Page 52 of In Your Eyes
“Who is he?” Dennis said, interrupting me.
Annoyed, I stepped closer to him and looked him the eyes. He paled, telling me he realized exactly who I was.
“Why are you here?” He gulped and darted his gaze back and forth between Korban and me. “What’s going on?”
“Are we going to have this conversation on your front porch?” Korban asked.
Instead of inviting us inside, his uncle reached behind him for the doorknob and pulled the half-open door closed. “Out here is fine,” he said shakily.
I had never considered myself skilled at reading body language or understanding people’s emotions, but I was pretty sure Dennis was nervous. My initial thought was that he knew his assertion about becoming Alpha of Miancarem simply by virtue of being Dirk Keller’s relative was false. I was quickly disabused of that notion.
“Okay, then I’ll cut to the chase,” Korban said. “As you noticed, I’m not dead, which means I’m still Alpha of this pack. I heard there may be some confusion about that, so I wanted to let you know. I’m calling a pack meeting for tomorrow evening and I’ll fill everyone in on my plans.”
“You can’t be Alpha,” Dennis said. “The interpack council took you away.”
“The council offered our pack’s Alpha—that’s me”—he gestured to himself with his thumb—“to the Yafenack pack as a blood tribute in compensation for my father’s violations. They chose not to kill me.” He pulled his shoulders back and stood straight and proud. “So I’m still Alpha.”
“But this isn’t how it’s supposed to work. Dirk said they’d deliver your body and then….” His eyes widened and he slammed his mouth shut.
“My father said a lot of things. None of them matter now.”
“He can’t take over our pack that way!” Dennis screeched and pointed at me.
It was really inappropriate for any sort of leader to take that hysterical tone. Plus, it wasn’t the least bit effective as far as intimidation tactics went. I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at him without saying a word.
“He can’t.” Backing up a step, he bumped into his doorjamb and said, “You think you can fool me, Korban, but you can’t. I know what’s going on. You traded your life for this… this… ruse.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Korban said in annoyance. “I didn’t say Samuel was taking over the pack. I said I’m still Alpha.”
Dennis narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Then why is he here?”
Shaking his head, Korban sighed in frustration. “Samuel is with me because he’s my true mate and he didn’t like the idea of me coming here unprotected after what my father and you did to his dad.”
“Your true mate?” Dennis spat. “That’s impossible and disgusting! He can’t be—”
“He can and he is,” Korban snapped.
I reached out to him. Korban looked down and then laid his palm on mine. His shoulders relaxed and the tension left his face. Taking in a deep breath, he turned back to his uncle.
“Make whatever telephone calls you want to make to confirm how the rules work,” Korban said. “The pack meeting will be in the community center tomorrow evening at six. Come or don’t come. Either way, I’m Alpha.”
He started down the front walk and I stayed beside him, still holding his hand. When we got to the car, I squeezed it and then stepped around to the passenger side. Korban knew who we were going to visit in Miancarem, so he was driving.
“Your relationship with your family is a little, um, tense,” I said once we were in the car and out of his uncle’s hearing range.
Sighing, he dragged his fingers through his hair and then slumped against the seat. “My uncle is pretty much a puppet for my father, always has been. Even though nobody admitted it, I’ve always suspected that was the reason my aunt left him.”
“They’re divorced?” I asked in surprise. Though some shifter marriages ended, it wasn’t a common occurrence.
“Yup.” Korban nodded. “My aunt and my mother were really close, so I spent a lot of time at her house. She had two daughters, and the three of us played together all the time. I was too young to understand what was going on between the adults, but I remember my aunt and my father argued a lot. Nobody talked back to my father, which is why I noticed it.”
He paused and looked out at the woods, his brow wrinkled in concentration. “Then, right around the time my mom died, my aunt came to my school. I was in the playground out front, and she walked up, gave me a hug, and told me she loved me and not to worry because we’d see each other soon.” He closed his eyes. “I never saw her or my cousins again.”
I reached across the console and squeezed his arm. “I’m sorry. It must have been really hard for you to lose them both so close together, and your cousins too.”
“I was pretty young, so I don’t remember a lot of it, but, yeah. It sucked.” He sighed. “At first, my father spent a lot of time with me, letting me see what it was like to be Alpha because it’d be my job one day.” He shrugged. “It was fine, but the older I got, the clearer it became we didn’t agree on much, and then after I met you….” He lifted my hand to his mouth and kissed it. “My father has been at odds with the Smiths my entire life because he agreed with my great-grandfather that Yoram’s gay uncle couldn’t be in the pack. It was hard enough when I chose Yoram for a friend and wouldn’t stop hanging around with him, but once I realized I had a male true mate—” He chuckled and shook his head. “No way could I tell my father the truth about me. You saw how my uncle was just now. My father would have been worse. I used to hope that maybe over time, I could work on him and get him to change his mind about Yoram’s uncle and then he’d see it was fine by the time I was old enough to mate. Instead all that happened is we grew further and further apart and I cared less and less.”
My memory of Korban was of a happy, carefree boy who everyone loved. I’d had no idea he had lost so much as a child and had been living under a mountain of pressure the entire time.
