MSR- Short- Red, White & Blue
The box arrived on a Tuesday, and Stormy nearly had a heart attack.
I know this because I was standing in the pack office with a cup of peppermint mocha when the delivery guy set it on the desk, and my Alpha, who has faced down rogues and Project Griffin and the entire Council of Elders without so much as a flinch, took one look at the label and went the color of skim milk.
"Skates," he said.
"Skates," I agreed, sipping my mocha.
"Veronica." He said it slowly, the way you'd talk to someone standing at the edge of a cliff. "Wheels. On her feet."
"That's generally how they work, wolfie."
"She's four."
"Four and three quarters," I corrected. "She'll tell you herself."
He put both hands flat on the desk and breathed through his nose. Behind him, Knight was very carefully studying a zoning permit that I'm fairly sure he was holding upside down, because the man has the survival instincts of a Beta and knew exactly when to look busy.
"I'll need to see a safety plan," Stormy said finally.
"You'll need to see a Luna who has already made the plan," I said, and kissed his stubborn jaw. "Wrist guards, elbow pads, knee pads, helmet. I ordered all of it. The pads are purple."
"Purple is not a safety feature."
"Purple is Amara's safety feature."
He opened his mouth, closed it, and looked at the box like it might go off.
I didn't tell him why those particular skates mattered. Not yet.
I carried the box upstairs to our bedroom to hide in the closet with the rest of the Bun Bun’s gifts to fill the baskets and Emmy and Smudgie met me at the top of the stairs the way they always do. Emmy with her princess in exile stare, Smudgie with the quiet disgust of a cat who suspects she's being left out of something. They inspected the box. Smudgie sniffed the corner, sat on it, and refused to leave.
"Fine," I told her. "You can supervise."
I set the box on my bed, and when I finally lifted the lid, the smell hit me first. New leather and rubber and that faint scent of fresh laces, and I was suddenly eight years old again, standing on Gramma’s uneven walkway in Wellsville, Ohio.
I had a pair just like these.
Red, white, and blue, with bright red and white candy cane laces that I'd begged for and then spent a whole summer skating on. I'd skated up and down that cracked, uneven walkway until the outside light came on, and when I fell, which I did constantly, Gramma would be sitting on the porch on her glider with her coffee and her kind, knowing eyes, and she'd call out the same thing every single time.
"Get up, Luvy Lu Lane. The ground's not going anywhere."
She never rushed over. She never fussed. She just watched, with that half smile that meant she thought I was braver than I knew, and when I finally got up, scraped palms and all, she'd nod once like I'd passed a test no one else could see.
She'd also tell me, in a perfectly pleasant voice, about the girl who'd fallen at a roller rink in 1951 and was still said to haunt the rafters, because Gramma never met a spooky story she didn't like and never once believed a child was too young to hear one.
My mother hated that. I adored it.
I held the little skate in my hands, turned the wheel with my thumb, and listened to it hum.
Get up, Luvy, I thought. The ground's not going anywhere.
The reveal happened on Easter morning, because Amara had been told in a very serious voice that there would be "something special in her basket," and if there is one thing my daughter cannot tolerate, it's a mystery.
We were all there. Of course we were.
When you live in a pack house with a Beta, a Gamma, a handful of toddlers, and a small army of warriors and Red Moon refugees who've all quietly turned into doting aunts and uncles, you don't have private moments. You have an audience.
Rhett had taken it upon himself to MC with a wooden spoon for a microphone.
"Ladies and gentlemen, wolfies and cubs," he boomed, standing on the hearth in the great room. "Welcome to the most important unveiling in Moon Shadow history. Please direct your attention to the Bun Bun’s baskets!"
"Oh my gosh," GG whispered, grinning, one hand on her belly. "He's so much."
"He's the best," I whispered back.
Amara tore into her first basket. She looked at the large box wrapped in the bottom. She looked at me. Her dark curls were already escaping their ponytail, and she had a smear of chocolate on her chin that I'd tried and failed to wipe off twice.
"Is it a bunny?" she asked.
"It is not a bunny."
"Is it a wolfie?"
"Open it, Lil Bit."
She slowly removed the gift wrap and lifted the lid with both hands. The whole room went quiet and watched. Even Rhett.
Amara stared down at the red, white, and blue skates for a long, long moment. Then she looked up at me with those big eyes, and her little voice came out hushed and reverent, like she was standing in a cathedral.
"My skates is beautiful," she whispered.
I don't know what happened to my face, exactly. I just know that Stormy reached over and pressed a hand to the small of my back, and when I turned, he was looking at me like he'd just figured something out.
"Those are yours," he said quietly. "From when you were little."
"Not mine," I said, my voice wobbling. "But just like them."
He didn't say anything. He just pulled me against his side and kissed my hair.
"Can I wear dem now?" Amara demanded, already yanking at her sock. "Right now? Today? Now?"
"Don't you dare," Stormy said, and then, after a pause, "...after helmet, breakfast and the egg hunt."
The pack’s loop was the best place I could think of. Smooth packed gravel near the pack house, then a long, flat stretch of pavement that the construction crew had finished the week before. It curved gently around the packlands, bright with late-afternoon sun, lined with pines that smelled like Christmas in the middle of spring.
By two o'clock, the entire pack had turned out.
I'm not exaggerating. There were folding chairs. There was a cooler. Scott and DanDan had claimed the best spot under an oak tree, and a dozen other massive warriors stood in a loose, protective semicircle along the loops path, arms crossed, expressions grave, like a very large, very confused honor guard.
"What are they doing?" I asked Stormy.
"Spotting," he said, with total seriousness.
"They're spotting a four-year-old on rollerskates."
"Four and three quarters," he corrected me, and I laughed so hard I had to sit down.
Stormy himself had come armed. A first-aid kit the size of a small suitcase. A thermos of something. A blanket, though it was seventy-five degrees. And a folded sheet of paper I'd caught him writing at the kitchen table the night before, which he'd refused to show me but which I'd glimpsed over his shoulder.
Possible Outcomes, it said at the top.
Below that: a numbered list. I'd counted to fourteen before he'd slapped his hand over it.
"You made a list," I'd teased.
"A responsible Alpha plans for contingencies."
"Is number fourteen 'dragon'?"
"Number fourteen," he'd said stiffly, "is 'unexpected gravel.'"
Now Amara stood at the start of the path, helmet slightly crooked, purple pads buckled everywhere they could possibly buckle, little skates strapped on and gleaming. Kyle stood beside her holding up his brand new bike, a plastic broadsword tucked into his belt, wearing an expression of absolute, unshakable duty.
"I'm her official guardian," he announced to the crowd.
"Officially noted, Braveheart," Rhett called.
"And spotter!"
"The best spotter!"
"I have a sword," Kyle added, as if this settled it.
Amara took a wobbly step. Then another. Her arms windmilled, her tongue stuck out the corner of her mouth, and for one perfect, terrifying second, she was upright and rolling.
"I'm doing it!" she shrieked. "Luna momma, I'm doing it!"
And then she wasn't.
She went down hard on her bottom, skates flying out in front of her, and the whole pack went silent. I heard Stormy suck in a breath beside me. I felt him lurch forward, and I caught his arm.
"Wait."
"Veronica, she's down."
"I know. Wait."
He stared at me, wild eyed. Every muscle in his enormous body was coiled to sprint. Down the path, Knight had taken three steps forward and stopped, watching me, waiting for the Luna's call.
I didn't take my eyes off my daughter.
She sat there for a second, blinking. Her lip trembled. Her little face scrunched up, and I thought, oh no, here come the tears.
Then she looked down at her skates. Looked at her purple knee pads. Looked at Kyle, who'd dropped to his knees beside her and was solemnly checking her helmet with the grave focus of a surgeon.
"I'm okay," Amara announced, in a voice of pure, stubborn steel. "I fell down, but I'm okay. Da ground not goin' anywhere."
I felt something crack open in my chest.
Get up, Luvy.
Amara grabbed Kyle's offered hand, hauled herself upright, and set her chin. "Again," she said.
The crowd erupted. Rhett whooping loudest of all. Scott roared something that might have been "THAT'S MY GIRL." GG was grinning openly, her eyes sparkling with pride. And Stormy stood next to me, absolutely motionless, my hand still wrapped around his arm, staring at his daughter like he'd just watched her grow ten years in ten seconds.
"She said the thing," he murmured.
"Hm?"
"The ground. Not going anywhere." He looked down at me, and his ice blue eyes were suddenly bright. "That's your Gramma's."
"I might have said it a few times around the house," I admitted.
"You told her."
"Maybe once or twice."
Stormy let out a shaky breath, shook his head, and pulled me hard against his chest. "I love you," he said into my hair. "I love you, and I love that child, and I am going to need a very large drink."
"The thermos."
"The thermos," he agreed gravely.
She fell eleven more times that afternoon.
I counted. So did Stormy, apparently, because I caught him ticking marks on the back of his fourteen as item list. By the end, she had a scraped knee, a tiny skinned elbow, and a streak of dirt across one cheek, and she'd earned the full, solemn attention of every grown wolf on that path.
The knee was the real drama.
It happened around four, on a gentle curve near gazebo. She hit the pavement sideways, slid, and came up with a scrape the size of a quarter, bright red and angry. Stormy was on his knees beside her before I'd even registered him moving, the first-aid kit already open, the antiseptic already uncapped.
"Hold still, little moon, this might sting."
"I know," Amara said calmly.
"It's going to hurt a little."
"I know, Daddy." She watched him dab at it, completely unbothered, swinging her skated feet in the air. "It's fine. You’s is da one dat's shakin'."
I looked down. He was.
His big, scarred, steady hands were trembling, just slightly, as he pressed a bandage over her knee. A butterfly bandage, purple, because of course he'd bought the purple ones. He smoothed the edges down with exaggerated gentleness, and then he sat back on his heels and looked at her like he'd never seen anything braver in his life.
"You're doing great, sweetheart," he said, and his voice cracked.
"I know," said Amara, patting his cheek with a gloved hand. "Dere, dere. Be brave, Daddy."
I turned away and pressed my lips together so hard I nearly drew blood. Behind me, Rhett had hidden behind his large hand, and Knight had suddenly become very interested in a distant pine tree.
That night, Stormy disappeared.
I noticed around ten. Amara was asleep, bandage and all, with Emmy tucked against her side and Smudgie claiming the pillow. The house was quiet. I came downstairs in his flannel shirt, the one that's always warm and always smells like cedar, and found the great room empty, the fire burning low.
"Knight?" I called softly into the guard’s intercom.
"Luna." His voice was a little too innocent. "Everything okay?"
"Where's my Alpha?"
A pause. A very long, very telling pause.
"...He went to check the perimeter."
"Knight."
"He's checking the perimeter very thoroughly."
"Knight Hargreaves."
A heavy sigh. "He's in the barn, Luna. Please don't tell him I told you."
I put on a pair of Stormy's boots, wrapped myself in the flannel, and padded across the dark lawn toward the old barn. The moon was fat and bright. Crickets sang from the long grass. And as I got closer, I heard it: a low, rhythmic whirr…whirr…whirr, punctuated by an occasional heavy thud and a very, very quiet curse.
I eased the barn door open an inch.
And there, in the middle of the swept concrete floor, lit by a single bare bulb, was my Alpha.
On skates.
Not just any skates. Enormous black rental skates that must have come from a rink supply catalog, size fourteen at least, strapped onto his feet. A helmet perched on his head. Elbow pads. A single, enormous purple kneepad on his left knee, because apparently he'd bought a spare set.
He was holding a broom for balance like a ski pole. He took a long, careful, wobbling glide across the floor, his face a mask of grim concentration, and then his left foot slid out from under him.
He went down with a thud that rattled the rafters.
"Dammit," he muttered, flat on his back, staring at the ceiling. "Number fifteen."
I clapped a hand over my mouth.
He heard me. Of course he heard me. His head snapped around, and our eyes met across the dim barn, and for a long, awful moment neither of us breathed.
"Veronica," Stormy said, with enormous dignity, from the floor. "I can explain."
"Can you?"
"I was..." He gestured vaguely at the skates. "Scouting the equipment."
"With your whole body."
"It's a very thorough scouting process."
I started laughing. I couldn't help it. I leaned against the doorframe and laughed until I was gasping, until tears ran down my face, until Stormy, still sprawled on the concrete in his purple kneepad, started laughing too, that big, booming, helpless laugh that shakes the walls.
"I just wanted to be able to catch her," he finally said, when we'd both calmed down. He sat up slowly, pulling the helmet off, his dark hair sticking up in all directions. "If she falls and I'm not fast enough... if I'm just standing there on the path in boots like a, like a giant..."
"Oh, wolfie."
"I wanted to be on her level." He looked down at his enormous skated feet and shook his head. "I know it's ridiculous."
I crossed the barn, knelt down in the flannel shirt, and cupped his rough face in both hands.
"It's not ridiculous," I said softly. "It's the most Stormy thing I've ever seen."
"I fell down eight times."
"Nine," I said. "I counted from the door."
He groaned and dropped his forehead against my shoulder.
I sat there with him for a long moment, holding him, breathing in cedar and sawdust and rubber and the warm, steady smell of him. And then I stood, held out both hands, and grinned.
"Get up, wolfie," I said. "The ground's not going anywhere."
The echo of "Atta girl, Luvy Lu Lane" still warm in my heart as I helped haul my big, sensitive wolfie to his feet. I flipped off the barn light. Our hands stayed clasped as the heavy barn door closed behind us.