"I don't want you working yourself to the bone just to keep this house," Dee said softly.
"But it's your house! It's the house you grew up in! And I grew up here, too..." Julia said.
"I can always find a smaller place. It might be better at my age." Dee shrugged as she washed and dried her hands, but there was a sadness in her eyes that Julia could not bear to see.
"How much do they want?" she asked.
"Nine thousand dollars."
"Nine thousand!"
"I'm sorry, Julia. You've done everything you can for me," Dee said. "I don't want you to worry about the house. It's just a house."
"It's our house," Julia said, tears threatening to spill over her eyes for the second time that day. Granny Dee came around the table and cupped her hands around Julia's face. Her skin felt soft and wrinkled, and she smelled like a comfortable mix of lavender and baking.
"It's the people in a house who make it home," Dee said, looking straight into Julia's eyes. "Wherever we end up, we'll still be family."
"Okay," Julia said softly.
"Go relax," Dee said. "You deserve it."
"Okay," Julia said. "Goodnight. I love you."
"I love you too, sweet child," Dee said.
Julia walked up the stairs to her small room. She looked out of her window, but the foreclosure sign in the front yard made her sick to her stomach. Nine thousand dollars. That would take months of paychecks from the library. There was no way that they could get the money in time, no matter how many guests came to stay at the bed and breakfast.
Closing the blinds, she lit a candle next to her bed. She'd always liked to read by candlelight, no matter how many times Dee told her that it would make her nearsighted. Julia sighed, rolling over on her bed to look for a book on her shelves. She needed to escape from life. And books always made the bad things disappear, if only for a little while.
Skimming through the spines on the shelf, she found her finger resting on a book she hadn't read in a while. It was a fairy tale book that her mother had bought her because the princess looked like Julia in the illustrations. She pulled it out and plopped down on the bed, opening the book to the first page.
"Once upon a time," the story started, "there lived a very smart young princess named Felicity."
Julia let her fingertips move over the princess's face on the page. The same bright red curls of hair, the nose covered in freckles, the plump cheeks. It looked like her, alright. Even though her hair had calmed down a bit over the years, she still woke up to a fuzzy mess on top of her head more days than not. Her mom said that anybody could be a princess.
Julia choked up and closed the book, blinking through her tears. Her parents had been dead for over ten years now, and there wasn't a single day that passed that she didn't miss them. While Granny Dee was kind and loving, Julia still longed for someone else to share her life with.
"There's nobody out there for me," she whispered. The face of the blind man, Damien, rose up immediately, unbidden, in her mind. His lips, his cheek—she felt like she could almost reach out and touch him. She remembered the almost electrical shock that he had given her when he touched her elbow, the warmth that had spread through her body when he talked to her.
"Not for me," she said, but the memory felt so comforting that she let her thoughts spin off into dreams of Damien. Soon she was dancing in a gown as he led her around a ballroom in a stately waltz.
"For me." Her lips formed the words, but no sound came from them. Outside in the night sky, the full moon rose soft and white, shrinking as it fell upwards among the stars.
CHAPTER FOUR
Damien
Back at the hotel, Damien found Kyle and Jordan talking animatedly over a map about the possibility of buying a house outside of the city. Kyle had brought back a bunch of real estate brochures which were scattered across the map in different regions. Damien walked over to the table and stood behind a chair. His hand bumped the table slightly, but as soon as he felt the slightest touch, he had already reacted and adapted to the obstacle. In public he often pretended to rely on his cane more than he needed too, for his deftness and intuition sometimes made people doubt that he was blind.
"South of the city will be better for us," Jordan said decisively, pointing out the map topography. "The way the mountains are lined up, the wind blows south over the entire urban area. We wouldn't have to worry about any wolf passing through the city and smelling us."
"Who passes through this city?" Kyle asked, shrugging. "College kids? Any member of a pack wouldn't be leaving their territory to go to school somewhere else. It makes no sense."
"Anybody might pass through!" Jordan said, adjusting his eyeglasses on his nose. "Just driving through. What if someone drove through the city?"
"We're in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere," Kyle said. "Who's going to smell us? Pardon my language, Katherine," he said, blushing as he nodded apologetically in her direction. She scowled.
"At least we can afford any of the places around here," Jordan said. "We've got enough money to buy half the town if we wanted to. Turns out Bumfuck, Nowhere is a cheap place to live."
"Are there any good places south of the city?" Damien asked. At his question, both Katherine and Kyle perked up to attention.
"I found a couple," Kyle said. "And Jordan scouted around the edges to see which ones we can get to from the state park's land."
"There are a few," Jordan said, scratching at his beard. "Most of them are pretty ramshackle, though. It's the poor part of the area, the houses are old."
"We're going to tear down the house anyway, right? Build separate cabins?" Katherine said. She hugged close to Damien's side.
"I'd like a study of my own," Jordan said. "For research."
"And you'll need a house for your family," Kyle blurted out. He licked his lips and bent his head, avoiding Katherine's gaze. Damien paused for a second, gathering the information he could from the subtle sounds of his pack, and then picked the strands of the conversation back together.
"Go tomorrow and check out the interesting places together," Damien said to the two men.
"In human form?" Kyle asked.
Jordan's voice was soaked in sarcasm. "Yes, in human form. Unless you think it's a good idea to go traipsing into an open house as a wolf?"
"I meant to get there," Kyle said. "I want to run. My leg is hurting." He tapped his withered foot on the floor..
"Everybody wants to stretch their legs, Kyle," Katherine said. "You think I wanted to scout in the city all day?"
"It's just that it's been three days nonstop on the road," Kyle said.
"Three whole days?" Jordan sniffed condescendingly. "Ah, to be young again and have nothing to complain about."
"You got to run all day today around the outskirts of the city!" Kyle said. "How is that fair?"
"I don't suppose respect for your elders was something they taught you in your last pack," Jordan hissed.
"Enough," Damien said quietly, but the instant he said it silence descended on the table. "Katherine and I will scout around the edges of the state park tomorrow while Jordan and Kyle visit the potential houses. Kyle, you can run with us as far as the highway, and Jordan will pick you up at the rest stop we stayed at last night before you go house hunting. That's what, a mile? Mile and a half?"
"That would be perfect," Kyle said, the brightness back in his attitude. Argumentative as he was, Kyle could never stay in a bad mood for long.
"Then it's settled," Jordan said, shoving his chair back from the table. "Can't wait to go house hunting with you tomorrow, honey."
"You got it, babe," Kyle said, smirking. "I'm going to go hit up the gas station for some donuts. Anybody want to come?"
He addressed the group, but Damien could smell his lust from across the table.
"I'll go," Katherine said.
"We have snacks in our room already, Katherine," Damien said. "Don't you remember?"
"Oh. Right." The bit of disappointment in Katherine's voice disappeared as she kissed Damien on the cheek. "I'll see you later in bed?"
"I'll be there shortly." Damien waited until he heard Katherine shut the door to their room just across the hall. Outside the window, Kyle limped across the parking lot towards the gas station.
"You worried about your competition?" Jordan asked, teasing. "Is that little crippled boy wolf going to take over the pack? Take your girl?"
"He's head over heels for her, that's for damn sure," Damien said.
"You're not going to fight him," Jordan said, only a hint of a question in his voice.
"No, of course not," Damien said. "He's a kid. Weak."
"You're blind."
"Doesn't matter that much in a fight," Damien said thoughtfully. "No, I just have to keep them apart. We don't need any fights between members of the pack."
He felt his way to the hotel end table and pulled out the bottle of scotch from his briefcase.
"A little premature to celebrate, don't you think?" Jordan asked. "Not that I won't take a drink."
"I'm alright with celebrating early. This feels like the right town," Damien said. He poured two glasses of scotch, listening for the tinkling pitch that meant the glasses were half-full. He handed one over to Jordan, and they both sat back in their chairs. The full moon was low in the sky outside of the open window. He could feel the pull of it, the same force that moved the waters of the earth.
"It does, doesn't it?" Jordan said, sipping his drink. "Peaceful town. A good place to settle and start raising a family."
Damien winced.
"Don't remind me," he said.
"What, you don't want to have kids?"
Damien paused before answering, taking another sip of scotch. The liquid burned the back of his throat, but the fire was welcome. He wanted kids, sure. He wanted a family. But first of all, he wanted a mate who was right for him. And Katherine, for all her youth and beauty, was not right for him.
"I'll do whatever's best for the pack," Damien said.
"She's almost ready to mate," Jordan said thoughtfully.
"She is ready," Damien said. He took another gulp of scotch. "She told me last night."
Jordan's inhale was audible.
"So that's why you want this to be the town," he said.
"I want every town to be the town," Damien said, finishing his scotch and setting the empty glass back on the table. He felt the cool glass under his fingers, the slight moisture of the liquor evaporating from the rim. "We've been saving up and searching for a territory for two years. That's longer than any pack should be on the move. Even if we only have one female."
"The kid will be jealous," Jordan said.
"He'll get over it."
"I'll be jealous."
"You're always jealous," Damien said, smiling. Jordan had never been interested in any females, of mating age or otherwise. Ever since they were pups together, Damien and Jordan had been best friends, and when they grew older Jordan had admitted that he felt more attracted to Damien than any other wolf in the pack.