“People do transfer packs,” Devon said slowly. “It’s a coming-of-age thing.”
I snorted. “Coming-of-age? Please, Dev. This isn’t Catcher in the Rye. Pack transfers happen when a wolf gets exiled from one pack and picked up by another, or after someone’s been peripheral for years. That’s how it happened when Mitch left Callum’s pack. That’s how it happened a hundred years ago when Shay transferred to Snake Bend. That’s how it works. It’s nature’s way of shaking up the gene pool—and it doesn’t happen like this.”
I wasn’t telling Devon anything he didn’t know, but in a show of grace, he didn’t call me on it. I took that as a sign that he knew how uncomfortable I was with Lucas’s coming here, looking at me like I was different from the others, like I could be his savior. Being alpha was one thing with my own pack—we were young, and we were family, and I would have died for any of them, no questions asked. I needed to protect them, more than I needed water or air or any kind of human connection.
But this?
Lucas wasn’t a member of our pack. I didn’t know him, didn’t love him, couldn’t see inside his mind or feel his emotions as my own. I knew from experience—first with Callum’s pack and later with the Rabid—that I had the ability to rewire pack-bonds, breaking another alpha’s hold over a wolf and psychically instating my own, but I also knew that doing so wasn’t something the powers that be in our world would let me get away with a second time. Mitch had said it himself—not all alphas were as forgiving as Callum had been when I’d claimed Devon, Lake, and Chase.
The same law that kept the other alphas from coming here and raiding our ranks for child brides forbade me from interfering with Lucas’s ties to Shay’s pack. I couldn’t just welcome him with open arms and say, “Hey, sorry your alpha has been torturing you on my account. Make yourself at home.”
“Shay has to agree,” I said slowly, realizing even as I did that I might as well be saying something about hell freezing over or pigs taking flight. “For Lucas to transfer from Snake Bend to Cedar Ridge, Shay would have to agree.”
Anything less could start a war—or worse, give the other alphas, Shay included, the justification they needed to take what was mine.
I wanted to help Lucas. I did. The idea of sending him back to Shay, knowing what Shay would do to him for running away, made me want to vomit.
But I couldn’t risk my pack’s safety for his.
—Maddy—
The part of me that was alpha felt her approaching, and I wondered how long she’d debated before joining the four of us in the woods. She was the newest recruit to our inner circle, and even though we were Pack, even though that made us family, I knew she was still getting used to trusting other people, to believing that they could care about her the way we did.
Being raised by a psychopath will do that to you.
“Hey, Mads.” Devon greeted her with a smile, and I knew he felt the same tug I did: to protect Maddy, to make her feel safe, to make sure she knew that on four legs or two, she belonged. Only this time, those mandates were in conflict with each other. Protecting Maddy meant telling her that everything was fine, that we would take care of this, that she didn’t need to worry about Snake Bend or Shay or the battered boy in Cabin 13. But doing that would put up a wall between her and the rest of us. It would be saying that Maddy was weak or broken, that because she’d been a victim, she’d never get to be anything else.
I couldn’t do that any more than I could have stripped Lake of her weapons or demanded that Chase open up at the next run and tell the entire pack his human life story.
“The boy is part of the Snake Bend Pack. His alpha has been abusing him, and he came here hoping we could help.” Hoping I could help, I corrected myself silently. “He wants to transfer packs, but Senate law says I need his alpha’s permission first.”
Maddy absorbed this information in an instant, and something dark and animal settled over her gray eyes. When she spoke, her voice was absolutely calm, but there was something almost regal about it.
Something deadly.
“His alpha won’t give permission,” she said softly. “He’ll be furious that the boy got away, that he came here. He won’t like being outsmarted. Monsters like that don’t like knowing there’s a part of people that you can’t touch unless they let you.” Maddy shrugged, like her words weren’t important, like she wasn’t talking about herself every bit as much as she was talking about Lucas. “If you send this boy back, his alpha will kill him.”