Chapter 21: Home is where the family is

Garrick came charging out of the house, gripping his hoe so tight his knuckles turned white. His face was twisted with panic and rage. But then he saw James standing there, holding his limp wife in his arms.

“Who the hells are you?” he roared. “What did you do to my wife?”

James felt a small sting of hurt that his own father didn’t recognize him right away.

But then, it had been almost ten years. James now looked like some towering barbarian straight out of legend—broad, scarred, and built like a fortress of muscle. And he was standing next to a monstrous beast that could pass for something out of a nightmare. So really, he couldn’t blame his father for being utterly flabbergasted as to why this stranger was cradling his unconscious wife.

He sighed.

Before James could speak, Fel stepped in. The huge beast took one lazy step forward—six hundred pounds of silver-furred power. His lips pulled back from fangs that could rip a horse apart. A rumble rolled from Fel’s chest, like far-off thunder. It was strong enough to shake windows and make dust fall from the roof. Garrick’s angry rush stopped dead. His hoe dipped as the sound knocked the breath out of him.

“I’d be very careful about attacking him,” Fel warned.

Garrick just stared and nodded, too stunned to speak.

James didn’t bother to speak. He simply stood there holding his mother in his strong arms. Her head lolled, cheek pressed to the hard line of his scarred neck, warm breath ghosting over his skin. Dust drifted from her skirts in lazy spirals, catching the late-afternoon light like golden motes.

“Hello, Father. It’s been a long time.”

Garrick’s mouth opened, closed. The hoe wavered, then sagged. His eyes tracked from the unconscious woman cradled like something precious, to the impossible wolf the size of a wagon, and finally (finally) locked on the face he had not seen in nine years. Recognition slammed into him harder than any blow. The color drained from his weathered cheeks; his knees buckled as though the ground itself had vanished beneath him.

Then the hoe slipped from Garrick’s numb fingers and clattered to the earth. His knees folded. He hit the dirt face-first with a meaty thud, out cold.

James exhaled through his nose, half-laugh, half-sigh.

“Well,” Fel rumbled, tongue lolling in a wolfish grin that showed far too many teeth, “that could’ve gone better.”

“Come on.”

James carried Marta across the yard, her full, unconscious weight light against his chest. At the bench beneath the oak, he paused, shifted her, and laid her on the grass.

Then he returned for Garrick.

He lifted his father with the same effortless strength and laid him gently beside Marta, shoulder to shoulder in the shade.

James exhaled, sat on the bench, and drew his sword. Pulling out a whetstone, he used steady, hypnotic strokes to dress the blade. Fel circled once and curled in front of him, six hundred pounds of silver fur and muscle forming a living wall at his feet.

They waited.

Doors slammed open. Bert, his oldest brother, charged out, roaring, a machete held high. Ryan followed, bow drawn. Women and children (pitchforks, spears, kitchen knives) spilled into the yard in a furious wave, voices crashing together in outrage and terror.

There, sitting calmly next to his unconscious parents, was a hulking mass of muscle he didn’t recognize at all. And right in front of the stranger loomed something even bigger and more terrifying than a dire wolf.

James never paused. Stroke. Rasp. Stroke. Sparks danced along the edge.

When the blade caught the sunlight like a shard of ice, he slid the stone away, rested the sword across his knees, and lifted his gaze.

He grinned.

None of them stepped forward. Improvised weapons trembled in clenched fists, but they stayed frozen in place. Their unconscious parents lay side by side by the bench, a scarred giant lounged with a freshly honed sword across his knees, and six hundred pounds of silver Fenrir loomed in front of him, a coiled weapon waiting to be unleashed. The threat was too large, too impossible; fury curdled into uncertainty.

“What?” Bert gasped.

He stood up slowly, brushing the dust from his pants. “Hey, brother.”

Bert froze, his eyes bulging as he took in the stranger—no, the man—who towered in front of him. “Fuck me, James?”

“Hey,” James said softly, giving a short, awkward wave with one massive hand.

Bert swallowed hard, his gaze flicking from James to Fel and back again. “What happened to them?” He nodded toward their parents, still sprawled on the grass.

James sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “They both fainted.”

“Both of them?”

“Well, their favorite son came back from the dead,” James said, a wide grin breaking across his scarred face.

“Favorite,” Bert chuckled, the shock starting to fade into something warmer. “Yeah, we’ll see.”

James laughed—a deep, rumbling sound that seemed to shake the air. He sheathed his sword and let his heavy sword belt slip from his shoulder and thud to the ground. Then he charged forward, scooping Bert up in his arms like he weighed nothing at all. Bert’s eyes widened in pure astonishment as his feet left the earth, lifted clean off the ground in a crushing bear hug.

“Bert!”

“James,” Bert managed to laugh, the sound muffled against his brother’s broad chest.

The years melted away in that moment. Bert, once the taller, stronger brother who’d tossed a scrawny James into haystacks and pinned him in the dirt during their rough housing, now dangled helplessly in arms forged by almost a decade of relentless adversity. James’s muscles—thick cords of power etched with old scars—flexed effortlessly around him. Bert’s boots kicked uselessly in the air for a second before he gave in, thumping James’s broad back with affectionate, calloused fists.

“Put me down, you great brute,” Bert wheezed, but his voice cracked with obvious relief and joy.

Behind Bert, Ryan lowered his bow. The women clutched their children closer.

James lowered Bert slowly, carefully, keeping one heavy arm slung around his brother’s shoulders as they both turned to look at their parents. Marta and Garrick lay side by side in the soft grass, still out cold. Garrick had started snoring softly, a faint, familiar rumble.