“Meredith, I think you meant, Marshall, honey,” Ansel corrected her.
“No, I meant Tucker, you little punk. I’m old, not daft. Show some respect, honey,” she snapped back at him.
This time, there was a roar of laughter, but it was quickly brought to a halt by Marshall barking for everyone to settle down.
“Aunt Meredith, I know you are excited to see Tucker after so long, but he’s hardly qualified to lead this pack and, even if he was, I’m sure he doesn’t want to do so,” Marshall told her.
Leslie remembered then. Meredith Buckley. She was the sister of their grandmother, a great aunt rather than merely an aunt, Tucker had said. Leslie had not expected her to be the one to raise the nomination against his brother, but she certainly seemed comfortable with doing so.
“Why not? Look at him. He’s here, ain’t he? He’s married. He has children. He’s a long-standing member of this pack. He’s eligible and he’s a sight better man than you turned out to be,” she said in a matter of fact tone, that way older people have of just not giving one single fuck if people like what they have to say.
Marshall opened his mouth to say something and Ansel shook his head quietly at him, turning back to the people gathered there. Some were snickering, some looked confused or disapproving. Still, others looked positively alarmed by the new development.
“Okay. Let’s get back to order. We have two people nominated for Alpha, so we’ll not be able to sort this out today. Both men are eligible to be our leader, so we’ll need some time to decide who we’d prefer, a man who has stood beside you through thick or thin, or a man who ran off and left you behind. Doesn’t seem like a hard choice to me,” Ansel said snidely.
There were a few jeers from the people. Leslie wasn’t clear if they were intended for him or for Tucker. Ansel closed out the meeting by saying the council would reconvene in a week to determine when to hold a formal election. Leslie knew that the announcement would heat up the rest of the afternoon. Before, she had only been on display. Now, she was on the stage, in full spotlight. People were going to want to know a lot more about her now that Tucker was a contender to become Alpha. She prepared for the inquisition.CHAPTER TENMany of the people who had paid Jessica no mind before were now very interested in knowing everything about her and about Tucker, who they’d not seen for ten years, other than a brief encounter with him at this father’s funeral recently. Despite several attempts by his brother and others to pull him aside and discuss his nomination further, he resisted, telling them that he wasn’t going to leave her and the triplets alone. He told each of them that he would come back in a day or so and discuss things with them further.
Leslie couldn’t be certain if this was because he was afraid she would make a mistake while he was away, if he just wasn’t ready to tackle that part of things yet, or if he just meant what he said. Whatever the reason, she appreciated him not leaving her to the wolves, in the all too literal sense of the word. They continued to make their niceties among his pack well into evening, when the girls began to get cranky and he called it a day to get them home and in bed.
“I’m so sorry, Tucker. I didn’t mean for you to have to leave if you weren’t ready to go.”
“Oh, no. I was more than ready to go. Sorry to use the girls as an excuse.”
“You don’t care for your pack very much, do you?”
“It’s not that I don’t care for them. There are many people there that I love, but I just never enjoyed the pack sort of life. Just about every wolf pack I know runs a motorcycle club. It’s their way of interacting in large groups without much suspicion, you know. I’m sure that is the way it was in our pack, as well. Even those who don’t participate in the actual rallies and rides get sucked into the void of fulfilling some role for the pack.”
“What’s wrong with that? It’s family, it’s kin.”
“I just always wanted more. I left to get an education and when I came back, they never accepted me. They saw me as thinking I was too good for them because I had a college degree. So, I ran away again, joined the army. I thought that would be more acceptable to them. I came back as an officer and it only made matters worse. You’d have thought they’d be proud, but they just felt I was a sellout. After a while, I just decided to fuck off and do my own thing. That’s why I left.”