If she were mine, I’d know it right now. And I don’t know it. I don’t know what I know.
“You good?” Greyson asks, touching my arm.
I jerk my chin up, but it takes everything in me to refrain from hauling off and decking him or anyone else who lays a finger on me. My agitation is bubbling, hitting the rim.
I’m not okay. I’m certainly less okay than I’m pretending because the notion of inflicting bodily harm on one of my closest friends, one of my pack council co-alpha brothers – it should be abhorrent to me. But I can’t process that, can’t think straight except to think it’s too late to do anything about this. His eyes just clocked me. His nose would’ve done it before he even stepped foot in here tonight. I know we met as babies. Our mothers put us together at stages of our infancy, there’s an annual party where infants born each year are put together to gage their connection, to see if they might be the next generation of council alphas. And my mother told me this week that when Tyson, Riley, and I were put on the same blanket, Tyson and I both shifted and played as pups. They had to get Riley out of the way as he didn’t shift, and we spooked him.
Since I’m the only Council alpha he hasn’t met, of course he’s looking at me first. It’s what I’m sure I’d do in his shoes.
I follow my brothers who move in to take turns greeting them.
Our eyes lock and something crackles in the air. Something ugly. Dangerous. I look away. But too soon, it’s my turn. I shouldn’t meet his eyes again because of what he’ll see. But I can’t help it. There’s not a submissive bone in my body. I’m alpha down to my blood, a super-alpha which doubles the alpha traits, and I need to meet his eyes regardless of the fact that I’m so very fucking divided inside right now.
I step up and get introduced by Riley. And despite the noise, the crowd, if I knew nothing else, I’d know by Riley’s tone of voice that something is off. But I know more than by that voice, I know by my blood that something is very, very fucking wrong. Riley senses the wrongness in me. So does Tyson and the other four. All of us together, I feel a new connection snap into place.
“This is Mason. Mason isn’t feeling his best. Mase? Hold it together, brother.”
I extend my hand, knowing by Riley’s expression, by Tyson’s, that they both sense something wrong in me. Something I can only describe as foul, as if something ugly is there with my wolf, in his shadow. An unnamed, indescribably dark force of energy.
He takes my hand.
That dark energy wants to emerge. It’s not coming from him; it’s from me. I’m the one that’s wrong. He’s not. The sense of family, of rightness I feel from him nearly knocks me over, but the thing that keeps me upright is that other sensation in me. It feels like I’m about to split in three. Mason the man. Mason the white wolf. And the angry, entitled shadow that has moved in and wants to come out of the darkness.
The connection I feel with our hands joined is familial. There’s the thread of what I feel with Jase, Linc, Joel, Grey, and Rye – but there’s also that something else I’ve been grappling with all week and it’s bigger, stronger, darker.
Our gazes are locked and the thing in me wants something from Tyson. Wants what’s his? Is that it? Is it because it’s not supposed to be his? Is it because it’s supposed to be-
I feel a sense of warning come at me with a rumbling growl, a threat that comes from Tyson’s mouth. This isn’t just a warning, it’s his wolf, it’s his very essence. He knows something in me is wrong. The warning comes before that dangerous word forms in my mind, the word that would likely cause an eruption of anger. Rage. Fur. Fangs. Blood. Chaos.
“Good to meet you,” I somehow manage. “And you,” I add, greeting her without looking at her. I can’t set eyes on her. If I do, I know bone-deep it’ll be seen as a direct challenge to him.
Is that what I want to do?
My brothers and I all feel equal in my mind. But in past councils the firstborn alpha has always had a size advantage plus a combination of skills that elevate him just slightly. And I sense that in Tyson. I know to my core he’s our pack alpha. If we had no council, if we were a typical pack, it’d be him. If there were a challenge to the death like many packs still believe in, it might also be him, I don’t know about that. The rest of us aren’t remotely beta, but we might be tagged that way in a typical pack. And that’s strange to me. Foreign.