Page 40 of Knife Volume 2

It’s hard to kill a young werewolf, but Knife didn’t want to ask how he’d died in front of Dorcas.

And it isn’t impossible. Just hard. His grandfather was on his third wife. His first went for a run in wolf form and never returned. They tracked her and found the scent of where she’d been killed, with a mountain lion’s scent nearby. The second, his father’s mother, had died in a car crash that’d broken her neck bad enough to instantly kill her.

But he wasn’t bothered by his grandfather remarrying. His grandmother had been gone nearly fifteen years. He was happy for his grandfather, and even happier for him later that night, when the sounds coming from his bedroom told Knife they were still acting like newlyweds.

Tuesday got dressed and went into the kitchen when she heard the sounds of cooking the next morning, and Knife took his time getting a shower before he got some coffee and sat on the porch with his grandfather.

“She’s my world, Grandfather. I was going to leave my club so we could be together. If I’d known what she’d planned, I’d have done it, to keep her from giving up…” He shrugged. “I know how bad it hurts. Having the connection severed. Never would I have wanted her to go through it, but she did. For me.”

It worried Knife that his grandfather hadn’t questioned her the night before. Had kept everything casual. Nothing personal.

“She’s worldly. Paris. Italy. New York. San Francisco. Hawaii. Her job takes her to glamorous places, and she works with foods you want to learn about. Are you sure that isn’t what draws you to her?”

“It’s only a small part of it, Grandfather.”

They were called in to breakfast, and Knife was both relieved and stressed when his grandfather literally interrogated her over steak and eggs while he watched her like a wolf assessing prey before taking chase.

“Why did you leave your pack?” his grandfather asked out of the blue before he took his second bite.

Tuesday didn’t flinch. “Because true love doesn’t come along every day. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices to do what’s right and necessary.”

“And what does leaving say about your loyalty?”

“It says I was loyal to who I am. To what both I and my wolf knew to be true.”

He took another bite. Drank some coffee. Taking his time. “What are your intentions with my grandson?”

She met his gaze with a frown. “Intentions? Nothing beyond sharing my life with him.” She looked at Knife with a smile and added, “Walking hand in hand with him into old age.”

“Where do you see yourselves in fifty years?”

She turned back to Knife’s grandfather. “I won’t dare try to guess where fate puts us in fifty years, but we both come from nuclear families who are still together, so I’d like to think we have a better than average chance of still holding hands and watching sunsets together fifty years from now.”

His grandfather looked at her for a long moment, then back at his coffee.

“Tell me more about this idea of balance for Asian cooking. You said five different flavors?”

Tuesday talked to him about the balance of savory, sweet, sour, bitter, and spicy. She broke down the ingredients for each, pointing out that Worcestershire can do what soy sauce does, and suggesting other substitutions along the way.

It kept breakfast conversation away from unpleasant things, and his grandfather took what she was saying and ran with it, considering what he might do the next time they made a big stew to test the theory. She wrote out what she does for beef stew to find that balance, and he put her note on the corkboard.

Knife was proud of Tuesday for holding her own while questioned, but he had no idea if her answers had been enough.

What would he do if his grandfather refused?

Because telling her anyway would finish the break with his family, but he saw no other way. Their wolves needed to run together, and keeping this huge secret from her forever simply wasn’t an option.

He’d very nearly lost his family for good when he’d wanted to tell his club what he was, so he could run with them. Only Duke and Brain knew the words for what he is. The rest of the club only knew he was a huge wolf, and that this was a club secret. One not to be shared even with other chapters.

If his grandfather refused him, if Tuesday wasn’t allowed to run with them that night, they would have to pack up and leave. Go home to run with his brothers. One way or another, she’d know what he was before the evening arrived.

He only hoped he still had a relationship with his family at the end of the day.

After breakfast, the four of them walked through the woods, showing Tuesday the nearby river and a few waterfalls the family had been careful to keep off maps, lest outsiders try to hike across private property to see them.

These were Knife’s woods in a way no other place could ever be. His own little couple of acres came close, but his family owned this entire mountain, and both man and wolf drank in the deep green energy of an Appalachian mountain forest in the heart of summer.

Forty minutes in, his grandfather stopped, looked at Knife, and said, “You have my permission.”