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“Oh, boy,” Levi grumbled.
“What!?” Raven squealed. “What the hell does my mother not being a shifter have to do with no one from this so-called ‘pack family’ reaching out to me?”
And as I shook my head, the breadth of her ignorance finally dawned on me. “You’re right.”
“What?” Raven asked.
I drew in a deep breath. “You’re right. You aren’t cut out for the position of alpha.”
“The fuck?” Brody asked.
I clasped my hands behind my back. “You don’t have the faintest idea as to what position leaving with a human as a shifter puts you in. You don’t have the faintest idea of what we need from you. Hell, you don’t even have an idea of why we never reached out for you because your mother made your choice for you.”
She put her finger in my face. “Don’t you dare talk shit about my mother.”
My eyes darkened as my voice lowered itself an octave.“You have no business leading the most powerful pack on the West Coast with your ignorance and your lack of knowledge, and it’ll be a pleasure to watch you leave. Brody?”
“Yes?” he asked.
I walked back into the kitchen. “Do whatever you feel absolves you of responsibility in all of this. Then, teach her how to transfer the power of alpha to someone else.”
One of the foundational pillars of our beliefs was that the pack always fought for one another. The pack always considered each other in actions that affected the entire encampment. And it enraged me, in the pit of my gut, that Colin hadn’t taught her that. It wasn’t as if she left when she was a child. She had been ten or eleven, for fuck’s sake! That was more than enough time to teach her the valuable lesson of never leaving family behind.
When Raven left with her mother and never looked back, she left us behind. She made a statement. She showed us, in her actions, that she didn’t want to be part of us. That she didn’t want her place in the family that had been gifted to her. So, in my mind? If she didn’t understand what leaving with her mother had stated to our pack, then she had no business attempting to lead it.
I just didn’t understand why Colin wouldn’t have taught her.
Especially if he knew he wanted to name his only child his successor.
7
RAVEN
I vibrated with a fury I’d never experienced before in my entire life. Who in the absolute fuck was that dickhole to tell me what I could and couldn’t do? What I was capable of and not capable of doing? I balked as I watched Hudson’s dark hair and equally dark eyes saunter back into the kitchen. He walked with the grace of a dancer but spoke with the intensity of a fucking demon. And as my skeleton shook within its meat prison, the stare of a thousand men beat down onto my back.
Why is everyone expecting something from me that I’m not willing to give?
It was clear that none of them would ever understand how I felt. I was eleven when this all happened. Eleven! And somehow, my ignorance was my fault? Somehow, this supposed family not reaching out to me was my fault? How the hell was it the fault of an eleven-year-old that had no say in anything that took place?
Did they think I wanted my father and mother to divorce!?
I mean, I had been rejected by my entire pack. My mother scooped me up, left, and I never once heard from anyone ever again. The friends I thought I had made disappeared, and for the longest time I thought it had been nothing but a dream. My mother immersed me into the human experience so much to try and fill the gaping void that had been left within my soul that I had practically convinced myself that my entire childhood had been one massive, elaborate fantasy.
And now, my absent father who didn’t even fight for me wanted me to lead that same pack?
The same pack that once abandoned me as their own?
“Leave us alone for a little bit,” Brody said.
Levi glared at me and shoved my shoulder as he walked by, causing me to stumble on my feet. I wanted to lunge at him and claw his eyeballs right out of their sockets, but I resisted the urge to spill blood. I’d never been around a more infuriating group of people in my entire life. Well, except for at work.
And as Brody stood beside me in the living room, I stared at the wet bootprints Levi had left on the carpet.
“Is handing over the pack something you really want to do?” he asked softly.
I sniffed the air and smelled Dean, with his oaky cologne, standing in the hallway just around the corner. “You might as well come in.”
Dean chuckled as he appeared at the entryway to the living room. “I see your senses have developed as beautifully as you.”
