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She pounded her fists against my chest and, I had to admit, it almost tickled. “Jesus fucking Christ, Levi. You are as much of fucking asshole as I remembered. You have no idea what I have been through. Of what it was like to be taken away from everything I had known. If wanting nothing to do with the father and the pack that completely dropped off the fucking planet when I left makes me a little bitch, the so fucking be it.”
I grabbed her wrists and backed her against the kitchen counter. “Your father trusted you with his family and you’d rather spit on his legacy than give him a chance.”
“That’s right, his fucking family. Clearly not mine,” she said with venom in her voice.
Her words made me pause for a moment. Did she really not see us as her family?
I let out a long sigh. “You should be taking this seriously. Instead, you are being a child about this.”
“I am taking this seriously,” she growled.
The second I heard her growl, I searched into her eyes searching for some measure of her wolf. For an instant I thought I saw it. I felt how strong it was. But as quickly as I noticed it, her wolf disappeared.
I dropped her wrists in defeat and took a step back. “Then, prove it.”
Tears lined her eyes as she threw her hands into the air. “I just found out that my father died and I haven’t spoken to him one fucking bit since Mom left me with! And now I’m magically alpha of his pack!? Of a life my Mom refused to teach me about!? I’m just supposed to step into this role like I was trained for it even though I’ve never been back here since Mom and I drove away in that god-forsaken truck!?”
If she was truly meant to be our alpha, then she had to fight for it. Something in her had to want it. I held my head high as the words fell effortlessly from my lips. “You will never be him.”
“I don’t want to be him,” she hissed.
“Good, because our pack deserves better. They deserve Colin, not you. They deserve someone who cares about them, not you. They deserve a future that is bright and filled with happiness. Not you.”
“Levi!” Brody exclaimed.
The tears streaking Raven’s face didn’t waver me one bit. I was tired of her bullshit. She could have reached out to us, but she never fucking did. We were her apparent best friends, but she never had the balls to pick up the phone and give us a call. In that moment, I realized her human side had complete control over her. She wasn’t a wolf, and she sure as hell wasn’t an alpha.
She was just like her piece of shit mother that ran off.
“And when you finally do what your mother taught you to do and you leave us, don’t you ever come back, deserter.”
“Levi!” Dean bellowed.
I turned around and stormed away with my hands clenched at my sides. Sweat dripped down the nape of my neck as heat coursed through my veins. The fiery chasm of my soul dripped with a need for our alpha. For the man we had lost. For the shifter we had just buried. Colin had been more than simply an alpha for us. He had been our guide. Our protector. Our father for those of us that had been abandoned by ours. And that woman—that shell of a woman born from a girl I used to respect—would never be what he was. She’d never be able to give our pack what they needed. She’d never be able to lead us into the prosperity we deserved.
And as I stood in the front yard with my head tilted toward the sky, I came undone.
I felt untethered and ungrounded without Colin in our world, and I had no idea what the hell to do with that.
“You still breathing out here?” Hudson asked as he walked up behind me.
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “You were pretty quiet in there.”
Hudson folded his arms across his chest. “Not much to joke about.”
I scoffed. “There’s plenty to say without the joking..”
A shadow of a grin ticked his cheek. “Yeah, but where’s the fun in that?”
There was something in his face, though. And when he didn’t stop looking at me, I knew he had something on his mind.
“Just say it,” I said flatly.
He turned to face me. “Did you feel it?”
“Feel what?”
“Her magic. When you had your hand around her throat, did you feel it?”
