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Titus grunted. “So who’s going to challenge McKenzie for the pack? Because someone has to. True before Jessie became pack Second, truer now.”
“And it needs to be Ryder,” Benny said. “I told him. I mean does he really want his mate to be pack Second for anyone else? Tell them, Titus. Being pack Second is a bond —you feel things.”
Titus nodded. “I do,” he agreed. “Not as much as some pack Seconds, I reckon —your Dad’s a private man. But I get moods, threats, location.” He shrugged. “It’s comforting, really. But it does help if you like the guy.”
Jessie let out a shuddering breath. “Make it go away,” she pleaded. “I don’t want to be pack Second!”
Benny grimaced. He looked at Titus, but apparently Titus wasn’t going to field that one. Ryder considered what he knew about challenges. No, he wasn’t going to answer her either. He rubbed her back and made sure not to meet Benny’s eyes. Benny sighed.
“Someone would have to challenge you for it,” Benny said, reluctantly. “There could be an agreement that it was to be a token fight, and then you concede, and the bonds should transfer. But I’d say at least half the time in a token fight — the ones I know of were for Alpha, from father to son —the Alpha ends up dead. The wolves take control in the fight, and they don’t necessarily stop. So it’s a risk. Not to mention that we don’t know anyone in the Penticton pack, and I can about guarantee that when the Alpha figures out his Second is a woman, he’s going to issue a kill-on-sight order.”
“Can you fight, girl?” Titus asked gently. “We could all see that your wolf can, but what about you?”
“In Chen’s pack? Are you kidding? He liked his women submissive. He wasn’t going to teach us how to fight —or allow someone else to,” Jessie said bitterly. Then she brightened. “But I’d like to learn, if I live through this.”
Titus nodded. “We’ll work that out,” he promised. “I’ll teach you. Ryder can. Benny’s the best teacher, of course. So you’ve got lots of teachers available to you. Might give you a brief session today about confidence. If you have to fight, looking confident and then a quick shift to your wolf is probably the way to go.”
“Especially since she doesn’t know how to fight, and her wolf does,” Benny said, nodding. “That’s basically what Abby did when she became Alpha. She’s learned a lot about fighting since then, but truthfully, that’s what she still does.”
“I saw her kill an attacker,” Jessie said slowly. “The wolf that day, and then a human. She was human, but she had claws.”
Ryder saw Titus’s quick look, and then he looked at Benny. Well, he was wondering too. What the hell? He’d been told, be one thing or the other, never anything between. Had the female Alpha not gotten the message?
Probably exactly that, he realized.
“Could I do that?” Jessie asked. “I mean, we were taught not to ever be anything in between. But, then, we were taught a lot of things that were just plain wrong.”
Benny grimaced. “Abby seems to be able to do a lot of things simply because no one has had time to tell her they’re impossible,” he agreed. “I do know a couple of other people who can partial shift, but it is rare. You might talk it over with your wolf, see what she says.”
Jessie giggled. “That sounds weird,” she observed. “And maybe not a thing to do when we’re in crisis mode.”
Benny grinned at her. “Honey, we’ve been in crisis mode and running red for months. Good luck with that. But maybe you should just know that it is possible. And if your back is against the wall, call your wolf. I saw you do that in the fight with Bjorn. You called your wolf close to the surface, long before you actually shifted and attacked.”
Jessie nodded. “My wolf has more confidence than I do,” she said. “So I let her take care of situations where I need confidence.” She laughed a bit. “Or maybe it’s that she lets me take care of situations where words are important. I’m good with words.”
“Which is why we have wolves,” Benny agreed. “And why our wolves have humans.”
“All well and good,” Ryder interrupted, although he knew giving Jessie some confidence and ideas about fighting might be important. “But Benny, it’s not me who can challenge McKenzie for Alpha. You’re going to have to do it.”
Benny shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m not pack Alpha material. Oh, I’m dominant enough, but pack Alphas have something more than just dominance. They’re driven to take care of people. They collect people, form groups. You probably saw it even in humans when you were in school. Or in town at Horse Creek. Some people just like to group up people and make things work. That’s you, not me. You didn’t see me running a motorcycle club — even when I rode with you, I was happy for you to be in charge, and I was your de facto Second. When you were in the Army? What were you known for? Organizing people. No, you’re the right person to challenge McKenzie. You just need to get your mind wrapped around it.”
Benny stood up and dusted off his pants. “Going to leave the two of you to talk it over,” Benny said. “But Ryder? You can’t leave Jessie to be the pack Second for McKenzie. He’s too much like Chen. I don’t recall anything about the sexual perversions, but then I didn’t recall that about Chen either. So I don’t know if that’s part of the jettisoned memories, or if they just kept it hidden. But regardless of that part of it, McKenzie is in this fight because he wants traditional packs to prevail. And he’s willing to align himself with Chen and the Chinese Alpha —whoever the hell that refers to —to gain power and force all of us back into the Dark Ages. And trust me, the so-called modern packs are conservative, even by the standards of a century ago. They’re hardly progressive. And the traditionalists want to destroy them and take use farther back.”
Ryder snorted. He saw a fair amount of pack life because they rode through pack territory all the time. And if they were going to get off the interstate for very long, he usually made a courtesy call. Benny had been in more pack houses and for longer than he had when he was an intelligencer for the Council. So if he said the modern packs were barely tolerable, and the traditional packs were retrograde, Ryder figured he knew what he was talking about.
He pulled Jessie to her feet. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll spell the guards at the top, and we’ll talk.”
Benny and Titus were already half-way down the hill back to camp, arguing about something, it looked like. Ryder grimaced, wondering what that was about. He sent the guards on down to get something to eat, and then he settled down on the rock that made for a good viewpoint of the road back into Penticton. He considered that. Could someone come at them from Osoyoos? Possible, he allowed. If they ended up staying here much longer, he’d post a guard to the south too.
Jessie sat between his legs, and he wrapped his arms around her. She relaxed back against him. In spite of his promise to talk, it felt good to just sit here, feeling Jessie’s warm body in his arms. Must have felt good to Jessie too, because rather than talking, she fell asleep.
Gave him a chance to sort out his thoughts. Benny was right; the idea that his mate would have a bond link with an Alpha bothered him. He could already appreciate how... intimate a bond that was. And yes, he’d caught Titus’s reference to moods. He suspected that meant he knew when the Alpha was making love. Talk about living in each other’s pockets! But truth was in the MC, you knew that. Just like last night, when everyone in the pack knew he and Jessie were making love.
And probably everyone with an Okanogan pack bond had felt them seal the mate bond. It was part of what meant to be pack, this sense of belonging and connection. But a mate bond was more. And he suspected a Second-Alpha bond was more.
No, Benny was right, that thought gave him the creeps.
So Something Must Be Done. It always felt like that phrase should be capitalized. Maybe illustrated with a chicken with its head chopped off and flopping about. It usually meant no one wanted to be the person who did it —and probably no one knew what needed to be done, either.
