Two: Landry Thayer
719 Words
Two
Landry Thayer
“Why do you smell like a Huntress?” Landry’s older brother Noel loomed over him as he came through the woods and morphed into a human.
Landry rolled his eyes at his brother.“Can’t you give me a moment to get dressed before you start with the third degree?” he’d left some clothes behind a tree stump before he’d morphed for the day. Jeans, a t-shirt, and tennis shoes.
There were clothes scattered throughout the forest, left for wolves in case they didn’t have time to change. But unlike the human myths, wolves could control their morphs. Most of the time.
Noel grunted. “No, not when you’re coming out smelling like the enemy.”
“Except its Ellery, and you know that she isn’t the enemy.” He slipped on his boxers, then his jeans, and the shirt. He sat on a nearby stump to put on his socks and shoes. “You know about the arrangement, remember?”
Noel Thayer was the exact opposite of Landry. He was a little bit taller, with brown hair, and scruff on his chin. His eyes were amber, a color that had always unsettled him. “I do know about the arrangement. I also know that she’s not twenty-one yet.”
He smiled. “She’ll be twenty-one on Friday. Besides, I didn’t do anything wrong. All I did was I gave her the necklace.”
Noel raised an eyebrow. “Her grandmother’s necklace. The golden arrow?”
Landry nodded. “I saw the goddess in a dream last night. She led me into the woods, and Ellery found me. When she did, she was wearing the necklace. The goddess wanted me to give it to her. I’m sure of it.”
His brother scratched the back of his head. “Fine. You didn’t tell her anything though? Ask her out on a date or anything stupid?”
“No brother, I didn’t do anything like that.”
“Good. It took everything in Dad’s power to keep the arrangement from falling apart when Tom Corbin died. We still don’t know how he was killed. And the Huntresses would absolutely love to make sure that everything is going to fall apart. Moon Falls exists peacefully alongside Glacier Falls because of our treaty with them. If it falls apart, everything is lost.”
Landry glared at his brother. “You don’t think I know that? I’m the one that was offered up on a silver platter to them for that. I don’t get my own mate because the witches stripped me of mine so that I could be bound to Ellery. Of course, I’m not going to screw this up. I know how important this is. If Ellery and I don’t follow through with this, I lose my wolf powers, and she loses her Huntress powers. We won’t remember anything. I don’t want that.”
Noel sighed. “We just have to make sure that she doesn’t decide she doesn’t want you. There are rumors that she and Deacon Foy are in love with each other.”
Landry snorted, getting up from the tree stump he’d sat down on to put his socks and shoes on. “Deacon Foy isn’t anything to worry about. He’s a human. He won’t be man enough for her. She’d be bored with him in days.”
“The mating isn’t like other matings. The witches made this. The goddess didn’t. She has choices, Landry. If she decides against you, that’s the end of us here, and everything our family has built will be done for. The Moon Children, witches, werewolves, and vampires have a community here and we can’t let that get ruined because you did something stupid.”
“This is on all of us, brother. Who says it will be me that makes it so that she doesn’t like us?”
Noel bristled. “What are you talking about? I can be a gentleman.”
He laughed. “Yes, that’s why your mate likes you so much.”
His brother glared. “November hates me because I wasn’t supposed to be her mate, I was supposed to be her sisters….and then her sister died.”
“The goddess has strange ways,” Landry said.
“That she does.”
- Writer
