“I was always going to claim him, Maddy. I didn’t win him from Shay just to send him away.”
It didn’t matter if Lucas was damaged, or that he’d come here believing that doing so would put our pack in danger. He’d never really had a chance, and I could give him that. For better or for worse, he was Maddy’s, and that made him ours.
“Tonight,” I told her, and the strain melted off her body like she was shedding a second skin. She glowed, practically luminescent, and I felt a deep hum of approval, of contentment through the bond.
For the first time since we’d saved her from the Rabid—since she’d saved herself—she felt sure of herself.
She felt whole.
The moon wasn’t full. The snow on the ground was fresh. Our numbers were diminished, and the forest still smelled like blood, but the energy running through and around us was no less palpable than it had been the last time the Cedar Ridge Pack had met.
The need to shed my own skin, to be one of them, was no less real.
Five feet from the spot where the others had buried Eric, Lucas stood, hunched and waiting. To a lone wolf, standing in the middle of another pack, knowing he didn’t belong must have been torture.
I glanced sideways at Chase. As far as I was concerned, he shouldn’t have even been out of bed. As far as he was concerned, I shouldn’t have granted Maddy’s request to claim Lucas until I’d had at least a few more days to heal myself.
And there it was again. I was the alpha; Chase was putting my welfare above the pack’s. Love was so much less complicated when I was halfway dead.
As if he knew exactly what I was thinking, Chase gave a wry little smile and brought his head to rest on top of mine. I can’t help it, he said. And neither can you.
Alpha. Alpha. Alpha.
The call pushed Chase back from my body, and as he melted into the rest of the pack, I searched for the right words to say to the others. Our pack had never been much on ceremony. On the nights when we ran together, the power just burst out of us, like water breaking through a hole in a dam. At most, I nodded to usher it in, but this wasn’t just another night at the clearing.
Too much had happened, and for better or worse, every single one of us was changed.
“Brothers and sisters.” Those were words I’d learned from Callum—or at least, the brothers part was. “Tonight we mourn the loss of one of our own. He will be remembered.” For a moment, I felt less like the alpha and more like myself. “I will remember him.”
Unbidden, Lucas stepped forward, and Chase matched the lone wolf’s movement with a subtle movement of his own, quiet and understated, even as he kept one eye on Lucas and one eye on me.
“We protect each other,” I continued, the words coming faster now. “That’s what packs do, and I like to think that even when we’re hurting, none of us are the kind of people who could hear a request for protection and turn that person away.”
I nodded to Lucas, who took another step toward me. The pack spread out around us, then crowded inward, until we were surrounded on all sides, alpha and lone wolf separated only by inches from the rest of the pack.
“We know what it’s like to be kicked around, to be small and weak and feel like no matter what happens, there’s never going to be a place where we really belong.” My breath turned to frost in the night air, and unwillingly, I shivered. “We were wrong.”
Normally, at this point, the alpha would call Lucas by his family ties, but I didn’t know his mother’s name, or his father’s, and I wasn’t about to mention his severed relationship with Shay.
“Lucas,” I said slowly, “beloved of Maddy, step forward.”
There wasn’t much of anywhere for Lucas to go, but the words and the ceremony of the moment seemed to have taken on a life of their own.
Pack. Pack. Pack.
The feeling rose inside me—unbearable ecstasy, unbridled joy. I lifted my right hand. Lucas knelt. The lines on the back of his neck—a half circle embedded with a four-pointed star—were still faintly visible, and in a single motion, I slashed my nails through them.
A tiny bead of blood rose on Lucas’s skin, mixing with sweat and adrenaline and the smell of things to come. I closed my eyes and reached for the connection, the invisible cord that tied me to Maddy and Chase and Lake, Lily, the twins, and all the others. I felt it.
I owned it.
And then I threw it at Lucas. Power surged through me. All around us, the others began to Shift. Lucas’s back arched, and his pupils went wild and wide.
Pack. Pack. Pack.
“You’re mine,” I whispered, “and you’re theirs, and all that we are is yours.”
The low hum of the others’ minds gave way to Lucas’s as a familiar scent filled the air.
Pack. Pack. Pack.
Lucas rose on unsteady legs. Maddy was beside him in an instant, and they leaned into each other, as if his body had been made only for hers. My stomach lurched, and without thinking, I reached for Chase, and he was there, beside me.
There as the urge to run became overwhelming.
There as I tasted something sharp and bitter and electric on my tongue.
Maddy must have felt it, too, because her face went pale and she stopped breathing, her chest frozen and still.
“I was always the weakest,” Lucas said, and though neither his tone nor his words surprised me, there was something about the set of his eyes that made my stomach roll. “I never hurt anyone, but that never stopped anyone from hurting me.”
I wanted to tell him that it wouldn’t be like that here, that he could trust us not to do to him what had been done again and again and again. I wanted to make him see that he could trust me, but now that I could feel his emotions, now that I was in his head, I could taste the tinny, sour flavor of blood in his memory and see for myself the number of times he’d been forced to swallow his own.
I looked in Lucas’s eyes. I looked inside him. And no matter how hard or how far I looked, I saw nothing but hurt.
Anger and hurt and helplessness—and the desire to never be helpless again.
“I know what Shay must have been thinking when he sent me here. I know what he wants me to do, and the real kicker is that as much as I hate him, I hate myself more. I hate weakness more.”
“Lucas—” Maddy choked out his name, and he silenced her, pressing his lips to her temple in a tender, bittersweet kiss.
“You understand, Maddy,” he said, his voice a hoarse and heady whisper. “I know you do.” His eyes flickered from hers to mine, and this time, there was no submission in his gaze. He met my stare with his own, and he spoke down to me.