Wolf Child - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,144

honesty, I’d known my dad wasn’t popular because he was a hard-ass and he relied too much on the council. But Mom? I’d thought she was—

Bill cleared his throat as he plunked a hand on his mate’s shoulder. He was a genuine person, just like his woman, but he had a softer way about him. Maggie didn’t mind if she cut you verbally when she was speaking the truth. Bill? He added some honey to the vinegar.

“Your mother wasn’t the softest person to come to. She wasn’t all that good at easing pack concerns, because if she was, we’d never have needed a reason to meet the way we do.”

Well, that wasn’t a lie, was it?

I knew for a fact that these meetings had been going on for a long time, and that was because father had been obsessed with building pack wealth rather than the community.

I wasn’t like him.

Community was all that mattered, and now that I had a mate who had a purpose that was Mother given? I knew things had to change.

Sure, the pack needed wealth to sustain itself, but more than anything, we needed a place that was safe for our pups to be born.

I blew out a breath and said, “Sabina isn’t like her.”

“No, she isn’t,” Linda Green muttered. “Remember that panic attack Ariel Johnson had the other day, Elsa? Right in the middle of the kitchen, she was. Thought she was having a heart attack.”

I twisted around to look at Sabina, brow arched, and she just shrugged, but her smile was sheepish.

“She’s a lot more potent,” Maggie confirmed. “That’s for sure. Only fitting that the Mother would grant us a true omega after gifting us shitty ones for such a long time.”

My lips almost twitched at her maligning my family, but what could I say? It wasn’t like I could disagree.

I hadn’t known my grandparents. They’d died when I was only a few years old, and I didn’t remember them at all, but if Maggie said it, then it was true.

And from the glum nods that followed her words, I figured she wasn’t bullshitting me.

“Anyway,” I muttered, trying to get things back on track, “I’m here now for a reason.”

“Aside from spoiling our Wednesday night get-together, you mean?”

“I do mean,” I retorted, rolling my eyes at Maggie. “This, here, is going to be our new council meeting spot.”

Everyone froze at that, even Maggie.

“Jesus, never thought I’d see the day Maggie shut the hell up,” Riley Hunt muttered somewhere behind me, and when even that didn’t prompt Maggie to snark back at him, I knew I’d truly stunned the hell out of her.

“What about the council?”

I pulled a face at Bill’s apt question. “I’m in the process of dismantling them.”

“The process?” Jim Koln repeated, his disappointment clear.

“The process, yes, because most of them run the pack’s businesses and I need to find replacements before I put those businesses in jeopardy.”

Maggie finally defrosted at that, because she muttered, “Those fools don’t know their dicks from their thumbs. Half the people in here do the managing. You don’t need to find your replacements—they’re looking right at you.”

I grinned at her. “Maggie, I was hoping you were going to say that.”

“Then why not just spit it out?”

“Because I don’t need false modesty or people trying to oversell themselves. We’re transitioning to a new phase in the pack’s government, and I need to make sure that all the Is are dotted and the Ts crossed, because if they’re not, we’re going to be putting the entire community in jeopardy, and I can’t have that.”

Maggie harrumphed, but then she muttered, “Jonas? You manage the brewery, don’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jonas replied, and I arched a brow because that came as a surprise.

Jonas wasn’t a beta-type personality, but the brewery was our second largest business and employed a good chunk of the people in town.

“Are you good at it?”

He shrugged. “Place would fall apart without me.” About ten or so people muttered their agreement, their nods were strident too. Eager.

She sniffed at me. “That seem like a good reference?”

My lips twitched. “Like the best. What about the logging company? The farms?”

Maggie, as she’d done a few moments before, picked out people she knew were the best at their jobs, and as I stared at her, I knew I was looking at my next council leader.

I was a dumbass for not piecing shit together before, but hell, sometimes it took a slap to the face with a fish to figure out what the

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