“We’ll see what happens with Reeve,” she said firmly, before Case could try to convince Ruth that life was more than a gray, grim march of doing your duty. She didn’t think he was going to pry Ruth’s vision of the world out of her hands, not at this point. “There’s something else I wanted to tell you, though. Case and I ... we’re not just mated. We’re true mates.”
Thatjarred Ruth, even when the news about Reeve hadn’t. She looked back and forth between Lydia and Case like she was trying to see what they added up to.
“I never ....”
Ruth coughed, and the cough turned into an agonizing wheeze with a horrible rattle at the end. It hurt Lydia’s heart to hear it. Ruth deserved an easier exit than this. It was awful that she was having to go through so much.
When Ruth got her breath back, she said, “I never thought they were real. They seemed like nothing but a fairy tale for shifters. No one around here has ever found a fated mate, not that I’ve ever heard.”
“None of us have ever really tried,” Lydia said gently. “You probably have better odds of meeting the one person for you if you meet more people to start with. Usually everyone in Mountainview stays home.”
“Home is the only thing that matters. It’s the only thing you can count on.”
“I can count on Case.”
“And I can count on Lydia,” Case said. “I’ll always do my best to make sure to live up to what she needs from me.”
“As long as you make sure the pack doesn’t get lost in the shuffle,” Ruth said. She closed her eyes. This was a longer conversation than she usually had these days, and between that and the big revelations, Lydia could tell she was exhausted. “Put it first, the way you would a child. Even more than you would a child.”
Lydia bit her lip. She knew exactly how Ruth’s pack-first approach had messed with her dad’s head. It was hard to always come second—sometimes even a distant second—in your own parents’ eyes. She didn’t ever want her own kid to feel like that. She didn’t even know if she wanted a kid at all—she’d never had much time to think about it.
For the first time in her life, she felt like shecouldthink about it, and she even had someone to talk it all over with, someone who didn’t already have a “right” answer in mind that he was waiting for.
The pressure of following in Ruth’s footsteps hadn’t gone away, but Reeve’s sudden departure had bought her time to deal with it. And she had Case. Thinking his name made her reachout and take his hand, so she could lace her fingers in with his as they left Ruth alone to sleep.
She could still feel every worry she’d pushed down swimming around inside her, making her wolf yip nervously from time to time, but that was something she could get over. This was as good as her life could possibly get, so no matter what, she was going to focus on her happy ending.
20
Case had traveled all over the country and seen all kinds of weather. He’d seen flooded-out roads and deserts where droughts had left nothing but cracked, dry hardpan. Once, he’d even had to pull his car under an overpass to hide out from a surprise tornado. But he’d never come across anything like theemotionalatmosphere in Mountainview after Reeve Steele caught that plane. No one knew whether or not he would come back, so even though his absence had them giddy, the uncertainty still had them walking on eggshells.
It was strange to be living through sunny weather without knowing whether it was genuine or just the eye of the storm.
As the days went by, they did their best to cope.
The biggest diversion—and the best one, aside from the nights in Lydia’s bed—was learning more about his wolf. He loved the “wolf lessons” Lydia and the pack would stage for him, from play-fights in the backyard to hunt-and-track sessions in the woods. It was all great, but he paid particular attention to the fighting, learning the play-bites that he might one day have to do for real. It was strange to snarl and lash out at people he liked more by the day, but it was necessary. He couldn’t afford to assume Reeve would stay gone for good.
According to his primary fighting teacher—the grizzled but hardy Horace—Reeve could challenge the two of them for control of the pack anywhere between Ruth’s death and her funeral.
“It feels morbid to be on tenterhooks waiting for what’s going to happenaftersomeone dies,” Case said.
He might not have had the highest opinion of Ruth’s view of the world and how she had instilled it in Lydia, but he respected her. He hated playing this kind of waiting game with her life.
“Tell me about it,” Horace said. “If you were an old-timer like me, you’d be even more annoyed. I don’t want people distracted frommydeath because they’re waiting for some punk to show up—SHIFT,” he bellowed suddenly, testing Case’s reflexes.
Case moved into wolf formalmostseamlessly, which was definitely an improvement.
“Your shifting is getting faster,” Horace said. “It’s still better when you’re working off instinct alone, but it always will be. But you’re not having to think about it much now, which is good.”
Horace shifted too now, changing forms much more smoothly—but then, he’d had decades more practice than Case had had.
Unfortunately, fights to the death didn’t issue handicaps to more experienced wolves to keep everything fair. When he faced down Reeve—ifhe faced down Reeve, because his fingers and paws were still crossed that Reeve was gone for good—he wouldn’t get any grace for being new to all this. That was what these lessons were for.
He and Horace circled each other, wary and alert. By now, Case had been in enough practice scuffles with him to know how Horace liked to operate, which was an advantage he wouldn’t have with Reeve. No matter how much he rehearsed the alpha challenge, he was acutely aware of how different the real thing would be.
But it was still good to have Horace on his side and know that these fights were making him more and more familiar with how wolves tended to attack each other. This time, he even managed to knock Horace down and get in the play-nip that stood in for the real killing bite. It wasn’t the first fight he’d won, but it was close.
Horace shifted back, panting from exertion but grinning all the same. “Not bad, kid.”
