Red Moon Rising

28. rules

Chapter Song: The Devil Wears a Suit and Tie - Colter Wall

XX

I spend the rest of the morning in the kitchen with Sam, and by the time lunch rolls around I force him to let me help prepare the pack's meal. It may be a small pack, but feeding fourteen wolves several times a day is no small task. These men don't know how to feed themselves either; they're entirely reliant on Sam if they want to enjoy cooked food. For the most part, everyone except Sam is gone for the entire day, returning only briefly for lunch and again for a late dinner. It isn't lost on me that the only place I'm able to worm my way in here as a woman is gardening and cooking, but I'm mostly just thankful to Sam for enabling me to feel necessary in some way. He's good at sensing my restlessness during the long days without Isaac. I've told Isaac how lost, how depressed I've started to feel here, but he doesn't understand my perspective or the way I crave interaction and routine. I haven't even talked to Sam about it, but I get the sense that he knows better than anyone, that maybe we're kindred spirits in that regard. He's been my constant companion from breakfast to dinner for almost a month and a half, save for the rare days when Isaac lets the boys take some time off.

I don't know what it is that they're so busy doing. I hear whispers of trespassers every now and then, but no one is interested in giving more detailed information about why they're trespassing, and Sam doesn't know anything more than I do. Isaac says that work talk is for work hours only. We don't talk much when we are together, and when we do it's in the quiet moments when we're lying together, and I can't bear to break that stillness, that gentleness, with questions about business. In those moments, I get to have my own side of Isaac, a part of him that has become more dear to me than I want to admit. I find myself missing it during the long days away from him, and even sometimes when he is beside me but somehow a different person. It's silly to think of how drawn to his rough exterior I'd been when now all I want is his vulnerability. But Isaac isn't a vulnerable person.

Isaac doesn't return for lunch, too busy with business in town to eat with the rest of the pack. I stupidly miss his presence, the assuredness of his knuckles brushing over my knee when we sit next to each other in the little cafeteria. Sam forces me out of the kitchen to sit with the rest of the pack, but without Isaac present I don't think they know what to say to me anymore. I'm no longer a new thing, but a strange, misshapen fixture in this place. I eat quickly and return to Isaac's bedroom as a strange sense of panic begins to well in my throat. I miss my home more than anything, I miss the security of family and friends and my pack. I miss Cam. It's been easier to forget him in the twilight hours when I'm wrapped in Isaac's arms. But in times like this I feel more alone than I've ever been, even after I left Finn. At least when I was truly, honestly alone, I could blame this feeling on my immediate circumstances.

I'm lying on the bed when I hear a rhythmic buzzing noise. It's a phone, I realize, and it's in the drawer in the bedside table on Isaac's side. Walking around the end of the bed, I open the drawer and find a phone—Isaac's phone—ringing among odds and ends of books and batteries that he keeps near the bed. On the screen is a number I recognize. It's Tasha.

I accept the call all while my body feels like it's sinking deep, deep into the floor. Isaac said he needed his phone in town. He lied to me. Why the fuck would he lie to me about something like that? Who lies about something so incredibly small unless they lie about things that are much bigger? Maybe he had a change of plans—maybe this isn't what it looks like.

"Tasha?" I'm breathless when I answer the phone, and there's silence on the other end for a long moment before I hear her whisper my name.

"You actually answered," she says slowly.

"What do you mean?"

"You never answer the damn phone, Layla."

"You've been calling this number? How many times?"