Page 29 of Rogue If You Want To
Now he had to face the bevy council, but I’d be by his side.
16
OTTO
After the death of Lutris, I went numb. Completely numb. I didn’t feel pain, hunger, joy… nothing except the weight of my guilt, and even that was more a feeling of being weighed down than an actual emotion.
My mate was great, supporting me as I fell away, lost in my own world of nothingness. He never pushed me beyond what I could handle and gave me the space I needed to try and move on. But also… I never once felt like he wasn’t there holding my hand.
My brain understood that there was nothing I could’ve done differently, not if I was to come out on the other side alive. But that didn’t change the heartbreak it caused, which was so messed up given what he’d done to me and had wanted to continue to do to me.
I was a failure. There was no sugarcoating it. I’d worked so hard to come up with a way to give him the job he wanted and to get me out of his way safely. He was too impatient, and he thwarted me in an act of fear, for that’s exactly what it had been.
Now he was dead. My father was dead. And I, the remaining member of the Alpha family, had directly caused one of those deaths.
Worse than that, I brought danger to the pack where I now belonged. Everything was a mess, and I still had no idea how to fix it, if it even could be fixed.
This morning, I walked out, shifted, and went straight to the river, just like I’d done the past two days. I dove into the water looking for rocks. I’d made a pile of them on the riverbank over the past couple of days. It felt like I was accomplishing something. There was no plan for the rocks, but it kept me going.
And just like always, my mate came down with food midday. He was trying to give me the privacy I needed, while still letting me know he was there for me and that I ate.
He and Creven had been working on dealing with the situation of the bears. We needed to determine if there were any open contracts with my brother in play and also to make sure that their Alpha knew what had happened.
A good mate would have known everything that they had done and helped them. But lately, I wasn’t a good mate, and it was beginning to break me even further.
Torin sat on the riverbank, a basket in his hand. He made sure I saw him but gave me the choice on whether to come out of the river to join him or not. I didn’t always, but today, I was ready and swam over to him, popped out of the water, shifting, and sat beside him, still soaking wet.
“You brought yums.” I slapped on a smile. “I’m starving.”
“Yes, I brought food, and we need to eat it. But also, we need to talk about…”
I knew what about. He was worried. Heck, I was worried.
He set the basket to his other side and took my hand in his, bringing it up to his cheek. “I hate to ask this of you, but today… today you have to pull us together and be the strong man that you are. And I’m not saying there’s anything weak with needing to grieve and process your guilt… that’s so much stronger than pushing it down and ignoring it or taking it out on other people.”
“Okay.” I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that.
“And the reason is, your father’s Beta, James, is coming. And not alone. But they didn’t tell us the names of the others.”
I tried to think who James would bring, probably his brother Josiah, and maybe his cousin Louis. It didn’t really matter. At least James understood my life better than most. He’d been witness to it for years.
I thought he’d died, but our intel wasn’t always great, and my memories were mushing together since the fight.
“Okay. Let’s eat first,” I wasn’t hungry as much as I wanted the time to process what was about to happen.
“Yeah, mate, let’s eat.”
We ate in silence. Only this time, instead of focusing on my guilt, I was focusing on how to handle what was to come. It could go so many ways. They could be coming because they wanted to set up a tribunal for me. They could be coming because they thought I was now Alpha. They could be coming to collect a body… a body they wouldn’t find because we already burned it. So many possibilities, and I needed to be prepared for all of them.
After we ate, the two of us walked back hand in hand, my hair still wet, my body still naked. It didn’t matter. I needed his touch, not my fur.
I was barely dressed and ready when they showed up. Most of the pack was in their homes. Creven and Auden stayed with us. Larkin and Oak remained inside. We didn’t want to come across as being ready for a fight, even though we were. But my pack’s beasts were for the most part innately stronger and larger than otters. If we wanted any sort of diplomacy, this was better.
James came, and just like I thought he would, he brought his brother and cousin. They stood behind him. He looked to my mate, then to me, then to Creven, then to Auden, and did it again.
“This isn’t your pack,” he finally said, looking directly at me.
“You’re wrong.” I took my mate’s hand. “I might not be marked as pack, but this is my mate, and it’s his pack… making it mine as well.”
