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“Yeah, and enjoyed a couple of beers thanks to your attentive little gift,” I said warmly.
She smiled and shrugged. “It’s been a while since you guys got some time to yourselves, you know? I wanted you guys to have some quality time.”
“Thank you. It was good for both of us, I think,” I said. “So, what have you come up with for the meeting so far?”
“I was thinking about covering the situation with the war declaration. Word has certainly gotten out, but we haven’t really addressed it in any official capacity yet, you know?”
I nodded. That had been partially my fault. I hadn’t wanted to create problems until they were actually problems. Of course, in the process, I’d left everything up to hearsay, and now it was Marley’s job to get those things addressed and leveled out.
I looked at all the papers and books strewn on the bed and then looked back up at my wife. She gave me a bit of a glower.
“What?” I asked.
“What’s that guilt about?”
It was still so hit-or-miss if Marley would be able to feel my emotions once she’d transitioned. Even now, as married mates, it seemed like sometimes she felt it and sometimes she didn’t. Or if she felt it all the time, she picked and chose what to address with me.
“I was thinking about how I set you up for a lot more work than I’d intended,” I said finally. “I keep trying to give you responsibilities that aren’t too hard to handle—”
“So you don’t think I can handle this?” she asked, frowning.
I balked, pressing my lips into a line. “Well, no, that’s not what I mean. I just meant that if I’m going to shoulder things off on you, I try to make them approachable tasks.”
Marley heaved a loud sigh. “Cole,” she said, leaning back into the pillows behind her, “if you only give me the tasks that you consider ‘easy,’ does that mean you’re keeping all the difficult ones for yourself?”
“It’s not that I think you can’t do them,” I said quickly, hearing my voice change to something a little more reedy and weakly defensive. She put her hand up to stop me from continuing my excuses.
“Cole, I’m not offended,” she clarified. “I’m just…I’m a little annoyed, you know? How am I supposed to help you shoulder your burdens if you don’t give me tasks that are burdens to you?”
“I’m alpha and your mate,” I said. “Frankly, it’s my job to take care of the difficult things so that you and Noah can live a life of relative comfort and ease.”
“No, that is not your job,” she rebutted. “Your job is to be my partner, and my job is to be yours. Our job together, as a couple, is to face these challenges head-on together so that we can both enjoy the comfort of having succeeded in accomplishing them. So that we can both protect Noah and have happy, relatively stress-free lives.”
“Stress-free?” I asked.
“Relatively,” she repeated. “And beyond that, Cole, we need to establish myself as an authority now to get ahead of the dumpster fire these problematic pack members are trying to start. I can’t do that if you only ever give me the easy stuff.”
“But…it just isn’t me,” I said. “It’s not like me to share the burden. I do this for everyone. For Travis, for Syl, for Noah.”
“Well, I’m your wife,” she countered. “And you don’t have to—and frankly, shouldn’t—do it with me.”
Marley threw her book off to the side and crawled over to where I sat on the edge of the bed, situating herself on my lap and bracketing my face in her two small hands. She heaved a sigh and shook her head, her messy bun loosening with the little movement.
“Cole,” she said, “I need you to internalize that you’re no longer doing this alone. You don’t have to protect the entire pack by yourself. I am your mate and your wife and your partner. This is literally the purpose I am supposed to fill in your life. Instead of trying to balance the foundation of this pack like a tray of plates, let’s each take one side and keep it stable and upright together. Okay?”
I nodded, letting my head drop into one of her hands. As if showing she meant what she’d said, that arm stiffened to accommodate my weight, keeping my head from fully lulling off her palm.
She traced the edge of my cheekbone with her thumb and sighed. “So, with that out of the way, what else have we got on the docket that we need to take care of? As a team?”
“Well…we probably oughta check in with Gramps,” I said. “He’s been running a pack a lot longer than I have and probably knows more about pack warfare than I do.”
“Alright. What else?”
“We need to start sorting out the hierarchy,” I said. “We have a lot of pack members but no real structure when it comes to who does what. Travis made that chore list, and a lot of the people we’ve taken in are eager to help, but I don’t actually know what everyone can do.”
“Can do as in, like, combat ability?”
“As in all abilities. We need to know what skills people bring to the table. Accountants, teachers, doctors, fighters, construction workers…that sort of thing.”
