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“Surprised to see that you have a fucking doorstep when Dolores Fisher is sleeping in a tent.” Dolores is just shy of ancient with bad hips and a hernia she likes to bring up every other sentence. But she’s a great lady, and an institution in the West Pack.
Unfortunately, Cooper doesn’t have an ounce of empathy in him.
“The woman survived two heart attacks. Nothing short of a gunshot wound to the head’s gonna nail her.” He leans a hip against the door and eyes me. “What do you want?”
“Can we come in?” I demand, a little impatiently. “We’re not here to admire the garden shed.”
Cooper’s shit-eating grin spreads wider, and he steps back, opening the door to let us pass into the dimly lit room. He looks at Sable like he wants to take her for a test drive, a flash of interest in his eyes. It takes all my willpower not to lay him out on the floor like the trash he is just for looking at her the wrong way.
The place is literally a garden shed—one room, walls lined with gardening tools, a small work bench stationed in one corner. Cooper has a cot set up with blankets and a threadbare pillow, and the electric cord is hooked to a hot plate.
Cooper flops onto the cot, kicking up his feet so that neither of us can sit beside him. Not that I want to anyway, but the cot is pretty much the only option unless I want to turn over a ceramic planter that looks like it would crumble under the slightest weight. I motion for Sable to perch on the work bench, then I stand beside her awkwardly, staring down at the man who gave me life.
“Why are you here?” Cooper asks, his eyes narrowing a little.
“Sable wanted to meet you,” I say shortly.
He swivels to smile at her, turning on the charm. “Enchanted. Sable, is it? So you’re mated to my boy?”
“Yes, sir.” Her voice is cool and gives nothing away. I’m dying to know what her first impression is. I’m dying to know if she thinks he’s just as much bluster and bullshit as I know he is.
I charge ahead before he can proposition her, because God fucking knows he will. “Also, after the pack meeting last nigh—”
Cooper snorts and slaps his knee with his free hand, his eyes glinting with disdain. “That circus! Fucking hell. My pack made the right choice, you know. Isolating ourselves is the right thing to do. You team up, you get dragged into sharing the burden other, lesser packs carry. The West Pack’s strong, sturdy stock. We don’t need other packs dragging us down.”
He continues his tirade about how great the West Pack is and how useless the other packs are. He even makes mention of the South Pack being weak and good riddance, and a wave of fury washes over me on Dare’s behalf. He’s been mourning the destruction of his pack since the day it happened, and my father just shit all over them in a self-aggrandizing rampage.
His voice grates on me, and the pressure builds between my ears until I think my head’s going to blow. Sable remains quiet and watchful beside me, and I try to keep my composure too. But inside, I’m seething. Inside, I’m imagining how it would feel to punch my dad in the face again without the challenge pushing me to do it. I’m wondering how the actual fuck I came from this man, and how much damage he did to me that I’ll spend the rest of my life undoing.
I finally can’t take his pompous shit anymore. “Shut up, Dad.”
Cooper’s words die out as his mouth slams shut with an audible clicking of his teeth. Even though I’ve been alpha for years, I think it still takes him by surprise to hear me speak to him like that—probably because we haven’t spoken in years. He’s seen me running the pack, but maybe he doesn’t know how much I’ve changed.
Back when I was a kid, I never talked back. I never argued. I just bowed to his every whim until the day I fought back.
Until the day I stood up for myself and my pack.
“You’re an asshole,” I go on before he can speak, “and you’ve always been an asshole. Too full of yourself to see that other people matter. Too shortsighted to see the whole picture. You aren’t the reason the West Pack is great. You’re the reason they’re broken.”
As the words fall from my mouth, I realize that some of the same traits I’m chastising him for are ones I once possessed. But just as I’m not the scared little boy living under his father’s thumb anymore, I’m not the arrogant asshole who thinks he’s better than everyone else either.
Or at least, I’m learning not to be that man. I’m trying.
And so much of that has to do with the woman by my side. The sweet, strong, stubborn she-wolf who loves me enough to see past my faults, and loves me enough to call me on them too.
Cooper scoffs. “You aren’t going to stand there and tell me you want to keep the packs joined?”
My lips press together. “If I do, it’s none of your damn business. You aren’t the alpha.”
“Ha! Good luck then, kid.” He leans back, smirking. “You can order your people to stay here, but they’re smarter than that. They’ll rebel.”
The smug smile on his face makes my blood boil. Fury rises within me like a tsunami, and I have to fight the strong desire to bash my fist through his face to wipe that look off it.
I vividly remember now why I challenged my father for the alpha role. Cooper always had the charisma, but he never had the heart. He never actually cared about the people or putting their needs first and foremost above his own. As an alpha, the number one priority is always what’s best for the pack, not what’s best for yourself. What I want is a fucking moot point when two hundred other people are relying on me to lead the way.
It seems so fucking obvious now. My pack will be safer if we join forces with the other two. Yeah, it won’t be fucking easy. But it’s exactly the right path. And I’m exactly the right man to be leading my people down that road.
I surprise even myself when I don’t scream at my father. Instead, my voice comes out low and hard, full of conviction. “I’m not going to order my people to do anything. I’m going to convince them.”
