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He cocked his head at me, ears twitching.
“You had to stay for a reason, right?”
He growled.
I sighed. “Right.” The houses were out of sight behind us, the road stretching out before us, and I was struck, then, by just how easy it would be to take this decision out of their hands. To put an end to all of this, just as Livingstone had said. I was under no illusions that I could trust a single word that came out of his mouth, but what if? What if he was true to his word? What if all he wanted was the two of us and he would leave everyone else alone?
“We could just go,” I said suddenly, and the wolf stopped. I did too. I didn’t look at him, but I knew he was listening. “You and me. We could just leave. Head east on our own. Because that’s what people do for those they care about. They do anything they can to keep them safe. I don’t think I had that in Caswell.” I paused, considering. “Either time. I was sent here to keep tabs the first time, and I never left. If I’d had a home before, I wouldn’t have stayed. These people. This pack. They made something for me here. They allowed me to stay.” I closed my eyes. “It would hurt them, but it would be a gift in the long run. They could see it in time. They might even forgive us someday.”
I opened my eyes as the wolf rounded in front of me, hackles raised. He bared his fangs as he growled at me, pawing the dirt and gravel. He took a step toward me, and I took an answering step back. His eyes were alight, and the air was hot and hazy around us. It almost felt like I was dreaming.
Before he could take another step, a voice spoke behind me. “You can’t.”
I turned.
Joe stood in the middle of the road. He looked impossibly young for one so strong, here in these woods that thrummed with the blood of all those who had come before him. He had a complicated expression on his face, part anguish, part irritation. And there was blue too, rippling off him like he had no control over it.
He said, “You can’t. You just can’t.”
I hung my head. “Why? It’d be easier—”
“I don’t give a fuck about easy,” he snapped, Alpha filling his voice, creating a deep and unwavering timbre. “If I did, I wouldn’t be here. We never would have made it this far. Look at me, Robbie.”
I did. I was helpless not to.
The irritation was gone, though the anguish remained, filling in the cracks. He looked stricken, hands jerking at his sides like he wanted to reach out for me and thought better of it. The wolf stood next to me, tail swishing, waiting to see what the Alpha would do. What he would say.
Joe shook his head. “I let you down.”
I barely kept from rolling my eyes. “I think you were justified—”
“No,” he said, taking a step toward me. I was frozen in place. “That’s not fair. That’s an excuse. An easy one. And one I’ve taken before.” He took another step. I could see his mother in him. His brothers. He felt like the wolf from my dreams, the one I knew now to be his father. And in this haze of green and blue, he was a king without a crown. I thought he could save us all if only given the chance. “My father….” His chest hitched. “He told me that an Alpha couldn’t be absolute. That I would need to listen. He said the measure of an Alpha isn’t the power he holds over others but what he does with it. I would need to know kindness as well as strength. I would need to put pack above all others, even myself. An Alpha without a pack isn’t an Alpha at all. Richard Collins didn’t understand that. He only wanted the power. To use it to twist everything until it lay in ruins. He wanted to destroy. He almost took everything. Do you know why he failed?”
The wolf nuzzled my palm, nipping lightly at my fingers.
“He failed because he didn’t understand the lessons of my father. He didn’t understand what it meant to be pack. And neither did I. Not until you taught me.”
I was alarmed when he fell to his knees in front of me. I was horrified when he bared his neck, a sign of submission I’d never seen from an Alpha before. His eyes were wet and pleading. His voice was broken when he said, “I let you down, Robbie. I should have done more. I should have listened. To Ox. To Gordo. To Kelly most of all. I forgot the words of my father. You were—are—part of my pack, and I—I just let you go.”
“Get up,” I said roughly. “Get up, get up, get up—”
And he said, “No. Not until you hear me. Not until you understand. You are important to me. When you were gone, I tried to ignore this hole in all of us. I told myself that we had other things to worry about. I closed ranks, and that was a mistake.”
I saw movement behind him, and there, standing down the road, was Ox. He watched. He waited.
Joe never took his eyes off me.
“If you leave,” Joe said, “if you decide to give up, to give in, then what the hell are we fighting for? What’s the point of all of this?”
“It’d be easier,” I whispered.
“It would,” he agreed. He tried for a smile, but it shattered. “But I don’t want that. Not if it means losing you. You’re my brother’s mate. But more than that, you’re my brother, just as much as Kelly and Carter. You can’t go, because without you, we’re incomplete. And if we’re incomplete, then we’re nothing.”
“You survived,” I said, surprised at how bitter it sounded.
“We did. But there’s a difference between surviving and living. And I want to live, Robbie. I want to live for you. For all of you. Because we deserve it. We deserve to exist in a world where we only know peace. We deserve to be happy. You deserve it. And I forgot that. If you’ll forgive me, I promise I’ll never let it happen again.”
I wiped my eyes. “You can’t promise that. No one can.”
