6

On my bedside table, the smartphone David let me have buzzed. ‘Go help Colt butcher that elk,’ read his text message.

The evening’s events stung me so much I didn’t even want to leave my room. I texted back, ‘Okay,’ and watched as David marked the message read, then pulled away in the truck.

The manor was eerily quiet, with everybody gone. My bare feet padded down the hardwood corridor on the second floor, past Catrina’s room and Colt’s room, and the master bedroom belonging to Alpha David, all with doors closed. I paused outside of Colt’s room and found the smell permeating from under the door to be the most pleasant: musky and piney like evergreen sap. His room never used to smell that way, so I wondered if what I had been smelling was a new cologne. Gingerly, I continued through the manor, pausing at creaking floorboards and harsh gusts of wind out of fear that I’d be ambushed again. When I finally made it through the basement door, I stepped onto cold cement and was smacked by the overpowering metallic stench of blood. It was so oppressive that it suffocated me, and I tasted it in the back of my throat and gagged.

In the chilly butchering room, Colt had the elk hanging by its hind legs on hooks above a metal grate below. The carcass was already skinned, its legs below the ankles sawed off, head removed, and savory organs harvested. They sat on a pile of ice cubes on a metal table, a gory scattering of offal glistening under the bright lighting in the room. Donning nitrile gloves and an apron both stained crimson, Colt had a hook in one hand and a curved butcher’s knife in the other, pausing from trimming the elk’s tenderloin to glance at me. “What’s with the face? You’ve done this before.” He smiled.

My hand clasped over my mouth from the smell. “I’m not feeling well,” I mumbled. The gash on Colt’s nose drew my eyes. “Are you okay?”

He wiggled his nose and the adhesive closures bridging the clefts of skin just below his brow crinkled up. “It’s nothing,” said Colt. “Just annoying.” He returned to work on the carcass, his lingering smile present in the atmosphere around him. “You can start packaging up the offal. The recipient's list is on the corner of the table.”

After washing my hands and putting on my gloves and rubber boots, I divvied up the organ meats on the table before me, sealing them in plastic, writing names on their labels, and storing them in a cooler.

“I’m glad it’s you down here and not Cat,” Colt eventually said.

“Was she supposed to help you tonight?”

“Yeah. I wasn’t too keen on it though.”

I carefully trimmed the fascia off the tenderloin cut. “Why?”

“She was just… unpleasant today.” His back was turned, so I couldn’t see his face. “Hey, how’d those binoculars work for you? Did you try them out yet?”

My guilt roared back to life. “David caught me using them.”

Colt peeked over his shoulder at me, his eyebrows pinched. A frock of black hair hung over his brow. “He did?”

“I’m grounded,” I said.

Now he looked annoyed. “He grounded you just for having binoculars?”

“Well, it was a little more than that…” I tried to focus on the cut. It was easier to give my eyes something to stare down at. “He caught me as I came in from outside.”

“You went outside?” Colt dropped his hands to his sides and faced me. “You could’ve just used them from your room!”

“I wanted to watch the hunt,” I muttered.

Colt laughed bleakly. “I give you binoculars to watch birds and you use ‘em to spy on us. I guess there’s no stopping a wolf from doing what she wants if she wants it badly enough.”

He didn’t sound angry. It inspired me to smile, bolstered by his acceptance of me as a wolf like him. Because I was one. Even if the others didn’t act like it.

My smile wilted a moment later. “He took the binoculars,” I said. “But I didn’t tell him you gave them to me.”

“Thanks for that.” Colt turned around again.

I snuck a glance at my brother, watching him carefully slice chunks of meat off the elk and set them aside for me to clean up and package. Despite his lean physique, the muscles in his arms bulged as he flexed and stretched. His smile had two modes: thoughtful and mischievous, the latter pairing best with his gleaming blue eyes and sharp jawline. Behind his every calculated move was cleverness certain to sweep his future mate off her feet, whoever she may be.

It took us three hours to process the elk and clean up the butchering room. By then, it was a little past midnight; tomorrow morning, I’d have to wake up early to clean the manor, even earlier than I used to wake up for school. I graduated this past June. David wanted to keep me on an early schedule so I knew I was going to be tired, especially since I felt exhausted tonight. Colt walked me back up to my bedroom, his gloves and apron gone and now wearing jeans and his dark blue t-shirt. “Hey,” he said, grabbing my shoulder as I opened my door, “if you need anything, just give me a shout.”

I hesitated.

“Since you’re grounded,” he added.

“Oh.” I wouldn’t be able to join in on trips to the grocery store. That was probably what he meant. “Okay. Thanks.”

Colt grinned softly, taking his hand away. From the air whisked by his hand, a fresh wave of his piney smell hit my nose, rising directly off his skin. I breathed in and relished it, catching his eyes.

He tilted his head.

The desire to tell him about these newfound smells became tangled up in my throat. I didn’t want to sound stupid in case it was nothing. It was sometimes embarrassing, just looking in peoples’ eyes; so I averted my gaze and turned for my door. “Goodnight, Colt.”

“Night, Billie.”

I undressed into pajama shorts and a tank top, and once the corridor was clear, ducked into the bathroom to wash my face, brush my hair, and brush my teeth. Back in my bedroom, I crashed onto my bed and was sure I’d pass out within a few minutes.

Except I didn’t.

It was hard to sleep, no matter how heavy my eyelids felt. I tossed and turned, reliving the overwhelming stench of blood in the butchering room. No, outside. It was fresher outside. Warmer. How could I even tell the difference? I was fidgety, hungry, remembering the skinless corpse’s pattern of white fats strafing through pink muscle. The ambient sounds of the manor suddenly became too loud for me: the humming of central air, the groaning hardwood whenever Colt moved around in his room. It was too hot even after I took off my blanket. I wanted to be outside again.

I shouldn’t go. I knew I shouldn’t.