The Things We Water

“This wasn’t exactly how I thought the day was going to go,” I whispered to Sienna before taking a bite out of the piece of beef jerky in my hand. It was one of my best batches, if I did say so myself. Instead of using premixed seasoning, I’d started experimenting with making my own blend. It had either been that or spending a huge chunk of my paycheck buying Duncan treats every month. The idea of underfeeding him was something that kept me up at night; it wasn’t like there was a growth chart on the internet for what I could expect from him.

He was a bougie little donut.

Sienna snickered from her spot beside me on the gravel ground with our backs to the front of my truck, both of us trying to avoid the bugs splattered on the grill, my puppy between us having a stare down with the white mini wolf sitting about six feet away, doing the same thing right back. I’d known he was on the small side, considering his growth had basically stunted after a few months, but in the presence of the white wolf, who was probably five times his weight, it was very, very apparent.

I didn’t think either of them had blinked in a while, but I wasn’t sure considering I’d been eavesdropping the crap out of the conversation that the satyr woman, Henri, and Pascal’s maybe-dad were having as they interviewed Matti and the two boys on what exactly had gone down leading up to all this. From what I understood, the kids had, in the past, taken off on adventures that they weren’t supposed to go on, and they had done it again.

Except this time, they’d come across a “river crone” who had been ready to eat them. The river crone was a mythical being who should not have been anywhere near here from what the escalating body language in the group confirmed—and from the brief conversation that Henri had with someone on a cell phone, telling them to “find her.”

I was a little in awe of him. Who was this man asking for explanations, throwing out orders that people listened to, and demanding searches? He was not the man-boy of my memories that sulked and brooded quietly in the corner, too grown up to deal with Matti’s and my BS.

Ripping a piece of jerky into thirds, I popped one in my mouth, held the second out toward Duncan Donut until he edged his head closer—not breaking eye contact in the process—and took his piece from the side. Only then did I toss the final chunk at the white pup. It hit her on the forehead.

She ignored it.

“What do you think so far?” Sienna whispered as the group conversation got even more intense when the wolf boy said something the adults must have not liked. Even Matti winced.

“I like the drama so far. It’s almost as entertaining as campground parking lot dynamics are,” I told her, letting my gaze drift to the black body between us. His tail was up straight, the flame back to a solid blue instead of the ice-blue one that had taken over when he’d been ready to fight MegaWolf in my honor. It wasn’t that I couldn’t believe he’d done it—I could. But it still shocked me.

This little bitty boy had defended me, outsized and all. He had risked his life for me. Me.

I would do anything for him, I thought once more.

Which was why I was hoping someone who lived here would consider marrying me.

A part of me couldn’t believe I’d actually just thought that.

I was willing to marry a stranger to be here, in this quiet land with fencing, big gates, half-goat half-human children, hairy green monsters that wanted to eat them, and werewolves bigger than my first car who were also my best friend’s family.

I had made a rare being fart. I’d had two children claiming I’d saved them. My boy with red eyes had bitten a werewolf’s tail.

None of the fairy tales my parents used to read me at night could have prepared me for any of this.noveldrama

Except that thought led me to another, and then another, and I turned to Sienna, remembering what I was pretty sure I’d overheard.

“Question. Did Matti actually talk to Henri before we drove here?” I whispered, trying not to sound suspicious but pretty much failing.

Her nose wrinkled. “Huh?”

“I swear Henri asked what we were doing here, and Matti said something sarcastic about him not answering his calls,” I explained. “He said he was going to text him, but….”

Her face darkened, eyes getting squinty the longer she sat there. She plucked at the spaghetti-strap of her pale-yellow top—a color I could never pull off, but she could perfectly. “He never actually said he spoke to him, did he?”

We looked at each other.

“I’m going to kill him,” I warned her.

And my friend nodded like the person I wanted to murder wasn’t the love of her life. “I’ll help you.”

We both turned to glare at Matti, who must have sensed it from the way his attention shot over to us, and he waved like he’d never done a wrong thing in his life.

That was such a Matti thing to do if he was desperate, and I had been pretty desperate the night I’d showed up to their apartment asking for help. I wasn’t really going to kill him, but I might get Sienna to twist his nipple for me.

In the meantime, we sat there munching on jerky from a silicone sandwich bag in my fanny pack, and I released some deep breaths, my skin feeling kind of tickly, my lungs sucking up the fresh air like they had been deprived all their lives. The magic that lived in my gut stirred in response, a ball of squiggly warmth.

What was it about here? I had traveled so much over the years, and while some places had wonderful vibes and traces of magic, no other place had ever felt like this one. Not even close.

I peeked at her, but Sienna seemed totally unfazed. Even a little bored. What was she staring at?

She answered my question a second later. “If that satyr looks over here again, I’m going to get up and go have a calm conversation with her about how rude she’s being.”

That got me to beam. “You’re so scary, but what she needs to worry about is my attack hound right here. Did you see him?”

Sienna patted the furry butt cheek closest to her. “I saw him all right. The boy needs a steak dinner for that.”

The good boy’s ears twitched, but he still didn’t break eye contact with Agnes, even as he said “Yes”in my head.

Yes, he agreed he was a good boy and he needed steak. He was always listening.

I smacked his other butt cheek for good measure, just as the adult satyr turned to look over again real quick.

I didn’t say a word, and Sienna pressed her lips together tight, smelling whatever emotion the woman was releasing. Wariness, more than likely. Possibly even a little bit of fear; herbivores were like that, from what I’d been told. I palmed my bracelet. If she was like this now, what would it be like if I took it off? Shiloh had been fine, more than fine, but….

A warm hand slipped into mine, and my best friend since the age of fifteen gave it a squeeze. “I love you, Nina. I’m glad we made it, and I hope things work out.”

I let go of her hand and threw my arm around her, my head going to her shoulder. Somehow, she planted a kiss on my temple. “I love you too,” I told her. “Thank you for coming with us.”

Loud sighs came from the group, and we watched the woman put a hand on Shiloh’s shoulder before leading him down a path that curved around the right side of the big building. The boy’s head was down, his shoulders slumped, and I really didn’t think I was imagining his hooves dragging behind him. The man stayed talking to Henri for a minute longer before they nodded in agreement over something. Henri dropped into a crouch and leaned in close to Pascal, cupping the back of the boy’s head with his hand. He said something that had the little boy gesturing with his hands before nodding as well.

Then the werewolf man pressed his cheek to the top of Pascal’s head, and the little boy tucked himself into his neck and gave Henri a hug. With a scruff to his hair, Henri stood and gave him an expression that was totally a chastising one. The boy and the other man turned and headed down another path, but I watched as Pascal paused, looked over, and gave me a wave before continuing his march. His maybe-dad glanced over as well, in the middle of a frown. He lifted his hand briefly, mouthed what I thought was “thank you,” and kept going too.

Only then did Henri turn to where we were; his lips started moving. He still didn’t seem very happy. Matti gestured us over, his eyebrows up.

“It’s showtime,” I told Sienna as I stood, and beside me, Duncan got to his feet, attention still on the white wolf pup. Somebody was a little obsessed. He was too young to have a crush, wasn’t he? Or was he just in love with the familiarity of someone who looked similar-ish to him? Anytime we’d been around a dog before, he had never really cared much for them. But this was totally different. He’d never seen Matti or Sienna in their wolf forms.

It was like he was seeing himself in the mirror for the first time and couldn’t believe it.

“Agnes,” Henri’s demanding voice called out.

Uh-oh.

I wasn’t sure how I was expecting him to react, but it sure wasn’t the way he did.

“I’m glad you’re back safe and weren’t hurt,” he told the white wolf in a voice that was somehow stern and careful at the same time. “But now it’s your turn to deal with the consequences. Go inside, tell the elders what you did, and see what your punishment is. They’re waiting in the library.”

The ball of poofy anger had already gotten to her paws when my donut did, but she barked at Henri.

“Now,” his reply was no-nonsense, sounding very much like a dad. “You knew what you were doing. We had this talk last time.”

The amount of attitude in her body couldn’t be ignored as she lowered her head and stayed in that position for longer than I ever would have imagined—she was pushing it, defying his orders, even I knew that—but then she took off in the direction of the main house, disappearing around the back of it.

Matti’s cousin blew out a long breath, which didn’t do anything to the tension padding his body. He focused on where we were, and the man I hadn’t seen since he’d been in his twenties dipped his chin. “Thank you for helping the children.”

He was talking to me. “Sure, anytime.”

His hands went to his waist, his jaw—a very defined one—ticked to the side. “Now, you going to come over here so you can tell me what this visit’s about or are we going to keep yelling at each other?” Henri drawled. Not just bossy but blunt too.

We’re here for the pup who has a paw on top of my foot, who can’t live around humans anymore.

Instead of saying that, I reached down, scratched the top of my donut’s head, and held out both hands to him.

“Yes,” he told me, using his gift more often.

I scooped him up before marching over, Sienna at my side. Then I did what I’d told Matti I would do: I let him handle it. For now.

Or that had been my plan.

It seemed like Matti wasn’t fast enough with an explanation when his cousin got impatient two seconds later.

“You didn’t come all this way by accident. What’s going on?” Henri asked… all four of us, really, even if his attention in that moment was centered on the puppy balanced on my forearm, legs hanging off either side of it. His long ears drooping.

He was so cute. He looked like a prince. I would even go as far as to say he made me think of a god in that position, shiny black coat an obvious sign he was well taken care of. The fire obsidian around his neck a subtle flash of color against his body.

Duncan gazed at Henri steadily, making it very, very clear he was something more. He listened, and he understood everything that was said to him and in front of him. He always had. For his age, he followed rules more than I ever could have hoped for.

“It’s not an accident,” Matti agreed, finally finding his words. He made a funny face. “I explained why in the voicemails, if you’d listened to them.”

The mountain of a man he was related to blinked.

“We’re hoping someone might recognize what Duncan is,” Matti kept going. “He’s the pup in Nina’s arms, if you didn’t get that.”

Henri didn’t move a muscle.

“And we wanted to see if the elders would be willing to accept two new members to the community,” Matti wrapped it up neatly, leaving the final part of our visit out in the open, just hanging in the air like a wish upon a star.

The whole marrying part implied.

I’d been watching Henri’s face, and that got him. Dark eyebrows rose on caramel cream skin, and even his clear eyes widened. I wasn’t sure a man who looked like him could peek at someone, but that was the closest word I could come up with to describe the way his gaze flicked over to me for a split second. “You’re serious?”

Was he scoffing?

“Yeah,” Matti confirmed.

“Here?”

He was definitely scoffing.

My friend nodded.

“You and Sienna?”

Matti shook his head, and his older cousin’s expression hit a new level of disbelief.

“Cricket and the pup?” he asked slowly.

Sienna took a step closer to me, asking under her breath through the side of her mouth, “Why does he keep calling you that?”

I only whispered, “Later,” because I felt the need to jump in, even though I’d told Matti I’d let him handle it.

“I understand the rules about getting married, and I’m okay with them,” I spoke up, wanting Henri to be aware that I did get what was going on and was willing to do what was needed to get permission to stay here. Other than my two closest friends, I didn’t have anyone or anything tying me down. My parents had retired to Mexico, and they weren’t coming back. I couldn’t exactly move there now, with Duncan being what he was.

Amber irises met mine, and I tried smiling at him.

Maybe I should’ve kept trying to hide my nervousness, but it was getting exhausting, and honestly, if Henri opened up his senses to smell how I was feeling, he was going to be able to tell anyway.

Henri’s eyes narrowed in reaction. Not exactly nice. Not in curiosity or interest either. But in the middle of a thought that could have gone either way. Wary.

Once upon a time, I’d been his little cousin’s friend who he had tolerated slightly better than his own relative, possibly because I was a girl, or maybe because he felt bad for me. We had never been friends, but he had been nice enough. Just the right amount of attentive that had lured me into hoping to run into him during his visits.

And with a face like the one he had now, I could understand why. The only modeling he would ever be qualified to do was maybe be the new face for that paper towel brand with a lumberjack on them. But he’d be perfect at it. That bone structure, those forearms, and boots? Sold.

Matti cleared his throat, bringing everyone’s focus back to him. “You see the pup, Henri. His eyes. His tail.”

“I see ’em,” Henri agreed a moment before scrubbing a palm over his forehead, the spot of red still bright near his elbow, threatening to stain his shirt.

I unzipped my fanny pack and dug around until I found what I was looking for, then I held it out.

Henri eyed my face, then my balled-up fist. But he didn’t hesitate long before extending his hand, palm up against my palm down, cupping his fingers beneath mine. I dropped the Band-Aid into it. I always carried a couple around in my fanny pack, along with ten other things, mostly snacks, a poop bag, a glove or two, and a couple baby wipes. “Your elbow is bleeding,” I told him.

The muscle in his jaw flexed, but he took in the Band-Aid sitting in his palm, then shoved it into his pocket instead of using it.

It was the thought that counted, I supposed.

“Right,” Henri went on as if nothing had happened. “There’s no use in you telling this story twice, and this decision isn’t just up to me,” he said. That bold gaze worked its way down to what I thought was Duncan but realized it wasn’t when he tipped his chin in the direction of my hand. “If that bracelet is doing what I think it’s doing, take it off. Whatever the pup has on, remove it too. We can’t help him if his magic is hidden, and I haven’t seen you in a long time. I need to know what you’re hiding.”

Hiding was such a strong word.

But it wasn’t like I’d expected any different. I’d want the same thing if I was in his shoes. Probably more. It had been obvious to me from the moment we’d gotten out of the car that the people here had something precious they were protecting: magical children for starters. A forest with so much goodness… power… magic, whatever you wanted to call it, that I wanted to roll around in the leaves. Pick up tree bark and tape it to my skin. Bottle the scent and take a bath with it.

This was a community of people who I was told wanted to live in peace as themselves in an adorable village setting hidden in a small nook of the world. They had so much to lose, more than I ever could have imagined.

So I nodded at him, then turned to Sienna and held Duncan out. “Will you take his collar off, please?”

She did just that, releasing the button with the tip of her nail. With it in her hand, I suddenly stopped sensing her magic at the same time Duncan’s strong, subtle one pressed against mine. She reached for my other arm and tugged my bracelet off. She put it on too, twisting her wrist this way and that way, as if testing it, but it didn’t make the person wearing it feel any different.

Here went freaking nothing.

Because there I suddenly was. We both were. Duncan and I in our full glories. More vulnerable than if I’d been naked, in some ways. I took the bracelet off from time to time, but it wasn’t often, and never when I was around people like us, unless there was a statement I wanted or needed to make, like earlier. That was rare. I wasn’t the competitive type.

I watched and heard Henri take a tentative sniff, then another. Testing. After a moment, his brawny chest literally puffed out as he took such a deep inhale it would have made a yoga teacher proud when he held it for second after second.

If I hadn’t known he wasn’t human before, I would have then. His eyes widened, then widened a little more. His thick throat bobbed.

A couple of times, when I’d been younger, he’d let me sit next to him on the couch or at the dining room table. But back then, my true heritage had been a mystery. In Matti’s words, I hadn’t smelled magical, but I’d smelled magical. Those around me had been able to tell I wasn’t human-human, but what I was hadn’t been apparent enough. The same way that Duncan had been before his own nature had exploded across him physically and mentally.

Henri released his deep breath.

That stubbled jaw clenched even more somehow.

Slowly, he turned to his cousin and stared at him, hard.

Matti looked at him right back. Straight-faced. But there was a glint in his eye….

I didn’t think I imagined that Henri’s voice came out different, maybe slightly hoarse as he reached out. “I’ll take those, Sienna.”

My friend took the bracelet off and handed it over, along with the collar, and at the same glacial speed that he’d looked at his cousin, Henri brought both up to his nose. His chest rose and fell again. Then again. And for the second time, his intense gaze returned to Matti.

Henri’s attention slid back in my direction, and I smiled. He needed to like us. I rocked up to the balls of my feet and let the eighteen years of living among their kind help me take the next step. “Do you want to smell my neck?” I offered, thinking about how many times someone—werewolves mostly—had done that to me. With permission of course. It was like a crash course in getting to know someone, Matti had explained. You could learn a whole lot of things about people from their odor, and the least important of them was whether or not they used enough deodorant.

Henri’s jaw flexed again. “Do I want to…?” He sounded a little strangled.

Shifting Duncan’s weight on my arm, I tapped my neck with my other hand. “Smell me,” I repeated. Why was he making it seem like I was offering him a lit stick of dynamite?

I slid my gaze toward Matti, who was looking real funny at his family member.

Taking a whiff of another person wasn’t unheard of. It wasn’t weird. If anything, it was a formality. Good manners. An olive branch from me to him.

There was a lot I didn’t want him knowing yet, but this was nothing.

At least it should’ve been nothing.

“Or not,” I muttered, trying not to feel dejected.

Maybe I’d finally met the one werewolf who wasn’t a Nina fan.

But I refused to give up hope. Slowly, I lifted my shoulders and asked, “What about a hug?” We used to know each other. A reminder of the past might help.

It didn’t.

There was more staring. Eventually, he cleared his throat and looked away. “I’m going to hold onto these”—he moved his hand indicating our jewelry—“while we’re inside. I’ll give them back later. Let’s find the elders.”

I gave him a thumbs-up, not sure if he was wary over this whole situation, or just me, or Duncan, or what.

Henri had always been a serious potato.

But I guess it was a good thing he wasn’t telling us to get back into my truck or growling because he couldn’t control his dislike of Duncan or me. Henri didn’t seem overly interested in my donut either. He hadn’t focused on his tail half as much as I’d expected him to.

Maybe he knew something I didn’t.

I guess we’d see.

For now, we’d head inside and go from there. I’d forgotten all about these “elders” that Matti had mentioned. They were the main leadership here, the decision-makers. He’d explained it on the drive in a short, vague way: Henri was the CEO of this place, and they were his board of directors. One couldn’t act without the other.

With that, Henri headed in the direction of the main building. Matti followed, waving us to do the same. I held Duncan against my chest and took in the forest as we headed to the massive log structure. Nature was nothing new to me, but I couldn’t ignore or get over how this place felt. From the way Duncan’s sniffer was going too, tipped up high, maybe I wasn’t the only one pleasantly surprised and soaking up whatever special stuff was around here.

Now, without distractions, I’d swear there was something different about the trees. The barks wrapped around the trunks had a texture I’d never seen before, almost iridescent at a distance. They also seemed bigger and greener than any others I’d ever seen. In a way, they reminded me of the redwood forests I’d stayed by several times—there was something epic and timeless about them.

Rumor and folklore claimed that there were places in the world where magic was stronger. Where it was embedded more deeply in the environment than in other places. Those stories told that it was where parts of the Great Meteor—the unknown mass that had supposedly been responsible for bringing magic to Earth, according to ancient civilizations across the globe—had landed and subsequently turned normal people into what they became: legends and mythological entities.

I’d heard arguments that there was a chance we had always been around and someone in the past had made up stories to better explain how magic was possible, and maybe that was true. Maybe there had been a meteor filled with something special that changed the very essence of the humans it had come into contact with and made them something different. Or maybe those magical beings had always been around, and people needed some way to explain it. Without a time machine, who would ever know the truth?

Maybe the very old ones, like my neighbor was supposed to have been.

Regardless, this place made me wonder if the meteor theory was true and fragments had landed here thousands of years ago.

Or I just needed something to help me understand how this may or may not be a real-life magical forest with mythical creatures running around in it. Which then got me wondering… did authors and screenwriters come up with enchanted forests after visiting places like this? Were they based off reality? Why had I never thought of that before?

“You coming?” Sienna set her palm between my shoulder blades, forcing me to shelve my questions for later.

I nodded.

We went along, going straight for the front of the main building where my friend held one of the doors open. Henri was waiting inside. Duncan stuck his neck out while his nose continued twitching, taking in all the scents. The foyer we walked into had two connected hallways, one to the left and right, another straight across from the front door, leading toward the back of the building.

“Follow me,” Henri instructed after Matti closed the door, heading down the hall that led to the rear.

We did, the silence so loud within the quiet, plain walls. There wasn’t artwork, a clock, or anything decorative. Not really a surprise. Every werewolf home I’d ever been in had been the same. Even Matti and Sienna, as bougie as they could be and with the exception of their clothing, were pretty minimalist. Now ogres? They loved their little treasures.

“How have you been?” Matti asked his cousin from all the way at the end of our line. I wasn’t sure how it happened, but somehow, I’d ended up directly behind Henri. Duncan had his head stretched forward, trying to smell him discreetly without being noticed. With his floppy ears, it was so cute because it wasn’t sneaky at all.

“Fine,” Henri answered him in a clipped tone. “Busy.”

That was informative.

Matti thought the same thing. “I figured that when you’d barely respond to my texts the last six months.”

“I replied,” Henri answered with a grumble that might have held a touch of guilt to it. “There’s been a lot going on. We finished expanding parts of the ranch last month, and I’ve been putting in a lot of overtime.”

“Still working at the sheriff’s office then?”

“Still.” Henri Blackrock was a sheriff? Or a deputy? “Still doing aviation consulting?”

My friend answered, “Still.” There was a pause. “You get into a fight before we got here, or did you punch yourself in the face?”

The self-control it took me not to snicker….

That must have caught Henri off guard too because his pace slowed for a second. “It was more of a disagreement than a fight,” he answered cryptically, and I didn’t even know him and could tell he was being weird.

Mr. Curious wasn’t letting it go. “With?”

“Dominic” was the one and only answer he provided.

There was another pause “Over?”

Nothing.

“Leadership?”

Henri’s reply was a single low grunt.

How long was this hall? I wondered as we passed a smaller hallway, then another that branched out from the one we were on. This place was even bigger on the inside than it had seemed from the exterior. Peeking around Henri’s frame, I found that we were almost to the back of the building, and with a few more steps, he turned suddenly to the right, through a doorway and directly into a room.

In it was the biggest living area I’d ever seen. Multiple couches surrounded a television, there was a small bar area with stools in front of it, and a table that belonged in a conference room. At it were older adults whose magic felt very contained and low. One of them had a single eye… in the middle of his forehead.

An enchanted forest, a green swamp thing, a couple of satyrs, a werewolf the size of Falkor, and a cyclops.

Where exactly had Matti brought us?

“Over here.” Henri indicated toward the table and the empty chairs at it. “Sit.”

It was time to shine and, like I’d told Duncan, be on our best behavior. I took a seat right in the middle. Matti slipped into the chair beside mine, while Sienna decided to play bodyguard and stand directly behind us. Henri stayed off to the side with his arms crossed over that chest the size of Rhode Island, his expression still that tight one that didn’t tell me if he was aggravated about the Jenny Greenteeth, his cousin being here, my and Duncan’s very existence, or maybe it always looked like that.

The six men, women, and cyclops stopped talking the moment we settled in.

Like a line of dominoes, each one of them slowly caught sight, or possibly smell, of my puppy. Every single set of eyeballs went wide. Then wider.

One of the females delicately gasped. The cyclops rubbed a hand over his single eye. A man with wire-rimmed glasses leaned forward, pushing his frames up his nose….

“Dear gods,” the man exhaled as Duncan let out the cutest yawn, not even slightly worried about his audience.

But my body went on high alert anyway, especially when I realized the man was focused on me, not Duncan.

I hoped he wasn’t one of those people. Some older magical beings were way more superstitious than younger ones. Nothing I could do about it though.

“He’s a good boy,” I claimed out loud, just in case anyone was thinking otherwise.

And that earned me the rest of their attention and similar reactions. The woman who had gasped did it again but slightly fainter, and the cyclops rubbed his eye—a blue one—one more time. It was a striking blue too. The man with the glasses sat up straight in his seat.

For some reason, I had a flashback of the time a woman had thrown holy water at me that she’d carried around in a necklace. I’d been seventeen and on vacation with my parents. Why she had holy water on her was beyond me, but she’d been sorely disappointed when all I did was frown. It had been shortly after that, that I started wearing an obsidian bracelet.

Some people had problems.

And it had only been years later that I’d regretted not asking why her reaction had been so violent. Maybe she had known something I didn’t. She may have also tried exorcising me if I’d done that. I was never going to know.

Matti cleared his throat beside me. He clasped his hands together on the table and bowed his head. “Elders, thank you for allowing us this visit and for the gift of your time and attention. If you remember, I’m Matti⁠—”

The cyclops waved a wrinkled, heavy hand. “Be quiet, Matti. No one here has forgotten the time you lit the kitchen on fire.”

I’d never heard that story.

The one-eyed man snorted. “I’m sure I’m not alone when I say I would rather hear the young lady explain what you’re doing here.”

All right, I guess I was winging it then.

I pressed my lips together and tried to give the group the friendliest smile I had in me. “I’m Nina,” I said. “Nina Popoca.” I lifted my donut a little, grabbing his front legs in the process and then holding them up toward them. It made him look extra cute and like a stuffed animal. “This is Duncan. Thank you for allowing us to experience the magic in your community.”

That must have been the right thing to start with because all the elders nodded. It was the man with glasses who spoke next, his eyes a little narrowed, as he smoothed his hands down the front of the vest he had layered over a button-down shirt. “Hello, Nina. You smell young, but sometimes our ages can be deceiving, can’t they?”

That was… an interesting comment to make.

It meant he either already suspected something or… he was wondering about childbearing years. I hoped?

“Most of the time, I feel old and young at the same time,” I told the man carefully, trying to read his body language. “I’m thirty-two.”

Out of the corner of my eye, Henri shifted his weight and crossed his arms again.

The elder nodded stiffly, still too watchful. “Tell us why you’re here.”

As I adjusted Duncan on my lap, he set his head on top of the table, and I bumped Matti’s foot with mine for moral support to get through this next part. “We’re here, elders, because I need help,” I explained. With my chin, I gestured to the puppy who was busy looking at them. “I didn’t give birth to him, but we’ve been together since he was a newborn.

“Two months ago, he went from appearing like a normal puppy”—that was a subjective description, but hopefully they understood—“to his tail and eyes changing and becoming what you see now,” I explained. “I need to know how to fulfill his needs as he keeps growing. I’ve tried figuring out what kind of being he is, and I have a few guesses, but I don’t know for sure. The only knowledge I have of raising a pup is what I know from the wolves I grew up around, and they’ve all told me how important having a pack is at this age.”

A few of the elders started whispering to each other. Glasses, I noticed, wasn’t one of them. He was sitting very, very still.

“Matti said you’re all very wise and accepting.” He hadn’t said that, not exactly, but I wasn’t above sucking up. “More than anything, I really hope that you might let us live here since this is a secure community. The world out there isn’t safe for him. I’ve already had people try to steal him, and I don’t want to put him at risk. I want him to be happy, healthy, and safe, and I hope this place might be able to provide all that for him.”

There was stirring, and looks were cast that didn’t make me feel all that optimistic. Or maybe I was just expecting the worst. They had been polite so far, but they were picky about their privacy and community. That much was obvious.

The cyclops narrowed his eye. “You’re in danger?”

“Not anymore, only in the moment,” I explained. “On two different occasions recently, people tried to take him, but I took care of the problem.” I paused and held Duncan’s foot. “They won’t be an issue again. We aren’t bringing any danger or attention here.”

Matti huffed beside me. He’d heard the whole story on our first day of driving, and he and Sienna had just about exploded over me keeping those incidents a secret for so long.

“How can you be sure of that?” one of the female elders asked. Her hair was so silver it bordered on pale blue.

“Because there’s no way they knew my name. The incidents happened at campgrounds at night. I checked their phones and cars before they… were taken away. There weren’t any pictures related to us, and there hadn’t been any recent calls or texts they’d sent or received.” I’d been lucky their phones’ facial recognition had worked.

“That doesn’t confirm that you can’t or won’t be followed,” the cyclops argued.

They were really going to make me tell them more than I wanted to. But I couldn’t say I didn’t understand why they needed to make sure I wouldn’t be bringing any drama. My hand trailed up to my neck, where it had still hurt up until yesterday. “Every person involved suffered a brain injury and some other wounds. If they ever wake up, the chances of them remembering… or being able to communicate again… are slim.” I tried not to wince. “Very slim.”

A small part of me still thought that I had no right to mete out any kind of justice, but another part of me knew it hadn’t been justice at all. I’d done what I had to, and I felt bad about it, but I wasn’t going to apologize for it either. Both of our lives had been at risk.

I stroked my hand down Duncan’s side, his coat so, so soft. Probably from all the sardines he ate. To be honest, out of everything I’d ever done for him, scooping those tiny fish out of their containers was the grossest. Not pulling hair out of his butt after a poop or having him sneeze into my open mouth. Nope. Sardines. I didn’t like fish, but I did it every day, and it still made me gag. But like the song said, I would do anything for love.

I was here, willing to do what I was willing to do, and Matti and Sienna had come with us, and if that wasn’t the four-letter word that had started wars and maybe even ended them, I didn’t know what was.

My hand kept going along his side, over his flank, until I could wrap my fingers around the middle of his fluffy tail. I’d teased him before, telling him he had to be half fox with that thing, and he’d given me the stink eye even though I wasn’t even sure he knew what a fox was. It would look like a black dust sweeper… if it wasn’t for the tiny blue flame on the tip of it. I pinched it and smiled as the color flickered around my fingers.

There were multiple gasps, and it was the woman who spoke that time. “But how…?”

Maybe they were letting the incidents go for now.

“It only gets ‘hot’”—I used quotation marks with my free hand—“when he’s scared or protective.” It had changed colors when he’d been trying to save me from the giant werewolf, but I was the only one who’d recognized the signs. “He burned a few of the men who tried to kidnap him. Those were the other injuries they received. But it was in self-defense.” It had happened right before I’d taken action. Just thinking about that moment pissed me off all over again because it had been my fault for hesitating.

I reached with my free hand to rub Duncan’s ears between my fingers. Multiple sets of eyeballs moved from his relaxed body to the hand I had on him and back. Several nostrils flared again as the elders smelled him—and maybe me too—all while staying quiet, hopefully just intrigued by whatever he was and whatever I was. Two mysteries wrapped in the same tortilla.

I knew better than anyone how much was at stake. It could have been so easy for me to have lived a lonely life. Love could have been something I’d only read about in a fairy tale. I’d thought about it often, how different my life would have turned out without the love of my parents, of Matti and his family, of Sienna and hers. Without Duncan’s.

Everything I knew about love and loyalty was because of them and their presence in my life.

You don’t spit in Love’s eye, my mom had told me once before my body had changed. You’ll make her mad if you do.

I don’t think you can spit in Love’s eye, Mom, I had argued.

The face she had given me had been only a little patronizing. Sí puedes, Nina, and she’s not as nice as you’d think.

It had been an interesting conversation, but I’d taken her words to heart. When life gives you a true love, you keep it.

And that was Duncan for me.

He was special, and I’d known it from the moment I met him, which had been about a heartbeat before I’d fallen in love with him. Up until then, I had always thought love at first sight was BS. An excuse for being horny, if anything. Then he showed up, and I suddenly understood just how the universe could drop something into your existence that your soul recognized belonged there.

Sometimes you learned real quick how you could love something more than you loved yourself.

“How old is he?” the man with the glasses asked quietly but still kind of weird.

“Two years old.”

There was a murmur among a few of the elders.

“His magic is strong,” he noted softly, attention locked on my donut.

“I know. When he was a baby, he felt magical but faintly, universally. The way most young magical kids do. I had hoped he might be an iron wolf because of his dark hair, or a mix⁠—”

Matti’s foot bumped mine beneath the table.

“But since his tail and eyes changed, I started second-guessing that,” I finished telling them.

The woman with the silver-blue hair cleared her throat and leaned forward. “How did you manage to become the child’s guardian?”

My life with Duncan started on the night of a full moon.

Which shouldn’t have been a surprise, really. Full moons were the time when magic was the strongest. When it pulsed and resonated and reminded those with even the faintest trace of it in their cells that there was something greater out there. Something so powerful that, once a couple thousand years ago, give or take, our ancestors had thought the world was ending when magic streaked across the sky and fell to the earth, or so the stories from so many civilizations said.

It had always made me wonder if the first person to write about mysticism on full moons had been magical. Then I wondered if someone had taken them out for spilling a secret. That was the first thing we were taught the moment our brains could comprehend it: Don’t tell anyone.

On those special nights, I always had a harder time falling asleep than usual, which was why I’d been awake in the first place when I’d heard something big moving around in the bushes outside of my camper. I’d only been at that state park for two nights at that point, and the first thing the employee who had checked me in had said was “Watch out for coyotes.”

Animals didn’t concern me. It was everyone else that moved around on two legs that I side-eyed, at least until I got to know them. As many good people as there were in the world, it always felt like there were ten times as many not-so-good ones.

But the truth was, I hadn’t thought much of the noises going on outside my RV at first. By that point, I’d been living in it full-time for almost three years, and I’d heard and seen some things. For the most part, I liked staying at RV parks more than I enjoyed parking in the middle of nowhere. Being able to plug in to power and drain my gray tanks easily was a luxury I didn’t like living without. Having access to Wi-Fi, a shower that wasn’t confined to a tiny stall, and laundry facilities? If I’d wanted to rough it, I could have lived out of a tent, but I wasn’t that simple of a person. I loved air-conditioning too much, and the twenty-foot travel trailer I pulled behind my truck was more than enough space for one person.

Which was why I had been there that night in the RV section of a state park in Arizona, my reservation good for a whole month. Depending on how much I liked a specific location, and the ages of the people also around, sometimes I would stay for a month or two. Every once in a while, maybe three, if there was availability, among other criteria.

When I’d been outside earlier that day, I’d overheard a couple two spots down talking to another couple about how they were pretty sure they’d seen a wolf the night before, the night I’d gotten there.

It hadn’t been a wolf, but they wouldn’t have believed me if I’d told them the truth. My nose might not be anything spectacular, but my night vision was. The chupacabra had slunk around in the dark, keeping its distance from my van before eventually finding its way back into the fifth wheel where it had come from. The trailer with New Mexico plates had been gone by the time I’d woken up the next morning.

I didn’t take it personally. I had been busy replacing the elastic thread that held the beads of my bracelet together when I’d spotted it. I hadn’t intended on running it off.

So honestly, when the rustling started on that bright night, I hadn’t thought much of it. I wasn’t sure what kind of predators lived in the area, but I’d figured chances were a coyote was poking around. It hadn’t been until I’d heard creaking on the steps, followed by something nudging at my camper door, that I’d sat up in bed, which was wedged into the open space at the front of the trailer, and listened. The stairs only creaked when something human-sized or bigger was on them.

The hairs on my arms had gone straight up.

An awareness of magic like I had only felt around one other being before—my neighbor—had filled my chest in the next instant. That was the best way to describe what sensing other beings felt like. An invisible nudge hello—pressure, even. A sensation that said, This person is a little like you, with most beings, but with this one, it had been a shout across a room, a HELLO, HELLO, HELLO.

The most startling thing of all was that I’d been able to smell its magic. Sweet and potent, it had triggered something in me that left me itchy. I had driven through areas with it sprinkled into the leaves of its trees. Diluted in the water that filled its rivers and creeks. Invisible to most, but not to those that kept its secrets.

But I had never felt it the way I did then, maybe because it was so close. I’d never been within ten feet of my neighbor when he let the full spectrum of his power out for the whole neighborhood to feel. The magic at that moment had made me lightheaded. My heart had pounded faster than ever.

And just as every single instinct in my body shivered in reaction to what was outside, I’d heard it.

“Child,” the soft voice had whispered, a stranger talking directly into my head.

And I hadn’t known as I got to my feet—my own magic boiling to life in my sternum in reaction, awakened, tickling my nose, my throat, my spine, and every nerve branching out from it—what I was going to find as I’d crept to the door that led outside.

“Hello?” I’d whispered, fully aware that I hadn’t imagined hearing something in my head. The only voice that had ever sounded like that, felt like that, had been in my dreams, and that one had been different.

But I knew I hadn’t been dreaming. Even if the voice had gone quiet, the magic had still been present.

Somewhere between scared and concerned for the first time in at least a decade, I went for the latch and opened the door, knowing dang well that whatever was outside wouldn’t be stopped by some aluminum framing and fiberglass siding.

And as I swung the door wide, I braced myself.

I’d seen a lot. Bogeymen and sirens. Gray men and harpies.

I had known a man who could turn into a gryphon when he wanted to, and a woman who had told me once at a bar that she’d pulled a man into a part of the ocean that was so deep, his body hadn’t known what to do with the pressure.

My parents had never held back from sharing stories about the beings they had grown up wary of and those their parents had revered, like Kukulcan and Hunab Ku… among others.

There wasn’t a whole lot I genuinely feared, but the magnitude of the magic that had snuck into the campground undetected until then was right on the cusp. And it wouldn’t be until months later that I realized she had done that on purpose. The magical being had let me feel what she was capable of to draw me outside, like a curious moron who would die at the beginning of a horror movie.

And at a little after midnight on that full moon in May, with a power so great making me second-guess why I would even be outside in the first place, trying to find where the magic was coming from, my senses still managed to pick up on a tiny trickle of something.

All it took was a glance down from my camper doorway to spot it.

On the dirt-packed ground had been an itty-bitty body covered in matted black fur that looked wet. The lump had made a sweet cry right at that moment that I felt in my bones.

I’d jumped to the ground and crouched in front of it. The wetness was something that looked more like gel than water, I’d realized as I’d wedged my hand beneath the body and lifted it, thankful for my near-perfect night vision. Crust-covered eyes were set above the smallest nose I’d ever seen.

“Oh my god, you’re a baby,” I had cooed in surprise. I’d felt its fragile bones and its scrawny little chest raggedly rising and falling as the four-legged creature learned how to breathe right in my hand.

A newborn baby—not a dog, I’d been able to sense that, at least not any kind of normal dog that I knew. And as I’d cradled it to my chest, this innocent life too young and defenseless to take care of itself, I had raised my head and looked around. My heart was back to beating so fast.

I saw it then, in the distance of the chaparral landscape. Two bright red eyes.

“Care for him,” the silky, tired voice commanded in my head.

“What?” I had squawked like it hadn’t been the middle of the night and a powerful magical being capable of telepathy hadn’t been communicating with me and I wasn’t surrounded by people who didn’t know about how true folklore was. I’d glanced down at the baby that fit into the palm of my hand before raising my gaze to meet the two eyes moving further away by the second.

She was backing up.

It was its mother. I would’ve bet my life on it.

She howled so deep, long, and loud, there was no way anyone who knew anything about animals would ever believe it was from a coyote.

As I gulped, futilely waiting for an explanation that was never going to come, bright red eyes winked out of view… and the glow of power disappeared.

The fuzzy, wet creature in my hand had let out another newborn-sized whimper.

With the full moon overhead, I stood there for a very long time, hoping the creature would come back for her baby.

But she never did.