Chapter 4 #3
Who would want to take on all three major powers in this valley at once?
Though now I find myself wondering if that will change once wolf week starts and all the asshole kings from the other irritating packs start throwing their weight around.
I brood on that as I head back to my cottage and get ready for the rest of my day. I want to take that glorious leap forward into the woods, shifting as I go, but I don’t. If I run the way I want to, I’ll almost certainly be late.
The day after another unclaimed full moon is not the day to be late. Tempers are sure to be high as it is.
I trudge out to the big old Explorer I’ve been driving since high school and climb in, then head down the hill.
I drive down the main street of pretty, preserved Jacksonville, the human safe zone.
It’s still early, so there’s no one around.
This means I can look at the old buildings, strung with lights that remind me it’s December today.
And that this is the holiday season, no matter what folks celebrate.
There used to be carolers on the streets, dressed in period costumes. Maybe there still are. I’ll have to remember to come and see for myself if they’re doing it again this year. You never know. The chorus group could have been eaten.
Though I know perfectly well that one thing I will not have much of over the next few weeks is time. Not with the wolf packs gathering here and the role I’ll have to play for them, hopefully helping to ward off any runs at Ty before they happen.
I take the road out of town, down Stage Road and past Winter’s coffee stand, where there are already cars backed up.
I roll down my windows despite the chilly wind so I can smell the remains of the moonlight on the acres of abandoned farmland that spread out on both sides of the road, slowly going back to the earth.
I can pick up the faint scents of those who ran last night on the breeze.
I feel the need to run free inside me like claws.
But I keep driving. I let the land work its magic on me. I let the mountains help me remember who I am. I navigate my way around the usual obstructions in the road, from questionable debris made into barricades to suspicious creatures supposedly hawking their goods.
I feel like my head is as close to on straight as it’s likely to be by the time I make it to the warehouse that’s stood unobtrusively in Phoenix, one of the smaller towns along the river between Medford and Ashland, for as long as I’ve been alive. And a whole lot of years before that, too.
It’s not far from what used to be the Harley-Davidson store, though the actual outlaw biker contingent rarely rode down this way. That would have called attention to what they were doing. In most things, the pack always prefers to keep its business to itself.
I turn into the parking area and drive around back, not at all surprised to see that all three of my brothers’ trucks are here.
The fact that I expected them doesn’t make me any happier to see that they’re here, but I don’t run from fights.
Especially fights I’ve had a thousand times before.
I take a steadying sort of breath as I climb out of the Explorer.
Then I march myself right up to the heavy door that requires a code punched in on the keypad and let myself in.
My brothers are in the office, waiting for me.
All three of them are huge. Not as big as Ty, but brawny and gigantic just the same.
It was obvious to me growing up that they have a certain effect on females of all species, and I’m sure they still do, not that I ever want to know more about their personal lives than that.
This is not a courtesy that they extend me in return.
They don’t even play. They all go silent. Then they glare at me in a heartwarming display of united brotherly condemnation of me, their only sister.
“Good morning to you too,” I reply.
As brightly as possible, to be annoying.
“What the fuck, Maddox,” the youngest of them, Micah, growls from where he sits at one of the desks, his booted feet propped up before him. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Sooner or later this is all going to have to come to a head,” chimes in Asher, the middle brother. He is scowling, looking as if he’d like to bring it all to a head himself, right now. “Who do you think is going to have your back when we’ve watched you play this game for years?”
Like he thinks Ty and I are going to devolve into fisticuffs. It would be funny if I didn’t think that people . . . really do think that. They think Ty hates me. They think I believe I’m better than him.
They don’t understand us at all.
But I’m not going to defend us to my brothers, who should know better. I act like I can’t hear either of them and take my seat at my desk, where I’m in charge of painstakingly recording every single thing our pack moves, protects, and makes.
Back in the days before the Reveal, the pack pretty much operated on vibes and violence, like every other outlaw biker gang around. These days we’re more strategic, in part because we are what keeps most of our part of the world fed, armed, and entertained.
I like to think that’s not only because Ty is a visionary but because the things I do support that vision, practically and effectively.
I study the patterns in our movements. I pay attention to who attacks our caravans and when.
I track the ogres who do a lot of the truck driving, because everyone knows an ogre can’t be fully trusted, and I’ve identified those who tried to cheat us at least ten times this year.
I collect and analyze all the things the drivers and bikers riding protection details say about the state of the old interstate and all the other roads they encounter so I can make targeted suggestions on how to avoid trouble spots.
All of these things maximize our profits and reach.
And none of these things are under the purview of a pack’s queen. If I take up my official duties, return to the den, and focus on only that all day, who will do all these things the way I can? No one, is the answer. I think that makes us weak.
Everyone else thinks I need to mate with Ty and get over myself.
I officiously open up my various notebooks, too aware that Liam hasn’t said anything yet. The oldest of my brothers, Liam is the closest thing to a biological father I’ve ever had, no matter how I try to play like his opinion is the same as that of the other two.
Noise. Easily dismissed.
“Leave her alone,” is what Liam says, but I’m not foolish enough to consider that a reprieve. He’s the biggest of the three of them. He’s also the meanest of them, if he has a mind to be. “We have to get that food shipment up to Vancouver tonight. Get on it.”
Asher and Micah obey Liam too, though they make a show of slamming out of the office so they can go make sure the truck is being loaded with the black market foods that are supposed to go on it.
And not extra, usually creepy, shit that people are always trying to sneak on board without paying.
I respond to that by making a show of acting like I don’t notice them banging the door that leads into the warehouse hard enough it makes the whole place shake.
I continue to put on a whole theatrical performance of complete and total serenity despite the fact that I can feel the way my oldest brother is glaring daggers at me.
“Ten years ago, if you’d come to me and said that you thought the prophecy was wrong and this wasn’t what you wanted, I would have tried to help you,” he growls at me in a low voice.
Low blow. And also bullshit, but I stop pretending that my performative rearrangement of all the documents on my desk is doing anything. “Ten years ago I was fifteen.”
“So fucking what?” He belts that out, though he doesn’t raise his voice. That means he’s not pissed, he’s somewhere far beyond that. A smarter woman would wince, apologize, and make it right.
Oh well.
“We’re not human,” Liam is growling at me. “We don’t need thirty years to grow the fuck up. You knew what was expected of you long before that. Don’t bullshit me.”
I look at him and start to say something but think better of it.
He nods. “But it’s not ten years ago, Maddox. You’ve been back from college for three years now. You can’t pretend you don’t know what’s going on here or what the pack needs. What the hell are you doing?”
“It’s hard to take you seriously, Liam,” I say, and I’m annoyed that it takes an effort to sound calm. “You’re older than me and I don’t see you finding yourself a mate. Why is it my responsibility?”
“Try again. I’m not the king of anything. I wasn’t fated to do a goddamn thing but run free and howl. What the hell happened to you?” He shakes his head, looking at me like I’ve maybe turned into a swamp demon or some other low-life scum. “I don’t know who you are anymore.”
“Exactly the same person I’ve always been.”
He’s still shaking his head. “I knew it was a mistake for you to go away. I advised Ty against letting you do it.”
It isn’t that I hadn’t suspected that. But he’s never said that to me before, flat out. I take the blow. I do my best not to react. “Thanks for that vote of confidence.”
“I know you think it’s because I have some problem with you educating yourself, or whatever the hell you like to yell at Mom.
” Liam snorts. “I don’t care if you go to class all day every day as long as while you’re doing that, you’re standing up for this pack and our king.
Which, as far as I know, is what we all vow to do every fucking year when the Wolf Moon rises.
That’s what makes us pack.” He gives that a moment to sink in like the knife it is.
“It’s coming up, Maddox. Are you going to promise your undying fealty, once again, to a man you refuse to mate with?
Got to say, it makes your loyalty sound like a load of horseshit. ”
“You have no idea how loyal I am,” I tell him. Through gritted teeth.
Liam only stares at me until I find myself looking away again, and hating myself for it.
“You’re right,” he agrees, in that hard voice of his. “I don’t have any idea how loyal you are. No one does. And that’s a problem that’s only getting bigger, little sister. One that if I were you, I’d solve.”
He does not slam any doors when he leaves. That makes it worse. I’m sure he knows that.
There’s a reason he’s Ty’s enforcer.
I stay where I am, staring furiously down at all my charts and files before me, and I don’t move until I hear them slam their way out of the warehouse some while later, then drive away.
I sit there a long time. Eventually, I shake myself off and get to work.
Because I also have a vision for the things we can do, and that vision is worth fighting for, no matter what anyone else thinks.
Including Ty, who could have changed all of this years ago by loudly and publicly agreeing that he didn’t need his queen to be as traditional as everyone else wants me to be.
He didn’t do that. Here we are.
I can feel guilty about all of this, but that doesn’t make it my fault.
I’ve talked myself into feeling a little more bulletproof by the time I make my way home late that night. I drive into the yard, and the headlights sweep across the dark front of the main house. I miss the days when Winter and her grandmother were in there and all the lights were on.
Maybe I need to stop thinking I’m going to stumble across a home I don’t make myself. Maybe that’s the lesson here.
I am not my brother Liam, so I take pleasure in slamming my car door shut behind me when I climb out. I head for my cottage, only to stop dead a few feet away from my front step.
Because there’s blood all over it. The moment I see it, the wind shifts and I scent it, too. An unpleasant copper that I don’t like. It’s too acrid.
I take a few steps closer to confirm that at the center of all that dark, ominous red there’s another small animal corpse—or what’s left of it—arranged like more of an offering than a kill.
But not an offering to me.
That’s the only part that’s clear.