Page 19 of Wolf's Reckoning
“It’s coming, daughter,” he said. “Change is coming, and you need to accept that our Goddess Luna chooses this.Whatever male you pick for your husband, this pack will go on, becauseyouwill be at the helm. A pack leader will be the face of this pack, but you,you, Rowen, have the chance to steer them right.” He looked at me as if he were trying to make me believe it. It was as if he thought calling it a blessing would somehow gild the cage.
“Steering from the shadows isn’t what I want,” I said flatly.
“I want you to survive.”
The words were soft, but they cracked something in me, because I knew what he meant. He wanted me to live long enough to guide this pack, even if it meant letting someone else wear the title. An alpha could come along, claim this pack, claim a mate, and I would be disposed of, either by death or by the pack. Dad wanted me to live even if it meant pretending I didn’t bleed for it.
“I know,” I told him, just as softly. “But is it living, Dad? Being someone’s pawn?” I stood, my fists clenched at the injustice of it all. “Do you really think this is what the Goddess wants? Does she blessthis? You think she wants me tied to some Councilpetbecause the law says I have to be because I don’t have a cock?”
“Rowen—”
“I’d give this pack everything. Every damn piece of myself. I trained harder than anyone else. I fight cleaner. Lead better. And still…I’m not enough. Still, I’m just adaughter. A daughter of an alpha, which means I will most likely birth an alpha. That’s all I am. A birthing vessel.”
Dad watched me, he didn’t interrupt, he didn’t raise his voice to command me. He waited until I was done. “You are more than enough,” he told me gently. “But the law doesnot change because I want it to. Or because you want it to. This pack follows tradition.”
I laughed bitterly. “Or it follows fear dressed as tradition.”
“Our Goddess chooses alphas,” he reminded me with more bite in his words. “Alphas aremale.” He saw me open my mouth to reply, but held up his hand to stop me. “But a packleaderis someone wholeads, even if itisfrom the shadows.” Dad rubbed his forehead tiredly. “This is the hand fate gave you, my daughter; how you choose to play it is up to you.”
“I need to unpack.” I turned to leave, feeling no less pissed off than before.
“Rowen.”
I paused, my back to him.
“I may not live to see how this ends. But I know my daughter. And I know she’ll fight to the end before she lets anyone take what’s hers.”
My throat tightened. I didn’t respond. There was nothing left to say, because he was right. I would sacrifice everything I had for this pack. I didn’t have to like what that sacrifice looked like. All that mattered was that my pack would survive.
I left him and made my way to my own chambers. We’d always lived in the hall, where our pack could access the alpha easily. My mother passed when I was young, and while I couldn’t demand my father stay celibate after her passing, I didn’t need to see the females he took to his bedroom the next morning while I got ready for school. I moved into my own rooms when I was fifteen. No longer a child, but not quite an adult either.
A female shifter wasn’t considered an adult until we had our first heat. Our heat was the Goddess’s way of saying we were mature enough to be women. I never had my first heat until I was nineteen. I wasn’t sure what the Goddess was trying to say tomewhen she left it so late for me tobloom.
My heats were short, lasting no more than three days at a time, but more frequent than those of some others. The druid, in their unasked-for opinion, believed it was because I chose not to spend my heat on my back with a lover. I grumbled internally at my harshness towards the druid. They hadn’t quite been that blunt. But it was what they meant…
I didn’t stop until my door was closed, and I leaned against it, letting my mask fall and my shoulders drop, alone at last. No Lewis. No suitors. No Pack Council watching. Just me and solitude.
I pulled off my boots, dropped my jacket behind me, and shed my clothes, heading for the shower. My mother always maintained that you felt better after a nice, long shower, and I was ready to put that to the test today.
By the time I was finished, I was, grudgingly, not as moody. But I knew what would really make me feel better. The window of my bathroom was high, but I’d mastered being able to climb out of it a long time ago, when I used to sneak out and meet a boy.
The boy was long gone, but the escape route from the hall without being seen was still very much in use.
I shimmied out the window, in a sports bra and boy cut shorts. On bare feet, I ignored the trail and pushed deep into the forest. Pine needles bit into the soles of my feet, but I ignored the pain. The air grew cooler in the shadows, thick with moss and decay, and always carrying the lingering scentof rain. My body moved through the trees as if on autopilot, the route as familiar to me as breathing.
In the shower, I had shoved aside the thought of “I’m not enough” and was determined to move on. The thought was not new. It was one I’d lived with since I was old enough to understand what it meant to be born without a claim.
I stopped near a hollowed-out cedar tree, one I used to crawl inside as a child when the world was too loud. I wasn’t small enough to fit anymore, but I stood beside it like a ghost revisiting its bones.
Beyond it, just out of sight, was the smooth flat rock I used to spend time on with the boy I used to sneak out and meet, hoping for a stolen kiss, until the day he ran off with much more than a kiss.
The wind shifted, and had I been human, I would have felt the mountain chill a lot more. My head tipped back, and I stared through the canopy to the sky above.
“Luna,” I murmured, voice low. “If you’re listening—if you still look down on your daughters—tell me. Is this what you wanted for us?”
The sky didn’t answer. The forest didn’t either.
The silence felt less like peace and more like pressure, like the woods were waiting. Holding their breath.
