The Alpha’s Curvy Payment

The library closed at five, but I stayed until the lights blinked off. That was my trick. Stay out as long as I could, and walk home slow. It was already getting dark when I turned onto our street. October dark in Alaska comes fast, like someone pulls a blanket over the sky. The air smelled like wood smoke and wet leaves. My breath came out in little white clouds. I hugged my textbooks to my chest and kept my eyes on the sidewalk. Then I saw our fence. It was the same as always. Tall and black, with iron bars and wooden posts, running all the way around my aunt’s house. Every old house in Birch Hollow had one just like it. Nobody ever said why. But something was different tonight. Uncle Greg was kneeling at the gate. He had thick leather gloves on. In one hand he held a small tin can. With the other, he was rubbing some kind of gray, gritty stuff into the iron hinges. He worked fast, like a man who was late for something. I slowed down. “Uncle Greg?” He jumped so hard he almost dropped the tin. He shoved it behind his back, and a little gray dust puffed into the air. “Hazel!” His laugh sounded like a cough. “You scared me half to death.” “What are you doing?” “Oh, you know.” He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “Gardening.” I looked at the frozen dirt. I looked at the dead flower beds. I looked back at him. “Gardening,” I said. “In October.” “Prep work,” he said. “For spring.” He didn’t look at me when he said it. Greg is an accountant. He’s the kind of man who straightens the pens on his desk. He is a terrible liar. Then the smell hit me. It was sharp and bitter, like burnt pennies mixed with old medicine. It stung my nose and made my eyes water. I covered my face with my sleeve. “What is that stuff?” “Just a cleaner.” He pulled off one glove and tucked the tin into his coat pocket. “For rust. Old fences get rusty.” I glanced down the street. The Hendersons’ fence had gray smears on it. So did the Parkers’. Even Mrs. Lindqvist’s, at the very end, had fresh marks on every post. It looked like the whole village had gotten the same idea on the same day. “Everybody’s doing it,” I said. “Well.” Greg cleared his throat. “It’s that time of year.” “Since when?” He didn’t answer. That’s when I noticed his hands. They were shaking. Not a little shiver from the cold. His fingers were trembling so hard that the gloves rattled against the gate. My stomach dropped. “Are you okay?” I asked. “I’m fine.” “You don’t look fine.” “I said I’m fine, Hazel.” He snapped it. Greg never snaps. He says please when he asks me to pass the salt. I stood there with my books pressed against my ribs. And I felt something I hadn’t felt in three years. It was the feeling I used to get in the pack house, back when I was fifteen. That feeling when you walk into a room and everyone goes quiet. When you just know they’re all in on a joke, and the joke is you. I hated that feeling. “Did something happen?” I asked. “Is it about my birthday?” His whole body went stiff. “Why would it be about your birthday?” “I don’t know. It’s in four days. And everyone’s been acting weird.” “Nobody’s acting weird.” “Mom dropped a mug yesterday and just stared at it.” “She’s tired.” “You hid a tin behind your back.” “Hazel.” He finally turned and looked at me. His eyes were red around the edges. “Please. Just go inside.” I almost pushed. I really did. But I’ve lived in this house for three years, and I’ve learned something. You don’t push. You smile. You say thank you. You do the dishes and keep your voice soft, and you never, ever ask the questions that make the grown-ups’ faces go tight. That’s the first rule of Birch Hollow. Everyone passes the casserole, and no one explains why the iron is cold, even in July. So I swallowed my questions like I always did. “Okay,” I said quietly. “It’s getting dark,” Greg said. He looked up at the sky, then at the line of trees past the last house. “You should be inside before dark.” His voice cracked on that last word. Dark. It came out thin and broken, like a little kid’s. I had never heard my uncle sound scared before. Not once. It made the back of my neck prickle. “I’m going,” I said. I reached for the gate. “Wait!” Greg grabbed my sleeve. Then he let go, like he’d touched something hot. “Sorry. Just... be quick.” I pushed the gate open. The iron was freezing. That wasn’t a surprise. But the moment my bare palm touched the bar, a sharp sting shot up my hand. It felt like a tiny electric shock. “Ow!” I yanked my hand back. “What happened?” Greg’s voice went high. “Hazel, what happened?” “Nothing. It zapped me.” “Show me.” “It’s fine.” “Show me your hand!” I held it out. My palm was pink, and across the middle, there was a thin red line. It looked like a paper cut, but I hadn’t been cut. Greg stared at it. His face turned the color of old snow. “Go inside,” he whispered. “Wash it. Put something cold on it.” “It’s just a scratch.” “Please.” That one word scared me more than anything else he’d said. I stepped through the gate. The iron hummed behind me, a low, strange buzz that I felt in my teeth. Greg snapped the lock shut so fast it echoed down the street. I walked up the path toward the porch. The yellow light over the door glowed warm and normal. Through the window, I could see Izzy at the table, swinging her legs, with a crayon in her fist. Normal. Everything was normal. Except my hand burned. And my heart wouldn’t slow down. I stopped at the bottom of the porch steps. I don’t know why. Something just made me turn around. Maybe it was a sound. Maybe it was a feeling. I looked back over the fence, past the road, past the last streetlight, to where the woods began. The birch trees stood pale and thin in the dusk, like rows of bones. And something was standing between them. At first I thought it was a shadow. Then it moved. Just a little. Just enough to shift the dark. It was big. Way too big to be a dog. It was black as a hole in the night, with thick fur and broad shoulders. It stood so still that it felt like it had been there for hours. Waiting. The porch light caught its eyes. They glowed. Not red like in the movies. They were pale blue, like ice with a lamp behind it. My whole body went cold. I knew those eyes. No. I couldn’t know those eyes. I was being silly. It was just the cold and the stress and Greg’s weird mood making my brain play tricks. But my chest went tight, and I heard my own heartbeat pounding in my ears. I told myself to blink. Just blink, and it would be gone. I blinked. It was still there. It tilted its head, slowly, like it was studying me. Like it was trying to remember something. Then it took one step closer to the edge of the trees. The branches parted around its shoulders without a sound. “Hazel?” Greg called from the gate. His voice was a whisper now. “Hazel, are you inside yet?” I couldn’t answer. My throat had closed up. I felt the silver pendant that my mother left me, hidden beneath my shirt, grow warm against my skin. It had never done that before. It got warmer and warmer, until it almost burned. The wolf, because that’s what it was, I knew that now, lowered its head and stared right at me. Not at the house. Not at the fence. At me. My knees went weak. My fingers tightened on my books until my knuckles ached. Why was it here? Why did it look at me like it knew me? And why, deep down in a place I didn’t want to name, did part of me want to walk right through that gate and go to it?