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Whoever said that, when the cat’s away, the mice will play only did because they didn’t know anything about wolf shifters. From the youngest pup to the oldest gamma, the moment the Alpha steps paw off of immediate territory, they get the itch to rebel.
It’s a shifter thing. A pack is at its best when there’s no doubt who the leader is. We need a concrete hierarchy, each one of us intimately aware of where our place in it is. Alpha’s at the top with the alpha female, followed by the Beta, the Alpha’s inner circle, the gammas, and then the deltas. As always, omegas are set apart from the rest of the pack, though I’m still closer to the top because of the way my type of wolf has power over those on the bottom.
That’s why, on the rare occasion that Bishop has to leave Hickory, I have to be on my guard, calming any wayward packmates who might feel lost without their Alpha to lead them—or talking down those whose wolf go feral enough that challenging the absent Alpha seems like a good idea.
I’m in charge of their emotions. As Bishop’s mate, Sofia’s presence is a reminder that one-half of the alpha couple is still imprinting on the pack and our territory. And West… our Beta will do whatever he has to to protect Bishop’s position of power.
It’s not as though any of us expect our fellow packmates to lose their mind and rise up against Bishop. We don’t. Bishop has all of our loyalty and has since he became Alpha a decade ago. Doesn’t matter. Shifters respond better to routine, and when something changes it, it’s up to the rest of us to keep life in Hickory going smoothly.
It’s been six months since West ran off with me and we returned as bonded mates. Losing the Beta and Omega at the same time was a hard blow to the pack’s stability that we only recently got under control. Seeing us together, sensing our mate bond… it helped, but it also inadvertently gave some other packmates the really wrong idea of what’s acceptable when it comes to a mating.
West is the Beta. As Bishop’s right-hand wolf, he should’ve known better to put his own needs before those of the pack. When he did what he wanted anyway and Bishop didn’t punish him publicly for it, some other wolves thought that meant our Alpha condoned what West did.
As if. The only reason my brother kept his reaming out of West behind closed doors was because he thought of it as a family matter first, and a pack matter second. That was Bishop’s mistake. Too busy thinking like my older brother, he forgot that impressionable packmates were watching.
We discovered that around Christmas, four months ago. When Reese disappeared with Lux, leaving only a vial of quicksilver behind in her cabin as a clue that he’d followed West’s lead, Bishop shifted on the spot when he was told, roaring so loudly that there wasn’t a single wolf in Hickory—wild or shifter—who didn’t submit at the sound.
Including his Beta.
Not that I blamed Bishop at all, but I almost missed my first Christmas as a mated she-wolf because his solution was to send West on his own to track down Reese and Lux. West wasn’t allowed to come back unless he brought them with him so Reese could explain himself, and Bishop could make sure that Lux wasn’t forced into doing anything she didn’t want to.
I know the two younger wolves. Both in their early twenties, neither one had met their fated mate yet, and though they weren’t in a relationship when Reese made his move, that wasn’t for a lack of trying on Lux’s part. She’d been trying to attract the black wolf for years. Too thick to notice, he pined for her from a distance until he decided to follow his Beta’s lead and whisk her off of pack land to proposition her.
It didn’t matter to the Alpha that Lux was ecstatic that Reese both chose her, then stole her away to shower her with his attention. Bishop put his paw down at the beginning of this year: anyone who brought quicksilver into Hickory would be punished, and the next wolf—male or female—who forgot that mates get to choose was going to be banished from the pack.
No ifs, ands, or buts.
Desperate to get back to me, West ran them to ground in three days. He told me later that he burst in on them in the middle of mating; with the whole cabin smelling like wolves and sex, it wasn’t the first time they had mated, and he missed the grunts coming from beyond the door until it was too late. Reese is a delta. Normally, he would be no match for the Beta, but, normally, he didn’t have his naked female beneath him, his cock buried balls-deep inside of her.
Poor West. While nudity is no big deal in a pack, that doesn’t count mating. He saw more of the younger wolves than he ever wanted to. Then, to add injury to insult, my mate got a nasty bite to his arm when Reese pulled out, shifted to a wolf, and lunged at West in a bid to protect his female.
Served him right, Bishop said later, lips twitching in the closest thing he did to a smile.
Reese and Lux are bonded mates now, and no one has defied Bishop’s latest law since then. He was a little worried they might when he had to leave—not gonna lie, so was me and West—but, so far, everything’s run as smoothly as possible.
I never left Hickory before West made off with me in the middle of the night. My brother, though? As Alpha, sometimes he has no choice. At the very least, he has to travel to the annual Alpha meeting that takes place every July. And then there are those times when the Alpha collective—the ruling body for shifters in the United States—needs an Alpha to do their duty.
That’s what happened a couple of days ago when Bishop was summoned to the Northern Winds Pack in the Northeast.
Turns out that the fabled Luna-touched female who could break bonds with the touch of her finger isreal. A she-wolf who lost her fated mate because of the other female went to the Alpha collective with her complaint, and they decided to put Elizabeth Howell on trial. Twelve Alphas had to go meet with the female and see if she was as big a threat as the other she-wolf claimed.
Bishop was one of them.
Sofia might be the alpha female of our pack, but her wolf is a maternal delta. When she heard that Bishop would have to interrogate a shifter who couldbreak bonds, she was understandably worried. Only Bishop assuring her that the she-wolf’s “gift” wouldn’t work on a bond as strong as theirs kept Sofia from making it even harder on him to leave her behind.
He promised he’d be back within the week. It’s only been three days since he left, and I can’t wait for Bishop to return so that I can have West to myself for more than a few minutes.
I knew what I was getting into when I mated the Beta. His loyalty to Bishop and our packmates makes him attractive in a different way than his sexy smile and his handsome face. He’s devoted to Hickory, even if I’m the only female who’s ever held his heart in her paws.
Without Bishop here, West is acting as the de facto Alpha. He still spends the nights in our bed, but he’s either sitting in the den, mediating any pack squabbles, or strolling around our territory, letting the other wolves see him and know that a dominant wolf is in charge during the days while Bishop is gone.
As for me… Sofia is obviously struggling without Bishop. She doesn’t want anyone to see it, but I’m the Omega. I don’thaveto see it to know that her wolf is keening inside of her chest, calling for her mate. When I’m not busy with another packmate, I’m sitting with her, soothing her wolf’s loneliness with my presence and my wolf’s calming nature.
And, okay, maybe I tell her a few of my favorite childhood stories about Bishop to cheer her up.
It’s early evening now. The sun is streaming through the hanging leaves of the hickories on the edge of our land, and it’s even warmer than it has been lately. As shifters, we run hot to begin with. The dress I’m wearing today is a simple light blue shift dress covered in a daisy print that reminds me of the flowers that my beloved mate still brings me whenever we’re apart.
West has brought me three Shasta daisies alone since Bishop left. I’ve pressed each one of them in my latest album—except for the one from earlier this morning. That one I have tucked behind my ear, nestled in my loose hair.
