Chapter 56: Outsider

Inviting strangers into the pack house can be risky, awkward, any number of things. Resistance members tend to be more trusted, and Roan felt like Remi, Stark and Lir were good people. Well ... anthros.

But that doesn’t mean they don’t have hang ups or quirks of any kind. Remi had a big one, specifically involving packs.

Remi lasted until the third time someone called it their house like he belonged in the sentence.

It happened in the kitchen after midnight. The news was still looping muted on the living room TV, another anthro attack, another set of comments calling every muzzle a conspirator. Roan had gone quiet in that dangerous way of his. Cass looked worn through. Kiran was trying to keep the air from turning to stone by being himself.

He bumped Remi’s hip with his own as he reached past him for a glass.

“Move, packmate. Some of us need water.”

It was nothing. A joke. The same kind of loose talk Kiran used on everybody.

Remi’s whole body went still and his giant fennec ears turned back.

Not startled. Not annoyed. Still, like an animal that had just heard a branch snap the wrong way. His ears pinned flat. The glass in his paw stopped halfway to the tap. For a second the kitchen felt too small, too full of wolves and heat and the assumption that he was already theirs.

“Don’t,” Remi said.

Kiran blinked. “Don’t what? I was kidding.”

“Don’t call me that.”

The humor drained off Kiran’s face. Behind them, Lir looked up from the table. Stark, perched on a stool with a mug, went quiet too.

Roan’s voice came from the doorway, low. “He didn’t mean it like a claim.”

“I know what he meant.” Remi’s tail was tight to his legs. “I’m staying here because Dante put me here. That is all. I am not your pack.”

Kiran held up both paws. “Okay. Okay. I hear you.”

Remi set the glass down harder than he needed to and walked out the back door into the dark.

The porch was cold. Wind moved through the trees beyond the property line. Remi sat on the top step and stared at nothing, one paw braced on his knee so it would stop shaking.

He hated that it was shaking.

The door opened a few minutes later. He did not look back. He already knew the lighter tread.

Kiran sat down beside him, close but not touching. For once the fox did not fill the silence with a joke.

“You looked like I pulled a knife,” Kiran said eventually.

Remi let out a short breath through his nose. “You used a word.”

“Pack.”

“Yes.”

Kiran waited. Remi almost respected him for that.

“I had two,” Remi said, eyes still on the trees. “The first one found me after the eagles. I was sixteen, starving, sleeping in drainage pipes. A coyote pack took me in. Fed me. Trained me. Called me theirs. I believed it because I wanted to believe something.”