Mark raised his hands in surrender. “Hey, all right. All right. I hear you.”
“Either end it or don’t,” Elizabeth said to me after glaring at her brother-in-law. “Forgive him or don’t. Just don’t make him wait. It’s not fair. To either of you. Men. Useless. All you do is make things difficult just because you can.”
“Could a pack have two Alphas?” I asked, trying to distract them.
She narrowed her eyes at me, knowing what I was doing. But she allowed it. “Who’s to say we couldn’t? We already have a human Alpha. We’re not exactly orthodox here. We never really have been, even when we were supposed to be. There’s tradition, and then there are the Bennetts.”
I was still learning that. “And if I say no,” I said slowly. “If I rejected him. If I kept the packs separate.”
“It would be your choice,” Elizabeth said. “And we would know you thought you were making the right one.”
“But you wouldn’t agree.”
“Maybe,” Mark said. “Maybe not. But it’s not about that. You have… instincts we don’t.”
“I could say the same about you.”
“True,” he said. “But our instinct is to trust you to make the right decision for the pack.”
“Even if you disagree?”
“Even then.”
“That feels like I’m controlling you. That you’re not getting a choice in this.”
“We are,” Mark said kindly. “We chose you.”
“They’re your sons. Your nephews.”
“And you’re our Alpha,” Elizabeth said, eyes flaring orange. “This is the way things are.”
This wasn’t how I wanted things to be. “I don’t want to come between you.”
“You couldn’t, even if you tried,” she said.
And that was that.
HE WAS waiting for me on the dirt road.
Looking hopeful. Scared. Angry. Tense.
Because I’d talked to all of them. Except him. And he knew that.
I was tired. Of all of this. Something had to give. And it needed to be from me.
I just needed to find the words.
I reached him, and I knew he thought I was going to walk by. Maybe say not yet again, throwing those words back in his face like I’d been doing since he’d come home.
His shoulders were already starting to slump.
So I said, “Hey, Joe,” and hoped it was a start.
He was startled. He opened and closed his mouth a few times. He made a growling noise deep in his chest, a low rumble that made my skin itch. It was pleased, that sound, like even just me saying his name was enough to make him happy. For all I knew, it was.
It cut off as quickly as it started. He looked faintly embarrassed.
I scuffed my foot in the dirt, waiting.