22

Lydia was glad she was taking a moment to pull herself together.

Of course, if there was ever a time in her life when she could have appeared in front of her packmates with tear-stains on her face, this was it. But when she knew that her eyelids were still red and puffy not from grief but from a horrible bout of stress crying, it felt different. She didn’t want them to see such obvious evidence that Case was right: she did feel trapped here, and she knew it. She just wasn’t sure there was anything she could do about it, not if she wanted to protect Mountainview.

But what if Case was right about Mountainview too? What if the town could look out for itself—and for its alphas—more than Ruth had ever let it? What if it even wanted to?

She had been so sure he wouldn’t want to stay, and so sure she couldn’t leave, that she had never let herself think that maybe neither of those things were true.

She needed to think about it, as much as it hurt to mull over whether or not her whole life had been needlessly narrow and stifled up until now. But—

A sickeningly familiar scent hit her nose.

Lydia growled. It wasn’t the first time she had accidentally let that sound slip out when she was still on two legs, but this was the roughest and most intense it had ever been. It grated on her throat like sandpaper, and she didn’t even care.

Reeve.

It wasn’t like she hadn’t known he might come back. There had always been a timer in the back of her mind, counting down to the last words of Ruth’s funeral, when his chance would be gone for good, and she’d known they weren’t there yet. But she’d still let herself hope.

Ruth wouldn’t have let herself hope.

But Ruth wasn’t here. She was, and so was Case.

And she wasn’t going to let him face Reeve down alone.

She was so distracted by having Reeve’s stink back in her nose again that she was almost to the door before she recognized that there was another new scent here too. This one didn’t ring any bells.

Female. About my age. Scared but —she took a deeper sniff— steeled for trouble. And ....

Mated.

She could smell it, like Ruth had smelled it on her and Case. The mate-bond between two wolves was like a living thing with a distinct scent of its own.

This one didn’t smell healthy or strong, but it was still there. There was a rank physicality to it, a stink of sex and fear-sweet, like the bond had been created under tense and desperate circumstances, with little more than the initial consummation to hold it together. It didn’t smell anything like her bond with Case, but that didn’t matter when it came to an alpha challenge, did it? All that mattered was the fight and who was allowed in it.

Reeve hadn’t run away to escape a fight he wasn’t up for. He’d done it to even the odds as fast as possible.

The battle wasn’t two-to-one anymore. There was no advantage on their side.

She guessed it was good to know that before she even had to come face-to-face with Reeve once more, so her surprise wouldn’t show. He’d already gotten to shock Case. She didn’t want to add to his feeling of smug self-satisfaction.

“Lydia,” Reeve said, as she stepped into view. His voice was almost a purr. “It’s good to see you again.”

Lydia ignored him and held her hand out to his mate instead. If they were going to do this, there was no reason they couldn’t be civilized about it.

Civilized about a tooth-and-nail fight that might go to the death? Sure, why not?

“Hi,” she said, forcing a thin smile that she doubted she could keep up for very long. “I’m Lydia Vasquez. This is my mate, Case Jackson. We already know Reeve, obviously, but what’s your name?”

The young woman tensed up even more, if that were possible. She clearly hadn’t expected this kind of reaction.

It gave Lydia a chance to study her a little more closely. She was in her early twenties, and she had a lean and hungry look that made Lydia suspect she’d lived a hard life. She carried herself like someone who was ready for a fight, but there was a kind of youthful yearning in her gaze that said she hoped it wouldn’t come.

“Meg,” the other woman said finally, clasping Lydia’s hand. “Meg Lindley.”

“Meg Steele ,” Reeve said.

A little ripple of disgust ran over Meg’s features. “I haven’t changed my name yet,” she said tersely. “There’s a lot of paperwork for that.”

Reeve clearly wasn’t thinking about it as a choice Meg would make or a process she would go through, though. He thought it should have happened automatically.

Lydia wouldn’t have minded becoming a Jackson. She had never felt that close to her mom, especially since both her parents had basically handed her over to Ruth. It might be nice to have a name tied to Case instead.

But even if she’d come from a family she actively despised , or even if her name had been something truly heinous like Lydia Buttwiper, she still wouldn’t have taken Reeve’s name as her own. The prospect of it left her with a visceral disgust. It was interesting that even Meg, who’d been able to bring herself to bond with him, seemed to feel the same way.

Well, Lydia had said once that only a desperate woman would be willing to marry Reeve. It looked like she might have been right about that.

“Nice to meet you, Meg Lindley ,” Case said, putting the tiniest emphasis on the last word.

Reeve’s scowl said he hadn’t missed that.

“Ruth’s not buried yet,” he said harshly. “We hereby challenge you for control of the Mountainview pack.” He elbowed Meg, needing her to second him.

She looked down at her feet. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she muttered to her scuffed-up shoes. “But yes. We challenge you.”

It wasn’t like Lydia had really believed that Meg would back down at the last minute. No one mated with Reeve Steele and came all the way across the country to not do what they’d come for.

Still, she found herself reaching for Case’s hand. She needed him to bolster her—

No , Lydia realized. She didn’t exactly need it. She could have stood here alone and dealt with it, the way she’d stood alone and dealt with things her whole life. But she wanted to hold his hand while someone was challenging her to a fight to the death, and dammit, she was going to do it. She didn’t care how much it made Reeve sneer.

Case squeezed her hand, and when he looked at her, she gave him a small nod. He could take the next part of this whole idiotic, stupidly necessary exchange.

“Okay,” Case said evenly. “When do you want to do this?”

Reeve almost spat his answer at them: “ Now .”

“Oh, now’s not good for us,” Case said, with all his blithe “I was a human a couple weeks ago” insouciance that he had to know would drive Reeve nuts. Lydia actually had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. “We have a funeral to go to in the morning.”

“I don’t care if it’s—” Reeve scowled. “You know it doesn’t matter if you’re busy right now or not. Lydia had to have told you that.”

Case shrugged.

Reeve’s scowl only deepened, but Meg’s reaction, Lydia thought, was interesting—she looked back and forth between her mate and the stranger she was about to fight with curiosity as well as confusion.

“I’m saying that I only think it’s right for Lydia to get to attend her grandmother’s funeral, and that she shouldn’t be blocked by an asshole like you showing up.”

Reeve’s scowl changed back to a sneer. Lydia wondered if he even knew how to smile at all. If he ever had, he’d probably trained himself out of it because it didn’t fit the tough image he was going for.

“Maybe if you die, and she surrenders, she can attend two funerals tomorrow.”

He clearly thought it was a good line, but Case was fantastically, adorably unruffled by it.

“I don’t think they’d get me in the ground that fast, actually. And anyway, Lydia isn’t the type to surrender, especially not to you.”

Reeve didn’t like the way they kept foiling him and ignoring his oh-so-clever taunts. They hadn’t even acknowledged that he’d outwitted them by showing up with Meg, which he obviously thought was rude.

“Now,” he said again. “You know you don’t get a choice. The challenge has come, and you have to meet it or lose your pack.”

That was blunt enough, and true enough, that there was nothing they could retort this time. A chill ran down Lydia’s spine. This time, unfortunately, Reeve was right. Lydia had spent months trying to think of a way around this, or a way to survive it, and now it was here and she didn’t know what the odds were at all.

But to her surprise, it didn’t matter. Despite that single cold shudder, she was mostly warm. Dying today would be so much better than dying a month ago would have been. She’d gotten to fall in love with her true mate. They’d eaten linzer cookies and made love and slept beside each other night after night.

She’d gotten to know her pack as a true alpha, not just an alpha’s heir, and she’d gotten to know it without Ruth’s shadow hanging over her. She had at least gotten to hear what Case thought the pack could be, even if she hadn’t had the time or courage to try it out. Now she wished she had, because her objections seemed so small and far away. Right now, the world was crystal clear to her.

She raised her chin—and her voice. Mountainview was gathering around the porch yet again, everyone’s eyes wide with fear and anticipation. She wanted them to hear what she had to say.

“We’ll fight you for the pack. But even if you win, don’t think for a second that they’ll just let you waltz in here and take over. This town is braver than you ever could be, and they’re not going to surrender just because you killed us. They’ll make it hard for you, Reeve. They might even make it impossible.”

Reeve rolled his eyes. “Packs always follow their alphas. They don’t have a choice. What are they going to do, challenge me? None of them are up for it.”

“They don’t need to challenge you to make your life hell.” She remembered what Polly had said. “Or to leave Mountainview. What are you going to do to make them stay?”

“They have to stay,” Reeve growled. “That’s how it works .”

Suddenly, Lydia could see that she and Reeve actually had had something in common this whole time, and she didn’t like it. They’d both taken it for granted that packs worked a certain way, and there was no changing that. Packs followed. Alphas led. Reeve didn’t think packs could ever stand up for themselves, and Lydia didn’t think— hadn’t thought—that alphas could ever lie down, no matter how much they needed to.

Reeve would have been a much worse alpha than Ruth—a catastrophic alpha—but they would have still been working out of the same playbook about what alphas did and how they functioned. Up until now, Lydia had been doing the same thing. It was time to see if that couldn’t change.

She was betting on Case, and she was betting on Mountainview.

“That doesn’t have to be how it works,” Lydia said loudly, “and this pack is too smart, and too tough, to roll over for you, Reeve Steele. They’re not going to follow you if you don’t earn it. And you sure haven’t so far. You can kill us, but you can’t lead a pack that won’t have you. This town will fight back.”

“Yeah!”

It was just a single shout from the crowd at first, and Lydia didn’t even know who’d said it. But it kicked off an avalanche:

“You’ll never be our alpha!”

“We want Lydia and Case, not you!”

“We’ll never let you have this town! We’ll leave first!”

“Hell, we’ll burn it to the ground if we have to!”

Okay, that last part was a bit extreme. There were people in Mountainview who didn’t belong to the pack, weren’t tapped into its drama, and would probably be pretty alarmed to find the town going up in flames around them.

But Lydia had to admit she liked the spirit, like she liked the way Reeve’s face went pasty pale, like spoiled milk, at the sound of everyone in the village rallying against him. After a stunned second, he clenched his jaw and seemed to will that terrified white to turn a mottled, enraged red. But they had all seen his initial reaction, and he knew it. Everyone here today knew that for all his apparent ferocity, Reeve Steele didn’t know what to do with the idea of his targets pushing back against all his bullying.

And that meant that even if Lydia didn’t live to see it, she’d know that Mountainview was going to be okay. Case was right. The pack would thrive with a good alpha, but that didn’t mean it needed a babysitter. Everyone here would fight for themselves if they had to. If they were capable of rallying against Reeve, they were certainly capable of holding it together while she and Case went on vacation.

She wished she could have shared this moment with Ruth. All those hard years, all that lost time, when Ruth could have had a different, easier life.

I love you, Lydia thought to her grandmother. I wish things had been better for you, but I don’t think I can let them be bad for me out of guilt. If I live past today, Case and I are going to be happy. I think Mountainview will be too. I know that’s what you wanted, even if you never imagined it would look like this. And if I don’t get the chance to speak at your funeral, I hope you still know how important you were to me.

There was no sudden parting of the clouds to let one particular ray of sunshine fall on her like Ruth’s approval, but she felt at peace all the same.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s fight. I just want you to know that you’ve already lost.”