IT WAS enough of the truth that the gruff man didn’t catch it.
Because I did have faith in Joe.
But I thought maybe it was waning as the days went on.
ROBBIE WAITED nervously as the gruff man left, standing just beyond earshot. As soon as the car disappeared down the dirt road, he practically ran to my side. I could hear the others in the forest, the yips of Mark and Elizabeth, the laughter and shouts of Tanner and Chris and Rico.
“Well?” he demanded, wringing his hands, eyes darting to mine and then away.
“Well?” I teased.
“Ox!”
I rolled my eyes. “You can stay. You’ll still work for Alpha Hughes, but you can—”
“She’s not my Alpha,” he interrupted in a rush, eyes wide. “She isn’t—she can’t be my Alpha. Not like… okay. She just can’t.”
“Why?” I asked, curious. “I know you weren’t really a part of her pack. Or any pack, really. But you work for her. Why wouldn’t you be part of hers?”
“It never fit,” he said. “I never fit. Not with them. Even when other packs took me in after my mom died, it… it never felt right. They kept me safe. They kept me fed and clothed. They helped me through my grief, but I just… couldn’t. They asked me to stay. And I couldn’t. So when I came of age, I floated. I bounced around. And then Alpha Hughes asked me to do a job, and when she asks, you just do it. No questions asked. And I came here and did my job and it was fine, Ox, it was good. And even though you didn’t trust me for a long time, none of you did, I still felt more myself here than I’d felt since… I don’t even know.” By the time he was finished, his cheeks were flushed and his eyes were wide and flickering orange. He sounded breathless, like he was afraid I was going to reject him where he stood.
“Robbie,” I said, oddly touched. “You’re going—”
“Because you’re my Alpha,” he blurted out. “You’re the only one I want to be my Alpha. Not anyone else. My wolf—just. You’re it, okay?”
So I said, “Okay, Robbie. Hey, it’s okay. You’re staying. With us. With me.”
He gaped at me. “Are you serious?”
I nodded.
The smile on his face was wide and blinding.
And even though I still felt a bit like a child playing dress-up, there was a pride there I didn’t know what to do with, even as I knew I didn’t want to let it go.
SHE STAYED away for a while, Jessie did.
Not that I could blame her.
I was only sixteen when I’d found out the truth, still young and naïve enough to believe in impossible things.
She wasn’t sixteen. She was in her twenties. Which meant she was cynical.
But I didn’t blame her. I couldn’t. She’d witnessed something most people wouldn’t have known what to do with. Wouldn’t have known how to process. She’d been taken and beaten, held hostage in a fight she had nothing to do with.
She’d been coming home from a night out with friends two towns over. They’d gone to a late dinner. Had a couple of drinks, but nothing where she couldn’t drive after.
She’d been coming back when she’d seen another car stopped on the side of the road, a woman standing in the dark by herself next to it. The emergency flashers blinking yellow.
She’d stopped. Because it had been the right thing to do. The woman was alone. And even though Green Creek was safe, Jessie said she wouldn’t have been able to forgive herself if she hadn’t stopped and later heard that it hadn’t been safe.
The woman had smiled at her. She’d said her car had broken down. And to top it all off, her cell phone was dead, could Jessie just believe her luck?
It’d happened swiftly. One moment she’d been walking toward the woman, and the next she’d been surrounded by people whose eyes glowed violet.
They’d hit her.
They’d made her bleed.