My mother paces the length of my kitchen, a cleaning sponge in her hand. She’s been here daily since Monday, checking on me, trying to push food at me. Hovering. Cleaning. I’ve barely had any appetite and I’ve been fucked up beyond all recognition. My father has been around but hasn’t been like glue the way she has. I’m tight with my parents, but she’s getting to me. Her hovering. Her incessant mothering. I know she’s worried about me, but I need space.
Dad has been a quiet presence doing his best to be reassuring, but I’ve felt anything but assured.
I’m at my place on Chariot Lake, the house I started drawing up the plans to build just days after we first caught Tyson Savage’s scent, right after we took over as the council. Everything in me knew that because he was alive, he’d be part of us eventually. When that black wolf showed at the four corners of our village during our very first council meeting, we knew it was fate. Time to get serious about the future.
I wasn’t fixated on meeting my mate, knowing it’d happen when the timing was right, but I still had the urge to nest, get ready. Build a home.
Scents influence, hold significance; have a powerful effect on wolf shifters. Tyson’s scent sent us all to a new place. A place of excitement. We were transported from a functioning pack still mourning to a new hope. It was also a space of limbo in a sense because we had no idea when he’d join us, but every one of us knew it would mean good things for not just us as council alphas, but also the whole pack. And plans were made according to the belief he’d eventually take his place as first alpha.
So I designed and then worked on the build for this place, a home on the water’s edge a short run from Arcana Falls or a quick boat ride down to the river which is fed from Chariot Lake.
I’m proud of it. I even let it be featured in a magazine after being anonymously nominated as a contest entry after it was built, which did good things for Savage Construction in spreading our wings into custom luxury homes.
I’ve lived here alone since building it and lived life enjoying myself, feeling ready for the future. It’s now time for it all to fuse together, I know it, I feel it, but yet I’m fucked up. I’m more fucked up than I can even level with anybody about, because I can’t articulate what the fuck is wrong with me.
This isn’t me. I’m a logical, even-tempered, dependable guy. I’ve always been certain of exactly who I am and what I stand for. Until the past week.
Those close to me know I woke from a dead sleep out of town and immediately rushed home, got lost, lost time, and have been fucked up since Linc found me. But nobody knows just how fucked I feel. I haven’t confided in anyone just how bad the past few days have been. Fending off a nagging shadowy presence and fighting urges that feel like instinct, but that I know would cause war. There’s raging violence rattling the cages of my brain.
Tonight, there’s a party. And though a party is the last thing I’m in the mood for, I need to attend. Because tonight, I’m meeting Tyson and his mate. Everyone is ecstatic that he agreed to come, meet everybody, and as much as I still don’t feel right, I need to do this. Tonight needs to be a turning point for me; I need to snap out of whatever this is.
My place has been like Grand Central Station all week with rotating visits from the guys and my family. Cat Savage, who is not just Tyson’s mother, but also our pack healer, doesn’t have a medical guess regarding my symptoms. The only plausible suggestion that’s been voiced repeatedly is witchcraft – though we can’t fathom why that would be a factor, except it could explain me losing time. I’ve been more transparent with Cat Savage about some of my symptoms than anyone else and she’s shown concern, likely not just as the pack healer but also as Tyson’s mother.
I assured her I’ve waited for his return like we all have, and I wanted it. I left for home Friday night excited about it. But when I got here, things went sideways, and I can’t get my head together.
I overheard my mother telling my father she’s worried that this stems from me being at the top of the pack birth order with him having been away. I’ve heard her murmurs of worry that I’m rejecting my pack because of the shifting dynamic to come.
I’m not. And it pisses me off she’d even suggest it despite knowing me my whole fucking life. I’m not rejecting him as co-alpha. I’m not rejecting anything. If I didn’t give a shit that many treated Riley as the pack’s lead council alpha, why would I care now?