3. Poe #2
“How is that my problem?” I didn’t mean to sound so acerbic, but my inner beast growled at the thought of Lycan helping her through it, giving her his magic while I stood there and watched.
Useless as always.
“It’s my problem,” Kodiak said. “Which is why I need the favor.”
“And if I say no?” Despite being a dominant wolf, I didn’t rank high in the pack, and I never would.
This had never bothered me. My wolf and I both knew our place, and we’d made peace with that a long time ago.
But this? My throat tightened, and my chest ached, and my bruised heart threatened to shatter all over again.
What if I walked in on them together? What if I arrived just as she was in the throes of it? Lycan would kill me to keep her safe; the wolf in him wouldn’t let anyone else come near her in such a state, not even me.
Maybe that’s for the best. Maybe he would literally gut me and make the metaphorical a reality. Maybe that would be better than pining away for him like some stupid adolescent with a crush.
“Poe, you came to me years ago, a broken lone wolf with no one in his corner,” Kodiak started. “Do you remember what I told you then?”
I licked my lips and hung my head. “Pack means family, even when it’s difficult.”
“I asked you if you could live with that,” he said. “You said you’d try. I took you in, a teenage boy with no background and no family.”
I winced at the reminder. Who the hell knew where my parents were?
I’d grown up in the human adoption system, foster home after foster home.
No one wanted a broody, aggressive little shit who couldn’t understand why he was the way he was.
I’d always been a morose emo dirtbag, and that didn’t change, even after I figured out who and what I was.
I’d gone through childhood alone. I’d gone through the transition alone. I thought I’d always be alone.
No one else I’d ever encountered broke into pieces on the full moon and ran in the woods as a giant, fur-covered monster. I’d always thought I was a freak, but that only made it more apparent.
Until I encountered one of the other pack members, Crater, during a full moon.
He’d been on a run out in Baltimore. It should have led to a fight.
He should have scented me and killed me, not knowing whose pack I belonged to.
Instead, he ran with me the rest of the night, and in the morning, when we’d shifted back to our human forms, he’d brought me here with the promise of safety and knowledge of others like me.
“I could have turned you away,” he said. “I could have told you we didn’t take in strays. I didn’t know who was looking for you or what might find us because I harbored you.”
I closed my eyes and bit back the scalding fury of resentment.
“So why didn’t you?” I snapped. “Do you expect me to be in your debt for the rest of my life?”
“No,” he said. “That’s why it’s a favor and not an order.”
I squared my jaw. “I’m forever grateful for what you’ve done for me. But Kodiak, this is too much. Lycan and I…” I didn’t have the words for what Lycan and I were to each other. Ex-lovers. Almost mates. A simmering love that had festered into rot buried under the skin.
“You and Lycan need to sort out your shit. You think you’re the first two shifters to have a falling out?
” He tipped his head toward the door, toward the restless shuffle of the pack living their lives under his roof.
“A hundred people live on this homestead together. Shifters need to fuck for three days when they go through their transition, longer when they go into heats or ruts. You think emotions don’t get complicated?
You think it’s still easy to be a pack after something as intimate as that? ”
I took his reality check on the chin and looked at my feet.
“Life goes on,” he continued. “Lycan needs help. I need help. And I’m asking you because you know him. Hell, you probably know him better than he knows himself.”
Debatable. Lycan was as loving and carelessly promiscuous as he was riddled with commitment issues and insecure attachment.
“You two make a great team,” he continued. “You move, he counters.”
“He doesn’t want me, Kodiak,” I said. “If he knew you were sending me, he’d—”
“He doesn’t know I’m sending anyone yet,” he said. “I need you to stay for Mill and Maeve’s mating, just in case something happens here. Then, you’re on the first flight out.”
“What happens when he rips my heart out for walking in on Ava during her transition?” I asked. “You know how dominant shifters are.”
“Oh, something tells me he won’t.” Kodiak flashed a small grin, seemingly aware of something he didn’t deign to share with me.
Everyone who joined the pack made a blood vow to the alpha, which meant we were all connected through him.
He was the enigma at the center of our universe, the sun that had caught us all in his gravity.
Because of that, he knew what was going on in the pack better than anyone, even those insipid fuckers who always ran their mouths.
I’d heard a rumor that Kodiak knew Maeve and Mill were mated years before they did, and if that were the case, I shuddered to imagine what he might sense about me.
“Anything else?” I asked, my wolf bowed in defeat.
Kodiak, after all, was right. Pack meant family, especially when it was difficult.
I didn’t want to see Lycan. I didn’t want to go to Copenhagen and play second fiddle to some spoiled Vanderbilt princess.
But I wouldn’t deny Kodiak. I owed him far more than my life and a place in the pack.
“Yes,” he said. “Take better care of yourself. I can’t have you keeling over the next time the Scorpions decide they want to ruffle up our skirts.”
I pushed to my feet. “You got it, alpha. Thank you.”
He narrowed his eyes as I left and quietly shut the door behind me. But I straightened when I met eyes with the person standing outside his office.
Channing, Lycan’s younger sister. At six years younger than me, we’d gotten close after I started dating her brother, and quickly became best friends. Hell, after everything went down with her brother, she might be my only friend.