Shameful by May Dawson
1
Legacy
Crosby College wasbeautiful in late spring. White blooms on the pear trees fluttered on a cool breeze, and sunlight slanted across the brick paths between the grass and yellow daffodils. Students hurried past me, many of them smiling, as if spring had brightened everyone’s mood. Almost all were human.
And I hoped none of them had a clue that I wasn’t. I hoped they didn’t know I was a wolf shifter. I hoped they didn’t know I would disappear by the end of the semester.
Female wolf shifters didn’t get the chance to earn college degrees. Not when the supermoon was coming, a full moon when the moon is closest to the earth, when it’s brightest and biggest. And not when my twentieth birthday had just passed.
It was the season for mating in the Northwood pack territory, and that meant my season for pretending wasover.
I jogged down the steps of the Fuller building and stopped under the weeping willows, waiting for my best friend. We did everything together: attend pack parties, train in martial arts to protect the pack—reluctantly, for her part— and even work a normal job at a coffeeshop.
“Hey, Legacy.” Tania had snuck up behind me, and her voice in my ear made me jerk. “Jumpymuch?”
I whirled to face her. “Just when you act like a stalker.”
“Okay, fearless warrior.” Tania looped her arm overmine.
“You are so stealthy. Where’d you comefrom?”
“You were probably too busy daydreaming about Lucas Harley and the mating ceremony. Meanwhile, I was daydreaming aboutmath.”
She was so loud, I could swear her voice carried all the way to the Alpha’s house.
I shushed her, then glanced around quickly, but no one was close enough to hear. “Let’s at least pretend we’re normal. Why are you daydreaming about math?” I hoped to distract her from her nagging me about Lucas, the alpha’s son, my first crush.
The two of us joined the students heading across campus. “Because this degree in Business will be my ticket out of the Northwood, and that’s worth revisiting math. I think I might actually understand how to multiply fractions this time around.”
“You know there’s no ticket out of the Northwood without the alpha’s say-so.”
Tania yanked a fluffy white blossom off a branch as we passed underneath, and I shot her a could-you-stop look. She was always drawing attention to us, and Cyrus barely tolerated our attempt at having normal lives.
“What?” Her wide-eyed innocence wasn’t believable. It didn’t convince anyone even back when we were in kindergarten together. She tried to hand the bloom to me. “You need this more than I do. Lucas Harley is not the type to buy anyone flowers.”
“You know we’re not dating.” I’d never had a boyfriend. But my wolf was beginning to long for amate.
I hoped Lucas and I would find each other underneath that brightest moon. But he wasn’t my boyfriend yet. Lucas was sidelong smiles after church on Sunday, hand-on-my-arm check-in chats during every pack event, and cut-away looks from the other girls. There was something sweet there, but nothing certain.
“Sure, you aren’t official yet despite all the googly-eyes you two trade, but that’s not why he’s not the type to buy anyone flowers.” Tania sounded jaded.
She’d consumed just as many romance novels as I had. But Tania sometimes tossed them away from her like she’d just touched something dead, shouting at me that if this were real life, if a guy was an asshole in chapter one, he was still going to be an asshole by the epilogue.
Beach-reading is one of life’s great pleasures. But Tania would never earn a gold star in relaxing.
The two of us reached her Jeep. When she turned the car on, Taylor Swift blared out of the speakers, a lot too loud like it was this morning.
“All love to Tay, but I’m turning down the radio, you don’t need any distractions.” I snapped the volumeoff.
“Me? I’m a good driver.”
“Only two fender-benders thisyear.”
“Those were early this year. I’m better now. But let’s talk about you and Lucas. My favorite topic.”
“Let’s not. I don’t know if anything will even happen at the mating ceremony.”
Tania glanced over her shoulder to pull out. “Please. I’d expect the perfect mating ceremony for the perfect wolfgirl.”
“I’m definitely not perfect.”
Tania slid her sunglasses on, but she was side-eyeing me even if I couldn’t see it. “You’re beautiful. Smart as hell. Fearless in a fight, but still submissive, for reasons I’ll never understand. And listen to you, you’re even fucking modest.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were jealous.” My voice was teasing, but the words soured in my mouth.
Tania’s jealousy was the kind of awkward truth that friends are contractually obligated not to notice.
I couldn’t imagine ever leaving our pack. Tania couldn’t imagine staying. But even though she wanted to run, she didn’t have anywhere to go. No matter what she daydreamed, Cyrus Harley wasn’t going to let her march off to be an accountant and blend into the human world.
“Ha, me? Jealous? I would be, you’re right. If I wanted to be the perfect wolfgirl.”
I didn’t like to talk about how differently we felt about the pack I loved. “You’re always the perfectyou.”
She glanced away from the road—oh god no—to offer me a syrupy smile. “And you’re the sweetest wolfgirl.”
“I’m not that sweet.” No matter how everyone sawme.
“But you’re almost as delusional as you are adorable. Hopelessly naïve. Endlessly optimistic.” She rattled off those adjectives cheerfully, as if they didn’t feel like a slap in theface.
“Are youdone?”
She was not. “Which is probably why you’re hoping for a moon-blessed connection between you and the alpha’s stuck-upson.”
“Why don’t you likehim?”
She kept her left hand on the wheel and ticked things off on those fingers without saying a word. Then she froze as if she’d gotten stuck on a thought so corrupt, it made her inner computer reboot. “His personality.”
I sighed. Of course, Tania didn’t like Lucas Harley. “He and his family represent everything you hate, right? A life that revolves around the pack, not any one wolf’s dreams.”
Maybe I’d gone toofar.
Now Tania paid more attention to the road than I’d ever seen before. Finally she said, “Maybe there’s nothing wrong with having dreams.”
“No, of course not. But being part of the pack is goodtoo.”
She let out a huff of disbelieving laughter. “The pack is run by misogynistic assholes that prize our virginity and submission to a distinctly creepy degree.”
“Those assholes include people I love, Tania. People who just want the best for us.” Like my father who had diligently taught me to fight all these years, and my mother who still came into my room to check on me before she went to bed, and even my little brother, who was growing into a broad-shouldered shifter who would one day join my dad as an enforcer.
Tania chewed her lower lip, as if she was debating what to say next, and my stomach churned. I hated fighting with my best friend, and I wished I could rewind and change the topic. Let her tease me about Lucas; it was better than hurting each other.
“You’re right, I am jealous,” she said softly. “Everyone loves you. You’re so good at everything that matters to the pack. But… maybe that’s a weakness too. Because feeling like I’m an outsider means I can look at things like an outsider. And our pack is fucked up. Even your precious family.”
I pressed my lips together tightly. I wouldn’t say anything back, not when I knew anything I said next would hurt her. Someone had to stop the spill of toxic words betweenus.
Tania always knew when she’d gone too far, and as she came to a stop in the parking lot behind the Crosby Sunshine Cafe, she pulled off her sunglasses, then twisted in the seat to look at me. “How did we get from discussing Lucas’s low likeability levels tothis?”
“I don’tknow.”
Her lips twisted in a faint smile. “Really, I guess no one would be good enough for my best friend. So maybe I hate him for no reason.”
She wanted to make up, but she didn’t want to apologize. I let her sweat, giving her a long look, then sliding out of thecar.
“Do you have a ride home?” She called over the roof as she gathered her purse. “I picked up the restock shift at the mini-mart after thecafe.”
I worried about my best friend and her two-jobs-plus-college, no-sleep life. But I knew she didn’t want to hearit.
“I’m good. My real mother will come pick me up.” Because I was still a little hurt, I added, “She has a lot more faith in my competence than youdo.”
“You can’t blame me for trying to protect you,” she said. “Old habits diehard.”
“Ha. We’re not in third grade anymore.”
I’d been throwing punches since I was old enough to wobble on my own two feet. I’d been raised by the head of Northwood pack security. But it was Tania who would wade in to face down wolf-boy bullies when we were in grade school. Almost twenty years of training had forged me into a weapon—but Tania was the one who was frightening.
She opened the door to the café for me with a dramatic sweep of her arm, and I stepped into the scent of bitter coffee and burnt sugar. In front of us was the long, familiar blond wood bar and a dozen tables. I smiled at no one, donning my customer-service personality even before I reached my apron.
Tania wasn’t ready to give up the argument, though. “No, you need to be protected more than you ever did in third grade. Especially from yourself.”
Sometimes Tania was condescending in a way that exasperated me. I washed my hands in the sink and pointedly ignored her in favor of scrubbing under my fingernails. I was the best female warrior in the pack; I wasn’t exactly helpless.
One night at family dinner, Tania said I was the best warrior in the pack, period. My dad had shushed her, even though there was no one around to hear, as if he could preempt her from saying it again.
Male shifters like powerful females…to a point.
I turned around to find my best friend staring at me, with something a little bit lost in hereyes.
My heart flip-flopped. “I don’t need to be protected. I just need my best friend.”
“You’re my favorite person, Legacy.”
“You’re minetoo.”
Her lips pursed, but even if she was worried someone might take her spot, she managed not to mention Lucas Harley.
“You’re everyone’s favorite.” Her tone was as flat as a stone that didn’t manage to skip. She wanted to be on the outside so badly, then resented that the pack treated her like an outsider. “Everyone lovesyou.”
“The pack loves you just as much,” I said the words knowing that I only wanted them to betrue.
For once, she had the grace to play along with the lie, coming to life with her usual energy. “Oh, shut up and make me a vanilla latte. I’m slated for soup-and-sandwich all day. You’ll have to keep me caffeinated.”
I picked up the metal espresso cup, headed for the giant silver machine.
“You love me. That’s all that matters.” Tania’s voice never faltered, but it was a little quieter than her usual bravado.
I wanted to see my best friend happy, but for now, at least I could make her latte.