Page 76 of Oakheart

Cash had paused at this, drawing up short, and was staring at Walter like he was the one speaking a foreign language. “What would ever make you say Leo wasn’t pack?” he asked. “Leo cut all your firewood last year. You’d have died of the cold if not for him. Katya made you soup and nursed you back to health when you got sick, and Grant said if you got sick, you were barely a real werewolf and didn’t deserve help. But they’re traitors? Are you insane?”

Walter paused, stammering, and stared at Cash like he’d started growing extra limbs. I supposed in a way, he had grown something new: a shiny backbone, unwilling to let anyone step on him or people he cared about.

For a moment, Walter looked between Cash, Leo, and finally me, blinking. “Where... where’s your uncle? Where’s our pack alpha?”

I lifted a brow at him, unimpressed. “Where do you think? He went to San Francisco to challenge a pack alpha ten years younger and a hundred pounds stronger than him. Fyse killed him.”

The change that came over the old man’s face at that, the sheer outrage, was almost comical. I barely repressed laughter as he planted his fists on his hips and started to turn red. “Killed? That monster killed your uncle, and you’re... you just left? Walked away and left him alive?”

I just stared at him a moment, letting silence fall heavy in the square. People had started coming out onto porches and leaning in windows—almost the whole pack was there, listening to me.

Good.

“Yes, I left Fyse alive. This is how challenges work. Grant made a ridiculous challenge to another pack’s self-rule, stretching wolf laws in ways they were never meant to stretch. Trying to manipulate things to his advantage. Fyse still beat him, fairly. Grant tried to cheat. To attack from behind with his interfering followers, who also died for their treachery. Fyse still won. Did you wish us all to die?”

Walter just stood there a moment, turning redder and redder as he realized the whole pack was watching him, waiting for his answer. “You abandoned your own uncle,” he shouted back. “You should have defended his honor. The pack’s honor. You?—”

“My uncle had no honor,” I told him. I didn’t raise my voice, but the whole square went deathly silent in the wake of the words. “He died with no honor, trying to attack Fyse from behind, after he had been beaten. If you want to be in my uncle’s pack, or any pack that runs like it, you are free to leave.”

“Runs like it?” Maggie asked, where she was leaning against the side of her own shack, her voice soft, like she was both hopeful and frightened of the answer.

“Runs like it,” I reiterated. “My uncle is dead, and I am his heir. This makes me alpha. And I will not be like him, or like my father. I will have no Giselle. I will not sell our children for witches’ perversions. Any man who touches a child in my pack will die like he deserves to. Children are not property. Womenare not property. All wolves are free. We will rebuild a pack. A community. Not a dictatorship where you will fear to speak. We will cut out the rot and start over.” I turned back and met Walter’s eye steadily. “If you are part of the rot, and you wish to have power over others, then you will leave. Today, of your own will, or tomorrow, when you make trouble and we make you leave. It is your choice.”

CHAPTER 37

Cash

Walter wasn’t well enoughto go out on his own. He could’ve joined another pack, maybe, but I knew deep down I was right: This pack had taken care of him, and there were no assurances that anyone else would.

It wasn’t Grant’s pack that’d done it either, but the first sprouting seeds of this new one. It’d been Leo and Katya and kindness.

He’d be a fool to go.

Getting sick or injured humbled a wolf, and there weren’t many who’d experienced that. Sometimes, with age, brutal pack conflicts, or abject cruelty, mishaps happened, but I didn’t think Walter was going anywhere of his own volition.

I didn’t know outright if there was any reason Walter shouldn’t be a part of our pack. People like Marcus had made their corruption perfectly known, and I had no doubt that there were people who Grant had tried to bestow “favors” on who, sick as it was, would’ve taken advantage without saying anything about it.

But there were also people who’d been taken in by the cult of personality that Grant had built around himself, whoremembered Reeve and were glad to have dodged some of his brutality, and who feared change now.

I hoped this was the case with Walter, but from the uncomfortable looks on a few faces, I had no doubt our pack would be smaller tomorrow than it was today. If we were lucky, the trash would take itself out.

Regardless, even if we found out every abuser was dead or had fled, we needed to provide support for those who’d endured abuse and a safe place for them to name the people who’d hurt them and know that they’d be safe from now on. Somehow, I thought Aleks wasn’t the right person to lead that effort.

As kind as he was, and as much as he could empathize with that particular kind of pain, after the alphas we’d known, I couldn’t imagine how intimidating it would be to talk to him first.

Maybe Katya? Everyone knew her to be kind and patient, and when I was a child, her smile and her ready tea cakes had been a comfort.

I’d talk to her about it, maybe even get Evie’s input. It wasn’t her responsibility, or the responsibility of any child who’d lived in fear, to figure out the support we ought to provide them, but they knew what they needed, and their insight and comfort would be paramount to ensuring we could move forward and build something better.

They were our future, and it was our responsibility to support them as best we could.

One thing at a time, though. Right then, I needed to see?—

Pa’s house was there beyond the edge of the square, but it was dark and there was no movement within it.

For a second, my stomach dropped. Something could’ve happened after I’d left, but I—I didn’t think Aleks, Leo, and Viktor would have left before Grant. They’d have known. They’dhave told me. And once Grant had left pack lands, I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to hurt my father.

But he wasn’t at home. It was dark and empty, and my stomach clenched.