9. Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine
HARRISON
The only weak wolf is an untrained wolf.
I’ve heard my dad say this countless times. He ingrained it in me from an early age, and he’s ingrained it in all the Crescent Lake warriors.
But there’s more to it than that. There’s nuance to it. It’s not as straightforward as the more you train, the stronger your wolf is. You can train until your feet fall off, but without self-confidence, you’re stuck at square one.
Which is why, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve added my own mantra to my dad’s: You’re only as weak as you believe yourself to be.
And right now, Emily still believes she’s weak—the weakest of the weak, the lowest of the low. My job is to convince her she’s wrong. To believe in her until she can believe in herself.
Beyond helping her shift, getting her to believe she’s strong is my primary goal.
“Are you ready?”
Emily stands with me at the edge of the training field closest to the forest, arms crossed over her chest. She’s pulled her light-brown hair into a ponytail, and she wears a cobalt tracksuit that makes her gray eyes lean blue.
It’s a week after her failed shift, and her bruises are finally gone.
But the defeat lingers, settling deep in her demeanor.
I hope I’m enough to bring her spirit back.
“I’m scared.” The confession falls from her lips in a shy whisper. “What if I fail again?”
“You won’t.”
My fingers twitch to reach out and reassure her by squeezing her shoulders, but I refrain. She’s closed herself off from me in the week since she left the pack hospital, and I don’t want to push her further away by crossing a line.
Instead, I opt to dip my head and force her to meet my eyes. “I’m an excellent teacher, remember?”
That remark earns me a smile. A short-lived one, but I’ll take what I can get.
“And you’re a fast learner,” I remind her.
“Learning to catch berries is much different from learning how to be a real werewolf.”
“I’m not sure.” I rub my chin, pretending to mull over the idea, hoping to get another reaction from her. “As the resident expert on both, I’d say they’re incredibly similar.”
“I’ll take your word for it, Harrison.” No smile. Just words.
“You’ve already mindlinked,” I point out. “So you’re well on your way to being a ‘real’ werewolf.”
“I can’t mindlink.”
“You can mindlink. You already have.”
She flinches back, confused. “When?”
“In the hospital. I mindlinked you. I asked if you could hear me. You didn’t reply, but I could feel your mind listening to me.”
“That was a mindlink? I thought it was all in my head.”
“Well, it was in your head. Technically.”
“Ha. Ha.” She relaxes a little, shaking out her arms and loosening up her shoulders. “So, what’s first?”
“First, we warm up. It may not be a very chilly January this year, but your muscles are still cold. You need to stretch so you don’t injure yourself and—”
I stop myself before I say what I’m thinking. Because what I’m thinking won’t help her mindset, even though her situation isn’t her fault. But Emily finishes the thought for me.
“And delay my first shift more?”
I grimace. It sounds worse when she says it than it did in my head. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault my former alpha was a prick.”
Prick is a nicer word than the one I’d use to describe him.
We stretch in relative silence, interrupted only by my quiet corrections and gentle coaching. Emily withdraws into herself once again, and I hate it. The smiles, the laughs, the teasing—they have all been gone for too long.
It’s times like this when I wish I were more like Brad. He’d know what to say or do to get her to laugh.
We’re in the grass, me holding her feet as she does her second rep of sit-ups, when she speaks again. “Why did he do it?”
I wait until the round is done before I acknowledge her question. “Why did Justin block your wolf?”
“Yeah.” She breathes in through her nose and out through her mouth as she rests between sets—like I taught her—thinking through her next words.
“What did he gain from blocking our wolves and telling us we were weak? I’ve been thinking about it since I left the hospital and…
I just don’t understand why someone would do that. ”
Of course she doesn’t understand how his mind worked. She’s too sweet, too kind, too gentle and innocent to comprehend the level of depravity it takes to use people the way he used his pack members.
“Some people will do anything to feel powerful. They don’t care who they hurt or what they have to do, as long as they’re at the top.”
She hugs her knees to her chest like a shield. “That’s a terrible mindset to have and a terrible way to lead.”
“I agree.”
Her brows pinch together. “I told myself it doesn’t matter, but I can’t stop wondering why he went to Silver Ridge instead of coming here?”
“No one in your pack knew where you went after you left your first class.” I had pondered why she didn’t ask that after she woke up in the hospital.
I’d chalked it up to her being too overwhelmed.
“Dad and I think his plan was to question every pack to find you, but Alpha Julian intentionally provoked him into attacking so he’d have an excuse for getting rid of him.
” I purse my lips together, ignoring the clenching in my gut when I speak about the alpha of Silver Ridge.
“I don’t agree with Alpha Julian’s methods, but—”
“I’m glad Justin is dead,” Emily whispers, eyes locked on the ground. “Does that make me as evil as him?”
“Only if it makes me evil too. Because I’m also glad he’s dead.”
Her gaze remains trained on the grass, distant and haunted, and I risk ruining the moment by putting my hand on her knee. “I hope you don’t think we’d ever treat you the way he did.”
“Part of me doesn’t know what to think. I’ve only ever known one truth, and now I’m told that truth is actually a lie? A mindset like that doesn’t switch overnight.”
“I know.” I squeeze her kneecap, reassuring her with my touch as well as my words. “And I promise I will do whatever it takes to prove to you that what you knew in Lupine River is not the way the majority of packs think and not the way they treat their members.”