It wasn’t that hard for wolves to smell sickness and impending death, but if Reeve claimed he could really catch that sickroom scent this far away, in his human form, he was lying. It had to all be part of his attempt to seem like a purer, stronger kind of werewolf than “civilized” types like her. He had probably come into town on four feet and only shifted back once he’d gotten closer.
For a guy who prided himself on being animalistic, he sure did like his mind games. Well, Lydia wasn’t going to play them with him.
“Ruth isn’t dead yet,” Lydia said bluntly. “So go.”
Reeve leered. “I wanted you to know you’re in my thoughts, that’s all.” He turned to take in the rest of the pack in their huddled circles. “All of you are.”
Lydia could see them shiver. She knew exactly the kind of calculations they were doing right now, and she couldn’t blame them for it. They were wondering if it might be better and safer for them to try to sidle on over to Reeve’s side. If they could curry favor with him before he was their alpha, maybe he would go easier on them. Maybe that would be safer than throwing in their lots with her.
If Lydia could really see it working, she might have stood by and let her people go over to him, one after the other. But while Reeve might be a gracious victor at first, his generosity wouldn’t last. If he was in charge,everyonewould get a bad deal sooner or later.
“I’m not going to tell you again,” Lydia said.
“Don’t antagonize him!” someone in the crowd cried out. “You’ll make things worse for us!”
Dammit. She’d known some of them were thinking that, but hearing it said out loud ....
There were people here who had already written her off. They’d spent weeks praying she would come up with some kind of solution, and they’d finally lost hope. As far as they were concerned, Reeve was already their next alpha, and Lydia was already—
Dead.
She swallowed. Maybe they weren’t wrong. Maybe she was doomed. But even if she was, she wasn’t going to spend her last few days on Earth crawling to Reeve Steele and watching him glory over her. If she never saw his stupid smirk again, it would be too soon.
“I can’t make things any worse for you than they already are,” Lydia said to whoever had called out. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking that he’s going to be any easier on you if you go along with him. He doesn’t want to be a leader. He wants to be a tyrant.”
Reeve kept his back turned to her. He spread out his hands, and the gesture made him look like a carnival barker ready to trick people out of their last dollar.
“Do you really believe that about me, people of Mountainview? Maybe I’m a little more rough and tumble than you’re used to, but I’m not so bad.”
There were little murmurs in the crowd. They wanted to believe him, because wouldn’t it be easier and more convenient if he were telling the truth?
But he wasn’t. They knew his history the same as Lydia did. They knew that he’d left his original pack out of disgust at its “softness”—softness like “having actual town elections instead of leaving everything to the alpha,” “collecting money for charity,” and “treating gay mate-bonds as legitimate.” The Mountainview Pack was mostly poor families and retirees. Reeve’s doctrine of survival of the fittest, where the weak fell by the wayside so the strong could feed on what they left behind, would kill them.
If he ever took over, the pack’s best hope would be him getting tired of having such a boring prize. They might have peace again if he abandoned them for a shinier, newer set of people to grind down and terrorize.
They were good people, though, so they weren’t going to settle for any option where that was their best hope. Maybe a small fraction of them would, but not all of them.
“Lydia’s right,” the 9-1 guy said, his thumb still poised above the touchscreen of his phone. “You’re just trouble.”
“We don’t want you here,” someone else chimed in.
A few more people seconded that, some of them obviously fuming with anger, but most of the crowd was too tense and too wary to speak up. Besides, it wasn’t Mountainview’s way for the pack to get involved in alpha disputes. Reeve was testing that tradition to its very limit, but it hadn’t broken yet.
He raised his voice to test it even more:
“If Lydia steps down as her grandmother’s heir, would anyone stand in her place? This could all be over right now. Let Ruth Willmore’s alpha position pass straight to me, and we won’t need to have any bloodshed.”
As remote as that possibility was, it had an obvious appeal.
“Maybe youshouldstep down,” an old woman muttered to her feet, clearly not wanting to look Lydia in the eye. She wiped away a tear as it tumbled down her face.
Lydia knew her. Pam Delaney used to watch her after school sometimes when she was little. She used to always have a stack of Oreos and a mug of cold milk waiting for her. She’d taught Lydia how to play chess.
She counted up the people who were shuffling their feet and nodding reluctant agreement. There weren’t many of them—only six or seven out of a crowd of over thirty—but it was enough to depress her.
Taught me art in high school ....
I went to her baby shower ....
