“Of course you’re Alpha.” Willa reached out to grab my elbow, preparing to draw me away from the pack before she growled sense into me. But I shook her off while letting negation sway my head from side to side.
“It’s past time this pack started acting like a democracy,” I rebutted, voice loud enough for everyone to hear me. “We’ll vote, here and now, on our leader. I nominate Willa.”
“And I”—my father’s Beta stalked forward until we were toe to toe again—“nominate Tara.”
Rune, blast him, was chuckling behind me. Then the whole pack was laughing.
I swung around to face them. “What?”
Rather than answering, Rune waved his hand at my pack mates, my family. Every last one of them was shuffling quite clearly away from Willa so they could surround me. They were voting with their feet. They wanted me to remain leader.
And that final hole in my stomach filled up. Not with rubble, either. With sweetness, light, and love.
“Okay,” I told them. “I’ll be your Alpha, but things are going to change around here. You’ll call me Tara rather than using my title. There will be no Consort. No Heir. In fact, I don’t think I even want to have children.”
My teeth snapped together and I snuck a glance at Rune. Perhaps I shouldn’t have broached that particular topic so publicly....
“Your disinterest in babies,” Rune murmured, eyes smiling, “doesn’t come as a surprise to me. There are plenty of children to dote on in this pack.”
Speaking of which, I turned to face Caitlyn. “And you.”
The teenager swallowed, eyes wide. “Yes, Alpha. I mean Tara. Yes, Tara!”
Now I was the one fighting back a smile. Then I stopped fighting. Right. I was a different sort of Alpha now. I could smile if I darn well pleased.
“You’re moving in with your age mates, effective immediately.”
“But a Beta in training should be above and apart....”
My father’s words. Or, no, I had a feeling those had instead been the Guardian’s words.
The realization froze me for a split second, long enough for Caitlyn to draw an unintended conclusion. Her whole body stiffened then drooped as she fought against then accepted what she assumed was my decree. “Yes, Tara. I understand.”
I rolled my eyes. “No, you clearly don’t understand.”
Stepping forward, I enfolded Caitlyn in the hug I’d longed to give her for years now. “I want you to dream up silly pranks,” I murmured into her hair. “I want you to fall in love and out of love and maybe out of windows.”
Her body shook in my arms. A tremor of sadness or laughter. I couldn’t quite tell which.
So, just in case, I pushed her back until I could see her face and I elaborated. “What I’m saying,” I said, providing the direction I wished my father had given me as a teenager, “is that an Alpha in training needs to be part of her pack.”
Epilogue
Four months later....
There was glitter everywhere. Being massaged into hair using Natalie’s newly developed biodegradable sparkle gel. Exploding outside windows when heart-shaped confetti was tested one final time before the big ceremony. And—less intentionally—shining from every surface in my recreated breakfast nook.
Because even though we’d rebuilt using a different plan, we’d saved facets of our previous abode that we weren’t ready to part with. No more tower from which the Alpha glowered, above and apart from the pack. The mansion concept had also been thrown out the window since modern wolves preferred individual households. A communal dining hall, however, we’d unanimously voted to keep.
I hadn’t been here much, however. I’d been avoiding my own mistakes. Speaking of which....
“I hope Natalie’s glitter really is food safe.”
I turned to face Ash as he entered the breakfast nook, plate of pancakes balanced in one only slightly glittery hand. He walked more stiffly than he used to, still healing from being stabbed by his Alpha. But his gaze didn’t drop to the floor and he didn’t request permission before sliding into the chair opposite me.
“These are for you.” He pushed the plate across the table, the three-tiered confection so mouthwatering that it almost overcame my gut’s feeling of impending doom.
“Ash. We need to talk....”
“Tara.” His smile was sad but present. “Eat at least a few bites first. For old times’ sake.”
I forked up one mouthful dutifully...then lost myself in the flavor. Ash was right. I needed to consume these pancakes before we ruined them with tough conversation. No one else had ever been able to recreate a perfect Ash breakfast, and I had a feeling I might not be eating anything this tasty after today.
“I gave Butch the recipe,” Ash said when my eyes finally drifted back open. “His, I suspect, will be even better. Because the secret ingredient has always been love.”
And there it was. The truth the Guardian had slapped me with. Coming from Ash, the realization hurt even worse.
The one-sided crush hurt both of us, and I resolved to fix as much of that hurt as possible. “I’m sorry I was so blind to what was right in front of me.” I leaned forward, ignoring the way syrup joined glitter staining the front of my t-shirt. “But things don’t have to be weird between us. You’ll get over me and find someone else....”
Ash cut me off, the way he never would have before this summer. “You’re right. I’ll get over you. Faster since I’m leaving.”
“Leaving?” I blinked. Trying to survive outside a pack was barely feasible for someone in the peak of health. Ash was still recovering from a serious injury, one I’d inflicted personally.
I could fix this though. I was Alpha. I had to fix it. “Okay, let me pull some strings. I’ll find you a pack....”
Ash shook his head. “Tara. My future is not your problem. And it’s already settled. I’ve signed on for a year as a Samhain Shifter. After that...well, I realized that my problem from the beginning was cowardice.”
“Ash. I’m sorry....”
“Not your cowardice,” my oldest friend corrected me. Pushing back his chair, he got to his feet with only slight difficulty. “Mine. I should have told you how I felt when I turned fifteen and noticed you were more than a friend to me. I should have told you when I turned twenty and realized I was in love rather than lust. The next time perfection comes calling, I won’t make that mistake.”
By this time, he’d reached the door leading from the breakfast nook to the main dining hall. And there, where I hadn’t noticed it until this moment, sat a suitcase large enough to hold everything Ash cared about.
He wasn’t just thinking about moving out. He was leaving. This very moment.
The fragment of pancake in my mouth tasted like sawdust. But Ash was right. This wasn’t my problem to fix, and he was already fixing it.
So I acted like a friend rather than an Alpha. “I’ll miss you,” I told the man I loved in a very different way than he loved me.
And Ash let me off the hook. “Don’t miss me too much.”
DESPITE ASH’S LEAVE-taking, the day continued to sparkle. By 10 AM, the sky was so blue we might as well have been in Faery. The mood of the pack was jubilant and the glitter quotient was even higher than usual. No wonder Lenny and his family were over the moon about the upcoming ceremony.
More than that, they were over the moon about each other. “Did you know”—Lenny leaned in closer, his voice conspiratorial—“my wife is like a new woman this year. She asked me to call her Viola yesterday. I didn’t even know she had a middle name.”
“I’m so happy for you,” I responded, entirely honestly. Because I was happy. Happy for Lenny and Viola. Happy for Natalie, who had outdone herself creating glitter-related items for the ceremony. Happy for the pack, half of whom had decided to attend in lupine form and were currently mingling with the guests.
“I can’t believe how well trained your dogs are,” Lenny continued. “They’ll look great on video.” He wagged a finger at
me. “Now, remember our bargain.”
“I’ll remember,” I told him, smiling across the crowd at his son’s girlfriend, who I’d already moved onto lighter duty weeks ago.
Then Viola stepped out of the glitter-curtained changing room our teenagers had rigged at the edge of the forest. For a moment, I thought perhaps she’d broken her word and sucked magic out of the people around her. She was so beautiful she glowed.
But no. Viola’s resplendence came from inside. The moment she set eyes on Lenny, pure joy illuminated her.
And him. “Er, um. Excuse me,” the slick businessman choked out as he arrowed toward his wife without a single backward glance in my direction.
Then the ceremony started. But I was walking in the opposite direction. Because I’d been affected by a magnet of my own. A wolf I’d seen only once, through a mirror, but who I nonetheless recognized instantly.
Rune had donned fur today for the first time since I’d known him. At long last, he’d relinquished his fear of being a beast and met my pack in the middle. The sight of his bravery brought a lump to my throat.
So I curled around Kale, who was holding his phone up over his head to catch the action. I entered the changing room, empty other than the overwhelming promise of nearby persimmon. Stripping out of my clothes so fast I tore off a button, I slid into fur and ripped my way out through the fabric shielding the room’s rear.
There, Rune waited, all elegance and four-legged perfection. And I couldn’t help it. I raised my muzzle to the sky and I howled out the joy of the moment. Rune joined in without hesitation, his voice intertwining with mine as if our throats had been created to sing in harmony.
Then the whole pack was howling. Those in wolf form. Those in human form. Even, after a choked laugh, Lenny, his wife, and all of the non-shifter guests.
“This is totally going viral,” Kale hooted. Then he raised his voice and joined everyone else in the eerily beautiful howl.
One community, united. Human, wolf, and faery.
The kid was right. Tomorrow, we’d field inquiries about our glitter wolf wedding services. Pack debt, I suspected, would be wiped out in short order.
Today, however, I had a wolf beside me who I hadn’t been alone with in hours. A wolf whose bravery deserved rewarding...especially when I’d also benefit from that reward.
I nudged Rune’s shoulder and persimmon licked around me like fire. He turned and I spun in synchrony, leaving behind the pack who would be perfectly fine for a few hours without us.
Because I might be Alpha, but I wasn’t indispensable. Without the Guardian sucking us dry, my pack mates were quite capable of choosing their own paths forward.
Which left space in my own life for love and adventure. And I knew exactly who I wanted to adventure with.
Glitter in our fur and on our paw pads, Rune and I were beast and beautiful as we ran.
I HOPE YOU ENJOYED Charmed Wolf! You can learn more about Rune’s background in A Snowball’s Chance, free to email list subscribers. As an added bonus for joining my team, I’ll throw in two free werewolf novels so you don’t have to come up for air for days.
And don’t miss the rest of the Samhain Shifter series, each installment of which can be read as a standalone. Tank and Athena enjoyed their adventure in Moon Glamour, full of thievery and face blindness. The next book, Fae Wolf, will be available on all retailers in July 2021.
TORN BETWEEN TWO WORLDS.
Changeling werewolf Storm stumbles across her fated mate at a very unfortunate moment. The Queen of the Unseelie Court has demanded that she snatch a magical sword able to open up the borders between earth and Faery. Price of failure? Storm's adopted family will be peeled like grapes.
Unfortunately, the sword is in the possession of a dangerously delicious shifter whose job is keeping fae in Faery. Ryder's oddball jokes match Storm's own, and if lore is to be believed, that makes him her one and only chance at love.
Save the world and find true belonging or save her mother's skin...literally? Storm always knew the universe had a sense of humor, but this time she doesn't get the joke.
Keep reading in Fae Wolf!
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