by T. J. Klune
He searched my face, looking for I didn’t know what. “And did you?” he asked.
I kissed him instead of answering, because I didn’t know quite yet how to put into words that I hadn’t healed, not completely, because part of me had been gone.
I wondered at all the things we’d missed. Everything he’d been through when he’d been gone. Maybe one day I’d get to hear everything that had happened to him. To them. I thought maybe it didn’t matter right at this moment. There were bigger things coming for us. We’d have time. After.
Because regardless of what Richard Collins would bring, I wouldn’t let him touch Joe Bennett. Not again. Not ever.
hurt you/our fucking pack
THE TWO packs were spread out before us in the house at the end of the lane. My pack was on the couches, on the sofa. On the floor. Looking like they belonged, casual and easy. Most of them, anyway. Robbie was tense.
Joe’s pack stood off to the side, Carter and Kelly leaning against the wall near the bay windows and Gordo standing at parade rest next to them.
There was a divide. It was visible.
But Joe. Joe stood next to me. Side by side, close enough that we brushed against each other with every breath. The wolves knew. Of course they did. They could smell the previous night on us. I took some strange, savage satisfaction at that. Until I looked Elizabeth in the eye, that is, and flushed horribly, even though she looked nothing but amused.
They were all waiting for us to speak first. Even the humans.
“So,” I said, trying not to be nervous. “We have some things to discuss.”
“Like your lack of showering,” Carter said, sounding like he didn’t have a care in the world. “Seriously, Joe. We get it. Jesus Christ.”
Joe refused to be embarrassed, which was fine, because I was embarrassed for the both of us. “Damn right,” Joe said, sounding smug.
“What the hell,” I muttered.
He winked at me.
“No shit,” Tanner said. “Seriously?”
“Oh boy,” Rico said. “This is probably going to get awkward.”
“Only if we make it awkward,” Chris pointed out like a reasonable adult. Then, “We should make it really awkward.”
“We could compare stories, I guess,” Jessie said because she was evil.
“Yeah,” Chris growled while glaring at his sister. “Let’s not even go there, because I really don’t want to have to punch my Alpha in the face.”
Jessie rolled her eyes. “Please,” she said. “He’s bigger than you.”
“Anyway,” I said pointedly, before this sunk down into something I couldn’t control anymore. “We’ve talked—”
Carter and Kelly started coughing obnoxiously.
Joe snarled at them with red eyes. They smirked at him like it didn’t matter. It probably didn’t. It was the closest I’d seen to them acting like they had before they left. I wondered if this was because they already knew what we were going to say.
“—and we’ve decided to see if this could work,” I finished.
“To see if what could work?” Robbie said with a frown.
“Us,” Joe said before I could answer. He cocked his head at Robbie, but didn’t flash the Alpha eyes. “The pack. Trying to be… one.”
My pack was mostly silent. The humans looked curious. Mark and Elizabeth looked happy. Robbie had a blank expression.
“How would that work?” Tanner asked. “Both of you would be the Alpha?”
I nodded.
“We don’t know him,” Rico said. “We only know you. And you want us to… what. Treat him like you? No offense, Joe,” he added hastily.
“None taken,” Joe said easily. “And you’re right. You don’t know me. Not like you know Ox. This isn’t going to be something that happens right away. It’s an endgame. It’ll take time for you to trust me.”
“Trust you?” Robbie said. “How can we trust an Alpha that left his pack behind?”
“Robbie,” I barked.
Joe put his hand on my arm. I looked over at him. He didn’t say anything, but I didn’t think he had to. He wanted to handle this. He wanted me to trust him.
And I did. To an extent. Maybe not like I did before, but we’d get there. Eventually.
He said, “Robbie, I know this might be hard for you.”
“Do you?” Robbie said coolly. “Because you know the first thing about me.”
I gritted my teeth together. Because as much as I understood his frustration, he didn’t need to be acting this way.
“You care about him,” Joe said simply.
“He’s my Alpha.”
“And I’m not going to take that away from you.”
“No?” Robbie snorted. “Because it seems like you’ve already started.”
“I’ve… made mistakes,” Joe said. “Ones that I’m going to have to live with for the rest of my life. I hurt people here. My mother. Mark. My brothers. Ox, though. I think I hurt him the worst.”
Robbie narrowed his eyes. “So you can see why I—”
“But I’ve never hurt you,” Joe said. “Because, like you said, I don’t know you.”
“You hurt Ox,” Robbie said. “He’s my Alpha. Therefore, you hurt me.”
Joe said, “Okay. Then I apologize to you too. For hurting him.”
Robbie blinked. “It’s not that easy.”
“And is that for you to decide?” Joe asked.
“Ox,” Robbie said to me. “You can’t be buying this bullshit.”
“You don’t know him,” I said quietly. “Not like I do. He means it, Robbie.”
Robbie looked hurt at that. And I felt bad, I did, but I didn’t know what else he expected of me. Robbie was pack. Joe was my mate. I would fight for both of them, but I couldn’t have them fighting each other.
“Look,” Joe said. “I don’t expect you to believe me. Or trust me. Or even like me. And I know respect is earned. You care for Ox. He’s your Alpha. But I care for him too, because he’s more than that to me. And I would do anything for him. If you have a problem with me, then come to me. Either we’ll hash it out or we’ll find some way around it. But don’t hurt him or yourself by hating me.”
Robbie, for once, was speechless.
I was a little impressed.
Joe could probably smell how impressed I was.
Which probably wasn’t the best thing to have happen in this first meeting together. In front of his blood relatives.
Even though they probably already knew.
Kelly coughed quite loudly.
I tried hard not to blush.
“Sorry,” Kelly said. “Something in my throat.”
“That’s what Joe said,” Carter muttered under his breath.
They fist-pounded each other without taking their eyes off me.
“He’ll be like you are to us?” Jessie asked, staring at Joe. “We’ll be able to feel him like we do you?”
“You should have told me about that the moment we got back,” Gordo said, glaring at Rico, Tanner, and Chris.
“Hey!” Rico said. “We had to be careful. We didn’t know if you were the enemy or not.”
“The enemy,” Gordo repeated flatly before slowly turning to look at me.
“I didn’t say anything,” I said.
“You could have gone dark side,” Tanner said.
“Like full-on Darth Gordo,” Chris said.
Gordo put his face in his hands. “I told you guys, I’m a witch. I’m not a Jedi.”
“Um, excuse me,” Rico said. “Can you or can you not shoot Force lightning from your fingertips.”
“It’s not Force—”
“We rest our case,” Tanner said quite loudly.
“The humans feel the bond too?” Gordo asked Elizabeth and Mark.
“Curious, isn’t it,” Elizabeth said, smiling faintly. “I dare say even extraordinary.”
“It’s because of Ox,” Mark said. “And all that he is. He responded to the territory’s need for a
n Alpha. And the pack’s desire for one. He grew up here.”
Everyone turned to stare at me.
“Mystical moon magic,” Jessie whispered.
I tried not to squirm under the attention. “It’s not—”
“It makes sense,” Gordo said thoughtfully.
“Mystical moon magic makes sense?” I asked incredulously.
Gordo rolled his eyes. “No. Idiot. It’s not mystical mo—I’m not even going to say that. Look. There was always something about you. Even before all of this. The fact that I was able to tie myself to you as easily as I did should have been my first clue, but I think I was just so relieved to have that again, I didn’t think of anything else. I could feel you because of that connection. The wolves could feel you because of their pack bond. But the humans? I didn’t think that was possible. Not to the extent it seems to be. How far does the bond go?”
“He has to push for it,” Jessie said. “It’s not like it is with the wolves. We know he’s there when he’s reaching for it.”
“Can you push back?”
The humans looked at each other. Then Jessie said, “Sometimes?”
Gordo frowned but didn’t say anything.
“Have you heard of anything like this before?” Carter asked his mother.
She shrugged. “Rumors, mostly. Unsubstantiated stories. But never proven. Not like him.”
“And who else knows besides the people in this room?” Gordo asked.
Everyone paused.
“Alpha Hughes,” Robbie said finally.
“And the gruff man,” I added.
“The who—”
“Philip Pappas,” Robbie said. “He serves under Alpha Hughes as her second. He came here when you were gone to… assess, I guess. I don’t think they told others, or at least not many. I don’t think they know what to make of him.”
“They wanted me to register,” I said. “If Joe didn’t come back.”
Joe grabbed my hand and squeezed. He didn’t let go. Robbie looked at us briefly, then away.
“You can’t make other wolves,” Gordo pointed out.
“But I can make a pack,” I said. “And I’ve shown you don’t need it to be just wolves. I think it worries them.”
Gordo shook his head. “You just had to be a special snowflake,” he muttered, but there was a small smile on his face.
“That’s it?” Kelly asked. “No one else knows about—”
“David King,” I admitted.
“Who?” Chris asked.
And shit. I’d forgotten I hadn’t told them about him.
“King,” Elizabeth said slowly. “As in the hunter clan King?”
“He came here,” I said. “Months ago. That night I sent out the alert.”
My pack stilled.
“We saved him from Richard,” Joe said. “Barely. He was running, but Richard caught up with him. Richard escaped, but David… I sent him here. With a message for Ox.”
“And you didn’t think to tell us?” Mark asked. He didn’t sound angry, just confused.
I had. Multiple times, but I’d let my anger get the best of me.
“And he knew,” Elizabeth asked, letting me off the hook for now, “that you were an Alpha?”
I nodded. “Said he’d been around them enough to know.”
“Where is he?” Mark asked. “If he’s still on the run, we need to make sure he’s not talking about—”
“He’s dead,” Joe said. “A few weeks ago. Not that far from here. Idaho.”
“Richard?” Elizabeth asked her son.
Joe nodded.
“That’s why you came home, isn’t it?” she asked. “Because you think he’s coming here again.”
“Maybe,” Joe said. “And maybe I just wanted to finally come home.”
“They said you didn’t speak,” Elizabeth said. “That you stopped talking again.”
He looked down at the floor. It was quiet in the house.
“Do you know why?” she asked him.
“It hurt,” he said in a low voice, sounding like the tornado who’d once waited for me on the dirt road, wide-eyed and demanding. “Being apart from you. From him. I couldn’t… find the words. To say anything. I just wanted to find the monster so I could come home again.”
“And here you are,” she said. She rose from her feet and approached her son. I didn’t know what, if anything, they’d discussed since Joe’s return. I had a feeling she’d been waiting for me to talk to him first.
She was so much smaller than him now. It was oddly endearing, the way she had to reach up to cup his face. He leaned into her hands, even as he still held on to mine.
“Your father would have been very proud of you,” she said.
“I don’t think—”
“Joe,” she said.
He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close, his nose on her neck as she ran her fingers over the stubble on his head. She glanced at me and smiled.
Eventually, she pulled away and took a step back. “I think we should try,” she said. “Because we are so much stronger together than we could ever be apart.”
“Is it going to be bad?” Rico asked. He looked tired. They all did.
“Maybe,” I said. “But it’s been bad before, and we’ve always gotten through it. Because of the pack. But if you don’t think you can do this, I won’t hold it against you. But I need to know. Because if you stay, I have to be able to count on you. So tell me now.”
No one spoke.
I hadn’t thought they would. They were brave, all of them. Foolish, but brave.
“Then we do this,” I said. “As a pack.”
I wondered if this is what it felt like to heal.
TWO DAYS later, Robbie said, “She wants to speak to you. Both of you.”
Joe glanced at me before looking back at Robbie. “Alpha Hughes?”
“Yes.”
Joe sighed and rubbed his hand over his face. He stood at my side as I chopped peppers for Elizabeth, who was humming lightly near the stove. Mark, Carter, and Kelly were off somewhere in the woods. Gordo was still at the shop, though he was supposed to be over later. I’d given the others the night off. They had lives beyond the pack, and I didn’t want to take away from that, even if they looked at me funny when I said so.
“When?” I asked.
Robbie snorted. “Now, probably. She doesn’t like to wait.”
“She never did,” Elizabeth said, not looking up from the stove. “This will hold. Just try not to take too long.”
I scooped up the sliced peppers and placed them on a plate next to Elizabeth. I kissed her cheek before looking at Joe.
He shrugged at my unasked question. “No time like the present.”
“What does she want?” I asked Robbie as we followed him to the office.
“I don’t get to ask questions like that. Not to her. Most people don’t.”
“I’m not most people,” I said, because I wouldn’t be cowed by anyone.
“Yeah, Ox,” he said, sounding fond. “I know.”
Joe kept a blank expression.
A laptop was open on the desk. I thought it was Robbie’s. I didn’t have one. I dealt too much with the computer at the garage to ever want one at home. Joe sat in the desk chair, and I pulled a second chair next to him.
Robbie pulled out his phone and typed a message. It was a moment before his phone pinged and he sent a response. He shoved the phone back in his pocket before turning the laptop toward himself. He clicked on Skype and said, “She’ll call you in a minute.” He put the laptop back in front of us and left the office, closing the door behind him.
Joe waited a beat before saying, “It’s going to be a long time before he sees me as anything but an enemy.”
I rolled my eyes. “He doesn’t think you’re an enemy.”
“He thinks I’m something.”
“You are something.”
Joe smiled. “Probably thinking of two different things, Ox.”
I t
ook his hand in mine, still marveling that I could do this. We’d stayed in the old house, Joe in my bed every night. It was cramped and small, but it gave us the excuse to sleep on top of each other. I didn’t need distance from him now. I probably wouldn’t for a long while.
“He’ll get there,” I said. “I told you what he said about Kelly. Maybe we could—”
The computer chimed. A little flashing screen popped up.
“Ready?” Joe asked.
I kissed him once, brief and sweet.
I said, “Yeah, Joe.”
He squeezed my hand and then connected the call.
I didn’t know what I expected her to look like. If I were being honest, I hadn’t given much thought to this Alpha at all. She didn’t know me. She didn’t know my pack, not really. She might have been the big Alpha, but what she did meant nothing to me in the long run. She hadn’t come after me and mine, but she hadn’t done anything to protect them either.
But she was young, younger than I thought she’d be. Maybe in her late thirties, early forties. She looked calm, relaxed even, her dark hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, the white collared shirt she wore opened a few buttons at the throat. She didn’t scream Alpha, but I’d only met a few in my life that I could compare her to.
She didn’t smile when she saw us on the screen, but instead flicked her gaze between the two of us. I realized this was the first time she’d seen us, though she’d probably heard about us plenty. We probably were not what she expected, either.
For some reason, I didn’t think that speaking first was going to be right for Joe and me. Joe must have thought the same thing, because we both waited.
“You won’t remember me, Alpha Bennett,” she said, voice even. “You were probably only five or six the first time we met. But I remember you. Your father was…. Well. He was a good man. My condolences.”
“Thank you,” Joe said, rather stiffly. “That’s kind of you to say.”
She nodded at him, then looked back at me. I refused to be intimidated by her. I don’t know how much I succeeded in that. “Alpha Matheson,” she said. “Curious thing.”
I didn’t know if I should be offended or not. “How so?”
“I’ve never met someone quite like you before,” she said. “For all intents and purposes, you appear to be one of a kind.”
