Chapter 127

Elroy POV

I never felt farther from my wolf than when I was sitting in my office. It wasn’t the chair and desk made for my human form or that there was no decent place to curl up in my fur and digest my latest meal. It wasn’t the books or the numerous awards and certificates serving as décor that all required opposable thumbs to handle.

It was the isolation. Even though I frequently had wolves in here, particularly Sam, it was a small room (by tradition), and sometimes the walls closed in. I couldn’t see the moon except through the one window. I couldn’t run with the Pack; I couldn’t play with the pups. I was just a man sitting in a room and worrying about things that I could influence but not control.

Yes, that was an Alpha’s job: influencing and keeping order.

On the one hand, I had to keep the other Alphas, and the other alphas, feeling respected and included in that order and in that influence. They had to feel their position in the pack was not just safe but sacred. They had to know they woke up each morning respected for their status.

On the other hand, the betas and omegas couldn’t be made to pay the price for that respect. They had to know their own positions were secure and sacred and respected.

When that didn’t happen, the Pack ejected them, and that’s what led to victimized Rogues like Ines and violent Rogues like Denis. Both were unacceptable, and I would do anything including die on the field to prevent that from becoming my legacy.

The power of the Pack on one side and the welfare of the Pack on the other: To ignore either was to fail the wolves who looked to me to lead them. To indulge one at the expense of the other was to invite catastrophe. To ignore Pack politics was idiocy. To become a political animal was intolerable.

I rubbed my forehead as if that would ward off the headache I could feel coming. I tried to come a the problem from a different angle. The issue was power, but just what was power?

If power were influence, my main power of influence was setting policy, but policies needed first the support of the council and then the support of each wolf at the individual level. To help me with this, as Alpha, I had advisors and I had the Luna.

The Luna.

Olivia.

Everything seemed to come back to her these days.

She was exceptional, she was beautiful, she was kind, and she was carrying my child. There was nothing to keep her from being the perfect mate.

But, finally, sitting there, I admitted it: I didn’t think she was my fated mate.

I felt my gut drop to my balls. Not my fated mate.

What were an Alpha and Luna if they were not fated?

But that wasn’t the worst of it. I was growing ever-more certain Emma was my fated mate, this daughter of the Ravencrest Alpha, a Pack I was growing increasingly wary of.

I relived that moment of walking into the room to see my Luna, mother, and mother-in-law drinking coffee with a prized artisan of my Pack and Emma talking over the news in the Gazette. The one I most wanted to greet, to sit next to, and to touch was Emma. I could barely direct my feet in the right direction.

It hardly helped that she was obviously receptive to whatever overtures I wanted to offer up. I could feel our mutual attraction like a sparking wire between us, never mind that my true mate, even if not my fated mate, was sitting there pregnant and watching closely beside us.

It occurred to me that this hadn’t been entirely proper. But then, I imagined that Emma was used to being admired. She probably hadn’t noticed it at all. Her charm effortlessly enthralled those around her.

I rubbed my forehead harder, but the tension between my temples did not abate. I felt the tension increase in my neck and shoulders, and I realized I was grinding my teeth. How was I going to deal with this? It had been all I could manage to get through a cup of coffee and a graceful exit.

And Mother had known exactly what was going on. I suspected everyone else there had too, including and most especially Olivia.

How was I going to deal with this?

Without even asking, Sam, who hadn’t taken the least liberty after my shows of friendship but did seem happier in his work, had brought me a multi-authored report on Emma when she returned from overseas. There was a taint—no, a mystery to wolves who left their territories for an extended time. What had she been looking for that she couldn’t find here?

I opened the report again. Emma had been an exceptional alpha, a silver wolf of exceptional acuity, an instinctive hunter, and a dutiful daughter to her Alpha father and Luna mother. She’d excelled at school and won a scholarship she didn’t actually need to Lunaris University. She’d made the news, yet again, when she gifted the scholarship to second-place finisher and went traveling instead.

She’d made first for Deleko Territory, an odd mix of humans and wolves living together under the extremely loose reign of the decidedly larger and anti-Goddess Solar Pack. It had raised more than a few eyebrows, but the whole thing had been treated in the press as a missionary mission. She’d been welcomed with a great feast that had dominated the news for days.

She’d made a speech about needing to heal wolves and humans alike. She pled for unity and charity. She spoke of suffering, of hunger, of inequality, all the while wearing designer clothes and dripping with jewels. Someone should surely have called her a hypocrite, but instead she was lauded for it, as though she had the world under a spell. Even I admired her for it all.

The report grew somewhat vague after that. She’d made a name for herself by sharing her family’s considerable wealth with the less fortunate in a variety of wolf and human territories. She’d formed something of a scandalous but for all appearances strictly humanitarian partnership with Feed the Children, a human-only charity whose purpose was reflected in its name.

She’d appeared in the papers over and over: standing atop the tallest mountain of Lambert Territory, working at a soup kitchen in Atlanta, leading a prayer session to the Goddess in Skyfell Territory while a human monk stood respectfully at her side, swimming with dolphins (for charity, of course) in the Sea of Astris.

She’d adopted an omega pup only so she could bankroll her treatment then returned the child to grateful parents. She’d been the headliner at a ball to promote inter-pack relations in Parcone Territory, and, yes, she’d spent months learning primitive music in Albsraca.

I realized I was actually sitting there considering replacing Olivia, and I sprung out of my chair to pace my limited floor space. What was I thinking? How could I be thinking it?

What might this mean for my mate? For my marriage?

For my Pack?

For my sanity?