Chapter 10
Wolfe
The Grumps didn’t move when I sat down.
They never did. Age and attitude had given them the confidence of wolves who knew no one in their right mind would dare try to make them.
Grandmother kept knitting, needles clacking like the ticking of a very judgmental clock. Grandfather tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair, humming tunelessly under his breath. It sounded like a lullaby, if the lullaby had been written by someone who hated children.
“Really?” I scrubbed a hand over my face. “You’re going to make this difficult, aren’t you?” I asked them. Neither of them indicated they’d heard me. “Or…prove me wrong? You know it’s your favorite thing to do,” I teased. Grandmother’s lips twitched. “Could you start talking?”
“Start talking?” Grandmother’s needles never stopped. “You’ll need to be more specific,” Grandmother chirped. “We know many things.”
“Too many,” Grandfather muttered. “What would you like us to talk to you about? The migration pattern of the blue jay? How about the spawning pools of the salmon? Or Grandmother was just telling me the other day about—”
“I want everything you know about the Hollow.” I leaned forward. “About the Pack Council. About the last time they tried something like this.”
Grandmother paused mid-stitch. Her eyes lifted to mine.
Sharp.
Ancient.
Knowing.
“Ah,” she said softly. “So the meaty part of the pie.”
Grandfather snorted. “Told you the boy wouldn’t be able to avoid it. You were wrong.”
“Wrong?” Grandmother sniffed. “I said eventually. Not immediately. There’s a difference.”
I glared. “Either of you want to explain to me what the hell you’re bickering about?”
Grandmother clucked her tongue. “Alpha of two packs, two territories, and still impertinent.” She dropped her eyes back down to her knitting—her hands hadn’t stopped since I came into their home. “You think we know more than you do, Alpha? Alpha touched by the Goddess.” She sniffed. “I think not.”
“Then tell me what you think I already know,” I prompted her. “You said it yourself, Grandmother, I was always slow.”
She giggled, and Grandfather harrumphed. “Charms improved,” he muttered. “The land has always chosen guardians. Long before the Pack Council. Long before wolves thought bloodlines meant crowns instead of anchors.”
Grandmother nodded. “The Hollow is old. Older than even us.” She looked up from her knitting. “We’re young ones compared to the magic that lies there.”
Grandfather was nodding along. “The Hollow is older than any Pack Council or law. Older than rows of alphas bashing each other’s heads in.
” His blind eyes were fixed somewhere over my shoulder.
“It remembers.” His head moved a fraction, and I knew that even though he was blind, he saw me perfectly.
“Remembers those that have bled for it, sacrificed for it, born of it.”
Born of it.
“Like Rowen?” Like my son will be? My pulse thudded sharply against my temple. “What does it remember?” I asked, almost scared of the answer.
“Balance,” Grandmother said. “Unity. Daughters born of its soil. And those who came to protect them.”
A prickle ran along my spine. This is what the druid had said to Rowen. “You’re talking about the land choosing me.”
“No.” Grandfather wagged a finger in my direction. “The land chose your mate, Rowen. She chose you. That’s how it works.”
Grandmother nodded. “But the land recognizes what she recognizes. And now, because she is tied to you—so is it.”
My wolf rose at that, my alpha power uncoiling within it. Massive, steady, ancient. “So the Pack Council trying to dissolve the Hollow—”
“Is like trying to dissolve the mountains,” she said. “Or the moon. Or your mate’s temper.”
That made me snort. “Accurate.”
Grandfather leaned forward, voice gravel and dark. “The last time the Pack Council tried something like this, they were smaller. Dumber. Greedier. They wanted control over lands they didn’t understand.”
“And?”
“They broke the wrong pact.” He tapped the side of his head. “And were broken in turn.”
My blood chilled. “Define broken.”
Grandmother shrugged. “Gone.”
“Gone,” Grandfather echoed. “Vanished. Like wolves swallowed whole by fog.”
I stared at them. “You’re telling me the Hollow erased them.”
“The land protects its own,” Grandmother replied. “But only when it must. And only when its guardian cannot.”
“And you think it will again?” I asked quietly.
“You tell us.” Grandmother pointed a bony finger at my chest. “You’re the one it listens to now.”
Me?
“Try not to die,” Grandmother said casually. “Best not to anger it.”
The room thickened. The air felt heavier. It felt as if something unseen was leaning closer, looking over my shoulder, anticipating what was coming next.
The door was knocked, and Cody came in. Whatever he sensed in the room made him stay beside the door. “Alpha?”
I shook myself and stood. “I need to check on the ones who attacked you,” I told them. I looked at Grandfather. “Are you okay?”
“Took you ten minutes to ask me, boy,” he said with a hint of sarcasm. “Don’t let that bloodline of yours be mistaken for becoming a crown,” he warned.
I nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I just…” I licked my lips and looked over my shoulder at Cody. I didn’t want others to know about Rowen yet.
“She’s my wife. Carrying my child. The Pack Council wants to eradicate us. But it’s been too long since I’ve sat with you both… and I missed you,” I told them honestly.
Grandmother chuckled. “Go on, then. Go take justice against those that would strike at your pack,” she told me, watching me, ancient wisdom and power in her gaze. “Go be an alpha of this pack, while pretending you’re not terrified that you’re part of something much bigger than you.”
“I’m not terrified,” I muttered.
“Liar,” she said sweetly, and Grandfather laughed out loud.
I left before she could be proven right again.
The Stonefang shelters were arranged in straight rows, small wooden structures that could be easily dismantled should we choose to move location. Stonefang territory was vast but mostly barren. Much of it was uninhabitable. But it was ours.
Ours.
I stopped and turned, looking at the land of which I called myself alpha. I was barefoot, and I stood and listened. The land hummed gently underneath me, and as I focused on the feeling, I let out a sigh.
Had I said this wasn’t my home? I’d been wrong. This was my home as much as the Hollow was. This is what the Pack Council feared. The land itself recognized me as its alpha.
It had nothing to do with my pack sizes or the geography of the territory. It was the nature of the land.
“You see it now.” Grandmother’s voice was smug in my head. “Now you understand and believe it.”
“I do.”
“Slow but not unteachable,” Grandfather chuckled.
“You’re both as bad as each other,” I scolded them.
I turned back to the shelters where the Hollow shifters were being held. Stonefang pack guarded the doors. Some looked pleased to see me, and some watched like they were waiting to see who I’d become.
As much as I hated Cody being right, this was exactly why I had needed to enforce my Will separately here.
“Where is Solana?” I asked, and Cale stepped forward.
“She’s in that one.” He pointed across from us. His head tipped to the shelter nearest us. “Her children are in here.”
“Confined?” I asked, not masking my surprise.
“All Blueridge Hollow shifters are in these three shelters,” he told me without hesitation. “We took no chances.”
Another of the pack stepped forward. “No more attacks. No scouts from the Pack Council. But we are watching, Alpha. We did not invite trouble.”
Meaning I had?
He continued. “There are pack here with family in the Hollow—they’re uneasy. Waiting for you to tell them what we do next.”
Meaning, they were waiting to know whether I’d ask them to leave Stonefang.
“Everyone gather around,” I called out. When they were around me, I thought about how to phrase it, then decided I wasn’t known for inspiring speeches. I was someone who spoke the truth as I saw it, straightforward and more often than not, blunt. Why change who I was? That wasn’t who I was.
“The pack has been split,” I told them. “I won’t apologize for that.
” I turned as I spoke so I could see them all.
“As you know, I met my mate. When I left here, all those moons ago, to make my way to the Pack Council to inform them of Alpha Lars’s successor, I did not know my mate was in Blueridge Hollow,” I told them honestly.
“I did not know that their alpha was dying. I did not know his daughter was to be offered in political marriage.” I shrugged.
“What I did know was that Blueridge Hollow was the pack that accepted me when I was a young child with no family,” I said simply.
“What I knew was that the girl who I loved as a teenager was being offered in a game of marriage, and the Hollow was the prize.”
“Not the bride?” someone asked curiously.
“You’ve obviously not met my wife,” I told them with a chuckle. “She’s not exactly the prize you want to win if she doesn’t want to play the game.” I met Cale’s gaze. “And she doesn’t play games.”
His eyebrows shot up at my statement, and I could hear Cody sigh in disappointment that I wasn’t letting it go, but damn, I just couldn’t. So I was a jealous and possessive man—pretty sure my mate already knew.
“I never knew she was my mate.” I licked my lips. “No one was more surprised than me, trust me.” I considered them as I spoke. “Alpha Malric named me heir. Named me alpha of the pack.”
“Did he not know you were already an alpha of this pack?” someone demanded at the back.
Good question, and only the truth would do. “He did.” I heard their whisper of discontentment. “Me being alpha to Blueridge Hollow does not mean I am any less your alpha.” A few shuffled their feet. “I am alpha of two territories, one pack.”
“You haven’t been home for a while, Alpha. How can we believe you?” Cody asked.