21

Case took over as many of the arrangements as Lydia would allow, hoping against hope that he could give her a small break so she could actually have time to deal with her feelings. There was probably no way around funeral arrangements being time-consuming and complicated as hell, but God, it felt almost cruel to ask anyone to go through all that while they were still in the rawest stage of grief. He tried to handle as much of it as he could.

It helped that Ruth had had such a strong personality that in some cases, it was easy to know what she would and wouldn’t have wanted: no, they wouldn’t be having her ashes turned into fireworks, thanks. Nor would the funeral have a “fun theme.”

He wanted the service to be the tiniest bit of a balm for Lydia, who would need the closure, and a fitting acknowledgment of Ruth, who had been Mountainview’s unflinchingly devoted sentinel for so many years.

With all that going on, neither he nor Lydia needed a flood of people coming to them with dishwasher-level squabbles, but that was what they were getting. But it felt like the wrong time to suggest, however gently, that these weren’t problems the whole pack needed to deal with. Lydia wasn’t the only one around here who was grieving and a little bit at sea without Ruth’s presence. Mountainview’s residents needed some reassurance, and Case didn’t want to deny them that.

He was slowly learning when to trust his wolf and go with its instincts over his own. And even though it had shared his skepticism about the Graves’ little problem, it didn’t once balk at handling any of this.

We are co-alpha now , it said, and the welfare of the pack is our business.

Including dishwashers?

It flicked its ears back and forth when it was thinking, like they were two little metronomes. Case found it oddly adorable—at least as adorable as he could find something that didn’t exist outside of his own mind’s eye.

It’s not about dishwashers now , his wolf said finally. It’s about them wanting to see us and our mate and know that someone is still looking out for them.

That was what Case had sensed too, and that was why he was willing to go along with even the silliest, most obviously trumped-up “disputes” that people came to them with right after Ruth’s death. He took some of them solo, to give Lydia some time and space, but sometimes she seemed to crave the distraction and the pack’s presence. He let her be the judge of what she needed most at any given time, and no one, to his relief, quibbled about her sometimes choosing to sit things out.

That was more proof of what he’d already known: Mountainview’s people weren’t unreasonable or uniquely needy. It reassured him that he and Lydia could work out a system that would be good for everyone in the long-run. It wouldn’t leave any of the pack out in the cold, neglected or unhelped, but it also wouldn’t leave Lydia feeling drained and trapped. Even in the midst of all the grief and stress they were going through right now, it was still getting easier and easier to imagine a future.

To imagine a home here.

But before they could get properly started on any of that, they had to get through the funeral.

“One more day,” Lydia said. “After tomorrow, Reeve is out of our hair for good. Even if he comes back, he can’t challenge fully established alphas.”

She took a black dress out of the thrift store garment bag and carefully hung it up on the closet door.

Case looked at it. “That suits you,” he said frankly. “I know that’s not anybody’s top concern about something they’re going to wear to a funeral, but—”

“No, I know.” She smiled a little. “I’m actually not the one who picked it out. Jen—the thrift shop owner—saw it come in and held it for me, since she knew it was my size and knew I was going to need one. Every time I get frustrated that I can’t leave this place, I’m going to think about that. People around here stick by each other.”

“They do. Did I tell you that I practically had to argue Polly into charging us anything for the bakery catering the wake? There are a lot of good people around here.”

“There are.” She sat down on the bed and looked up at him. “And you really like it here?”

“Of course I do. I’m not as mated to—and married to—Mountainview as I am to you, but it might be close. It’s gorgeous here, and the people are great.”

It was hard to say the next part, but if he couldn’t be vulnerable with her, then he couldn’t be vulnerable with anyone.

“I sort of convinced myself that I couldn’t have that, you know. I always liked moving around, but after a while, I kind of had to keep moving around, if that makes sense. Because wherever I went, people acted like there was something wrong with me because of how I’d been living. Either they wanted me gone or they wanted me to settle down because it would be good for me, like it was a dose of medicine I needed to take whether I wanted it or not. Don’t get me wrong, I made friends, and I met plenty of nice people, ones who would have been happy enough if I’d stuck around, but I never found a sense of ... community. I never found anything like Mountainview. Not before it, and not before you.”

To his surprise, his little speech—as awkward as it felt to him—actually made Lydia tear up a little.

“Happy tears,” she said instantly, catching Case’s look of alarm. She stood up to give him a hug. “I’m so glad that you feel like you belong here. I was ....” She took a deep breath. “I know that it’s silly, since we’re meant for each other, but I kept thinking, ‘What if he wants to leave?’”

He kissed the top of her head. “No. I promise, Lydia, I love living here.”

“Right, but being so stuck . I kept worrying that you’d mind it.”

The last thing he wanted was for her to worry, so he almost didn’t say anything at all. But ever since they had worked out that they were mates, they had been open with each other. They’d spent enough time and effort trying to hide how much they cared, and that had been bad enough. They didn’t have to hide anything anymore. He didn’t want them to be on different pages again, and he had the uneasy feeling they were getting close to that.

“We’re not exactly stuck,” Case said. “There isn’t some curse laid on pack alphas that prevents them from ever leaving Mountainview, right?”

Lydia pulled away from him a little, which was a bad sign that made prickles race up and down his spine.

“We don’t crumble into dust at the town line,” she said slowly. “We could go back to the lodge every now and then, for special occasions, or go back to the roadhouse where we met and have a drink. But that’s about it. I thought you realized that. Even staying gone for a night—now that Ruth’s gone, I don’t know if it would be a good idea. The pack is counting on us, Case.”

Case had known they would have to have a talk about setting boundaries with the rest of the Mountainview pack, for everyone’s sake, but he hadn’t imagined that it would have to be this kind of talk. Even though he knew Lydia took it for granted that people would come to them with the tiniest of squabbles, he still hadn’t really understood how deeply she believed her life had to be like this. She truly didn’t think she could ever take a break.

Because Ruth never did .

Ruth, who had died trying to say that she had no regrets about giving her life to her pack—but who hadn’t been able to say it without crying.

Case said, “But isn’t it like a family? You wouldn’t leave your family out in the cold when they needed you, but people still have separate lives. Even if you wanted to live close by, there are still vacations and—”

“No, there aren’t. Ruth didn’t even go to my dad’s funeral, Case. To her son’s funeral. She put me on a plane for it, since I wasn’t the alpha yet, but that’s it. She wasn’t going to leave Mountainview to fend for itself.”

Lydia said all this fiercely, like it was a decision she was ready to defend. But it was one of the saddest things Case had ever heard. Lydia had still been pretty young when her parents had died, and from what she’d told him about shifters and air travel, that could easily have been her first flight. Not only would she have been grief-stricken and hurt, struggling to deal with the loss of parents who had pretty much shrugged her off, but her wolf would have been freaking out too. How could Ruth have let her go through all that alone?

And as hard as it was for him to take his attention away from Lydia ... how could Ruth have chosen to go through all that alone? What had it been like for her to mourn her son in an empty house? Case was willing to bet she hadn’t shared her feelings with the pack. He couldn’t imagine Ruth asking anyone else for emotional support.

Now Lydia was planning on following in her footsteps.

A few weeks ago, Case would have said that was her business. He would have hated it, but he still would’ve stood by and watched her wreck her future happiness, because he wouldn’t have believed he had any right to interfere.

But she was his wife, his mate . They had promised to stick by each other. As far as he was concerned, that meant more than staying with her no matter what she decided. It also meant saying something when he saw her heading for disaster.

He would never leave her. But he would also do whatever he could to change her mind about this. She wasn’t going to have Ruth’s life, not if he could help it.

“Mountainview needs an alpha,” Case said quietly. “But it’s a pack, a village, not a child. It doesn’t need constant attention. No one needs to be around all the time to stop it from drinking something it finds under the sink. What’s going to happen if you leave?”

Lydia’s eyes looked dark as flint, striking sparks off her steely gaze. For all that intensity, though, it took a second for her to think of something. She did, though:

“Reeve, obviously.” She sounded almost relieved to have such a good answer.

“You don’t have Reeves coming around every day. You told me that the whole problem with him is that nobody’s prepared for him. He could have targeted anybody who was about to have a change in leadership.”

Lydia’s jaw worked in place, like she was chewing gum. “But he came after us . And yeah, he was waiting for a power vacuum, but he’s not that patient. He almost made a move the day I turned you. What if I hadn’t been here, and he’d killed Ruth instead?”

“What if the rest of Mountainview had stepped in to try to stop him too?”

“That’s not their job.”

“It’s everyone’s job to try to fight back against people like Reeve. From what I’ve seen since I’ve been here, the pack knows that, and they’d step up if you’d just let them—”

Lydia shook her head so hard that her hair lashed back and forth. Case suspected she couldn’t even stand to think about that. If she did, she’d have to acknowledge that, with the best intentions on both sides, she and the pack had let each other down.

She’d have to admit that she wasn’t just an alpha, she was a person and part of a community that was supposed to have way more of a give-and-take.

“You’re just trying to talk me out of doing what I know is right,” she said.

He knew how upset she was, but that still stung.

“Does that sound like me?” Case said. “You’re a hero, and I know it. Do you really think I’d get in your way? Didn’t you want me to marry you because you knew I felt the same way you did? We both agree on what matters. That’s part of why we’re true mates, isn’t it?”

But Lydia had been dismissing her fear and grief and needs for a long time, and now everything was hitting her at once. She was buried under it all, and it was like she couldn’t even hear what he was saying.

“I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to let Ruth down, I’m not going to let Mountainview down. And—” Tears were shining in her eyes now. “And if you can’t handle being co-alpha with me, if you need the kind of life we can’t have here, then—”

Case couldn’t stand to hear her tell him he could leave. He shook his head as frantically as she had.

She said it anyway: “Then you can go. I knew this might be too much for you, that you might be happier on the road. I don’t want you to be miserable here, Case.”

“ I’m not . But you are, Lydia. At least right now. You’re not meant to be stuck like this. You need a little more freedom, the chance to go somewhere, have a little breathing room. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad alpha.”

She turned away from him, which was hard to take. He looked at the sharp, angular lines of her shoulders as she hunched up, her whole body cramped with an unhappiness she was apparently going to do her best to never, ever express. He hated seeing her like this—but now he felt like trying to talk her out of it had only made things worse. Now she was talking to her own fears, not to him.

Was this it? Would they never leave Mountainview’s borders for more than an hour or two? He would miss the open road, and it would break his heart to never have the chance to share his favorite places with her. How could he go the rest of his life without seeing Lydia’s face when she saw the Grand Canyon? But he would still do it, for her. He’d seen enough of the world, so it wouldn’t be the worst thing to stay home, now that he’d finally found it.

But watching Lydia, with her adventurous spirit and need for freedom, slowly wither away inside the trap she’d made for herself ... that would be the worst thing. It was even more painful because he knew it didn’t have to be that way. There was no reason they couldn’t have a different relationship with the pack than the one Ruth had built.

But would he ever be able to get Lydia to see that?

That was all he’d wanted to show her, but instead, he’d managed to convince her that he was on his way out the door. Maybe this was the worst possible time to have this conversation, and it was his own fault for bringing all this up on the eve of Ruth’s funeral. He should have known that Lydia wouldn’t be in the right head-space to reevaluate her whole life. It was time to drop it for now.

He took a deep breath. “I’m stressing you out, and I’m sorry. I just want you to know that no matter what, I’m never going to leave you. That was never what I was saying.”

Lydia’s face softened. “I know. I mean—” She rubbed her eyes, getting rid of the tears. “I freaked out, but I know you’re here for me. I do. It’s just that I don’t ever want to stop you from being happy.”

“You won’t. You couldn’t.”

He wrapped his arms around her, and she pressed her still-damp face against his chest, letting out a long, unsteady breath of her own. He was relieved that as tense as things had gotten just now, she was still prepared to cuddle up to him without a second thought. Their mate bond was as strong as it had ever been, and holding each other felt as right and easy as ever.

That meant it was okay to risk the hard conversations. It would take a lot more than that to drive a real wedge between them.

Even if he never convinced her to give herself a break, he could at least be sure it was okay to try. And he was going to try again, both for her sake and the sake of the pack.

“I love you,” he said against her temple.

“I love you too.” Her breathing was steadier now. “But you’ll tell me if you’re ever unhappy here, won’t you?”

“I will. And you’ll tell me ?”

He knew that was a risky question. Even if Lydia honestly meant to tell him when the pressures of Mountainview were getting to her, he wasn’t sure if she’d be able to bring herself to do it. But if she promised she would, he’d know she meant it—

Before she could say anything, though, there was a knock at the door.

As much as Case had vowed to humor any and all appeals from the pack during this difficult time, he swore to himself that if a dishwasher was involved in this at all , he was going to lose it.

Be patient , he told himself. Whoever it is, they don’t know that this is a bad time.

“I’ll get it,” he said, pressing one last kiss to Lydia’s forehead.

“Thanks.” She rubbed her eyes again, making a distinctly sheepish face. “I could probably use a minute to calm down, but I’ll join you. If it’s something complicated, stall them.”

He had to admit he was intrigued by what kinds of complicated issues they could—and eventually would—get. His wolf perked up at that too, always interested in learning more about being a good alpha to its pack. Case gave it a mental scratch behind the ears as he headed for the door.

He opened it up.

“Hey,” Reeve said, his mouth widening in a threatening grin. “Did you miss me?”

Before Case could answer, Reeve crooked his finger, and a lean young woman stepped up onto the porch beside him.

“By the way,” Reeve said, “I wanted you to meet my new mate.”