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The steps to the porch creaked under my weight. Robbie looked pale and withdrawn. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. His gaze jerked toward me, then away. Back, and away. He was nervous. I didn’t know why.
“Is that it?”
He shrugged. He started wringing his hands.
I didn’t have time for this. “What’s the matter?”
For a moment I thought he was just going to stand there, fidgeting. I had no problem leaving him on the porch if he was going to waste my time. I had shit to do.
I didn’t have to wait long.
“I didn’t know,” he blurted, eyes wide.
There it was. “About?”
He winced. “This. Everything. About the Omegas. About the infection or magic or whatever it is. Any of it. I didn’t know.”
“O… kay. Did someone say you did?”
He shook his head. “No, but—I’m not—I came from there. I was Osmond after Osmond.”
“You’re nothing like him, kid. Trust me on that. If I thought you were, you wouldn’t be standing here. I don’t care what Ox would say. I’d turn you inside out without a second thought.”
That… probably wasn’t the most reassuring thing I could have said. He squeaked.
“I’m not going to do it,” I told him. “Because you’re not him.”
“Right,” he said, swallowing thickly. “That’s… good. I appreciate that. Really. Like, so much.”
“Good talk,” I said, turning for the door.
“But it’s weird, right?”
I sighed and turned back around. “What is?”
“That I didn’t know. Because Michelle knew. For a long time. Or at least, she knew something.”
“Probably above your pay grade.”
“But it shouldn’t have been above Joe’s. If Thomas knew, then the moment Joe became Alpha, she should have told him.”
He had a point. “Those were some strange days. Things were… chaotic.”
He pushed his glasses up his nose. “Maybe. But this past year? After Richard. We were… calm. Everything was fine. Mostly. Why not then? Especially since all these Omegas kept coming here. Any one of them could have bitten us. Maybe they were just regular Omegas and not the infected kind. But what if they weren’t? Why would she take that chance?”
One of the many thoughts that had run jumbled through my head. “I don’t know.”
“I know you don’t. But I think I do.”
I looked at him sharply. “What?”
“Thomas Bennett was royalty,” he said, shifting his weight from foot to foot nervously. “All the Bennetts are. It goes back years. Joe. Thomas. Abel. Even before that. Michelle was always supposed to be temporary. An interim Alpha until the Bennett Alpha could take his rightful place.”
“But.”
“But it hasn’t happened. She’s asked for him, but why not push more? Why hasn’t she demanded Joe go to Maine to become the Alpha of all? Why haven’t any of the other wolves tried to call for him either? I was told that after Abel died, there was a huge uproar that an Alpha could be killed in his own territory, especially a Bennett Alpha. They practically forced Thomas to relocate back East.”
“Thomas Bennett wasn’t forced to do anything he didn’t want to,” I said bitterly.
