The loud thumping of dropped books was held in stark relief against the deafening silence as eyes went wide. Even though Darryl was no longer touching her, Lydia could feel vibrations emanating from him. Sara’s squeak of a voice broke the silence. “Who?” the fear in her voice thick and tangible.

“Dominic,” Terrance measured in a discordant tone that made everyone’s skin crawl.

Sara leaned against the doorframe, her hands fluttering helplessly. “Did-” she squeaked out, question unfinished as she pawed around for a stable place to sit down, finding nothing she slumped down the frame to the floor. “Did-” she tried to ask again.

“No,” Terrance assured her, “Actually he practically rejected her, you could see him using his entire self-restraint to stay behind his desk. I could hear the start of him fighting with his father about the decision to let her stay here when we left, Beta Gregory seemed mostly favorable. Lydia was an absolute trooper and gave not a single sign until we were out of the building. Knowing him, and thinking about it now, I believe he thinks her too weak for his status, especially if he thought that she wasn’t able to smell him.”

“He has been putting on such a show about how he is still mate-less at his age because his mate must be perfect and he wouldn’t form the bond without the pull,” Darryl murmured, “Ungrateful bastard, she is perfect, he’s just a horrible creature,” Darryl trailed off, “Sorry,” he muttered flatly, glancing sideways.

“For what?” Lydia said, “It is obvious that he is not a pleasant person.”

“He’s still your mate, he is a part of you now,” Darryl whispered this last bit, tucking into himself. “You’ll know once your skin touches.”

“Who says?”

“Everyone,”

“No, who says he is a part of me, didn’t Terrance just say that he practically rejected me? Who says I can’t reject him?”

“The Goddess,” the answer was whispered, Lydia didn’t know from whom, but that didn’t matter.

“Then this goddess can tell me to my face,”

“She did. Lyd, I am sorry, but I think it is more important to get you out of here than it is to find a way to keep you in our family. I was a fool to think that we could pull this off under Father’s nose, but with Dominic personally invested, I can’t see how it is possible to keep you safe.” Terrance’s voice deflated as he spoke. The sudden use of a pet name making him sound even more broken.

The long silence that buttressed the conversation suddenly came undone when Lydia stroked her chin and asked a question she had not thought she would humor, “Is this Goddess real or a myth?”

“Real,” the entire group responded solemnly.

When Lydia arched an eyebrow, Darryl gestured at himself. “All magic has a source, I have lived too many curses to doubt it, though she does not show herself as she had once before,”

“I plan to come back to this curse information later. However, I won’t leave, the bonds I am developing with you are stronger than Willow felt for this supposed mate,” Lydia set her jaw and narrowed her eyes, “I will challenge the Goddess herself if I have to.” Her mind began to race, she would not abandon this family. She loved Darryl already as much as Willow instinctively loved Terrance, there was no way some delusional man was going to stop that. ‘I grew up outside of these customs. If anyone is going to break the cycle and expectations of these ridiculous traditions, why not us?’

Willow balked at the idea of severing one of her bonds, unwanted as it was.

‘What? You want to make kissy face and have a family with someone like our biological father? Someone who makes our brothers tremble in fear over us?’

‘If you say it like that-’

‘There is no other way to say it.’ Lydia stated sharply.

‘But I-’

‘Listen, Willow. I know what you felt. I am telling you that just because you feel something doesn’t mean that you need to go with it. Goddess or not, that is equivalent to giving every bully that ever hurt anyone the right to do so. I have a mind of telling this deity myself! In fact, this is precisely what I will do.’ Lydia’s anger flared hot when she felt not a soul in this room would stand against this blatant abuse.

“Get me a teacher of lore, or religion or whatever you call it,” she roared aloud, startling the room. There was a static forming in the air as she said this, Terrance had already moved to pull his wife from the floor, but both paused to look at her and Darryl opened his mouth in awe, “If I can dance with spirits, I can dance with Gods. I will not stand for this abuse!”

Darryl felt a slight breeze across his cheek and lifted his eyebrows, certain she was about to initiate the change herself. However, before the static could latch on, a deep pink blush seeped across her face and like a bursting balloon she exploded into embarrassment, hand flinging up to her cheeks to hide. She turtled, dropping into a deep squat, burrowing her face into her knees.

“Oh gosh!” she squeaked, scared of the sudden outpouring of magic, “What am I doing?”

Darryl lunged forward, pulling his sister’s trembling form into a huge hug as he laughed harder than he had ever remembered laughing. “I think you are saying you are about to become a champion among Spiritdancers,”

“Or Luna’s” Sara chimed in, the grin on her face huge.

Lydia was still too embarrassed to be confused. “You just advocated for an entire race Lyd,” Terrance chimed in, “That was some explosion of your magic. Quite a rear feat may I add. I think I might just hold you to this,” his voice trailed off, leaving behind small seeds of thought as he left the room with a severely thoughtful expression.

Suddenly there was a tornado of clothes tossed into the air and Lapu was frolicking about the kitchen.

“Lesson One,” Sara said, opening the back door, “Crazy Wolves play outside.” Lydia pulled on her shoes and grabbed her tiny wallet as well as one of the packs next to the door that Sara gestured toward before she followed her brother over the threshold.

~

Darryl emerged from the tree line in his loose shorts and a tee that came from the pack Lydia brought before the two of them leaned against a large tree at the park.

“Seriously though,” he said, his soft voice catching Lydia off guard, “That declaration was something else,” he gave her a playful elbow.

“I got a little bit ahead of myself there, this lack of choice thing is really disturbing to me, it is not how I was raised.”

“Old-fashioned,” Darryl said slowly, remembering the social studies lesson he had about arranged marriages. She nodded in agreement.

“Is there a way to contact this goddess?”

“There are rituals, but no one in our Clan does them. That is part of why I disappeared the other month, we traveled to another Clan who was hosting them, though they are mostly for show. I spoke with one elder while I was there. She has signs of dementia, so you can’t believe everything she says. To me it more seemed like she was lost in her memories, than had forgotten things.”

“And?” Lydia probed when he trailed off in thought.

“And she mentioned how the rituals that day were so hollow, the Goddess wouldn’t even receive them. When I asked her why she only talked about-” Darryl started to tremble and suddenly stood up, Lydia was intrigued, this was a remarkably familiar posture to her as he did it quite often at school, usually before suddenly sitting and clutching himself to stop from touching her. Today, the excitement was sluffing off him as his trembling finger pointed to his sister, “-She, She!”

Lydia smiled, his melodic voice and energy was always calming to her. This was the most excited she had ever heard him. Standing up she grabbed onto his outstretched hand to help draw him mentally back to the present so he could hopefully articulate what was so exciting.

He grabbed fiercely onto her hands and jumped in place. “She told me I had to find ‘the vessel for the voice of the wind trapped in a cave,’ and was earnest that only I could bring that to her.”

When her face only showed confusion, he began shaking her hands up and down with his jumps, “It is you and Willow, when she told me her name, she was stuck in a part of your mind that resembled a cave and her name was a vision of wind going through various willow plants! What else could that mean?”

Giving him a skeptical look, she responded, “Okay but 3 days ago I wasn’t even part of this world, now you want me to go on some quest and change it? How cliché is that?”

“You’ve been in this world since we collided in the stairwell, Miss Barefoot Girl. Besides, you are the one who said you would change it!”

“I don’t really see you reading like you used to,” Lydia replied to distract him.

“Why when we’ve got our own adventure right here?”

Sighing when it did not work, she tried again. “What did you spend your days doing before we hung out?”

“School work, it was hard transitioning from a Pack-centric school to a public one, I was also training with Terrance on the back field, most of us enjoy sports of one sort or another, though in our pack combat style sports are more popular.”

“Hey, you do what you have to do, I am glad you could keep up with me,”

“Just because I let you set the pace doesn’t mean that I am simply ‘keeping up’.” He narrowed his eyes.

“Oh really? Long or short distance?”

Darryl thought for a moment before responding, “Want to sprint first?”

He took off his shirt and sauntered up to the start of the flat grassy section of the park, he squatted down much like a track star and waited for her.

“Um, shouldn’t we warm up or stretch first?”

He cocked his head, and his dulcet tones gave her so much excitement, “Why? We are Spiritdancers we have a very innate tie with wolves. Wolves, dogs and other predators have the muscle structure to suddenly take off at full tilt from resting.”

When she gave him an excited yet doubtful expression he asked in his most charismatic tones, expression dripping with mirth, “Have you ever seen a cheetah doing stretches and a few warmup laps before catching breakfast?”

Lydia walked up next to him, placed her toes in line with his and lined her fingers up at their starting line, ready to go. “If I tear a muscle you’re nursing me back to health and I call foul on the results of this race. To the far edge I assume?”

“First to touch the lamppost wins?”

“On your mark,” Lydia began.

“Get set,” Darryl added.

“Go!” they chorused and took off, dirt clods actually tearing out from under their first few steps, though they were both barefoot. The first few steps were in perfect tandem, but then Darryl’s longer stride started to draw him ahead, Lydia let him go, saving her strength for the last half of their approximate 300 meter dash. This was a miscalculation on her part, because while she drew even, when there was about 75 meters left he dug in and began his last tilt. Never having such a healthy rivalry and feeling Willow wanting desperately to connect with her brother, Lydia took a deep breath and drove her trembling legs harder than she ever had in her life.

Arms reaching forward Lydia strained to reach for the pole, but Darryl was doing the same and while he did connect before her, it was only by just over a second.

However, just as his fingers were about to slide off, a loud horn wrenched through the air. A truck was coming down the road that bisected the area they needed for breaking. This was an extremely low traffic road so neither even thought to take traffic into account. Thankfully Darryl’s quick reflexes took action, his fingertips dug in tightly to the pole just before they lost purchase and he leaned into the turn, swinging his body wide around it, bending his knees just as he collided with his sister and continuing to spin as they crashed, he landed on his butt, his sister kneeling safely in his lap, just as the truck sped by.

Lydia just sat there for a moment, catching her breath, eyes wide in astonishment. However, when it finally sunk in she dissolved into laughter and rolled out of his lap. “Is this our thing?”

Lapu showed through the lopsided grin that Darryl displayed, “Yup!” they both lost it to breathless laughter and sprawled out at the grass’ edge.

“Do you want to head to the library? I want to look for a few things.” She asked.