by J. L. Wilder
“You could stay with us,” Marco said, just as Sophie had known he would. “You could join our pack. We’d be happy to have you.”
Ryker’s gaze snapped to Marco. He didn’t look surprised. He had seen this coming, Sophie knew, as clearly as she had.
“Yeah, you could,” Burton agreed eagerly. “More hands make less work.”
“And more to the point,” Marco said sharply, “having a bigger pack makes us stronger, and that’s a good thing for everybody.”
“We should talk about this,” Ryker said.
“Ryker,” Marco said, “the bears are out there.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Yeah, we do,” Marco said. “I was attacked. Burton and Sophie had food taken from them. And even these betas have seen them. It’s not a coincidence anymore. We know they’re out there, and we know we’re at risk. There are three of us who can fight them—”
“Four,” Sophie interrupted. If it came to a fight, if her alphas were in danger, she wouldn’t sit in the cave and wait to see who came back to her alive. She would find a way to help.
Marco glanced at her, but he didn’t acknowledge the interruption. “If these betas join our pack, we’ll be twice as strong as we are now,” he said. “No bear would stand a chance when attacking us.”
“Who says we want to join your pack?” Chrissy asked.
“Logic says,” Burton said. “If you’re with us, you’ll also be twice as strong. Nobody would stand a chance attacking you either. You’ve got to know that’s the smartest way to play this.”
Ryker worried his lip between his teeth. “We could try it,” he said at last. “I don’t know if it would work or not. But we could try it.”
“Why wouldn’t it work?” Sophie asked. “What’s the problem?”
“We’re a pack with three alphas,” Ryker said. “It’s one thing for you to submit to all of us. We’ve imprinted on you, and that’s a very unique bond. But can a beta submit to three different alphas without favoring one over the others?”
“If they can’t, it won’t work,” Marco said. “That could set one of us up as dominant over the other two. It could lead to infighting.”
“Which is the last thing any of us want to be in the middle of, trust me,” Chrissy said.
“I’d be willing to give it a try, though,” Robby said. “If everyone else is open to it.”
Ryker, Marco, and Burton looked at one another.
Then, by some unspoken agreement, they turned and looked at Sophie.
They were letting her decide.
She felt a rush of power and confidence unlike anything she had ever experienced before.
“Yes,” she said. “I think we should try.”
Chapter Fourteen
BURTON
Burton knew the truth. The betas would never have joined the pack if it hadn’t been for him.
Marco wouldn’t have been bold enough to approach them. Ryker wouldn’t have been able to get over his mistrust of strangers. Only he could have done it.
And it had to be acknowledged that it was going better than they could have hoped.
One of the best perks of their new life was the fact that no one ever had to go anywhere alone now. When Burton had joined the pack, it had been common practice for the alphas to split up, dividing the work that needed to be done among themselves. And, though no one had put it in quite those terms, they had always had to make sure someone was with Sophie. They couldn’t leave her alone.
Now, ensuring that Sophie was safe was an easy task.
It was usually Petra or Cam who stayed behind with her to pick berries or patch the cracks that inevitably formed in their mud-lined baskets. Petra and Cam were the easiest for all three alphas to trust with Sophie. Neither of them seemed capable of doing her any harm.
Robby was friendly enough as well, but he was still a guy, and a big guy to boot. Since he was a beta, there was no risk of him imprinting on Sophie, but that didn’t mean that he was necessarily safe to have around. They all felt more comfortable bringing him out hunting with them, at least until they got used to having him around.
Burton could understand, now, what it must have been like for his fellow alphas when he’d joined the pack. How disconcerting it was to have a stranger around Sophie all the time, even when it was someone you’d decided on an intellectual level that you were going to trust. What if the next time he turned his back was the time Robby decided to attack her? How could he be sure?
Still, as nervous as Robby made him, it was nothing compared to how edgy and uncomfortable he felt about Chrissy.
He had never met a woman like her, and it was hard to see how she fit into the dynamic of the pack. She seemed angry and aggressive all the time. He would have liked her, he thought, if he had met her outside of the context of the pack. In fact, he did like her. He liked the way she thought for herself, and the way she talked back to Ryker.
But that didn’t change the fact that if she was going to stay with the pack, she was going to need to learn how to recognize his authority, and the authority of his fellow alphas. And that seemed to be a particular struggle for her.
She was hunting with them today, mostly because she had insisted on not having to spend another day stuck in the cave with Petra and Cam. “It’s boring,” she’d moaned. “There’s nothing to do all day.”
“I wonder if she knows she sounds like a child,” Ryker had said as they’d climbed the hill that led into the part of the woods they had chosen for today’s hunt. “This is going to be insufferable.”
“Not your problem,” Burton had reminded him. “You and Marco are shifting today. I’m the one who will be talking to her. Not you.”
“More power to you,” Marco had said, socking him lightly on the shoulder. “Have fun with it.”
Now the four of them were making their way through the trees. Ryker’s rusty coat was just visible in the distance, with Marko’s thick gray body a few yards behind him. Burton and Chrissy, in human form, brought up the rear.
“I don’t know why you sent humans out on hunting missions,” Chrissy said.
“Because,” Burton said patiently, “you can never tell whether you’re going to need claws or hands. If we find something good, Ryker and Marco will bring it down, and you and I will haul it back to the cave.”
“Seems like there has to be a more efficient way to do that than sending four people out on one job,” she said.
“If you can think of one, I’d be happy to hear it,” he told her.
She raised an eyebrow. “You’re the alpha, I thought. Isn’t the point that we all have to do what you say?”
“You don’t like being a part of this pack, do you, Chrissy?”
“I don’t like being a part of packs generally,” Chrissy said. “I didn’t come north with my brother just to join another fucking pack, for God’s sake. I ran away so that we could be alone. So that we could finally decide things for ourselves and live the way we wanted to.”
“Then why do you stay?” Burton asked.
“Because Cam wants to stay,” Chrissy said. “I’m not going to leave him here with you people and go off on my own. He’s the only family I have left.”
“I do get it, you know,” Burton said.
“No, you don’t,” Chrissy snapped. “You’re an alpha. You don’t have any idea what it’s like.”
“I know what it’s like to find yourself pulled into a pack out of love for somebody when pack life was the last thing you ever wanted,” Burton said. “I didn’t want to live like this either, I thought. I wanted my freedom. I didn’t want to belong to anyone or be responsible for anyone. And yet, here I am.”
“Why’d you stay?” Chrissy asked.
“You know why.”
“Because of Sophie?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know what makes her so special.”
Burton shrugged. “Ryker says that when an omega draws multiple imprints like she has, it’s because
she’s especially powerful. She has a really strong form of the gene. I’d like to think it means that our pack has a lot of potential, but who knows, really? I just know that I’m into her, and I can’t leave her behind, just like you can’t leave your brother.”
“He already recognizes your authority, you know.” Chrissy said the word authority as if it were a dubious thing. “He already considers you his alpha. All three of you.”
“Yeah, I know,” Burton said. It had been easy enough to pick up that vibe from Cam, who had begun almost at once to look at Burton as if he was a leader. “Petra does too. And I think Robby is close.”
“I’m the last holdout?” she asked, smiling wryly.
“You knew all along that you would be, I think,” Burton said. “You’re not exactly a team player.”
“You’ve got me all figured out, huh?”
“It wasn’t hard. That was one of the first things you told us about yourself,” he pointed out. “You said that you didn’t know how long you were going to stay with your group of betas. That wasn’t even a real pack, and you were already itching to leave.”
“Yeah, well.”
“That’s why you haven’t submitted to our authority, isn’t it?” he asked. “You’re afraid we’ll make you stay if you decide you want to go. You’re afraid we’ll make you do something you don’t want to do.”
“I’m not afraid of anything,” Chrissy snapped.
Burton waited, looking at her.
“I’m careful,” Chrissy said. “You would be careful too if you’d been through what I have. If you had a brother to look out for.”
Burton nodded. “Probably,” he said. “And I get it. It’s hard to trust new people. But you can trust us. We don’t mean you any harm. None of us do.”
Chrissy started to answer, but then she frowned. “What are they doing?”
Burton looked up ahead. The two wolves had flattened their bodies low against the ground, and from where he was standing, he could see that their hackles were raised.
Danger.
There was no time to think. No time to analyze the situation and put a plan together carefully, the way he would have liked. “Get up that tree,” he hissed, pointing.
Chrissy stared. “What?”
“Go!”
He feared further argument, but he was pleased to see Chrissy obey without question. She turned and scaled the tree quickly, making her way up into the highest branches. Burton climbed up after her. When he had reached such a height that he could no longer see the ground, he turned and looked out in the direction that his fellow alphas were facing.
What he saw turned his legs to jelly.
Two bears—massive grizzlies—stood in a copse of trees, accompanied by three humans.
Already, Burton was running the numbers in his head. Five of them. Even if Robby fought by the alphas’ side, the wolves’ fighters would be outnumbered. And that wasn’t even taking into account the fact that it would likely require multiple wolves to bring down any one of these bears. They were too big. Too strong.
We’re going to have to run for it, he thought, shivering.
He hated that Marco and Ryker were on the ground, that they were in such close proximity to danger. It felt like having the bears breathing down his own neck. It was frightening. He wanted to jump out of the tree, to put himself between the bears and his packmates. But, of course, that was a terrible idea. Right now, the bears weren’t alert to the presence of the wolves. If Burton acted, he would give away their position.
“What do we do?” Chrissy asked. Her voice was higher pitched than it normally was, and Burton knew she was afraid.
“We wait,” he said quietly. “We just wait.”
He held a finger to his lips, then pointed to his ear, then down at the bears. Quiet. Listen.
Chrissy was pale and obviously frightened, but she nodded.
The voices of the bears below floated up to them. “We know they’re in the area,” one of them was saying. “They’re not even being careful. They’ve left plenty of signs. The paw prints, for one. That’s how we know it’s wolves. And all the traps and snares indicate that we’re looking at some kind of permanent settlement.”
“Which they should know better than to do,” another one said. “This is our territory.”
One of the bears in animal form growled in a way that seemed to indicate agreement.
“We did just get here,” the third human bear said. “Maybe if we talk to them—”
“Don’t be so soft,” the first bear said. She was big and bulky, her stature bordering on mannish. Peering into the group, Burton was able to distinguish that all of the human bears in the group were women. He couldn’t be sure about the two in their animal form.
Maybe that’ll even the odds a little.
But he still didn’t like it. Bears were the natural enemies of wolves, after all. They were bigger, burlier, stronger. Wolves were faster, it was true, and they might be able to hold their own for a while, but in one-on-one combat, the bear would win two times out of three.
And right now, they were outnumbered.
They had to get out of there.
He reached out to Chrissy, to signal that they should climb out of the tree, but she waved him off. She was still listening.
Burton turned his attention back to the bears.
“It won’t be hard to follow their scent,” one of them—the biggest one—was saying. “It won’t be hard to figure out where they’re holed up. And once we do, we can separate them and take them out.”
Even from all the way up in the tree, Burton heard the familiar sound of Ryker’s teeth clicking together and knew that his packmate was biting back a snarl.
He thought of the rest of their pack, alone back at the cave, with no idea of the danger that lurked in the forest.
“We have to go,” he hissed to Chrissy.
She nodded and began to climb down out of the tree without a word.
Burton followed carefully, doing his best not to shake the tree. Twice, he had to stop and wait for the bears to resume their conversation. If they saw him, not only would he give away his own position, but they would also have to run right past Marco and Ryker to get to him.
He hoped his packmates were also taking this opportunity to back away.
When he got to the foot of the tree, he saw that Marco had indeed retreated. The big gray wolf stood waiting, clearly aware that Burton had been in the tree.
“Did they know where I was?” Burton asked anxiously.
Marco gave a shake of his head.
“Is Ryker coming?”
Marco turned and looked into the bushes. Ryker was still there, still hunkered low and staring off into the distance.
“Damn it,” Burton whispered.
“We have to get back,” Chrissy said. “The others don’t know there’s a pack of bears out here. We have to get them to safety.”
Burton nodded. “Marco, you and Chrissy should go back to the cave,” he said. “Make sure the others are safe. I’ll get Ryker and we’ll be right behind you.”
Marco shook his head.
“I know we’ll be outnumbered,” Burton said. “But we have to get the others to safety. Sophie is out there. If they find her—”
He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to. Marco clenched his jaw. He nodded once and jerked his head toward home, then set off at a slow lope. Burton was sure he wanted to run, but at that pace, Chrissy could keep up with him without shifting. Burton respected the decision. It made sense to let her stay in her human form for now. They might need to communicate. If the bears started to pursue them, she could always shift.
He crept up behind Ryker and rested a hand cautiously on his shoulder.
Ryker startled only slightly. He turned to glare over his shoulder at Burton.
“Marco and Chrissy have started back,” Burton said, his voice so low that it was more a breath than a whisper. “We have to get the pack to safety, Ryker. If bears are
in this territory, then we have to leave. We have to move on.”
Ryker looked from the bears to Burton and back, and Burton had a horrible feeling he knew what Ryker was thinking.
“There are five of them,” he said. “We can’t take them all on. They’ll make hamburger out of us. And then they’ll track our scent back to the cave and find our pack. They’ll find Sophie.”
He knew he was right, but for a moment, he was afraid that Ryker still wouldn’t disengage. That he would insist on fighting.
Then Ryker took a deep breath and stood down.
“Good,” Burton said. “Okay, good. Thank you.”
Ryker said nothing.
“Let’s go,” Burton said. “We need to get back to the cave as fast as we can.”
He turned and ran, the wolf by his side.
Chapter Fifteen
SOPHIE
“You don’t really talk, do you?” Sophie asked Cam.
He looked up at her, then looked back down at the bowl he had been weaving, saying nothing.
“He talks,” Petra said. “He just saves it for when he actually has something to say. Better than I can say for most people.”
“Yeah,” Sophie agreed. “That’s a decent way to be. How long have you two known each other, anyway?”
“Not long,” Petra said. “I’d been with Cam and Chrissy for about two days before we met you. Robby joined up with us the day after I did. We were all having trouble finding food, and we thought we’d work together for the short term, until we were a little less hungry.”
“So the plan was never to stay together long term?” Sophie asked.
“I wouldn’t say there was really a plan at all,” Petra said. “We were taking it day by day. Hour by hour, really.”
Sophie nodded, remembering the time she had spent on her own before joining up with Ryker. “I know what it’s like,” she said. “I was alone out there for a while.”
“It’s strange,” Petra said. “I ran away because I thought I didn’t want a pack. Did you?”
“No,” Sophie said. “I just didn’t want the pack I had. But I never thought there was anything wrong with pack life generally. I always sort of assumed it had to be possible to put a pack together that wasn’t as horrible as the one I was living in.”