“Well, no,” she agreed softly, and I could tell she was thinking about being without us for that length of time. “But she was traumatized!”
“Hardly. A freight train through the living room wall wouldn’t faze Maggie May.” My lips twitched at Austin’s tone. “We need you to meet her properly. You’ll probably like her. She was the woman who spoke out at the pack meeting.”
“I remember her.” She cleared her throat. “Conrad attacked her, didn’t he?”
Was I surprised she’d learned about that? Not exactly. Still, I’d have preferred her not to know.
“We can take you to the diner tomorrow,” I concurred, changing the subject as I accepted that Sabina would like Maggie May’s inherent bluntness.
Sabina had to get to know the pack, and Maggie was a good way to start.
Though she and Levers weren’t high ranked, they worked the diner, and that meant their place was an unofficial meeting ground. Everyone knew them, and it was why, though poorly ranked, people tended to listen to them.
You never ignored the people who made your dinner. Especially not when their chicken pot pies were the best this side of the Columbia River.
I hummed. “You’ll like her, and I bet you’ll like her BLTs.”
She laughed. “If there are BLTs involved, then can we take Daniel too?”
“Of course. Kid needs to eat more,” Austin said.
Since she’d wheedled Eli into taking the boy in, we’d been tasked with getting him to eat more, because he was too bony. His metabolism was working extra time right now, and we all knew he’d be shifting soon so he needed all the calories.
I figured his circumstances were why Eli had agreed to Sabina’s request, even though it was damn awkward in the midst of all the pack turmoil with the council.
Bringing in another alpha’s spawn, an alpha who was unpopular to boot, who’d lost a challenge, could never happen at a great time. But with the shit with the council too? Couldn’t be much worse. Still, I got it.
Eli, more than anyone, knew what it was like to shift at such a young age, and Daniel needed all the help and support he could get.
That was why he was staying with us. I wasn’t sure if it was permanent or temporary, but knowing Sabina, it would be permanent.
Surprisingly, having the kid around didn’t irritate me. He was good and quiet, but just ate like a…you guessed it…wolf.
“Probably be good to introduce Daniel to Maggie too. She might settle things for him after he shifts and can take his place in school,” Austin reasoned.
“Yeah, good point.”
“I still don’t get why he can’t go to school—”
“Because he’s technically illegally here,” I interjected dryly.
“It’s not even a legal school,” she countered.
And it wasn’t. The pack school wasn’t like a normal public school. All the kids were registered under human law as homeschooled, when really, we had our own system.
“He needs to be at home when he shifts,” Austin explained.
“When Eli was close to shifting, he didn’t go to school for around eight weeks.”
“Kali Sara, so long? He must have been lonely!”
Trust her to think that.
I’d never looked at it that way, mostly I’d been jealous about him getting to stay home from school, but now that I thought about it, in this great big house with a fucker for a father and a weak bitch for a mother—that wasn’t much fun.
Her hand glided down my arm, and I knew my bitterness had drifted into her awareness.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
“No need to apologize.”
Wasn’t there?
Merinda was still Eli’s mom.
He still respected her. I didn’t want to cause any tension between us with my inability to get over the fact we’d been dumped on Rebekkah like we were stray cats.
“It takes time,” she soothed, and it figured that Austin knew what we were talking about, because we were going through this together.
“I just find it hard to believe that all this time, he was watching over us and he never said anything.”
“You know how controlled he is, how he plays every move cautiously,” she replied. “I’m not surprised at all. It’s exactly the kind of thing he’d do.”
Austin sighed. “She isn’t wrong. Didn’t he put up with the council just because he didn’t want to upset his father’s memory while Merinda was around? Then, the second she was gone, he started stirring shit up.”
I hummed at the thought.
Eli was an odd man.
Sabina snorted. “That’s one way to phrase it. I don’t think he’s odd, more just unique.”