Page 47 of Crave

I played football in the fall, baseball in the spring, and continued to pull in A’s. Ethan got into fights, failed classes, and glowered all through dinner. And each and every time he screwed up, our dad wrote him a pass. I began to resent him, resent the preferential treatment he always seemed to receive from our parents that I was never the recipient of. But most of all I resented that Ethan had managed to turn me into the black sheep in my own family.

Looking back on it now, I knew my parents had been trying to help my brother through a difficult transition from foster care into our family. I shouldn’t have been such a dick. I couldn’t even imagine what he’d been through in the years before he came to stay with us. If I could have gone back and shaken some sense into nine-year-old Dallas, hell yeah, I would have. But I’d been on a trajectory I couldn’t escape, feeling more isolated from my family with every day. And back then, I didn’t have anyone to turn to for help.

My mom listened, worry lines forming in her brow. “I will never forgive myself for not stepping in when your father took you out to the barn that night. Of all the things I’ve done in my life, there is no mistake I regret more than that one.”

I closed my eyes, that night roaring back, the pressure of my dad’s power forcing me to submit as everything in me screamed for it to stop—

“I don’t want to talk about that night.”

The thing with Lacey? It didn’t matter that transmitting the virus shouldn’t have been biologically possible. It didn’t matter that we’d used protection and that she was the last person on earth I would ever have dreamed of hurting. It didn’t matter that, contrary to everything my dad would later shout at me, I not only grasped the gravity of how badly I’d screwed up, I was sorrier than he would ever know. In the end, Lacey Blair had been forcibly changed at my hands. She would never get a second chance. And so I didn’t deserve one.

But somewhere in the back of my mind, I resented that had I been Ethan, it would have been granted anyway.

“I think we need to talk about it. You’re in pain. You’re still reliving that night somewhere in the back of your mind, even if on the surface it seems to everyone else like you’ve moved on.”

I clawed a hand through my hair, saying nothing.

Ethan thought he had it so bad? Try getting shipped off to Canada and not hearing from your dad for four years. Try arriving home at twenty-one to a town you barely recognized and a family that treated you like you were radioactive. Try finding out that even though you were the one who used to get up at dawn to make everyone in the family French toast drizzled in syrup, powdered sugar and fresh raspberries, your parents set up the kid they adopted from foster care to inherit their coffee shop the day he turned twenty-five. That once again, you were an afterthought.

Ethan thought he knew what it was to be an outcast. I was the one this family had thrown away.

But that wasn’t even the worst part.

“I busted my ass opening that food trailer. It took all the money I’d earned working up in Calgary. I barely slept that first year between running the smokers, showering at West’s and driving around to work sites. And I don’t care that I had to start over from nothing. I just wish even once Dad would have acknowledged I was trying. That I wanted to get back on the right track.”

“You know I was proud of you. Your father was, too.”

“He had a hell of a way of showing it.”

That second-hand food trailer sold out of brisket, chicken, and pork every day by 2 p.m. By the time I was twenty-four, I was able to get a construction loan to build The Rusty Spoke. My entire family showed up to opening day. Everyone that is, except for Ben Caldwell.

“He shipped me away two thousand miles from home, then wanted me to crawl back to the pack on my knees. And even that wasn’t good enough.”

“Ben didn’t react well. There are… factors in his past that caused him to be easily set off that night. When he discovered you’d been lying to us for two years—" She stared me down. “What your father did was inexcusable. But you have to understand that you changing a human against their will, even by accident, represented one of his greatest fears.”

My vision greyed out, hot visceral rage searing through my blood as the wolf clawed to get free. How many times had I apologized to all of them, in calls, letters, and later in person? How many times had I curled in the corner of the shower, having retched until my stomach was empty, sick with shame at the knowledge I’d destroyed Lacey’s life, that I could have forced my entire family to leave Blood Moon if we’d been exposed? All because I’d convinced myself that just this once it would be okay to bend the rules, that if Lacey and I didn’t let things go too far, no one would get hurt. Except they had gone too far. And she and my family had paid the price for my lack of judgment.

“Except Dad’s been punishing me for years. Telling the city to deny me the permits to open The Spoke. Refusing to come to the restaurant even after it opened. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised you went to such lengths to keep me and Lacey apart, or that you’re clearly not supporting us now.”

She didn’t try to deny it.

“It’s not that I dislike Lacey. It’s that I’m not convinced either of you is good for the other.”

I barked out a laugh. “Wow. Got it.”

“You have to realize what an impossible situation Ben and I were in. You were seventeen. Lacey was a child. Underage. What happened that night was a terrible accident. But she had been changed in our territory. At your hand. And we were therefore responsible for ensuring she was safe.”

I ground my teeth until I was pretty sure I heard a molar crack. That night in the barn came rushing back. Dad looming over me, the belt whistling in his hand. Splinters in my cheek from the barn floor. Moths swarming the light high up in the rafters as my vision swam in and out. The sharp metallic taste of blood—

“And so you sent me away.” The wind gusted. Sharp blades of silver-tipped grass swirled in the moonlight. “Do you have any idea what that was like, being exiled from everything I’d ever known?”

For an endless moment, no one in the clearing breathed. My mother took a cautious step towards me, like I was a rabid animal. Right now, that didn’t feel far from the truth.

“We never meant to hurt you. Either of you. It’s common for sires to develop a strong bond with the wolves they change, a bond that often turns sexual. Ben and I couldn’t be sure what either of you were telling us was the truth, or just the bond’s influence. Lacey was my responsibility until I could safely return her to her mother, delivered out of her transition and no longer a danger to humans. It wasn’t until much, much later that I realized how deeply she cared for you, that you loved her in return, and I came to regret keeping you apart for so long.”

“I never would have forced her—”

“You can’t know that. I’m not saying you ever would have willingly, just that… you two were very young, the connection between you was intense, and I couldn’t allow Lacey to be put in a position where she would be made further vulnerable after everything that had already happened to her.” She paused, and I could feel her weighing her words. “I understand you’re angry with me, that you’ve been angry for a very long time, but look at it from an outsider’s perspective. What happened that night was a freak accident, so far outside what should have been possible none of us could have predicted it. It had to be due to your age, a spike in hormones that boosted your viral load enough to cause infection outside the normal transmission window. But regardless, you changed Lacey. No matter how much it killed us to send you away, in the immediate aftermath, we had to focus on her.”