Page 94 of Claimed By the Rival Alpha

brYN

Tavi and I had given each other plenty of space while I became more accustomed to the role I’d been given.

As the days passed, I tried stopping by to see Tavi more than once, but she always said she wasn’t ready for a visit.

I had something important to talk to her about, but she would just shake her head and give me that sad, distant smile that had replaced her usual beaming grin.

I tried speaking to Violet about Tavi the night before the Alpha ceremony, but she didn’t know much more than me.

“I can’t say, girlie,” she said with a sad shake of her head. The moment I mentioned Tavi’s name, her shoulders slumped, and she let out a long sigh laden with worry. “You would know more about what happened in those caves than any of us would.”

Violet couldn’t have meant it, but those words cut me deep.

I didn’t know any of the specifics of what Tavi had been through; all I knew was that the experience had changed her.

But I still loved her. She had been my first friend at the Wargs compound, and she had quickly become precious to me.

It hurt to see her suffering like this and be unable to help her.

I couldn’t stand being apart from my best friend anymore.

“I know she keeps refusing to see you, Bryn,” Violet said.

Her hands pulled apart her braid with deft, quick movements.

Her long hair, crimped from the braid, fell over her shoulders like a silvery waterfall, covering the awful mark that Troy had left on her shoulder.

“But don’t give up. She wants to see you, too, but she doesn’t think she’s ready. ”

“She told you that?” I asked.

“Not in so many words.” Violet gave me a small smile. “Call it a mother’s intuition for her daughter. And anyway, you can’t keep letting her avoid you. You have something important to ask her, don’t you?”

My eyes widened, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. Violet was so in tune with things, I should have known that she would have an idea of what I wanted to talk with Tavi about. Part of what I wanted to talk to her about, anyway.

“Yeah, I do.” I nodded. “Do you think she’ll talk if I’m straightforward with her?”

“I do. She misses you, too, remember.”

Again, I nodded. I headed back to the Alpha cabin and had some fun with Night, but even after we had exhausted each other with sweet ecstasy, I couldn’t sleep.

My mind was too clouded with thoughts about not only the Alpha ceremony, but Tavi as well.

I tried over and over to plan what I wanted to say to her, but nothing felt quite right.

I woke after a fitful hour, maybe two hours of sleep, and slipped out of bed.

It was the day of the Alpha ceremony, and for once, I was up before Night.

After I got ready, I wrote him a note telling him that I needed to prepare for the ceremony.

Even in sleep, his hands reached for me as I pressed a kiss to his forehead.

I suppressed a giggle, avoided his hands, and quickly slipped out of the room. It was still dark out; the sun wasn’t set to rise for a while yet. Well, it would have been dark for me if I were still human. With my shifter eyes, I could see everything clearly, though in a slightly monochrome hue.

I headed to Tavi and Violet’s cabin and knocked on the door.

It opened a few seconds later. Violet never seemed to sleep, so I expected her to be the one to answer, but Tavi was the one who stood on the other side.

All of my plans for what I had wanted to say, thoroughly considered over the course of a restless night, vanished from my mind as I met her deep, mahogany-brown eyes.

Tavi seemed just as surprised to see me. For a second, her eyes widened and her fingers twitched, as if she wanted to raise her hand. But the surprise quickly faded, and that empty, blank smile returned to her face.

“Oh, Bryn. It’s a little early for you, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yeah.” My laugh sounded forced, and decidedly un-Alpha of me.

If Tavi noticed, she didn’t show it. She held onto the knob, her body facing me, but made no move to let me in. In sweatpants and an oversized long-sleeved shirt, she looked like she’d slept for days but still hadn’t rested. “So, did you need something?”

“Um, yes, actually. Tavi, I—” I hesitated. “I need to talk to you.”

There was a flash of another expression across her face, but this one I recognized immediately despite the fact that it had rarely marred her features when she spoke to me. Annoyance.

Again, it vanished quickly. “I’m sure, but isn’t today the day of the Alpha ceremony, Bryn?

” She stepped back into the cabin, trying to give me the hint to leave.

“Violet let me know you’ve got a full schedule.

I’m sure you have other things to do than waste your time with me. We’ll talk sometime soon, okay?”

I needed to remember to be direct. “It’s never a waste of time to talk to you,” I said. “You’re my best friend.”

Tavi hesitated, wavering from side to side like a ghost. I thought she might be about to refuse me again—and if she did, what could I possibly do?—but then she eased her hand from the door.

“Okay.” She shifted her eyes down and away from my face.

“Okay.” I let out a breath. “Do you…want to take a walk?”

“Um, sure. But, just, not around the compound.”

She had seemed more willing to walk around when we spoke to Tyrell, but she’d become more reclusive since then.

Is she not adjusting well to Kings’ territory?

Is her recovery not going well for her? Neither of those possibilities would bode well for what I wanted to ask her, but maybe talking with her would allow me to help ease her worries?

“Of course. We can go wherever.”

I didn’t mind where we walked. The Elders weren’t expecting me to stop by until after sunrise, so we had time. Besides, I knew exactly where to take her.

Tavi called to Violet to let her know that we were going out, and we set off. She was quiet as we walked through the compound toward the forest, keeping her eyes either straight ahead on the tree line or on the ground. It reminded me of the way I’d moved from place to place when I had been human.

I tried to think of what Tavi would say to me if our roles were reversed, but nothing I could come up with sounded genuine or helpful.

I wanted so badly to be the comfort that she had been to me when I was still Night’s captive, but surprise, surprise, the former human couldn’t think up a way to do it.

My wolf whined and nudged me with her nose. Don’t, she seemed to say.

I closed my eyes long enough to take a deep breath, and when I opened them, I felt less sorry for myself.

My wolf was right—I shouldn’t be putting myself down when I was trying to make my friend feel better.

This wasn’t about me; it was about Octavia Black, who needed someone to be there for her.

So, though we walked in silence, I tried not to feel bad about it.

I couldn’t try to be Tavi to make Tavi feel better. I could only be myself.

When we reached the tree line, she uncurled a bit, her shoulders rolling back to a straighter posture, her chin raising slightly higher. We walked a bit further in until we reached a small clearing. Tall, thin spruce surrounded us, and white and purple wildflowers decorated the forest floor.

“Is this a good place to stop and talk?” I asked.

She nodded. “It’s beautiful.”

“I think so, too.” I sat in the middle of the clearing and crossed my legs.

“My mom used to take me to this spot when I was a kid. She would tell me that this was her ‘thinking spot’ when she was a younger wolf. She said that she’d lay out in the grass and stare up at the sky through the canopy until life started to make sense again.

” I patted the spot next to me. “Wanna try it? I promise the grass is super soft.”

She hesitated, but eventually nodded. “Okay.” She sat down and together we lay back in the grass. The soft blades cradled us as we looked up toward the sky. It had started to lighten from black to a royal blue, a gradient that steadily lightened as it reached the horizon.

Lying like this took me back to those moments with Mom, when we would eat sweet homemade granola and she would tell me stories about shifters she knew.

“Is this okay?” I asked. “If it’s too quiet or something, we can keep walking.”

“No, no. I…I like this a lot actually.”

I couldn’t see her face, but something about her tone seemed a bit more relaxed. My chest warmed. I was doing something right!

“To be honest,” she said gently, “I’m surprised you’d want to talk to me after the way I acted when we went to talk to Tyrell.”

“Hm? But I thought we agreed that went okay all things considered.”

“Well, I thought so, too, but you never came by again after that. You never asked me to help you with any other Alpha projects around the compound.”

I started to respond, and then I stopped. I replayed that sentence in my head, and realized—she thought I was avoiding her?

I sat up on my elbow and looked down at her. “Wait, Tavi, I think you’ve been misunderstanding me. I was trying to give you space. I felt like I used Violet to make you help me out that day, and I didn’t want to push you into doing something you didn’t want to do again.”

She frowned, glancing away from me. “But it makes sense, doesn’t it? I was useless when we were held captive, and I only made things worse between you and the Kings.”

“That’s not true! Neither of us could do anything against Troy, and we were both hurt and scared and weak…and Tavi, I was so glad that I took you with me that day. I mean it.”

She didn’t say anything, but when she wouldn’t look at me, I knew that she wasn’t convinced. So I tried again.

“I would have loved to have you around with me these past couple of days. I’ve felt out of my depth and confused so many times, it would have been great to have you there with me…”