...sister?"

The older man eyed me cautiously once again, and I wished that the alpha nature of my wolf hadn't begun making nearby humans more wary around me in recent months. In response, I did my best to look small and insignificant—something I'd had no trouble with while my lupine half was sound asleep. But I could tell the astute educator wasn't buying into my deception.

"I guess," Ethan said at last. He jumped out of his seat and was out the door before I even had time to open my mouth, so I simply shot the headmaster an apologetic glance before following in the teenager's footsteps.

Outside, the sun pounded down on a broad parking lot, barren save for half a dozen vehicles scattered across the expanse of pavement. Ethan had never seen my car before, but he was making a beeline in its direction nonetheless. My sibling should have lacked a werewolf nose, but I couldn't see any other way for him to pick my vehicle out of the lineup since Keith and Ember were nowhere to be seen.

"Hey, Aunt Terra," Keith said, derailing my line of thought as he popped up from behind a privet hedge with Ember dangling by the scruff of her neck in one hand. Before meeting our little bloodling pup, I would have chided my nephew for handling a young animal so roughly, but now I knew that an Ember in the hand was worth two in the bush. The kind of grip you had to use to ensure the pup's continued proximity was largely irrelevant.

"That's your Uncle Ethan," I said briefly, continuing to speed walk after my half-brother. I really didn't want to break into a run, but that kid had seriously long legs. Behind me, I could hear a clatter of footsteps as Keith vaulted the hedge and jogged along behind.

By the time I caught up to my delinquent sibling, Ethan was lounging on the hood of the car and pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. The sight was the last straw.

"No. Just no," I snarled. I hadn't meant to pull alpha dominance on Ethan at all, especially not after I saw how skittish he was in my presence. But no brother of mine was going to smoke, not if I could help it.

And, strangely, the flare-up of wolf behind my eyes was rewarded with the first true smile I'd seen from my sibling in over a decade. "Not keen on cancer, huh, sis?" he asked. But Ethan didn't make a move to grab the cigarettes back out of my hands. Instead, he busied himself rolling up the arms of his shirt until the garment appeared to be sleeveless, bringing the fullness of his tattoos into plain view.

I paused, struck by the beauty of the design. The inked lines picked out wolves and people and trees, the figures intertwined into a seamless whole that struck me as both elegant and menacing. Ethan wasn't just projecting a tough-guy image, I now realized. He really was tough to have sat for so many hours braving the tattoo-artist's needles.

Tough...and obsessed with wolves.

As I rearranged my impression of this sibling out of the punk-kid category and into the wounded-teenager camp, my brother looked fully into my eyes for the first time that day. He was obviously watching me size him up and waiting for my response, but before I could decide what to say, Keith had jumped in with both feet.

"Cool ink!" my nephew enthused, acting like a much younger kid in front of this second teenager who struck me as all man. The difference between a youngster raised within a simple human family and one raised by Crazy Wilder became even more apparent when my two relatives interacted, and my stomach clenched up in pain.

I should have done something to prevent Ethan from growing up too quickly, I thought, guilt clouding my inner dialogue.

We both should have, my wolf countered. But since there's no way to change the past, we'll just protect our brother now.

I agreed wholeheartedly with her optimistic attitude, but I had a sinking feeling that Ethan wouldn't let us into his life to act as his protectors. Not after we'd ignored him for over a decade, forcing the teenager to turn into a man he shouldn't yet be. In fact, after perusing his tattoos and staring into his eyes, I would guess that our chances of talking my brother into returning to Haven today were midway between slim and none.

But I wasn't counting on the super-glue quality of our bloodling wolf pup. The spoiled beast was accustomed to being greeted with open arms by friends and strangers alike, and I suspected she could smell Ethan's similarity to my own scent even easier than I could. Which must have made being ignored by this newcomer particularly exasperating for our little wolfling despot.

So, while Keith was busy turning his uncle's arms over to get a closer look at his tats, Ember took advantage of her jailer's lax grip. She pushed out of Keith's grasp before the kid had time to realize what was happening, then she leapt straight for my brother, grabbing onto his arm with what I knew were needle-sharp fangs.

The wolfling wasn't trying to harm Ethan, of course. No, our little Ember was just attempting to get purchase in arms that stubbornly refused to hold her up the way they obviously ought to.

Still, I thoroughly expected my brother to fling the puppy aside in surprise and anger. After all, who likes to be bitten at first introduction? Ethan certainly didn't appear to have a soft side interested in the well-being of a spoiled little wolf pup.

But, instead, my brother's tattooed arms came reflexively together to cradle the ornery wolfling, and the barest hint of a smile curled up the corners of his lips. And when Ethan met my eyes a second time, I smiled in return, knowing that Ember had once again worked her magic. The pup had convinced my brother to let us take him home.

Good job, wolfling, I thought. Bedtime tonight would once again be fully negotiable and she'd be welcome to the choicest tidbits off my plate. Maybe I even needed to get my adopted daughter a pony.