Page 7

From out of the grasses, a wolf with stark white fur pounced. I was quick enough to dart out of the way, and Evander’s massive paws skidded past me to an eventual halt. I let out an amused huff through my snout and dashed off with Evander’s paws thundering behind me. The other pack members joined.

It was hard to find joy these days, even in a pack run. Everything was constantly shrouded in grief. Even in wolf form, my heart ached. It longed for something I couldn’t comprehend. I hated the rules and restrictions of pack mentality and the centuries of archaic tradition, and at the same time, it was a familiar comfort.

Happiness was measured in those around me. The pack was happy, so therefore I was happy.

Or so I tried to convince myself.

Cold water rushed from the head of the shower above me and poured over my head. I stood there, letting it wash away the sweat and dirt. It always took a lot of wrestling with my mind these days to keep from wandering into the past. To keep from thinking ahead to the future.

Yeah, it was irresponsible not to think of what was to come, but uncertainty had a habit of leaving me frozen with fear.

There was a knock on the door, and Evander’s baritone called to me from outside. “Are you going to claim Clover in her next Heat?”

“Fucking hells, Van. You’re interrupting my shower for this?”

He entered the room, the door shutting softly behind him. “Well, you’re always too busy otherwise,” he replied.

Being occupied left me with less time to mull over my sadness and indecision. I spent countless hours in the empty stable woodworking, creating new crossbows for hunting as well as new furniture pieces for the house. My newly built bookshelf, however, remained empty in my room since the pack found my love for books strange.

All that aside, I needed to find some courage, because the pack dynamics needed revising. Another Ministry meeting was on the horizon, the sixth I would attend as beta in place of Antoine. It’s a wonder they weren’t suspicious yet.

Evander came into view, lean arms crossed over his bare torso. He was as pale as moonlight, with flaxen hair and our pack tattoo—an elongated Z—over his heart. His slight body gave him the appearance of a runt, but he was a deceptively powerful beta.

“You’re supposed to be giving off the appearance of normality. The others are going to start questioning things if you still fail to claim her, especially now. Just rut her a few times, claim her, and get back to your sulking.”

I frowned at him through the water streaming over my face. “Do you hear yourself? Clover isn’t some object to be rutted a few times for shits and giggles. It’s a sacred thing, and I refuse to defile it. Besides, neither of us is ready for that.”

“Do you hear yourself? You are Alpha Prime.”

It had been weeks since I felt my role shift. It didn’t happen immediately after my brother’s death, but the next morning. The transfer of responsibility was like a physical weight crushing my chest the moment my eyes opened. I’d stumbled into the yard, hands contorting into claws to rip my clothes from my body. It wasn’t a common thing for me to lose control, but the unbearable heaviness of the alpha spirit, coupled with grief and guilt, had sliced through me with such force my inner wolf took over to protect me.

The Awakening, they called it. Whoever “they” were. I imagined some ancient elders in robes sitting around a fancy table coming up with names to describe things. But what an understatement it was. Not an awakening, but a fucking death and rebirth,. if you ask me. Very much like the first time I shifted. For a while, it was like I’d both lost who I was and gained more of myself than I knew what to do with. It was like a magical switch in the brain activated whatever made us lycan.

The pack members had come out to see what the commotion was. They’d shifted, bowing to me. As I morphed back into human form, I used the alpha bark for the first time. A command I had not intentionally laced with the power to demand obedience. “Rise,” I’d said. They wouldn’t have been able to resist even if they tried. And of course, not all of them were happy I held such power over their autonomy.

But as far as everyone outside of our pack knew, I was beta. It had to remain that way. At least until I could explain Antoine’s death without endangering the entirety of Sublune Creek and the Zilveren pack. I was trying to buy time, but it insisted on racing by while my grief dragged on.

While Clover’s grief dragged on.

My heart clenched. “I will not claim her,” I told Evander. “Nor do I plan to ever claim anyone. It’s a weakness.”

“Careful, brother. You don’t want to say those thoughts aloud.”

I rolled my eyes and pinned him with a sharp glare, tugging on the rope to shut off the flow of the water before stepping out of the shower. Evander flung a towel at me, and I caught the material and wrapped it around my waist.

“We are one pack united. One mind. One soul.”

“One fucking enormous target,” I said.

“Sylvan—”

“No, no, see that’s the thing. No one wants to listen to logic. We only care about the ancient creeds. Ritual. Tradition. Some of the other packs hold on to the old ways at all costs. That’s why the bloodsuckers get to be in the city, and we are banished out here without choice. They adjust. They survive. And they don’t even fucking deserve it.”

Evander drew a breath to speak, but I held up my hand, and his mouth snapped shut.

“Do you truly believe I ought to rut a woman in Heat just to prove she’s mine? She was Antoine’s mate. I can’t just … I don’t have a bond with her.”

“That didn’t stop you from rutting her last time.”