Page 47 of A Wolf in the Garden

“Did your family…oh, that makes so much sense now. Oh fuck, I’m so embarrassed,” she starts, and I laugh, knowing exactly where this is going. I’d been an irresponsible idiot that summer we were together, never using any protection despite her not being on the pill until a few weeks into our relationship, instead pulling out and ejaculating all over Ellie every time, my wolves crowing with glee as I gave into the instinct to coat my mate with the most potent version of my scent. The look on my parents’ faces when they’d first arrived at Bluewater Bay and walked through the door had been priceless, even if I was pretty embarrassed at the time.

“Evander, I cannot believe you did that to me, knowing what you knew.You knewthey would smell me smelling like you!” she hisses, and across the street, a long-eared rabbit-person laughs quietly to himself. “The way your mum looked at me…” she continues. “Did you do that on purpose? Come all over me so they —”

“Shhh.What?No. That’s weird.” I bend low, whispering into her ear. “I hadn’t been thinking about anything all those times except how fucking hot you were, and how good your pussy felt, and you know,coming. The scent of sperm is strong — if your little human nose thinks it is, you havenoidea — and it lingers for a few days. It’s just a fact of life, for wolves. You can’t avoid it, growing up. Almost all mated pairs smell of each other constantly, and if they don’t, you know there’s usually a problem.”

The signal to walk turns green and we cross, heading into a park, the grounds full of manicured grass and flower displays.

“Or that someone’s on their period, so no sex?” Ellie asks a minute later, still on the same train of thought as before. “Or do wolf women not get periods?”

“They get them, just the same. But I would say, culturally, period sex isn’t a taboo thing for us. I mean, typically you wouldn’t with someone you just met, but…” I shrug. “From observations, it doesn’t seem to deter the long-term couples I know. It doesn’t bother me. I would absolutely fuck you through your period, but you have an IUD, right? Do you still bleed?”

She shakes her head, eyes looking up at me with awe. “I don’t, but, you would still do that, even when it’s a full on blood bath?”

“Absolutely.”

Her smile stretches wide, eyes crinkling at the corners. “You really are the man of my dreams.”

* * *

We walk hand in hand, meandering through the maze of streets that make up the inner city, heading gradually downhill towards the water. The city is almost overwhelming; too many scents, too many sounds, too many people for my wolf-senses. We spot a used bookstore, and I can tell immediately that Ellie wants to go in. The quiet space is a relief from the bustle outside, the scent of old pages lending a cosy air to the floor-to-ceiling shelves as we wander through the rabbit-warren, searching for the gardening section. We leave with three books — two for Ellie, and one for me,The Wines and Vineyards of New Zealand.

Ellie tells me about her day: she crawled out of my bed an hour earlier than I did, caught the ferry to the city, an Uber to a client’s house in Ponsonby, a second Uber to another client in Remuera, before finally getting to the university an hour prior to her talk — time to catch up briefly with some of the university staff she’d known.

“Sounds exhausting,” I say.

She sighs. “Yep. Every time I do this, I tell myself‘next time, I’m booking this city stuff across two days,’and then I forget, and schedule everything into one day again.”

“It’s the ferry, right? It makes it seem like abig thingto come into the city, since it’s by boat.”

“Yeah, that’s it. And it’s in my head, because there’s people that do this commute daily — it’s only forty minutes! — but for some reason my brain thinks ‘boat’ and sees it as this big journey.”

“Why leave paradise when you don’t have to?” I shrug. “There’s a reason why we both picked Motuwai as the place to live.”

She nods. “I still pinch myself, about you being here.”

I squeeze her hand tighter, lifting it to my lips. I breathe in the scent of her skin, so much more pleasant than the stink of the city. I don’t know why the universe works the way it does. There’s no sense, no rhyme or reason in the way people live and die —in the way Jenny died— but the way Ellie and I found each other again rings of fate, and having her here beside me is a gift that I will not squander.

We’re almost at the ferry terminal when I scent another wolf, so it doesn’t surprise me when we round the corner and come face to face with an amber-eyed teen walking in our direction. He’s scented me too; his eyes dart between Ellie and I, wary. “Alpha,” he says as we pass one another. I sigh and nod in greeting, but otherwise ignore the boy.

Ellie is quiet as we wait in line for the passenger ferry. When we climb aboard, I head for the back row that lines the large cabin wall. Settling into the seat beside me, Ellie pops her bags on the table in front of us and cuddles close, and I wrap my arm around her. “Everything okay?” I ask, sensing the change in her mood.

“I just realised how little I know about your culture,” she whispers, her breath warm upon my neck. “Like how that boy called you ‘alpha’ — how did he know? I’m just feeling out of the loop, and a little guilty that I haven’t bothered to ask more.”

“Guilty?Fuck, I haven’t exactly volunteered a lot of information. I should be the guilty one.” I pull my arm tighter around her, rubbing her thigh.

“Are there things you don’t want me to know?”

“No. Nothing like that. There’s just a lot to cover. It’s two cultures, too. That boy was a shifter, but there’s also my whole werewolf side, and both are quite different. I’ve held back on mentioning things because you’ve already been dealing with a lot.”

“I’m a big girl; I’ll tell you if things are too much for me to handle.”

I look out the window — passengers are still boarding — and this particular sailing has a stopover in Devonport, before heading to the island, which means we have at least an hour on our hands. “Alright. Let me buy us a snack each, because I’m about ready to eat my own shoe if I don’t get some food, and then I’ll tell you about shifters. We can cover werewolves over dinner. Sound like a plan?” She tips her chin up, and I give her a quick kiss. “You want a coffee?”

“Tea, please.”

I return five minutes later as the boat begins to pull away from the dock, with two takeaway cups in one hand and three muffins and two pieces of ginger crunch — one of my favourite Kiwi snacks — in the other.

“Oh, yum,” Ellie smiles, quickly taking the food from me and setting it on the table so I can sit down without spilling drink all over myself. The ferry sways from side to side, bouncing over the wake of another boat.

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