The Things We Water

I knew it was dumb.

I also knew that there was no reason why we couldn’t wait one more day to do this.

There’s no rush, Franklin had insisted earlier when I’d stammered my way through our plan.

There was, but there wasn’t.

The hellhound brothers had decided on the same day we’d met that they wanted to extend their visit. They’d explained their desire to spend more time with Duncan, who was, in fact, their little brother. Henri confirmed it too, after they’d taken off their bracelets and let the cool wash of their magic fill everyone’s senses. Whether they had the same dad or not wasn’t something I needed to know badly enough to ask any time soon. But maybe someday.

Their mother, they explained, was a long-lived being, known as the first hellhound in many places, and a fairy hound in others. But unlike Duncan, their mother had raised them until they’d turned fifteen and had left them behind in Alaska, where they’d spent the majority of their lives since. No one knew why she had abandoned Duncan without an explanation, much less what she’d been up to since leaving her children so many years ago, but at some point, I reminded myself that it didn’t matter.

It wasn’t like I wanted her to come back.

That was a terrible thought, but I wasn’t going to apologize for it. Not anymore. I loved him, I called dibs on him, and that was the whole point as to why I needed to get this conversation over with.

Well, needed the hellhound brothers to get this conversation over with. I was just an innocent bystander. A bystander whose whole world hinged on the outcome of it.

Like the moon had been able to tell that these few days were some of the most important in my life, she had been out in her full glory every night since the siblings had arrived. Brilliant and bold, making the magic in the air so much sweeter and stronger. Her light felt like a hug to me.

Or as Pascal had called it, moonshine. The nonalcoholic kind.

A big, furry body appeared between some trees up ahead, and I sat up straight, catching the amber eyes set in a dark, sharp face. A predator. This forest’s largest one.

Henri was so quiet when he wanted to be.

The imposing wolf, part Amarok, part Fenrir, stalked over while I sat there in the clearing, his long face dipping low to nose at my cheeks, at my neck, slipping between my hair and my nape, warm and damp.

And even though I hadn’t felt like laughing up until then, I did.

It tickled.

The stunning wolf, my official mate as of tomorrow, curled around my body before slowly lowering himself to the ground, his ribs and side pressed against my back so close I could lean into him. I reached for him and slid my fingers into his coat as much as I could, wiry and soft at the same time. That jaw full of sharp, sharp teeth skimmed the top of my head.noveldrama

With my other hand, I touched the long leg on one side of me as two puppies appeared in the same direction from where he’d come from. One pounced on the other, taking turns chasing each other on their way over. Agnes, the much bigger but still small white wolf, and Duncan, sleeker and with those ridiculous ears I liked draping over my face every chance I had.

“They’re going to talk to him right now,” I told Wolf Henri, sliding my fingers back and forth through his coat. He was so solid behind me, I could really let myself sink in.

Like I was sure I would always be able to, even when he was in his other form.

I twisted some of the black strands between my fingertips. “I need to know, Fluff. I want to get it over with,” I admitted, turning my cheek into his fur. “I like them, and I can tell he does too.”

The side of his snout brushed against mine, the sounds of his breathing soothing.

“I’m still struggling to comprehend that they’re brothers, because of their age gap, but who am I to talk? Franklin is at least four thousand years old, from the stuff he’s mentioned,” I rambled to him about the man I’d left in the kitchen, along with my parents and best friends. They had so many questions for him.

Wolf Henri laid the bottom of his jaw back on the top of my head as the sound of the clubhouse’s door opening and closing told me who was coming.

“Look at him, Fluff. He doesn’t look like he could be a weapon of mass destruction,” I murmured, and as if the universe was listening, it tripped him. Duncan’s paw caught on something, and he went butt over head, tumbling once before shooting up to his feet again, like nothing had happened.

I grinned even as that familiar low-grade fear filled my stomach.

But whatever happens, we’re going to be together.

Between us, we could face anything.

Like my harbinger of death biological parent, who had gotten knocked out by his brother and left to sleep in the yard for hours until Franklin had taken pity and, with help, had loaded him into his car and taken him to a nearby motel. When he got back, my uncle had given me the basics. My DNA dad was going to back off, but he wanted to talk. Eventually. In the future, but in the near future.

He seemed like a stubborn goat with an ego problem, but of course he would be just that.

And I’d agreed. A part of me hoped he would forget and change his mind—it wouldn’t be the first time he did—but another very small and petty part of me was glad he had regrets and was forced to live with them now. And that very tiny, itty-bitty part of me hoped he would try and work at it, that he would come to grovel. I had questions.

We’d see.

I wasn’t holding my breath.

Plus, I had to survive this first.

Henri made a deep sound in that barrel chest as two men walked across the patchy mountain grass. I was sure the brothers, who told me all about how they’d been called the Huodou when they’d lived briefly in China, could sense my nerves, but I’d decided I wasn’t going to hide them. Duncan meant the world to me; I’d never downplay that.

The brothers and I had already discussed our game plan for this. They had shared with me what they would say to Duncan, and I appreciated that they’d been willing to, so we were all on the same page. I couldn’t blame them for hoping there was a chance the donut might go back with them. It wouldn’t be fair to not present him with every option he had either. Even if that option made me want to curl into a ball.

Duncan and Agnes bounded over right on time, my boy coming straight for us, body-slamming me in his excitement, his head and limbs rubbing over parts of mine. I hugged him and pet him and groaned when he stepped on sensitive places. Then I watched as he climbed over me to pounce on Henri, running up his body in a way that reminded me of a lion cub trying to play with its father.

Henri laid there, nosing Duncan back, letting him use him like a trampoline.

And then I watched as my puppy took a flying leap off before charging toward the adult hellhounds, biting at their pants before running circles around their legs. One of the brothers gave me a subtle nod before they kneeled. There were smiles and pets, and it was easy to see the three of them not only genuinely like each other, but that there was a bond there.

They were telepathic just like Dunky, they had confirmed. He couldn’t communicate with them any more clearly than he did with me, but they understood enough. One day, when he was older, that gift would allow him to include more and more people in his conversations, slowly but surely.

My hand strayed back to Henri’s leg, the one closest to me, and I held it as he set his head on top of mine again.

We hadn’t mentioned Alaska to Agnes, who hadn’t warmed up to the men, but she came and sat to the side of Fluff, and the three of us watched as Duncan plopped on his butt and stared up at his much, much older brothers. Listening. Paying attention.

They were probably telling him how happy they were to meet him. To know he existed. To see him doing so well.

Then I imagined that they probably started explaining about how they lived very far from here, and that their place was in some ways a lot like ours.

At some point, they were going to get to the part where they told him that eventually, someday, he would be able to turn into a human boy, and how that fire that came out of his throat would become so much stronger and could be dangerous if he didn’t learn how to manage his emotions well. The same went for his tail. They wouldn’t tell him yet that when he got to a certain age, his bite would become deadly, but we had at least a decade or two before then, they’d warned me.

And lastly, the brothers would invite their young sibling to come and live with them. They would promise to care for him and teach him….

My eyes started watering, dang it, and I lifted my arm to wipe at my face with my forearm before the side of Wolf Henri’s cheek lowered and he let me use him as a napkin.

Everything was going to be fine.

We had gone over this a hundred times by this point. It was just fear that made me irrational.

Even if Duncan decided he wanted to go, we’d all leave together. And maybe one day, when he was old enough, he might go off on his own and live his life wherever and however he wanted, like all children did.

I wiped my eyes on Henri again, curling my fingers into his coat, holding on to him, letting him anchor me and ease the worries and the fear of a future I had no control over.

But that was life in general.

My parents had left their parents, and then I’d left mine, and that was the way things were. But it didn’t mean anyone forgot. It didn’t mean there weren’t visits. That anyone was really, truly left behind. That there wasn’t love.

You could never forget love.

Love was the one thing that could survive illness and distance, and even time.

My throat was in a knot as the hellhound brothers eventually stopped talking, and the three of them stared at each other, communicating telepathically, I assumed.

My stomach sank when one brother smiled gently, then so did the other. And I watched one of them nod and dab at his face, joy writing itself all over his craggy features. They were really nice men.

And I couldn’t look. I couldn’t. I tipped my head up to the moon, reclined even more into Henri, and I thought that I loved this place, this ranch, and remembered what I’d told myself when we first got here.

The grass would always be green where you took care of it.

I could love anything I watered. A person, a place, a plant, a life.

I could be happy wherever Duncan and Henri were. Even wherever my little bonsai cactus hybrid, Agnes, was. They were what mattered.Not the mountain range, not the magic, not money, or much less people who didn’t matter. The sun would shine almost everywhere, and the moon would continue its reign no matter where we ended up.

And I was so busy thinking that I had moved so many times, once more wouldn’t make a difference, that I wasn’t ready for the body that slammed into me.

For the “no, no, no, love, love, love”that my donut projected at me, each word one dart after another. “Family, family, family,” Duncan chose.