Beautiful Disaster
If he tastes like rainfall,
looks like a summer storm,
fights for you like a forest fire;
he's a tornado of trouble.
(And you need to hold on
and never ever let him go.)
_________
Nikita Gill
**********
When my father returned to his room, I was waiting in the reading chair for him. His haggard face betrayed his tiredness and I gestured to the plate of food I'd made for him before dinner finished up. It was long cold, but he dug in as if still steaming.
"He's still alive." I released a breath I didn't realize I held as my father spoke. "And believe it or not, Castor's return isn't the most unsettling of our problems at the moment."
I stared at my father for a second. "Meaning what? What did Castor say?"
As I leaned forward in my seat, he slumped down into a sitting position at the end of his bed.
"Apparently, there were matters that Leyton kept from me. Things he only mentioned to Castor." He moved his hand over his face. "Regarding a few Alphas that had reached out about their pack members crossing into our territory and not returning."
Cursing, I threw myself back in the chair. "Leyton's not even an Alpha anymore and he's still causing problems."
"That's not just it." My father sighed. "When I was speaking to the pack earlier, a few mentioned their...unease at how the situation played out."
"To the moon with their unease! Where was their unease when wolves were being dismembered and tortured on our land for no reason? If they feel Leyton was in the right it's only because they weren't the ones who had their claws ripping into chests every other night!"
He conceded my point but defended them anyway. "Leyton broke their trust. And now its our duty as leaders to restore that trust. A pack without trust is just a bunch of wolves. We were made for more than congregation. We were made for communion and walking through life together. It is the way of the wolf to depend on one another, to provide for each other, stand up for one another. Leyton wasn't always a poor example of a leader, but the last year burned the pack more than they care to admit."
My heart rate slowed and the organ settled in my chest as I listened to his speech. If I weren't so worked up, my eyes would've welled. "What are you going to do?"
He crossed his arms and I knew what he was going to say before he even said it. "What would you do?"
I played with a frayed end of the chair I sat in, contemplating his question. "I wouldn't allow the pack to return to our land with threats from other Alphas pouring in. I would ease those situations first, then allow the pack to return when it was finished. If they really are wary to trust you, establishing the trust of the safety of their home would be top priority."
My father smiled. "That's my girl. At lunch tomorrow I'll explain the situation to our pack and then I'll take off."
"You mean we. We'll take off."
He shook his head and gave me a look. "You just accepted a challenge for the first time in your life. You're not leaving this territory until the two of you mate or you reject him."
My jaw dropped in mortification. "I am the Beta of this pack. Where you go, I go."
He grinned. "Exactly you are the Beta of this pack. You will run this pack here, in lieu of my absence."
"You are unbelievable." I sauntered over to him and grabbed the dinnerware. He pulled my head toward his before I could move too far away. "I'm so proud of you, Tara."
"Dad..." I tried to pull away from him, but his forehand remained latched to mine.
"Your bravery and loyalty are unmatched, your heart so fierce and true. If I had been the half the man you are a woman at your age..." He kissed my forehead and looked at me so kindly, a smile curling his lips.
"I would say you're delusional, but I wouldn't want to offend your Alphaship." I grinned. "I love you too, Dad."
Pausing through the open door, I turned back to him. "Do you believe him? Castor?"
Dad was thoughtful for a minute. "I've known Castor his entire life and have known him to be foolish, but not stupid. He gains nothing by lying yet stands to gain something by telling the truth. If Leyton really did maim him, he has no one but us."
I nodded and shut the door behind me, pondering his words. I carried the dishes downstairs to the kitchen, which I realized a half-second before I entered, wasn't vacant. "Alpha Jones," I said, not sparing him a glance as I washed the plate and silverware.
"Are you upset with me, Tara?"
"Does the wolf howl at the moon?" I quipped as I finished drying the dishes. "Next time you want an errand done, try sending your own Beta to do it."
"No offense was meant. I didn't realize you cared for Castor so much... Perhaps your decision to accept my challenge wasn't given enough weight."
I met his eyes and swallowed my anger. "All of my decisions are given as much weight as my feelings." I eyed the glass of liquor set beside him on the counter and the way his eyelids hid his eyes a bit more than usual. "Perhaps your decision to challenge for me was premature."
He caught my elbow gently as I walked by. "You're the only woman I want." His heavy breath washed over my hair.
"Well you're not the only man to tell me that." I slipped from his grasp and locked myself in my borrowed bedroom, waiting for sunlight with closed eyelids.
Any normal pack member would have no right speaking to a former Beta. But I'm sure it fell somewhere under the Beta's job description.
*****
After a long morning run with a particularly long stay in the area Castor had appeared, I girded myself in the shower. A part of me regretted blaming Jones for sending me off. The other part, the more weighty part, insisted he'd treated me like a child. Between being a newly ranked Beta and his possible future mate, I don't know which hurt more. And he had the audacity to claim it was due to feelings I had for Castor. I scoffed. My feelings lied with my pack and my pack alone.
As Beta of the pack Castor was just ousted from, I claimed more of a right to be present with Jones as they interrogated him more than Ty, his own Beta. I was right and he knew it.
"You look like you're prepared for battle," Jones's bearded Beta commented as I slunk into the breakfast table.
"Always." I flung my wet hair over my shoulder and dug into the food set before me.
He whistled. "Maybe I'm glad she accepted your challenge instead."
I flicked a piece of bacon into his beard, eyeing the person he'd directed his statement at.
Jones came from across the kitchen, one hand clutching a mug and the other open-palmed in surrender. "A peace offering," he said, setting the cup down in front of me.
I inhaled and stopped my furious assault on my food.
"Her favorite tea, nice," my dad nodded his approval.
A few seconds passed before my hand responded to my brain and dragged the cup to my lips. It was indeed my favorite tea, a little piece of home in this foreign land.
"I would've had it to you sooner, but the flowers were wet when I picked them. Made them take especially long to dry then steep," Jones said with his back to me as he poured himself one as well.
"Thank you, Alpha Jones." I met his eyes fleetingly.
Other wolves poured in by the time I finished breakfast and I took the advantage to corner my father on the front porch. "Take me to Castor."
My father sighed but obliged. Briefly, I felt as though Jones was watching me, but I didn't allow myself to feel guilty. Only if I didn't treat Castor like the former pack member he was would I allow guilt to slip down my throat.
I didn't knock before I entered the room, which didn't matter because Castor was passed out in the bed anyway. Bandages covered his unveiled lower section. Castor was famously known for his deep sleep, so I was without fear of him waking up and taking us by surprise.
"How deep were his wounds?" I asked, observing the light pink tinge to the white wraps of his side.
"Deep enough to scar. If Leyton didn't attack him with the intent to kill, he gambled big hoping he'd actually make it all the way to us."
I approached the bed Castor sprawled over and nudged his arm. He came to and nearly fell off the bed.
"Tara." He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and clutched his abdomen with a grimace.
"Castor."
He stared at me, his chest heaving more visibly as the seconds passed.
"Why did you come back?" I scoffed at the pained look that crossed his face. "Don't look like that! You knew whose side you chose when you helped Leyton off Jones' territory! You chose, not me."
"But you chose before that, didn't you?" His eyes dropped and I knew his hurt was real, no matter how convoluted.
I had to pry my jaws apart to speak again. "Why did you come back?"
Castor sat back against the wooden headboard of the bed. His eyes didn't move past his feet. "Leyton was like a father to me. Called me 'Son' in private, I don't think you knew that."
I shifted on my feet and glanced at my father, whose face was made of stone. Steeling myself, I turned back to Castor to find his glassy eyes fixed on me. In that moment, no matter how hard I tried, my resolved slipped from my grasp like a wet balloon.
"Castor..."
"I knew what he was doing was wrong. But he raised me. When my parents died, he was there for me. When your mother died, you had Andrew. I had no one. He was the closest thing to a father I ever got to have, Tara. I didn't have love and trust and kindness. I had loyalty and rank. That was all I could give back to him. Do you understand? That was all I had."
I sighed deeply and shook my head. "No, that wasn't all you had. You had the pack. And now, you have nothing. Because you chose a man who hurt your pack, who hurt me, over your family. You protected the back of the man whose claws tried to rip my heart out; Jones protected my back. So yes, I accepted his challenge," I snarled.
Castor tried to stand but I shoved him back on the bed before he got his feet under him. His flushed face was all hard lines. I had no doubt that if he wasn't doped up on pain medication and had a hole in his side, he would've shifted and lunged for my throat. In a second though, he calmed and shook his own head.
I surveyed him. "Where's Leyton?"
"I wouldn't know that, would I? Because I came back to a pack that no longer wants me. To a girl who doesn't even want me. To no rank, to no home."
"You left us, not the other way around, you idiot!" I desperately wanted to smack the back of his head, but realized the days of us hitting each other for fun were over.
"Yeah. Go ahead and berate me. Leave me. Like everyone else I love," he said, turning his body away from me and towards the window.
I laughed. "You have a really funny way of loving people, Castor."
As soon as I closed the door behind us, the amusement drained from my face. My father caught my arm, looking me straight in the eye.
"While I'm gone, don't let another man manipulate you as Castor did. It was not your fault whose side he chose; You choosing to accept Jones's challenge did not cause Castor to choose Leyton's. He made his own decisions and by the full moon will I let you go on believing that Castor's decisions were not his own."
I swallowed hard and nodded. "Will you take Castor with you?"
He shook his head. "If Castor is involved in some kind of ploy, that'd be exactly what Leyton would want me to do."
"You won't go alone, though?"
"I'll take AJ and Taylor," he said, scanning the trees as if Leyton would pop right out.
My eyebrows furrowed. "You should take Bryton, not AJ. He couldn't even complete a challenge without conceding."
"And there will be no challenges for him to concede from," he said, giving me a look that dared me to continue arguing.
I shook my head, relenting. "If that's what you want, Alpha."
"They're doing some gender-based one-on-ones today. You should go help the girls until lunch. Start training up your future new pack members."
"I swear, no one wants me to mate Jones more than you do. I think you've finally lost it," I muttered.
He laughed and ruffled my hair as we stepped outside.
True to his word, the packs were out and intermingling today, sharing fighting techniques and workouts. Jones was especially eye-catching as he'd already built up a sweat. Mating him suddenly didn't seem like such a bad idea.
Dad shoved my shoulder then retreated to Jones's house, a grin stretching his face. I rolled my eyes but approached the men's ring to stand beside Jones.
Neither of us said anything for a few minutes while we watched a few men fight until he corrected one man's fighting stance. I took a deep breath.
It was almost demeaning to have to stand on my tippy toes to press my lips to his, but I did it nonetheless. The kiss lasted longer than I planned when he wrapped his arm around my back. I pressed against his chest to release me and he rubbed his cheek against mine. A few low whistles sounded, but I ignored them.
"My peace offering," I said, answering his question before he could ask it.
"Hmm," he said, the corners of his mouth tilting up. "You know, I don't exactly enjoy your favorite tea, but I do quite like the taste of it on your tongue."
"Keep making it for me and you'll learn to love it," I promised, breaking his hold on me.
I could feel Jones's eyes on me while I trained the women. They burned into me in a way that had me glancing at him every few minutes. To distract myself, I dove into the training. I offered myself as a practice dummy, though hardly any women actually got a hit in. I was laughing hard by the time lunch was called, much due to Drea, the girl from Anders' pack that Bryton pined after. Her sarcastic remarks plus her eagerness to improve her fighting skills had me taking a liking to her immediately.
"Don't worry about me, just eating dirt here," she said after I'd had her pinned too long face-down.
I released her, shooting a glare at Jones's whose sudden appearance once again distracted me. "Sorry, Drea."
"No worries. Just glad my skin's already brown."
I chuckled at her smirk and shook my head. "Great job today."
"You too, Beta Tara. Already got him whipped," she murmured and hurried off quickly.
I suspected it had something to do with the hand that stretched across my waist.
"Sit with me at dinner," said Jones, nuzzling his face against mine.
"You have a funny way of delivering all your questions as statements." I turned to face him and he said nothing as he waited for an answer. "We already sit at the same table."
"Sit next to me," he amended, drawing me close.
I conceded and let him drag me to the Alpha and Beta table. The Alphas took their first bites and then the rest of us followed suit. When everyone was finished eating, my father stood up, addressing our pack.
"My pack, I hope you are enjoying your time with Alpha Jones and Alpha Anders' packs." A few low whistles sounded and my father chuckled. "As you should. Pack summits are normally a time for great celebration with the new bonds and alliances formed.
I will be returning to our pack lands early, leaving Beta Tara in charge of you all. Your safety is my foremost concern and you can rest assured that while you relax and enjoy the rest of your time on Alpha Jones's territory, I will be fixing the problems our former Alpha left in his wake. At the end of the original two week deadline, Beta Tara will lead you back to our territory, many of you with new mates. By then, your old or new home will be more fortified than it has ever been. I ask for your patience and your trust as I make these changes. Enjoy the rest of your time here, my family."
I stood when my dad neared. He pressed his forehead against mine. "Be strong like Alpha Jones, Tara."
"The moon's protection and strength," I returned after some hesitation, breathing in his familiar scent. The scent that had pulled me from my tumultuous self more times than I could count.
His strange command had my mind whirring as I sat back down. Uncle Taylor and AJ followed him to one of our cars.
"Fellow packs," said Jones. I could feel him rise from his seat beside me. "As usual, enjoy your afternoon with your family, friends, and mates. Dinner will be at seven for those of you who won't be occupied."
He sank back into the seat beside me and I studied him as I leaned on the table, chin in hand.
In the direct sunlight, I could see more clearly the lighter skin where scars resided. His brown eyes were bathed in the liquid light of the sun, melting them golden.
"Ty seems to really like Malra," he said, in-between bites of food he picked off his plate.
I followed his line of sight to the table Malra had dined at. Beta Ty stole the seat next to her as soon as Jones dismissed the packs. She was laughing, her curls bouncing as she shook her head. "He seems good for her."
"Do I seem good for you?" His golden orbs held me captive.
I grinned. "Until further notice."
**********
Alright, Castor's back and feeling down, Tara and Jones have made up, and Alpha Andrew is off to go fix some security issues back home. What could go wrong?