Chase
“Why don’t you tell her how you came to join our pack?” Maddox suddenly asks, making me look up at him in surprise. There’s something in his gaze, almost a dare.
He knows how much I hate talking about my past, so if he’s asking me to do it now, he has a good reason. His eyes move to Red, and I glance down at her and the way my hand moves through her soft fur.
“Opening up to her might make her feel more comfortable around us,” Maddox says through our pack bond.
“I can tell the story,” Hunter offers.
“I can do it,” I tell them, a little defiantly. “Just give me a minute.”
I think about the best place to start, wanting to give the cliff notes version but knowing she deserves a little more detail.
“Hunter and I were born in the Red Creek Pack,” I tell her as she lies still, blinking up at me as if she’s listening.
“Our father was Alpha of the pack, and as far as we knew, he ran it fairly. He loved his role as alpha. He’d spend many nights in meetings, discussing ways to improve the pack.
When we were ten years old, he was challenged for his position by one of his enforcers.
They claimed he’d been stealing from the pack for decades.
“You have to understand that while we didn’t live in poverty, we also didn’t have anything that I would have thought of as wealth surrounding us at home, either. It seemed preposterous. If he was stealing, where was the money going? What did he spend it on?”
I take a second to take a deep breath before continuing, knowing what my story is leading up to.
“That was the first time I saw anyone die. Our father shifted into his wolf form and ripped the man’s neck out before he could say anything else.” Red shifts, lifting her head to rest across my outstretched leg, and my fingers instinctively find her head, stroking it gently as I continue.
“He told the pack that false accusations will be met with swift and lethal punishment. But after that day, everything changed. Our friends stopped hanging out with us, and everyone eyed our family with suspicion. Nobody was dumb enough to question it aloud, not after what had happened.
“He started training Hunter and me much more aggressively. It wouldn’t be uncommon for us to spend anywhere from eight to fifteen hours a day running drills or practicing combat.
It was as if he was readying us for war.
When we asked our mother about it, she told us our father knew what he was doing, and it was for our own good.
“This went on for a few years, until one day, in the middle of a pack run, he was ambushed by almost every adult male in the Red Creek Pack. They ripped him to shreds before we even knew what was happening.”
Red shifts a little closer, as if trying to offer me comfort.
Surprisingly, that helps to ease some of the tension in my body.
My free hand, which I hadn’t realized had clenched into a fist, starts to relax as I take a calming breath, taking in her smoky, cherry vanilla scent and letting it soothe me even more.
“We were all led back into the center of our town, where the men who killed him produced all the evidence they’d gathered on our father.
Apparently, even shifters can be afflicted with human problems, as our father had an extreme gambling problem.
They were right. He’d been stealing pack funds for years and using them to gamble, of all things.
“The worst part?” I say with an unamused chuckle. “He used any winnings he had to pay for prostitutes.” I shake my head in exasperation. “Everyone knows that Alphas have a bigger sexual appetite than the rest of the pack, but to cheat on our mother like that?” I shake my head in disgust.
“Those meetings he claimed to go to several days a week turned out to be a cover for his adultery and gambling. He had also been slowly selling off part of the pack’s land to get more money.
Our mother was devastated, but only about the cheating.
Apparently, she knew about his gambling addiction and turned a blind eye to it. ”
I risk a glance at Hunter, who's been uncharacteristically quiet through my whole story. When my eyes meet his, he gives me a nod of support. I can see hearing this isn’t hurting him any more than it is me.
In some ways, it’s good to get it out. We haven’t spoken about it since we met Maddox and the other two.
“After that, the pack treated the three of us like outcasts. Our mother became a shell of herself, and no matter what we did, she refused to leave the house. We were fifteen at the time, so we took care of the food and the home. But there was no money coming in, so we had to get jobs. Only nobody in town would hire us, so we had to drive to the closest human town, where we got jobs at a hardware store after lying about our age. Technically, we shouldn’t have been driving either, but we didn’t have a choice. ”
I swallow heavily, knowing I need to get through the worst part quickly.
“When we were eighteen, she hung herself.” Red lets out the tiniest whine and presses her head harder against me.
“Hunter and I didn’t want to follow the same path as her, so we taught ourselves to grow thicker skin and stand up for ourselves. I started lifting weights every day, and Hunter studied pack law to figure out how to leave this pack without becoming rogues.
“We started getting into a lot of fights with our pack mates. When we told them we were going to leave, they told us that the second we left the pack, they could kill us as we’d be rogues on their land.”
She whines a little louder this time, and I run both hands over her soft fur, trying to comfort her. “Don’t worry, you're not a rogue, pretty girl. You’re one of us now.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” Maddox confirms from his seat on the couch.
I decide to finish my story. “When we were twenty-two, a neighboring pack sent a couple of representatives to negotiate with our alpha for some land. We’d already lost so much thanks to our father, so they had no interest in getting rid of any more, but the conversation had struck a nerve with our alpha.
He lashed out at us when he thought we were out of earshot of the others, telling us it was our fault the pack land was so small, and that he was going to make sure every day of our lives was hell.
“In hindsight, I know that he was purposely egging us on, trying to make us attack him so he could kill us and claim self-defense.
But in the moment, I saw red. When he called our mother some nasty names, we were about to lunge for him when Maddox suddenly appeared between us, his palm outstretched to me as he told me to stand down.
“Every instinct I had told me to listen, and so Hunter and I stepped back. Bain and Gage appeared at our sides as Maddox gave us his back and turned to our alpha and declared that he was claiming us as part of his pack.”
Hunter laughs at the memory as he adds, “Yeah, he wasn’t impressed. He told Maddox he wasn’t the alpha of the Westgrove Pack, so he couldn’t do that. But that’s when he told him he’s the alpha of the Silverstorm Pack, and that’s who’s claiming us.”
“Our pack bond snapped into place as soon as he said those words,” I tell her as I shake my head at the memory.
Normally, you need some sort of ceremony, but for us, Maddox’s words were all that was needed.
“Through the bond, he told us to come home with him.” I smile at Red as I finish. “And the rest is history.”
“That was six years ago,” Hunter tells her. Red doesn’t say anything, because she can’t. But I can’t help but wonder what she thinks of our past. Looking down at her head resting on my lap, she doesn’t seem put off by it at all.
Deciding we need to lighten the mood a little, I stand up as I tell her, “Why don’t you get comfortable on the couch, and we’ll find a movie to watch?”
She stands up and shakes out her body. I head to the kitchen for some snacks, and when I return, setting a variety of food on the coffee table, I’m pleased to see they’ve left me a seat right beside her, with Maddox on her other side.
Hunter scowls through the selection, occasionally asking her if she wants to watch something. We end up watching a show called True Blood. I’ve never heard of it before, but apparently, it has wolf shifters, vampires, witches, and fairies, and Red seems almost excited to watch it.
I lean forward and grab a handful of jellybeans and sit back, throwing a couple in my mouth as the show starts. Red leans against my side, and I smile, loving how much she seems to like being touched now.
When we met her, she did everything to stay away from us, and now she was almost seeking it out.
I feel the gentle weight of her head on my shoulder and turn to see her staring at my hand and licking her lips.
I laugh and hold the jellybeans out to her. “You want this?”
Her jaw snaps forward, somehow managing to quickly take it from my hand without biting my fingers. My eyes widen in surprise. “Are you hungry?” I ask, even though I saw her eat three giant steaks just over an hour ago.
“Maybe she just loves candy,” Hunter says from the nearby armchair. She licks her lips, so I hold out another one for her, and she quickly takes it from me and crunches away happily.
“These can’t hurt her, right?” I ask, looking at Maddox then at Gage in question.
Gage shakes his head. “It’s the same as her eating them in human form in terms of how it would affect her body. So they won’t harm her, but too many and she might get an upset stomach.”
I nod and feed her a few more, not wanting to make her feel sick. Eventually, she lies down between Maddox and me, with her head pressed against my side as she watches the TV.
I dig my fingers into her fur, once again basking in being able to touch her so freely.
I’m not an idiot. I know the chances of her being all of our fated mate is slim to none, but I’m not willing to give up on that dream yet. Not until she is able to shift and confirm one way or another, and until that happens, I want to spend as much time with her as possible.