My brothers were werewolves, and sometimes they were the stupidest ones I'd ever met.
I'd been told by Mr. Jarias at the supermarket that they would be back, that they would come home finally soon. That was an hour ago.
I hadn't believed him.
Then on my way home again I had taken the shortcut through one of the neighborhoods to get to the long back road that led to my home. The Rhodes family had been out in their yard as I passed and of course I'd had to slow down as the mother yelled out to me. She'd said almost the exact same thing as Mr. Jarias, with a smile that was encouraging on her face. As if she'd told me for my own benefit what I needed to hear.
Both had known my family and I for a long time, had seen the outside looking in of my life for the past decade. They weren't strangers, but everyone in this town had felt distant to me for so long now that I just smiled and thanked them when they told me anything at all. I had small talk down to a T in this town, knew and could visit with just about everyone but still kept them all at a distance that was safer. Just in case.
I never believed anyone when they said that they were coming home soon, not even myself. I used to, but that had changed.
Over the years I just had come to accept it— that I couldn't change it, that it just was the way it was. Same as everything else in my life. From the dead-beat going-nowhere-jobs I'd had to keep, to the crazy friendships I'd made that could only stay secret.
Yet here I was... staring at their vehicles in our gravel driveway. Parked right to the side of our front porch rails that started our old two-story home.
It was my pride and joy, this house, it'd been through shit and every time I had repaired what I could. The colors were a faded white and a light sky blue that I had picked and re-touched several times. It's windows were scattered perfectly across both floors and I knew each one held a beautiful view of the yard and forest that surrounded our home on all sides at a distance. The front steps up the porch were simple white and the porch itself held three wooden chairs to sit on.
Then I realized I wasn't dreaming.
Those vehicles were really there, in the very spots I'd kept empty for them for well over two years. And before that it had been seven months. And before that it had been another year and a half.
They came.
And then they were gone again.
Always the same.
In the past I had forced smiles on my face despite how I really felt, I had run and leaped onto them with a hug and welcomed them back no matter how long they'd been gone. I had always hung around waiting, I would try to invite them to eat or wait for them with food or movies or anything. I would stand around and bug them to spend time with me while they were in town and then... I would convince myself, that this time— this time they were staying.
But I was always wrong.
And they were gone way too soon again.
I didn't even have the energy in me to summon for a fake smile this time, much less a greeting like I used to give them.
My brothers and their best friend were home.
The home I'd tried to keep and rebuild for them. My home that wasn't quite home enough without them, and the home they didn't seem to want all that much.
Yet I could never seem to leave it like they did.
I slowly moved my beat-up long-faded blue pick-up truck to it's parking spot, the furthest from the front of the house and next to theirs. I could see their movement through the front windows, all three of them.
I felt numb as took it all in.
They were back.
Why now?
I bit my lip until the skin almost broke, worried about what this could mean for all the plans I'd started to put into action after all these years.
It was always harder to say goodbye to them after they came back. Harder to come downstairs and get hit with the realization that they'd left me behind again while they went God-knows-where.
I slammed my truck door and glared down at my black knock-off doc Martins as I stepped onto the ground. This time would be no different, and I really didn't feel like forcing a smile again.
Not one more damn time. I just couldn't these days it seemed.
And I honestly doubted they'd notice. They'd failed to notice anything for the past nine years as it was. I was too tired today.
So, so tired I just wanted to not adult today and go build a pillow fort to hide in.
I stomped up the stairs to the house I'd been taking care of, to the home they'd abandoned. The moment I stepped inside I had to pause and blink at the bags crowding my entry way floor that shared the living room space.
It was almost like they were moving back in.
More bags and items than they'd ever brought with them when they ''came back''.
My eyes went towards the kitchen door where I could hear their movements as they bumped
into the cabinets and closed the fridge door again. I could've so easily opened the door and greeted them. Smiled and welcomed my only family left home, I could've hugged and sunk into their arms and been so glad they were back again.
That's what I'd done every other time they'd come home.
That's what I had thought I would always do.
But hell, after a long double shift at the diner in the next town over with nothing more than a few minutes stolen away to stuff a biscuit down my throat— that was the last thing I was going to do.
I quietly made my way upstairs, past the door and up to my bedroom. When they saw my truck they would know I was home, but it didn't change anything. I had never once seen them come to me in the past years. I was always the one bugging them and trying to have time with them.
They would leave me be, and it was the last thing I wanted, but all I needed at the same time.
They thought I didn't know their secrets. I didn't know what they were or where they went or what they'd done.
And maybe to a degree they were right... but they would always be my big brothers, Kal and Ansel, and their best friend, our childhood friend and my ex-boyfriend, Stryker.
I knew more than they thought, saw more than I should have, but I'd realized a while ago that changed nothing.
They would always be running and striving to grow their pack and I would always be home and safe in their minds— tucked out of the way and not knowing any better about the werewolves I was surrounded by.
As the one human in the Werewolf territory that my small town resided in, I was kept outside and in the dark about everything.
My family had no idea I knew what they were and what this town hid, and I pretended that I hadn't seen the largest wolves in the world turn into humans when they thought no one was looking. Or seen them watching me sometimes when I jogged through the woods on the path. Or hadn't secretly watched my brothers shift into their wolves for the first time when they were thirteen.
I wasn't one of them. I didn't shift into a wolf, and I still remember slowly over the years as that dawned on them that I was different. A kind of sadness and disappointment in their eyes they couldn't quite hide.
My brothers had hoped I was one of them. And by all accounts I should have been as both our parents had been werewolves, but I wasn't. So they were never able to tell me the truth.
Overtime we grew more and more separated until I practically tried to glue myself to them when they were in town, I admit it I had been clingy, and that only seemed to worsen it.
And now I couldn't even greet them in our own home. I would be clinging and bugging. And there was no point.
The silence in my bedroom that greeted me was lonely and cold. It was an itch to not turn on my speakers and blast my music, to break this tiny fragile feeling that hung around.
Fragile was meant to be broken, and I was not fragile.
No matter what I had to hide from and keep quiet about, I would never be fragile again. Fragile meant I couldn't protect my loved ones from the truths and secrets I wore in the scars littering my back.
My brothers were werewolves, and the only boy I'd ever loved was one too, but I had a different kind of monster under my own skin.
Our parents had died when I was ten, leaving me to my older brothers' care as soon as they turned eighteen (until that it was ironically Stryker's parents that watched over us according to my parent's will as they were the Alpha and Luna of the pack), and leaving us our childhood home. Since then I'd kept some of the decorations and furniture the same but not a lot of it. My brothers' rooms and the spare room we'd always let Stryker use over the years I kept the exact same. I went in pretty often to dust and make sure everything was ready and perfect for them when they did find their ways back home again. My bedroom was the only room in the house I'd taken lots of liberties with and that no one would ever see besides myself.
My small twin bed shoved in the far corner, with a shelf holding all of my camera collection and a few books was positioned directly above it. The only two windows almost connected at the other corner as far away from the bed as possible. I didn't like being in front of the windows a lot but I didn't like it being too dark in my room either or it made my skin crawl so I had settled and put up white black-out curtains over them. Two dressers took up the wall across from the bed, right next to one of the windows.
And finally, my masterpiece: every spare inch of wall was covered in printed out photos I'd taken. It told the whole life story of my family, of the friends I couldn't talk about, and about everyone I knew in my life. Every picture, every glimpse, it was all pieces that made up a whole.
Pieces of me.
Memories of my parents.
Pieces of my brothers and Stryker.
All the moments I never wanted to forget, plus some that I only wanted to forget depending on the day.
Pictures from when we were all a lot younger and Stryker would come over and play in the yard with my brothers and I all the time. We were covered in mud from playing King of the Hill after it'd rained, large grins on our faces, our parents and Stryker's had found us like that and unable to stop laughing— they had wanted to capture the moment forever.
Pictures of Stryker and I's first date, when we'd sneaked out to the only diner in our town for milkshakes without my brothers. They had caught us twenty minutes in though and crashed it with a camera they'd made the waitress snap a picture of us all with— me blushing with a small smile sitting across from Stryker who looked annoyed but still managed to grin, and my brothers mid-laugh, each holding one of our shoulders as they scared us.
Funny it had been all four of us for the longest time, yet now only one out of the team would ever see these photos and feel stuck.
The more recent photos from the past two years were more filled with my friends that were kept in secret. Only because they had weird ass situations (one was the town recluse that was known to never leave the house, and the other was a goody-girl that everyone wanted to think of as tame). Aleise, Fira, and I all toasting a bottle of Tequila around a bonfire for our own New Years celebration, complete with skimpy outfits even though we didn't go anywhere but my yard. One was of the three of us on our road trip to Vegas, the windows down and my wild red hair blowing around my sunglasses, a smirk on my face as the girls high-fived.
We certainly made a colorful group, I mused as I grinned up at our pictures. My hair was long and bright red, Aleise's reached just above her shoulders, was green and usually had some kind of flower in it, and then Fira's was a light pink curly bob cut that fit her pixie pale face perfectly.It took me all of three seconds to decide where I needed to be more than inside of a pillow fort.
I needed a drink and my girls right now.
And for them to talk me out of some of the ideas shooting through my head at the moment. I was known for bad ideas, or I guess to me, very exciting ideas.
Last minute road trip out of state? Was totally all me.
Breaking into the old high school and wrecking some havoc? In my defense I had been a bit tipsy and a lot angry.
Sneaking the drinks and cigarettes to the girls for us to share? Why the hell not?
I was trouble but they kept me grounded when I needed it. When I was too wild I guess.
And they were the only ones that knew absolutely everything about my brothers and Stryker. They had their own Werewolf issues so it seemed fair to keep each other in the loop and have someone to talk to.
I didn't like to be the pining ex-girlfriend or the annoying little sister. To them, Aleise and Fira, I was just Bee the Rebel Bitch in our group of Bitches.
Not the sister that was left behind because she couldn't shift.
Not the girl that stayed because she loved her family and old flame too much still.
I was the rebel that had always been in me when I was with them.
Not the fucked up problem of the pack.
******
Please remember it's not the finalized, totally amazing version of the story yet so there will be grammar errors!!
~NoelW