My finger hovered over the X icon that would delete the app from my phone. As I stared at it, a number appeared. A notification? My lips curled, and I tapped the alien. Sure enough, Phin had logged in, but he hadn't logged off. I scanned the lines of text, most of it stuff I had no idea what they were talking about.
This is an invasion of privacy.
Technically, yes. The right thing would've been to click out, delete the app, and forget about it.
However…
Phin had been the one to stay logged in—maybe he wanted me to know? Or maybe a reason didn't really matter since I was so desperate to learn more about this guy and why the fuck he didn't want me. I probably wouldn't find out anything anyway. Wyatt used to lie all the time to his little chat friends. That was the main reason why I didn't see the point. He could be anyone he wanted online; so could the people he spoke with. No one was real, so how could any of it mean anything? Maybe I'd at least learn why he was so connected to that neighbor who had caused the whole mess in the first place. Something about the two of them still plucked at my ball hairs. And was I going insane, or had the old lady healed really quickly?
I was about to close the stupid thing when I spotted the word fireman. Had Phin been talking about me? To his friends? My lips curled.
The fireman was hot. But he knows it. Head the size of Jupiter.
That line had been written by the goblin king. Was that Phin? I scowled at the mention of Hot Neighbor. Yep, the goblin guy was Phin. At least it looked like some of his friends were more understanding. Confidence wasn't a sin.
He'd make a dead soldier come back to life and stand at attention. Believe me, he's a lost cause.
So he wasn't immune to my charms. Or he wasn't immune to my looks and thought I had no charms.
I didn't feel any better now that I'd looked. He knew I was hot and still wanted to talk about Zach. I shoved my phone back in my pocket and concentrated on the task at hand: slaughtering these dead wood chunks so they would know how annoyed Phin made me. The stack of wood took me no time at all. I loaded what I'd split in the wheelbarrow, using my usual style of stacking the wood until it teetered over my head as I rolled it up to the porch.
Nana closed the book she'd been fixing. "Still in a rush to finish."
"That's a weird way to say thank you," I grumped. Moments later, there was a sharp pain at my backside. I rubbed my buttcheek and looked back at Nana.
She held a handful of acorns. "Want to sass me again?"
"No." Damn. She might've been showing her age recently, all the color nearly gone from her silver hair, but her flicking finger was as strong as ever. "I'm sorry, Nana. I'm going through something, and it's making me an ass."
"Language," she scolded me. She brushed aside the papers that covered the second chair on the porch and patted the seat. "Sit with me, now that you've got your energy out. Tell me about it."
Sighing with relief, I sat down. "I saved this guy today." I kicked my legs out so they were unbent but crossed in front of me and folded my hands over my chest while the chair groaned beneath me.
"It's what you were made to do, my boy. Save people. I'm glad you found an answer to your calling."
That was saying it kindly. After the four of us, Aver, Branson, Wyatt and me, left pack lands with just the clothes on our backs, we'd been thrust into an unfamiliar world. Living off pack lands was nearly almost the same, except no one cared about your birthright. Sure, we got some extra attention because of the whole Walker thing, but on the pack lands, even as a child, I'd recognized how they'd treated us like gods.
I'd searched for that feeling again when I was eighteen and without a job. I'd been drawn to the physical demands of firefighting, as well as the natural competition that cropped up between firefighters. I currently held every timed record but one, the ladder climb. I'd graciously pretended to miss a rung during the trial and let Paster hold that particular title.
That had kept my attention until I'd gone on my first call. I loved the adrenaline and anticipation. On the scene, I loved the clarity of figuring out what to do and in what order. And then there was the actual saving, being the thing that separated a life from possible death, helping those who couldn't help themselves. Nana was right that firefighting was the best job for me, but I was glad she didn't know exactly why. She'd be disappointed in me if she understood how shallow I really was.
"The pack is going to need you and your skills when—"
I jumped to my feet, heading for the stairs. "Nana, stop it." She'd always been unable to turn from the pack as my cousins and I had. "Maybe you've got Branson drinking your Kool-Aid, which means Aver isn't far behind, but leave Wyatt and me out of it. We don't want to go back. Ever. Not after what they did."
"I'm not forgiving your parents for what they did," Nana said sternly. Today, her eyes were an icy blue and spooky as all hell. "They are what caused this mess, them and the other elder families. But it's your job to fix it. Already, the pack has been blessed. What's happened with Riley and the babe, it is a sign. The pack's savior is here, my boy. I'm sure of it."
Why should it be my responsibility to help the same people who had asked me to murder my cousins? My own brother? To me, the pack crumbling around their heads was the perfect punishment. It sucked for the other shifters, the ones who relied on the pack. There were three elder families, not including Alpha Walker, but hundreds of shifters lived on the other side of the island who had sworn loyalty to the pack. They would be the ones to suffer, and if I thought too long about that, it would just make me angry, so I didn't. Except, now, Nana had planted the seed in my brain, and dammit if it wasn't growing like a weed.
"There are other packs in this country. Better ones, probably." Other than the spare pack representative that came to visit—spy—now and again, I hadn't had a lot of experience dealing with other packs. I knew Paul had come from one in Texas, and according to him, that pack was the ninth circle of hell. Maybe shifters just weren't meant to live in packs.
I knew that wasn't true, though. When the four of us had left pack lands, we'd clung to each other. Shifters were social creatures, not in the sense that they were outgoing or extroverted, but in the way a shifter was always happiest when they had someone to care for and protect, as well as someone they thought did the same for them.
"I wish you could've seen the pack in the days of my beloved," she said wistfully.
I turned, wincing from her sorrowful tone, and grabbed her hand. She clung to my fingers so desperately I sat back down. "I'm sorry, Nana. I'm sure the pack of your memories is something else entirely." She was our great-grandmother, our parent's grandmother, Alpha Walker's mother, and the widow to the former Alpha Walker, our great-grandfather. A Walker had led the pack since its creation. Generations of Walkers, until now.
"It isn't just the pack of my memories, Nash. It's the pack of my dreams. It's gonna happen. Something is already happening." She sounded so different than she had even moments before that I was suspicious of her earlier sorrow.
"Well, as long as whatever that is stays confined to Branson and Riley, that's fine. They're grown-ups. They can choose to step in whatever pile of shi—poop that they want. But my boots are staying clean." Ironic, considering my boots were currently caked with mud. I had my own reasons for wanting to stay away from the pack. As usual, they were selfish. I remembered almost every day of my childhood. I'd grown up wanting for nothing, told I was everything, and believed it. Namely, I'd been a little shit. I didn't like who I'd been in the packs.