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Story: What’s Rogue Got To Do With It (Fur-Ever Mountain Pack #1)
CREVEN
Settling into the new pack life and knowing for the first time since I was marked as rogue, that I wasn’t moving, that we didn’t have a target on our back for being mated… what a difference it made.
My mate and I worked together not only to get the garden ready to plant next season, but also fixing up the different buildings, including our new home.
And at night, the three of us ate around the campfire, talking about our day and listening to tales of what the pack had been like.
We’d settled into a nice routine, one that made my fox happy.
This might not have been where I envisioned being mated and raising our family, but now that we were here, I couldn’t imagine doing it anywhere else.
There might be only three of us, but it really felt like a pack in all ways.
And my fox was settling into life with an Alpha that wasn’t our father easily.
I hadn’t realized how antsy and confused he’d been by not having our den anymore.
I felt similarly, but I thought that with our mate, he’d been doing okay.
And he definitely had been doing better after we found our mate.
But when we took the vow and were marked, something more snapped into place.
He was back to his old self… only happier.
Tonight, we were having stew, and it wasn’t settling well with my mate’s stomach.
My mate didn’t say as much, but he put it down after only taking a few bites, which wasn’t like him, especially not with one of his favorite meals.
When I gave him a concerning look, he assured me it was fine…
just the pregnancy talking. What I would do to take that away from him.
And not just the nausea. I’d take the exhaustion, the discomfort, and the weird dreams. Anything and everything I could to make this pregnancy easier on him.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t an option.
“Tonight, we need a pack meeting,” Auden said, setting his empty bowl down.
I had assumed it was about finances or something similarly boring.
Because, well, that’s what most pack meetings I’d been to were like.
At least the meeting kinds. That, or security issues.
From everything we knew, there was no need for us to worry about security.
Auden’s beast wouldn’t be able to hide his worry over anything like that from us if something had recently changed, either, not with our connection to him.
After we became official as a pack, I saw for the first time how powerful the old man was.
Our open bond to him as his packmates was stronger than the one I had with my father.
When he allowed it, I could feel emotions running through it quite clearly.
And really strong feelings, like when he stubbed his toe, those came through without him trying.
Larkin said he didn’t have the same flow of emotion with Auden that I did, although it was there.
He described it to me as more a feeling of belonging than what I was experiencing.
I half wondered if it was because I was the closest thing Auden had to a Beta or if it was that my mate had been a lone wolf. Not that it mattered, not really.
“That sounds ominous,” Larkin teased. Or at least I thought he was teasing, until he grabbed my hand and held it tightly. Maybe I was missing something here—or possibly his stomach was that bad or maybe he was reading Auden differently than I was.
“Do you think we could wait another day? My mate’s not feeling so well.” I’d never have considered saying anything like that to my father when he was Alpha. Son privilege only went so far. But this was Auden. And our pack, in many ways, was very… loosey-goosey.
“It really can’t.”
And my mate had read the room much better than I had. This wasn’t something small that could wait. So much for thinking I could feel emotions through our connection.
Auden had seemed happy enough, and I crossed my fingers I was working myself up for no reason.
“This can’t wait. I’m gonna cut to the chase. We need to have a change of power here. I’m too old, and I’m too weak to be Alpha.”
“You seem perfect to us,” Larkin said.
Larkin was looking at it through a different lens than I was. I understood instantly what the old man was talking about. It wasn’t about whether or not he was the leader we needed, it was about him being the leader others would perceive as being weak.
Now that attention had been brought to the pack and it had grown, people were going to look at this land and his position and see it as an opportunity to come in, challenge him, and take over. The histories of our people were filled with that.
I always thought it was a thing of the past. But the more Auden spoke, the more I realized he didn’t. He never said if he heard rumblings or if it was just a gut reaction, but he was firm in his belief that I needed to take over the pack and become the Alpha.
I had the pedigree from my family lineage. And while my mate looked far more Alpha and his beast possessed a lot of strength, he was an Omega and that wasn’t going to help us, not in the eyes of others.
“I won’t fight you. I won’t. You’ve already done so much for us. If I need to fight for a pack to protect you, I’ll do that, but I won’t be the one to end your life. Not for a title. Not after all you’ve done.”
And then Auden did something I never in a million years would have expected him to do. He laughed… laughed so hard he started to choke. Then he laughed until he snorted and eventually until he fell off his seat.
The old man was losing it.
“What’s going on here?” Larkin asked, and I didn’t have a clue.
If he thought this was the normal pack protocol I could explain away, my mate had a lot to learn about pack structures. Because never had I ever heard of an Alpha who laughed at someone worried about it and trying to avoid a challenge.
Finally, he set himself right again, his eyes tearing from all the laughter.
“I don’t see what’s funny.” I said, my eyes darting back and forth between my mate and our Alpha.
“It’s not really funny. But it just reminds me of how I… let’s just say anticipating the look on your face when you realize what I really asked you.”
I still had no clue what was going on. So I stared at him, waiting for him to clarify. He eventually shrugged and shook his head, the silliness he’d shown gone.
“Who is the Alpha of this pack? Let’s start there.”
“You’re Alpha, Auden.” Larkin answered for us.
“Exactly. And who decides how we do things in this pack?”
“We do?” Larkin asked.
Auden shook his head. “Nope. Me. I am the Alpha. And I have decided that blood challenges are what get most packs into trouble. If someone from the outside comes in and blood challenges us, we have to go by shifter law. But within the pack, we don’t need to allow them at all.”
“So you’re saying… I just become Alpha?” That didn’t sound right.
“No. There needs to be a challenge—that we can’t change. Stand up.”
I did.
“Okay. We’re going to decide this the only way we can: Rock, Paper, Scissors. Do you know the game?”
Just when I thought he was being serious and rational… There was no way he was serious, except when I nodded, he said, “Perfect. House rules which apply only for today: the challenger can only use paper.”
If I was playing Rock, Paper, Scissors anywhere else, I rarely used paper. There was always something that just felt so weak about it. But then he called, “The challenge has been set. Rock, Paper, Scissors… now!” And my choice was to obey or not.
And as I threw paper, just like he commanded. He threw rock and went, “Oh no, I lost! You’re Alpha.”
This could not be my life… but also it very much was. Before I could say a word, he got on his knees, bore his neck, and swore his allegiance to me as Alpha. He then called my mate over to do the same.
We went from having dinner, to listening to what I thought were the ramblings of an old man, to me being Alpha of our pack of three, in a few minutes' time.
I wouldn’t have believed the ceremony worked, if I didn’t sense the Alpha bond already forming and my beast commanded that we shift together.
“And now we shift.” Became my very first act as Alpha.
This isn’t how you thought it would happen, Father, but I finally became what you always wanted.