The gym was peaceful that time of the night, quiet, with only the hum of the icebox condenser for the ice bins and the gentle buzz of the incandescent lights for company. Seamus sighed aloud to himself, stretching out his calves and leaning into the satisfying, predictable resistance of his muscles. Another day gone. Another Saturday settled to the log books, three more open classes, two private sparring sessions, and one solitary job of locking up until Monday.
He raised his arms over his head, savoring the way his shoulders pulled at his back, releasing the tension he’d spent ten hours building up. Seamus didn’t mind Saturdays, not really. He’d rather be busy than not, and Saturdays at the Carlucci gym were always a hive of activity, with young cubs in large groups learning their first formations, ramped up from a week spent at their desks in school.
Being a young Wolf was never easy, but it had only gotten harder since the Rupture.
Growling softly, he stood and checked the ice bins, raking his hand across the solid blocks that wouldn’t be carved out or broken up until the week started anew. Satisfied that the damned condenser wasn’t on the fritz again, he hit the lights, casting the place into darkness. Long shadows traipsed after the stacks of soft mats, piled six high against the windowed wall that faced the street.
So much had changed. So much had stayed the same.
The yellow glow of the streetlamps chased the darkness back into the gym, pooling amber puddles just at the edges of the carefully tended wood flooring, now scuffed from a day’s work. He bent, scrubbing the marks from the floor with a damp rag he’d taken from the top of the ice chest. The condenser wasn’t acting up, but that didn’t mean it didn’t still leak now and then.
“Hey,” a voice said from the doorway to the locker room.
Seamus turned and straightened, tossing the rag into the bag of dirty uniforms and equipment that was destined for the laundromat. “Hey’s for horses,” he replied automatically, a long-standing family joke that had long lost it’s humor. “You’re here late, I was just closing up.”
His brother’s tall, lanky frame shifted against the frame. “I was just coming to check up on the place, that’s all.”
“No need to check up, just another Saturday.” Seamus tugged the handle of the laundry bag free and hefted the entire thing over his shoulder with ease, waiting for Saint to move out of the way. “I was going to lock up.”
“Clocking out early?” Saint asked, only half kidding.
“It’s almost ten,” Seamus protested. “Wolves aren’t exactly breaking the doors down to spar on a Saturday night, you know.”
“Not anymore.”
“No, not anymore.”
Saint sucked his teeth and offered up a relaxed smile as he took the bag from Seamus. “The place looks good, you know. Dad would be proud.” He chuckled quietly, clapping a hand on Seamus’ shoulder. “Our old man never did keep the floors this pristine. You could eat off ‘em.”
“I don’t recommend that,” Seamus said, taking the bag back. “They look good, but you know, they still host a lot of Wolf blood, sweat, and tears.”
“Who’s crying?”
“My opponents, obviously.”
“Ma wants everyone over in the morning,” Saint said. “The family, you know.”
Seamus groaned. “It’s not the first Sunday of the month!”
“She said it’s important, you know how she gets.” Saint followed Seamus through to the locker room, hitting the lights behind them as they went, and tossing a discarded towel into the laundry bag. “She’ll be murder if you don’t show.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll show,” Seamus reassured him. He knew better than to challenge his mother’s sense of matriarchal ownership over the pack. He’d never hear the end of it. “Any ideas what it’s about this time?”
“Not a clue,” Saint replied. “Finn and them already said they’d be there.”
“Alright, alright,” Seamus relented. “I hear you, alright.”
“Did you have plans?” Saint asked, lifting an eyebrow. “Plans you didn’t want to cancel, little brother?”
Seamus snapped an open locker shut with just enough force to punctuate his point. “No,” he lied. “Sundays are just Sundays.”
“Not to Ma.”
“No, not to Ma.” He hovered by the back door of the gym, laundry in one hand, and the heavy ring of keys in the other. “You coming?”
“Yeah, I’m coming.” Saint tilted his head quizzically before he passed to the outside, the vestiges of summer still warming the asphalt in the parking lot. “You sure you didn’t have plans tomorrow?”
“Would it make a difference if I did?” Seamus thrust the key into the lock, jiggling the handle until the deadbolt caught. “Lock is sticky,” he murmured. “Need to get someone out here to fix it.”
Saint stood in one of the golden light puddles, his bright blue eyes glowing in the recent darkness. Sunsets had only just begun to close in earlier, autumn on its way but still only a figment in the hot evening. “Did you see the papers today?”
“No,” Seamus admitted, testing the door to make sure it was secured. “You know how Saturdays are. Early starts and all, no real time for a break.” His stomach growled and he frowned at the timing, hating how his hunger always betrayed him. “Didn’t have time for lunch today,” he grumbled.
“You know Ma would pack you something if you asked.”
“She has enough to do without me piling it on,” Seamus said.
Saint ruffled Seamus’ hair, putting him into a light headlock. “That’s why you’re her favorite, you know.”
“Stop,” Seamus said, ducking out of the hold. “I’m not her favorite, she loves us all equally.”
“Mothers have to say that.”
“With ours, it’s true.”
Saint leaned against the hood of his car as Seamus tossed the bag of laundry into the back. “There was a Wolf attack,” he said. “Or at least, that’s what the papers are saying it was.” He nodded in the direction of the city’s center, the river glinting in the distance despite the moonless night. “That’s the second one this month.”
“Could be a coincidence,” Seamus offered, but the unease had long since settled beneath his skin, too. Public opinion had shifted over the years, waxing and waning in its estimation of mythics, but somehow things felt different over the past few years. Sharper. More dangerous. Calculated. “Could be nothing.”
“Even if it is nothing, or a coincidence, or a new Wolf who hasn’t figured themselves out yet, the headlines are going to scare mortals regardless.” Saint sighed, running a hand through his salt and pepper hair. “We’ll get the blame again.”
“What if it was a shifter?”
“Mortals rarely care much about the delineation there, brother,” Saint said. “You know that.”
“Who was it this time?” Seamus asked, and somewhere, a dark part of him hoped that the victim had deserved what they’d gotten. It was much easier to justify violence that way, even if it turned his stomach to even consider it on a subconscious level.
“A woman about Ma’s age.”
Seamus shook his head. “That’s…” he trailed off, searching for words that wouldn’t come. “What do you think?”
“I think if we’re not careful, Wolves are going to be in a heap of trouble. A world of hurt.” Saint tugged at the lapels of his black leather jacket, straightening the zipper’s edge as he moved his hands alongside it. “As if we weren’t already.”
“Yeah.”
Two cars passed on the street in front of the gym, the rumble of their engines muted by the brick but echoing down the alley two streets down. “We need to get a handle on this,” Saint said. “Things are only going to get worse.”
“How do you expect us to do that?” Seamus asked, his hand resting on the door’s handle. “Where’s your car?”
Saint shrugged. “Loaned it to a friend for the night.”
“So the real reason you came by was for a ride home?” Seamus rolled his eyes, nodding towards the passenger seat. “Get in.”
“Not the only reason. I like seeing what you’ve got going on up here.” He climbed in and slammed the door, adjusting himself in the seat. “I don’t get to the gym as much these days.”
“I noticed.”
“This family is a paragon to the community, Seamus,” Saint said, resting a hand on Seamus’ forearm. “After the Rupture, where did everyone come? They came here, because of Pop, because of Ma.” He nodded, a sincerity resting on his face that was almost disarming, even though Seamus had been exposed to it from birth. “Because of you, too, little brother.”
“That was almost sixteen years ago,” Seamus replied, starting the car’s engine and waiting a moment to make sure it wouldn’t act up. Damned thing hadn’t been the same since he’d let Anya Quinn borrow it a month and a half back. “People have forgotten.”
“No one has forgotten,” Saint corrected, glancing down the street left and right as if he was the one driving. “You’re clear.”
Seamus didn’t bother letting him know that he could see that the road was clear, Saint would always be the same way regardless. He had an inextricable sense of duty and protection as the oldest sibling, and there was no sense in fighting it. There never had been. “Even so, the papers are just reporting the news as they see it. What are we supposed to do about that?”
“Do you really think there’s a Wolf running around the city looking for victims?” Saint prodded. “Are you buying this cock-and-bull story?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time a Wolf, especially a new one, went a little rogue.” The south side of the city wasn’t quite deserted that time of night, but it wasn’t far from the truth. Most people were in the city’s center on a Saturday night, if they were out at all. “It’s believable, that’s all I’m saying.”
“Who would it be? We have tabs on almost every new Wolf in the city.”
“Almost,” Seamus stressed. “Someone could have jumped over state lines for all we know.”
“Even if that’s the truth, headlines like these are going to cause problems for all of us. If there is a new Wolf running around causing problems, we need to find them and bring them to heel or run them out of town. Verdance Wolves have enough on our hands without newcomers making us all look bad.”
“When was the attack?”
Saint rubbed a hand against his knee, the thick woven fabric scratching against his old calluses. “Last moon.”
“Bit late for a headline.”
“That’s my point, little brother, why wait two weeks to post up about it? They’ll have had the police scanner information since it happened. If it’s so important, why not have a headline splashed the very next morning?” Saint growled under his breath, and the sound tugged at the Wolf buried deep within Seamus, waiting for the next opportunity to rise to the surface. “They’re trying to make it look like we can shift out of cycle. They’re trying to scare people.”
“Mm,” Seamus murmured, long-seeded guilt prickling along his skin.
Saint looked over at him, flashes of concern sparking across his face one at a time in rapid succession. “That was one time, Seamus.”
“One time was enough.”
“It was just because of the Rupture, because of the unstable—”
“I’m well aware of what it was,” Seamus retorted. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“It’s not like it will happen again,” Saint soothed, his voice gentle and calming, the same way it was with their mother. “And you didn’t mean for it to happen, and she forgave you a long time ago, if she was even angry to begin with.”
Seamus’ jaw flexed with the tension of the memory. “Doesn’t matter,” he said, an uncharacteristically gruff tone populating his voice. “What’s done is done.”
“You’ll have to forgive yourself someday, you know,” Saint said. “The rest of us did.”
“The rest of you didn’t do what I did.”
“Maybe not of us, not our family, or our pack, but nationwide there were worse things done, and you know it.”
“They aren’t me.” Seamus waved towards the red glare of the traffic light. “Are you going home, or over to Ma’s?” He checked his watch, frowning. “Might be a little late to drop in on Ma.”
“Home,” Saint answered. “I’ve got the kids tonight.”
“And you left them alone?”
“No, Maria is there with the whole flock of ‘em.” Saint tensed, the same way he always did when his parenting skills were questioned. “I wouldn’t leave them to fend for themselves, Seamus.”
“No, I just meant—”
“You said what you meant.”
Regret ebbed across Seamus, dragging what was left of the good intentions between them. “I just meant that since the split, they probably want to see more of their dad, that’s all.”
“I’ve been busy, little brother. It’s not easy running this pack, I have a lot of responsibilities. You wouldn’t know.”
“I guess I wouldn’t,” Seamus shot back, but it was too late to bite back the sharp edge of his words. He hissed out a sigh. “Sorry.”
“I wan’t supposed to have the kids tonight, or I wouldn’t have made plans to be figuring some of this stuff out,” Saint explained after a long moment of sitting in silence at the light before it turned green. “She had to take the train out east for her sister’s wedding or something.”
“Right.”
“I’m doing my best at this, I know I’m not Pop, but—”
“Pop would have loved those kids,” Seamus interrupted. “You know he would have.”
“Yeah,” Saint agreed. “He would have. All of ‘em, you know. Finn and Maria’s too.” He gave Seamus a sideways glance. “Yours, too, if you had them.”
“Between the lot of you, it’s any wonder I get three minutes of peace.” Seamus turned left into Saint’s parking lot, all the lights in his apartment on, and at least two kids running past the window in silhouette, laughing and flailing. “Enough cubs running around anyway.”
“Tell that to Ma.”
“I do, whenever she gives me this same spiel.” Seamus parked the car, tapping his fingers against the leather of the steering wheel. “Does Maria and them need a ride home?”
“Nah, Finn’s coming to get them.”
“Go upstairs and tell him it’s fine, I’ll take them home. It’s just around the corner from me anyway.”
Saint nodded, laying a hand on Seamus’ arm again. “He’ll appreciate that. I think he’s got a late shift at the Sphinx tonight he’ll be trying to make on time. Boss woman over there has his family jewels in a vise.”
“She’ll have to fight Maria for them.”
“She’d lose.”
Seamus snorted a laugh. “Without a doubt.”
COMING SOON
Ryann Fletcher Writes 