7. Chapter Seven
Chapter Seven
HARRISON
“Emily.” My head pounds from my lycan’s withheld fury and the thought that Emily’s never shifted and thinks she can’t. “Emily, listen to me.” I grab her shoulders, keeping my touch soft yet grounding. “ Omega is an outdated term for a werewolf without a rank.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Most packs stopped using it because of the derogatory undertones of the word and because assholes like your alpha would use that lack of rank against those wolves. All wolves can shift, no matter if they’re ranked or unranked.”
Emily’s breathing quickens with every word she hears. Confusion and disbelief furrow her brow. “All my life I’ve been told that all unranked wolves are omegas, and all omegas can’t shift because they don’t have a wolf.”
“And you never thought to question it because your pack makes sure outsiders aren’t welcome. Your alpha and his predecessors were very thorough in their brainwashing of your pack,” my dad says as the classroom door shuts behind him.
We were both so wrapped up in our discussion that we didn’t hear him arrive.
Emily flinches and leans into my chest again. Her heart races, and an almost inaudible whimper passes through her lips. I wrap my arms around her to ease her fears, rubbing her back in long strokes as I speak to my dad over the top of her head.
“You got here fast.”
“I was in town. Mr. Martin caught me on my car phone.”
His gaze lingers on the way I hold Emily and the way she clings to me as he meanders down the row of desks, but he doesn’t comment on it.
“Emily”—he lowers himself into a chair so he’s not towering over her—“I know you don’t have the best experience with alphas, but I promise you have no reason to be afraid of me.”
“Why should I believe you?” Emily rasps.
“Because I’m here to help you, not hurt you.”
“Help me how?”
“By making you a member of Crescent Lake.”
Instead of the relief I expect from Emily, she begins to cry again. “I c-can’t.”
“You’re eighteen now. The law states that you can choose your own pack once you’re eighteen,” I remind her.
She shakes her head vehemently and gazes up at me with a storm of pain in her gray eyes. Her fingers curl into my sweater, and she gasps for air. “Y-you d-don’t u-understand.”
Emily’s sobs intensify until she’s almost hyperventilating. She tries to speak, but she’s too panicked, too hysterical to communicate with us. She sputters and trembles until her teeth chatter.
“I can’t,” she forces out between her sobs. She stares at me pointedly as she cries and shakes in my arms, as if she’s trying to convey some hidden meaning.
It hits me with the force of a sniper’s bullet, what she’s trying to tell me. Why she can’t join our pack.
“There was more to his alpha command than you told me, wasn’t there? He ordered you not to join a new pack, didn’t he?” I keep my voice as calm as I can even though I want nothing more than to scream and rage against this injustice.
Emily sniffles and nods. Her gaze lowers to my chest, and she refuses to meet my eyes.
She shouldn’t do that. She has no reason to be embarrassed for what her alpha has done to her. It’s not her fault.
If anything, it’s mine. I should have kept her money safe for her. If I’d kept it, then her alpha wouldn’t have found it. If I’d kept it for her, she’d have met me at Brewed Awakenings on her birthday, and she’d already be a member of Crescent Lake.
“What exactly did he say? How did he word his command?” My dad leans forward with his intensity.
I glare at him in warning. She’s clearly in no shape to speak, yet he’s attempting to interrogate her about semantics?
Luckily, he realizes the error of his ways before I overstep and growl or yell at him.
“Did he say, ‘You can’t reject me as your alpha’?” he asks, rephrasing his initial question.
Emily nods again.
“But did he say you can’t accept a new alpha?”
“What does it matter?” I snap. “Why are you pushing her on this?”
“It matters,” he explains with exasperation, “because she can accept a new alpha without rejecting her current alpha.”
Shit. He’s right. It’s a good thing one of us is thinking clearly during this ordeal.
“He just—” Another sob cuts through Emily, but she swallows back the tears and tries again. “He just said, ‘You can’t reject me as your alpha.’”
Triumph sparkles in my dad’s eyes, and the aching in my muscles lessens. Even my lycan relaxes, although he’s still ready to race up to Lupine River and detach Alpha Justin’s head from his body.
“Do you want to join our pack, Emily?” my dad asks.
Goddess, I hope she says yes.
“I do.” Her voice is the strongest and clearest it’s been since she entered Mr. Martin’s classroom. “I know I’ll be safe there.”
She meets my eyes, and although she doesn’t say it, I know what she’s thinking. What she’s trying to tell me without words. I’ll be safe there with you.
“Once you accept me as your alpha, it will nullify any of the commands Alpha Justin has placed on you.” Dad stands and holds his hand out to her, claw extended so he can slice through her palm. “This will hurt, since your wolf is already weakened.”
“I don’t have a wolf.”
My nostrils flare, but my dad shoots me a look that keeps me from letting my inside thoughts become outside thoughts. And he’s right. Now is not the time. We need to ensure she’s safe before we dive into figuring out the rest.
Dad slices through Emily’s upturned palm, then quickly does the same with his own before clasping their hands together. “Emily, do you accept me, Michael Henry Stone, as your alpha?”
“I do.”
I glance at my dad, unsure if that’s enough for his lycan to recognize her as a new pack member. It’s shady as fuck that Lupine River isn’t teaching the members the official language we need to use to accept or reject pack bonds.
“Then I, Alpha Michael Henry Stone, accept you, Emily…”
The silence stretches, and Emily’s eyes widen with her fear that he’s changing his mind.
“He needs your full name, Em,” I say before she can fall into another panic.
“Emily Aurelia Parisi.” The words rush out of her with her relief.
“I, Alpha Michael Henry Stone, accept you, Emily Aurelia Parisi, as a member of the Crescent Lake pack. I promise to protect you and care for you as if you were my own, and I promise that Crescent Lake will be a haven for you. No harm will come to you while I am alpha.”
“Or while I am alpha,” I add. “You have my word. The Stone family will always keep you safe.”
Her lip quivers. Silent tears fall from her red-rimmed eyes. “Thank you. I don’t know if I can ever—”
Emily’s gasp echoes in the room. Her body jerks violently in my arms. She grabs onto me, her nails digging into my skin. Her teeth grind together, and a grunt of pain escapes from behind them.
“Em? What’s wrong?”
“Hurts.” Her back arches. “Everything hurts.”
“It’s her wolf.” Dad waves Mr. Martin towards the door. “Lock it. Don’t let anyone in.”
“You’re just going to let her shift into her wolf in the classroom? She needs to be in the forest. She’ll need to run.”
“Would you rather carry her through the halls like this and risk humans catching her mid-shift?”
As much as I hate to admit it, he’s got a point. “But why is her wolf coming forward right now?”
“Command,” Emily growls. Even with her pain tearing through her body, her fury is intense. Palpable.
And it feeds mine.
“That bastard suppressed your wolf with an alpha command?” I’m seething. This goes beyond mistreatment. This is pure, diabolical, calculated abuse. “Is that possible?” I ask my dad.
“Possible? Yes. But no alpha worth their title would ever stoop to something as low as that.”
Emily’s fingers flex. She cries out in pain again, and her knees buckle.
“Breathe, Em.” I stroke her hair, taking all her weight against me. “I know it hurts, but you have to breathe.”
Dad and Mr. Martin push the desks against the walls, leaving an opening for me to lower Emily to the floor.
Her fingertips curl against the tile as she scratches at it.
The cries and tears of anguish rip into my heart, as sharp as the claws trying to force their way out of Emily’s hands.
Sweat pours from her skin. Her eyelids flutter until she can’t hold them open anymore.
With each pulse of pain rippling through her, she weakens until her sobs and grunts are whimpers, and she shivers uncontrollably while barely conscious.
“What’s happening?” I pull her into my lap, cupping her cheek with one hand and checking her pulse with the other. It’s too fast, and her body temperature is too high, yet she’s shivering with the force of an earthquake. “Why is it taking so long? She should be in her wolf form by now.”
“Her body is too weak to handle a shift.” Dad sighs. “I don’t think she’s had any training, and her wolf’s been suppressed for too long.”
Goddess, this is all such a mess. “I should have helped her sooner.”
“Even if she’d joined our pack on her birthday like you wanted, this failed shift still would have happened.”
His response doesn’t ease my guilt.
“What do we do now?”
“Get her to Crescent Lake. She needs rest so her wolf can heal her bruises and so she can build her strength and eventually shift.” Dad grabs my shoulder so I meet his eyes. “And more than anything, she’ll need a friend. Someone she can trust.”
“She has me.”
“It won’t happen overnight.”
“I know.”
“You’ll need to be patient.”
I grimace. Patience. I’ve never been good at patience. Except…
I think back to our day picking blackberries, when I played along with her vast imagination and protected her from the troll, and when I taught her to catch the berries I tossed at her.
Maybe she’s the missing piece. Maybe she is my patience.
I gaze up at my dad with newfound determination. “I think I can be patient with her.”