To her surprise and delight, the pack erupted in ragged cheers.
9
All Case wanted was to talk to Lydia, but he was officially getting a head-first, hands-on tutorial in the fact that running a werewolf pack meant that what you wanted didn’t always come first.
Or even second.
The pack wanted to know more about him, so he was herded back into Lydia and Ruth’s living room, which quickly became cramped and hot when over a dozen people swarmed inside to surround him. The peppering of questions they gave him was way more relentless than Lydia’s quiet, purposeful assessment.
It was a lot, but he couldn’t blame them for it. They were scared, curious, and excited. Of course they’d have a ton of questions.
Case did his best to answer them honestly.
Yes, Lydia had turned him. Yes, he was going to marry her.
No, he technically didn’t know how he’d hold up in a wolf-on-wolf fight with Reeve, but even his short transformation earlier had told him that his wolf had its own powerful instincts, and Case was happy to listen to it. He suspected it knew how to do battle in that form even if he didn’t.
That answer got a lot of approving nods, which was encouraging.
What did he do for a living? Case explained how he usually roamed around, so he didn’t have a fixed career, but he had fixed and long-practicedskillsthat had served him well over the years. It turned out that Mountainview was always in need of people who were good with their hands and had some practical expertise. They did their best to be self-sufficient out here, but they were better at farming than construction. Case would be a big help.
It was funny. Case had run across people who had reflexively expected him to stay where they’d met him, who took for granted that he would be looking for a house and a job that was permanent instead of seasonal. That wasn’t that unusual.
But it also wasn’tpersonal. They assumed he would settle down, but they didn’t really care one way or the other. If they did, it was because they were the kind of people who got miffed when someone wasn’t living their life the way they were “supposed” to.
Here, though ... this was the only time anyone had ever seemed like they wereexcitedby the prospect of him sticking around. It was like the Mountainview pack could instantly visualize what it would be like to have him be part of their world—him specifically—and they liked it.
Did Lydia?
It’s what she wanted, his wolf said uncertainly, its ears twitching.
Case was still getting used to the strange sensation of having a presence in his head that felt so real and alive. He liked it, though. His wolf had rescued Lydia, so he was definitely pro-wolf.
“Okay, okay,” Lydia said after this had gone on for a while. “Give the guy a break. He still has a lot to process.”
She was clearly trying to sound like a responsible authority figure drawing a reasonable line in the sand, but there was too much laughter and relief bubbling up in her voice.
It sounded good on her. It was the first time Case had seen her get to relax.
If he’d played any part in that, he liked it.
He shook hands with several Mountainview residents on their way out the door—most of them wrung his hand until he felt like they were going to crush his fingers—and then finally,finally, he was alone with Lydia again.
... And then, of course, they had to make a formal report to her grandmother.
Our alpha, Case corrected himself.
The title meant more than he’d realized. It had always been obvious that Lydia felt a real sense of allegiance to Ruth, something more than ordinary affection and respect, but Case hadn’t been able to really understand it, not deep down. There weren’t many human equivalents, at least not in civilian life.
But now he felt a tug toward Ruth Willmore. He was sure it was nothing compared to what Lydia and the others felt, since they had a lifetime’s worth of history to work with, but it was still there.
It was a kind of biological deference. But he wasn’t going to bow and scrape to her—he doubted she would even want him to—and he didn’t feel like he was being lulled into any mindless obedience. It wasn’t brainwashing. If she gave him an order he didn’t like, he could tell that he’d be able to refuse it. It was more that his instincts were telling him that whatever she said, it would be worth considering. His wolf seemed to see her as a kind of glue holding the pack together.
How well, though? Everyone here was clearly scared. So was Lydia, to the point that she’d been prepared marry herself off to a complete asshole just totryto keep the pack afloat. But it was like she was the only person even trying to find options. As far as Case could tell, she didn’t expect anyone here to help her out.
Had Ruth created a pack that was willing to let her granddaughter do all the work and reap none of the rewards, or had the pack idolized Ruth so long, and thought her so invincible and above-it-all, that they were already treating Lydia the same way?
More to the point, would Lydia even let them treat her differently? It wasn’t like he had seen her go to anyone in the pack for help.
