by CJ Cooke
Huffing in response, we set off at a trot towards the packhouse, and I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to get a lecture, and I probably deserved it.
28
River
“We fucked up,” I sighed as soon as I shifted back into my human form.
The pack was separating—Hunter back to Cassia, Blake back to Jean, but we had no mate to curl up with because after we all stood against her, after we all hurt her, she left. I couldn’t blame her. The first hurdle we faced, and none of us even considered what she was saying. We stood firm in our opinions, uniting against her; that wasn’t how the pack was supposed to work. She was right. We didn’t bulldoze over people just because it was easier.
“No, we didn’t,” Grey seethed, pacing on the grass. “Maverick’s a threat to the pack, and he needs to be assessed and dealt with appropriately.”
“I don’t disagree with you, brother,” I said cautiously. I’d never seen Grey spiralling like this before, and I was worried where it was going to take him. “What I am saying, though, is that we just hurt our mate.”
He suddenly stopped and seemed to deflate on the spot, his shoulders sagged, and his head tipped forward as he sighed in resignation. Then, slamming his hands into his pockets, he swivelled on the spot and started to stride towards the house.
“We know what needs to be done, and we will do it in the morning. Get Blake to start looking through the library for answers. If Calli won’t do what is necessary, then we ask Cassia to step up in the morning.”
And there it was, the alpha digging in his heels.
“And what of your mate, alpha?” I called after him. “She’s alone out there somewhere.”
Grey paused at the door, his hand grasping the handle. “She’s made her choice, River. She doesn’t want me.” And with that, he pushed open the door, striding inside, leaving a shocked Tanner and I standing on the grass watching him walk away.
“What the hell just happened?” Tanner said, looking about as shocked as I felt.
“He’s about to spiral so out of control with the need to protect everyone in the pack that he’s going to destroy the most important thing to him right now,” I sighed, seeing the gears already in motion. “Go after him. You need to try and calm him down.”
“What about Calli, though? You’re right. We can’t leave her running alone out here,” Tanner panicked, his eyes wildly scanning the area like she’d just pop out from somewhere. “I can’t believe this has gotten so out of control. We shouldn’t have just let her go off on her own in the first place, and now we had no way of knowing where she is. What if she’s hurt? What if she’s taken again? We’d never be able to find her.”
“Tanner, calm down,” I snapped, grabbing his shoulders and giving him a shake to draw his attention back to me. His eyes were wild, and I could feel the spike of turbulent emotions radiating from him. “I will find Calli. You know she’s safe. Look inside yourself; I know you can feel it like I do. You can feel the connection with her. Besides, I’m pretty sure Aidan went after her. He won’t let anyone hurt her.”
He nodded, the panic seemed to fade slightly in his eyes, but it didn’t completely go.
“We hurt her, didn’t we?” he finally said.
“Yeah, we really did.”
“Fuck!” His hands came up to tangle in his shaggy blonde hair, the distress just radiating from him.
“This is new to all of us, Tanner. We’re going to have times when we fuck up. It’s how we deal with it afterwards that matters,” I reassured him.
He nodded at me, looking so fucking lost. I hadn’t seen that look on his face since we were kids. I’d say I didn’t think his father realised what he’d stolen from Tanner when he cast him out and denied him the comfort his brother could have brought him, but I think he knew. I think he did it precisely for this purpose. The thing was, I had no idea how a grown man could hate his own child that much.
Tanner turned away from me and walked into the house, following in Grey’s steps, and I stood there and watched. For a brief moment, I’d never felt as alone as I did right now. But even as that thought came to me, I felt the warm brush of not only my wolf but an echo of the bond I had with Calli. She was my mate, my forever, but all of us needed to realise we couldn’t take that for granted. She was still a person, and we needed to remember she was more than our mate and someone who took care of the kids and the pack. Calli needed to be able to be herself too.
With a sigh, I turned away from the house, in the direction Calli had left. I had no idea where she’d gone or if she even wanted me to go after her. My wolf was sulking in the back of my mind, not happy knowing our mate was angry with us. Striding around the front of the house, I ran up the front steps and dropped down into one of the chairs on the porch. Kicking my feet up on the railing in front of me, I got comfortable to wait for her to come home, because she would; I didn’t doubt that. And when she got here, the first thing I was going to do was apologise and pray she could forgive me. Hopefully, by that point, Tanner would've been able to pull Grey’s head out of his ass—he definitely had the harder job out of the two of us.
I’d only been waiting for a little over an hour when two wolves dashed through the tree line in front of the house. I didn’t have to look closely. I’d never seen another wolf as pure white as Calli was, there was no mistaking my mate.
Aidan ran at her side, and a pang of jealousy ran through me at their closeness. It should have been me that went after her. I should be the one running through the trees with her now. We were lucky Aidan at least had the forethought to go after her, though. I would much rather he be running through the trees with her than alone. There were too many enemies out there that we didn’t know enough about yet.
As they drew closer to the house, they both changed back into their human forms and took the steps at a run.
“I’ll inform Grey of what we saw. We’ll meet you in the library,” I heard Aidan say as he rushed past me.
This wasn’t good.
Calli’s pace stalled as she saw me standing on the porch and a look of unease crossed her face. I hated myself that she felt this way when she looked at me. This was all getting so out of control. We needed to not only nip this in the bud now, but we also needed to figure out how we were going to communicate better in the future.
“Calli,” I sighed, opening my arms wide for her and praying she wouldn’t turn away from me.
With a soft smile, she stepped into my embrace, and I softly smiled with the relief. It was as she shivered in my arms that I realised something was wrong.
“What happened?” I asked, holding her tighter against me and tucking her under my chin.
“We… I… I think we saw a shadow demon,” she stuttered out.
My first instinct was to clutch her tightly against me, which given that I was already squeezing her tightly, couldn’t have been comfortable for her. My eyes scanned the tree line, and I could feel every muscle in my body tense, ready to fight.
“We need to go to the library. We need to check if what we saw was what we thought it was,” Calli told me, her voice shaking with fear. She moved as if to leave my embrace, but I held her close still.
“Wait, before we go inside, there’s something I need to say.” I swallowed my nerves and just forged ahead before she could say anything. “We failed you before, Calli, and I am so, so sorry for what happened. Not because we disagreed with you but because we didn’t listen to you. You raised your concerns, and we just bulldozed over you. It was wrong, and we shouldn’t have treated you as if your opinions didn’t matter.”
I leant back to look down at the woman in my arms. Calli was the most important person in the world to me, but we still hadn’t had enough time to get to know each other. These things were going to keep happening if we didn’t take the time to actually do that. We kept putting off the day to day stuff to deal with the issues that kept coming at us, but in reality, it was going to be the everyday problems that pulled us
apart before any witch or shadow demon had the chance to.
“Thank you,” she said, staring into my eyes. I could tell she was looking for something in them, and I hoped she found it. I hoped she could see the sincerity in my eyes because I couldn’t stand feeling like I’d failed her. “I needed to hear that.”
“We’ll get there, sweetheart. We just need to work to make sure we do.”
She nodded and then, with a sigh, turned to the door. “We need to start looking into the whole wraiths and shadow demons thing. We’ve wasted too much time.”
As she turned to start marching towards the library, I reached out to grab her hand and pulled her back to me.
“Calli, you’re allowed to have a life outside of all of this,” I told her softly. I could see the determined look on her face. I understood what we were facing was serious, but we couldn’t just throw everything away while pursuing one goal. If life became about nothing but survival, what type of life were you actually living for?
“You didn’t see it,” she said quietly. “It was… I’m scared, River.”
When she looked up at me, the tears in her eyes were enough to make me want to rip the world apart for her. There was no way I was going to let whatever this new threat was hurt her. I may not have been an alpha, I probably wasn’t even the strongest in our pack, but nothing would get past me to hurt my mate.
“Come on.” I squeezed her hand gently, and we walked together towards the library. “It’s going to be okay, Calli. We’ll face this together as a pack. We got past the witches, and we’ll get past this too.”
She nodded sadly, and I knew she was too lost in her thoughts to really be listening right now. That was okay, though. I’d be here for her when she was ready, and we would face it side by side.
When we reached the closed door, I could hear movement inside. So this was where Grey had run off too. Tanner had better have convinced him to calm the fuck down by now. Calli didn’t need to be subjected to whatever alpha tantrum he was having right now.
The door swung open as we approached, and Tanner stuck his head through. The worried look on his face told me his conversation hadn’t gone as well as we needed it to. New plan! Get everyone up to speed, and then I was taking Calli up to my room to give Grey more time to cool off. Purely selfless reasons, of course, no ulterior motives here.
Tanner opened the door wider, and the smile he gave Calli at least let me know he’d make an effort to set things right. The banging and shuffling inside spoke volumes of the mood Grey was currently in.
“Calli!” Tanner said, louder than was necessary. As soon as he said it, the banging inside stopped, and I could already imagine Grey frozen in place, unsure what to do next.
I got why he wanted to do the renovations himself. He wanted to do this for his mate, give her somewhere in the pack where she could be herself. It was his way of trying to reassure her that not only was she welcome, but no one cared she was different. If he couldn’t act like an adult over the next ten minutes, though, that gesture was going to be completely shattered.
Calli gave Tanner a curious look, no doubt wondering why he’d just spontaneously shouted her name. It did reek of guilt like they were doing something they weren’t supposed to.
“Tanner,” she said cautiously. “Is Aidan here?
The growl that flowed from the room was a warning of how well this would go if Grey was upset at her asking after one of our pack mates.
“I haven’t seen him since he left to go for a run with you,” Tanner answered diplomatically. I didn’t realise he even had it in him. “I can help you find him if you want.”
Tanner started to step out of the door and close it behind him, but unfortunately, Calli stopped him with a hand on his chest.
“No, it’s okay, he’ll probably be here soon. We need the books, and we need to speak with the pack.”
Grey’s growl flowed again, hitching every time she said the word ‘we’. He couldn’t seriously think Aidan was going to be a threat when it came to Calli. This was going to end so badly.
Tanner looked at me with desperation in his eyes, and I knew he didn’t want Calli around Grey when he was like this. To be honest, I didn’t think I’d ever seen Grey like this before. Yes, Grey was an alpha, and he’d always been the alpha of our little pack. But he’d never thrown his weight around before. He’d never been prone to the alpha mood swings we saw in other packs. He was always somewhat level-headed, even if he did need Tanner to keep him calm on the odd occasion. He’d never raged out of control, and I was seriously worried by the look on Tanner’s face right now that we were about to see the first time Grey’s irrational alpha anger got the better of him.
I shrugged in an unhelpful gesture and followed Calli as she went to walk past Tanner. There would be nothing we could do to prevent her from going in there without coming across as unreasonable ourselves, and right now, I didn’t particularly want to throw myself under that bus for Grey. I didn’t understand what had gotten into him, and I didn’t want to damage my own relationship with my mate just because he was being an ass. And yes, currently, he was being an absolute ass.
Calli’s steps came to a sudden stop, and at first, I was worried about what she’d seen inside the room, but when I stepped up to her back, preparing to drag her behind me if needed, the shock at what I saw froze me as well.
I’d known Grey was working on the room, but I hadn’t realised just how much he’d done. The shelves were all up, and from the fact that he had empty boxes at his feet, I’d guess the banging we’d walked in on was him reshelving the boxes of books we’d brought from Calli’s house.
The open fireplace in the new library was cleaned and stocked with wood. Two of the armchairs from Calli’s loft library sat in front of it with a small table between them. Heavy maroon curtains were hung at the window, and the hardwood floor had been covered with a beautiful thick rug.
Grey was sheepishly standing at the bookcase with an armful of books. As soon as Calli locked eyes with him, he turned away from her and shoved them on the shelf. Reaching back down to the box and continuing with his job.
“Grey,” Calli said softly. “This is beautiful. Did you do this?”
He grunted and nodded, continuing with his task, and I saw Calli’s face fall at his dismissal. And that was all it took for this amazing gesture he’d made to be smashed to pieces.
Calli’s shoulders dropped, and I could almost feel her disappointment in the air, but then she straightened her spine and held her head high. This was bad. Not only was Grey too stubborn to come out of his mood and apologise to her, but she was already hardening her heart to him. There were only so many blows she could take. He had no idea what he was doing.
Turning away from Grey, Calli spoke to Tanner instead.
“Aidan and I saw what we believe to be a shadow demon at the edge of the wards. It looked almost like it was testing them. We need to start doing some research, and we need to get the warding tattoos on the pack as soon as possible.”
Tanner’s eyebrows flew up, and I knew exactly how he felt. Grey stiffened at the bookcase. I could see the tension in his shoulders as he listened to Calli filling them in on the situation.
“I have my kit,” Aidan said, striding into the room, utterly oblivious to what he’d just walked in on. “Calli, do you have the sketch of the rune you need me to draw?”
“Erm, yes,” Calli said, looking around at the boxes on the floor. “It was in the box with…” She stopped speaking when Grey passed her mother’s book to her. I knew she hadn’t looked at it properly yet, and I also knew she wasn’t ready to.
“Thank you,” Calli murmured, taking the book from Grey’s outstretched hand but not looking him in the eye.
Opening the front cover, she pulled out a piece of paper with a drawing on it and passed it across to Aidan, who was already setting up his gear on the table in front of the fireplace. He looked at it carefully before he nodded and went back to setting up his kit.
&
nbsp; It was a relatively simple sketch, and compared to some of the work he’d done before, it would be an easy job. The rune design looked similar to a star, except at the end of each line either a square or a semi circle was added with intersecting lines leading to the centre.
“Does it need to be anywhere specific?” Aidan asked Calli.
“No, the placement doesn’t matter. All that matters is the ink.”
Aidan nodded distractedly and pulled the vial of ink Calli had prepared in the warding ceremony out of the kit, and carefully placed it on the table. We couldn’t afford to lose it, not if the shadow demons, or whatever the hell Calli had seen were already at our door.
“Did you feel it at the ward?” I asked her suddenly, needing to break the silence in the room.
Calli nodded. “Yes, it was the same as last time. It didn’t cross, though. I don’t know if it couldn’t cross them or if it was just waiting for something else.”
Aidan stopped what he was doing, and his face crumpled as he thought. “You’re right. There’s no way to tell what it was doing. If I had to guess, I’d say it couldn’t pass through, though. It looked like it was curious about what it was like it was trying to figure it out.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean it couldn’t pass through them, though. We can’t let an assumption draw us into a false sense of security. For now, we need to assume the wards are nothing more than a warning system. That’s all they were designed to do after all.”
Aidan nodded in agreement with her and finished setting up his gear.
“Maybe we should ask Cassia to look over the work you did on the wards. You didn’t know anything about magic when you set them. Perhaps she can tell us more. If there’s a problem with them, it would be good to know now when she’d have the time to fix them,” Grey interjected with a cold voice as he moved away from the bookcase towards Aidan.
Calli stiffened at the criticism, and I didn’t blame her. We needed to move this on as quickly as possible, and Tanner needed to get Grey to sort his fucking head out.