Page 13 of Wolf It Down, Knot Me Up

Then he left too. The only one who never meant to, and somehow that made it worse.

The bond didn’t care that it was an accident. When your Alpha dies, the bond dies screaming, and it drags the body down with it. Bond sickness, the clinics wrote on their neat forms, while I shook and burned and couldn’t keep food down for weeks. Months of clinics, two towns away. Months of Grandma sleeping upright in vinyl chairs, holding my hand through the worst of it, and none of it helped. That wasn’t her fault, but grief doesn’t hand out fault fairly. Every trail here reminded me of him, and I couldn’t stand to look at the place where his second chance had ended. So as soon as I could walk a straight line again, I left the lodge, left Rusty’s Bend, left the whole state, and I called it a career. That was five years ago.

We weren’t even scent matches, Jerry and I.

“I miss you,” I whisper.

Wind moves through the pines. Somewhere out in the green, a branch lets go and falls, and I flinch. For five years, I couldn’t imagine standing on this mountain without drowning. But right now, with his photo in my hand and the woods breathing all around me, I’m surviving and feel as though I belong here again.

Maybe that’s you, I tell him silently. That’s just time. Either way, I’m trying. I flew two thousand miles and got bitten by a stranger, but I’m trying.

I wipe my face and stroll inside to find a washcloth. So I push the bathroom door open and stop dead for the fifth time today.

“Are you kidding me?” Slate underfoot, log walls glowing under two more lanterns, a long timber vanity with a hammered copper basin. And under its own window, with the pines crowding green right up against the glass, is a freestanding copper tub. Deep enough to disappear in. Fat white towels sit stacked on a bench, and on the shelf, there’s a row of jars with Grandma’s handwriting on the labels—lavender, pine salt, oat milk—stocked for whoever needs them, and tonight that is emphatically me.

“Yes,” I inform the tub. “Absolutely yes.”

I quickly go to lock the private sector door, then the bedroom one too. I get the taps running hot and shake half a jar of lavender salt into the water. While the tub slowly fills, I peel off my clothes, pin up my hair, and ache for a soak. Steam climbs the window glass and blurs the pines into a soft green haze. I light the candle on the little wooden tray because if I’m doing this, I’m doing it properly.

It takes ages to fill, and I stand there, hugging a towel and watching the water rise, and think about nothing at all, which is a luxury I’d forgotten existed.

When it’s finally deep enough, I sink up to my chin. The heat takes every knot in my body and starts undoing them one by one.

Ever since I left these woods, my life has come apart one careful piece at a time. Alpha. Health. Job. Apartment. Like the universe took my leaving personally and has spent five years sending me the bill.

Well, I’m done fighting it. “I’m back, universe. You win. I’m home, and the forest can have me.”

Now leave me alone.

5

LUCY

“I’m in the bathtub,” I say out loud toward my phone.

“Mm.” Grandma’s voice comes through the phone propped on the wooden tray near the tub. “And?”

“I’m in love and am moving in here now. If anyone needs me, my new address is this tub.”

She laughs. “I fought the plumber for that tub, you know. He said copper was a nightmare, and I said he had to make it happen because it was for my granddaughter.”

“You didn’t even know I was coming back to the lodge.” I slide deeper until the water laps my chin, steam fogging the window above the taps.

“Pfft, I always knew you would, love, eventually. And I hope to be home soon. I’m so tired of sitting in this bed and being beeped at. They won’t release me until the scans show the bones knitting, and now my blood sugar’s decided to run high on top of it all, so I’m on tablets for that too and back under supervision.”

“It’ll be okay.” I stretch one leg out of the water and rest my heel on the copper rim, watching steam curl off my knee as if I’m something served hot. Through the fogged glass, the ridgeline is turning gold at its edges as the afternoon comes in. “And until then, you take it easy and let them fuss. Watch those hospital dramas we used to watch on TV.”

She giggles. “It really is nice to have you home, Lucy. I know it’s been hard for you to come back here, but I’m glad you did. I missed you terribly.”

“It feels different here now, Grandma. I can’t explain it. Maybe it’s the change you made or that I’ve been away too long, but I stood on that balcony today, and it wasn’t as if I was drowning, but more like being home again.”

“Oh, love, that makes me so happy to hear, as I was worried about you when you just left.” I blink back tears, and I adore how much she loves me. “Now, while I’ve got you, it would be a great help if you could please pitch in with the three boys out at the far cabin, the ones doing their service. Meal preparation, changing linens over, that sort of thing. Part of the agreement when I took their placement was that we’d provide motel-style services while they clear the land and help around the property. Ethan’s been doing it all himself, and he could use the help.”

“Yeah, of course,” I say.

“And once I’m home,” she continues, “I’ll get you properly trained on the rest of the business. The bookings, the accounts, all of it. Really help me run the place. How does that sound?”

“Amazing.” I won’t let her down.