1. Kato
KATO
My parents told me, shortly before shipping me off from Anchorage, Alaska to the northern Scottish coast, that it would be tougher to get in trouble in the middle of nowhere.
Naturally I scoffed at this, because in the middle of nowhere there’s nothing to do but get into trouble. After all, it’s sort of my specialty.
Except in an insular pack like Uncle Declan’s, where everyone makes it their business to know your business, it’s proving exceptionally true.
It’s pointless to sneak off and smoke a cigarette, for instance; everyone can smell it for miles around.
I am not particularly hidden, either, where I sit behind an old crumbling stone wall that could be anywhere from a hundred to a thousand years old, among the long summer grass.
It’s more that I’m trying to smoke it before anyone catches me.
Some days it’s doable, and I get a moment of solitude, time to catch my breath without someone bearing down on me. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, I even manage to smoke a second or third before I’m hunted down and scolded like a child.
Not today, though. Right on time, when I’m about two-thirds finished, up walks my assigned babysitter. He’s a great big ginger-bearded fuck who probably outweighs me by a good twenty pounds—or stones, or kilograms, or whatever the hell they use here in the UK—and it’s all muscle.
He’s magnificent actually, is Nathan. He’s absolutely jacked, his broad shoulders straining against his flannel shirt and sculpted forearms peeking out beneath the rolled-up sleeves.
Piercing honey-brown eyes, half obscured by the darkish auburn hair that tumbles across his forehead.
He’s dominant as hell, too, taking no shit from anyone.
(He’s all the things I would want to be, as an alpha, in another life. If I were less of a relentless fuck-up.)
He leans down and snatches the cigarette from my mouth, grinding it out beneath the heel of his boot. “Up,” he says, in both a brogue and a tone that brooks no argument.
But argument I brook nevertheless. “I was almost done, Nate,” I say. “Could’ve let me finish it.”
I think he hates it when I call him that. Everyone else calls him Nathan, which seems to be what he prefers. “I don’t care,” he tells me. “Get up, now.”
“What for?” I’m trying him not for any reason except for the fact that I can.
And like that, his thin patience is at an end.
He takes hold of the front of my shirt and hauls me to my feet, shoving me against the wall.
He looks me right in the eye while he rifles through the pockets of my jeans, gaze not breaking contact for even a second.
This is—aside from the cigarette—the most excitement I’ve had all day.
He produces the slightly squashed pack of cigarettes. “Who was it this time?” he asks, flapping them in my face.
“I don’t wanna say,” I whine. “You’ll yell at them.”
His mouth twitches. “I’ll kindly remind them you’re not to have—”
“Anything? At all? No booze, no drugs, no fun.”
“Kato.”
I let my head rest against the damp stone at my back. “It was that cute little old lady at the human village. The one who wears purple all the time?”
“Magda?”
“Magda.” I snap my fingers. “That’s it.”
Nathan sighs and lets me down, tucking the pack into the front pocket of his shirt. “Of course it was Magda.”
“Hey.” I dust myself off. “She says I’m a wee bonnie hen, Nate. And that you should be much nicer to me.”
“Isn’t she ninety years old?”
“Yeah, well, that doesn’t mean her opinion isn’t valid.”
He smacks my hand when I reach for his pocket. “Piss off.”
“I don’t get why you care so much. It’s not a big deal. A smoke isn’t going to kill me. I am still very firmly on the wagon.”
“I’m following orders. I have no personal interest in your wellbeing beyond that.”
“Oh, ouch.”
Such are our interactions. They follow a similar script every time and very seldom deviate. Me needling him, him turning me aside. Sometimes putting me in my place, as a more dominant wolf should, and I fight him on that, too. Don’t show belly or throat, only teeth.
Always.
I follow him, though, when he abruptly turns and strides off. I’m conscious of the way he carries himself: rigid and contained. Like the rest of my uncle’s pack, he is not touchy-feely in the slightest.
No one here sleeps in puppy piles, or finds excuses to touch and cuddle or otherwise express affection.
No one greets with a press of cheeks. There are no submission displays that aren’t dropping to the ground and rolling over.
Everyone sort of pairs off, even betas and those yet to be mated. It’s strange.
I try to touch him anyway, though. Nathan.
Sometimes. A brush of fingers, a bump of shoulders.
Because I miss all the touching and he’s the one who actually pays any attention to me—even if it’s only because he has to—aside from the odd horned-up omega still wanting for a mate.
And the only time that’s ever reciprocated in any way is if I manage to push his buttons enough.
Nathan was voluntold to be my round-the-clock jailer from the moment I set foot here, and he’s been sure to let me know he’s resented every moment of it.
Granted, I’ve made it my mission to make his life hell for the simple crime of having this job he never wanted and did not ask for, but that’s not my fault.
After all, I didn’t exactly ask to be here, either.
I didn’t sign up for whatever bullshit wilderness camp for troubled youths my dad seemed to think this would be, at the big age of thirty.
My uncle’s pack lands consist of farmland—lots of it—populated with horses and sheep.
A lot of the work is delegated to the betas, but bad little alphas like me get our noses put to the grindstone too.
You need to detox, my a-dad had said. You’re an alcoholic, son. No more than fucking everyone else in the Anchorage pack—I just don’t seem to hold my liquor half as well. And then I make it everyone else’s problem. Which turns into a pack problem.
That’s not on purpose, though. I don’t mean to be the way that I am. I just…am.
Just like I hadn’t meant to start drinking so heavily after my would-be mate, Everett—who I grew up with and adored with my whole heart and thought my destiny—died.
Just like I hadn’t meant to lash out and hurt that beta for daring to try to console me when we realized he wasn’t coming back.
Just like I hadn’t meant to lose control and kill that alpha—and yeah, he attacked me first, but that was because I was drunk again and he was trying to snap me out of it, and only very technically was it self-defense.
I never meant any of it. I didn’t. But intentions don’t mean much when your actions scream otherwise.
So I’m here. And my uncle has pawned me off onto one of the lesser alphas because I don’t even merit the pleasure of his personal attention. I’ve been officially sober for thirty-one days. And I can’t even celebrate with a cigarette.
Sort of funny how I thought it might be relaxing, staying here. Like a vacation.
I suppose it is, in a way. It’s beautiful here. A different kind of beauty from Alaska’s icy desolation, more green, and the people are warm enough in their admittedly abrupt way. It’s better than the side-eyes, cold shoulders, and turned backs from back home.
I wonder if I’ll ever get to go back. And when.
Not that I’m in any hurry, not that I really left anyone behind.
Not that there’s anyone waiting for me, really—no lovers, no family beyond my parents and a brother who had long since stopped speaking to me before that final straw.
But I’m behaving as if on a timer anyway because it’s principle, really.
I don’t belong here, but probably I don’t belong anywhere.
I don’t just sit and mope, though. I still have my duties, menial as they can be.
Barn chores, lots of those—mucking out stalls, measuring grain, throwing hay.
Deer hunts too, on the occasions I’m allowed to tag along, and patrolling pack territory that encompasses a decent chunk of land beyond the pack’s tiny village on the coast.
The latter is the reason I’m following after Nathan now, lagging behind a bit the way he prefers.
The perimeter checks we conduct every morning, afternoon, and night are seemingly ceaseless, and verge on pointless.
There’s no one out here who wants us, no natural predator in sight.
There is nothing but open green country and rolling fog, and cliffs that tumble abruptly off into the white-capped sea.
For miles and miles and miles it’s like this, ass end of nowhere.
And this is grunt work, all because I’m fresh meat, bottom rung, starting all fucking over again and this is the true nature of my punishment—being nothing and no one, stripped of all autonomy because I cannot be trusted with even that much. I know what it means for me.
We’re about a half-hour’s walk out from the village when I kneel to untie and re-tie a shoelace, and Nathan turns to me in barely concealed irritation. “Can you not make this quick and easy for once?”
I want to point out that this would go much faster if we shifted, but Nate follows Declan’s directive to the letter, so no fur.
I think Declan does it to remind Nate of his place, to not let him forget the limp in his right leg that’s less noticeable on four legs than it is on two. A sore spot for sure.
“My uncle would probably be mad if something happened to me. Say, I trip and break my nose on an inconveniently placed rock.”
“Both of us know exactly what you’re doing.”
“It’s just that there’s never been anything scarier than a loose pony out here. You ever wonder what we’re patrolling for?”
He is beyond annoyed with me, arms folded over his chest. “Like you didn’t do this at home.”
“Yeah, but there are bears back home. And moose. You ever seen a moose, Nate? They’re fucking terrifying.” I double-knot my lace, unnecessarily. “We had a moose nearly take a couple of us out on a hunting trip after we got too close to her baby.”