Didn’t he? I try to remember through the haze. But then again, I should have known better than to take anything that asshole said for truth. He’s never done anything worth a damn in his life.
Oscar is still talking, and I focus. “— we need to work out a plan. Don’t go up there.”
I stop in front of my truck. I left it here last night, too wound up to drive. “You’re joking.”
“Not without us.” The slam of a door echoes in my ear. “Jake and Max are coming home. This is a pack discussion, Theo. This is a call we make together.”
The tone of his voice has me bristling. “Is that anorder? Because as far as I knew, nothing was settled yet.”
Loaded silence in my ear. And then Oscar sighs. “A request.”
We don’t truly know who has the strongest dominance. Brett would have been the obvious choice for pack leader before everything went to shit. But Oscar and I are neck-and-neck, have been for years, and only time will tell us which one is the strongest.
“We can pick an argument,” he says after a moment. “I’ll fight it out with you, if it makes you feel better. But come home to do it, Theo. Don’t go up there on your own.”
The phone goes dead in my ear, and I swear as I slide into the truck and toss my phone into the passenger seat. “Sanctimonious asshole.”
I don’t mean it. Oscar, Jake, Max, they’re the only ones holding me together at this point. Some days I feel like I’m nothing but a leftover of Brett, the gap my brother left in my parent’s lives one that highlighted my own inadequacies in their eyes all too clearly.
My brother was a better alpha than me in every way that mattered. Physically stronger. More dominant. More focused. More confident.
I never felt lacking in any of those things, until I stood next to him.
I shove my hands into my eyes. “Fucking hell.”
She’shere.
I’ve spent months trying to contact her. But her phone is dead, her emails unanswered. Her social media pages deactivated.
I should have gone to the college to see, but I couldn’t bring myself to make the fucking trip. Not when we should have done it together, all of us.
See? Fucking weak.
The voice in my head sounds suspiciously like my father.
They’re all there when I get back. Max is still wearing his hiking boots, his face grim as he sits at the table. He looks as if he came straight from a trail. Jake leans against the wall, and Oscar kicks out a chair. “Sit down.”
I tense again, and he rolls his eyes. “Just a suggestion.”
“I can’t help my reactions,” I snap. I pull out the chair opposite instead. “You know that.”
“Kind of annoying though.” I turn to glare at Max, and he raises his hands defensively. “Just saying.”
“Easy for us to say,” Jake murmurs. “Our dominance settled already.”
They wear it so easily, both of them. Even Oscar manages the ebb and flow of his without complaint – whereas sometimes I feel as though I’m fighting inside my own body, every moment of every day. And if I’m not fighting myself, I’m fighting everybody else, taking offense over every single interaction like a personal insult.
I fucking hate it. “Let’s move on. Tell us.”
Oscar lays it all out. Jake slides into the seat beside me, a frown on his face. “Her scent… that doesn’t sound right. Maybe she’s sick?”
“Sick in the head,” I mutter.
Oscar grimaces. “She seemed fine. Enough to knee me in the fucking balls and ride off without a care in the world.”
Max snorts. He sounds almost admiring. “Did you expect anything else from Kenny?”
I tense again. “She’s notKennyanymore. Have you forgotten what she did?”
