“Yeah,” I said, because I didn’t know how else to start. “We’ve done all right.”
The no thanks to you was left unsaid, but he heard it. Even if I hadn’t meant for it to be out there like that.
He nodded, running a hand up the frame of the door, fingers picking at a little sliver of paint. “Better than that, I expect.”
“We haven’t gone under, if that’s what you were worried about.”
“No. Didn’t think you would.” He cracked a smile that I didn’t return. “Never worried about that, kiddo.”
I looked back down at the invoices, unsure of what to say next.
He sighed and moved into the office, dragging his hands along everything he could reach. I recognized it as the habit of a wolf when they wanted to get their scent on something or someone. The Bennetts had done it when they’d come into my house the first time, sprawling over and touching everything they could. Joe especially. When he’d gone to my room. When he’d seen the stone wolf, sitting on my—
No. I wasn’t—
“You act like them,” I said rather than follow that train of thought. “Like a wolf. Move like them too.”
He arched an eyebrow at me. “Pot, kettle.”
“That wasn’t an accusation.”
“I didn’t say it was one.”
“I don’t….”
He waited.
I couldn’t say that, because I did. If anything, I was more wolf than he was, even though he’d been immersed in it more, especially over the last three years. He’d been entrenched and I’d… well. “I did what I had to.”
“And you won’t hear anyone say otherwise.”
This was surreal. I wondered if it was the same for him. “They’ve told you. What we’ve been through.”
He paused, fingers barely touching the photo on top of the filing cabinet. It was old. Me and Gordo. Tanner, Chris, and Rico. My sixteenth birthday, when I’d been given some keys for the shop. The day I’d met the Bennetts. I didn’t remember who’d taken the picture, probably someone in for an oil change, but Gordo’s arm was around my shoulders as I grinned at the camera. Rico stood on his other side, and Tanner and Chris were next to me. Gordo had a cigarette behind his ear.
He let his finger rest against the glass of the picture frame, tracing the faces of everyone in the photo aside from himself.
“Some,” he said. “They were vague. Purposefully. It wasn’t their place. It needs to come from their Alpha. Much like we haven’t said much to them. Or you. Because it needs to come from Joe.”
“Why hasn’t he said anything?” I would have thought he would have at least spoken to Elizabeth. To Mark. To at least update them as to what had happened. I’d been too wrapped up in my own self-pity to approach him. It wasn’t fair, but I needed to be selfish for my own sanity.
Gordo snorted. “Ox, that was the first time we’d heard him speak in almost a year, barring the few words he said to that idiot David King to get him here. Which, I assume he came.”
Gooseflesh prickled along my arms.
Not yet.
“What the hell,” I whispered.
Gordo shrugged as he pulled out the chair on the other side of the desk and sat down. He sighed and rubbed a hand over the stubble on his head. It rasped under his fingers. “He just stopped, Ox. Carter and Kelly said it was like he was after… well. After Richard Collins. And before you.”
“But. How—he is the Alpha. How the hell did he—oh Jesus. He didn’t even need to talk, did he? The bonds. The pack bonds between all of you.”
Gordo sighed. “Yeah. It was… intense. Feeling them the way we did. It was like that when I was—after my father, I guess. I was twelve when I was made the witch of the Bennett pack. It wasn’t like it is now. Or has been for the last few years. Everything is more… I don’t know. Just more.”
“So he stopped talking,” I said flatly.
“Mostly. If he ever did speak, it was one word or two. Nothing more than a grunt, really.”
“And you all just allowed it.”
“We didn’t allow anything, Ox. It’s just how it was. You think you could make a grieving Alpha do anything? Go ahead. Be my guest.”
“Really,” I snapped. “Because I wouldn’t know anything about being a grieving Alpha.”
That stopped him cold. Whatever anger had been building in him died, and he just looked tired. And older than I’d ever seen him look before.
“Ox,” he said quietly.
“And not to mention, you left your goddamn mate here—”
His face grew stony. “You leave him out of this.”
“At least you’re acknowledging it now.”
“I don’t want to talk about him.”
“Does he know that?”
“Ox.”
“Three questions.”
He blinked. “What?”
“I am going to ask you three questions.”
“Leave Mark out of this.”
“Not about Mark. About everything else.”
“Ox, I told you. It needs to come from—”
“Gordo.”
“Fine.” He sounded slightly irritated. It reminded me of the Gordo I used to know. “Three questions. And I get to ask the same of you.”
My skin itched. “Fine. I’ll go first.”
He nodded. For some reason, the tattoos on his arms flared.
“Why did you ditch the phones?” I asked.
Gordo stared at me. He obviously hadn’t expected that.
I waited.
“Joe thought it’d be easier,” he said slowly. “He thought if we cut ties, we could focus on what we needed to. That being reminded of home, of all of you, made things harder.”
“And you all went along with it.”
“Was that a question?”
“Statement.”
“We went along with it. Because he was right. Because of what we had to do. Because every time he picked up that phone, every time we saw a message from you, it became that much harder to not turn around and come right back. We had a job to do, Ox. And we couldn’t do it with being reminded of home.”
“So instead of letting us know you were okay, that you were alive, you decided—excuse me, Joe decided—you’d all be better off keeping us in the dark.”
Gordo winced. “Joe said Mark and his mother would know. That they’d still feel—”
I slammed my fist down on the desk. “I didn’t,” I snarled at him. “I didn’t feel a goddamn thing. And don’t you tell me I had them to know, because it wasn’t the same.”
“You think we wanted this?” he snapped back. “Any of this? Do you think we asked to be put in this position?”
“Was that your question?” I said, throwing his own words back at him.
The ghost of a smile, long since deceased. “Why did you tell them?”
Rico. Tanner. Chris. Jessie.
“Because they needed to know,” I said. “Because they didn’t understand why you’d left them. Because whether you knew it or not, they were your pack too. They needed to understand that they weren’t alone, even if you were already gone.”