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“I’m sure,” Elizabeth said evenly. She reached out and rubbed a hand along my arm, leaving a trail of light as my tattoos lit up under her touch. It’d taken a long time to get used to being touched by wolves again, and I tended to avoid lying in the piles they sometimes did, but I didn’t shove them away anymore. Ox was pleased at it, as was Joe. I put up a good front.
“Ox talk to you?” Carter asked.
“He tried.”
“Stubborn, huh.” He eyed me up and down. “Should probably work on that.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Did you put him up to it this time?”
He said, “No,” and at the same time, Kelly said, “Sure did.”
Jessie coughed harshly again.
“Assholes,” I muttered. “Mind your own damn business.”
“Grumpy old man,” Kelly teased.
“That’s what I called him,” Robbie said. “But then he got the murder eyebrows he sometimes does. Like right now.”
They all laughed at me.
I left them on the porch.
Ox and Joe still weren’t speaking when I approached, though Ox’s hand was still on Joe’s neck. Joe glanced at me as I came to stand at his side. His eyes flashed at me, and I felt the pull of pack as my arm brushed his.
It’d been… difficult, trying to reconcile the difference between my Alpha and my tether. There’d never been two Alphas in charge of a single pack before, and for a while, I wasn’t sure it was going to work. I was drawn to Joe because he was all I’d known for three years. I was tied to Ox because he kept me sane.
It hadn’t been fair to him. To Ox. Making him my tether as I had, all over a work shirt with his name stitched in the front. He didn’t know about the monsters in the dark. But the roar in my head lessened, the anger quieting anytime he was near. By the time I realized what was happening, it was too late. And then the Bennetts returned to Green Creek, bringing with them a lifetime of memories I’d forced myself to forget.
It’d been made more difficult the first time Thomas had come to me asking for help with Joe, who couldn’t seem to hold his shift. Or when I’d seen Mark for the first time in years, standing on the sidewalk in Green Creek like he’d never left.
Nothing about this had been easy. But I thought it was getting better.
“Ox talk to you?” Joe asked.
Okay, it wasn’t getting better at all. Fuck every single one of them.
“Murder eyebrows,” Ox murmured.
“We have other things to worry about,” I reminded them.
“Sure, Gordo,” Joe said easily. He’d found peace since returning to Green Creek, especially after the death of Richard Collins. He was his father’s son, much to my dismay. He was calm and strong and not above a little manipulation if the situation called for it. I told myself it wasn’t malicious, but I still struggled with the idea of Thomas Bennett, though he was nothing but ash and dust spread throughout the woods around the Bennett house. “Other things. But I’m pretty good at multitasking, in case you didn’t know.”
“Omega?”
Joe bumped his shoulder against mine. “Yes.”
“Like the others?”
“Probably. Your wards give us plenty of warning. I trust them. Like I trust you.”
It shouldn’t have made me feel as warm as it did. “You’re just trying to get on my good side.”
He squinted at me. “Is it working?”
“No.”
“Kelly’s right, you know.”
