Page 18 of Rogue If You Want To (Fur-Ever Mountain Pack #2)

OTTO

Tonight was the night of our first official pack run, and I was excited about it. But also, I was nervous. Very nervous, and I didn’t need to be. The pack had been wonderful to us from the get-go. Still, the memories of pack runs from my past kept pushing their way to the forefront of my thoughts.

Growing up, pack runs were intense, to say the least. My father was very big into proving we were just as big and strong and powerful as the predatory animals in packs around our state. It was one of the reasons he was so adamant about calling our bevy a pack. It sounded big and tough.

My father added what he called traditions into the mix to prove how badass otters were.

As if our beasts weren’t already badass—just not in the way he wanted them to be.

And those traditions morphed bevy runs into the pack runs that were now the norm there.

Or were they? So much had to have changed with the deaths of both my brother and my father.

I was curious, but not curious enough to go there to check it out.

This was my home, my pack, now. The past needed to stay there.

Only it didn’t. As I prepared for today, the contrast kept invading my headspace. My bevy didn’t have a potluck before the run. We didn’t have sing-alongs. We didn’t have fun romps in the woods. It was all serious and with purpose.

It was more like training than anything else.

And sometimes that training would mean running perimeters or trying to get particular items from the water that had been placed there earlier by my father’s Beta, all of which were dangerous and not something that should be there in the first place.

He didn’t care about the pollution or who did or didn't get hurt as long as we all complied.

And then there was the fun , as he called it, where they’d set up people to attack us, and your job was to get away. They were usually other bevy members, but not always. More than once I feared for my life, which was his intent. Asshole.

There were very few runs I could look back on fondly, and even with those, I’d call anything other than describing them as not so bad a stretch.

I knew this pack wasn’t like that. Not even close.

They were made up of people who were compassionate, who understood what it was like to be on the outside.

And in my short time here, I’d been able to meet and get to know all of them.

There were shifters who joined who didn’t have a pack to call their own and craved that, others trying to escape a pack that wasn’t treating them the way they needed to be treated, and a few random shifters who just wandered through and ended up sticking around.

It shocked me how much word got around about this place, and that the pack had grown from such a tiny number of one to what it was now. No one would call it a large pack, not by any stretch, but it was definitely growing and thriving.

And while Oak was the first baby, he wasn’t the only child. And there were a couple of us expecting our own pups. This pack was on its way to being what I always dreamed my bevy would be.

No… not on its way. It was there. And somehow, my mate and I got to be a part of it.

“Hey, are you coming?” Torin stood at the door with the huge bowl of Snicker salad that I’d made.

I didn’t understand how it was salad, but I looked up recipes for potlucks, and it said this was always a winner. I was starting to have second thoughts.

“Yes. I was just thinking about how different this is.”

“Good different?”

“The best different.” I kissed his cheek as I walked past him and held open the door.

As I pulled the door shut to the place we were staying, I was a little bit sad. We had been in temporary quarters… ones designed for people who were new here. And all too soon, we would be moving.

Not far… I could see the building we’d already started fixing up together, along with the other members of the pack.

And it was great… wonderful even, and objectively a thousand times nicer than what we had.

But this place was always going to be home to me in some small way, like the start of a new chapter.

I followed behind as we met everyone. We were starting to gather at the fire pit, but eventually would go down to the riverbanks.

“Otto, you’re all up in your head today.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry, Tobin. I am. I’ll be better once we get this pack run started.” I’d shared a lot about my past with Torin, but not everything. Not yet. We only had so many hours in the day, and focusing on the negative wasn’t going to get us anywhere.

I had much better uses for my time. Such as snuggling with my mate. Kissing my mate. Being knotted by my mate. All of it.

I still didn’t know everything about his life, either. Good thing the goddess gave us all of our days together.

When they said we were meeting by the fire pit, I thought there was actually going to be a meeting there.

Instead, there were some wagons, and people put their potluck items in them and headed to the river.

It was very organized. The wagons were going to function as our tables for serving, while we ate on the grass.

And then hold all the garbage as we went for our run.

There were a couple of older shifters who were carrying folding chairs with them. My father would never have allowed that. He saw it as a sign of weakness. Here, it was a sign of acceptance.

Once we reached the riverbank and all sat down, Creven whistled for attention, and all eyes were on him.

“This is a very exciting run tonight. We have two members joining us for the first time. The moon is going to be high, and the weather is going to be beautiful. And of course, we have our wonderful dinner prepared by everyone. Does anybody have any business?”

Another thing my father never would have allowed.

One bear stood up and asked if we were going to expand the seating near the fire pit. Creven assured us that he would put that on his radar and asked if anybody was interested in helping with it. Not once did he make a command. It was 100% a group endeavor.

The more I learned about him and his leadership, the more I understood just how bad things had been growing up.

It’s funny how you don’t realize it when you’re in the thick of it.

I knew it was bad. Toxic. Dangerous. But I thought most of that was put on my brother and me.

I didn’t realize how universally horrific it was.

And all of that had been so ingrained to the point of recitation, that it was good I wasn’t in leadership here of any kind. I had so much to learn about what a healthy pack looked like.

My mate took my hand, intertwined our fingers, kissed my cheek, and whispered in my ear, “You disappeared again.”

“Sorry. Today is… it’s a lot. This. This is just new, and wonderful, and different, and I just keep thinking back.”

He squeezed my hand. “Just don’t stay back there. Remember, this is our now, and our future.”

“Oh, I know, alpha mine. I know.”

A couple more people had random questions about the next pack run and about which direction we might want to consider expanding the housing.

Now that the rehab project was becoming visible, people were really getting into turning this into more of a true pack land than just a clump of falling down housing.

And then after everyone shared their ideas, it was time to eat. My snickers salad might not look like a salad, but it was one of the first things gone, and I had lots of compliments from young and old alike. Internet for the win.

The moon was high in the sky when Creven announced it was time to run, swim, and play. Auden stayed behind with Oak and the other children, and my mate and I joined all the others, taking off and running along the riverbank.

We ran, my mate holding back, knowing I was not as fast as he was on land. And we dove into the water on our way back.

I was a whole lot more competitive than my mate. I swam as fast as I could, circling back underneath him, and eventually climbing on top of his shoulders and rubbing my otter cheeks against the top of his head.

This was what pack life was supposed to be. And from now on, I wasn’t going to look back.

I was only looking forward.