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That caught my attention. Normally if she sent me anywhere, it was within a few hours’ drive of Caswell. There were extensions of her pack throughout Maine, wolves who worked around the state, mostly in the bigger cities like Bangor and Portland. They lived in small groups, working with the humans who were unaware of what they were, especially those in positions of power in local government. When I first arrived I’d made the mistake of calling it her agenda, and she’d corrected me immediately. She didn’t have an agenda, she said. She merely wanted to expand the reach of the wolves. I didn’t understand why she needed to do this, given that no one was trying to fight against her. And why would they? She was the Alpha of all for a reason. And while her word was final, it wasn’t absolute. She listened to her pack, heard their worries and concerns. If she could help them, she did.
I thought at first the wolves were scared of her.
I thought at first I was scared of her.
But there’s a thin line between fear and awe.
I tried to tamp down my eagerness. “You’re serious?”
She nodded toward Ezra. “He thinks you’re ready.”
Maybe I wouldn’t have to yell at him after all. “I am.”
“Then consider this a test,” she said. “To see if he’s right.”
“I think you’ll find I usually am,” he said mildly.
The skin around her eyes tightened briefly. I wondered what they’d been talking about before I showed up. “We’ll see, then, won’t we? There’s a pack in Virginia. It’s small—an Alpha and three Betas. We haven’t heard from them in a few months.”
I frowned. “Hunters?”
She shook her head slowly. “Not that I’m aware of. More of a… disagreement in the way things should be run. I need you to impress upon them that open lines of communication are paramount to the survival of our species. It’s imperative, especially in these troubling times, that we have each other’s backs as much as possible. I’ve sent you the file.”
I pulled my phone from my pocket and clicked on the Dropbox app to download the attachment. The first page was a picture. The Alpha stood in the center. She was smiling. She was younger than I expected her to be. She could have been in high school. She was holding a sign that said SOLD! in bright lettering. There was a run-down house behind her looked barely livable.
Standing with her were three men. Two were young. One was old enough to be her father, though they looked nothing alike. He was black. She was white. They were all smiling.
The rest of the file contained information on the pack. I was right. The Alpha was young, having just turned twenty. I couldn’t imagine having that kind of power at that age. I read that she’d gotten it from her mother when she’d passed on a year prior.
“No witch?” I asked, reading through the notes.
“No,” Michelle said. “They were never big enough to need one. Her mother was a friend of mine. Kind. Patient. Willing to work for the good of the pack. Her daughter is headstrong. I know tha
t she’ll fall in line with proper motivation.”
I looked up at her. “How did her mother die?”
“A car accident, of all things. Her daughter was in the car with her but wasn’t seriously hurt. The power of the Alpha passed along to her. She’s been… difficult ever since. But when one is as young as she, one tends to get ideas about the way things should be run. She hasn’t been in touch, and it appears she has cut off communication with us.”
“She wants independence,” I said, going back to the picture. They looked happy. “You can’t fault her for that.”
“I don’t,” Michelle said sharply, and I felt the pull in her voice, the undercurrent of the Alpha. “But there is a difference between independence and outright defiance. This is the way things are done, Robbie. You know that. She has her own pack, yes, but all wolves are under my jurisdiction.”
I did know. There were outliers, sure, wolves who tried to remain hidden from the reach of the Alpha of all. And if they didn’t have an Alpha of their own, they ran the risk of turning Omega, losing their minds to the wolf, forgetting they had ever been human.
And if it got that far, there was only one thing that could be done.
It was always quick. Or so I was told. I’d never seen an Omega put down.
I never wanted to.
“Maybe they just forgot to check in,” I said. “You know how things get. They’re busy living their own lives. It happens.” I didn’t know why I was pushing this. Maybe it was because I understood the desire to be free, to not have anything hanging over your head.
“We’ll see,” Ezra said.
“We?”
He looked at me. “Of course, dear. You don’t think I’d let you go by yourself, do you?”
