Page 92 of Dawn of the Pack

“Yeah, I wonder if she would have run away if she knew the curse wasn’t real. That part of it, at least. If she felt she had more time to solve the problems between the two packs.” I’ve accepted that she left to raise a daughter untainted by the biases of this pack, but it still hurts to think of what I grew up without. How different would my life have been here? If Mom became alpha, and I had three dads to protect me? If she never suffered the pain of rejecting two of her mates, and never ended up in a car wreck that left me an orphan?

As if he could read my uneasy thoughts on my face, Landon reaches over and threads his fingers through mine. “You’ll drive yourself crazy doing that, Lily. We can’t change the past.”

“I know.” Heaving a sigh, I squeeze his hand gently and refocus. “So, now that Derrek is the alpha of Montrose and my mate, does that present any additional problems?”

Roxanne shakes her head. “No, according to Mr. Carson, it should do as we hope and allow us to unite the packs during the lunar eclipse. There’s no way to be sure, though.”

“Do we have anything to worry about with members of Montrose? There were a lot of self-proclaimed Nielsen loyalists there last night. I refuse to believe all those people worked in that dungeon purely because of compulsion.”

Milo clears his throat. “Actually, you’d be surprised at how many were grateful you defeated him. Apparently, while we were inside the house getting changed, dozens of them took it upon themselves to ask when they could move to Smoky Falls. They wrote up a list.”

“We have a different list from Billy. He wrote down the worst offenders, people who seemed to enjoy doling out Nielsen’s punishments, for us to monitor.”

Derrek’s been quiet, but he agrees in a low voice, “There were some obvious ones. I’ll go over that list, if you like. Make sure Erica is on it.”

Tension thickens in the air while we all grapple with the meaning behind his words. I don’t know if asking him about it is the right thing to do, or if waiting until he brings it up would be better. Or maybe he never wants to talk about it.

“Okay, thank you,” Roxanne replies softly, saving the rest of us from the indecision. “At any rate, no one is moving anytime soon. Of course, anyone from Montrose is welcome to leave if they want, but they aren’t part of Smoky Falls yet. We’ll have to find some way to vet them before the eclipse, so we have a plan.”

“I trust you to handle it, but let me know if you need my help,” I offer. “For now, I feel like we’re all on hold until the ceremony, so let’s try to get things back to normal and prepare for the last step of my ascension.”

It doesn’t seem possible, but things actually go back to normal pretty quickly. The boys and I return to classes, and find ourselves loaded down with make-up work for the week we missed.

Derrek resumes teaching, but they move Jared and me to a different Lit professor to prevent any perception of favoritism.

It’s not a problem, though. Derrek and I find plenty of time to hook up in his office.

Roxanne is planning to get a suite renovated for each of the guys, including Derrek. He’ll keep his apartment until his room is ready, and the rest of the guys plan to move into Harridan House immediately following the ceremony regardless of the status of their rooms. They practically live here anyway, so it makes no difference. At this point, they’ve yet to sleep anywhere but in bed with me, anyway.

And for a few weeks, everything is quiet. Derrek checks in with Montrose; he’s made Billy his beta to keep an eye on things while we’re sorting out logistics. In the end, most of Pack Montrose don’t actually want to move. Several who’d written their names on the list rescinded their requests, realizing that life was very different with Nielsen gone. Anyone on the ‘willing sadist’ list—as Billy put it—was immediately banished from Montrose and Smoky Falls, and the weeks pass quietly in both towns.

As the day of the eclipse approaches, I’m once again shocked to find out the ceremony for claiming my mates is hardly anything special.

“So I literally just have to stand under the eclipse and claim them?” I scrunch my brows at Roxanne, who smiles placidly back at me from behind her desk.

“That’s correct. You claim your position as alpha, and then you claim your mates, listing off their names. It’s done with the entire pack to witness, and that completes the ritual. Then we all go for a run like any other night.”

“And that’ll break the midnight curse?”

“We can only guess at that, Lily. But if the original curse was part of the spell splitting the packs, reuniting them should lift it. We won’t know until we try.”

We sit in silence for a moment, pondering.

“I wonder what it’ll be like if it works. You know what I mean? If everyone can just… shift whenever they want? Or when they get super upset and lose control?”

Roxanne grins back at me. “I’m sure there’ll be a learning curve. Folks will have to manage their own reactions, learn how to stop their wolf from clawing its way out without their permission. I, however, am looking forward to the challenge. The big question is: will you still do midnight runs?”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” I admit. “If everyone has the freedom to shift whenever they want, there’s no need to meet up every night for it. It’ll be a relief to go to bed at a decent hour. But those runs are also my favorite part of being a wolf. It’s almost as if that curse forces us to be closer as a pack. You see what’s happened at Montrose? they’re barely a pack at all.”

“True, but I’m not entirely sure that has to do with their habits as much as their leadership.”

“That’s fair,” I agree, but a melancholy feeling blossoms in my chest. “I know it’ll be good, but I can’t help feeling like it’ll hurt our closeness somehow.”

There’s a long pause while Roxanne considers. “I’m sure we’ll come up with a solution to ensure we don’t lose it. Our pack is closer than ever since your return, Lily. You being here, just being the person you are, is what the pack needs above everything else. We can face anything else as it comes.”

“You’re right,” I agree. “What matters most is that we’re finally all together.”

I stand in the dark clearing with all four of my mates around me. The air is unseasonably warm tonight, compared to the last several weeks. Almost as if mother nature knows.

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