Page 44 of Knife Volume 2

If someone killed Knife and expected her to marry him? She’d kill the motherfucker herself.

Knife’s hand found hers as they climbed the steps into the house, and she squeezed his hand back.

She was in this family now. All of it.

Later, when she called the main clearing their ceremonial grounds, he’d told her it was their gathering place, and he took her to another, smaller clearing, and told her this was for ceremony. There was a sweat lodge he took her into. A little domed room that felt like a cave. He explained that rocks are heated for hours, put into the center, and water is poured on them to make steam.

“When I called my grandfather about you, months ago, he could only tell me I could come to sweat.” He shrugged. “Shorthand for saying I needed to go to the Great Spirit for my answers.”

“Did you?”

He shook his head. “I knew the answers, I just didn’t like them.”

“This is, like, Native American, right?”

He nodded. “Our oral histories go back to what historians call the Yuchi, who were absorbed into the Mississippian culture, then eventually the Cherokee, but we are also wolves, which means we assumed the mantle of the new settlers in order to fit in with society long before the removal was ordered.”

“You adapt to the dominant society to keep from drawing attention to yourselves, but your family is kind of living like the Amish now.”

He shook his head. “We use electricity. We have smartphones and the internet. Cars. Some have jobs in Asheville. My dad went to Charlotte and managed to become a famous racecar driver. Most of the kids, including me, are homeschooled when young, but go to the local high school so we can learn how to get along with outsiders. We are part of the world and still separate.”

She looked out at the clearing, the buildings and shelters, a small arena, the sweat lodge, the ancient trees closing in around the ceremonial grounds, and thought about a family that’d been keeping the same secret for eons longer than the United States had existed.

Tuesday turned to look at the man beside her who’d left all of this in search for more, but still carried the depth of his family’s history in his soul.

“Thank you for showing me this. All of it. Your family, pieces of your childhood.” She motioned all around them. “And this. Your history.”

He pulled her into a hug. “I mean, I kind of had to. No other way to get permission to show you my wolf, and he was protesting hard about being kept hidden from his mate.”

She laughed into his chest. “Point, but you showed me more of yourself even after gaining permission, and that means the world to me.”

Chapter 18

They took turns driving home, though with it raining, neither played on the curves too much. He drove the final stretch, and when he pulled through the gates and said, “Home at last,” the words reverberated in her soul.

Home.

After a lifetime of moving from city to city, with her grandmother’s house the only constant, she was finally living in a place that felt like home. A permanent home, shared with a man she’s madly in love with.

He pulled her car into the garage, and tears wanted to form low in her throat because he’d even made a place for her vehicles to have a safe haven from the elements.

She’d wondered, all these months, why he never ran with her. Why she’d never seen his wolf. Now she knew, and the knowing settled the last fragments of disquiet she’d felt about their relationship.

They could run together now, any time they wanted. Just walk out the door and run as wolves.

They made burgers and fried potatoes, and somehow turned chopping the potatoes into a competition. They finished their stacks about the same time, their knives chopping out a fast staccato while they made quick work of the task.

Shortly after they sat to eat, he told her, “I need you to make a decision. Whatever you tell me is fine, but I’ve learned my lesson about putting off uncomfortable conversations, so we need to have this one.”

Her stomach turned over, but she nodded, hoping that would be enough to keep him talking.

“If the club has businesses that aren’t entirely legal — hypothetically — would you want to know about them, or would you want plausible deniability?”

Her stomach didn’t just somersault, it cartwheeled. She gently set her burger down. Took a drink of the ginger beer Knife had made.

She’d known they had to have more than their legal businesses. Not the specifics, but she’d known. For one thing, they consider themselves a one-percenter club, but also, the cars in the garage, the smoker. There was a lot of money floating around.

“Hypothetically,” she said, “are we talking running drugs? Laundering money?”