5. Dane
DANE
The annual summer pack cookout was probably the worst possible place to bring a fake date. Naturally, that was exactly where I brought Seth.
In my defense, I hadn’t fully thought this through when I invited him. At the time, it had seemed simple enough.
Bring Seth to one pack event, let my family see I was capable of finding my own dates.
It would get my mother off my back before she started handing out my number to random eligible bachelors at the grocery store. It was supposed to be easy.
Except now I was parked outside Seth’s apartment building with my hands gripping the steering wheel while my wolf paced circles in my head nervously.
I told myself to calm down. This plan would go without a hitch. My wolf disagreed. The passenger door opened before I could spiral further, and then Seth climbed into the truck.
My brain promptly forgot how language worked. He wasn’t dressed fancy.
That somehow made it worse. Seth wore a pale blue short-sleeved button-up, sleeves rolled casually to his forearms.
That was accompanied by dark jeans, and sneakers. His curls looked slightly damp, like he’d showered not long ago and lost a fight with a towel afterward.
He smelled like soap, vanilla, and coffee. My wolf immediately sat down and paid full attention.
“Hey,” Seth said, buckling in. “Sorry. I couldn’t decide if this looked too much like I was trying.”
I stared at him for half a second too long.
“Nope,” I said finally. “Looks good.”
Seth smiled a little, though I caught the nervous energy underneath it. It was obvious in the way he adjusted his sleeve, checked the mirror, then checked it again.
“You sure this is okay?” he asked after a minute. “Me being there?”
The question hit strangely hard, because humans didn’t really get what it meant to bring someone onto pack land, into pack gatherings and around family.
Sure, there were a few humans mated to wolves, but not many.
“Yeah,” I said, softer this time. “It’s okay.”
Seth nodded, though he still looked uncertain.
The drive out to pack territory took about twenty minutes. The farther we got from town, the quieter Seth became. Not uncomfortable exactly, but more observant.
I caught him glancing out the window at the trees, the familiar dirt roads, the cabins scattered deeper into the woods.
“So this is all pack land?” he asked.
“Most of it.”
“That’s…” He shook his head slightly. “Big.”
“Comes with being territorial oversized dogs,” I said.
That got a laugh out of him. Good. I liked that sound more than I should’ve. By the time we reached the main clearing, the cookout was already in full swing.
Music drifted through the warm evening air. Kids tore across the grass at alarming speeds while adults shouted warnings they ignored completely.
Smoke curled up from massive grills near the picnic tables, carrying the smell of burgers, barbecue sauce, and grilled corn.
Pack members filled the clearing in loose groups. They were talking, laughing, and eating. A few wolves were already fully shifted.
They lounged near the tree line or wove through the clearing while children chased after them, because apparently the second the temperature hit eighty degrees, some pack members decided clothing and basic human behavior became optional.
Seth slowed as we got out of the truck, not enough that anyone else would notice, but I certainly did. His shoulders tightened slightly as he took everything in.
And yeah, okay, I understood why.
If I put myself in Seth’s shoes, I’d probably be overwhelmed too. A human walking into a massive wolf pack gathering for the first time? That was a lot.
There were probably too many unfamiliar faces, too much noise and energy packed into one clearing.
Wolves moved differently in groups too, looser and louder around family, brushing shoulders, crowding space without thinking about it. To me, it was normal.
To Seth, it probably felt like getting dropped into the middle of someone else’s ecosystem and hoping you learned the rules fast enough not to embarrass yourself.
Apart from Michael, Griffin’s mate, there were no other humans present at today’s cookout.
Still, no one looked hostile. If anything, people barely glanced our way before going back to their conversations.
Seth stood a little closer to me than before, and my wolf noticed immediately. Mine. I ignored that aggressively.
“You good?” I asked quietly.
“Yeah,” Seth said quickly. Then, more honestly, “Just feels a little like I accidentally wandered into a family reunion where everyone can probably smell fear.”
I snorted. “To be fair, they probably can.”
His eyes widened.
I grinned. “Kidding.”
Seth narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Then someone yelled my name across the clearing.
“Dane!”
Mark was already heading toward us with Zack beside him and the world’s most smug expression plastered across his face.
“Oh my God,” I muttered. “Here’s our first hurdle.”
Seth made a choking sound beside me, then subtly straightened next to me, shoulders pulling back slightly like he suddenly remembered exactly why I’d brought him here.
“Is that one of your brothers?” he whispered out of the corner of his mouth.
“Unfortunately,” I whispered back. “And now he smells fresh gossip.”
Mark stuck out a hand toward Seth, smiling. “You must be Seth.”
Seth shook it carefully. “Uh. Hi.”
“I’m Mark. Dane’s better-looking brother,” Mark said.
“That’s objectively false,” I said.
“Debatable.”
Zack stepped in smoothly before we could start bickering. “Ignore my mate. He gets worse in groups.”
“Noted,” Seth said, visibly relaxing a little.
That lasted all of thirty seconds, because then Chris appeared, along with Jaime and Pampi. The tiny dog spotted Seth and immediately lost her mind.
“Well,” Jaime said as Pampi squirmed violently in Chris’s arms trying to reach Seth, “congratulations. She’s chosen you.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Seth admitted.
“It means you belong to her now,” Chris said.
“That tracks,” Seth said as Pampi finally got transferred into his arms and immediately started licking his chin.
I watched Seth laugh. It was a real laugh this time, head tipping back slightly. Something warm settled low in my chest. Things only got more chaotic from there.
Levi and Mason soon introduced themselves, as well other curious pack members. An older pack aunt shoved a plate into Seth’s hands before he could protest.
“You’re too skinny,” she informed him.
“I work at a coffee shop,” Seth said helplessly.
“That’s not food, you should eat more. We have plenty,” she said.
“I will,” Seth agreed.
Another wolf demanded Seth settle an argument about whether tomatoes belonged in pasta salad.
A couple of kids stared openly at him before deciding he seemed safe enough to interrogate about human things.
“You play Shadowfall: Requiem?” one of the kids asked seriously.
Seth blinked. “Moderately.”
The kid looked deeply impressed. Meanwhile, my family watched the whole thing unfold with expressions ranging from delighted to outright entertained. Traitors.
I ended up beside the grill at one point while Seth sat at a picnic table talking to Zack and Jaime like he’d known them for years.
“That’s going suspiciously well,” Chris remarked beside me.
I grunted.
“You worried he’d hate us?” Chris asked.
“No,” I said.
“You’re making the face.”
“I don’t have a face,” I pointed out.
“You absolutely have a face.”
I ignored him. Across the clearing, Seth laughed again at something Jaime said. Zack leaned over to tell him something quieter, and Seth smiled warmly in response.
My wolf puffed up proudly. Even my mom had adopted Seth almost immediately.
I’d caught her earlier asking him questions about the café while pressing extra food onto his plate like she was trying to carb-load him for no apparent reason.
Seth, annoyingly, handled it perfectly. He was polite without being stiff, funny without trying too hard. He was genuinely interested in people when they talked.
Watching him with everyone should’ve made me feel relieved. Instead, something uncomfortable flickered under my ribs.
It wasn’t anger or jealousy, but something stranger.
Because Seth fit here too easily. Pack members gravitated toward him naturally. He made people comfortable, and he could even make them laugh.
He could probably walk into any room and end up belonging there within an hour. The thought landed badly. Why would someone like that stay with me?
On the heels of that thought came another. Seth wasn’t really with me. We were just pretend dates. I frowned slightly at the grill.
“That’s a concerning expression,” Mark said, appearing beside me with a drink.
“I’m thinking.”
“That explains it,” Mark said.
“Go away.”
Mark leaned against the table instead. “Mom likes him.”
“I noticed,” I replied.
“She already asked me if you two are serious,” Mark pointed out casually.
I nearly dropped the spatula. “What?”
“She used the phrase ‘promising energy.’”
“Oh gosh, no,” I muttered.
Mark laughed into his drink. Across the clearing, Seth stood from the table and wandered a little farther out toward the edge of the trees where the noise softened.
Without thinking, I tracked him with my eyes. Protective instinct stirred low in my chest before I could stop it.
“I’ll be back,” I muttered.
Mark looked entirely too knowing. “Mmhm.”
I ignored him and headed after Seth. I found him near the edge of the clearing, watching the crowd from a slight distance.
The sun was dipping lower now, throwing everything into gold and orange. Fireflies blinked lazily near the trees. Seth glanced over when he heard me approach.
“Escaping?” I asked.
“Briefly,” he admitted.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” He smiled faintly. “The pack’s amazing, so is your family.”
I leaned against the nearby fence beside him. “They can be a lot.”
“They’re good, though.” Seth looked back toward the cookout. “Everyone just fits together.”
My gaze followed his. Mark had an arm slung around Zack’s shoulders near the drinks table while the two of them argued about whether hard seltzer counted as real alcohol.
Chris was unsuccessfully trying to stop Pampi from stealing hot dogs off a paper plate abandoned by one of the kids.
A small group of younger pack pups hovered impatiently near the grills, clearly waiting for the next batch of burgers like starving little vultures.
One of them was already trying to convince my dad to hand over food early.
“It’s still cooking,” my dad said for what was probably the tenth time.
“But I’m starving over here,” the kid argued.
Levi laughed beside him while flipping ribs on the second grill. Nearby, my mom stood with three pack aunties around one of the picnic tables.
All of them were deep in conversation that probably started with recipes and somehow evolved into pack gossip and unsolicited life advice.
Every few seconds, one of them would laugh loud enough to carry across the clearing.
The whole scene felt deeply familiar to me. Loud and crowded, a little chaotic around the edges. It was home.
Beside me, Seth watched it all quietly, his expression softer now. And suddenly, unexpectedly, I found myself wondering what his family was like.
Did they do things like this? Big gatherings and noisy dinners and too many people talking over each other? Did Seth have siblings?
Was his mom the kind who fussed over him too? Did someone in his family embarrass him regularly for sport the way mine did?
The realization caught me off guard a little.
Sure, Seth and I had shared things about ourselves over the last few days but they were small details like our favorite drinks, work stories, dumb complaints about customers.
Surface-level things, but not much beyond that. I didn’t actually know Seth that well, not yet. The thought should’ve made this whole arrangement feel more temporary.
Instead, it did the opposite. Because I realized, with a quiet sort of certainty, that I wanted to know.
“You fit too,” I said before I could stop myself.
Seth looked surprised.Then something quieter crossed his face, warmth faded slightly around the edges.
“It’s different,” he said after a moment.
“How?” I asked.
He shrugged lightly, eyes still on the crowd. “This is permanent for you guys.”
There it was, the thing underneath was not discomfort but distance.
Like he’d already decided he was temporary here. The realization unsettled me more than it should have, because suddenly I didn’t like the idea of temporary, at least not with him.
I knew that was a dangerous thought, because at the end of the day, we were both just playing pretend. Seth looked over at me then. For a second, neither of us said anything.
The air felt heavier somehow, charged. Then Pampi barked furiously somewhere behind us, immediately ruining the moment. Seth laughed under his breath.
“Guess I’m being summoned,” Seth said.
“Yeah,” I said, smiling despite myself. “You’re her favorite now.”
We started walking back toward the cookout together, not touching but close enough that our shoulders brushed once. Neither of us moved away.
And somewhere deep down, my wolf settled with dangerous, terrifying certainty. Like this was beginning to feel less like pretending and a lot more like something real.