I said, “I’m good at that. Picking out what’s between the words. All the things that aren’t being said. I watch.”
He sounded amused. “I know.”
“Oh. Right. You would know that.” Then, “Did I….”
He waited for me to collect my thoughts.
“Was I useful? Did I contribute to the pack?” I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “Did I matter?” I hated how it sounded, like I was fishing. Like I needed his approval. I did, though. I needed to hear him say it.
He squeezed my hand, and when he spoke, there was a curl of Alpha in his voice, low and heavy. He said, “Things were…bad, when we were younger. I lost someone very important to me. I thought I was going to break apart.”
“Did you?”
“In a way. But even when I thought I couldn’t take another step, I did. I had people depending on me. People who needed me. And as it turned out, I needed them just as much. But I remember how much it hurt, like I was flayed open, all my nerve endings exposed. And when you were taken, I felt like that all over again.”
I wasn’t prepared for it. This truth. His truth. I didn’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this. He meant every word.
He said, “I went to the woods. For days. I howled for you.” His voice cracked, and I wanted him to stop. I wished I’d never opened my mouth, but it was too late to take it back. “I howled for you with everything I had. My father told me once that the call of an Alpha is one of the most powerful things in all the world. That it echoes through the earth and the trees and the sky. And I knew, I just knew that if I was good enough, if I was strong enough, that you would hear me. That you would find me and you would find your way home.”
“But I didn’t,” I whispered.
He surprised me by laughing. It was rough and gravelly, like it crawled up from his chest through his throat. “You did, though. It just took longer than we expected. You heard us, Robbie. All of us. I forgot in those early days that an Alpha is nothing without their pack. It took longer than I’d hoped, but we came together again. We stood tall and we all howled for you. And not because you’re useful or because of what you contributed or what you could tell us about where you’d been. It’s because you matter. I couldn’t save my mother. I couldn’t save my father.”
“But you could save me,” I said, sounding awed.
“We could,” he said. “But only because you’d already saved us. When you came, we were broken. We were lost. You couldn’t fix us, but you didn’t need to. You made a home in here.” He tapped his chest. “And I wasn’t about to let you go. That was never on the table, even if I had to go it alone. I would have moved heaven and earth to get to you.” He chuckled. “Thankfully everyone came around, hardheaded though some of them may be.” He glanced at me, and a hint of red bled into his eyes. “An Alpha is only as strong as his pack. And you’re a part of that.”
I nodded, unable to speak.
He squeezed my hand again, tilting his head back to rest against the window behind us. He closed his eyes. I’d overheard Gordo talking about Ox’s Zen Alpha bullshit, and I didn’t understand it then.
I did now.
He turned his head to look at me. “There are going to be rough days ahead. Are you with me?”
And I did the only thing I could.
I said yes.
And there, in the back of my mind, I heard it, louder than it’d been before.
packpackpack
“You can run, you know,” Kelly said. He sat beneath a tree at the edge of the clearing, picking at the grass between his legs. In the clearing ahead, a couple dozen wolves ran with each other, yipping, tails flicking back and forth. Clouds were starting to come in, thick and heavy, and I could smell rain in the distance, but the moon was bright, and my gums itched, my fangs wanting to drop. I forced them back. “You don’t need to sit here with me all night.”
He smelled so blue, I thought the weight of it would crush me. He watched Carter wrestling with the timber wolf, their violet eyes flashing in the dark.
“I’m okay where I am,” I said. I sat next to him, back against the tree trunk. Our shoulders brushed together every now and then, and I was working up the courage to lay my head on his shoulder. Pathetic, really. Especially the driving urge I had to go and find the biggest animal I could and kill it so I could drag it to him. Joe had told me before we’d gotten to the clearing that Kelly wasn’t a fan of bloody carcasses, and I didn’t know what else to bring him. He’d refused to tell me how this had happened before, saying I’d need to hear that from Kelly when we were ready.
Carter, in his infinite wisdom, told me that I needed to be like a bird of paradise, all bright colors and prancing around a nest I’d made out of sticks and feathers and leaves in a sensual dance sure to attract the attention of a mate.
It was while I was collecting said sticks and feathers and leaves and trying to figure out what I could do about bright colors when Joe told me in no uncertain terms Carter was being a dick and under no circumstances should I listen to his advice ever again.
Which was a relief, because I didn’t think I was very good at prancing or sensual dancing.
Carter assured me I was very good at it as he tried to hand me the sticks I’d dropped.
But then Joe tackled him, and that was that.