Chapter Two #3
There certainly had been something else at play for him and Kimberly when they made secret plans as teenagers to escape their fathers and leave Warrington to start their own pack.
Shane had bloomed into his alpha dominance from the very start.
Kimberly, as they all discovered, had no dominance.
Isaac would never have given his blessing for Shane and Kimberly to mate.
Of course, none of that mattered to Shane.
He still wanted Kimberly, even before they became wolf shifters, and at the time, he thought nothing would have changed his mind.
Not dominance, not their families, not their pack rankings, nothing …
except when they were thrown into the crucible for the first time, it seemed that all of those things really did matter in the end. They didn’t matter so much anymore.
With a stack of warm pizza boxes balanced in one arm and the other hand smoothing back a flyaway hair from her ponytail, Erica rushed to the kitchenette counter and set down the food. Dominic instantly stood and went to his mate.
“Sorry I’m late,” she panted. “Marco’s was pretty busy and—”
Dominic snatched her up around the waist and captured the last of her sentence with his mouth in a kiss that made Shane uncomfortable. He wasn’t the only one.
“Hey! Can you put off kissing my daughter until after the meeting?”
Shane’s brows shot up at Cole’s mocking reprimand.
Taking a closer look, he finally noticed the resemblance.
But if Erica was a human, that meant Cole was once mated to a human as well.
It was an inevitability that a pure shifter couple would also have shifter children.
When the couples mixed, it was less certain.
Another alpha mating with a human. Apparently, it was more common and accepted than Isaac led Shane to believe.
Dominic released his mate and gave his fellow alpha an apologetic look.
A deep blush rose into Erica’s cheeks. “I got two meat lovers and an everything pizza. What does everyone want?”
At first, she turned away to retrieve a stack of paper plates from the counter to start filling requests. But then, Dominic carefully guided Erica away from the pizzas and toward the circle. “We’ll eat when business is done. Shouldn’t take long.”
Erica’s hazel eyes darted around the alpha circle, but Shane didn’t sense any fear in her, only a touch of confusion about the order of business over food. With a pleasant smile, she and Dominic sat together, the assembly now complete. Once more, the voice of Shane’s father pounded in his skull.
A woman shouldn’t be here. This is men’s work. She doesn’t belong.
No. That wasn’t right. This was Dominic’s town. This was his meeting. He could bring in whomever he wanted. Dominic clearly had a reason for allowing her to stay.
Hank picked up the file folder from the floor and opened it. Like reading off a financial report, he worked through the more redundant bits of the meeting, reporting on the successful placement of Shane’s pack in both housing and occupations.
“You don’t have a beta yet,” Hank stated, as if it wasn’t something to be ashamed of. “Do you need help picking one?”
Shane clenched his teeth and hated the way his insides flipped at the thought of taking on another beta.
In one sense, he knew he couldn’t go without a beta forever.
Small packs often didn’t need a beta, but a pack of his size still needed that structure.
Though lately, beta had become synonymous with betrayal, at least it had for Shane.
How could he possibly pick the next wolf who could try to split his pack again?
He judged that he would need a little extra push to get him moving.
“Yeah, probably,” he mumbled, folding his arms tighter over his chest.
Dominic offered, “How about you, me, and Cole go out for drinks tomorrow night to talk about it? Howling Bones Bar can get a little busy on Saturdays, but it’s the best place in town for a cold beer and a game of pool.”
Shane weighed the idea. He had a special project for some flower shop tomorrow that Ferrin had assigned him earlier that morning, but he suspected he was overdue for night out.
He nodded. “Sounds good to me.”
Cole grinned. “Gage should come too,” he said. “Your pack isn’t too big right now, but it will be some day. Might as well learn something.”
There was something in Cole’s grin and Gage’s grimace that told Shane the younger alpha wasn’t too keen on the idea. Gage took another sip of his coffee and grunted a begrudging agreement to the plan. It was settled.
“Do we want to review the pending applications for sanctuary?” Hank asked Dominic.
All eyes looked to the Prime Alpha, the man who held the fate of endangered shifters in his hands. This was what Tolstone was all about, and Shane was eager to see how Dominic handled such an important job.
Dominic nodded and slipped one of those trusted hands into Erica’s. Shane watched the way their fingers laced together, and a weird bit of envy struck him out of nowhere. It had been so long since he held a woman’s hand like that … Since he held Kimberly’s hand like that.
Hank’s eyes dropped to the file folder as he shuffled through the packets. One by one, he listed the packs on the waiting list. He gave their locations, the crisis, and the size of the pack.
A pack of five in Colorado was unable to find jobs.
A pack of twenty-eight in Wisconsin was short of females.
A pack of ten in Florida found they had three too many alphas and struggled to make their own peace.
After each one, Hank waited for Dominic’s verdict.
“No,” was his answer across the board.
Shane understood. Their problems did not warrant a move to Tolstone. They were temporary conflicts that could be resolved themselves, or they weren’t problems at all. They all seemed mild or downright silly. But it spoke volumes about Tolstone’s reputation. Shifters were desperate to come here.
Then, they came to one that was different from the rest.
A pack of eleven from Virginia believed they were in the crosshairs of a hunter.
The thoughtful silence was deafening. Hunters were the boogeyman of the shifter world.
Humans who knew too much about their existence either went mad at the reality that men could turn into animals, they accepted the truth and coped with it in their own ways, or they became hunters.
Those humans made it their mission, their sacred purpose in life, to exterminate shifters indiscriminately.
They weren’t that common in the modern world.
Centuries ago, shifters could find leagues of hunters in just about every country.
With globalization and the age of science, humans gave up tracking down fairy-tale monsters.
However, when hunters did make an appearance, it shouldn’t have been brushed under the rug as mere hearsay or paranoia. When they hit, they hit hard and fast, leaving few, if any, survivors.
They all held their breath and waited for Dominic.
The Prime Alpha leaned forward on his knees and rubbed his mouth, considering whatever factors ultimately played into his final decisions.
But what was there to decide? Shifters could have been in danger.
This was what Tolstone was founded for. Why did he hesitate?
“What’s their evidence?” Dominic asked.
Hank looked at the notes. “All they listed was suspicious activity in their town, and a few of their pack went missing.”
“Did they give any details of the missing wolves?”
“No.”
“What’s the makeup of the pack?”
“Two singles, a family of three with a child under a year old, two married couples, and the alpha.”
Dominic sighed. “We don’t have many open rentals. Did they say they were willing to cohabitate?”
Hank flipped a page on the application. “The box isn’t checked.”
“Then we wouldn’t have enough room for them right now.”