Page 16 of Wolf Found

Absently, he wondered if they saw him how he saw Graham. Well, without the boner.

9

Follow Your Arrow

Amos Martingale didn’t leave Kismet. Oh, he wasn’t slinking through the parking lot behind them waiting for an opportune moment to grab Graham and stuff him in a car. He was just still there, nearby. Calling the alpha for orders, likely.

But why?

When Hannah had run away, they had announced her “banishment” and moved on. That was part of why it had been so chilling; it was the notion that a person could be there one day and gone the next, too awful to be in the pack’s presence ever again. It had been as though she’d never existed, as though their feelings for her were supposed to disappear.

Graham didn’t doubt Hannah’s word, so that meant there must be something different about this situation.

They went to a baby store after breakfast, an unfortunate moniker that fortunately did not indicate they sold babies, and the Kismet wolves bought an astonishing array of things for Paige.

Hannah stood next to the register, holding Paige and crying while store employees helped carry things, packing them onto carts and then into the back of Dez’s truck. When the woman behind the register started to read the total to Dez, he didn’t even pay attention, just handed her a card.

Graham might have only a small understanding of how things worked, but he knew the Martingale alpha kept scrupulous track of every penny the pack spent. Even when he’d asked ahead of time, the chocolate chips on the weekly grocery order had earned him a raised brow.

Things must be very different for the Kismet pack.

Good for Hannah.

Well, and good for Graham, maybe. They seemed fine with his continuing presence, and Gavin had even said he would grant any Martingale wolf asylum. Graham was any Martingale wolf. Did he need to ask permission to stay? Would they really want him?

He bit his lip and considered his options as they finished packing every last onesie into the trunk of Asher’s car.

A sure hand came down on his shoulder, squeezing. When he turned to see who it was, he found Gavin, a soft smile on his face. “Your turn. What do you need, Graham?”

“Me? I don’t... I mean, I have my things. Clothes and all that.”

“Nothing you left behind you want replaced? Books? Extra clothes? Secret stash of candy?”

Ash snorted as he slammed the trunk and turned around. “As if the alpha would allow candy to find its way onto enclave territory.” Then he flinched and looked over at Graham. “Sorry. There’s no call for me to speak ill—”

“He lied,” Graham said aloud, even as he inwardly cringed for interrupting an alpha wolf.

Saying it made it even more real. It was one thing to whisper it to Hannah in the night, when even he couldn’t quite pick apart why it bothered him so much. It was another to say it aloud, to all of them, in a public place.

Maybe he was just sensitive to it because she was his best friend, and at least for a while, he’d lost her to that lie.

Gavin’s hand tightened on his shoulder, not painful but reassuring. “The alpha?” he asked, voice soft and encouraging.

Graham nodded, looked at him, then turned back to Ash. “Am I being silly for thinking that’s important?”

Beside him, Gavin took a breath to answer, but Ash held up a hand, so he waited. Ancestors, these Kismet wolves were so uninterested in rank.

“What did he lie about?” Ash asked.

“He told everyone Hannah had been kicked out of the pack when she hadn’t. She ran away.” Graham didn’t know why he cared so much, but he was grateful Ash was taking his silly question seriously, and not just reassuring him everything was fine.

For a moment, Ash was quiet. Then, he asked something unexpected. “Why did he say I left?”

“He didn’t. He just said you were gone, and we weren’t to speak of you anymore.” Graham bit his lip to try to stop talking, but it didn’t do the job. “It didn’t work. People talked anyway. They said you had a fight with the alpha. Or your father. Some people said you left to be alpha of another pack because you were tired of waiting.”

Ash snorted and rolled his eyes, but then went back to his thinking. “So,” he said after everyone had gone silent, gathering around them behind the car. “I was allowed to leave contentiously. Everyone knew something had happened, but they didn’t say I’d been cast out.”

Graham nodded.

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