Would she be able to start fighting again, making it through day after day on grim determination alone? Someone Lydia didn’t think so. It would be so hard, almost impossible, to get back to that after you’d had a moment’s relief.
You have to hold on, Lydia wanted to beg her.I don’t know what I’m going to do on my own. I don’t know how to be without himandwithout you.
But as she rummaged through Ruth’s medical supplies, she bit down on her tongue to keep any of those pleas from coming out.
At some point, wasn’t it cruel to ask her grandmother to keep struggling to live? Even with the morphine, Ruth was sometimes still in a fair bit of pain. She had given her whole life to her pack. Shouldn’t she at least get to have her death be on her terms, whenever she was naturally ready for it?
But that wasn’t what being an alpha was about. Not the way her grandmother had ever handled the job, anyway, and not theway she had raised Lydia to see it. Being an alpha meant always putting yourself second. Adistantsecond. It meant not even having a chance to mourn the man you loved.
Or, in Lydia’s case, mourn the chance to even have a life with the man she ... with someone she had already felt strangely at home with.
She had to put all that aside. Whether or not Ruth was down for the count, she wasn’t. She couldn’t afford to be.
No break. No companionship. No support. No fun.
Lydia locked those thoughts away. She found the morphine and started back toward Case—
Only for all a spike of adrenaline to suddenly surge through her, putting her on high alert.
Someone was here. Someonewrong.
If she’d been in wolf form, she would have picked up on the trespasser long ago. But her senses in this form—even though they were sharper than a normal human’s—were comparatively dull. She couldn’t smell the trespasser at all.
But she could hear him. A lifetime of Mountainview had made her an expert in the ordinary, familiar sound of a fellow pack member coming up to the house. It wasn’t hard to tell the difference between even the shyest approach and this lingering,skulkingattitude.
She didn’t need her nose to tell her who was creeping up to her door.
Reeve.
He had the absolute worst timing of anyone she’d ever met, and she couldn’t even tell him so. It would only make him even prouder of himself.
She hesitated for a second, wanting nothing more than to duck back into her bedroom and give Case the painkiller he desperately needed. But she couldn’t afford to leave Reeveprowling around outside. She just had to hope that it would only take a minute or two to drive him off.
She slid the morphine into her pocket and headed outside.
It wasn’t as nice a day as it had been the last time she and Reeve had run into each other. That had been a clear, picture-perfect spring afternoon, sunny but the tiniest bit cool. Today, it was too damp. Lydia immediately felt like her clothes were sticking to her skin. It was like the weather itself was determined to clue her into the fact that nothing was going to go as she’d hoped.
She didn’t have to look hard for Reeve. He was leaning against one of the pillars on the porch, looking as cocky as ever.
Other members of the pack were milling around on the street, looking tense and worried. One man had his phone out and turned it towards her, so she could see he’d already dialed 9-1: one nod from her, and he’d punch in the last number.
It wouldn’t do much, unfortunately. They could get Reeve thrown in jail for trespassing, under human law, but he would be out almost immediately. It wouldn’t save the pack.
She liked that he was trying, though. A couple other people looked like they were gearing up to take a swing at Reeve if necessary, too. It would be nice if she could let them. At least it meant that a tiny fraction of this problem wouldn’t rest completely on her shoulders ....
Shut up, she told herself fiercely.You can’t be an alpha if you’re going to think like that. No alpha worth their salt sticks the pack with the hard work.
That needed to be her mantra. No one was going to help her. No one was going to save her. No one was going to take this burden from her shoulders, even for a little while. Her grandmother was dying, and Case was sick. It was all on her, even if she felt like she might collapse under the strain.
Maybe someday she would. But for right now, she was still on her feet, and the pack was counting on her.
She got her voice as clear and ringing as she could make it. “Reeve, I’m pretty sure I made it clear that you needed to stay out of our territory.”
His smirk made her skin crawl. “But I’m here to pay my respects. You wouldn’t call the human law on me for that, would you?”
“You don’t have any respect for anybody here, so that excuse doesn’t wash.”
“Let’s say I’m offering my condolences, then.” His nostrils flared. “I can smell your grandmother getting worse.”
