an Alpha position.”
“Well, you fit that. You are nuts. I told you that before.”
“Not crazy enough to want to be an Alpha. But no, it doesn’t work that way. Remember I said I fall about mid-way in the pack? Well that means half the pack is stronger than me and more able than me to hold the pack. It takes strength to hold a pack together, a certain spirit. Some males are born with it and some males are not. I was not.”
“And it doesn’t bother you to have so many ahead of you in the pack?”
“Why should it? I answer to Gammon. If something happens to him my wolf will decide whether we will follow the new Alpha, probably Nikita and or Dimitri.”
“And if your wolf decides not to follow the new Alpha? What then? And if I am stuck here what does that mean for me and Halo?”
“You are borrowing trouble where there is trouble enough already. Gammon is barely middle-age now and since he mated to Mia he gained two maybe three hundred years. He was born in the 1500s and Mia is only sixty-one. Theirs is a true-mating, which shortened her life and lengthened his. Instead of living eight or nine centuries she will probably live six or seven and Gammon could live to be over a thousand.” He ignored her gasp, “ But say something did happen to him, he has, on more than one occasion, asked his two Betas to lead the pack together if he dies before them and they are still young enough to hold the pack. Together they are a formidable pair and they might could pull it off.”
“Are they a couple?”
Hendrix shook his head. “No, they are all of them best friends since childhood and that sort of relationship can change things. Gammon is the only Alpha to ever have two Betas. He thinks it is because they went through so much together. Enough about the pack. Look at me. Gracie, I know this isn’t what you wanted but do you think, is there any chance at all you could be happy staying here, with me?”
“If I say no? What happens then?”
“Are you saying no?”
“You always have to answer with a question?” she rolled her eyes at him, that was becoming a habit he didn’t like.
“You started it.”
“I did not. You clearly started it. There I was, minding my own business, not bothering nobody, just innocently—” She broke off when the finger landed on her nose. “If you don’t move it you will lose it.”
“Gracie, I need an answer. You don’t have to say yes you will stay with me. But I would like a maybe we will try this.”
“When you sent that text four weeks ago it hurt. I never had anyone treat me like you treated me and I wasn’t ready to give that up. I didn’t see how you could be willing to give up what we had without fighting for it. I figured I wasn’t that special after all. But Dimitri said something that got me to thinking.”
“Am I going to like it or will I have to plot his death?”
“Hush, and let me finish. He said I wouldn’t die because you have given me your seed, he said it like that.”
“Well, the man is like over four hundred years old, they slip up sometimes when they talk.”
“Will you shut up. I am trying to say something important here.”
Hendrix lifted both hands in defense. “Sorry. You are so beautiful when you are aggravated.”
“Do you want me to finish or not?”
“I don’t know. I may not like what you have to say.”
“Well if you don’t shut up you will never find out. Now, he also said, and you had to hear him to understand, he said you were begging for your dad’s mercy for the fucking human because I loved him. He sounded I can’t describe how he sounded when he said that. Enraged maybe? Disgusted?”
“Well, he hates human also for the same reason Gammon hates them but he was wrong. I did not beg my father for Halo’s life. I begged my Alpha for his life.”
“Isn’t that the same thing? Your Alpha is your dad so it is the same thing.”
“No, Gracie, it isn’t. I could have begged my father for his life and I probably would have gotten him to let him live. But by begging my Alpha for Halo’s life I did something entirely different.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Ask me again in a year and I