Page 74 of Hungry Like the Wolf

He knew JJ was right, but this was more than that. It was the shift, sure, and the long night of running. But it was also the fact that his heart was broken. His chest ached. His throat was raw from crying, from howling.

After the run, when everyone had gone home to put their pups to bed, he’d stayed in his wolf. He’d sat by the shore of the lake and howled his anger and agony to the moon. JJ and Rose had stayed with him, lying on their bellies just beyond the tree line, their scents a familiar comfort that kept him from losing himself completely to his grief.

Eventually, he’d lost his voice, exhausted, and they’d helped him get back to his cabin.

“Shift, pup,” JJ had commanded, and with a yip that turned into a shout of pain, Robbie’s body obeyed his Alpha. JJ had coaxed him to his feet and helped him to bed. He’d fallen naked onto the mattress and straight into a dreamless sleep. JJ had woken him up the next morning with a mug of hot coffee.

“Shower, pup,” he’d commanded, and Robbie had woodenly gone to the bathroom and turned on the shower. Standing facing the spray, water cascading over his face and chest, he felt as if he’d been hollowed out and petrified, like his body was there but that everything inside, everything that made him him was somehow missing.

He’d washed his body and growing hair and shut off the water. He’d dried himself and brushed his teeth and put on the clothes that JJ handed to him. He’d drank the coffee and put his feet into his shoes and shuffled down the path after JJ.

The hall was loud, but Robbie hardly noticed. He went to the couch in the back corner, the couch where he’d lain, insensate, that first day. Had it really only been two weeks? His whole life had changed and then been upended again since then. He’d been changed and upended.

He stared into space, only half paying attention to the pack filing in and grabbing coffee from the big percolator. He vaguely registered Rose chasing the pups away from the donuts, telling them that three each was plenty.

He’d meant to make donuts from scratch, but then he’d come home to an empty cabin and didn’t know how he’d mean to do anything ever again. Rose must have found packaged powdered donuts in the pantry and put them out.

It was time for the council meeting, his brain dimly remembered. The council meeting where they would vote to banish him from the pack because he was an unmated male. What would become of him then?

He could go back to World’s End, but it would feel as empty and hollow as he did. Sure, his friends were there, people who loved him, but she wouldn’t be. She wasn’t even on this mortal plane anymore. And anytime he drove past her office, which would be unavoidable, he would be forced to think of her. It would kill him.

He’d been so happy in World’s End. For the first time in his life, he’d felt as if he could put down roots, as if he could stay. But that was impossible now. He hadn’t missed moving around, taking odd jobs around the country and couch surfing where the wind took him. It had been lonely. But he’d done it before. He could do it again.

Or maybe he’d finally listen to his mama and “just come home already.”

He winced as JJ pounded a fist on the table at the front of the room.

“Alright, alright, you chaos goblins. Let’s get this thing started,” JJ said in that beleaguered tone he used when talking to the whole pack, as if the mantle of responsibility weighed as heavy as Atlas’s earth, though Robbie knew that he wouldn’t have it any other way. JJ was the Alpha.

That was most apparent in how quickly the room quieted, as if now that JJ had acknowledged that he was the Alpha, everyone else could, too. JJ started recapping the last meeting, and Robbie closed his eyes. He loved it here. Even more than he’d loved it in World’s End. He’d loved feeding the pack and running with the pack. He’d loved living with a huge family, how everyone was in everyone else’s business all the time. He’d loved the freedom. He hadn’t had a cell phone in two weeks, and apart from wishing he could tell Callum and his friends that he was okay, he hadn’t missed it. He’d woken with the sun and gone to sleep when he got tired. He run and cooked and laughed and—he squeezed his eyes shut tighter as the memories of her careened into his brain. Because in addition to running and cooking and laughing, he’d kissed and hugged and fucked and made love and dreamed of a future. More potent than any of those things, he’d fallen in love.

He’d fallen hopelessly in love with his fated mate, and from the pitying looks he had seen from the rest of the pack, everyone knew it. He’d found the magical “one,” and she’d been taken from him. A gift of fate followed immediately by the turn of the wheel, which then crushed him.

The pack might pity him, but it wouldn’t be enough. The rules had been clear.

He was so tired, but the thing about wolf hearing was that he couldn’t turn it off now that he’d turned it on. He heard as JJ called for new business.

“I move that Robbie gets to stay even without his mate,” Rose said loudly to the assembly.

Robbie opened his eyes and saw when JJ’s sister, Agatha, rose to her feet. He’d not often seen her out of her wolf form, but she was here on two legs today, clad in a pink sundress, her hair in a long braid down her back. He didn’t know what had happened to her, only that the thing that had happened was one of the reasons for the “no unmated males” rule.

His stomach sank. She would remind everyone of the rule—and would be well within her rights to do so—and that would be that.

Agatha’s voice was soft, with a gentle rasp, when she said, “I second the motion.”

Robbie didn’t so much sit up as he did rocket upright.

Rose looked over at him, her eyebrow tilted as if to say, “I told you so.”

JJ smiled. “Let’s put it to a vote, then. All in favor of Robbie being allowed to stay and join the pack?”

Every hand in the room rose, joined by a few yips for the members still in their fur.

“All opposed?”

Robbie held his breath, his whole body very still, as if a single twitch from his corner would cause someone to change their mind.

“The ‘ayes’ carry. Robbie is now an official member of the Dismal Falls Pack. Is there any other new business?”