Ravensong (Green Creek 2)

She was leaning against the wall near the cellar door. She looked as tired as I felt, but she was carrying herself high and proud. Like a wolf.

“I think so.”

She nodded slowly. “Can we beat this? All of this?”

“I don’t know. But we’re going to fight like hell.”

She pushed herself off the wall, leaning forward to kiss me on the cheek. “I’m glad you got your mystical moon magic mate.”

I scowled at her.

She wasn’t fooled.

“Elizabeth is waiting for you outside. Get to the bar. Bring the rest of the pack home. Stay out of sight.”

She eyed me curiously. “What are you going to do?”

I looked at the cellar door. I could hear the sounds of wolves beneath us. “What I have to.”

“WE DON’T need the wolves,” my father had told me once. “They need us, yes, but we have never needed them. They use our magic. As a tether. It binds a pack together. Yes, there are packs without witches. More than have them. But the ones that do have witches are the ones in power. There’s a reason for that. You need to remember that, Gordo. They will always need you more than you could ever need them.”

My father had never understood. Even when he had pledged himself to Abel Bennett, he hadn’t understood. What it meant to be tied to a wolf. What it meant to be pack. It wasn’t about necessity.

It was about choice.

He hadn’t given me one.

Neither had Abel Bennett.

Thomas Bennett had. In the end. I was just too blind to see it through the fury I felt at everything that was being taken away from me.

He’d been wrong to do it the way he had.

But in the end, I’d been given a choice.

I’d said no.

He had threatened me. I wasn’t lying when I’d told Elizabeth that.

But there’d been more. After fang and claws and red, red eyes.

“My son,” he’d told me. “Please, Gordo. It’s Joe. It’s my son. Please help me.”

He’d fallen to his knees then, tilting his head back, exposing his neck.

The Alpha of all, begging me to help him.

I’d almost turned and left him there, on the ground.

And I half think he expected it.

But it was there, wasn’t it?

Deep down, buried in an ocean of blue.

That spark that demanded my Alpha.

I’d forgotten how bright it burned.