Chapter 23 #2
The jet was packed; his purchases were made, and the wolves all knew. All except one.
The pack had been supportive and confused, but no one had died. Many of the wolves hadn’t even blinked because Nico was right; they already had an alpha.
It was almost funny. Almost. He’d nailed his feet to the floor for this pack, thinking that was the only way his wolf was going to be okay. When in reality, it had always had another alpha. She had so thoroughly convinced herself of the proprieties that even she didn’t believe it.
He knocked softly on the door of her penthouse. “Nonna?”
He could both smell and hear her. There was no pretending not to be home in a wolf pack, but she didn’t walk toward the door.
“Nonna, I know you’re there, and you know I’m here. Open the door.” He kept his voice soft. If they started at the volume they both could reach, they’d bring down the house by the end of this. “Nonna, per favore.”
Finally, she shuffled closer and swung the door open. “Cosa vuoi?”
“I want to talk to you.” He really wanted to do it in English. This was going to be hard enough without trying to translate on top of it.
She opened the door wide, and he walked in, seeing all over again how tiny she was. She was from the part of the pack that had stayed in Italy when Jacomo came over to build his silver mine.
They called her Nonna and great aunt, because she was the sister of somebody in his direct line, and it seemed the most accurate in his twisted family tree.
She’d told him the story only once. She’d never been able to have children, and rather than accept the increasing irrelevance of a childless wolf, she’d come to visit relatives here and never left, slowly working her way into the heart of the pack.
She sat him down and poured him a plain espresso, the only thing she drank or served, even though to him it tasted like motor oil and sent his wolf jittering out of his skin. He took the smallest sip humanly possible, gasped at the taste, and put it down. This was their ritual. He would miss it.
She drained her own cup, set it down, and said, “No.”
Mateo blinked. “I haven’t said anything—”
“I am also not stupid.”
Mateo knew that was true. He was the one who always felt a little stupid in this apartment.
“There is no other alpha,” she said. “The next in line is a teenager. You have always done your duty. There is nothing to change in that.”
He smiled with a brief, humorless grin. Like all of her mistakes, Colorado was banished from the house, never to be spoken of again.
“I’m leaving,” he said as simply as possible.
He’d practiced several speeches in his mind over the last week to justify that and soften the blow.
He even thought he could explain the interesting things he’d learned from the shifter he bought the land from, that there did really seem to be a destined mate for every wolf, that he had one, and every child born so far had both magic and a wolf as they reunited magic long divided.
“Hah,” she said imperiously, and he felt his wolf yank within him to stop baiting the alpha.
You could have told me she was your alpha!
It ignored him.
“You are not stupid,” he said slowly and calmly, “but maybe you don’t see everything.”
She gasped.
“I can leave because I was never alpha.”
“What are you talking about?” she began and then started up in Italian.
He knew this was coming. He knew it was only a matter of time before he got the huge lecture he hated so much, but today it was just more proof. Why would an alpha wolf hate to hear from a distant, aged relative?
Because his wolf thought she was in charge of things. Because when his father had died, she took a traumatized and terrified little boy and told him everything was going to be all right. She was going to take care of everything, and he had believed her. He never stopped believing her.
“You are my alpha,” he said. “You are the alpha of every Amato on this continent. And you have been since the day my father died.”
Miraculously, for the first time, her harangue stopped.
“I love you, Nonna. Ti amo, but I never wanted this life.”
“But your wolf—”
“He used to, but we have a better one waiting that works for both of us.”
“Your company!”
“Matt is going to run it better than I ever could have.” He bit his tongue. He should tell her about Tori and that there would be more witches in her life, but he’d let Matt do that. He couldn’t make everything easy. “I’m going to play with code and do the stuff I’m actually good at.”
“From the wilderness!”
“They have Wi-Fi.” He was going to spend an absurd amount of money bringing broadband to the town of Silver Spring to make sure of it.
“But the pack! I cannot.”
“You have for decades, so clearly you can. Everyone else is on board. The moment I said it, it was obvious to all of them. Can’t you feel it? The weight?”
He couldn’t anymore. He still felt his pack as vague connections in his brain, but they weren’t pulling on him, and it was the best feeling in the world.
“I’m 89!” she said. She only seemed to be capable of two-word sentences at the moment, and he was mildly worried; maybe he would get another wolf to come over after this. Maybe someone should steal her espresso stash. Then her words registered.
“I knew you weren’t eighty-six last year!”
She lit off again in Italian.
“Nonna! Nonna, you’re going to live to a hundred. And by that time, Jackson will be of age.”
She clutched her chest. “An alpha named Jackson.”
He burst out laughing so hard he could taste espresso again. “That’s what I said.”
He leaned forward and wrapped his arm around her softly. “I love you. I love the family. I will be back for visits.”
“With a witch.”
“You’d love her.”
He didn’t say it, but he figured they had some of the same magic.
Tori had finally given him the proper names for all twelve talents, as well as how they were organized first into active and receptive magic, then into three buckets: pattern, natural, and elemental magic.
Pattern magic made order out of chaos; natural magic was connected to phenomena in the world, and elemental were the oldest, most powerful but also the simplest talents.
He knew that if he were a witch, he would probably be some kind of patternmaker. Hell, that’s literally all he did with his time. Codes were nothing but patterns. Cat’s divination was an elemental skill. Somehow, the two of them worked.
Nonna was a different kind of wolf. She sometimes stared into the distance with a look he’d seen on Cat’s face more than once, only to come back to herself with an intuitive leap that made his brain hurt.
It was something to study more, whether the magic that went into each wolf privileged one talent or another.
It was far more subtle, and they didn’t seem to do anything with it until they found a witch of their own, but it was there.
After all, she’d randomly sent him right to his fated mate.
He stood up. “Call anytime, but you don’t need me.”
“I am the alpha?” she said, and he blinked. He was genuinely worried about her, but he also knew he was not the right person to calm her down. Every word that came out of his mouth seemed to rile her more and render her more speechless. “Impossibile!”
“It’s not impossible, because it already is.”
He kissed alternate cheeks three times and headed for the door.
He would call Maria to help Nonna, then he would call Nico and the airport, and be in the air in an hour.
He was digging out his cell phone as the elevator hit the lobby and the doors opened when the scent of roses flooded his nostrils.
“Oh my god, I’m hallucinating,” he said as his wolf snarled, and he looked up to see Catarina standing in the lobby of his building.
The elevator doors began to close, and he leaped forward, jostling until they opened again and he could stagger out, cell phone still in one hand.
She was dressed like she was going for a hike in the woods in plaid, boots, jeans, and the backpack she wore when they met.
God, he loved her.
“Hi,” he said.
“Sorry!” she said and spun for the door.