Safe and Sound

Lya

It was dark out when I woke up. Lights were off, and moonlight streamed through the window. My arm brace had been taken off, and the bed returned to laying flat. I hadn’t even noticed anyone come in.

The room was quiet, save for the beeping of monitors and a soft snore. I looked over, expecting to see Trevor. The form in the chair was decidedly not him.

I reached out to the wolf in my head. 'So you couldn’t warn me that some random guy turned up here?'

'What, am I supposed to be your babysitter or something?' she jeered.

'You’ve already proven you can be a bodyguard, so why not?' I said wryly.

'Oliver and Adair are not a threat.'

'How do you know?'

She didn’t humor me with a response.

The person invading my room stirred, slowly opening his eyes.

“Hey.” Oliver’s voice was gruff with sleep.

“So are all werewolves creepy stalkers?” I asked.

“Only sometimes.” The room was too dark to make out his expression, but it sounded like he was smiling.

“Well, I don’t need a babysitter,” I said, turning away from him.

“I wasn’t trying to babysit,” he replied. “Just figured you would want some company when you woke up.”

“How do you know?”

Oliver looked intently at me. “Look, I get that this is a lot. I just thought-”

“Yeah, it’s a lot,” I scoffed. “ This thing that is stuck in me brutally murdered someone I cared about, I’m stuck in a hospital, I hurt everywhere, I have no idea where I am or why I’m here, I don’t really have the option to leave, and nowhere to go if I did.” I fought to hold back tears. The gravity of the past couple days was hitting me. “I feel like a kid who has no idea what’s going on or how to deal with anything.” A tear slipped out.

Oliver came and perched on the side of my bed, awkwardly putting his arm around me in a half hug. “It’ll all figure itself out,” he said quietly. I didn’t move away from his side, partly because it would hurt to move, and partly because sometimes a hug is just nice.

“I don’t see how,” I mumbled into Oliver’s shirt.

“That’s okay, sometimes it takes a while to figure out.” He removed his arm and went back to sit in his chair. He leaned back and propped his feet up on my bed. “My parents died about eight years ago,” he said.

“I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“Me, too.” He was silent for a moment. “It isn’t really what you are dealing with, but adversity is adversity, right? I was pretty lost for a while. The entire pack was. Sometimes I feel like I still am.”

I nodded. My father didn’t die, he just left.

“He passed, and my brother refused to take on the alpha roll. Actually, my brother left the pack and is now what we call a rogue when that happened.”

“You can leave the pack?” I asked.

Oliver nodded. “Being part of a pack has many benefits, but some just want to be lone wolves. Thom has a pretty good life now. But, because he left, I had to become alpha. My father hadn’t bothered to train me up at all for it because it was always expected that Thom would replace him. So I had lost my father, my brother who had any idea of what to do had left, my mother was dying, and I had gone from no expectations in my life to being in charge of nearly three thousand people - all in the course of only a week.”

“Oh,” I said. I stared at my hands, not knowing what else to say.

“So I get it,” Oliver continued. “I know what it feels like to feel lost and alone and scared. But most of that comes from feeling like you have to do everything by yourself, which is your first mistake.” I stayed quiet, still lost for words. “You were brought here when shit went sideways so you wouldn’t be alone, and you have a home available to you in the pack for however long you would like it.” Oliver’s face developed a pained expression. “Should you choose to leave, no one will stop you, but then you would be on your own.”

“What would happen if I stayed here?” I asked.

A smile flitted across Oliver’s face. “You’d be a pack member,” he said.

I motioned for him to continue. “I’m the new kid, remember?”

“We are our own little society here,” Oliver clarified. “We have a fully functioning, self-sufficient territory, including our own leadership structure. All pack members contribute to the pact in a fashion similar to a national guard, but members still have jobs either within the pack or out in the human society. This town we are in now I guess would be considered the capital of the pack, as it is the largest and it’s where the packhouse, hospital, and training grounds are. Whenever we have pack functions, they take place here. But there are three other, smaller, established towns within our territory, as well as some members that live in the human towns nearby. We do have a school that pack pups are required to attend, as education is of utmost importance. But to answer your question, it would be up to you what happened if you stayed here with us.”

My eyes widened. This sounded much more structured and civilized than werewolf stories would lead you to believe. “How do people not find out about this place?” I asked. I had to imagine if anyone knew of this place, it wouldn’t take long for everyone to know.

“We are quiet and keep to our own,” he said. “We do have enemies out there, and we know that the best way to avoid them is flying under their radar.”

“This is a lot.”

“I can’t imagine what it would be like to learn all of this at once instead of growing up with it,” he agreed. “The only thing we ask is if you leave, you keep quiet about us.”

“Do all of the people who live here have a wolf as part of them?” I asked.

Oliver chuckled. “That is one of the key attributes of being a werewolf. Those of us who have chosen a human mate usually don’t live within our towns, but they are still actively involved in the pack.”

“This is too much right now.”

“We don’t have to talk about this, all we have is time,” he said.

We sat in silence for a bit, but he made no move to leave. Strangely, I was beginning to appreciate the company.

“Where are we?” I asked. “Where is the uh - the pack located?”

“A bit south of Spearfish, in the Black Hills. Have you been out this direction before?”
I shook my head. “Here, can you scootch over?” Oliver moved back over to sitting on the edge of my bed. I slowly - painfully - made some space for him. He settled in beside me, pulled out his phone, and opened up his photo gallery. Most of the pictures looked like scenery photos. He scrolled through, showing me quick snapshots of the area.

I stopped him at a picture of a small waterfall flowing into calm waters. “That place is pretty,” I said. “It reminds me of a place back home.”

Oliver looked down at me. “Where is home for you?”

“I grew up in Maine, lived in North Carolina for a while, but Vermont is home.” A smile played on my lips as I thought of everything I missed the most. I laid my head back against the pillow and closed my eyes as I continued to talk. “I used to live in a house that was quite literally falling into the river. After Hurricane Irene, the White River got really full and destroyed the houses that were really close to the river. After work, I used to take a couple beers down, sit on one of my favorite rocks, and keep them cold in the water.”

I opened my eyes after a moment of silence. Oliver’s eyes were burning into me. Something about his deep brown eyes looked off compared to how they did just a few moments ago. “It sounds lovely,” he said. “We can go here sometime, maybe it will be almost as nice.”

“Maybe.” I smiled at the idea. Maybe staying here wouldn’t actually be so bad. For a little while, at least.

I wasn’t sure what it was about this guy that had my walls cracking even the slightest bit, but I wasn’t complaining.