Running With Wolves

What the fuck was I doing? I was trying so hard to protect everyone, to put their needs before my own like an alpha—like my father always did. Yet I was doing more harm then good. Less than three days old and I was already doing everything wrong.

And Lukas? The pain I felt in my heart was excruciating, it nearly made me wish I’d never walked back into his life. I was so good at messing up his life it was like a goddamn art form. If it weren’t for me Lukas and Knoll would not have left their family. If it weren’t for me Lukas would never have been out casted in the first place. If it weren’t for me Lukas could have moved on and live a happy life. If it weren’t for me, the natural flow of things would have sent him to Calla-Lily. I hated Calla with a passion but I hated her more for knowing that she could offer him a healthier and happier life than I.

If it weren’t for me there wouldn’t be six innocent people in this house willing to die for me…I don’t know if I’d die for me.

And Cheyenne—

“Sagemint.”

“Go away.” In the course of several long moments I’d suddenly forgotten how to command. Hell, I was lucky my voice didn’t crack.

“No,”

I heard him move behind me and I closed my eyes tiredly. Would it kill him for once to just listen? Couldn’t he do me this one small favor of leaving me alone to hate myself for five minutes?

“Mia is worried about you.”

“Mia should—“ I met his gaze and his eyebrow quirked up; the words died on my lips. Stupid useless meaningless words would do nothing.

“Mia should what?”

“Nothing.” I grumbled looking away.

“I’m worried about you.”

I wanted to tell him I was fine. To say with all the assuredness that I could muster that I was okay. That everything was okay, that everything would be okay.

But I wasn’t okay.
Everything wasn’t okay.
I wasn’t sure if everything would even be okay in the future.

“No one is asking you to be a stony emotionless being, Sage.” He said it so simply. But it was easy for him, he’d never see me as his Alpha but always as his little sister; it was okay for little sisters to be weak. “It’s okay to not be okay.”

“I’m the Alpha.” I bit out. “I’m supposed to be okay, my problems my emotions. They aren’t supposed to be bleeding all over the fucking pack.”

“You entitled to being human you know. No one here is asking you to be a robot of perfectly controlled emotions.”

“But this?” The lump in my throat was growing larger. “Mia is afraid of me, Lukas hates me, I’m pretty sure any remote alliance with Erik is destroyed. There is a Were in our woods and pretty soon Viktor will come knocking. Then at the base of it all is the fact that not only did Chey go missing but Catalina and Coralie did too and everyone we trusted covered it up. How am I supposed to fix all that?”

The lump worked its way painfully up my throat and a sob burst from my lips. Like a dam breaking I suddenly couldn’t stop it, one sob, two sobs, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. No matter how hard I tried to pull myself together, the tears wouldn’t stop flowing and my breathing refused to be anything but broken gasps, my lungs refusing to expand.

’You made yourself a pack because you could, not because you’re an Alpha.’

“Erik was right, I’m not an Alpha I just made a pack because I had the power to do so…I shouldn’t have.”

“Alright that’s enough.” Conan stated his voice hard. His large hands took hold of my shoulders and forced me to turn and face him. “That voice in your head telling you that you are nothing but a fuck up needs to die. You’ve backed yourself into this tiny little corner with nothing to fill your head with but fault.
First of all Mia is not afraid of you, she’s afraid for you. She’s sad for you, Sagemint she isn’t afraid.”

“What?”

“I don’t know,” He shrugged. “her people have some story about soulmates who are reincarnated for hundreds of years because they never find each other and they can never truly rest until they are really together.”

“Oh,” I swallowed remembering the story Mia had told me early—it wasn’t however comforting words right now.

“Secondly, Lukas does not hate you he’s just upset. I don’t even think he’s mad at you I think he’s mad at himself. He knows that every wound on your body is either from your attacker or him. He, like you, has a voice in his head telling him that everything is his fault. He feels like no matter what he does he can’t protect you. He hates himself Sage—not you.”

“He shouldn’t,” I wiped the tears from my eyes and stared up at Conan’s large chocolate orbs. “It isn’t his fault. There is no way he could have protected me from those men. Me, Selvie, we attacked him. I mean we really went after him. What could he have been expected to do but fight back?”

A flicker of a smile crossed his lips but then it was gone. “As for Erik, he could never have truly been our ally. He’s the Beta wolf of the Eastern Pack. Even if everything had ended smoothly and he had left with coffee and cookies this would probably have been the last time Erik could have aided us. How many times do you think Viktor would let him help us?
Viktor will come knocking everyone knows that. It is something that is neither you’re fault nor something you can stop from happening. Viktor will come and when he does we will be ready because we are Pack.
We are Pack because we all chose to be Sage. We all chose this life, we all chose to stand by you. It was not something you forced us into, we aren’t shackled to this house. You may have made it official and declared us Pack but we were Pack long before that. Because a pack by definition is a group of people who live together in harmony, they fight for one another, protect one another, and love one another. A pack by any other name is just a family.” The pad of his thumb brushed stray tears from my cheeks. “You are Alpha because it is in your blood. It’s not a feeble line of Alphas either. Christof Wolfe’s blood runs through you’re veins, one of the first original Romanian Weres to come to America.
Do you know why Viktor will come? It won’t be because he thinks we are playing make believe or because he wants his sons back. It will be because within this entire state only you pose any great threat to him. Only you, out of everyone, could challenge him as Alpha and have a true chance of winning.”

“I don’t want Eastern.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s the principle of the thing. The fact that Canis blood and Wolfe blood run in the same pack makes this pack infinitely stronger. For most packs it is sheer size that makes the difference but for us? A pack of six, as small as we are, could rival pack’s twice our size just because of you, Lukas, and Knoll. It’s what made Blackwood so powerful in the first place. Because the Wolfe line and Canis lines together are so strong. They were basically royalty in Romanian and that’s a place that is filled with Weres.
So do not blame yourself because we are here. We want to be here and we want you to be here. We don’t want you to be Dad or Viktor or Mankato we just want you to be you. Because when you follow your instincts you are hardly ever wrong and if there was a side to be on it ‘d be this one.

So you see, you’re off the hook—none of this is your fault.”

It was silent between us for a long time as I digested my brother’s words. He made it sound so easy, but for the past five months I had been fueled by this notion that I could fix all that was broken, that more than half of those broken things were my fault to begin with. It would be nice to say that I could just take a deep breath and suddenly it would all be off my shoulders. Yet no matter how much I tried to tell myself that it was not my fault, that I was off the hook, I still felt the weight on my shoulders, an ever present pressure on my body that tired me.

Maybe one day I would not feel it there but it wouldn’t start tonight.