Wolf Box Set

Prologue

PrologueTwo eyes, as wide and yellow as the moon that held its attention, watered from the chilly wind. A muzzle quivered and strained to greater heights while fur, dense with the scent of sweat and blood, swayed in the wind. It was not, however, its own smell the creature focused on. A stronger odor…this…other…And the scent made its ears perk up and muddled its already fuzzy mind.

It lowered its broad head, shook, and growled at the soggy earth. This turn of the moon always brought urges. This hunger, though, was stronger than anything it had felt in a long time. Not since…

The sharp bite of loss clamped onto the wolf, breaking through the fog in his mind, and he did the only thing he could do: he lifted his gaze back to the moon and wailed.

* * * *

Randy stared through the glass of the bay window, his eyes on the lightening sky. He took another sip from the mug in his hand—good red wine in fired pottery. He figured he should probably be ashamed of himself, but it wasn’t a crystal stemware kind of night. Might not, he decided, ever be again.

The house seemed too quiet since the wolves had stopped calling. Short of the random texts from his mother (Harold’s up on charges again, moron never will learn to hold his alcohol. Ella and Phil just had their baby, a girl I think they said—call them! Your father is driving me crazy, suggest a hobby to him, will you?), the wolves seemed to be the only things breaking the silence anymore. He leaned against the window frame and closed his eyes. If he wasn’t so damn stupid, he’d be in bed. Sleeping, of course. Alone, of course. But that had been the plan, after all. Peace and solitude, space and freedom.

Great idea, really. If it hadn’t turned out to be so damn stupid. Just like everything else in his life it seemed. Stupid house, stupid decisions. Stupid life. Stupid Randy.

Hours prior to this, he’d claimed the term as his word of the day. He’d run it through his head so many times that he was surprised it hadn’t manifested on his forehead as a bleeding, oozing wound—a psychosomatic warning to others: Stay away, folks; this here’s a stupid one.

He lifted a palm to his face, scrubbed at his skin, and mumbled to the empty room, “This pity party brought to you by the word ‘stupid’.” He lifted his almost empty mug. “And the number six.”

Something heavy fell outside his window—a branch, a bin, the form of an unfortunate animal misjudging its leap, or even one of the wolves he’d been listening to—and Randy scowled at his yard.

Stupid wolves, and stupid Wolf.

Wolf, Wyoming. It had been the coolest sounding place Randy had ever heard of. He’d found it on a Google Maps search during a moment of madness, and it seemed like the perfect place to hide. Wolf was the kind of small town that promised retreat, yet community; seclusion, yet connection. The kind of small town where “small” was an exaggeration. He’d been stunned to learn the entire town consisted of only a couple of dozen homes and maybe a hundred year-round citizens.

The state’s website had proudly told him that although Wolf was part of a larger county (Sheridan), she herself was an ‘unincorporated community’. Which, Randy found out, pretty much meant that Wolf looked out for Wolf. Info on Wolf had been limited. He’d found details on a bona-fide dude-style ranch retreat, complete with home-cooked meals, rodeo-wrangling, and an annual horse drive. It was also the fabled grounds of one or two ‘real-life’ ghost stories, and dozens of gossip-enhanced tales of ancestral cowboys.

The weather pages had noted that from May to November, Wolf was mild and dry and beautiful. Blog sites told him that if a traveler was among the lucky, they just might catch sight of one of the massive moose bulls that were known to ramble out of the forests. If they were really lucky, they might even run across some of the wild horses that wandered in from Sweetwater. Randy had never considered himself to be among the lucky few, but he’d had no doubt that even without the moose, the horses, or a good close wolf sighting, he’d still enjoy the mountains, the long expanses of open fields and meadow, and the tall, thick evergreen trees that had stood their ground since the days of Davy Crockett and Sacagawea.

The warnings were out there, though. From December to April, Wolf could be a real b***h. Even if a person liked snow. Even if a person relished the idea of spending day after day barricaded in their home without contact from the outside world.

When Randy had first moved out to Wolf, summer had been in full swing and the weather had been gorgeous. That had been a good thing. It had given him a couple of months to learn all the things he hadn’t known that he didn’t know—how to prime a pump, start a pull-motor, and light a fire. And there’d had been a good many moments of unadulterated fury, frustration, and misery. Yet for every time he’d cursed the blackened ashes in his woodstove that should have been glowing embers, or fought with a leaking drain just to have it let go in his face, he’d also had moments that seemed so beautiful they’d been damn near religious: watching the stars wake up one by one in velvet skies; seeing dozens of Blue Dashers lined up on the porch railing, sunning shimmering wings; catching sight of a Lacewing for the first time and realizing it wasn’t, in fact, just a puff of cotton but an actual living, breathing, flying, walking, little critter.

The beauty of the country and back-to-nature-ness were not, however, the only things that had inspired his move. They hadn’t even been high on the list. While visions of snow-speckled silver wolf manes being shaken against swirling winter winds had its draw, at that point in Randy’s life, it wouldn’t have mattered if Wolf had ended up being swampland. He’d been desperate to get out of Washington, DC. He’d come to the conclusion that he hated concrete. He hated traffic. He hated sound. More than anything else, though, by the time Randy tossed his belongings in the back of a moving van, he’d hated people.

It hadn’t always been that way. There’d been a time in life when Randy had been a great student, a loving son, and a devoted, committed partner. He’d graduated from high school at eighteen, like almost everyone else, spent four years killing himself in a pre-law program, and then immersed himself in three jaw-grinding, brain-splitting years at law school. After passing the bar, he’d hit the ground running, and spent the next six and a half years clawing his way through the courtroom. He’d hounded after every case he could get. He’d waged war like a demon and mastered the art of schmooze. He founded a career that was promising and sustaining. And oh, the saving he did, diligently hoarding his pennies for all the beautiful things that life and Hollywood had told him he would need to survive. The perfect McMansion. The winters in Santa Cruz. Two happy-faced golden Labradors and a matching set of brand-new Beamers in the driveway.

Life was going to be perfect—he’d believed that with every ounce of his body, mind, and soul. All he’d had to do was keep working at it—keep trudging and keep trying. Just keep the head down but the eyes up, and go, go, go. The only thing he hadn’t been able to manage was a way to stop himself from turning thirty.

Yes, his parents had covered the cost of his schooling, and yes, he’d had a good wad of funds squirreled away in the cozy grip of Wells Fargo (thank you, Grandpa Frank on his mother’s side, God rest his soul, for the semi-sizeable, altogether too thoughtful inheritance), but that hadn’t meant s**t to the ex that decided after six years of being together, he actually preferred the lean, young arms of receptive twinks over a long-term commitment and happily-ever-after. And though he’d had a job where he was respected—to his face, at least—that hadn’t stopped the crushing weight of self-hatred any time he knew he was helping some jerk make off with somebody else’s cash, kid, or house for no other reason than that’s the way things were when it came to the supposedly-blinded Mistress of Justice.

Exhausted and worn, disillusioned and spent, Randy had done what nobody truly believed he was going to go through with, even after he started researching his plan—he’d picked up and walked away from it all.

He’d found what he’d believed to be the perfect house, on a perfect lot, with the most perfect neighbors. Set back a hundred feet from the road, buried in a pine-spotted lot, and (according to the real estate agent) well-sheltered from all but the worst that winter would throw at it, his little brick bungalow had seemed like a fortress in the middle of a fantasyland.

The town had been as miniscule as he’d expected, but Randy had found that it took no more than a couple of hours of driving to get all but the rarest of supplies. He’d committed himself to his belief that small town life would make up for its lack of amenities—neighbors helping neighbors, cheerful community outreach programs, and Welcome Wagons—and prepared himself for the kind of creepily close-knit lives that he’d read about in Stephen King novels, hopefully without the ghouls and the body count.

What Randy had failed to realize was just how close-minded being that shut off from the rest of civilization could make people. Wolf had very clear directives on who was in and who was out, and if someone hadn’t been born and bred in Wolf, and didn’t also have a good sub-layer of blood that had also been born and bred in Wolf, than that someone was most definitely not in, regardless of where their mail got delivered.

It was a shame, really. Biceps became beautiful things when they were worked as hard as Wolf boys worked them. Shoulders and asses, too. The gym bodies back in Washington wouldn’t have been able to compete in the least. For Randy, autumn had proved visually inspiring, if nothing else. More than one afternoon had been spent faking an interest in birds while he gazed at abs and arms, and even though he did do a bit of wandering, he didn’t have to go far to enjoy the scenery to its fullest. His neighbor’s house, the only neighbor on their street, had two of its own fine, upstanding, and muscle-ripped characters.

“Nice family,” the real estate agent had told him as they’d toured the property for the first time. “But they’ll mostly keep to themselves. You won’t have to worry on catching any trouble from them. I’ll bet you my agent’s license on that one.”

It had taken a fair bit of wheedling to get any more information from the man, but a sale is a sale is a commission, and the agent was from Sheridan, not Wolf. So, Randy had learned about the single father (Around forty-some-ish, I think my older brother went to school with him), and the son (Eighteen, and that I know for sure because he graduated with my daughter in June. She always had a thing for him, you know?), and finally the two small ones (Damn shame, isn’t it? They’re too young to be without a mother).

* * * *

Randy had no doubt, however, that not one of them knew a thing about him. Nor did they care. For not only had they not given Randy any trouble, they hadn’t given him the time of day, regardless of how many times Randy had waved, nodded, or offered a “hello.” That was also a damn shame, not that Randy would dare to hold truth on any fantasies about a man who was probably straight as a rail, and whenever Randy’s mind got to whispering, but the son, Randy simply shut it down and ignored it. Finding another openly gay man this deep in God’s Country was about as likely as finding a stick of gold amongst dynamite.

Despite being disregarded by his neighbors, in those first few months, Randy swore that Wolf, if not perfect, was still a hell of a lot better than where he’d been. For the first time in his life, Randy had felt completely free. He’d been alone and undisturbed. He’d shown true independence and learned how to cope with things he’d had no clue of before he’d left the city. He’d bought—not leased—his first vehicle, and it hadn’t been a Beamer. Instead, he’d kept his head and bought a perfectly economical but supposedly-sound ‘92 Ford Ranger XLT, with 4x4 and six cylinders. The truck made him feel safe, even if it did kind of look like hell. After all, as he’d been told by the nodding mechanic who’d sold him the truck, until he saw it for himself, he’d never understand how quickly winter could blow in around Wolf.

Looking forward, Randy had told himself that it was going to be the quietest winter of his life, and he’d been okay with that. He’d convinced himself of the benefit of retreat—it would be good for him, getting his head back on straight and giving him time to think. He’d write. He’d paint. After all, he’d always wanted to try his hand at a little creative endeavor.

It really had sounded good at the time.

Randy sighed, tried to take another drink, and ended up frowning at the inside of the empty mug. Wine disappeared too fast on nights like these. He closed his eyes and his mind checked the thought. Mornings like these. The wakening sky could no longer be called night.

So, instead of trundling back to the kitchen and digging out yet another bottle, Randy watched the sun get a finger-hold on the Earth, and in gradients that changed so slowly it seemed like they were bleeding into one another, pink and orange hues began to spill over autumn leaves and fading grasses. Dark evergreens began to glow as though lit by ever-advancing candlesticks—barely there, closer, almost there, and finally burning so brightly around the edges that the branches seemed to be on fire.

When the first brave blackbird began to offer up its morning hymn, Randy pushed himself away from the window. Maybe after a few hours of sleep he’d dig out a canvas. Or fire up the computer and start throwing words at it.

For real this time.

Maybe.