Chapter Sixteen
Shane stood on Dominic’s porch and waited for the Prime Alpha to answer his humbled knock. He sent a text in advance to warn of his coming. It took a couple of hours to choke down his pride after his meeting with Paul before he admitted that he needed real help.
Dominic opened the door, dressed in casual jeans and a loose shirt, and welcomed Shane into the old Victorian-era mansion.
The house had an old-world, grand, and masculine vibe, fitting for the family who practically owned Tolstone.
It looked like the kind of place that should have reeked of bourbon and cigar smoke, but the aroma of cedar and old books met Shane as he moved from the foyer to the parlor.
Dominic was the first to speak. “You look pretty rough.”
“I’ve had a tough day.” Shane almost collapsed into the velvet wingback chair Dominic offered to him. “Thanks for agreeing to meet me on short notice.”
Dominic sat in the matching chair on the other side of the stone fireplace. “No trouble. It’s what I’m here for.” The Prime Alpha settled himself down. “So, what’s up?”
Shane leaned forward on his knees, unable to relax or put any energy into asserting his rank against Dominic. His head was lower than the Prime Alpha’s, his defenses in shambles.
But this meeting wasn’t about posturing or establishing rank. For several moments, Shane took his time trying to find the words that would communicate his situation without making him sound weak or pathetic. Then again, what was the point of hiding it?
“I … I need help finding balance in being an alpha.”
Dominic’s face pinched with bewilderment. “What do you mean?”
Shane rubbed at his mouth and turned his gaze absently to the cold hearth beside them.
“I haven’t done a good job of … I haven’t done right by my pack.
I just found out that two shifters up and left because I tried to lay down the law the way I thought was right.
” Shane covered his eyes as he thought back to how brutal he was to Andy.
“In Kansas, I let more than half my pack lose confidence in me. Here, I’m driving them away.
I thought I had a handle on this, that I knew the kind of alpha I wanted to be, but I …
I don’t anymore. I knew from the beginning that I never wanted to be like my father, but somehow, I turned into the very person I’ve hated almost all my life. ”
Dominic was silent, but not in disappointment, not the way Shane’s father would go quiet when Shane did something wrong. This silence was to give Shane as much of the floor as he needed to get it all out.
Shane turned his palms up in frustration.
“When I thought about it, I realized I was too lenient. I was too loose with the rules. I didn’t keep a pulse on my pack the way my father did.
If I had been paying attention, if I had more control, then I wouldn’t be here.
If I had been stronger than my father, I wouldn’t have hesitated in the fight with Kevin, and I’d still have my pack.
But as soon as I tried to fix my mistake in Tolstone, my pack still fell apart. What the hell am I doing wrong?”
As if he had been waiting for that question, Dominic finally spoke.
“You’re doing wrong by not following your instincts.
You will fail every time if you don’t. What your beta in Kansas did is not a reflection of your success or failure as an alpha.
If anything, it says more about the mess your father left for you. ”
Shane’s brows tightened. “What do you mean?”
“Let’s see if this sounds familiar. No one dared question him? Was that out of respect or fear? What did he do to make them so submissive? What did you see and hear behind closed doors? Your father stressed? Paranoid? Was your dad a tyrant or a leader?”
Shane knew the answer, what he had known for years. “A tyrant.”
Dominic smirked. “And you didn’t want to be the alpha your father was because you saw that difference.
A tyrant rules with an iron fist. He’s the one holding a whip, waiting, hoping someone will step out of line so he can make an example.
” He held up a finger. “A leader holds no whip. His fist is open and soft.” He unfurled his fingers as if to make his point.
“A leader uplifts his people. He looks for every chance to help, not punish. He still has rules and boundaries, and he holds firm to them, but only to keep chaos at bay, not to suffocate individuality or freedom.” Dominic lowered his hand.
“When a tyrant dies, it leaves a power vacuum. Someone cut from the same cloth will seize that opportunity. The people may have two responses. They’ll bow to the new tyrant because they don’t know any better, don’t know they could have better.
Or they will rise up and assert what they know they deserve. That’s how revolutions start.”
Dominic crossed his legs and Shane didn’t dare even twitch as he listened to what felt like a history or political science lesson.
“From what it sounds like to me,” the Prime Alpha continued, “your father left that vacuum and his old beta exploited it. And I stress that he was your father’s beta, because the moment he decided to take your pack from you, he was not your beta.
You couldn’t have done anything to fix it.
And those who allowed themselves to be swayed by him were no longer part of your pack.
They held onto the security of having an alpha like your father.
Those you brought here were ready for change. They were ready for a leader.”
Shane laced his fingers together and pressed the flesh between his knuckles. “I don’t feel like a leader.”
“I think you were, but you lost your head somewhere along the way.”
A little bit of the tightness in his chest loosened.
Dominic was right, and Shane knew it was right too.
He had all the good intentions the minute they came to Tolstone, but the noose of expectation tightened around his neck, forcing him to do things he wouldn’t have agreed with in a thousand years.
Forsaking his pack’s input on their new home, kicking out Andy, making Cody and Thea feel unsafe.
He poured himself into finding a good home for his pack but ignored everything else that mattered.
In the stress of that task, he lost sight of what was important.
Not to mention, the instances where he had to endure the mistrust of those who were close to him.
Kimberly withheld the truth about her trauma, and he seemed to be the last to find out about the trouble within his pack.
It magnified the insecurities he tried to smother, and he lashed out like the unhealed shifter that circumstances revealed him to be.
“Does this have anything to do with Kimberly leaving town earlier today?”
Shane sat straight up. “Where is she? Do you know if she’s okay?”
The Prime Alpha held up his hand as if that alone would settle Shane’s anxiety. “She’s gone to stay with her parents for a little while. She seemed really shaken up, according to Gage, but she didn’t want to talk about it. As far as I know, she’s safe.”
That knocked the breath out of him. To escape Shane, she took refuge in her father’s house. Their fight had driven Kimberly back into a lion’s den. She preferred the company of the man who made her feel inferior, because Shane probably wasn’t any better.
“By your miserable look, I’m right?”
Shane nodded sadly. “We had a fight about what I came to talk to you about. She gave me some genuine wisdom, a simpler version of what you said. But I didn’t want to listen, and I hit her where it hurt … I said she was barely a shifter because of her lack of dominance.”
Dominic hissed in a breath at the stinging insult. “Yeah, that was harsh.”
“And totally untrue. I’ve told her as much before, but …
my father came out of my mouth. I hardly knew what I said until she slapped me and ran out.
” Shane passed a hand over his eyes and sank deeper into the chair.
“I spent so much time fighting his voice in my head that somehow, I let it consume me. I don’t even know how it happened. ”
Dominic leaned forward on his knees, now putting himself lower than Shane.
“When you walk out of here, at least take this bit of wisdom with you. It comes from someone who had his own struggles with alpha legacies. You don’t have to be your father.
You are not obligated to his memory, and you definitely don’t have to be the kind of alpha he was or expected you to be.
He was just a man doing his best, loaded down with the baggage we never saw as children.
Being alpha is hard enough. To be an alpha, husband, and father may have been damn near impossible. ”
Shane fought the snarl in his throat.
His thoughts went back to every one of his father’s decisions that made their home into a battlefield. “I don’t know if I could forgive him for all the shit he did and said, what he’s still saying in the back of my mind after all this time.”
“You don’t have to forgive him. Maybe just give him a bit of grace for the things you didn’t know about until you had to slide into his shoes.”
Shane looked at Dominic with the tiniest degree of suspicion. “This is coming from an alpha who’s been there?”
Dominic nodded. “I’ve been there. I thought about giving it all up at one point. But you know who helped me? Erica. She gave me a reason to be a better alpha, to take care of Tolstone the way it deserved. Without her, none of this would be here.”
Shane would have never guessed. Dominic carried himself like a true, born and bred alpha. He saw glimpses of it enough to assure him of that. Knowing he had his own struggles, that he had similar battles to fight in his own head, made Shane feel just a bit less crazy, less alone.