“We don’t crumble into dust at the town line,” she said slowly. “We could go back to the lodge every now and then, for special occasions, or go back to the roadhouse where we met and have a drink. But that’s about it. I thought you realized that. Even staying gone for a night—now that Ruth’s gone, I don’t know if it would be a good idea. The pack is counting on us, Case.”
Case had known they would have to have a talk about setting boundaries with the rest of the Mountainview pack, for everyone’s sake, but he hadn’t imagined that it would have to bethiskind of talk. Even though he knew Lydia took it for grantedthat people would come to them with the tiniest of squabbles, he still hadn’t really understood how deeply she believed her lifehadto be like this. She truly didn’t think she could ever take a break.
Because Ruth never did.
Ruth, who had died trying to say that she had no regrets about giving her life to her pack—but who hadn’t been able to say it without crying.
Case said, “But isn’t it like a family? You wouldn’t leave your family out in the cold when they needed you, but people still have separate lives. Even if you wanted to live close by, there are still vacations and—”
“No, there aren’t. Ruth didn’t even go to my dad’s funeral, Case. To herson’sfuneral. She put me on a plane for it, since I wasn’t the alpha yet, but that’s it. She wasn’t going to leave Mountainview to fend for itself.”
Lydia said all this fiercely, like it was a decision she was ready to defend. But it was one of the saddest things Case had ever heard. Lydia had still been pretty young when her parents had died, and from what she’d told him about shifters and air travel, that could easily have been her first flight. Not only would she have been grief-stricken and hurt, struggling to deal with the loss of parents who had pretty much shrugged her off, but her wolf would have been freaking out too. How could Ruth have let her go through all that alone?
And as hard as it was for him to take his attention away from Lydia ... how could Ruth have chosen togo throughall that alone? What had it been like for her to mourn her son in an empty house? Case was willing to bet she hadn’t shared her feelings with the pack. He couldn’t imagine Ruth asking anyone else for emotional support.
Now Lydia was planning on following in her footsteps.
A few weeks ago, Case would have said that was her business. He would have hated it, but he still would’ve stood by and watched her wreck her future happiness, because he wouldn’t have believed he had any right to interfere.
But she was his wife, hismate. They had promised to stick by each other. As far as he was concerned, that meant more than staying with her no matter what she decided. It also meant saying something when he saw her heading for disaster.
He would never leave her. But he would also do whatever he could to change her mind about this. She wasn’t going to have Ruth’s life, not if he could help it.
“Mountainview needs an alpha,” Case said quietly. “But it’s a pack, a village, not a child. It doesn’t need constant attention. No one needs to be around all the time to stop it from drinking something it finds under the sink. What’s going to happen if you leave?”
Lydia’s eyes looked dark as flint, striking sparks off her steely gaze. For all that intensity, though, it took a second for her to think of something. She did, though:
“Reeve, obviously.” She sounded almost relieved to have such a good answer.
“You don’t have Reeves coming around every day. You told me that the whole problem with him is thatnobody’sprepared for him. He could have targeted anybody who was about to have a change in leadership.”
Lydia’s jaw worked in place, like she was chewing gum. “But he came afterus. And yeah, he was waiting for a power vacuum, but he’s not that patient. He almost made a move the day I turned you. What if I hadn’t been here, and he’d killed Ruth instead?”
“What if the rest of Mountainview had stepped in to try to stop him too?”
“That’s not their job.”
“It’s everyone’s job to try to fight back against people like Reeve. From what I’ve seen since I’ve been here, the pack knows that, and they’d step up if you’d just let them—”
Lydia shook her head so hard that her hair lashed back and forth. Case suspected she couldn’t even stand to think about that. If she did, she’d have to acknowledge that, with the best intentions on both sides, she and the pack had let each other down.
She’d have to admit that she wasn’t just an alpha, she was a person and part of a community that was supposed to have way more of a give-and-take.
“You’re just trying to talk me out of doing what I know is right,” she said.
He knew how upset she was, but that still stung.
“Does that sound like me?” Case said. “You’re a hero, and I know it. Do you really think I’d get in your way? Didn’t you want me to marry you because you knew I felt the same way you did? We both agree on what matters. That’s part of why we’re true mates, isn’t it?”
But Lydia had been dismissing her fear and grief and needs for a long time, and now everything was hitting her at once. She was buried under it all, and it was like she couldn’t even hear what he was saying.
“I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to let Ruth down, I’m not going to let Mountainview down. And—” Tears were shining in her eyes now. “And if you can’t handle being co-alpha with me, if you need the kind of life we can’t have here, then—”
Case couldn’t stand to hear her tell him he could leave. He shook his head as frantically as she had.
She said it anyway: “Then you can go. I knew this might be too much for you, that you might be happier on the road. I don’t want you to be miserable here, Case.”
“I’m not. But you are, Lydia. At least right now. You’re not meant to be stuck like this. You need a little more freedom, the chance to go somewhere, have a little breathing room. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad alpha.”
