Chapter 23
Pack Politics
Roan
My father is sitting on my porch when I get back from Phoebe’s.
It’s late. Past ten. The kind of hour when reasonable people are in bed, and unreasonable people are sitting in the dark on their son’s porch with the patience of a man who’s been waiting a long time and doesn’t mind waiting longer.
He’s got a flask, which means he planned this.
Chris Mistwood doesn’t carry a flask for spontaneous visits.
I see him from thirty metres away and consider turning around. The forest is right there. I could run the boundary, loop back in a few hours, and hope he gets cold and gives up. It’s a coward’s option, and I recognise it as such, which is the only reason I keep walking.
“A bit late for a social call,” I say, stopping at the bottom of the steps.
“I’ve been calling you for three days. You haven’t answered.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“So I hear.” He pours something from the flask into the cap. Steam rises in the cold air. “Sit down, Roan.”
“I’m fine standing.”
“I know you are. Sit down anyway.”
I sit, because fighting him on the small things wastes energy I’ll need for the big ones.
The porch step is cold through my jeans.
Above us, the sky is clear, a sharp November darkness that makes the stars look close enough to touch.
My father drinks whatever is in his flask, and I wait for the ambush.
“Arthur came to me after the bonfire,” he says. “Told me the woman you brought smelled like something he hadn’t encountered in decades. I asked Rebecca. She wouldn’t confirm or deny, which told me everything I needed to know, because Rebecca only goes silent when she’s protecting you.”
I don’t respond. There’s nothing to respond to yet. He’s laying groundwork.
“Then Tom mentioned you’d been spending time with the new vet.
Regularly. Publicly. The whole village is talking about it, which means the whole pack is talking about it, which means I’m the last person in Mistwood to be told what’s happening in my own son’s life.
” He turns the flask cap in his hands. “That’s a familiar feeling. ”
The dig lands. He meant it to.
“You already know she’s my mate,” I say. “I told you at the main house. Her name is Phoebe Clarke. She’s a vet. Her heritage is activating, and she’s going through an emergence. You came here to talk about what happens next, so let’s talk about what happens next.”
“All right.” He sets the flask down. “What happens next?”
“Nothing changes. I’m helping her through it. She’s handling it well. When she’s ready to meet the pack, she’ll meet the pack. On her terms.”
“And until then?”
“Until then, it stays between us.”
My father is quiet for a moment. The measured stillness of an Alpha processing. “You said something at the main house. About watching me do this your entire life. About your mother.”
“I said what I meant.”
“I know you did. And I told you I knew what I’d done to her.” He looks at me, and in the porch light, his face is older than I’ve seen it. “But I don’t think you’ve told me what you actually saw. Not the version you’ve been carrying around like a weapon. The real one.”
The night is very still. I could deflect. I could tell him we’ve covered this ground. But he’s right. At the main house, I threw an accusation. I didn’t tell him what it cost me.
“I was twelve,” I say. “She was tired all the time. Not the kind of tired you sleep off. The kind that lives in your bones. She used to tell me stories about her life before Mistwood, the flat in Edinburgh, the friends she’d left behind, and she told them like fairy tales.
Like that woman was someone she’d read about in a book.
” I stop, because the next part is the part I’ve never said out loud.
“She smiled through all of it. Every pack function, every ceremony, every demand on her time and her energy. She smiled because she loved you too much to tell you it was killing her. And everyone around her called it duty and honour and the privilege of being the Alpha’s mate. ”
My father stands slowly. He’s still taller than me by an inch, still broader through the shoulders, still carrying the physical authority of thirty years as Alpha. But the pain in his eyes isn’t performance.
“I told you at the main house that I failed her,” he says. “I meant it. I’ve meant it every day for sixteen years. But hearing what you saw…” His voice is steady, but the steadiness is costing him. “I didn’t know she told you those stories. About Edinburgh.”
“She told me a lot of things.”
“I wish she’d told me.”
The owl calls from the forest. Two low notes that hang in the air between us.
“Then you understand,” I say, “why I won’t let the same thing happen to Phoebe.”
“What I understand is that my son has been handling the most significant event in his life alone because he’s so afraid of becoming me that he can’t see straight.
” He takes a step closer. “I’m not asking to take over.
I’m not asking to manage her or position her or turn her into a resource for the pack.
I’m asking to know. That’s all. As your father, not your Alpha.
I’m asking you to let me know what’s happening in your life. ”
I look at him. Chris Mistwood, Alpha of the Mistwood pack, standing on my porch asking me for something he’s never asked for before. Not obedience. Not compliance. Not the dutiful son finally taking his place.
He’s asking for a connection. Not Alpha to heir. Father to son.
I’ve got no fucking idea what to do with that.
“She’s emerging,” I say, and my voice sounds different than it did a minute ago.
Quieter. Less defended. “Omega traits. Heightened senses, temperature regulation, and emotional attunement. She’s handling it well.
She’s the most capable person I’ve ever met.
Handling it with clinical notes, lists, a stubborn rationality that would put most wolves to shame. ”
“She sounds formidable.”
“She is.”
“And the rogues?”
I look at him sharply. “What about them?”
“If she’s an emerging Omega, her scent is broadcasting.
Every unattached wolf within miles will be picking it up.
The rogues have been pushing closer to the village for weeks, and I’m not so old that I can’t connect those facts.
” He holds my gaze. “You’ve been doubling the eastern patrols. I noticed. I assumed you had a reason.”
I did have a reason. The reason is sleeping in a cottage half a mile from here, and the rogues have been circling closer to that cottage with every incursion.
“They’re drawn to her,” I say. “I think they have been since she arrived. The emergence is making it worse.”
“Then we need to address it.”
“I know.”
“Together, Roan. Not you on your own in the dark, running patrols you won’t let anyone help with. Together. As a pack.”
I want to resist. The word “together” has been weaponised against me so many times that my defences go up automatically, the same way they’ve gone up every time my father has tried to draw me into pack operations.
But this isn’t about leadership training or succession planning.
This is about keeping Phoebe safe. And I can’t do that alone.
I’ve been pretending I can, and the pretence is getting more dangerous by the day.
“Together,” I say. The word tastes strange in my mouth. Not bad. Just unfamiliar. Like a bone I’ve been refusing to chew. “But I run the tactical side. Not you, not Rebecca. I decide where the wolves go and when. You provide the bodies. That’s the deal.”
He wants to argue. The effort of not arguing is visible in every line of his body. I can see the Alpha in him straining against the father, the instinct to command warring with the decision to concede.
He just nods, and screws the cap back on his flask, and stands there for a moment looking at me like he’s seeing something he hasn’t seen in a long time.
“I’d like to meet her,” he says. “When she’s ready. No pressure, no ceremony.”
“I’ll ask.”
“That’s all I’m asking.” He walks down the steps, then pauses at the bottom. “Roan. Your mother would have liked her.”
He leaves before I can respond, which is probably deliberate, because the thing that happens to my chest when he says those words is not something I want anyone to witness. Bastard. He knew exactly what that would do to me.
I sit on the porch in the dark for a long time after he’s gone. The stars wheel overhead. Slow. Indifferent. The forest breathes around me. I think about my mother. My father. The woman sleeping half a mile away who’s changing everything I thought I knew about what I’m capable of.
The rebel in me is quiet tonight. Not defeated. Not converted. Just quiet, the way a storm goes quiet when it’s run out of wind and is deciding what to be next.
I think it might be deciding to be something new.