Todd winces. “That sounds wrong, but you know what I mean, right?”
I nod.
“Caleb’s a beta lynx shifter. He didn’t have an instant mate bond with Mom but they liked each other. After we were here for a few months, he asked if we wanted to live with him. She’d already been through initiation. So we moved in, and they started out in separate bedrooms. But after a year, they were spending nights together, and then they got married. He became my step-dad even though by that point I already felt like he was my dad, you know?
“They came to love each other and they both understood what it felt like to be widowed. So they had that in common, too. Mom gave me the option to keep my last name or take Caleb’s, so I took his—Reynolds—as my middle name, and Mom added Reynolds to her last name. Iris Shilling Reynolds. I wanted to honor my father, and Caleb understood. Mom really lucked out falling in love with him—he’s fantastic.”
He sits back. “That was when Jax’s dad was still in charge. The pack paid my college tuition, I earned a degree in ag sciences, and returned and asked to officially join the pack as an adult. By then, Mom and Caleb had my two little brothers. Since they were born into the pack they didn’t have to be initiated. Mike—Jax’s dad—sat me down and gave me the options, just like Jax talked to you. I didn’t want to leave the pack. This was my home, my family. And I knew I was gay, plus I was horny as fricking hell all the time by then, so I considered it a win-win.”
He smiles. “Man, Jax and I had a blast that night, too. He tried to talk me into moving in with him, but even though he’s an Alpha and I’m not, I didn’t want to fuck up our friendship. It worked out well we stayed just friends because he might not have felt a mate bond when Shawn showed up.”
“I guess I’m still a little weirded out that if someone knows a kid growing up they’d…” I can’t finish.
“Oh, the pack Alpha makes exceptions when it’s a kid who’s aged out and needs to join or leave. If the kid didn’t arrive with parents, host families are obviously exempted. Mike and Jax have opted out many times because they were close to the person when they were a minor. The longer a kid grows up in the pack, the fewer people are needed. Everyone’s used to them, they smell a lot like their parent if they joined, so they modify the ceremony as needed. The bottom line is that the more Alphas who participate, the stronger the bond for everyone. The more members who participate in the last part of it, same thing. Integrating the new person’s scent into the pack is vital.”
“What about you? Who’d you choose to participate?”
He grins. “Mike and Pavin—Jax’s dad—opted just to watch, because they were like adopted dads to me. Oh, other than Mom, Caleb, and my brothers, obviously, I wanted everyone who wanted to participate to join in.”
“Really?”
“Heck yeah! I was coming into my first heavy rutting season and, again, I was hornier than hell. Think the horniest you’ve ever been in your life, and multiply it by about a hundred. Look, I know Jax laid out the basics, but he’s not an asshole. He lets new people know the worst-case scenario, so to speak. Again, we don’t force people to join. People are free to leave, and members can choose not to participate in certain initiations. If there’s a pack member, Alpha or not, who wants to abstain from all initiations, Jax talks to them and grants exceptions. Especially for health, age, new parents—various reasons. Nothing is carved in stone, which is the beauty of being a pack of adoption, of found family, and not just a blood-or-mate pack membership.”
“Have you ever had someone join who you didn’t like and you fucked them anyway?”
“Well, I’m a beta, so I have more leeway than the Alphas when it comes to that. But the important thing is you don’t have to like someone to agree to let them join the pack. There are a couple of guys in this pack I will never be friends with, but if they need help for some reason, I’ll volunteer with everyone else to step in and give them a hand. Just like they would help me.
“After a hurricane a few years back, I needed help fixing my pasture fences because of downed trees. Those same guys showed up at first light the next day, ready to work, same as Jax and Shawn and my other besties. And one of the guys I’m not fond of took a tree limb through his roof during a different storm, and I was up there helping fix it with others as soon as it was safe to start repairs.”
He meets my gaze. “Pack is pack. That’s the point—we might not all like each other, but we stand with each other. Because if we won’t stand with each other, who will stand with us?”
“Wow.” I…really struggle to process that. Never in my life have our pack relations ever been like that. Assistance was ordered, or demanded, but rarely reciprocated.
Hell, never in my own family has that been the rule. Asking for help is considered a weakness. But if my father demands others do something, you’d best believe they know they need to drop everything and do it, even though they know he’d never do the same for them.
“Here’s another example,” Todd continues. “And I tell you all of this because I want you to relax and try to stop stressing over the introductions. We had a guy about ten years ago show up. Twenty-seven, sort of timid. Name’s Sam. I immediately got this weird damned vibe from him that no one else did. Sam spent a couple of weeks meeting everyone, and I hadn’t given Jax my opinion yet. Honestly? It bothered me that I couldn’t figure it out. When we spent time around each other, he would avoid me, barely talk to me, act borderline rude even though everyone else said he opened up after a few minutes and was perfectly fine with them.
“So I asked Jax if I could invite the guy over for dinner, alone. Just to talk, right? I didn’t know much about him except that he wasn’t a shifter but his parents were. They’d died in a car accident, and he was evicted from his flock. They were herons?—”
“What?”
“Birds. Great blue herons. Like small, feathered dinosaurs.”
“Huh. I didn’t know there were heron shifters.”
“I know, right? Hardly anyone knows about them. Anyway. Made him dinner, and he shows up, very nervous, mostly one-word answers. I finally ask him outright, look, what’s wrong, did I say or do something? Because if I did I wanted a chance to apologize and start fresh. He finally admitted it wasn’t me; he was bullied for years in school by a kid, an elk shifter.”
“Yikes.”
“Right? So even though I didn’t owe him an apology, I still apologized on general principles because I knew if I said no to him joining that’d be on me and I wanted to give him every chance. So I start asking him about his parents, about growing up, trying to get him to open up about his past, at least. He mentioned how his mom used to keep a butterfly garden and he loved helping her in it. That led to us talking about that.
“Somehow, three hours later, I now know way more about North American butterflies than I ever hoped to, I’d only said maybe twenty words total from that point on, and he talked my ear off about butterflies. Then he gets embarrassed and jokes about it being his info-dump hyper focus. I asked well, what’s that mean? You know what it meant?”
I shake my head.
“Turns out he’s autistic. That fact hadn’t been brought up at all before by anyone, because it just wasn’t. No one else gave a shit about that, and apparently something in my elk senses picked up on it in a way no one else had because of how he was secretly scared of me. And he admitted to me he was asexual, but he was also gay, and he really wanted to join us so much he was still willing to go through the initiation. Except he was intimidated by me, not only because of the kid who bullied him, but also because he heard elks rut really hard, and he’d been afraid to say anything for fear of me blackballing him. That’s when everything clicked for me and I told Jax I was fine with him joining. He’s a sweet guy, really fun.”
“Did you participate in his initiation?”
