“It belonged to your father.”
“Yes.”
“He can’t take this.” I bared my teeth. “Not from you. Not from us. Not from our fucking pack.”
“Yes,” the wolf said, all snarls and fire.
I kissed him then. Because it was the right thing to do. Because it was the only thing I wanted to do.
He kissed me back, urgent and harsh. A single fang pricked my lip, and I tasted the sharp tang of blood, my blood, between us.
“Alpha,” he whispered against me.
And I thought yes and yes and yes.
this empty shell/heartbeat
A WEEK after the call with Michelle Hughes, I stood watching Elizabeth sashay through the kitchen. It was a Sunday. And I’d told her we should have dinner with everyone. Because it was tradition.
Her eyes got very bright at that. She patted my hand, and we both ignored the roughness in her voice when she said, “That’d be nice, Ox. That’d be really nice.”
The humans in my (our our our) pack were outside setting the table. Or rather, Jessie was, and Tanner, Rico, and Chris were drinking beer and sitting in frayed lawn chairs they’d pulled out of nowhere.
Gordo was with them, and I could see him trying. Trying to find his way back to them. Trying to forge the bonds that had been there before. Because even if they hadn’t known, even though none of them were wolves, they’d still been his pack longer than anyone else. He needed them. Like he needed me. It was slow going, given the long history between them. They understood. Mostly.
Carter and Kelly were manning the grill. Robbie was trying hard not to shadow Kelly too much. After that first meeting where Joe and I had told them about combining the packs, Robbie had pulled back, had softened slightly around the others, less bristling and sharp edges. It helped that he had started to divert his attention away from me. Joe, possessive bastard that he was, was amused by the whole thing, especially seeing the bewildered look on Kelly’s face.
Joe was walking in the trees somewhere. An Alpha needed to be in touch with his territory. I’d told him I’d go with him, but he’d shaken his head. “It’ll be fine, Ox,” he’d said before he disappeared into the woods.
And so it was just Elizabeth and I. The salad I’d tossed was ready in the large plastic bowl. She hadn’t given me another task. So I waited. It felt like the right thing to do.
Eventually, she stopped dancing to that song that only she could hear.
She said, “Ox.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s nice, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Then, “What is?”
She smiled but didn’t look up from the potato salad she was stirring.
“This. Us. You and I. All of them.”
And it was. So I told her so.
She said, “I didn’t expect this.”
“What?”
“That we could have this again.”
“I wanted you to,” I said. “I wanted you to have all of this again. After.”
She nodded. “I know you did. But you couldn’t. Not right away.”
I shrugged, trying to keep cool. “I don’t know.”