“Your pack.”
He nodded. “Yes, Ox. My pack. Our pack.”
And didn’t that make me warm?
It did.
“These trees,” he said. “This forest. It’s filled with old magic. It’s in my blood and it thrums and writhes within me.”
“But you left,” I said.
He sighed. “Sometimes, there are greater responsibilities than home. Sometimes, we have to do what is necessary before we can do what we wish. But every day that I was away, I felt this place. It sang to me and it ached and burned. Mark came back to check in because I couldn’t. To make sure the place still stood.”
“Why?”
He smiled at me. “Because I’m the Alpha. I don’t know if I would have been able to leave again.”
“How far does it go? Your territory.”
“Miles and miles and miles. And I run them all, the ground beneath my feet and the air in my lungs. It’s like nothing else, Ox.”
I touched the nearest tree and tried to feel what he felt. My fingers scraped against the bark, and I closed my eyes. I laughed at myself quietly. I was ridiculous. I wasn’t anything like them.
And he said, “Do you want to become a wolf?”
I opened my eyes because there was something there. There were these little bonds, like strings, that pulled in my head and my secret heart. I couldn’t quite give them names yet, because they were so new, but it was close.
I could name Joe’s, though. His was easy.
I said, “Do you want me to be a wolf?”
Thomas grinned at me, full and blinding. “So many layers,” he murmured as we walked through the trees.
I wouldn’t be like them, not completely. That much had already been explained to me. A human turned never was. There was a difference between being bitten and born. Instincts, for one. They’d had their whole lives. I’d be stumbling like a child.
“There would be differences,” I said aloud.
“There would,” he said.
“But I would be a Beta.”
“Yes. One of mine. Eventually, one of Joe’s.”
“Why aren’t Carter or Kelly going to be the next Alpha?”
He said, “They weren’t born to be. Joe was. He will be an Alpha.”
I didn’t want to offend him, but I couldn’t stop the words. “I would have something you wouldn’t. If I turned.”
“Oh? And what would that be?”
I touched the tree again. “I would remember what it was like to be human.”
There was no anger from him. He put an arm around my shoulders and touched his cheek to my hair, rubbing once. Twice. A third time. They did that. I understood why now. I was part of them and they needed me to smell like I was. It was weird. And comforting. He pulled away. “You would,” he said quietly. “And you would make a fine wolf.”
“My mom,” I said by way of excuse, trying to stall for time while everything reeled around me.
“It’s up to you,” he said.