I bounced on my toes, balanced and ready. It’d been nine years since I beat Xander to take Fifth spot. He was older than me and not a bad fighter, especially in fur as he’d chosen that day. I’d still rolled right over him in less than five minutes. He’d needed a week to fully heal. I wasverywilling to do that again.
Xander smirked but swept his gaze around the room, no doubt figuring out how much support he had for going nuclear on my gay ass. I didn’t dare do the same. If it looked like I wanted support, like I was worried about the others, I’d be seen as weak.Let Xander beg for help from the rest of the pack. Let him show he’s uncertain. All I have to do is project total confidence in being able to wipe the floor with his straight ass.But that decision couldn’t prevent the hair rising on my neck, knowing how many older wolves stood behind me.
The rustle of their movements and the sound of men breathing, faint to my nearly human ears, didn’t give me enough clues about my reception. I watched Xander’s face instead as he glanced man to man. His grin slipped, bit by bit. I saw him flinch once.
Thank goodness. Maybe I’ll walk away from this moment after all.I held my stance.
Apparently, the approval Xander was getting wasn’t as much as he felt he needed because eventually he bowed his head to our Alpha. “No, sir, no Challenge.” Then, grudgingly, he bowed head to me too, just as low. “Fifth.”
“Fifth, are you content?” Alpha asked. His impassive tone gave no clue to what he was feeling. The ritual question came no slower or harsher than normal.
Is that enough? If Xander backed down, will any of the lower wolves try to step over him? Should I keep pushing for a fightand prove how thoroughly I can destroy them?I didn’t want to be the bad guy, though. If I was lucky, no one Xander had beaten would imagine they could take me, when he hadn’t dared. If not, well, they could take a number and fucking try.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I’m content. As long as he quits with the anti-gay slurs, I’m good.” I finally let myself look at Nick, and then Garrett. Both were a bit wide-eyed, staring at me, but neither seemed angry or disgusted. Garrett even gave me a fraction of a wink, which was ridiculous but a warmth I desperately needed.
Then Alpha tilted his head, eyeing me, and said, “Tell me, Fifth, how long have you been holding back that bit of information?”
Oh fuck, here it comes.But I wasn’t going to back down now. Alpha could only kill me once. “Since the days when you’d have been required to rip my throat out for it,” I told him, not bowing my head.
He blinked at the reminder, the calm of his face shaken for an instant. “It was never arequirement.” But he couldn’t deny that a death sentence had been the expected punishment for generations of queer wolves. An execution ordered by their Alphas. “Perhaps just as well you waited. So why come out now?”
“Because I’m tired of the bullshit,” I told him. “Tired of sitting back and listening to my packmates run their mouths when I want to beat the foul words off their faces. When I could’ve done so, but I was afraid to open that whole can of worms.” Of the more vocal homophobes in the pack, only Elijah, our Third, outranked me. I saw a couple of my least favorite older guys downpack give me disgusted looks, and I bared my teeth in their general direction.Yeah, no more Mr. Nice Guy.I might not be able to whoop their asses arbitrarily, but I could make them kneel to me unless they wanted to be considered Challenging.Next time they came out with a slur, I would put them on the floor, one way or another.
“Fair enough.” Alpha’s voice remained level, to my relief as I listened tensely for any hint of anger or retribution.
I added, “We have boys growing up. Any one of them could be queer. The time to end the homophobic reign of terror is now, with someone big enough to fight back, like me.” I thought of those trick-or-treating boys, of fearless little Dylan, and realized how much I meant that.They won’t go through that abuse. Not on my watch.
Elijah shuffled his feet where he stood by the coffee urn and grumbled under his breath. Before I could decide if his hostility would be my problem, Nick snapped, “Shut up, Third,” then looked my way. “Glad you could get it out in the open, Fifth.”
“Thanks.” My heart still raced and I didn’t unclench my fists, but my wolf’s fight-or-flight readiness eased slightly. If Alpha and Nick were willing to tolerate me, I might survive this coming out without losing my pack.
A grin crept across Nick’s face. “So that was aguyyou were texting and smiling at?”
I went from grateful to wanting to curse Nick for mentioning Kendrick.If anyone so much as looks his way, I’ll kill them.Except… maybe Nick was right. Maybe it was best to make myself perfectly clear. I swept the room with a glare. “Who I date is no one’s business but mine, but yeah, it’ll be a guy. Another wolf or a human man. If anyone even thinks about trying to mess with them, I don’t care what rank you are, I’ll rip your head off and stuff it up your ass.” I didn’t quite meet Alpha’s eyes, but did let my general stare include Elijah.
Alpha drawled, “And if you don’t think Trent can do it, Rick Brown will pull your liver out through your ears and make you wish for a faster death, if you mess with a wolf’s human boyfriend.”
I wasn’t sure I liked having Alpha suggest I needed backup, even from the most powerful wolf on Earth, but I was incredibly relieved my Alpha was coming down on my side.
Elijah muttered, “Yeah, the queers are Brown’s special project.”
A laugh escaped me. “I can’twaitto hear you say that to his face.”
Alpha made a chopping gesture. “Enough. Trent is apparently gay, any boyfriend he has is off limits, same as any wives and girlfriends, and if anyone has a problem with that, they can take it to me or Nick, or issue a Challenge to Trent. Anyone stupid enough to do that right now?” His acid tone and raised eyebrow were probably as big a deterrent as my size. There were a few low grumbles, but none of the lower-ranked wolves even raised their eyes.
“Right.” Alpha took a big bite of a donut and chewed slowly. No one moved till he was done. “Now, regarding the Ladies’ Auxiliary folks complaining about the buckthorn? No, I’mnotsending Charlie to sweet-talk them. I am, instead, setting up a work party to rip out all the buckthorn saplings and trees on our property. Nice hard work. Elijah, Xander, I hope you didn’t have anything planned for today and tomorrow.”
I bit back a grin, and Alpha gave me the slightest nod. I still didn’t think he was a big fan of gay folk. I’d heard enough casual homophobia from him over the years. But he was not tolerant of unnecessary infighting in his pack, and he had a hell of a lot of respect for Rick Brown. I could live with that.
I can live with that. I can live.
Dizziness hit me, bad enough that I sat suddenly in the nearest chair and braced myself with both hands on the arms, trying not to let my emotions show.Calm, cool, don’t let the bastards see you sweat.I’d had long, long practice at that.
When I was fifteen, and sixteen, it’d slowly dawned on me that I was never going to be interested in girls, with their round tits and sweet scents. Awareness crept up that I wasn’t just a late bloomer. I didn’t have a low sex drive. I was, in fact, gay. And that scared the shit out of me.
In those turn-of-the-twenty-first-century days, the packs were hanging on to secrecy by their fingernails. DNA testing was coming along fast. Cell phone cameras and surveillance videos were exploding across the nation. Our centuries of moving unseen among humans were on the cusp of ending. And none of us knew what would happen when humans discovered us. Genocide was the word whispered in the dark.
In that atmosphere of paranoia and fear, packs had been cracking down hard on all risky behavior. Death was the answer for any wolf who might betray us. And along with criminal behavior and mental illness and rank carelessness, being gay was on the shitlist. To my knowledge, my Alpha had never executed a gay wolf. However, the pack did, when I was sixteen, deal with a rapist wolf in a very final and bloody way. The DNA samples from his crime at the police evidence locker were purged at a high cost, and humans would never find his body. I’d stayed silent in the meet where he was condemned, trying to hide how much I was shaking.
