Page 3 of Delivered to My Wolves

Six. Months.

And we loved her so much, she had to extract that oath not to try to follow her. Wolves didn’t do well when a mate passed, and even with my best friend to support me, I was on the edge of failure to thrive most of the time.

“There you are.” Fitz was setting a platter on the table as I entered. “Hurry and wash up.”

“All right.” Once upon a time, I’d have joked with him, maybe called him “Mom” for fussing over me, but I just didn’t have the energy now. It had been years since we buried her, and everyone said time would heal, but you could have fooled me. “I’ll be right back.”

It had to be weird that every time I came home, I had to pause and prepare myself for the fact that she wouldn’t be there. And it still hurt. I couldn’t join Fitz at the table, covered with sweat and dirt, so I stepped into the shower and let the hot water run over my aching muscles.

Where Fitz had taken it upon himself to try to keep us healthy, I threw myself into work, taking any overtime that came up and making sure I’d be exhausted enough to fall asleep. But that punishment left me sore and often bruised. I spotted a new purple-and-black mark when washing down my calves. I didn’t even remember where I got it.

“Come on, Collyn.” Fitz gave a rap on the door. “It’s getting cold.”

“Be right there.” I rubbed shampoo into my hair and tipped my face into the spray. In truth, showering was one of the few pleasures I still enjoyed. For sure, it wasn’t women. I turned in a circle and let the lather flow down the drain then turned the water off. Rubbing the towel over my wet hair, I caught a look at myself in the mirror. Even though I’d lost some weight, my job gave me muscles, so you couldn’t really tell. But the circles under my eyes told of how rarely my plan to pass out as soon as my head hit the pillow was working out.

Spoiler alert: Not at all.

Once we were single, literally the day after the funeral, we had females letting us know they were available and that so were we. If I’d ever had any thought of mating again, that would have been enough to make me promise that it would never happen.

Dressed in shorts and a clean T-shirt, I went to eat dinner with Fitz. As usual, it was a silent meal, or almost so. No conversation beyond that necessary to pass the salt or condiments, but despite our dour demeanor, we ate everything. Our wolves worked hard to keep us going. I stood up and helped Fitz clear the table, rinsing the dishes while he wiped down the counters and table. We were a well-oiled machine after years of living under the same room. But we were not a family anymore. Just roommates.

When everything was tidy, we made our way into the living room and sat on opposite ends of the sofa to watch the evening news then a crime show. Routine might be good, but it was less than stimulating. Sometimes, I fell asleep right there and woke up hours later to stumble off to bed. Other times, Fitz did, or both of us, but not like back in the day when we’d fallen asleep together, three of us in a puppy pile of happy cuddling. Sela brought us together on another level that we could not maintain without her.

When we met her, she’d warned us that we should just move along and leave her to the fatal illness that was slowly draining the life from her. A rare illness among shifters, and one with no cure. But we couldn’t walk away, instead determining that we would give her everything we had and make her feel as comfortable and loved as possible until the time came that…

“Collyn?” Fitz’s voice cut into my musings. “Are you watching the show?”

“Yeah.” I cleared my throat, speaking so rarely made my voice sound rusty. “I’m watching.”

“Then tell me who they’ve got in mind for the criminal.”

“There are always red herrings,” I deflected, but Fitz shook his head and turned off the TV. “Listen, we can’t go on like this. It’s killing us both.”

“Do you want to sell the house?” I was miserable in general, but to be on my own without him even for what company we were to each other…I wasn’t sure I could survive that.

“No.” He tilted his head and studied me. “Do you?”

“Of course not. Can we turn the show back on?” I didn’t really feel like having a conversation. I’d had a long day.

“In a minute. Listen. I’ve found something.”

Chapter Three

Fitz

“You found something?” I knew where his mind was going. He probably thought I found something of Sela’s or a photo of her. We had them framed all over the house already and honestly, now that I thought about it, we had made ourselves a bit of a mausoleum here. We hadn’t changed a thing since she passed. Even her room where her discarded clothes from that morning before we brought her to the healer were laid across the bed just as they had been.

Time froze that day, not for the world but for us.

“Collyn, I know we haven’t talked about this before, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot.” I had to tread lightly. Our mate’s passing was still a fresh wound, open and gaping, susceptible to anything. “I’m ready to move on.”

His brow furrowed above his nose. As the summer went on, his tan had become darker along with it. There were lines where his safety glasses and watch were on him all the time, but the rest of him was bronzed. “You said you didn’t want to sell the house.”

The knot in my chest twisted. The tangle was always there, but when we spoke about Sela or anything not TV or pizza or what day of the week it was, that gnarl inside me became obtrusive. “This isn’t about the house, Collyn. It’s about my wolf and me wanting to find another mate. He craves one, and I need companionship, female companionship. I need a best friend and a mate to hold at night.”

My best friend’s body seized up, freezing at my words. “You want to find another mate?” he asked as though the concept hadn’t crossed his mind before this moment. I couldn’t imagine it hadn’t. “What about Sela?”

Sometimes I thought that despite the depth of pain and hollowness I felt at the loss of my mate that Collyn had somehow taken it harder than me. His grief was deeper. Not that I loved her less, but maybe our ways of dealing with it were different.

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