by DD Prince
I was told I had a strong sense of smell, was good with my hands, saw well, had strong ears, but are my senses stronger than theirs? I only knew they were stronger than Uncle’s. My intuition? I don’t know that it’s been strong. Then again, I have only known what I’ve known. My world has been very small until now. And with Uncle Cornelius being all I knew, maybe I tried to ignore my intuition with him because he was all I had. I know I did on certain issues. He was like a father to me. The thought makes me angry.
She keeps talking. “If you have questions about the past alphas in your position or other positions on the council, I can share that too. But it doesn’t all fall on you. You’ve got a team. You’ve got Linc who has a keener sense of smell than anyone. Greyson reads everyone very well and is wise beyond his years. Riley is strong, very strong, and extremely wise with a sense of hearing like nobody’s. Mason and Joel are also very smart with strong strategy skills and above average intelligence. Jason is so good with his hands. So good with them. We have several alphas who aren’t as involved as the top six as well as pack betas who are inherently alpha and could easily be alphas of their own pack because of their strengths, but we have a mutual respect so our alphas and the betas that lean toward alpha tendencies respect their place in the pack because every one of us provides value and every one of us feels appreciated. We love our pack. It’s a community. A big family. We’re a big pack and in demand as a group others wanna join.”
“Can anyone just join?” I ask.
“People apply. As you can imagine, we only have so much room in our village. And we don’t want it to get so big it’s difficult to take care of everyone.”
“That makes sense.”
“Where we get a bad rep from others is mostly more primitive groups who have trouble understanding the way we operate. Some packs have alphas that are more like dictators and would never want to share what they consider to be ‘power’. But instead of looking at it as sharing power, we look at it like sharing responsibility. One man shouldn’t have all that burden and if he has a strong pack, it’s not a burden. Our alphas take recommendations from all members of the pack. Occasionally someone who doesn’t qualify to be on the alpha’s council team has gone off and started their own pack or whatever, too. Some packs will try to chase down a wayward pack member, but we don’t do that. We believe everyone should choose their path.”
Greyson speaks up. “Except in the case where someone is just shrugging off their destiny. Like rejecting a mate or trying to be lone when we know it’s not healthy. We will intervene if we all feel it’s a good idea. There’s very specific criteria, including a vote. We all voted to intervene with you, for example.”
My brow notches.
He smiles and shrugs. “We’re trying. And it’s not entirely altruistic because you had your birthright stolen from you, it’s also because we want that completeness that only comes with a full team. And in a pack with a lead alpha in the council, like I said, we all work together, but he’d have veto power. You would have the power to overrule a decision. That said, though, if your pack had a major problem with a decision you make, it could be problematic. We don’t want a dictatorship. In a nutshell a group was formed and outlined the ideal structure for a leadership team. Over time it’s become a birthright in your family, but nobody got the chance to see if you’d be what your father was because you were taken too young. But we believed it should’ve been you by the loss we felt without you, and then when we saw you six years ago, we knew you were our missing piece. We’ve all agreed we feel it in your presence now that we’ve all come in contact. Well, five of us, anyway. Mason, that remains to be seen.”
“He’s right. And we have a great team. We want you to be a part of it but not just for us, for you,” Bailey says. “Everyone does their own thing. A few of our guys work together in construction. One of them has a technology company. Two others are into real estate development. We’ve got a lot of expertise in our community, too. We’re often called upon by other packs to help with problems, to sit on councils and bring objectivity. Our alphas are smart and want challenges, so if that sounds like you, we could bring you plenty of that. We get approached from other packs and a few of our guys are on councils that are offered bounties to help other packs with problems. Some don’t take on those roles, are busy enough with local stuff as well as their own livelihoods.”
“What sorts of problems?” I ask.
“Rogue wolves, mate rejections, other threats to our way of life. Grey has solid diplomacy skills. He’s got witch blood in his family line on his mom’s side, so he’s got pretty strong persuasion powers. He and a few other alphas just worked with a pack in the Northwest Territories. Their alpha refused to step down and let the new voted alpha take over despite dementia setting in. These guys helped negotiate his stepping down without any bloodshed, which was a worry. Mason was off last week with two alphas from another pack and a beta in our pack who were working with a mountain pack doing damage control over rumors flying around their local area after a couple got caught shift-fucking. An out-of-town hunter threatened to expose them.”
“Shift-fucking?” My eyebrows rise.
“Shifting while having sex,” she explains. “They were caught in a whirlwind. It was their mating night and she went into spontaneous heat and they lost control, weren’t careful about their surroundings, they were so caught up in one another. They both shifted repeatedly during copulation and they were seen.”
I can see how this would be a problem. Uncle told me from as young as I have memories that our nature had to be kept secret. At least he did that right.
Grey shuffles uncomfortably and then leans in. “We need you to take your place as alpha as soon as possible so we wanna help you get acclimated. Then Rye can heal and also the rest of us can start getting ready to mate.”
“Explain.”
“He’s told us to hold back with you, to give you time. But you should know that beyond me being here worrying Rye is taking on too much, you should also know that none of us have found our mates. Except Rye, likely because he took the leadership role, but she died, so he’s in pain. He’s taken on too many responsibilities and hasn’t taken the time to grieve properly. We all believe once our team is complete we’ll all begin to sense our mates out there. We’re hoping he gets a second chance.”
“Well fuck. If that wasn’t emotional blackmail, right?” Bailey laughs.
I don’t respond. I’m just taking everything in. As if I care if other wolf shifters find their mate.
Though, if I’m honest with myself, I do. I barely know these people, but the emotion I feel after having found Ivy? I can’t imagine how good it’ll feel when she’s fully settled with me. And if I’m honest, I do feel a strange connection with them so maybe I do care for that reason.
“What happens when someone loses their mate is ugly,” Bailey adds. “But, Riley hasn’t gone through that grieving process. He lost her and he jumped straight into taking care of the pack.”
“He’s not second in birth order. Why not Mason as leader?”
Bailey answers. “They all agreed it would be Riley. Mason’s entirely capable, too, any of them are. Riley’s combination of strengths and blood relations to you and your father made him the most logical choice. Believe me, they all participate. Anyway, it’s important for him to do his grieving and once he doesn’t feel so many burdens, it could allow for that. It’ll allow the rest of your team to be open to finding their mates, too. And maybe Riley can find love again. The past few years have been difficult for him. The happiest we’ve seen him in that time has been since he first spoke to you. He’s hopeful. He needs you. The team is incomplete without you. Once functioning as a complete unit, it’ll help everybody.”
“How does the team get … constructed?” I ask.
Grey speaks up. “The elders take notice of a group born within a year and it’s known they’ll eventually step up. Key alphas in the pack often stand out before they mature, but we alway
s know for certain once they do mature.”
“At maturation, do you all shift uncontrollably for a week?” I ask.
He leans back. “No.”
“No,” I repeat. I guess that doesn’t solve the mystery of why it happened to me.
“That happened to you, Tyson?” Bailey asks.
“Yes.”
“What age?” Grey inquires.
I think on it. “I don’t know. Maybe fourteen, fifteen years.”
“That’s when the year was identified. In my fifteenth year,” Grey says. “Our birth year was identified, though it’d been talked about since your birth, and eleven alphas were born in our pack that year. From there, eyes were on all of us to see who would make up the team.”
“Maybe something instinctive happened to Tyson,” Bailey muses. “Can I ask you more about that another time, Tyson? I document pack happenings for the global shifter archives. I know your life has been difficult and I know it’s extremely personal, but if I could interview you…”
I say nothing. I don’t know how to feel about this.
“Table that for now, Bailey,” Grey orders and continues speaking. “More about the process… there’s a vote and the selection happens. Except for the top alpha. That’s been carried down through generations the past three times via your family line. One of your sons will likely be next, though it’s not guaranteed, and it might not be your firstborn. The rest of the team retired a year ago, five years to the day after you approached the village. They knew it was time. Their successors stepped in then and worked with our fathers or uncles to learn. We wanted to try to find a way to reach you. The elders told us to wait, that you’d be called home eventually. They felt it. Your mother believed you’d find a mate soon and that’d make you open to our approach or that you’d approach again. We knew that there was a reason you were drawn here. Now we know it was after Cornelius’s death, and now that you’ve mated, we’re hoping you’ll spend time with us and wanna take your place with us.”
“The retired team, where are they?” I ask.
“They’re all alive,” Bailey says. “All six.”
“Six? I thought it was supposed to be seven.”
They’re both quiet a beat.
“Your father…died,” Bailey tells me a second after I realize who the seventh is.
Right.
“Tell me about that.”
I sit down on the ground in front of her. Grey sits down as well, off to the side, and the three of us are in a sort of circle.
I sense nothing but the truth from her as well as Grey, who adds bits to the conversation as they explain that my father was a triplet. One brother: Riley’s father, Atticus. The other: Cornelius. Riley’s father is a beta even though Riley is an alpha. Cornelius wasn’t just omega; he was a disabled omega of the trio.
“What exactly happened to my father?” I repeat as she goes off on a tangent telling me about how the alpha council will listen to opinions of anyone in the pack, not treat omegas like they’re bottom of the ladder.
Grey cuts her off, telling her she’s off topic. “The way it’s told, they all grew up together and Cornelius was in love with your mother, swore she was his mate. Your father disagreed and claimed her. Cornelius descended into madness. She walked in after being away collecting some herbs and found him standing over your father’s body. He told Cat he hooked up with a witch who gave him poison that he used on your father. He tried to take her, too, but she escaped with the bassinet. It was just a bundle filled with your clothing and a doll. He’d already moved you. Must have already disguised your scent with the herb Cat says you used to take. The pack looked for you but couldn’t find a trace. He later surfaced and caught her off guard, tried to take her again. He said you were gone, dead, and promised to show her the grave so she could say goodbye. She fought him off, stabbed him. He left and she didn’t know if he’d survive the gut wounds. He turned up again, many years later but during the time in between there was no trace of either of your scents.”
I grind my teeth, remembering those gut wounds, remembering that he lied by saying he took them as an unjust punishment.
“If he was so deranged, why was he allowed to be with the pack? Why wasn’t he put out of his misery?”
“Triplets are rare,” Bailey says. “Twins usually work out fine and we get an alpha and a beta, two betas, sometimes a strong council-level alpha and an omega. Single births don’t always turn out alpha. Beta is the most common. A triplet pregnancy with our pack’s lead council alpha, your grandfather being the father, Cornelius had to have been half-starved in the womb during development, didn’t get enough of anything because his brothers took it all, so he had underdeveloped senses, and it was a hard life for him growing up. He was a very sickly child. Our pack takes care of those who are disabled; we don’t just destroy those that are weak or physically challenged. He couldn’t accept his life and the blessings in it. He was treated as eccentric and looked after. He was a talented artist, there’s a storage area in the library basement dedicated to his paintings. If he hadn’t committed those crimes, they’d be displayed. He would’ve been loved and had a happy life. He just couldn’t let it go… his obsession with your mother drove him to murder his brother. I guess he kept you when she wouldn’t give in and be with him.”
He taught me to paint. And he was mad. I always thought so. He would shout obscenities out of nowhere, just go off on tangents, nonsensical ones.
We’re all quiet for a moment.
Poisoned. He poisoned my father. Fuck. And stole me. And hurt Catrina. She’s lived with the fallout of his evil madness every day for all this time.
If I could kill him… if I could take back all the times I saved his hide, all the times it was down to me that he got to eat, down to me that he had a garage filled with money to buy his whiskey for the times he was man.
“How’s it going with your mate?” Greyson asks.
“Meaning?”
“I know it’s new. Brand new. Cat didn’t say much, but I get the impression your mate is reluctant.”
I bristle.
“Bring her into the fold with us,” he says. “We’ll help get her acclimated.”
“We can’t have you without your mate. Anything we can do to help…” Bailey adds.
“I won’t be without her. I need no help.”
Grey raises his hand defensively. “No disrespect meant, Tyson. I just get the impression issues are there, and community often helps with non-shifters who have no ties to our way of life. We’re here to help. Show her what our lifestyle is and how fulfilling it is to be in our community.”
“I need no help,” I snap.
He looks down and says nothing.
I’m irritated.
“You’ve given me a lot to think about. I’d like you to go so I can do that. Think about everything.”
“Sorry we disturbed you,” Bailey says. “And I only meant –”
“Cat comes tomorrow. Please come with her,” I request. “I’d like you to befriend Ivy.”
She brightens with a smile. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
Grey extends his hand and I take it. And I feel with him what I felt with the others as he pulls me toward him and slaps my back and bumps his right shoulder to my left.
“You’re our brother. We want you to be part of our family, Tyson. I know it seems like a lot. Give it a chance. Just spend time seeing if we feel like your pack. We’ve got no heavy expectations. It’ll come naturally over time, bro.”
He lets go of my hand and steps back.
I swallow and look into his eyes. I say nothing. I know I don’t need to because he sees. We see things in each other. This guy is genuine. I feel the strange, new sense of camaraderie with him, just like with Riley.
“Goodnight,” Bailey says and hugs me awkwardly.
I pat the top of her head rather than embracing her and step back as soon as she lets go.
***
I climb into bed with Ivy. She’s
exhausted and taken the pain medication so she doesn’t even stir. I caress her face and stare at her features in the moonlight.
I’m glad Greyson and Bailey came to see me.
I hate some of what they told me. Hate it with a fever that makes me want to rip things apart. If I could run and feast right now, I would. I can’t leave her yet.
So many thoughts flood my mind.
Catrina has suffered so much loss.
They’re worried about Riley. They want me to be a part of their pack.
Most alphas, I’d have expected they’d see me as a threat. I was taught that they would, and it made sense at the time. Why would anyone want to willingly give up their power? But these shifters don’t seem to think that way. They seem to feel there’s strength in numbers and that makes more sense.
I’m awake until nearly dawn and I know it’s because not only have I thought a lot about everything I learned tonight, all I’ve seen so far from them, I’m also thinking about them going for a run together every dawn. Running together as people, maybe, but especially as wolves. Together. Running and maybe hunting together. Maybe feasting together. Possibly sharing stories and laughing together afterwards as men with that elevated and euphoric feeling that comes after a long run and a feast.
