Slipping the tranq gun into the inside pocket of my jacket, I couldn’t help wondering what exactly Callum had seen that had caused him to set us on this path.
Time to find out.
“So. You and Chase. How’s that going?”
Apparently, this was Ali’s version of small talk. I immediately started wishing that the drive to town was a significantly shorter ordeal. Ali had me as a captive audience for at least another ten or fifteen minutes, and this was a conversation I’d been expertly avoiding for months.
“So,” I returned evenly. “You and Mitch. How’s that going?”
I knew that was a bit of a low blow, but I really didn’t want to try to explain to Ali, who’d done everything possible to make sure I had things in my life other than the pack, that as much as Chase and I were just getting to know each other on human terms, there was another part of me—the part that had been raised to think like a wolf—that had known him the second we met.
“I’m not criticizing here, Bryn. I just want to make sure you’re careful.”
For one horrific moment, I thought she might be on the verge of giving me a sex talk. Luckily, her next words laid that worry to rest.
“Dating means something different to werewolves than it does to humans, and Chase hasn’t been one long enough to understand that, let alone control whatever his wolf feels when he’s close to you. You’re only sixteen, and wolves mate for life.”
Casey hadn’t.
I didn’t say the words, but the second I thought them, I felt like a horrible person. I was the one who’d torn Ali’s marriage apart in the first place. I would have preferred biting off a chunk of my own tongue to throwing that in her face.
“I tried to make it work with Casey.”
If I hadn’t already been silent, Ali voluntarily bringing up his name would have shocked me into it.
“I wanted it to work, but it didn’t, because Casey’s not human, and no matter how much he thought he loved me, there were always going to be things that mattered more.”
I wanted to point out that unlike Casey, whose loyalties had and would always lie with Callum, Chase would never have to choose between his alpha and me. I was his alpha. But Ali wasn’t done talking yet, and I didn’t interrupt her.
“You’ve seen the way Casey is when he visits, the way he still looks at me, the way he acts when Mitch and I are even in the same room.” Ali very deliberately did not elaborate on whether or not Casey had anything to be jealous about. “Whatever I had with Casey is over for me, Bryn, but for as long as I live, it won’t ever be over for Casey, and I have to deal with that. I’m a big girl. I can do it, but you’ve got your whole life ahead of you, and you have no way of knowing what you’ll want five years from now, or ten. Maybe Chase is the one. Maybe he isn’t. But if you let things get intense now, there won’t ever be someone else for him, and you’re the one who’s going to have to deal with the consequences.”
I was beginning to suspect that I would have preferred Ali giving me the sex talk.
“You don’t have to worry about me, Ali. Chase isn’t like other Weres. He’s not possessive. He doesn’t expect me to bow down to anyone.”
She looked less than convinced.
“And besides,” I added, “as intense as things are, I have an entire pack inside my head. If it were just him and me, then maybe things would be going too fast, but they’re not.” I glanced out the window, unsure whether I wanted to say the next part out loud. “Before I was alpha, it was like the two of us were the only people in the world, and now we’re not.”
Ali had the good grace not to look too relieved. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing, Bryn.”
“I know. And I wouldn’t trade the pack, not for anything.” I pulled my hair back into a ponytail and looped it over into a loose bun. “Chase wouldn’t ask me to—but seeing Lucas, hearing about everything he’s gone through, it makes me realize: I think I know more about Lucas’s past than I know about Chase’s.”
Maybe if it had been just Chase and me, we would have talked about his human life more, the way we did in the beginning, but the quiet moments, the ones where the rest of the pack just faded away, were so few and far between.
“People are allowed to have secrets, Bryn.” Ali’s tone was mild, but the words felt like a reproach. “Even from you.”
Ali looked like she was about to say something else, but instead, she killed the engine, and I realized we had made it to town.
Thank God.
I’d take a physical fight over Touchy-Feely Share Time, hands down. Hopefully, though, this wouldn’t come to an actual fight.