“I fucked up,” Owen admitted. He had and he had known it for a very long time now. Chuck was completely right on all accounts. Owen had shut Lee out of her support group when he let his temper get the best of him. “I’ve been trying to make it right.”
“Yeah, I know.” Chuck rubbed a hand over his jaw. “I’ve been trying to tell her that it was all in her head. I thought she was becoming more open to the thought of forgiveness but whatever just happened out there with Vince shut her down.”
“That was my fault.” Stupid, fucking macho alpha attitude had thought that she was getting back to normal but he had only seen what he wanted to. “I was teasing her about making Vince run off but to her, it probably sounded accusatory.”
Chuck sighed. “That would do it.”
Owen tried the door again but it was still locked. “Now what?”
“You leave. I’ve got this. If she sees you then she’d going to retreat further. Hopefully, I can get her to talk.”
All noise had stopped on the other side of the door. He felt her wolf through the bond and knew that the shift had completed. She was completely blocked from him now. Owen wanted to force her back into her human skin but knew that would be more damaging. He felt helpless.
“Ok. But let me know how it goes. I want to-”
“But you can’t. Every time she sees you she shuts down. So you can’t corner her or whatever stupid idea you are cooking up. Maybe I could get Sadie or Tyson to talk to her first but you cut her the deepest, so you have to be last.”
Goddammit! He was right. Owen didn’t want him to be right, he wanted to wave his magic alpha wand and have shit be like it used to be. But it had been bad then too, hadn’t it? Even the good times were tainted with her anxiety. Owen had told her countless times that her thoughts were unfounded. No one thought she was less of a wolf, of a woman because she couldn’t have pups. He would have known, he was alpha after all. But he never actually talked it out with her. Like usual, he talked at her. He told her what to think instead of conversing and finding out why she thought the things she did.
“I fucked up, Chuck. Help her, please.”
He nodded, satisfied with Owen’s admission. “Always.”
Owen left as Chuck pulled a key from his pocket and wiggled it into the lock. He was halfway out the back door when he heard him. “Well hell, girl. Where’d you go?” Part of him wanted to turn around and see what it is that had made Chuck curse. But he had never yelled for Owen to come back so he kept going. His presence was more harmful at this point. And until that changed, he had to fight every instinct he had and stay away from Lee.
Chapter Nineteen
A cold washcloth dabbed at her head and she flinched at the contact.
“There she is! Welcome back to the land of the living. Oh no, you don’t. You are staying awake this time.”
“Chuck?” It was all she could think to ask. Lee didn’t remember much beyond locking herself in the bathroom. But that wasn’t uncommon lately. When her wolf took over, she did so thoroughly. Lee had no memory of what went on during those times.
“The one and only. Let me get you some water.”
Lee opened her eyes slowly and found she was lying on his couch. She haphazardly reached up and grabbed the cloth from her head and tossed it on the floor. She was working on sitting up when Chuck came back into the room and grunted at her. “Couldn’t wait till I got back to help you, could you?”
“I’m fine,” she said accepting the glass of water he handed her.
“You’re not.”
Lee ignored him and sipped. Her mouth was as dry as cotton. “What happened?”
Chuck sat down beside her and put his feet on his battered coffee table. “I drugged the shit out of you.”
She almost dropped her glass. “What? Why would you do that?” No wonder she felt like she just had a marathon Monday of drinking.
“Well after you shifted and I convinced Owen to let me handle it, you weren’t listening to me. I gave you two options. Get in my car or I would drug you and make you get in my car. You chose option two,” he said smartly.
“Of course, I did,” she groaned.
“You’ve been out ever since.”
Lee mimicked him and stretched her feet out on the coffee table. They sat there like that staring at nothing in silence for a few minutes. Chuck was good like that. He didn’t have to talk to have his presence felt. Companionable silence was what he was known for.
Unfortunately for her, he had questions.
“Want to talk about it?”
“No.”
He grunted. Chuck’s version of a response. “Alright, want to tell me why when I unlocked the door I saw a wolf?”
She swallowed. “Because I shifted.”
“Don’t lie to me,” he warned. “I got in Owen’s face for you and called him out on his bullshit. He could have easily taken me down for disrespect. You owe me an explanation as to why there was a wolf in that bathroom with no Lee to be found. You shifted and had no trace of yourself left behind. I may be submissive but I’m not stupid.”
She let her head drop back to the couch. There was nothing to say. He didn’t need her to tell him what he already knew, what they both knew. She was walking the line of going feral. Testing the waters, so to speak.
“How can I help you?” he finally asked, breaking the silence.
A tear rolled down her cheek. She turned her head, trying to hide. There was no help for her.
“Lee, darlin’, you need to start talking or I’m going to call Owen and he’s going to barge in here and be a domineering prick about everything.”
She smiled a little and huffed out a laugh.
“See! You can smile. There is hope for you yet.”
Blindly she reached out and grabbed his hand. “I don’t know what to do.”
He covered her hand with both of his. “I think you need to open yourself up to listen to what your friends have to say.”
She tilted her head to the side and opened her eyes. Chuck was watching her. He didn’t bother hiding his worry for her and seeing the love on his face for her made the pressure behind her eyes more prevalent. A few tears escaped before she could get it under control.
“All you have to do is try, Lee.”
She nodded. “Yeah, okay.”
*****
Valek Firemourn: Lee?
Valek Firemourn: Come on Sweetheart. If you’re there, answer me. Please.
Valek Firemourn: You’ve been idle all day.
Valek Firemourn: We had a fight. It happens. I’m sorry for what I said. I wanted to see you or at least call you but you won’t pick up my calls. Lee, I’m truly sorry.
Valek Firemourn: It’s been hours. Where are you?
Valek Firemourn: If you don’t answer me I’m going to come over there.
Valek Firemourn: You have one hour.
Valek Firemourn: 37 minutes left.
Valek Firemourn: 12 minutes. Just answer, please.
Valek Firemourn: 5 minutes. Last chance before I grab my keys.
Glilee Lunamaul: I’m here.
Valek Firemourn: Thank god.
Valek Firemourn: Are you ok? I’ve been worrying about you.
Glilee Lunamaul: I’m fine. I was with Chuck and he wouldn’t let me leave. You know how he is.
Glilee Lunamaul: Look, I’m sorry too. I just couldn’t handle everyone watching us and it freaked me out.
Valek Firemourn: I get it. I didn’t see it at the time but I did later and I acted like an ass.
Valek Firemourn: Forgive me?
Glilee Lunamaul: Of course.
Valek Firemourn: Will you be around the pack house Saturday? I’m taking the pups out on a scavenger hunt. I could use a helper.
Glilee Lunamaul: I don’t know yet.
Valek Firemourn: The offer stands. Any quests you feel like partaking in tonight?
Glilee Lunamaul: Not really. I’m pretty tired.
Valek Firemourn: You ok, Glilee W
eed?
Glilee Lunamaul: Don’t worry about me V. Goodnight.
Glilee Lunamaul has signed off.
Valek Firemourn: I always worry about you.
Chapter Twenty
“I’m not late,” Mira said before Zach had a chance to chastise her.
“You are,” he said pointing to the clock on the wall.
Dammit. She was.
By two minutes.
“Fine. But please don’t pick something stupid.”
They might have lived across the hall from each other but Mira and Zach were the only ones on the third floor of the building, so they considered themselves roommates. He was her best friend, besides Owen and Sadie. Zach gave her a breath of non-wolf air to breathe from time to time.
“Tonight we are going old school. Nintendo.” He handed her the familiar rectangle controller. “Tetris.”
“Shit yeah.” Mira crawled onto his bed and curled her feet up under her. Zach found the game and gave a nice hard blow of air across the bottom.
He grinned. “I just love doing that.”
She nodded in complete understanding.
Their friendship was built on tequila, pop tarts and Mario Kart. Mira was not a gamer by any stretch of the imagination, however she knew how to throw down with some friendly competition, in which friendly meant tackling Zach when he had one lap to go in the race and she was in second place so she would sit on him and slip by him into first place and win the game.
Every week since she came to visit months ago, they met up and played games. It was always something old school. Zach had tried to get her to play Halo with him but she just kept running in circles. Mira just couldn’t figure out the looking and walking coordination.
Mira started singing along with the Tetris theme song as he unwound another controller. “So what’s been going on?” he asked. “You been spending nights up at the big house?”
“Yeah. Owen’s gotten back on the 'move in with me' thing.”
He snorted. “He never stopped with that. There was just so much other crap going on that it got lost in the shuffle.”
Couldn’t argue with that. “True. So how’s Juliet?”
Zach got pink in the ears. It was adorable and she would tease him relentlessly about it.
“She’s good. She and her dad are taking some time to get to know each other.”
A few months earlier Zach had stumbled upon a man who bought and sold oddities, shifters being his biggest seller. Juliet was his prize pet. Zach blew his cover and got himself captured and sold. Juliet was the one who saved them both. She had to learn how to live outside of a cage which put any kind of relationship on hold. But they talked every day and Zach was head over heels for the girl. He’d wait a lifetime if that’s what she needed.
“That’s good. They need to get reacquainted.”
“Yeah,” he said with a smile that he only had when the topic of Juliet was afoot. “She’s coming back in two weeks. Think you and Owen might want to get dinner with us?”
“Double date? Hell yes.”
They played a few rounds of Tetris. Mira surprised the hell out of him and won the first two. “This game was made for me, dude. You don’t stand a chance of winning the night.”
“Fuck that. I’m just warming up.”
This was her favorite night of the week. Sitting on Zach’s bed playing stupid games and yelling at the screen the most obscene and imaginative things possible.
It was more than just the entertainment that made this night so much fun. Zach was the one who she went to when something in the pack didn’t make sense. Sadie was still learning so she couldn’t answer much and Owen never bothered explaining things because he often forgot she had no idea what he was talking about. It was Zach who told her about pack bonds and a pup’s first change. He filled in the blanks for her.
Mira had been dealing with this knowledge of her father for over a month now. Owen, Sadie and Tyson knew but she hadn’t said anything to Zach. Now that she knew that she was submissive, she needed to know what that meant for her. Owen could only tell her what it meant from a dominant and alpha perspective. She often found that he had a skewed idea of how things were. Mira loved him, there was no doubt about that. He was a good man and a great leader but Owen glossed over the things that didn’t directly involve him. Submissives being one of those things.
“So are you going to spit it out yet or are we going to just play in silence some more until you gather your nerve?”
Zach was also very perceptive.
“I hate when you do that,” she said, clearing two lines of bricks.
“And I hate when you do that.” He was frowning at the screen. She was beating him again.
“When my mom was here, we found out some stuff about my dad.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Oh yeah? Like what?”
“He was a shifter.”
Zach froze for a second and two blocks laid down in the middle of his board creating a small tower of bricks. “What?”
“I know. I was surprised too. He was part of some pack in Maine. They killed him and made it look like an accident. My mom fled to Buffalo with Sadie and me.”
He paused the game and turned to her. “Was she…”
Mira shook her head. “No. She’s human but,” she hesitated for a second, “I’m submissive.” She hadn’t been looking at him when she said it. It felt weird talking about it out loud.
“No shit.” Zach was staring at her like she had grown a new head. Since she already felt that way without him looking at her, she flicked him in the head.
“Ouch!”
“You deserved it.”
“Sorry,” he said, not sorry at all. “This is just, unexpected.”
Mira wanted to laugh. Yes, it was very unexpected. For her.
“I bet Owen is walking on sunshine right now.”
“Pretty much,” she agreed with little enthusiasm.
Zach smirked and cocked his head to the side. “So I take it you are still in the ‘what does this mean’ stage? It will pass but it might take a bit. I know plenty of submissives who have gone through what you are. I knew from birth about us but some dominants just don’t feel the need to tell submissives.” The way he talked about it was like people did this every day. Mira found that oddly comforting.
“From the look on your face, I can see you thought you were the only one. Sorry to burst your bubble but you may be a precious little snowflake to your mamma, but you aren’t the first to find out as an adult that they have a second side to themselves that likes to howl at the moon. Consider this your official welcome to the club.”
“Is there a secret handshake?”
“No but there should be,” he said considering the possibilities.
In light of this news, Mira found the topic a bit easier to swallow. In fact, the whole thing seemed less frightening now that she knew other people had survived this news. “I have questions,” she said.
“Of course, you do. And I bet Owen gave you some bullshit dominant version of how shit is and what you are and how great it is going to be.” He smirked knowing he was entirely correct.
“Yes,” she said in awe of his assumptions. “But how?”
Zach tossed her a pillow and adjusted another up against the headboard. “Now that you are one of the chosen few, actually there are a lot of us but numbers aren’t important right now, I’m going to let you in on the ways of the pack.” Even in the air of calm he was sporting she could see the gleam of excitement in his eyes.
“But you already told me the ways of the pack.”
“Not exactly,” he said with a shrug. “It’s difficult to explain to someone who doesn’t know about the pack dynamic. You know by now how dominants are. There is nothing wrong with them, they are just different than submissives.”
“Because they can change forms,” she said.
“Yes but that’s not all. Although, you ask any dominant and that is what they will tell you.”
Mira w
as getting confused. Hadn’t everyone she had ever spoken to about this told her that was the difference? “So, what is it then?”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. His brow furrowed as he thought. “Alright, let me tell you what Chuck told me about submissives. You can draw your own conclusions from there. I should probably warn you that this is purely opinion. No scientific anything has been done to prove anything when it comes to our kind for obvious reasons.”
She nodded for him to go on.
“The way I see it, submissives are the stronger of the two. By the look on your face, I can tell you think I’m crazy. But, I’m not. Here’s why. We don’t need to hide behind our wolves. They are part of us, simple as that. We don’t take turns sharing a body or whatever, we are one in the same. My wolf is there, at all times, just like a dominant. He is my partner, my friend, not my crutch. I don’t hide behind him when shit gets bad or rely on him to handle the bad stuff. We live in harmony with our wolves; there is no fighting for control or whatever bullshit that is.”
“They don’t get it, though. They think being a submissive is some sort of handicap. But we are stronger than them because we have a level of control they can only dream of. That is why we balance them out in the pack. Our control settles their wildness.”
Mira didn’t say anything as he spoke. She just let her eyes be opened to the potential in his words. This made sense, she thought. This is what was missing from everything Owen had told her. She feared the wolf because she didn’t understand their relationship and everything Owen had told her was just slightly off, and that was because everything he said was meant for a dominant wolf.
“We are the evolved ones. Submissives are the ones that figured out how to live and hide amongst humans. And, look, I’m going to tell you something that only Juliet and Chuck knows and you can’t tell anyone else.”
How did Juliet know something she didn’t? “Of course, now spill.”
Zach’s foot bounced uncontrollably as he gathered his thoughts. “I changed. It was only once and to protect Juliet back in that house but I did it.”
On the Edge (Adirondack Pack Book 3) Page 16
