Wolfsong

In the third year, Robbie officially becomes a member of the pack and moves into the main house. Someone from the council comes to visit, telling Ox that the interim head Alpha, Michelle Hughes, is curious about him. Ox tells him that he can’t take Robbie because Robbie is his now. After the man leaves, Robbie runs anxiously to Ox for reassurance that he gets to stay.

Jessie stays away for a while but shows up at the shop one day, angry and demanding answers. Ox tells her everything. She joins the pack and starts training with the others.

A man comes to town one day, surprising Ox at the shop. His name is David King. He is a human who was rescued from Richard Collins by Joe and sent with a message: “Not yet” (312). He was raised in a clan of wolf hunters but quit after he’d killed his first wolf. It was his family that attacked the Bennett pack and killed the Collins family. Ox doesn’t tell the pack about it. At the end of the third year, Robbie kisses Ox. Ox gently tells him that it can’t happen because of Joe. More Omegas come, but the pack fights them off.

On a Wednesday, the wards shift like they’re breaking. Ox and the guys rush back to the Bennett house, ready to fight, but it’s Joe, Carter, Kelly, and Gordo, back. As they approach, it becomes obvious that they are two separate packs with two separate Alphas. Robbie puts his hand on Ox’s shoulder to calm him; Joe notices and his face tightens, but he says nothing.

Ox swirls in a torrent of emotions—relief at seeing Joe, love for him, unfamiliarity, and anger. They all realize that the territory is no longer Joe’s—it has become Ox’s. Robbie’s hand tightens on Ox’s shoulder; Joe growls a warning. There’s a standoff, and Robbie snarls and jumps in front of Ox protectively. Carter and Kelly move to protect Joe. Ox stops it, and Joe asks if they’re welcome. Ox is angry enough to consider saying no, but he says yes. He leaves and goes to the old house, sitting with his back against the front door. Joe comes, eventually, and sits with his back against the other side. Ox falls asleep and wakes surrounded by his pack. Ox knows his anger will keep the two groups from combining, but he can’t seem to let it go.

Ox feels distant and disconnected from the returning wolves and Gordo. They all seem different. Dull. Tired. Gordo tells Ox that Joe had gone silent again; they hadn’t heard him speak in nearly a year before he saw Ox. Richard Collins is still alive. Ox demands that he get the answers to three questions, and Gordo agrees. Ox asks why they got rid of their phones, and Gordo says Joe thought it would be easier. Ox asks why they came back; Gordo says they’d found the remains of Richard King in a motel room with the words “Yet another fallen King” written on the walls in his blood (337). Ox asks if he’s still Gordo’s tether; Gordo emotionally tells Ox yes and asks if he’s still Ox’s friend.

That night, when Ox walks home, Joe is waiting for him on the dirt road. Ox tells him “Not yet” and keeps walking. Two days later, Kelly and Carter “kidnap” Ox and take him to the old covered bridge. They have a difficult talk about what happened. Ox realizes that they’ve suffered too, but doesn’t know how to forgive them. Carter tells him that he would make the same choice again because Thomas had told them all that Ox was special and needed to be protected if anything happened to him. Ox makes them promise not to leave again; they agree; they all cuddle to restore bonds. In their discussion, Carter and Kelly come to think that Robbie is Ox’s tether. They think Ox has moved on from Joe and tell him it’s okay, but Ox says he hasn’t. He says that the pack is his tether, the way it had been for Thomas.

Gordo tells Ox that he needs to talk to Joe. He says that it hurt to come home and find that Ox had moved on enough to make his own pack with people they didn’t know. Joe is waiting for Ox again on the dirt road, but Ox says “Not yet” again and walks past him. Mark and Elizabeth give Ox advice, saying he should talk to Joe and that the Bennett pack has never been traditional and could have two alphas—but that if he can’t forgive Joe, they choose Ox as their Alpha.

This time, when Ox finds Joe waiting for him on the dirt road, he talks to him. Ox suggests their packs run together on the full moon the next night. The humans are a little concerned, but Ox reassures them. Before Joe shifts, he tells Ox that he’d howled for him at every full moon and hadn’t been with anyone else. It starts out fine, bonds reigniting, but Robbie attacks Joe. Ox stops it, and Robbie explains that Joe was in Ox’s head, pushing his thoughts. Ox sends everyone away and talks to Robbie to explain the connection between himself and Joe. Robbie says Kelly is cute. The packs combine again, and Ox promises Joe they’ll talk tomorrow.

Gordo returns to the shop; it’s weird after all these years, but good, too. Meanwhile, Joe and Ox go to the old house, where Joe smells Robbie and talks about how much he hated seeing Robbie touching Ox. They argue over Joe’s choice to leave. Joe admits that he might not have come home if he didn’t think Richard Collins was coming back to Green Creek. Joe babbles about loving Ox and nearly loses control of his wolf side, but Ox brings him back to himself by touching and kissing him. Ox realizes that Joe was near to becoming an Omega himself, having cut himself off from his tether. They lie together in Ox’s old bed and talk about Richard Collins, whom Joe believes will come soon. The tension between them breaks, and they kiss. Joe is possessive, and the encounter quickly becomes intense. They have sex but don’t penetrate each other, saving that consummation for when they don’t have the threat of Richard Collins hanging over their heads. They lie together afterwards, and Ox begins to forgive him.

The two packs meet. Joe and Ox stand together and say they will try to blend back together. Robbie protests, but Joe calmly talks him down. They talk about Ox’s abilities; Ox admits that David King knows about him, too. Ox offers the human pack members an opportunity to detach from the pack before the attack comes, but none of them do.

Robbie tells Ox and Joe that Alpha Hughes wants to speak with both of them on a video call. Hughes wants to offer them assistance by sending more wolves, but Joe and Ox decline. She presses, but they refuse. She asks Ox if he would die to protect the pack; he says yes. Joe tries to make Ox promise not to leave his side, but Ox neatly deflects and changes the subject. They both resolve not to let Richard Collins take the territory or hurt their pack.

A week passes. Ox suggests they all have Sunday dinner together, which makes Elizabeth happy. Robbie turns his attentions to Kelly, who is bewildered. Elizabeth and Ox have an emotional conversation in which she reassures him about his importance to Joe and to the entire pack. The pack continues to merge, but there are incidents—in one, Carter and Robbie are playing too roughly, and Robbie gets thrown into a tree, dislocating a shoulder. The Alpha in Ox responds, protecting Robbie. Joe offers to teach Ox the same Alpha lessons his father had been giving him. They walk in the woods, and Joe says that his decision to leave broke the bonds between Ox and the others; he vows to fix it and asks Ox to trust him.

Months pass. The new pack becomes more cohesive. Elizabeth starts painting again. They train and stick to a familiar routine. Ox and Joe sleep together in the old house every night, but they don’t have sex; Ox knows that his death would destroy Joe if they were already mated, and he knows he’s likely to die if it means saving the others.

Richard Collins calls Ox while they wolves are running in the woods. He taunts Ox and then says he wants Ox to come to him alone. Jessie and Rico sense something is wrong, but Ox lies to reassure them, then leaves to talk to Collins, who tells him that he abducted old Mr. Fordham when he left the town and crossed the wards. Ox listens as Collins kills Mr. Fordham.

At Sunday dinner, Ox gives a speech telling everyone how much he loves them and is grateful for them. He doesn’t tell them about his plan to meet Collins. Gordo senses something is wrong—he pulls Ox aside after dinner and presses him, saying it sounded like Ox was saying goodbye. That night Ox gets a text message: “You’ve had enough time” (434). He lies to Joe, saying Jessie got a flat tire and needs help. He tells Joe he loves him before he leaves.

Richard Collins has six more members of the town, including a mother and child. He threatens to kill them if Ox does not come to him, and further threatens to kill everyone in the pack and rape Joe to torture Ox, so Ox agrees to meet him at the old covered bridge. He texts Joe “I’m sorry” and then turns off his phone, knowing Joe won’t see it until the morning.

At the bridge, Ox passes through the wards. He’s cut himself off from the pack and feels cold and alone. There are 10 Omegas holding the humans hostage. Next comes Osmond, who questions Ox about how he became an Alpha. One of the Omegas cuts the hostage child, distracting Ox so that Collins can come up behind him and grab him. He breaks Ox’s wrist, and Ox begins to feel panic spreading through the bonds he’d tried to mute. He knows they’ll be coming but is surprised to realize that Gordo is already there. He hits Richard Collins with his crowbar while Gordo disperses the other Omegas with magic.

When Ox feels Joe approaching, he runs in the opposite direction, hoping to lead the danger away from him. When he is halfway across the old bridge, Osmond drops down on the far side of it. Collins blocks off the other end. Ox is trapped between them, but when they attack, he uses their momentum against them and impales them on both ends of the crowbar. The bridge begins to groan and sway as it weakens. Ox only just makes it onto land again before the bridge collapses and falls with Osmond and Collins to the creek bed below.

Joe arrives, terrified but relieved. Ox is apologizing when Richard Collins breaks out from under the bridge debris. He impales Ox with his claws to take the Alpha out of him. He roars with victory when Ox’s entrails start to come out, but Joe tears Collins’s head from his shoulders. Joe bites Ox to turn him; Ox smiles as he dies.

Joe wakes in the clearing in the woods. Everything feels like a dream. He feels the pull of the wolf, and his claws extend from his fingers. Thomas Bennett appears in wolf form. Ox realizes that he’s not dreaming—he’s dying, or very nearly dead. He has a choice to make: stay here with Thomas and his mother, or go back to Joe in the world.

Ox opens his eyes again and finds himself in a dark room, surrounded by pack. He can hear their heartbeats. The bonds are so much stronger than they’d ever been before, and Ox searches them to find Joe. He shifts as soon as he leaves the house. In wolf form, Ox is possessive and protective of his humans. He runs towards Joe as Joe calls for him through their bond. Ox struggles to control his wolf but is soothed by Joe’s touch and the news that his eyes are red—he’s still an Alpha.

Joe is angry that Ox went to see Collins alone, but Ox says he would do it again if it meant keeping Joe safe. They vow not to keep secrets and to work together from now on. The rest of the pack joins them in the clearing in the morning, and everything feels right, just the way it should be.

Joe and Ox have sex for the first time in a somewhat explicit scene. Joe gives Ox the mating bite, and their connection becomes more than either of them ever realized it could.