He huffed out a laugh that had some growling in it. Very confusing. “They know better than to try to throw you. And no, that’s not what they expect from you.”
“So you protect all of us, and I do....”
Oh. He liked that idea; she felt it through the bond loud and clear. But he shrugged. “Whatever they need.” Ashrug, as if that wasn’t monumentally big. “There are things the pack doesn’t bring to me, not because I wouldn’t listen, but because I’m the Alpha. There’s a distance in that, even when I don’t mean thereto be. You don’t have that distance. You’re not above them, and you’re not one of them. You’re something else.” He was quiet for a moment. “They might come to the shop—more than they already do, and not always for herbs. You already saw that, didn’t you?”
She had. A young wolf had come in on a Wednesday for a salve he could have gotten anywhere, stayed to ask about the forest situation with the fake ease of someone who was worried but didn’t know how to approach it. She’d told her they had a pretty good plan and were optimistic. He’d left with a smile. A woman had come in twice in a week for chamomile tea, which she definitely didn’t need that much of. Each time she’d stayed longer than the purchase required, sitting on the stool by the counter and talking for forty minutes about nothing in particular. Her job, her kids, the stress of a life you love but somehow feels too much anyway. Zoe had listened, made them each a second cup they had drunk together, and sent her home with something to help relax. And then there’d been the older man, she didn’t know his name yet, who’d sat outside on her steps for ten minutes before coming in, buying nothing, but leaving satisfied for whatever he saw. “Yes,” she said. “Maybe a little.”
“That's it, Moonbeam. That’s the whole thing.” He kissed her lips gently. “You just have to be there when they show up. Sometimes to fix them, sometimes to lead them, sometimes just to listen, the way you are already doing.”
Huh, she thought as she lay her cheek against his chest. She’d been so busy bracing for it to be hard that she’d missed the part where it wasn’t. The title, the role, the weight of what it meant being inside a pack that had gone without an Omega for years and was now stuck with someone fundamentally different—a human. She’d thought it would be heavy. But it wasn’t heavy at all. Listening, being there, making the second cup, savingthe forest. She’d been doing that her whole life without anyone asking her to. The fact that it turned out to mean something, tobesomething.... Her grandfather would have found that very funny, but also, knowing her, completely unsurprising.
She was still musing on it within the safety of Rex’s arms when the pack started arriving. Just a few, here and there, enough to make her go and start preparing her kits–and then they were all there. The trailhead filled up, people leaning on trucks and sitting on tailgates; wolves sitting, very properly, all around.
No nerves, Zoe realized. She knew names this time. Faces. And she felt the distinctive peace of being within a group in harmony. That was new. Good new.
Her heart was stable and her mind clear when she started dividing them and passing kits. Less than last time, as only the most depleted species in the ring they had traced were going to be tested, meaning smaller teams, targeted areas, and less ground to cover.
“Realistically,” she was telling Rex, “we should have preliminary results within a few days. The lab turnaround on soil samples is the longest part, but with fewer sites this round—” She gestured vaguely at the treeline. “It shouldn’t drag the way it did last time.”
Rex was leaning against the truck, arms crossed—always a very, very good sight—following along, nodding. “If our theory is correct, then Lachlan and his little tribe of witches can find a way to fix it.”
“It’s on him at that point. I have no idea how to help him.”
Rex smiled. “He’ll find something, he–”
He was mid-sentence when he stopped talking, and his head snapped west, like a magnet. Zoe felt it a half-second later: something moving through the bond, but not from Rex. It wasvaguer than that, and wider. A little more than a feeling of unease.
She opened her mouth to ask, but Rex’s phone rang before she could.
“Rex.” His shoulders drew up as he listened, the line of his jaw going tight. “I’ll be there.”
She read the reaction in his body, but she didn’t know the reason for it— other than it was not good. “What is it?”
“A fire at Hargrove’s cabin. Northwest, maybe five miles into the trees, up past the western ridge. I’ll get there faster through the forest. Owen’s on his way.”
Damn.Fires were a real and ugly danger out here, especially this time of year. She took a step after him, ready to follow, to help, an instinct she didn’t completely understand moving her feet before reason caught up, because...Help with what, exactly?
The fire department would already be called. Rex was going, Owen was going, probably more from the pack behind them. She turned the question over honestly: would she behelp, or would she be a warm body taking up space that someone more useful needed?
As if he could hear her thoughts, Rex turned and took her face in both hands. “Stay here,” he said. “The pack will feel the strain before we can reach them. They’ll know something is wrong, and they’ll need someone calm who can explain.”
This. This is where she was supposed to be. She covered his hands with hers. “I’ll be here for them.”
He kissed her, quick and soft. “Thank you.”
“No need. Go. But please, please keep in touch.”
He was already moving toward his truck. She watched him strip with efficient movements, shift, and dissolve into the tree line.
She stood there a moment longer, frowning faintly at the space where he’d disappeared.
He was going to need hands at some point—to help with the fire, to manage whatever came after. Which meant he’d shift back. Which meant he was going to be naked. She’d always privately held the opinion that clothing was fairly important when dealing with open flames, but she understood by now that shifters, wolves especially, had a relationship with nudity that was entirely different from hers. Very practical and unsentimental, nothing to see here but a body doing what it needed to do.
So, alright.
She turned back, pressed a hand flat against the tight feeling in her chest. It was tight, almost painful, but through the bond, Rex was steady—strained, but steady—and she held onto that. His quiet strength, even at a distance, had to be enough for today.
With no real way to relax, she went back to work—just slightly different.
