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“Medium rare. And we have to have something to talk about while we eat, right?”
Rook slides me a wry glance.
When the steaks are done, we move to the patio table and I give him a look. I’m still waiting. “You are relentless, aren’t you, woman?”
I just grin.
“Oh, all right. I used to be alpha.”
My brows shoot up. I hadn’t expected that.
Rook grimaces at my look and shrugs. “Our father—Wulf’s and mine—was the previous alpha of the pack. Our great-grandfather was the one who started it when the Detroit area pack split into two. Wulf and I were both groomed from the time we were born. Wulf always hated the leadership, but I was good at it. I think everyone was relieved when I turned out to be more dominant. Just before I was ready to take over for my father, I found my mate.”
I almost spit my drink out. “You weremated?”
Rook chuckles. “Is it really so hard to believe?”
I blush and shake my head. “No, of course not, but…you just seem so adamant about not dating.”
His face crumples, and I know immediately what happened. “Rook…I’m so sorry.”
He forces a pained smile at me. “Lily was everything to me. We were mated for nearly forty years.”
I choke on my food. “Forty years!How old are you? You look thirty, at best!”
Rook rears back, startled by my outburst, then throws his head back and laughs so loudly we catch the attention of all the wolves using the park or enjoying the river. Then again, the number of wolves in view has nearly doubled since we got here, so they may have already been spying on us. But now they’re openly staring.
“Sorry,” Rook says, trying to calm his laughter. “I thought you knew about shifters’ life spans.”
“Hu-uh. Just how long is it?”
“Wolves live to be around three hundred.”
“Whoa.”
“Yeah. I’m one hundred fourteen, so that’d be closer to thirty-five, in human terms.”
The man was one hundred fourteen years old. It took everything in me to play it cool. “Huh.” I blatantly ogled him for a moment, then said, “Well, you look great for your age, old man.”
Rook burst into laughter again.
When he quieted down, he seemed ready to talk about his mate without falling apart, because he continued his story without my having to ask. “So, like I said, Lily and I were mated for forty years, and though that’s not necessarily a long time to a werewolf, we were mated young, and we were happy together. Soon after we were mated, my parents stepped down, and Lily and I became the alpha pair. Thirty years ago, there was a vampire uprising in Detroit. A couple different clans who were having trouble with rogue shifters decided they were going to rid the area of all shifters. My pack was the largest and the strongest, so they attacked us first.
“We had no warning, and we were massively outnumbered. It was a slaughter. Over half of my pack was killed before we stopped them, including my parents and Lily.”
I gasp, completely caught up in the story.
He swallows, and it takes him a moment to speak again. His voice falls to a mere whisper. “I was devastated after the battle. Completely broken.”
“I can imagine,” I murmur.
“I blamed myself. I was Alpha. I was supposed to protect my pack. Instead, my pack was torn apart, and three of the people I cared for most in the world were dead.”
“It wasn’t your fault. You had no reason to think that vampires wanted to wipe out your pack. It was completely unprovoked and without warning.”
Rook looks at me for a long time but says nothing to my comment. After eating a few more bites of his steak in silence, he finally says, “I couldn’t be in charge anymore after that. Back then, I couldn’t live with myself. I was going to go off on my own, like Wulf had years before. Toth was my beta at the time. I handed the pack over to him and tried to leave.
“I roomed with Wulf for a year or so, but Peter came looking for me. He’d always been my best friend. He knew how much I still needed the pack. I’m not like my brother. I’m a social creature. Being a lone wolf was turning me dark. I would have eventually gone rogue. I’m not sure if Wulf called Peter for help, or if Peter came looking for me on his own, but he convinced me to come back.
