Various angry sounds surround me that I promptly tune out, focused solely on her face. They don’t get it, getherlike I do. She needs time to process, and if everyone’s breathing down her neck, staring at her like she’s moments away from turning feral at any second, it’s going to push her into doing exactly that. And while they’re used to issuing orders and taking care of everyone, the only experience as an alpha Sabrina has had is the burden of shouldering all of the responsibility herself, completely alone.
Alpha’s bear the sins of us all, and betas keep everything running. But it’s the burden of rankless wolves to put a smile on our faces and be people worth fighting to protect when we don’t even want to fight for ourselves. Our job is a subtle one, ensuring our alphas and betas don’t become crushed under the weight of the purpose that they need to exist, while ensuring they always have one.
“I need your help. I can’t do this alone, and the deadline is getting a little too close for comfort to keep losing days to pack business. Can we reschedule dealing with this until tonight? Because I really need you to check the functionality of the text-to-speech function of the notes feature.”
Releasing a long, drawn out breath, she finds her footing, standing straighter against Hunter. “You’re right. Jonathan’s never going to let us live it down if we make him lose out on that bonus.”
Smiling, I take a slow step forward, then another when she doesn’t flinch away at my approach. The protests around us are focused on attacking Slade for not having control of his pack, and I continue to ignore them all, leaving that for him to deal with right now. A few paces away from her now, I extend a hand palm up in her direction, waiting for her to come to me, offering a sliver of control that she desperately needs before she completely implodes.
“Exactly. After we get some work done, we can sit down and make a list of all of the things we need to address in our home life, including topics that need to be discussed. Bo loves to-do lists, so I’m sure he’ll have no problem helping us check some things off so that it doesn’t seem so daunting and overwhelming. Sound good?”
Tentatively, she slides her hand into mine, curling her fingers back the moment she makes contact as if expecting me to drop dead. When I don’t, she takes my hand with a sigh of relief, letting me draw her away from Hunter. “Sounds good.”
“She shouldn’t leave the house,” Hunter growls, and his reproach only drives her closer into me as Slade gets to his feet to intervene.
“It’s not your decision,” he decrees, alarmingly pale, but steady on his feet.
When he places a hand on her back and Sabrina involuntarily flinches away from him, I physically cringe for my brother, knowing how much that’ll hurt him. We just went through this with Cin and Bo, and while her reaction stems from fear of hurting him rather than upset at the claiming, it doesn’t feel much different than a rejection, I’m sure. Slade curls his hand into a fist, but doesn’t comment, used to having to save face in front of the vultures that have been circling us for years.
“Sabrina goes wherever she’s comfortable, and it’s our job to ensure that she’s safe enough to do so.” Turning away from Hunter, Slade locks eyes with me, commanding with no room for debate, “Help her clean up while I get changed, and I’ll meet you in the garage. We were all born with pups that we grew with and had time to master, but since hers emerged fully grown and she doesn't have the practice we do reining it in, someone needs to be nearby in case she needs help calming down. And with the other families pissed off more than ever, she’ll need more than a single escort for the foreseeable future.”
He risks a glance at Sabrina, who’s currently refusing to meet his eye. Stony faced, he strides out of the room. “I’ll make sure to bring a book so I don’t bother you while you work.”
***
Glancing up from theclock on my computer screen to Sabrina for the hundredth time this morning, she’s still completely closed off, silent and withdrawn. It doesn’t matter that Slade and Cinjin are fine, that Hunter worked to bring her wolf to heel as much as he could before releasing her. She finally got what she was hoping for these last few weeks, to really be one of us, and it came with all of the self-loathing we suffer with as well.
Despite our attempts, she’s sitting alone with several empty chairs on either side of her while the rest of us are spread out around the conference table. Me, Jonathan, and her newly mandated alpha shadow that needs to be handy in case she loses control again. This time it’s Slade, but Damian insisted on coming along as well, wrestling with his own guilt over the situation.
Then there’s the elephant in the room in the shape of faint blue, pearlescent claw marks slashing across Damian’s forearm that look suspiciously similar to the markings of a claiming bite that everyone is pointedly not mentioning. She’s barely hanging on by a thread as it is, and none of us want to be the one to send her over the edge, her recent stint in her apartment still a fresh wound we’re all still healing from besides this latest blow.
“So, tell me again why your brother and his friend are here?” Jonathan asks at my side, the awkward tension in the room finally too much for him to handle, having as much trouble as I am getting into the zone.
“Not his friend,” Damian scoffs at the same time that I lie, “They’re considering investing.”
“And staring at the back of our laptops for four hours helps them decide that how, exactly?” Jonathan testily snaps, mashing his finger repeatedly on the delete button.
Slade raises an eyebrow at him, in a shitty mood ever since Sabrina refused to let him touch her after he came to, especially with his newfound claiming mark on prominent display. “To see if you’re worth investing in.”
Sabrina’s shoulders slump as she shrinks further in on herself and I finally break. “Slade? Damian? Can I speak to you outside for a minute?”
They both look at me warily as I scoot my chair back and push to my feet, rounding the table and meeting them at the door to the conference room. Letting them cross the threshold first, I wait until they steal another nervous look at Sabrina, like she’s going to disappear for good if they let her out of their sight for even a second.
“You’re focusing on the wrong things and making matters worse. Come back when you get your priorities in order.”
Slamming the door in their faces, I flip the lock and stride away without a backward glance. Sure, they could break in if they were determined; Slade alone could pick the lock within two minutes. But I’m hoping that it’s enough of a shock to their egos that someone ranked so far beneath them would dare to do that in the first place that it’ll help knock some sense into them.
Grabbing my computer, I sit down directly beside Sabrina without another word, going back to work. It takes her a few minutes to relax, but eventually, the three of us are all able to immerse ourselves in our work without feeling like an axe is hovering above our necks. Jonathan ends up moving to her free side when she asks a question about integrating his work into the primary system, and things finally begin to feel semi-normal again.
She currently thinks that she’s a plague, a curse, and that touching anyone will only result in disaster after the shitshow that was this morning’s wake-up call. I need her to see that that actually makes her more like us than any wolf ever could. Slade treats her like she’s the answer to chase away the shadows and misery that haunt us, but I’m lucky enough to see her for what she really is.
At home in the darkness. She’s better at being cursed than any of us, andthat’swhy she’ll be the one to save us. She isn’t going to chase away everything that makes us who we are, she’s going to teach us how to endure it; to thrive where lesser men have fallen prey to something we were never meant to contain.
We work quickly, attempting to make up for all of the lost time as the deadline looms ever closer. Time fades away in the face of more important numbers, each bit of progress that doesn’t result in a glitch only encouraging us to push harder, rapidly regaining most of the ground we’d lost.
A soft knock at the door has me internally cursing, but when I glance at the time, it’s been a solid four hours of uninterrupted work, and I’m honestly surprised those two stayed away as long as they did. With only a few hours of daylight left before the sun goes down, I can’t fault them for insisting to be nearby.
She isn’t in a good emotional place, is attempting to be small and invisible. As soon as night falls, that newly freed beast is going to eat her alive.
