They were sitting on the most uncomfortable bench seat known to man. Well, man or wolf. The wooden bench was pushed up against the hallway wall in a large corridor, with intimidatingly large paintings covering every available inch of the wall space. They were quite cliché paintings of boats and ships sailing in the open seas and portraits of people that Nate’s father would have chastised him for not knowing the name of on the spot.
They were sitting outside the council chambers, the one room in the entirety of the camp which was designed specifically to house the meetings of the country’s finest. Nate had never been inside the room which was only a few feet from them, he had walked past once or twice, but you were only allowed in if you were a council member or specifically invited by the council, and they were the latter.
Nate and Brody had turned up just before the scheduled time and told to wait there, the receptionist had told them to take a seat on what had turned out to be the most uncomfortable seat that Nate had ever had the displeasure of sitting on.
He looked over at Brody then, seeing the practically terrified expression on his mate’s face. Nate thread his fingers through Brody’s, squeezing gently. The warm feeling of Brody’s hand pressed up against his was then the only thing anchoring him to the ground, his mind would have wondered off if not.
Brody relaxed visually beside him, turning to look at Nate. ‘Do you think they are already in there?’ he asked, glancing at the door.
Nate gently rubbed his thumb over the warm skin of Brody’s hand, ‘I don’t know,’ he then replied.
They hadn’t been able to hear anything from the hallway, and it was possible that they had all arrived early, or more likely that they were yet to arrive. The only entrance to the room was past them, and Nate felt uncomfortable imagining the entirety of the council walking past them with criticizing glares, or something just as malicious before they had even heard their case.
Nate told himself to calm down, that these were calm, rational people who were going to listen with open minds but he wasn’t sure how much of him truly believed it.
‘You’re going to talk, right?’ Brody asked, looking over at him. ‘You are much better at all this than I am.’
Nate nodded, ‘Okay, but they will probably ask you questions too, be prepared for that.’
‘I know,’ Brody agreed. ‘What are they going to ask me thought? Your father would have told them our situation, so other than a solution, what can they really want to know from us?’
‘I don’t know,’ Nate admitted. ‘I guess they must have questions for us before they decide.’
‘You remember what to say when they ask about what we want to do, right?’
Nate looked at his mate, he remembered. Man, did he remember. They had rehearsed the main points just before they had come here, and yet Nate wished that wasn’t what he had to say. He was supposed to say about the other pack, the one with the two Alpha mates, and that was fine, that was important, but then there was the requested solution.
Merging the packs.
Merging the packs meant committing to even more responsibility, adding more nameless faces to the masses of people in his home pack. He didn’t want that responsibility, he didn’t want to have to make decisions for even more people, be accountable for every aspect of their lives. He imagined the meetings he would have to sit through just for running a pack of that size, and then throwing in the council member’s responsibility, his brain almost exploded.
When he blinked all that he imagined was Brody. Brody at their pack house, surrounded by people that he didn’t know, staring out of a window high up in one of the giant buildings as he waited patiently for Nate to return from another meeting, another trip, another phone call that would last hours. He saw the loneliness on his mate’s face and the tears that would surely fill his eyes and in that moment Nate would have become his father.
Brody didn’t grow up like Nate did, he didn’t know what he was getting himself into. Nate could imagine three, five, seven years from now when he would walk into their room after days and days of endless meetings to see Brody sitting at the edge of their bed, looking down at his hands, not being able to put into words that he was unhappy with the life that they had made for themselves.
That wasn’t the future that Nate wanted.
‘You do remember, don’t you?’ Brody asked with slight worry mixed into his quiet words. Nate could smell the fear and worry in Brody spiking. It just reminded Nate that Brody just wanted them to be together and he wanted to protect his pack. Nate couldn’t disappoint him, he couldn’t tell him that this wasn’t what he wanted because if he did that then they could be separated forever. Nate would do this, he had to.
‘I remember,’ he assured Brody.
Brody sighed and relaxed a little. That relaxation only lasted a moment because there were footsteps coming their way.
Nate looked towards the corner just as the first council member passed the corner, walking past them and into the room with the rest of the members following him.
Nate recognised some of them, some were friends of his fathers who he had dinner with once or twice over the years, and others were complete strangers to him. He had seen all of their faces on the walls of the grand hall, but other than that, he knew nothing of most of these people.
Nate could see that Brody was watching each and every member with intense curiosity, he assumed that Brody knew each of them by face and name, what with all of those books he had been buried in lately. Brody tightened his grip at one point when a man passed them. The tall man was wearing a well fitted suit, with piercing blue eyes and a face much too old for his age. He hadn’t met the man before, but something about him was affecting Brody, what with the way his grip had become crushing for those few moments.
Eight of the people who passed them were men, only two women residing on the council. The men were dressed in smart suits with gelled up hair, wearing identical expressions that intimidated Nate to the core. The women on the other hand seemed harsher than the men, both with tied back hair and dark coloured dresses, they glanced at the two of them as they passed, unreadable expressions on their harsh faces.
Nate’s father was the last to pass them. He seemed to have hung back on purpose, slowing his steps as the other council member entered the room, the door closing behind them.
Nate stood as his father approached, looking at him expectantly.
‘They have agreed to hear you out, to form a plan,’ he told his son flatly, but Nate saw the way that his lips turned up a little at the edges. He was happy for them.
‘Thank-you dad,’ Nate half smiled at his father.
Brody was next to him then, ‘Thank-you sir,’ he said in almost a whisper, as if he was scared that the opportunity would run away if startled.
‘It’s in your hands now,’ he told them both. ‘Tell them what they need to know to make a good choice here.’
His father was gone then, disappearing into the room where the others had gone. The door swung behind him. It was like a void rested past that door, an unimaginable place of which Nate had no clue what resided behind its wood. He wouldn’t say it out loud, but he was scared. He knew that the second they entered through that door they would be crossing the point of no return.
Brody sat back down on the chair, motioning for Nate to join him. Nate reluctantly sat down on the uncomfortable seat, his nerves on edge. His fingers held onto the wood of the bench, the tips of his fingers tapping rhythmically against the underside of the bench in anticipation and slight fear.
They had only been waiting a few more minutes when the receptionist returned, a polite smile on her face. ‘You two can go in now,’ she told them, her hand motioning towards the door. She smiled so carelessly at them. Nate wondered if she would be so happy if she knew what they were about to face, the pit of lions that she was sending them into.
Nate turned to Brody as they stood up, threading his finger’s in-between his mates. ‘Let’s do this,’ he said, drawing strength from his mate.
Brody didn’t speak. Nate wondered if he was even able to with the nerves that he was surely suffering through. Instead, Brody just nodded, tightening his fingers around Nate’s. Nate could smell the anxiety coming off of his mate in waves, and so he pressed a quick kiss to Brody’s forehead, knowing how that always calmed him down.
‘Come on green eyes,’ he whispered in Brody’s ear.
‘Green eyes?,’ Brody asked in confusion.
Nate smirked slightly, realising that he had never actually called Brody green eyes in any place except his own head. He was amused by Brody’s obviously confused reaction, the cute way his head tilted just a little as he tried to connect the words with something.
‘They are waiting for you,’ the receptionist cut in, diverting Nate’s gaze away from Brody. He nodded towards the receptionist.
‘Thank-you,’ he told her. She nodded politely, turning back towards her desk.
Nate then walked towards the door, Brody following him closely behind with their hands still locked together. Nate stilled his movements as he reached the door, the handle right before him, innocently protruding from the wood.
Nate felt Brody squeeze his fingers, the warmth and the safety of the move was enough to push Nate over the edge and he reached out with his free hand, ripping open the door and stepping through with Brody right on his heels.
Well, it wasn’t as scary as Nate had imagined. He would be lying if he said that he wasn’t half expecting to end up in a room full of severed heads on sticks while powerful people casually talked about adding his head to their presentation of body parts.
Of course, the room was nothing like that. The room had been set up like a courtroom, a strange courtroom if that. The walls were almost the same as those in the hallway, dark paint with artwork that only a rich man in his sixties would find fulfilment in.
There were seven council members all sitting at one long refectory table, each person somehow siting exactly the same distance apart from each other with a note book and a pen resting in front of them. His saw that his father was sitting in the middle of that table, but there was no notebook or pen before him, only blank space.
The three other council members were sitting at another table, this one closer towards them, facing two chairs. The chairs were pushed next to each other, the small dark objects looking tremendously insignificant compared to the extravagance of the other furniture in the room.
Each and every council member was looking at them with strong gazes, piercing eyes seeing almost through them. Nate felt small under their gaze, yet didn’t let that show on his face. He pulled Brody towards the chairs which were obviously for them.
He sat down on the one furthest away from the door, Brody sitting down silently on the one pushed up alongside it. Their hands stayed interlocked between them, resting in the space between their thighs.
Nate could then get a look at the three people who seemed to be running the meeting. Unfortunately, the first person was that guy from before, the man wearing the well fitting suit. He was sitting casually at his chair, one hand resting under his chin in a way that made him look like he was severely judging something, or someone.
There was a man next to him and then a woman next to that man. He remembered the woman from when she walked into the room, her hard expression focussed on them.
It was the man who sat between them who spoke first. Nate knew him from a few parties he had attended over the years, and he was sure that Brody would know how it was as well. He was the oldest council member to sit on the council, his son had died as a child, leaving him with no one to take over his seat. When he decided to retire then his nephew would take his place, but his brother had been much younger, and the nephew was only an early teenager at this point.
‘Don’t look so frightened,’ the man told them, his voice husky with age.
Nate smiled politely, waiting for him to continue.
‘Now, this is quite unprecedented,’ he said. ‘In all my years on the council, I would have never even imagined to be faced with deliberating on a case such as this, and yet here we are. We do hope to make a decision here today that will be positive for everyone involed.’
Nate wasn’t sure if the man was more bemused or entertained by the situation that they were in. He spoke in a way that made his intentions hard to decipher and it was putting Nate on edge.
‘Nevertheless, let’s get this started,’ he commanded. ‘As you two can see, Mr. King is sitting out on this one. The three of us will run this meeting then the nine of us will deliberate on the options and vote.’
Nate and Brody nodded hesitantly, no words leaving their mouth.
The man looked over to the woman next to him, ‘Your turn.’
The woman nodded, looking over to them. ‘You have to understand, we find your situation quite hard to believe.’
Nate nodded, ‘We understand that completely.’
Well-fitting suit guy cut in then, ‘We had half a mind to just send you both back to your camps and strip your titles for this,’ he told them resentfully.
The woman interrupted him, finishing his sentence in a way that Nate was sure was completely different than what would have come out of his mouth. ‘But Mr. King managed to convince us that we should hear you both out, so that is what we intend to do.’ She sent a sharp look to her fellow council member. ‘Why don’t you two tell us what you would like us to do?’
The other man looked over at her with a sharp look, ‘What they want us to do?’ he asked mockingly. ‘They want us to destroy years of tradition by placing two Alpha’s in charge of one pack, that’s what they want us to do.’ The words had the maturity of a two year olds, but the way that he spoke them put real power behind them.
The man in the middle slammed his hand down on the table, ‘Stop Charles,’ he commanded of the other man. ‘Hear them out.’
Nate spoke, ‘We don’t want to destroy any tradition. We are mates,’ he looked over at Brody. ‘all we want is to be together. We were chosen to be together and there must have been a reason for that.’
‘How sweet,’ the man who was apparently called Charles mumbled.
‘We just want the opportunity to be together while keeping the interests of both of our packs in focus,’ Nate continued, disregarding what Charles was saying. ‘We believe that we can rule a pack together. We did research, we have precedence.’
‘And what is this so called precedence?’ Charles asked.
Nate wasn’t fazed, ‘We found a pack from Pennsylvania in the fifties. They had two Alpha leaders, one second born just like Brody. They were being destroyed by the local rouges and their pack was falling apart and then once they had two Alpha’s they banded together, they became strong. Having two Alpha’s united them, gave them skills and leadership that they hadn’t known before.’
Charles and the woman looked confused but the man in the middle smiled. ‘You found that one, did you?’ he asked in amusement.
‘You knew about this?’ Charles asked him, somewhat accusingly.
‘Yes. It was during the time my father was on the council, they discovered a pack who had been running with two Alpha’s for years and no one had even known. I visited the pack in my early days, one of the most organised packs that I had ever seen.’
Nate spoke, ‘Then you must know that it can be done. We could lead without any harm to the council. They even sent out a statement that said “although unprecedented, if two Alpha’s are naturally mates and this does not leave a pack without a leader, then there is no reason for us to interfere if they rule side by side over one pack”. ’
The older man looked at Nate, ‘This might have been an easier decision if you were both from small packs, but you are destined to be a council member. We have the interests of the council to look at here as well.’
The woman turned to the man next to her, ‘He is unable to become a council member without a mate, it’s the rules. We can’t separate them if we still want Nate to take over his father’s position in the future.’
‘They could run the Washington pack as two Alpha’s,’ Charles suggested, quite unexpectedly. The news of the Pennsylvania pack must have been a real shock to him for a personality change as such to have apparently occurred. ‘Then Nate would still be able to be a council member.’
Nate shivered involuntarily at the words. He didn’t want to be a council member. He wanted exactly what they would never allow him to have.
The older man shook his head, ‘If they run the Washington pack then Mr. Lewis in unable to perform his duties for his home pack. He is an only child now and his father is ill, he is needed there.’
This realisation seemed to dawn on the three members who became silent. The people at the back table seemed to be stumped as well. Nate saw his father’s face, noticing traces of worry.
‘We have a solution,’ Brody spoke up beside him, his voice strong.
Nate looked over at him, surprised by the outburst.
‘You do?’ the woman asked.
Brody nodded, ‘We want to merge the packs.’
Suddenly every pair of eyes in the room were focused intently on Brody.
‘Merge the packs?’ the woman asked to clarify.
‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘Then Nate can still become a council member and we can be together. We would rule side by side and no pack would be left in the lurch.’ Brody looked over at Nate with a smile, but Nate didn’t smile back.
Charles was the only one whose expression was readable. He wasn’t fond of the idea. The people at the back table started talking amongst themselves, rushed whispers which echoed around the otherwise silent room.
Charles shushed the people behind them, and they obliged. It was then that Nate looked up at his father, trying to read his expression. The man saw that he had his son’s attention and he nodded towards him, giving him his blessing on the idea he supposed.
The room went back into silence.
‘I suppose that you have given us a lot to talk about,’ he told them. ‘You two can wait in the room next door and we will give you the verdict in a moment.’
Nate nodded, standing from his chair with his hand still linked with Brody’s. They walked out of the room, closing the door softly behind them.
Brody turned to Nate as soon as they were out in the empty hallway, ‘How did we do?’
Nate smiled slightly, ‘I think we did well. It didn’t sound like they wanted to separate us.’
Brody nodded, biting at his lip. Nate figured that his mate was trying to keep the hope off of his face, just in case.
Nate and Brody crossed the small distance between where they were standing and the door just down the hall. Nate opened it and led Brody inside. The room was almost a replica to the room next door, only much smaller. The walls were the same dark shade, the paintings hung on the wall were almost the same. The biggest difference was that this room was more of a conference room with one circular table in the centre of the small room, six black chairs pushed into its sides.
They walked over and took a seat each, sitting nervously. Nate tapped his foot against the leg of the table nervously while Brody had become suddenly entertained by his twiddling thumbs.
‘What do we do now?’ Brody murmured.
‘We wait,’ Nate replied, because their fates now rested in the hands of ten strangers and there was nothing left to do but exactly that.