Page 14 of Fixer
Maybe we’ll run together in fur again.A shiver of anticipation ran through me.Belief slipped a little deeper into my veins, and my wolf rose in me.Soon?Pack, run, soon?
I hoped so, with everything in me.
As we approached Kenora, Dustin straightened away from the window, shook out his sweatshirt, and said, “Next right.”
“Are we close?”
“Twenty minutes.”As my foot went down on the gas, he added, “Unless you get pulled over for speeding.”
“Right.”I dropped our speed to a sluggish, annoying fifty.“Does Shawn know I’m coming?”
“Hm.No.”
That surprised me enough that my foot eased off the pedal, till I sped up again with a lurch.“Why not?Why would you tell me but not warn him?”
Dustin gazed out the windshield.“I didn’t want to make promises.I wasn’t sure I’d find you, and if I did, I wasn’t sure whether you’d destroy my evidence and kill me before I could get you to listen.”
“That’s why you left me just one picture at first?”
“Yeah.I wanted to shake your certainty and buy time.”
“And whose fault is it I was so certain?”I grumbled.
“Yours.”Dustin laughed when I glared at him.“You ran off and vanished very thoroughly.Although to be fair, I could never have told you as long as you were bonded to Alpha.You couldn’t have hidden that change of emotion from him.”
“So itwasyour fault.”
I’d been kind of teasing, but he said, “I guess,” and his face fell.
“You’re making up for it now.”I pushed the speed limit by a few more miles.“Tell me about my brother.What’s he doing these days?Does he have friends?”A lover?
“It’s been months since I was here.And I think you need to let him tell you about his life.”
“Fair enough.”Let him tell you.Hope sank an inch deeper into me.
“Take a right now.When you see a half-scorched dead tree, turn down the lane on the left.”
I did as Dustin told me, my breath coming shorter with every mile.When I spotted a tall, lightning-blasted elm, I steered left onto a gravel drive just wide enough for one car.The narrow ruts led through a gap in a wooden perimeter fence and around a wide stand of pine trees.On the other side of the pines, apple trees losing their blossoms lined both sides of the drive and a small wooden house stood at the far end.I drove forward slowly, trying not to rip the bottom out of Dustin’s old car, trying to keep my shit together.
Soon.If Dustin’s not lying.
Off to the left, past the house, two men had been working among the trees with some kind of sprayer.Now, they both turned our way as we approached.One of them had blond hair, a slim build, and stood poised for action—Shawn!
I slammed on the brakes, scrambled out of the car, and began running.Shawn flinched for just a second, then I saw recognition hit.He dropped the canister he was holding and sprinted toward me.We met in a collision almost hard enough to knock us over.I grabbed him, yanked him close, his scent in my nose, his living, not-dead, really alive body crushed against me.I breathed against his hair as my throat closed down.Shawn, alive, here, alive.
Shawn grabbed me back, his arms clamped tight around me.“Wade!God, Wade,” he muttered.“It’s you.”
I struggled for words.“It’s me.”Nothing else came.I hugged him tighter until he choked, then let go and pushed him back enough to look at him.That was my brother’s face, older, sure, but still my little brother.Shawn blinked hard, and I put out a trembling hand to trace his skull, his shoulder, his arm.“Dustin said you were hurt, off that cliff.Broken bones.”
“I’m fine.That was long ago.Wolves heal.”He shook his head, his eyes damp.“I never imagined Dustin was bringing you with him.I asked him to find out where you’d gone.I didn’t think he’d succeed.”
You asked him?I was glad my brother wanted me found, but somehow, a twinge of disappointment hit me that Dustin’s reappearance in my life was only because of Shawn.
Fool.Did you really think he spent all that time tracking you down for your own sake?
I shook my selfish thought off.Here at last was my little brother and nothing could make this moment less than wonderful.I peered into Shawn’s blue eyes, so like my own.Almost on a level with my own… “You’ve grown.”That simple realization punched me in the heart with all the years we’d lost, all the years I’d thought he’d never have.In my imagination, he’d been frozen at fifteen, eight inches shorter than me, scrawny as a weed—
A sob racked my throat, and I yanked him close again.
