Page 17 of Just One Bite
“No. And at least try to address me as Alpha in public.”
“You can’t be fucking serious,” I spit.
Gavin leans against the wooden post while I shrug off my gear on the player’s bench and my team exits the ice. His voice burns my skin, like my blood knows I’m taking orders from another alpha. It’s an involuntary thing. “A natural rejection of the bond,” he’d said. I’m lucky he let me join his pack, butit’s painfully obvious I can’t stay even if I wanted to. I try not to think about it.
“Rules are rules. I can’t break tradition for just any girl you want to protect. I don’t let the others do it, so I can’t let you.”
As a legacy pack leader, Gavin doesn’t make the rules in his pack. He just follows what’s been laid out before him by his father and grandfather. I understand it even if it is infuriating. But still—
“They need help. I’m supposed to just watch them get torn apart this year? I thought we protected humans.”
“We do. But we’re loyal to ourselves first. We can’t protect random humans that have no connection to our pack.”
My stick splinters and cracks in my hand, and Gavin solemnly takes a seat next to me.
“I’m sorry, Parker. I wish I could help. But I can’t play favorites.”
It’s not Gavin’s fault. He’s done nothing but risk getting his ass chewed by his father for me since we met. Alphas taking in other alphas is more than a little frowned upon.
I met Gavin and his pack my first day at Doxlothia. They’d set up a booth at orientation looking for new pack members. All of the packs on campus do it, but none of them wanted anything to do with me. Gavin was the only one who greeted me with a smile. I didn’t ask if I could join, he askedmeif I wanted to. Back then, I knew very little about what I wanted, but I did know I didn’t want to be a lone wolf anymore. My pack is gone, so I knew the only way I’d get even a sliver of that closeness again was to join someone else’s pack or create my own.
I’d heard him on the phone with his dad when he said it made their entire pack and his legacy look like a joke. He’d disgraced his family name sticking his neck out for me.
“Maybe you can look out for them another way? I know you’ll figure it out.”
Gavin is used to me doing this. Sticking my nose into other people’s business. I had to make a stop to see Finn earlier to ensure no one was giving him a hard time.
“Okay,” I start to say the word, but it hurts to get out. “Okay, Alpha.”
Gavin flashes his perfect white teeth at me. He almost hates hearing me call him Alpha because he can feel my hesitation and rejection. I try to mean it, I really do.
“And I know this is a shit time to mention this, but now that you’re asecond-year … finding a mate should be high on your priority list.”
“I know.”
All packs are different; some have old traditions, and some don’t uphold any traditions at all. It depends on the family who founded the pack. Gavin’s family is strict in the mating realm where it’s mandatory for everyone in their pack to find a mate by the end of their schooling term. Gavin is one of the many in a line of his elders who has gone to Doxlothia, and all of them were mated before their third year. Gavin found his year one.
“Maybe you’ll join The Hunt this year?”
“No,” I say.
The Hunt is a werewolf exclusive ceremony. Weres come from all over to pick their mates from a pool of volunteers.
“You’re not even trying.”
“Practice keeps me busy.”
He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t need to. Gavin agreed I could stay in his pack as long as I needed to, but that meant I had to follow all their rules.
“You've got enough shit to stress about. Don’t worry about me. I’ll figure it out,” I say.
Gavin rubs the stubble on his chin. He keeps his beard and his hair buzzed during school, but he grew it out over the summer we spent together.
“You’ve got your pick of the whole school. I don’t get what the issue is.”
I don’t either. “None of them feel right. It’s like I don’t feel what I’m supposed to feel.”
My mom used to say meeting my dad was like finding out the sky was purple when you’d been told it was blue your entire life. It was like discovering a fact that had always been true but not seeing it before, and when she did, she couldn’t stop staring in awe at the thing she found.
