I’m leaving all of our other shit behind us in Navarre. The only thing that matters to me right now is Sienna, and bringing our pack together the way it should have been from the start, if I hadn’t let panic cloud my mind.
“I agree.” Dusting off his hands, he gets to his feet. “I’ve got something I need to do. What are you doing today? Sienna asked for Logan tonight.”
I push down the disappointment. I’ll be grateful if she asks for me at all. “I don’t know. I’ll find something, though.”
I need to keep my hands occupied.
Gray crosses over with Jax, the two of them exchanging a few words before he comes over to me. “I need some stuff,” he says, crossing his arms. “Logan too, but he won’t want to leave Sienna if he’s going to her tonight. Want to go into town?”
“I’m not sure they’ll have everything you need, but yes.” Calling it a town is a stretch, but Jax’s words have given me my own ideas.
It’s our job to provide for our omega. Fuck knows we did a shitty job of it before, even if it was unintentional, thanks to Alicia’s games in the attic. But I’m not letting her go one more day without anything to call her own.
I get to my feet. “Let’s go.”
My fingers drum on the steering wheel as we drive down the track. The wireless is patchy out here, bursts of static making my ears ring.
Reaching out and turning it off, I glance at Gray. He’s staring out of the window, his copper hair blowing around at the top with the window down. A familiar face, one I grew up with, formed a pack with.
But I’ve realized I don’t really know the person he’s become. The secrets that have spilled out have held up a mirror to my role as pack leader, and it’s not a reflection I’m comfortable with.
“Gray? How are things with you and Lo?” He spins his head to me, surprise etched into his expression. “You’ve never asked before.”
“I wasn’t a very good pack leader before.”
Understatement.
Gray hums. “You weren’t that bad. Just busy.”
Too busy for my pack. Too useless to help my Soul Bonded.
“Well, I’m not busy now. Is everything okay?”
I catch a smile I don’t think I’ve ever seen before on his face. Gray is… stoic, I guess. Always has been. Quick to anger, but maybe Logan has helped to iron out his rough edges.
“We’re good, Tris. Better than we’ve been for years, now everything is out in the open.”
“And you’re okay with that?” I press. Hindsight is athing. I remember Gray’s panic being much more than Logans, his hesitancy at the idea of bringing their private life into the open.
His smile fades. “I… I didn’t want Logan to suffer for my choices. I was the one who pushed it in that parking lot when Erikkson took the photos.” He swallows. “But Sienna suffered instead. And I only made that worse. I would have swapped with them both if I could’ve, Tris.”
“But you do want Sienna?”
Gray laughs sadly. “She’s my Soul Bonded. Of course I want her. It was hard at first. It felt like… like I was betraying Lo, to want another person like that. I was harsher on her than I should’ve been. Took me a while to pull my head out of my ass.”
I take a turn. “You want her just because she’s our Soul Bonded?”
“No. That’s what drew me in, but… it’s her, Tris. She makes me feelcomplete. Logan too. She belongs with us.” He sighs. “If we can persuade her.”
Pulling into the little square, I switch the engine off. “I don’t know what’s gonna happen, Gray. But all we can do is try. I’m glad you and Logan have sorted things out – I’m sorry if you felt you needed to hide that from us. We’re a pack, Gray. Family. And we stick together.”
He raises his eyebrow. “You been practicing your motivational speeches in the mirror again? That one was pretty good.”
“Shut up.” I actually grin for the first time in a long time. “Come on.”
The little bell tinkles above us as we enter the store. It’s surprisingly large for such a small strip, but I guess they serve the surrounding areas too. Gray and I split up as he heads towards the section where they keep the tools, and I turn towards the toiletries, picking up a basket on the way.
It becomes apparent very, very quickly that I am out of my depth, even with the relatively small selection they have.
