But I keep driving. I let the land work its magic on me. I let the mountains help me remember who I am. I navigate my way around the usual obstructions in the road, from questionable debris made into barricades to suspicious creatures supposedly hawking their goods.
I feel like my head is as close to on straight as it’s likely to be by the time I make it to the warehouse that’s stood unobtrusively in Phoenix, one of the smaller towns along the river between Medford and Ashland, for as long as I’ve been alive. And a whole lot of years before that, too.
It’s not far from what used to be the Harley-Davidson store, though the actual outlaw biker contingent rarely rode down this way. That would have called attention to what they were doing. In most things, the pack always prefers to keep its business to itself.
I turn into the parking area and drive around back, not at all surprised to see that all three of my brothers’ trucks are here.
The fact that I expected them doesn’t make me any happier to see that they’re here, but I don’t run from fights. Especially fights I’ve had a thousand times before. I take a steadying sort of breath as I climb out of the Explorer. Then I march myself right up to the heavy door that requires a code punched in on the keypad and let myself in.
My brothers are in the office, waiting for me. All three of them are huge. Not as big as Ty, but brawny and gigantic just the same. It was obvious to me growing up that they have a certain effect on females of all species, and I’m sure they still do, not that I ever want to know more about their personal lives than that.
This is not a courtesy that they extend me in return.
They don’t even play. They all go silent. Then they glare at me in a heartwarming display of united brotherly condemnation of me, their only sister.
“Good morning to you too,” I reply.
As brightly as possible, to be annoying.
“What the fuck, Maddox,” the youngest of them, Micah, growls from where he sits at one of the desks, his booted feet propped up before him. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Sooner or later this is all going to have to come to a head,” chimes in Asher, the middle brother. He is scowling, looking as if he’d like to bring it all to a head himself, right now. “Who do you think is going to have your back when we’ve watched you play this game for years?”
Like he thinks Ty and I are going to devolve into fisticuffs. It would be funny if I didn’t think that people ... really do think that. They think Ty hates me. They think I believe I’m better than him.
They don’t understand us at all.
But I’m not going to defend us to my brothers, who should know better. I act like I can’t hear either of them and take my seat at my desk, where I’m in charge of painstakingly recording every single thing our pack moves, protects, and makes.
Back in the days before the Reveal, the pack pretty much operated on vibes and violence, like every other outlaw biker gang around. These days we’re more strategic, in part because we are what keeps most of our part of the world fed, armed, and entertained.
I like to think that’s not only because Ty is a visionary but because the things I do support that vision, practically and effectively. I study the patterns in our movements. I pay attention to who attacks our caravans and when. I track the ogres who do a lot of the truck driving, because everyone knows an ogre can’t be fully trusted, and I’ve identified those who tried to cheat us at least ten times this year. I collect and analyze all the things the drivers and bikers riding protection details say about the state of the old interstate and all the other roads they encounter so I can make targetedsuggestions on how to avoid trouble spots. All of these things maximize our profits and reach.
And none of these things are under the purview of a pack’s queen. If I take up my official duties, return to the den, and focus on only that all day, who will do all these things the way I can? No one, is the answer. I think that makes us weak.
Everyone else thinks I need to mate with Ty and get over myself.
I officiously open up my various notebooks, too aware that Liam hasn’t said anything yet. The oldest of my brothers, Liam is the closest thing to a biological father I’ve ever had, no matter how I try to play like his opinion is the same as that of the other two.
Noise. Easily dismissed.
“Leave her alone,” is what Liam says, but I’m not foolish enough to consider that a reprieve. He’s the biggest of the three of them. He’s also the meanest of them, if he has a mind to be. “We have to get that food shipment up to Vancouver tonight. Get on it.”
Asher and Micah obey Liam too, though they make a show of slamming out of the office so they can go make sure the truck is being loaded with the black market foods that are supposed to go on it. And not extra, usually creepy, shit that people are always trying to sneak on board without paying. I respond to that by making a show of acting like I don’t notice them banging the door that leads into the warehouse hard enough it makes the whole place shake.
I continue to put on a whole theatrical performance of complete and total serenity despite the fact that I can feel the way my oldest brother is glaring daggers at me.
“Ten years ago, if you’d come to me and said that you thought the prophecy was wrong and this wasn’t what you wanted, I would have tried to help you,” he growls at me in a low voice.
Low blow. And also bullshit, but I stop pretending that my performative rearrangement of all the documents on my desk is doing anything. “Ten years ago I was fifteen.”
“So fucking what?” He belts that out, though he doesn’t raise his voice. That means he’s notpissed, he’s somewhere far beyond that. A smarter woman would wince, apologize, and make it right.
Oh well.
“We’re not human,” Liam is growling at me. “We don’t need thirty years to grow the fuck up. You knew what was expected of you long before that. Don’t bullshit me.”
I look at him and start to say something but think better of it.
