“I should get this out there,” Elizabeth said, a smile on her face. She took the potato salad and went out the door without looking back.
Joe moved toward me slowly, like he was worried I’d be spooked. And maybe, in a way, I was. Because even though I knew what I meant to him, sometimes I didn’t think I knew everything. It was a weight on me, but I had strong shoulders. I could take it.
“All right, Ox?” Joe asked.
I said, “Yeah, Joe,” and I couldn’t keep the awe out of my voice.
“You sure?” He sounded amused.
Maybe I wasn’t. And maybe that was okay. Because Elizabeth was right. He’d given himself to me. All of him. I just had to make sure I kept him safe. Because sure, he’d chosen me. Out of everyone. He’d given me his wolf. Which was essentially the heart of him.
I said, “I love you, you know?”
And how he smiled.
IT TOOK time. It really did.
Things weren’t always going to be good.
They’d left us, and there had only been three of us.
They’d come back, and now there were eight and I was the Alpha.
There were clashes trying to merge them together.
To see if there were pieces of us that fit.
Sometimes they did, and we could move in sync with each other.
Other times we didn’t.
Robbie yelped in pain when Carter knocked him into a tree.
It was an accident. They were roughhousing. Wolves did that.
But all I heard was the crack of bone and the sound of one of mine hurting.
Robbie whined in the back of his throat, trying to lift himself up onto four legs.
I was in front of him even before I knew I was moving.
Carter had shifted back, standing nude, bare toes digging into the grass and dirt.
“Hey,” he said. “I didn’t mean—”
“Back the fuck off,” I snarled at him.
Carter’s eyes went wide, and he took a step back.
I turned and knelt beside Robbie. His ears were flat against his head, and he trembled slightly, reacting to my anger. I took a breath and let it out slowly.
There was a sharp knob of bone where one shouldn’t have been near his shoulder, bulging the skin and hair. Robbie grimaced, teeth gritting together as it slowly snapped back into place.
“Okay?” I asked, running my hand along his snout.
He nipped my finger gently.
“Sorry, Ox,” Carter said from behind me. “It was an accident.”