Red Moon Rising

11. out

Chapter Song: Running - Milky Chance

XX

It isn't until Cam's fingers run over my cheeks that I realize that I've been crying, and that I'm not dreaming anymore. I blink slowly at him as he kisses my mouth and cheeks and nose, and then I'm wrapping my arms around his neck and pulling him back down into the blankets with me.

"I have to go to work," he groans, but he doesn't try to push away. Instead, he buries his face in my neck and sucks my skin between his teeth.

"If you do that then I won't be able to let you leave."

Fingers brush up my thigh, beneath the edge of the too-big t-shirt that I stole from Cam for pajamas. It's all it takes for me to melt beneath him, begging him silently to skip work and stay in bed with me all day. He leaves one more kiss on my neck before slipping from the blankets and stepping into a pair of worn work boots, jamming his heels down with two solid thuds. It's something of a joke now, to whisper about staying in bed all day, but we both know what would happen if either of us missed a day of work. We only recently were able to buy a blanket and pillows to spread beneath us on the floor, and any existing furniture in our bare apartment, each chipped plate and half-broken appliance, was given to us or picked up at a dump and smacked sideways until it worked again.

But it's ours, and there's something about sitting in our pile of blankets on the floor and staring around the studio that makes my heart ache—each peel of paint on the walls that we've planned to cover with a poster, the places that are empty that we've yet to fill with a couch and chairs—all it took for this place to become a home of sorts was for us to step into it. It isn't like Rust Cove, and it isn't like living with family and our pack. That's a home that comes from deep inside. But we can be together here, alone, and that's all that matters. That's what I keep telling myself.

When Cam is gone I finally slip from the blankets and begin to get dressed for my day. Already, I can hear the clank of pans from the kitchen below me—Jeana is in early today. She's baking pies for the rush of out-of-towners who frequent the diner below our apartment every weekend, mostly consisting of the tourists from Grand Marais who care to venture further inland. Cam's friend Peter managed to get him a job at the lumberyard where he worked, but it was pure luck that allowed me to be passing Jeana's diner just as one of her waitresses stormed out the door. Jeana asked me if I overheard the things the woman said about her and the restaurant, and I told her it didn't really matter to me one way or another, I just wanted to work. She hired me on the spot, and was thrilled enough to have someone to fill in that when I asked about renting the apartment above she didn't seem phased when I told her I couldn't pay her right away.

And this is one of those things that I couldn't have done without Cam, who has been coaxing me into public life, even while we've had to live out of the sedan on a stretch of forest service road out of town. It's only because of him that I've come to realize that most people, aside from the occasional few, aren't on some constant search for wolves in their midst. They all have lives to live, some of them very hard ones, and wolves and treaties and territories mean nothing to them because they never owned land and never really had a stake in this country to begin with.

That isn't to say I'm about to tell anyone what I am. I want to keep this job, and I know that—subconsciously or intentionally—people would avoid the cafe if they knew a wolf was pouring their morning coffee. People might not be on some constant search for us, but they still have ideas in their heads about what we're like, rumors that our bite will turn them into one of us even though every leading scientist has debunked that theory.

"It's a sexually transmitted disease," laughs the morning news host on Fox & Friends, and I almost spill coffee all over the table in front of me, because I know that theory too. Jeana is nice enough, but the TV in the diner plays a constant stream of conservative talk shows. I can do my job, but there is something eerie about this room when the TV starts talking about wolves. Tension between the territories and locals is a lot worse in rural areas than near the cities, it's always been that way, but now I'm in a room full of people who are listening to the bullshit some guy with swoopie hair, a bowtie, and a forged journalism degree is peddling about wolves, about me. "It doesn't matter if you're human, if you get pregnant and the guy's a wolf, you're going to have your own little monster chewing on your chair legs before too long."