“Ox—”
“Did you know?”
“What?”
“About me.”
“I don’t understand.”
But I thought maybe he did. “That I’d become. Like this. Like how I am now.”
“An Alpha.”
“A human Alpha.”
He started to shake his head, but then stopped and sighed. “Maybe.”
“Maybe,” I repeated.
He rubbed a hand over his face. “Dad thought—well. Dad thought a lot of things about you. You know that, right? That you were his in all but blood. I don’t think he saw any difference between Carter and me and Kelly and you. You were his just as much as we were.”
It hurt, in a good way, like pressing against a loose tooth. A bittersweet ache that clawed at my heart. “Yeah, Joe,” I said hoarsely. “I saw that. Maybe not at the time. But now? I know now.”
Joe nodded. “Sometimes when we went out into the woods, just me and him, we’d talk, you know? About the pack. About what it meant to be an Alpha. About you. We talked a lot about you. Things I’ve never told you about. Things he never got the chance to tell you himself.”
I waited, not wanting to interrupt.
“After you left,” he said, looking down at his hands, “that first day I found you. They just stared at me. For a long time. Especially him. They hadn’t heard me talk since… well. Since Richard. Because of the things he’d done to me. The way he’d broken me. But you, Ox. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever felt—okay. Just. Look. They stared at me. They listened to me. They smiled at me. They hugged and laughed and cried, but I kept saying Ox. Ox. Ox. And I knew then what it meant, even if I didn’t quite understand. When I told them I wanted to give you my wolf, they were scared, okay? Because they understood. We’d come home, trying to find a way to help me, to fix me, and the very first day, I’d found you, brought you home, spoken for the first time in over a year, and then told them what you were to me, even if I didn’t use the right words.”
He looked back up at me, expression stark and pleading. “They were scared, Ox. But I was sure. I was so goddamn sure about you. I wanted you to have the thing that mattered the most to me, aside from my pack. When you’re little, you’re given your wolf and taught that one day, you will find a person to give it to, that it will be a token of everything they are to you. Dad, he… Mom. She didn’t want me to, not then. She wanted to wait. She told me it would mean more if I knew you better. If you knew what you were getting into. She told me that I didn’t have to do anything. That you weren’t going anywhere. I didn’t care. And Dad. Dad knew that. He could see it, okay? I told him that it was my choice. Because that’s what we’re told. That it always comes down to choice.”
“And you chose me,” I said quietly.
He laughed and rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, Ox. I did. You know I did. And Dad. He knew I would. He knew I wouldn’t not. So he told Mom it was all right. That when a wolf knows, he knows. But that’s the thing. I didn’t know. Not about you. I always knew something about you. But I didn’t know what he meant, okay? I didn’t. All I heard was yes, Joe, yes you can give the one thing you want to give to the one person you want to give it to. He helped me too. He brought out the box I put it in. Gave me the ribbon to tie it with. And I never asked him. I never asked her. But I think it’s the same one he used when he gave his to my mother.”
The house creaked around us. I couldn’t find a single word to say. That wasn’t unusual. Sure, I’d gotten better over the years. An Alpha couldn’t be silent, not really. But I still had trouble with words sometimes. It wasn’t that I didn’t have any. It was that I had too many, and they all got stuck trying to come out at once.
But that was okay. Because Joe had plenty.
“He knew,” he said. “Even then, I think he knew something was different about you. That you were wonderful and kind and amazing, but that there was something else. Not something more, because what you were was already enough. It was already a part of you. He recognized it. I don’t know how. But—Ox. H
e knew, okay? I really think he knew.”
He was watching me. I knew I had to say something, anything to fill the silence that followed his words. I owed it to him. To myself.
I said, “I still have it.”
He nodded and gave a wobbly smile that quickly disintegrated. “Okay,” he said in a choked voice. “Okay. Yeah. You do? That’s real good, Ox. I know—”
“Things aren’t the same.”
He stopped whatever he was going to say.
“I’m not the same,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “I knew that the moment I got here. Even before. I stepped back into the territory and knew.”
“Did you know? That I was an Alpha? Here, after you left?”