Raised by Wolves

Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

A STELLAR’S JAY squawks from a tree as Holo and I follow the chief to his house.

Before we go inside, he turns to us and says, “Now that you’re my guests, you should call me Chester.”

And my little brother says, all polite, “Okay, Mr. Chester.”

If Holo were a wolf, he’d be the omega—the one who tries to please all the other wolves. Meanwhile I think, I’m never going to call you Chester. And we’ll see how long we’re your “guests.”

“Not mister,” the chief says. “Just Chester.” He opens the door onto a small, neat living room, with a big soft couch and a couple of faded armchairs. “Come on in.”

The room smells like woodsmoke and cedar. Comforting. The chief walks over to the cast-iron stove and puts another log inside. He looks up at me, kind of sheepish. “We have electric heat. I just thought a fire would be nice.”

He probably thinks I’ll be touched by his thoughtfulness. But I’m not. I’m just confused. And a little freaked out. Why did he bring us here? What’s his plan?

A cabin’s a lot nicer than jail, obviously. But it doesn’t mean we’re safe .

Holo flicks a light switch, and a lamp in the corner of the room goes on. My brother grins in delight. He flicks the switch off. Flicks it back on again. “Did you see that, Kai? Look!” On-off, on-off goes the light.

“I sure did.” I’m not as impressed as Holo is. I like the sun better.

The chief smiles at my brother like he’s still wondering if the kid’s an idiot or not. “I’ve always taken electricity for granted,” he says. “But it’s kind of like magic, isn’t it? I mean, you flip a switch and suddenly a dark room’s bright.” He motions us into the kitchen. “If you want to see something that’ll really blow your mind, though, you should check out the kitchen faucet.”

Maybe the chief thinks he’s just going along with a game we’re playing. But it’s not a game.

Indoor plumbing, it turns out, is pretty amazing. Holo makes the water stop and go about five hundred times and it still delights him. And later, with a turn of a handle, I fill a big tub with water and take the first truly hot bath of my life. I sink into a cloud of soap bubbles and close my eyes. I decide that I will never get out again.

But then the water gets cold.

And I can see Holo’s feet going back and forth on the other side of the door. Pacing.

“Kai?” he calls. “What are you doing in there?”

I rise dripping from the tub and wrap myself in a soft towel. “Bathing. You should try it sometime.”

“I jumped into the creek!” he says.

I yank open the door. Sure enough, my brother’s hair is dripping wet and his face looks actually clean. He’s wearing new clothes that are much too big for him. I sniff. “Are those the chief’s pants? You look ridiculous, but at least you smell better than you did before.”

“You smell weird .”

“It’s called soap,” I say. “And I like it.”

I’m dreading putting my gross jail clothes back on. But it turns out that I don’t have to. While I was in the bathtub, Lacey came home and laid out a clean outfit for me. The pink sweatsuit’s ugly, but at least it’s not covered in dirt and grass and canine slobber.

I walk into the kitchen in my new wool socks. Lacey’s got her back to me. She’s washing dishes in the sink. When I clear my throat, she jumps. But then she turns around, smiling.

“You look mighty comfortable, Kai,” she says in her honey voice. “Are you hungry?”

“Always,” I say. “But not as always as Holo.”

She grins and offers me a plate of apple slices. “ Mi casa es su casa ,” she says. “That means my home is your home.”

She’s so welcoming. I wonder how she really feels about having two feral kids in her house, though.

Dinner is roasted chicken and vegetables. Holo chews with his mouth open and totally forgets to use his fork, but no one mentions it. Instead the chief and Lacey talk to each other about their days. Occasionally they ask us a question, which usually we don’t answer. We’re too busy eating.

Plus our secrets are none of their business.

After Holo’s had three helpings of food, he pushes himself back from the table and lets out a giant burp. He’s sucked every molecule of marrow out of the chicken bones and licked his plate so clean it shines. If he were a wolf, he’d have to sleep the feast off.

“Good stuff, huh?” the chief says.

“Great,” Holo says. “But Kai’s the best cook there is.”

“Most teens I know can barely boil a box of Annie’s Mac,” says Lacey.

“I’m not that good,” I say. “Holo’s just really loyal. Kind of like a dog.”

Or a wolf.

My brother kicks me under the table.

The chief says, “Lacey and I talked it over last night, and we figure you two can stay here until we work things out.”

Holo looks over at me, waiting to see what I’ll say. I’ve always made the decisions for us. What do I say? Should we stay? It seems crazy to me. But Holo wants to, I can tell. And I—well, I don’t really have a better plan.

“Before you answer,” the chief says, “I should point out that your only other option is going back to jail.”

Or running away , I think.

But I know that I don’t want to run. Not yet.

My mouth’s full of bread, so I just nod. Okay, fine. I’m not thrilled about moving in with the guy who arrested me. But maybe that’s what you get when you break a bunch of laws and you don’t have any parents to rescue you.

“We want your lives to be as normal as possible until everything’s figured out with the Grizzly,” Lacey says. “And with… where you belong.”

I choke on a bite of bread. Normal? Lacey doesn’t understand that none of this is normal to us.

Later, lying in a big, soft bed for the first time ever, I can’t fall asleep. I keep thinking I hear the wolves pacing around outside.

Looking for us. Missing us.

I get up and go to the window. The sky’s gone black, and I can see a thousand stars and the blurry wash of the Milky Way. We’re not so far away from where we were raised, but somehow it feels like I can’t get there from here.