Page 18 of Wolf Found

Sawyer nodded enthusiastically. “Yep. Five days a week. It’s a great job. You can do it too when Paige starts school or whatever.”

Graham stopped and stared at the two of them, spatula hovering over the pot of tomato sauce he’d made. “Paige is going to a human school.”

“Of course,” Hannah agreed. “I can’t teach her. Hell, you and me should go to a human school. They dragged you out of the enclave school when you were what, fourteen?”

“Twelve.”

Sawyer’s gaze flitted between the two of them for a second before settling on Graham. “Are you telling me you have the equivalent of a sixth-grade education?”

Graham shrugged and went back to stirring the sauce. “I have no idea what the sixth grade is. Is it bad?”

“Damn. Gavin’s gonna have a conniption.” Sawyer poured himself more wine and held his glass up like he was making a toast. “Nobody’s gonna be worried about me getting back into college for a while. They’re gonna GED you guys so hard.”

It sounded painful, but it seemed to make Sawyer happy, so Graham shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

He’d get an education if his pack wanted it. He’d always liked school. He liked the kitchen better, but maybe—“Can I cook even if I have to go to school?”

Sawyer’s eyes turned soft, and he looked away. “Yeah, Graham. Yeah. You don’t even have to go to school if you don’t want to. I’m sure Gavin’ll want you to because he’s always going on about everyone having ‘all the options possible,’ but nobody’s gonna make you do anything.”

That seemed really unlikely, but Graham didn’t want to say that out loud. At the very least, it was a nice thought.

He tried to imagine a world where he got to make all his own choices. Well, he’d follow Ash downstairs later on, first and foremost. And he’d kiss him the way he’d been dreaming of since he was a little kid.

Then he’d kiss him the considerably less sweet way he’d been thinking about for the last day or so.

After that, there was no telling what he’d do. He’d never allowed his mind to run that free before. Since it had all been so distant, there hadn’t been much reason. Now, though, everything he wanted was so close. A beautiful kitchen, his best friend and her beautiful baby, a pack who seemed to actually like him, not just tolerate him... and Asher Martingale.

Here it was, right in this house, being offered to him by the Kismet pack. Was it possible for things to be this simple, this good, this easily?

10

Wrecking Ball

All Ash could think about was Graham chopping tomatoes as they drove to the shop. He tried telling himself it was all about the fact that he hadn’t had homemade tomato sauce in years, but the truth was far worse.

The truth was that a nervous, fidgety Graham was adorable. But a confident Graham, fingers no longer twining together in uncertainty but slicing through tomatoes with practiced ease... Ash sighed. He had a crush on someone he hardly knew. What was he, twelve?

“You with us, Ash?” Gavin asked from where he was counting cash at the register. How he could count and talk at the same time was beyond Ash.

“Huh? Yeah. What’s up?”

Dez looked amused, so obviously he’d missed something.

“College,” Gavin said, in a tone that was not unkind, but clearly said he was repeating himself. “We offer them a college education. If they want to use that education as part of the pack when they’re done, that’s great, and if not, then they should still be able to be independent when they’re done.”

Ash frowned and tried to decide how to, as kindly as possible, bust Gavin’s bubble. He hated to disappoint his brothers, but college seemed like a reach. There wasn’t a nice way through it, though.

“They’re omegas,” he pointed out, and rushed on before Gavin could scowl at him. “Omegas from the Martingale pack. They’ll be lucky if they’ve got anything remotely like a high school education.”

Gavin’s face twisted in a series of emotions, each worse than the last, settling on the worst of all: pity. “What about you, Ash? You did okay. I mean, you had to have high school to get into the army.”

Ash shook his head. He’d never much wanted to talk about it, since Gavin was so darn smart, but it was necessary now. “I got in with a GED. I barely passed that test, and I had the best education of any person in the enclave.” His gaze fell away, and he picked at the laminate on the table in front of him. “Sometimes the omegas are lucky to get anything more than basic reading, writing, and fractions.”

“We can offer help if they want it,” Dez suggested. “The local college has GED prep classes.” He paused for a moment, sighed, and added, “I think we need to be prepared for them to not want that, though. Especially right now, fresh out of brainwashing camp, they might not be ready. And that’s fine, and we need to make sure they know that.”

Gavin sighed and slumped into a chair across from the two of them. “I just want them to have all the chances they didn’t.”

Dez gave him a pat, but as always, pulled no punches. “I know, but that’s the wrong thing to want. We can offer them those things, but we need to focus on what they need. What makes them happy. And they’ve been trained to think everything you say is absolute and right and perfect. You saw what it’s done to Graham, finding out his alpha lies to keep omegas under control.”

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