3. Chapter 3

Weekends were often used for pack business and pack bonding. We didn’t have a meet every Saturday, but this week we’d been called to our country lodge two hours outside town. I parked my beater beside Nick’s minivan, because looking at that Mom-mobile gave me glee. Nick had ridden a Harley, back in the day, dressed in biker leathers with his long hair pulled into a ratty ponytail. The evolution of rough and tough Nick into Nick the Doting Family Man had been a fast one from the day he met his wife. Love and family looked good on him, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t give him a hard time about the van.

As Second, he stood by the door watching the pack come inside. I murmured, “Your babywagon looks dirty. Don’t you wash it in the driveway every week like a good little househusband?” as I passed.

He stuck out a foot, trying to trip me, which I dodged. “I can make you wash it for me, Fifth ,” he reminded me with no real menace.

I laughed. “Yes, sir. Whatever you say, sir.”

“I say find some food and get your ass into the meeting room.”

Since that was exactly what I was planning to do, I waved behind my back and headed to the great room. Some meets, the whole families showed up, and we brought a lavish spread, turning a get-together into a party. This time, the tables along the wall were laden with takeout. We had a bunch of boring pack business to get through, wolves only, though some of the wives were agitating to change that. We men could cook for ourselves, of course. Some of the guys were even great at it, although I wasn’t. But greasy takeout on pack-only days was a longstanding tradition.

I filled a plate with burgers, fries, and pizza and found a place along the wall where I could sit in a high-backed chair and focus on the food. My pack was mid-sized at seventeen. Of those, two were elders who no longer fought for rank, and one was Charlie, just turned eighteen and not in the least eager to Challenge anyone. Charlie was a good kid but soft as a werewolf could ever be. Even in our now-more-image-conscious pack, he was going to stay at the bottom of the ranks till he was ninety.

My packmates gradually filled the room, chatting and jostling, friendship and food mixed with the little bits of push and posture that happened when bored wolves hung out together. Whoever our ancestors or creators were, they’d made us far more driven by rank and status than any wolf or human ever was. Each of us knew exactly where the rest stood, in fixed array from Alpha down to Charlie at Fifteenth, and the two elders. Each of us recognized the wolf above us, whom we’d have to fight if we wanted more power, and the one below who might be gunning for us.

Fights and changes of rank were rare in a settled pack like ours. Unless someone left or we gained a new member, there was little to unbalance the status quo. But occasionally, a young wolf was feeling his oats or an older one was impatient, and there’d be a Challenge. Periodically, a sense of uneasiness seemed to affect the pack, and people got snappy. The last true upheaval happened seven years back when Joe moved from Second to elder. Nick, who’d been Fourth, had challenged our Third, Elijah, for that open Second spot.

When the fur was done flying and we’d mopped the blood off the floor, Elijah had shown his belly, to the relief of many of us, and Nick was Second.

I wasn’t sure why the pack felt unsettled again now. Not as bad as when we’d been watching Joe, knowing his retirement was coming, but something was afoot. Maybe just the restlessness of a boring fall, though.

My phone vibrated in my pocket and I pulled it out.

Kendrick. ~Larissa drew a picture of you saving her and chasing away the boys.

The next text was a photo of a child’s drawing with a big black amorphous creature grabbing one human figure in its jaws while another ran away, a speech bubble above its head saying, “Ahhhhhh!”

~I didn’t bite anyone, I texted back.

~Artistic license. You okay? You didn’t text me last night.

I didn’t want to tell him I’d been too uncertain of what to say, whether to even contact him at all. I’d stayed awake long into the night wondering if I wanted to shake up my life. Because Kendrick felt like an earthquake in the making. Turned out, one text from him and I was caving, just as I feared. ~Stayed in fur. Makes typing difficult. That was true, if not the whole truth.

~Of course. I’m being a worrywart. Side effect of single-dadding.

~I don’t mind. I’d sent that before I realized how true that was. It’d been a long time since anyone had worried about me. Mom died when I was nineteen, and my father, heartbroken at the loss of his true mate, had left the pack and the home they’d made together to travel overseas. Fifteen years ago, he’d pledged to an Alpha in France and was now pack Tenth there. We called each other now and then. I knew he loved me, but it was a remote and pale version of love. Unless I missed contacts for a month or two, he’d never know anything was wrong.

Kendrick replied, ~Good. Wouldn’t want to overstep.

~What are you doing right now? I wondered what his weekend was like. Childcare, no doubt, with Larissa out of school, but he couldn’t spend two days playing with his kid.

~I’m cleaning the downstairs bathroom. There’s all this black fur on the floor.

~Sorry. I’d never had to worry about that at someone else’s place before. Vacuuming was a fact of life.

~I’m teasing you. It took one run with the Swiffer. I’m actually looking up recipes to make boxed mac and cheese healthier. Sadly, they all sound kind of gross.

~I wish I could offer cooking skills, but I got none.

~When I started this single parent gig, I could barely boil water. Slow progress.

~That stew last night was great.

~Thank you. Although throwing chunks of things together in a pot isn’t haut cuisine.

~I’d eat it again anytime. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, but excitement fizzed like champagne in my veins, chatting with Kendrick.

~Yeah? Want to come over tonight? I promise something better than Kraft Dinner.

“Hey, Trent!” Nick was staring at me from across the room. I realized the others had begun filing into the meet room. “You gonna stop smiling at the phone like a lovesick cow and join us? Who is she, anyway?”

I typed, ~Got to go, and stuck the phone in my pocket. “No one.”

“Didn’t look like no one. I’ve never seen you lose track like that.”

“Yeah, right.” I managed a scornful note. “Just someone I met last night, no big.”

“Hah. When I met Bianca, all it took was one night.”

I ducked past him into the room and sat in my assigned place on the floor in a semicircle in front of Alpha, between Stan, our Fourth, and Xander, our Sixth. With long practice, I locked all thoughts of Kendrick down deep in the back of my mind. No man, no sex— well, we hadn’t had any— but no interest, no attraction, no distraction. Here, I was Trent, wolf and Fifth, and my sole focus was the pack. I closed my eyes for a moment, breathed out, then inhaled the scent of pack deep into my lungs, centered, and looked at my Alpha.

Alpha swept his gaze around the room, meeting each man’s eyes. “Madison East Pack, we are met.”

“We are met.” Our reply echoed back from all our throats as one. Alpha raised his hands. Mental bonds grew, wolf to wolf, as he brought us together, one pack, one voice, one heritage. Our connections bloomed as Alpha opened the floodgates. In the darkness in the back of my mind, the silver that was my bond to Alpha glowed hot and strong, full of his steady intelligence and forceful purpose. My links to the other wolves lit up too, a steady blue that was Nick, a flicker of flame yellow leading to Garrett, dark green and light green and gold and yellow and amber with minds and bodies at the other end. Sixteen men I knew better than brothers in this way, for a moment sharing one space. Somewhere amid the bonds, anxiety flickered, someone was tired, someone had a sore leg… Hank, my wolf supplied. Stan was mad about something… But nothing big broke the melding of spirits that made us pack.

This, this, this. For all the reasons I’d held my packmates at a distance, there was nothing like the feel, in a meet or on a run, when the pack became one. When our hearts and breathing and feet found a common rhythm, and our differences fell away in the unity of pack. No thoughts, no words, just that deep accord.

“We are met,” Alpha repeated. For a moment, we lived in that space, breathing together. Then Alpha lowered his hands and reclosed our bonds, bit by bit, until only the normal day-to-day awareness remained. The fading of that intense connection was both an enormous loss and a relief. I’d still know if a packmate died, or if he was desperately injured or terrified, but not if he stubbed his toe. Hank’s pain thinned and vanished, Stan’s simmering frustration dropped to nothing in my head. Unless Alpha demanded it, we kept some distance between us.

Thank God. Without that privacy, day to day, I’d have been dead a dozen times before I turned twenty.

With pack bonding done, Alpha began working through the day’s business. Our pack was not a democracy. Anyone who tried for that would find their head firmly acquainted with the back of Alpha’s hand. Or maybe his fist. However, he wasn’t a despot, and he did like to get pack opinions before making decisions.

No voting, though, so unless he called on me specifically for something relating to my expertise as an appliance repairman, I could tune out and space out. And the moment I did so, Kendrick’s face floated into mind. Kendrick, and Nick saying, “all it took was one night.”

Is Nick right? Am I more interested in Kendrick than his pretty blue eyes, chiseled cheekbones, silky black hair, and perfect ass justify? Although, the complete package justified just about anything. Kendrick had pressed all my buttons years ago with a single glimpse on a crowded dance floor, and he still did.

However, I’d fucked other gorgeous men on my occasional nights out. None of them had cost me a moment’s sleep. At most, I’d felt a vague regret that a repeat wasn’t in the cards, before I moved on. So why was Kendrick different? We wolves didn’t find our mates in a flash of emotional lightning, fated like in some fiction. In times past, some men were married to their wives for years before they attempted a mate bond and brought their mate into the secret life of the packs.

Of course, back in those days, slipping up and revealing the packs to an unbonded human was a death-penalty offense. Going slow had made sense.

But even now— Nick and his one-night mate-finding dick aside— we were cautious about our bonds.

So it wasn’t as if Kendrick was somehow destined to be my mate.

Down inside me, my wolf pricked his ears. Mate?

No. Boring tax crap. Go back to sleep.

I struggled to pay attention, but it wasn’t my problem that the tax situation with regard to pack tithes had become complicated with a new law, or that the Ladies’ Auxiliary folks next door to our suburban property were complaining about the invasive buckthorn in our wild area. I trusted Alpha to deal with those things and to call on me if he needed me.

The meet lasted almost an hour before Alpha dismissed us from our places. I stood, stretching, and joined the guys filing out of the room toward the remaining food.

Yes, food is good. Kendrick fed us last night. We should bring him something, my wolf suggested.

I’m not courting him , I reminded the foolish wolf. Wolves tended to court with food, which was all well and good, but that didn’t apply here. Although I had eaten the entire container of his leftover stew, which he might have planned as another meal… Maybe I could bring by a supermarket roast chicken or something.

“…job for a total pussy.”

Those words from Xander behind me snapped me out of my thoughts. Who? What? I stepped out of the way and pivoted to stare at him.

Xander scooped a cookie off one of the tables and went on with a twisted grin, “I mean, anyone who can’t even beat Hank has to be queer, right?”

Alpha frowned at Xander from where he was filling a dessert plate across the room. “How is that relevant?”

“Send Charlie out to deal with the Auxiliary ladies. Let him use that gay charm on them. Old ladies love the queer boys. Kid’s gotta be good for something.”

I glanced back at Charlie who was leaving the room last, as was appropriate. He paused in the doorway. I’d never gotten a gay vibe from the kid. If he was anything alphabet, I’d have bet on asexual. Right now, his face had gone painfully red and I saw his throat work as if trying to speak. I thought his lips shaped the words, “I’m not,” but he didn’t get a sound out.

A few steps ahead of Charlie, Hank, Fourteenth, glared at Xander too. He was a crappy fighter and submissive in his own right, and yeah, the lower ranks were full of men who’d hopscotched right over Hank, but Xander didn’t need to rub it in. Xan was a shit-stirring asshole, though. I guessed every group had one. And I was sick of him, sick of the little jabs and the bully mentality and the homophobia I’d hidden from all my adult life.

I didn’t need an open pack bond to detect the terror coming off Charlie. Ten years of change in the packs or not, being submissive and called a queer wolf was an invitation to abuse. The poor kid swallowed hard enough to be heard across the room. His hands shook.