by CJ Cooke
“So, we have a rough plan then,” Tanner said, sounding more surprised than anything else.
“Apart from Calli’s room,” I pointed out. “I think you’re right, and pushing up the renovations might be a good idea. The garage being closed has impacted the pack finances, but we should have enough to do the top floor. The extra cabin is going to have to wait, though, until the business is fully open again.”
I was never happier than I was now for the investments we’d made early on. Money had been tight when we first set up the pack. We put everything we had into buying the house and land and then renovating it. When Nash had come to us with an investment plan that would give the pack a modest income and help build our savings back up, it had been hard to say no to. I was so grateful we’d looked to the future then. We had to scrape the very last of our money together at the time, and there were times in the early days when I’d regretted it, but it was definitely paying off now. In fact, once we had the business up and running again, it might be time to get Nash to look at expanding our portfolio. If the pack was going to start growing, we needed to make sure we were prepared for it.
“So, is that it? Do we actually know what we’re doing for a change?” Tanner laughed.
“There are a few other things, but we need Calli for those steps, namely Abby’s magic and Coby’s wolf.”
“I have a feeling that’s going to be another one of those research things. We need to sort out getting a schedule in place for the kids as well, and probably stuff like cooking and the house in general.”
I cringed at the idea. All of us hated doing housework, and I didn’t want it to become someone’s job in the pack. I’d die before we had the role of omega or anything like it in our pack. That shit didn’t have a place in the modern age. Omegas were treated like nothing but slaves. No wolf of mine would ever be put in that position.
“We’ll have a pack meeting after the bonding ceremony and get ideas from everyone.”
Tanner stood up from his chair and looked around the room a bit more closely. “How long until you’re done in here?”
“I’ll have the shelving finished today, but the fronts for cabinets will have to be tomorrow.”
“Okay, I’m going to get Nash to pull the plans for the top floor so we can look over them tonight, and I’ll scope out a place where we can hide a wolf pup.” He shook his head as he walked out of the room on a mission to try and knock some things off our ever-growing to-do list.
“I’ll just keep doing this then,” I muttered, heaving myself out of the chair and grabbing the shelf again. It was going to be a long night, but it would be worth it because I knew Calli was going to love it.
23
Tanner
Much to Maverick’s distaste, we’d decide to fire up the outside grill for dinner tonight. All of the pack was back at the house, and we had plans to complete the bonding ceremony and then for everyone to eat together.
I’d scoped out the perfect place to hide Jacob this afternoon. He was currently running around the yard with the other kids. I kind of felt guilty about the thought of shoving him under a bush so we could bring Maverick into the pack bond. I was making myself dizzy with my feelings for the guy. I had a brother, a fucking brother—and he was such an ass!
I was seasoning up some steaks when I smelt the delicious scent of Calli entering the room. Her arms wrapped around my waist, and I leant back to feel her push against my back.
“Have you talked Jacob through the plan?” I asked, looking around the room to make sure it was clear.
Calli’s laugh was music to my ears. “He’s excited about going on a secret spy mission.”
“He knows he’s just going to be sitting under a bush, right?”
“Well, I may have told him he needs to be super quiet so he can listen to make sure no one sneaks up on us.”
The sneaky minx.
Grey hustled into the kitchen, nodding his head to the outside door. “We’ve probably only got ten minutes. Nash is keeping Maverick busy by talking him through the garage and his new role in the pack.”
Grey snickered in amusement, and I really wished I could see Maverick’s face right now. Grey had come up with the idea of getting Maverick into the garage in an administration capacity. We’d keep him away from the books, but he was basically making him a glorified receptionist under the guise that he needed to contribute to the pack. In reality, we just wanted him somewhere through the day where we could keep an eye on him. Either way, he was going to be pissed, and it was going to be funny as fuck.
Walking outside into the last of the sun for the day, the kids suddenly screeched to a halt.
“Is it time?” Jacob asked, jumping up and down in excitement.
I couldn’t blame him. We hadn’t found time to have another pack run, and Jacob was still at the stage where he needed help with the shift. We needed to find more time for him to run as his wolf so they could bond. The problem was with Maverick being here and Jacob being at school all day, it was going to be really difficult to do that and keep it a secret.
Hunter sauntered into the yard, just as Grey led Jacob through the last stages of the shift. When the little wolf pup was standing on the grass in his place, Hunter looked like he was about to pass out from the shock. Shit, I’d forgotten he didn’t know yet.
Just then, raised voices came streaming out from the kitchen. It would seem Nash had gotten to the receptionist part, and Maverick was going rogue.
“Quick, you know what to do,” Grey whispered to Jacob, and he puppy scooted his way at top speed across the grass before diving headfirst into some weird bush Jean had planted in the gardens a few years back. “We’ll have to talk about it later,” Grey told Hunter, just as Maverick stormed out into the gardens.
“What the hell is the meaning of you making me your coffee bitch at that junkyard you run?” Maverick spat out.
“Firstly, it’s a garage and not a junkyard,” I corrected, moving forward to intercept my brother so he didn’t come any closer to where Jacob was hiding, or rather the bush that was now growling quietly at him. “Secondly, everyone contributes to the pack. If you have any other skills you’d like to share with us, we'll happily hear you out.”
It was mean. I knew he had no real-life experience, and I shouldn’t be rubbing his face in it.
“And what of the female, what does she contribute apart from spreading her legs for you?” he spat.
Before I knew it, my fist was flying through the air and connected solidly with his jaw. I wouldn’t tolerate him speaking about Calli like that, and it pissed me off when he called her female.
Maverick dropped like a bag of rocks. He didn’t even try to defend himself, which was more telling than he would realise. There was no way he didn’t see that punch coming, and if his childhood was anything like mine had been in that house, he’d have taken enough punches to the face to be able to keep his feet.
He stared up at me from the ground, wiping the thin trickle of blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. His eyes flickered to Calli behind me, and I realised his end game. His problem, though, was he didn’t know my girl. She wasn’t going to cringe away from a bit of blood.
As if summoned by the thought, Calli peered around me, staring down at Maverick on the ground. His expression instantly turned to that of a kicked puppy, and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes—fucking tool.
“Hmmm,” she hummed, “should’ve gone for the nose.” Then she pulled her head back and wandered away.
The look of annoyance on Maverick’s face made it all the more delicious.
“She doesn’t play games like that,” I told him as I helped him off the ground.
He’d get it eventually. He didn’t need to try and replace us, one up us or show himself to be more dominant. The pack wasn’t like that. He had a family here, whether he wanted it or not.
24
River
I stayed close to Jacob’s hiding place with Blake, talking loudly in the mos
t obnoxious way we could. Grey was starting to look at us like we’d lost our minds, but there was one flaw to the plan we hadn’t considered— puppies, like children, could not sit still, and they definitely couldn’t stay quiet. We now had a vibrating angry bush emitting a high-pitched puppy growl that Blake and I were desperately trying to drown out.
“Shift,” Blake suddenly said. “Shift, and you can tell him to try and be quiet,” he whispered more quietly.
“Oh, fucking, shit!” I swore, realising what we hadn’t considered. “We’re going to be bringing Maverick into the bond. He’s going to know just how much the bond has changed. He could tell the Council.”
Blake froze, his eyes scanning the area. Grey was talking with Maverick, Tanner at his side. Hunter was eyeing us suspiciously while Nash talked to him about something he clearly wasn’t listening to. I knew he had questions. We should probably have clued him in on all this sooner. We should've done it before—if we hadn’t forgotten about it.
A commotion over by the others drew my attention, and it was clear Maverick was causing another problem. Standing with his feet shoulder-width apart and his arms crossed over his chest, Maverick was in some kind of stand-off with Grey.
“Go on, I’ll shift and talk the pup down,” Blake said, nodding his head in the direction of the others. He quickly shifted into his wolf and then leaned against the bush, which was now at least vibrating slightly less.
When I reached the group that had gathered around Maverick, I could see Maverick looked like he was freaking out, which considering his usual attitude, was probably the most surprising thing than anything else.
“Absolutely not,” he growled, shaking his head. “I'll not shift into an animal.”
Calli stuttered at the phrasing, and she was right. Was Maverick a shifter that hadn’t bonded with his animal? I didn’t think that was even possible.
“You take the bond, or you leave the pack,” Grey said, shaking his head back and forth. His alpha nature was locked in, and he wasn’t going to back down from this. But it was the ideal opportunity for us. We needed this delay, but we also needed Maverick in the link so he couldn’t easily betray us, yet putting him in the link was handing him information that any wolf remotely against us would joyfully run back to the Council with. In other words, we were screwed.
Maverick reared back like someone had slapped him, but the curious thing was that the main emotion that seemed to be on his face was panic.
“Okay, let’s not get too worked up about this,” I said, raising my hands and coming between them. “Maybe we should bring Hunter into the bond tonight and then Maverick tomorrow. Give him some time to think about it,” I suggested trying to find a solution where I could talk to Grey, and we could decide if this was really something we should be doing without making it too obvious. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to realise that was what was happening.
“You know why we need to do this, and we cannot risk having him in the pack without some guarantee of his loyalty.” Grey was pissed, but he wasn’t looking at the situation and seeing that there must be a reason why I would suggest this.
“I’ve told you I will take the bond, but I refuse to shift.” Maverick had his arms crossed and looked two seconds away from stamping his foot like a petulant child.
“You can’t take the bond unless you shift,” Grey roared, his patience having already run out. His alpha need to protect the pack was feeding into this, and because of it, he wasn’t seeing things clearly. This was why every alpha needed a beta to balance them out. They could be rash and needed someone level-headed to make them see reason when the need to protect took over them.
“Wait, wait,” Calli said, joining me in the quite frankly terrifying no man’s land in the middle of a pissed off alpha and an asshole of epic proportions. “Why don’t you want to shift, Maverick?”
He looked awkwardly around the group, and an idea flashed to the front of my mind.
“Why don’t you go into the kitchen with Calli and talk it through with her,” I announced weirdly loud and high-pitched. “You probably don’t want to talk about this in front of all of us.”
I started to shepherd Calli towards Maverick, and she was shooting me a confused look. The rumbling angry growl coming out of Grey indicated he wasn’t a massive fan of the idea either.
“Grey and I will go over here and talk to Hunter about joining him into the bond while you have a discussion… in private! And we’ll be… over here.” Super spy, I definitely would not be, but at least everyone was moving to where I needed them to be, even if they were looking at me like I was a crazy person while doing it.
Once I had Grey, Tanner and a very confused looking Hunter ushered over to the growling bush that housed Jacob, I sighed a breath of relief.
“Jesus fucking christ,” I swore as I watched Calli and Maverick disappear into the house.
“What the hell has gotten into you,” Tanner laughed, amusement written all over his face.
“The bond, we can’t bring Maverick into the bond,” I said, pointing down at the bush that had sprouted a tiny tail which was now happily wagging away. How we thought we were going to pull this off, I had no idea.
“River, you know how this works. We need him in the bond, so we have some form of guarantee that he will not betray us. As it is, I’m pretty sure he’s still going to betray us, but at least then I can kill him when he does,” Grey finished on a growl.
“But when you bring him into the bond, he’s going to find out that we can all talk to each other in wolf form,” I pointed out, flooded with satisfaction when I saw them all realise the problem as well.
“Fuck!” Grey swore.
Blake yipped at Jacob, and the tail disappeared, but then Jacob launched himself out of the bush and play-tackled Blake trying to push him down to the ground.
“Okay,” Tanner said, pacing while he thought. “Maverick clearly has a problem with shifting. What if we don’t bring him into the pack bond and use it as an excuse to move him out of the pack instead? That way, he’s no threat to the kids, Cassia or anyone else.”
He was trying to hide how disappointed he was with the suggestion, but at the moment, it really was the only option we had. Tanner deserved a chance to get to know his brother, though. Whatever Tanner’s father had done to Maverick while he was growing up clearly had him terrified to shift into his wolf. Maybe we owed it to Maverick as well to give him a chance to get to know his brother. To realise there was someone else out there in the world that cared about him. Not to mention Calli. Could we really take away her chance to be with one of her mates, just because we were scared he might tell our pack secrets to his father, who seemed hell-bent on taking Calli for himself?
“This is a mess,” Grey muttered to himself.
“I have a weird suggestion,” I told them, seeing an obvious solution. “Why don’t we talk to him?”
“What?”
“Since he got here, we’ve moved around Maverick, trying to keep him away from our secrets and assuming he’s here for some nefarious reason. Why don’t we actually talk to him? Why not ask him his motivations, what his intentions for Calli are, if he actually wants to be part of our pack?”
“Because he’s just going to lie to us if he has some kind of ulterior motive, and we don’t know him well enough to know if he’s lying,” Grey pointed out, making Tanner visibly wince.
Blake shifted back to his human form on the ground beside us, with Jacob hanging off his arm, his little puppy butt wiggling in the air.
“What if we could make sure he told us the truth?” he said with a wicked grin.
“What are you thinking?” Grey asked him, scooping Jacob up off him, much to the pup’s annoyance.
“When we were looking through Calli’s books researching the wards, there were tonnes of different spells and protections in them,” Blake pointed out.
“You’re suggesting that Calli casts some kind of truth spell on him?” Grey said, looking confused. “Is that
even possible?”
“We won’t know until we look,” Blake pointed out.
“Is that a good idea? Would Calli even go for that?”
“We won’t know until we ask her,” Tanner retorted back.
“Wait, you can all talk to each other in your wolf form?” Hunter said, his eyes nearly bugging out of his head. “And how is it possible that Jacob can shift?” He looked like he was going to panic, and I couldn’t blame him. It was a lot to take in all at once.
Tanner just slapped him on the back. “Don’t worry. After a while, all the crazy that seems to gravitate towards us kind of starts to feel normal,” he laughed.
Grey rolled his eyes and tried to explain. “Jacob is different, like Calli. She was able to shift when she was a pup too. In fact, we may shortly have another one to worry about, but we’re going to have to discuss that later tonight. I don’t want us talking about things like this in the open until we know where we stand with Maverick.”
“Maybe we should wait on bringing me into the bond until we have the time to do it,” Hunter said. I could hear the disappointment in his voice, and I had no doubt the others did too.
“No.” Grey smiled at him. “The sooner we welcome you into our pack, the sooner we move you out of the grip of the Council.”
Hunter looked taken aback by what Grey said, and Grey frowned at him in confusion.
“What?” he asked.
“I just, I don’t know, I didn’t think you'd be worried about me like that. I was sent here to watch you after all.”
“So, we’re finally giving up pretending you came to guard Calli,” Tanner laughed.
“I would have laid down my life to keep her safe,” Hunter growled. “But I will admit it was only part of my job. The Council sent me here to test my loyalty, and I suppose we’re about to show them I have none.” He looked embarrassed and even ashamed as he said it. Hunter was a good wolf, and he didn’t seem like the kind of person who liked to have his loyalty called into question.
