“The people she was with, the DarkShadow Pack aren’t the problem. Do I like her being around other males? Obviously not. But they’re mated, and I don’t know how she’s connected to them.” I didn’t want us accidentally turning the three mated alphas into our enemies because of jealousy. If anything, we owed them for keeping her safe. As terrified as she had been with us, she felt at east with her pack. They treated her well.
We’d treat her better. She’d been carefree and our everything.
“She said she wasn’t really the aunt, but she acts like sisters with the other woman—Rumor.” Benji had a point I hadn’t considered.
The DarkShadow Pack had bought their mate. Did they buy Rumor too? That would make sense if both women came from the same shitty pack. Or maybe I was reading far too much into this all as I tried to figure out a way for us to win our omega’s heart.
“Roan, you’re focusing on the wrong things.” Harlan gave my shoulder a squeeze. “What we need to do is figure out a way to get her to open up to us, so she can see we’re not awful.”
“I know.” Benji leaned in closer. “We can bring her gifts. The DarkShadow Pack isn’t that far away. We can just spoil her until she loves us. I can’t wait to treat her like a princess—no, scratch that, a queen—but not in the real sense.”
Benji’s life before our pack was the definition of complicated and it included a crown or two.
“That’ll work.” I was down with buying her all the fancy tools she needed for her canning or jewelry or maybe making her a bookshelf for her cookbooks. If she used cookbooks. There was so much we still didn’t know about her.
Harlan barked out a laugh—one very much not filled with amusement. “Do you two know anything about females? Do you know anything about omegas?” He glared. “Do you know anything?” He was not impressed and rightfully so.
“We cannot go to her place. We cannot go to her territory. We cannot approach her pack about her. If we do, she’ll never trust us.” Harlan picked up a piece of toast and then put it straight down. “And we will not cook for her.”
His attempt to lighten the mood, didn’t. How could it, with our mate so close and yet so far away?
“The gift idea might not be bad.” Roan was much better at being diplomatic than I was. “What if we bring her gifts without pressure, and maybe, over time, she’ll forgive us and give us a chance?”
We spent the next hour talking about possible gifts and how to do it, and ways to approach her that wouldn’t make things worse.
We also set a list of boundaries, which added up to not going full speed ahead without permission on anything. She needed tobe the one in control. Because if she wasn’t, we were no better than those she feared.
And if I ever found those fuckers, I was going to bleed them until they met the goddess. Or I hoped she’d reincarnate them as fricking bugs.
They get stepped on.
Or a really awful animal everyone hates.
I wasn’t picky as long as they suffered.
Chapter Thirteen
Lily
My alarm went off, and I groaned in frustration. I’d already been lying in bed for three hours, wishing for sleep to come. It never did. Not that it should’ve come as a surprise. The same thing happened when I went to bed in the first place—watching the clock, counting imaginary sheep, doing the weird breathing exercises Rumor taught me years ago. All the tricks of the trade, and nothing helped. Nothing.
I’d had maybe two hours of sleep total all night, and that had been interrupted. Slapping at my phone, I eventually reached it and turned off the stupid alarm. No need for snooze when I’d been awake for so long. It was freaking time to start my day.May this one be better than the last.
There wasn’t really a ton on my to-do list for the morning. I made sure to fill my time, though. If I slowed down too much, I was going to be thinking about my alphas. No. Not mine. The alphas I already rejected, the ones I was better off without, the ones who wouldn’t leave my head.
I started with the chickens. They loved me best right now because I was the one feeding them. Talking to them couldn’t hurt. Was it weird to have chickens as some of my main confidants? Absolutely, yet there they were. I tossed them their feed and some dehydrated worms as I regaled them with the story of how I looked so terrible and about my lack of sleep.
“You’re lucky I remembered to feed you.” If they didn’t care what I was saying, they sure cared about their food and me opening up their henhouse for the day. We didn’t think wild foxes and such would come this close to the house with wolves aplenty here, but better safe than sorry. It only took one animalto decide it was an all-you-could-eat buffet and destroy our flock.
Chickens done, I set about weeding.
I weeded.
Then weeded some more.
Patches currently growing, patches we were planning to plant next season and were currently resting because corn zapped them or were brand new. And when those were done, I worked along the foundation of the structures. Anything and everything I could yank out of there, I did. Why? Because it was mindless, and at the end, I had a big pile that made me feel productive.
My wolf pushed for me to spend my time hunting, but I knew better. She didn’t really want to hunt. She wanted to see if we could pick up on the scent of those alphas. She didn’t understand how bad that would be, how this life here was so much better than anything we could find outside of her pack. She didn’t understand that I was scared.
