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Story: What’s Rogue Got To Do With It (Fur-Ever Mountain Pack #1)
CREVEN
I never thought that naming our child would be the difficult part of having a baby.
My fear had been I wouldn’t be strong enough to stay by his side with his pain running through me.
When I pulled the midwife aside, they assured me I’d be fine.
What they didn’t say was that the Alpha bond shut down during labor.
It felt like cheating at the time, but allowed me to be the mate he needed when he needed me most.
In the back of my mind, I’d convinced myself that we’d see our baby’s beautiful face and instantly know their name. And our son was beautiful and perfect, already looking so much like his father. But as to his name? Nothing popped out at my mate or I the day he was born.
It took two days before we found one and the second we heard it we knew. My mate had asked how Oak was doing. He meant the tree that we were drying out to become our son’s crib, but I misunderstood, thinking that he was calling our son Oak . We both instantly agreed it was his.
Oaks were strong, powerful trees, and he was going to be a strong, powerful shifter.
And I knew this without a shadow of a doubt because he already had all three of his pack mates wrapped around his finger.
Even now that he was beginning to crawl, he was the one in control. How could we deny his adorable smile?
The moon had already been rising when Auden called a pack meeting. Larkin swayed from side to side, encouraging Oak to fall asleep. He’d been having a grumpy evening thanks to a combination of teething and skipping a nap.
Oak paid attention to everything and often fought sleep when something interested him. Auden said it was a sign of intelligence and that it’d suit him well. And maybe it would, one day, but it wasn’t suiting our sleep habits now.
“Did Auden say why we’re meeting?” I asked.
Larken shook his head.
In my old den, the Alpha called the meetings, but I was Alpha here and power had never been a goal of mine.
From the beginning, we had an open policy that anybody could call a pack meeting at any time.
It wasn’t as if there were fifty of us and we had to worry about being in non-stop meetings.
If we ever decided to grow, that rule might change, but for now, it suited us.
Larkin and I went out to the fire, the place that had become our pack meeting spot, where we found Auden holding a stick in the flame, toasting a marshmallow. The old man always kept us on our toes.
“Ah, you’re here. I picked those up in town,” he said, pointing to the bag of candy. “Reminded me of sitting around the fire during the pack meetings of my youth.”
“Did you call us here to eat sweets?” Larkin sat down, Oak finally asleep in his arms, snuggling in close. “I’m not saying I mind. Just curious.”
“Yes and no. Yes, I called you to eat the marshmallows, but also I wanted to talk about whether or not we should open the pack to others.” It was a topic we’d tiptoed around since forming and it was time we hashed it out.
We spent the next hour eating more sugar than anyone should as we talked about our goals.
We all agreed that we didn’t want to grow too quickly, but had to balance that desire without squashing who we were, shifters who cared about shifters, rogues, lone wolves, and all.
It was productive and important and with the candy, far less painful than it could have been.
“Auden, is there a reason why you picked today to bring this up?” Larkin rocked back and forth, Oak still continued his peaceful sleep.
“There’s been some rumbling,” he told me. “There’s an increase in traffic around here. Shifter traffic… both rogues and lone shifters alike. I’m thinking that people are checking us out from a distance, and that we might have some requests soon.”
It made sense. I’d been reaching out to local packs, and I met with the Shifter Council on a couple of occasions.
There had been a common theme that ran through all of those discussions— our pack was unique, and there were other people like me out there…
shifters who were displaced as rogues, not because they caused harm to their pack, but out of fear that they someday would come into power.
Many were very young and had done nothing wrong.
And sure, there were some who were marked as the Alpha’s way of not giving the ultimate punishment… pushing their problems onto the community at large, but those were rare.
I wrapped my arm around my mate’s shoulder, thinking about how different our lives would’ve been if we hadn’t met…
if we hadn’t become pack. How alone I’d have been, how lost, how broken.
My beast would’ve eventually turned feral and then instead of ignoring me, one of the packs would’ve taken care of business.
It might’ve been in 20 years or fifty, but fox shifters didn’t do well in isolation, unlike their wild cousins.
We didn’t know what today or tomorrow would hold, and who might or might not cross our paths, but we all agreed that we wanted everyone to be as happy as we were now. Happy as a pack, as a growing family.
Being mated to my one true love, raising our family in a pack that was a true family had changed my perspective on everything. Back in my den, I focused on myself and my goals. Now? Now I lived each day making sure that those I care about have the community they need to thrive.
“Well, I’m glad that if there’s need for us, that we can be there for others.” I kissed my mate’s cheek, then took Oak from him so he could get up and grab another marshmallow. “Toast away.”
As much as he loved eating them, he also loved scorching them and then watching them turn black before going about enjoying the sticky goodness.
Try as I did, the ones I made for him had never been quite right.
He never mentioned it, being the sweet mate that he was, but I could feel it through our bond.
“You sure? There’s still half a bag left, I might be a while,” he teased.
“Go get a cavity or two.”
“Best mate ever,” he gave me a quick peck and set about the serious business of burning sugar over an open flame for he and Auden as I rocked off our sleepy boy.
Growing up in a den that embraced power and authority, I never knew it could be like this, but I did now? Now I couldn’t fathom anything else. This was what pack life was meant to be. I was finally home.