Alone, I cleared my throat again. “Does anyone have any objections?”
The pack members glanced at one another, sharing unconvinced winces. My heart fell. I dragged it back up and did my best to place barriers around it so that I wouldn’t break when they denied me. I couldn’t lead a pack that didn’t trust me.
It hit me, just how badly I wanted their approval. I’d lost all respect back home, all for doing what needed to be done. It’d broken my heart to be turned away. The sense of family and home that I’d taken for granted had been ripped out from under me.
I wanted to feel at home again. I wanted to gather people around me and hear their bright laughter as they savored the sense of safety that I brought to them. It was a silly desire, but one that I couldn’t deny either.
“We can’t trust you,” the elder shifter said.
Catriona, the pack historian, held up her hand to silence her packmate. Then her gaze slid to me, and I could see the hesitation on her face. “We can’t trust you yet. Excuse us for being hesitant, but we want to make sure we’re taking on the right person for the job. You haven’t…you haven’t proven yourself to us yet.”
My dragon writhed. It gnashed its teeth. What did I have to do to show them that I could be what they needed? My beast was far more powerful than any of them on their own. Over and over, I’d shown that I could survive anything that Alvin could throw at me. I’d kept Ness alive on my own, without any of their help.
My fingers curled into fists. My entire body trembled as rage rolled through me. I sucked in a breath and yanked it back, but my mind would not stop reeling. My thoughts tumbled too fast, one over another.
The dragon wanted them. It owned them.
No.
My chest heaved, my breath coming too fast. The Treasure Sickness was trying to take hold of me again. I fought back the intrusive thoughts and the overwhelming paranoia trying to drown me. I would not become my father. This sickness wouldn’t have me.
The pack needed me. They couldn’t survive without my strength. If they could be a little more grateful, then they would know what kind of gift they’d been given. Did they even deserve me if they couldn’t accept me as their Alpha?
I groaned and shoved the thoughts aside. They weren’t me. Those thoughts belonged to a sickness of the mind. I would never say such things. I hated that those words filled the inside of my skull and squeezed my lungs. They felt more like me than I wanted to admit. The way they filled me left little room for anything else.
It wasn’t until a hand clasped around mine, and I heard Ness clear her throat, that my mind emptied.
“You all need to shut up and accept the fact that we need help right now. You’ve been putting your faith in a tyrannical serial killer. What kind of leap is it to trust Ryder?”
Her dark eyes flickered with lightning as she glared at her pack mates. I wanted to tug on her hand and tell her that she was being too harsh on them, but she knew better than me. Though I could have pointed out all the ways her pack had suffered, she’d been through worse. I couldn’t quench the fire burning inside her when she addressed her pack.
“Is Ryder trying to subjugate you? Is he trying to frighten you so that you’ll do as he says? No, he’s giving you a choice. I don’t understand why you choose to spit in his face.”
Catriona scowled. “It’s not that easy, Vanessa.”
Ness said nothing. She released my hand and slowly lifted two middle fingers to the pack elder. Catriona’s scowl twitched with what I thought might have been a cheeky smile that she quickly hid.
“I’m tired,” Ness said. “I’m tired of having to watch my back all the time. If I can trust Ryder after all of this, when I should be afraid of absolutely everyone, then maybe you should take that into consideration.”
I expected Nester to scoff, but his eyes seemed to go distant. I wondered if he was reliving the times when he had to stand by and watch a younger shifter suffer at Alvin’s hand. As pack elders, both Nester and Catriona should have protected Ness.
They’d failed her, and she had the scars to prove it. My thoughts slid to Cerri, who stood at the edge of the pack. She wasn’t a shifter, like her brethren. Cerri had no animal waiting inside her, but she’d found power in potion making. I had no doubt that she could easily brew a healing potion to speed up her recovery.
Yet, Cerri stood beside her pack with all her bruises out for everyone to see. Cerri chose to make a statement. She acted as a reminder of what the pack was trying to escape.
“I trust him,” a female shifter said.
“Same here!” another female voice called.
Two young shifters stepped to the front of the pack. Haylee and Kelsey held each other’s hands, their chins lifted as they locked eyes with me. I gave them a nod to show my thanks. Ness let out a sigh of relief beside me.
I reached for her hand again and gave it a squeeze. The sound she made in the back of her throat, so low that only I could hear, confused me. She shut her eyes, her chest lifting as she breathed deep.
This meeting had to come to an end. We weren’t going to come to any decisions today, and I wanted to ask Ness what was wrong.
“Take your time to think this over,” I said, even though my dragon growled in warning. “You don’t have to decide tod—”
A scream split the air. A brown and gray blur tackled Haylee to the ground. Kelsey shouted and reached for the wolf on top of her friend. Before she could get ahold of the wolf, another slammed into her.