by Sara Summers
A sad expression pulled at Leah’s face before she hid it and looked down at her plate.
“Sometimes.” Ty folded his arms.
“They’re really nice.” I offered, feeling the awkwardness that filled the room and not knowing how to dispel it.
“They’re the best.” Cody agreed.
“Why are we pretending that our pack isn’t messed up now?” Artie wondered, dropping his fork and folding his arms.
“Artie.” Leah warned, putting her own fork down.
“What? Didn’t you like it too when Logan and Emma could live by us?”Artie asked. “I heard Old Man Bookers yesterday talking about how someone should kill Logan so they can force Emma to have babies so shifters can keep surviving without mating with humans.”
“What?” Tanner’s and Cody’s back straightened.
“He’s an old man, Art, he’s just talking. He won’t actually hurt anyone.” Ty protested.
“You’re okay with people talking about killing Logan now?” Tanner’s eyebrows lifted high into his forehead. “Are you going to let them talk about killing Hallie next?” he challenged his dad.
Ty stood up, flexing his muscles and exuding some kind of power that made me want to hit the floor on my knees. That must’ve been dominance, I figured. It wasn’t hard to resist the urge to kneel, so it wasn’t quite as strong as I expected.
“I won’t have my authority challenged in my own home.” Ty growled.
Tanner stood up to face him.
“If Old Man Bookers talked about killing mom, you would rip his head off. How can you expect me or Emma not to care when he talks about killing our mates?”
Tanner’s dominance started to come off of him in waves, too. His didn’t affect me, but I could still feel that it was there.
“That’s different. Your mom is the Omega, she was—“
“She was what? Born with a cotie? Raised knowing she was a shifter?” Tanner snarled. “If that’s what determines if our soulmates have value to your pack, no one under thirty means anything to you. We share our souls with people who were raised human.”
I saw Ty take a step back when Tanner’s dominance flared, and I noticed Leah’s eyes widen.
She stood up quickly.
“Tanner, go for a run to cool off. Ty, go back to work. We’ll talk about this when we can all be reasonable again.” Leah instructed.
“If you think I’m leaving Hallie in the middle of a pack that doesn’t care about her life you’re—“
“I won’t leave her side, Tanner.” His mom grabbed my upper arm and tugged me a step or two closer to her. “No one will try anything while I’m with her.”
Tanner looked to me, and I could see the emotions warring inside of him.
“I’ll be fine.” I promised him, nodding.
“Come on, bro.” Cody and Artie headed for the back door.
“I’ll be back in an hour.” He told me, and I could see the surety in his eyes.
“I’ll be fine.” I repeated.
Tanner nodded once and followed them outside.
Eighteen
“Come with me.” Leah let go of me and walked toward a door at the side of the room. I could tell that it was Tanner’s room before we even opened the door because it smelled so strongly like him.
We entered the room, and Leah shut the door behind us. I sat down on his bed, feeling a little bit like I was in heaven. Being surrounded by Tanner’s thick, woodsy scent was almost intoxicating.
Leah opened his closet door (there were dirty clothes piled on the floor) and stood up on her tiptoes, reaching for a large, new-looking suitcase on the top shelf. She pulled it down and I waited for her to explain why.
“I’m sorry, but you the two of you aren’t going to be able to stay here.” She apologized, unzipping the large suitcase and pulling out two others, one medium and one small. “Tanner’s right, it’s not safe. The older shifters hold a grudge against humans that isn’t going to fade for a long time.”
“Um, okay.” I bit my cheek. What was I supposed to say to the mother of the soulmate I’d just met when she kicked me and her son out of her house thirty minutes after we got there?
“I’m sorry, I wish things were different and I had time to spend getting to know you right now, but that’s going to have to wait.” Leah started grabbing piles of clothes off the floor and filling the largest suitcase first.
“Most of the kids around yours and Tanner’s age are too scared to go find their soulmates because of the pack. I know there are at least three who know where their mates are and haven’t left to go find them because they don’t want to face the wrath of the pack’s older members. The only good thing is that there aren’t any female shifters younger than Emma, so there’s no way they can force the boys to try to make things work with someone who isn’t their soulmate.”
“Alright…” I didn’t know why she was telling me all of this, but I was listening.
“No female shifters have been born more than two years after Emma, you probably didn’t know that.” She hurried to shake her head. “Sorry, I’m just in a hurry to get everything done before, well, let me keep explaining.” She apologized.
“Me and a few of the other ladies have a plan to fix the problem with them being too afraid to go after their soulmates, but our plan depends on you and Tanner.” His mom continued throwing his clothes and shoes and other belongings into his suitcases as she spoke.
“What are we supposed to do?” I asked, feeling a little strange just watching her pack up my soulmate’s room.
“Tanner isn’t going to like it. Neither is Ty, for that matter, but they’re both just going to have to deal with it because there’s no other way.” She was hesitant to let me in on the plan, which told me it wasn’t anything good. “Tanner has more dominance than Ty. He always has, but he refused to ever challenge his dad. That was a smart decision because being Alpha isn’t fun.
“When Tanner challenges Ty and wins, he’ll be able to take as much of the pack as he wants. We’ll keep all of the old, prejudice shifters, and you’ll take the young ones.” Leah stopped packing just long enough to pull a key on a chain over her head and hand it to me. “Emma and Logan offered their house as temporary shelter for your new pack, they’ll be part of it too.”
I pulled the key over my head and tucked it into my t-shirt.
While everything happening felt completely surreal, I was keeping up just fine and understood as well as any brand new shifter could.
“I thought the old prejudice ones were the parents of the young ones.” I said.
“They are, that’s why this whole situation is a nightmare. Their hearts and their wolves are telling them to go find their soulmates and the people they love are threatening to stop loving them if they do. If we take the parents out of the equation, they’ll find their soulmates and maybe they can make peace with their parents afterward.”
“Okay. I hope you have a plan to get Tanner to challenge Ty, though. He doesn’t want to.” I folded my arms.
“That’s the part you’re not going to like.” Leah gave me a sad smile. “We’re going to have to put you into the hands of the shifters that hate humans. Ty will side with the majority of the pack even if he doesn’t want to because that’s what the Alpha does, and Tanner will challenge him because you’re his soulmate and you mean everything to him.”
“Chances are that I’ve survived worse.” I shrugged. At least the racist shifters weren’t going to throw chairs at me or come at me with a glass plate-shiv.
“I’ll be close by to make sure nothing actually happens to you. And Ty would never let them kill you, just so you know. He’s a good man, he just doesn’t know which side to choose in all this.” She finally sat down beside me on the bed, slouching as the energy seemed to leave her body.
“You’re losing both of your sons today.” I realized.
“I’m losing all four of my kids today, and I’m losing them to a bunch of prideful middle-aged men. My twenty
year-old self would be yelling at me.” She sighed. “I was quite the feminist, back in the day. Before the Cage went up, before humans and shifters were at odds… My friends and I thought we were changing the world.” She gave me a sad smile.
“What happened?” I wasn’t just asking because it felt like the polite thing to do. I actually wanted to know.
“It fell apart around us.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant.
“I’m sorry, I’m sure that sounds vague. It’s a long story, one for another day. If I ever get to see you again after all of this is over. There’s a good chance Tanner will never speak to me again.”
“Don’t say that.” I shook my head. “You can hold your family together. Our family.” As I said it, I realized it was true. Leah’s family was my family. She was my mother-in-law or mother-in-mate or whatever, and that made her my family.
“Maybe.” She covered her eyes with her hands.
“What would twenty year-old you have done?” I asked. It sounded like she cared about what her old self thought, so I brought it up to see if it would help.
“I would’ve made a stand against my soulmate, and then I would’ve pulled all of the women and children from the pack to force him to make a change.” She smiled, but it was a pained smile. “I never would’ve let it get this far if I was still my twenty year-old self because I wasn’t nearly this much in love with my soulmate.
“I won’t tear apart that many relationships to force his hand. Having Tanner take the younger pack members is exactly the right kind of nudge that these hard-headed shifters need. Hopefully when their children leave them they’ll realize that times are changing and we need to change too.
“And if they don’t, at least their kids will have happy lives with their soulmates. That’s the most important thing.” She finished.
“Alright, I’ll throw myself to the wolves.” I stood up and Leah laughed.
“That’s a good one.” She smiled. “I really am glad that Tanner found you.”
“I am too.” I admitted.
We carried the suitcases outside and loaded them into the back of the truck with all of my stuff.
“All you have to do is shift and run in that direction for a few minutes. The jerks will hear you coming and grab you, and Tanner will come running because he’ll sense that you’re in danger. Everything will happen really fast, so just try to stay safe.” Leah advised.
“Okay.” I nodded and pulled my shirt over my head.
“Good luck, Hallie.” Leah didn’t ask about the bruises that were mostly-faded by then.
I shifted and ran in the direction she pointed me.
Nineteen
Leah was right; it all happened insanely fast.
The prejudiced middle-age men caught me around the middle, and I shifted back immediately. I wasn’t used to my wolf form enough to feel comfortable with someone else touching me while I was a wolf.
Someone threw a large t-shirt at me, and I pulled it on. It barely covered my lady-bits.
“Tie her up.” One of the shifters barked the order. There were four of them there at that moment, and one of them was on the phone so I had no idea how many more were coming.
“What are you going to do to me?” I demanded, not bothering with trying to fight.
The men exchanged cryptic glances.
Part of me thought that maybe they hadn’t thought about what they would do to me. It was one thing to talk about killing the soulmate of someone they’d watched grow up, it was another thing to actually kill them.
Also, I was a woman. Maybe they’d only ever thought about killing Logan.
Even prejudiced middle-aged men had some decency.
“We have to kill her. It’s the only way to show the others that mating with humans is not acceptable.” One of them finally said. He pulled a pocket knife out of his pants and I leaned away.
Maybe they didn’t have any decency.
My heartrate picked up when I realized that there were four large men planning on killing me, now, and an undoubtedly-large number of others coming to join in. If that didn’t put me in enough danger that Tanner could feel where I was I didn’t know what could.
When I heard howling in the distance, I knew he had felt that I was in trouble and would reach me as fast as he possibly could. That was another fun fact about shifters that I hadn’t known until his mom told me about it.
The guys heard the howling too, and most of them started to swear.
“We should run.” One of them said.
“No. Ty will take our side. He’ll see that we need to send the young shifters a message.” Knife Guy barked.
“If you think he’ll kill his son’s soulmate you’re insane. Even if he doesn’t care about her, he won’t want Tanner to go rabid.”
There it was, another shifter term I wasn’t familiar with. I thought Emma and Logan had said something about it but couldn’t remember what it meant.
“Better we lose Tanner than all of our kids.” Knife Man grabbed me around the waist as we all heard Tanner getting closer.
“Is Ty on his way?” One of the men demanded.
“Of course he is, he’s the Alpha.” Another one scowled.
I swallowed, feeling the cold metal of the knife pressed up to my neck. The sharp side was facing away from me at that moment but I had a feeling it would be cutting into my skin more quickly than I realized.
“Are we really doing this?” The fourth guy hung up the phone. I could see him out of the corner of my eye. “Killing another man’s soulmate?”
“There’s no choice if we want to keep our children away from humans.” Knife Guy said.
I heard Tanner approaching and let myself breathe a little more. He’d said dominance could keep the pack in order, and that meant he could use it to force these guys to release me.
I felt him before I saw him. After feeling it during lunch, I recognized the dominance immediately.
“Let her go.” Tanner stepped into view. Cody and Artie were behind him on either side, and between the three of them, there was enough dominance in the air to drown a fish.
Knife Guy dropped his weapon and his grip on me loosened, but he stopped himself from letting go when another source of dominance swamped the forest.
“Back down, Tanner.” Ty growled as he stepped into the arena.
“No.” Tanner was done arguing, it seemed. He walked closer, and Knife Guy let go of my arms.
As soon as he let go, I started toward my soulmate and his brothers. While the human in me said I should run, the wolf in me said that I needed to walk with as much confidence as I could muster.
No one said anything while I walked, slow and confident (at least on the outside), to Tanner’s side.
He tried to pull me behind him and instead, I stood beside him and took his hand.
“Take your mate and get out of here.” Ty commanded, upping the dominance that was coming from him.
“So this can happen again tomorrow, or next week? I don’t think so.” Tanner’s voice was as hard as his grip on my hand, and I knew that he was terrified.
I knew, because I’d stood in his place a hundred times before. My father might not have been the leader of a pack of wolves, but he had challenged me more times than I caught. I’d taken the pain every time he’d challenged me, I’d let him hurt me, because he wasn’t doing it on purpose.
If he’d been doing it on purpose, I would’ve fought back.
I think Tanner realized that it was time for him to do just that.
“Go home, Tanner.” Ty stepped closer and turned his dominance up to what I assumed was full-power. As his dominance hit me, I felt that urge to kneel and back down again. It was harder to ignore than it had been in his kitchen, but I still didn’t budge.
“I’m not leaving until the pack is a safe place for human soulmates.” Tanner didn’t give, not even a little.
I had to admire him for the way he stood up for what he believed in despite how difficult I
knew it must’ve been.
“You don’t want to challenge me.” Ty warned his son, stepping closer again.
“I don’t.” Tanner agreed. “But it doesn’t seem like I have a choice.”
“I won’t fight you.” Ty stopped moving forward.
“Then we’ll let dominance decide the outcome.” Tanner’s already-tight grip on my hand became even tighter as he used his power against his father, and it was literally a battle of willpower.
Though they weren’t fighting physically, I could see the toll that the dominance competition was taking on both men.
It was a long few seconds until Tanner forced his dad to his knees.
Ty looked up at his son with a little respect and a lot of frustration.
“What are you going to do now? You don’t want to be Alpha.” Ty growled.
Tanner hesitated.
I saw Leah out of the corner of my eye and turned to look at her. She met my gaze and mouthed something I couldn’t understand, but I didn’t have to understand to know what she wanted me to do.
“We’re going to take everyone who has or will have a human soulmate.” I pulled my hand out of Tanner’s and grabbed his upper arm. “We won’t go far for the sake of the younger ones being close to their parents.”
Tanner looked at me for a long second, and I could see the question in his eyes. I’m sure he wondered where I’d come up with that, and I was confident that with a second to think he would put it together that his mom was the one who had.
“Yes.” He turned to look at the part of the pack that was gathered. Every one of them was on their knees.
“You’re pulling kids into a separate pack from their parents?” Ty snarled and tried to stand up, but Tanner slammed him back to his knees with dominance.
“As long as their parents keep trying to murder their soulmates that’s the best thing for them.” Tanner was confident about that.
I was pretty sure of that too, considering that murder wasn’t typically a good thing.
“Do it, then.” Ty still looked angry, but the intensity behind it was gone. I think he might’ve realized that his wife was behind plan. If not that, he at least realized that this was the only option if he wanted his kids to be safe with their soulmates.
