My pack was the best thing that had happened to me, and they spent the next several hours reminding me of it.
True night found me out on the deck once again, a blanket around my shoulders as I watched the moon rise from the darkness. She was mostly full, yet not quite enough to turn me with Her gaze. Though I'd balked at the idea of moon worship early on, the rituals became clearer, felt more typical the longer I was with the pack.
Perhaps it was how some felt when they moved to another country or another culture within the same country. At first, everything was strange. The differences, while not bad, simply don't have the same meaning that they do to those around you. It isn't just that things are strange, but that you are a stranger.
Werewolf, human, neither likes to feel like they don't have a pack to belong to. You're a fish out of water, a lone wolf, worrying that you look like a fool to those around you. Or maybe, that you're making a fool of yourself and you'll never fix your reputation again.
Life is too short to worry about whether you're making the best impression all the time. We all make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes do wonders for you. A puppy's mistake brought me and my rescue to the forefront of supernatural society and lifted us higher than I could have ever imagined.
But it isn't all about taking the world by storm or standing on a stage in front of everyone, telling them who you are and what it is that you do. It's about living, about finding your place on that stage and being content with it. You should always strive to be greater than what you are; it's practically melted into our DNA to work toward a better tomorrow. That doesn't mean that you do it at the cost of your own happiness.
So many do.
I lifted my head, closed my eyes, and scented the wind. A deer herd moved in the far forest, not yet leery of the werewolf pack that inhabited the woods at the moon's zenith. In the opposite direction, a raccoon wandered along trying to find early spring grubs. They would never become anything more than a raccoon's meal, too intent on being the worm the early bird got.
Well, raccoon.
Whatever.
Beyond my senses, I knew there were other werewolf packs. Beneath what made my pack pack was a core of something else. We were all made of the same person, once a man that had turned wolf and continued on with his life. He had made others, produced children, and those children had gone on to create more of us.
Lineage, at its core, was a soul-deep connection among the supernatural world. We all had it and I had only experienced it once in the past year, knowing my children before they were born in the same way I felt Hudson's exhaustion or Gabe's confusion when we were at work.
That bond was worth everything to me, the perfect connection that went so far beyond words that there were times when my pack and I simply listened to one another through it. And we didn't need to say that Tommy needed a bath or that one of us was stressed out. We just knew, and it was there, waiting for the pack to help.
It made the relationship that much easier, but it also made the relationship that much harder. There was no hiding from my pack, no sense of intimacy that they didn't know when we were close enough.
But I didn't want to hide anything from them. They knew me, really knew me.
And that was why I'd understood why Lillian had done what she did.
"If we could freeze to death, you'd have done it," Hudson muttered, sitting down beside me.
I leaned my head against his shoulder and continued to stare out into the night. "The deer are back again."
"We'll see what Tommy makes of them."
"Is he old enough?"
Hudson mmmed at me. "I was five when I took my first deer. The werewolf body grows much faster than the human one. We're predator-sized at four or five."
"They grow up so fast," I sighed.
"The alphas do. When we figure out what the pups' alignments are, I'm sure we'll be in for all sorts of interesting management. Omegas take a little longer."
"And betas?" I asked.
He paused. "I don't know any alpha-omega pair who have produced betas. They're very, very rare these days. But the betas I knew growing up more or less kept pace with the alphas. If we have a beta in there, they'll be loved. Life is harder for them, but they'll still be loved."
I nestled into his arms and there we sat, silent and watching the unmoving trees. We were lost forever in time, quiet and simply with one another. It had started like this, brought together by Tommy.
"Do you think we'll ever know if he really meant to do what he did?" Hudson cleared his throat. I turned and looked at him, frowning. "Hudson."
"I think it was likely he understood in a general way. He loved you from the moment he met you; and who wouldn't? But I don't know if he really got the complications with it. Everything turned out all right in the end, but he was a baby. He probably just saw what he wanted and went for it."
"Takes after his dad that way," I whispered, nudging him with my elbow.
Hudson tightened his grip on me and growled into my ear. "I don't mind proving it."
"I imagine
