Chapter 16 #2
To make it clear that Ty has no intention of being any kind of tyrant. To prove that he meant it when he said that he’s for wolves. All wolves.
And at sunrise we are there to howl at the sun and welcome back the light.
But then, for a moment, I think I can feel the whole earth shake beneath me.
“Did you feel that?” I ask him as the sunlight pours in all around us. I know it won’t last. I can already see the fog developing at the base of the trees. I should bask in the light while I can. But that shaking unnerved me. “It seemed like some kind of . . .”
I don’t know where I’m going with that. I’ve greeted the morning after the darkest night of the year before, but it never felt quite like this. Like an explosion, and not inside me—but we don’t get earthquakes around here.
“It’s been a long night,” Ty says, and if he feels that strange uneasiness the way I do, he doesn’t show it. “And we’re not getting any sleep anytime soon, babe. Suck it up.”
He throws his arm over my shoulders and we walk down into the grand cavern, where he spends the rest of the morning engaged in more diplomatic wrangling, going over all the rest of the things that have to happen in the wake of such a huge change for wolfkind.
His first official act is to hand out weapons, ammunition, and explosives to the packs that are leaving at first light rather than letting them all continue to fight about stolen property.
“Consider it the kingdom’s property,” he growls at everyone. “Take my shit and shut the fuck up, because it’s all our shit.” He pauses for a moment, then grins at the wolves in question, all of them taken back. “Safe travels.”
By late afternoon, most of our visitors have headed out.
It’s down to pretty much the usual Rogue Valley pack again, so the den feels both empty and cozy around me as we set it back to rights.
I don’t go and sit with my family the way I would have done before last night.
I’m over with Ty now, on the raised rock shelf where I first slept in his furs as a girl.
It’s another indication that everything between us has changed. That everything is different.
I would know that anyway, though, because no one is talking to me like they’re disappointed in me today.
Females who only looked at me sideways before make a point of coming to ask my advice on small, insignificant things.
What do I think the weather will be for the full moon?
What are my thoughts on the mysterious elk herds that seem to choose new and random seasons all winter long, making it harder all the time to hunt them?
These are all olive branches. I accept them.
“I underestimated you,” my mother tells me when she comes and climbs up onto the ledge where the king spends his leisure time in this cavern. She waits for me to notice her. She waits to be invited to approach. She even waits for me to invite her to sit, acknowledging my rank.
I thought that I would celebrate when this day came. Instead, I find that it feels nothing at all the way I thought it would. I didn’t expect that I’d feel nostalgia for what’s gone, because at least I knew it.
Everything ahead of me is unknown.
“Of course you underestimated me,” I reply to her as she sits. “But don’t worry, Mother. Everyone else did too.”
“It’s actually brilliant,” Johanna says, and if she heard the undercurrent of something like hurt in my voice, she brushes it aside. “You’ve quietly upended generations of tradition. Now, no matter what your intentions were, everything you’ve done your whole life will be viewed as strategy.”
I grin at her. “Maybe it has been.”
She sits next to me on the low-slung couch and looks out into the great cavern.
I follow her gaze, tracking the electric lights that hang from cords attached to the rock walls by thick metal staples.
According to the stories I’ve heard, even that was a fight.
Old-school wolves thought electric lights were too human and would make wolves too soft.
Johanna isn’t only looking at light fixtures, of course.
She’s looking around at the different family groups.
Some of them are sitting together, talking quietly.
Others are still rearranging their areas in the wake of so much shared space this past week.
I see a few older females engaged in what looks like deep-cleaning, no doubt to get unwanted scents out.
“I’ve been pushing for so long, and it all happened so quickly, in the end,” Johanna says softly.
Almost wistfully, I think, but that doesn’t sound like my mother at all.
“Your brothers are off playing royal emissaries in far-off packs. They might as well be kings themselves, as close as they are to Ty. The packs will have to treat them as leaders. Meanwhile, you’ve managed to be accepted as our queen without lowering yourself to go through the mating ritual like everyone else. ”
“Not all of us can fall in love the way you did,” I point out, mildly enough. “Besides, no one kidnaps their mates any longer. It’s pretty much frowned upon in polite pack circles.”
“I was not raised to expect love,” my mother says with a short laugh.
I think that she’s not going to look at me, but then she does.
Her gaze is steady, and something about the resignation I see there makes my heart ache.
“Your father was a fine, storied male. It was an honor to be chosen by him, and so I dedicated myself to making certain that his choice was never questioned.” She nods as if that’s nothing more than common sense.
“Still, it took us time to trust each other. And more time still to build some kind of friendship. I always thought your brothers understood this better than you. Now I wonder.”
“All of you had to go out and find mates or accept them when they turned up,” I remind her. “I have always known my mate. It has never been a question of who. Only when.”
“I am trying to compliment you, Maddox,” my mother says after a moment, and again I think she sounds something like wistful.
“You know that’s not something that comes easily to me.
” Again, her gaze finds mine. “I apologize for assuming you didn’t know your own business.
And for thinking that you would embarrass the family when, on the contrary, you have now elevated us beyond my wildest dreams. I would have said that no wolf could rule us all, but I believe Ty can. Particularly with you at his side.”
I reach down and pinch myself on my own inner thigh, hard. I’m sure that will wake me up, but it doesn’t. Johanna really said those things. Directly to me.
I’m not dreaming. I also have no idea how to respond to something so . . . completely out of character.
Luckily, I don’t have to. It’s almost as if she hits a wall.
As if she said too many supportive, even loving things and has completely drained that battery.
She stands up abruptly. I watch her visibly remember that there are no gray areas any longer when it comes to pack hierarchy and me. She blinks, then offers a bow.
I have the urge to tell her that bowing isn’t necessary, but I hold it back. The truth is, pomp and circumstance might not be necessary for me. What it does, though, is remind everyone else who I am.
Wolves like to push boundaries. They like to play games. If I allow them to do it with me, sooner or later, I’ll regret it.
I’m thinking about that when Connor approaches, and instead of jumping onto the ledge, he only leans against it to look up at me.
“You’ve all been hidden away for a while now,” I say, meaning the remaining high-ranking males in the pack. Off in their church, I assume, coming up with their world domination plans. “There’s no need to worry. I have things handled out here.”
“He knew you would,” Connor says.
I find myself looking at the leather cut he wears, giving epic biker chic.
It’s also covered in badges that spell out his long service to this pack.
His kills and his conquests. It’s not lost on me that he’s seen queens come and go.
I’m lucky that he’s always seemed supportive of me—even when my own brothers and mother were not.
Today he gives me an approving nod. “He sent me to get you. Thinks you’ve been babysitting long enough.”
I laugh at that, though I don’t dispute it.
I get up and jump off the ledge to stand beside him, still basically in last night’s clothes.
And feeling it. I stole one of Ty’s T-shirts at some point and, as far as I know, left my jacket on the hilltop.
Someone will scent me on it and return it, I’m sure.
What I keep being shocked by is how hungover I feel when I had very little alcohol last night.
Everyone knows that hitting the cocktails hard is for after regime changes, not during.
I follow Connor as he leads me through the cavern and then into the tunnels.
This muddled, thick feeling reminds me of my party girl days, back in my first year in New York.
I took Ty seriously when he told me to do my thing.
I got out there and I did it. There wasn’t a club I didn’t hit.
There wasn’t a bar I didn’t pour myself out of at some egregious hour.
I danced and I drank and I indulged myself.
I slept with hot girls, I kissed pretty boys, and I fucked dangerous men with the careless abandon of a girl who knew she was always safe because she carried a wolf around with her.
I kept waiting for something—someone—to erase that imprint Ty had left inside me, but nothing did. Nothing and no one ever came close.
Nothing ever could, I came to realize that year.
That was why, when I came home that summer, I decided it was high time I saw what I was missing.