“Yeah.” He answered her as he zipped up his pants. “I’ll come down.”
His leg worked a little better on the steps. There was less strain and pull when he moved, which meant he managed the small trip in half the time it had been taking him.
Standing in the doorway of the kitchen, he smiled. His mother had just gotten back from a run in the woods. He could smell the forest on her. Devin sniffed the air. Yes, he actually could smell it. He still didn’t feel his Wolf inside of him, but like his leg, it had to be a good sign that scents were becoming more vivid.
His mother’s hair had turned gray, and unlike a lot of Females, she had no apparent interest in dying it back to its original brown. He liked that about her. She still looked beautiful to him, her silver hair shining in the moonlight that came in through the kitchen window.
“Where’s Dad?” He stepped forward.
“Still running. He needed more time tonight.” She smiled as she looked at him.
“Gotcha.” His parents used their Wolves as he would have used his own if he could have: to forget. The moments that Werewolves ran on all four legs were primal. Nothing existed outside of simply living.
Where was his Wolf, and why wouldn’t it come back to him?
“You look so much better.”
He touched his hair. Prompted by a desire to look more like he used to, he’d shaved his head. “Less shaggy, I know.”
His mother stepped forward. “I don’t mean the hair. I hated it long, but it’s just hair.” She touched both of his cheeks. “I meant you look better all around. There’s a glow to you, a life back in your eyes that’s been missing. What put it back?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but if you think I seem better, I’ll say thank you and be glad you feel that way.”
His mother’s words made him uncomfortable, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. There was only one thing that had changed for him and that thing wasn’t a thing at all. It was Lena Knox. He certainly couldn’t tell his old-fashioned mother that her third son had taken up fucking the girl next door who happened to be eighteen years younger.
His mother sighed and dropped his hands. “I saw Vera Knox today down at the post office. She said you’ve really made a difference over there fixing all of their stuff. That’s tremendously generous of you.”
Devin sat down at the kitchen table. “I saw they needed some help.”
“That’s putting it mildly.” His mother sat next to him. “Would you believe they are back again?”
“Who is?” Sometimes Devin wondered if Females spoke the same language that he did. Was he supposed to know what she talked about?
“The daughter, Elizabeth, and that son-in-law Fergus.” His mother shook her head again.
Lena never spoke about her family. He knew her father was in Decline. He’d take on his Wolf form soon and leave. She’d be responsible for her mother, and the one time she’d said anything about it, she’d said they’d have to leave the house. None of that had made much sense to Devin. Lena’s father, if he recalled correctly, had been a doctor. Shouldn’t he have left his family in pretty good financial shape? Maybe he didn’t understand everything there was to know about money. He’d gone off into the wars when he was young and now he had five years of back pay plus everything he hadn’t spent from before he’d been held prisoner.
“Is there something wrong with Elizabeth and Fergus?” He didn’t know Elizabeth, which meant she must have been one of the young ones like Lena.
“They’re complete drug addicts.” His mother took his hand. “Fergus came back from the wars a changed Wolf. Before they knew what happened, he’d taken Elizabeth down that road with him. The Knox family tried everything. I think—although Vera would never say—that they robbed them blind and then took off.”
Devin tapped his fingers on the table so hard they burned. Somewhere in the middle of his mother’s story, his gut had started to do the same. “And they’re back now?”
“I smelled them this morning before Vera mentioned they were here.”
At least that explained why Lena hadn’t come over. “Are they dangerous?”
Why by all the gods that sustained them would Vera Knox let them back in the house if they’d robbed her already?
“They still stink of the drugs. I don’t know if they’re dangerous. I know that at the time Vera wouldn’t even report them to the authorities. Not that the police do anything anymore. They’re made up of bruised and battered Wolves. No one left to really do any policing…”