Chapter 3 - The Pack Council
The word pack sounded like something out of a fantasy novel, but sitting in the massive, stone-hearth-warmed living room of the Hale lodge that evening, it felt entirely too real.
Gavin had called an emergency meeting. Only four people were in the room: Gavin, my mother—who had been filled in on the terrifying truth and had taken it with the eerie, terrifying calm of a woman who had suspected it all along—Rowan, and me.
“They’re going to demand she stays on the mountain,” Mom said, her voice shaking as she clutched a mug of chamomile tea. She looked at Gavin with fierce desperation. “You know how the elders operate. A mixed-blood cub with a dormant human mother who shifted early? They’ll want her quarantined in the upper ridge lodges until the birth.”
“Nobody is quarantining my family,” Rowan growled, sitting on the arm of my chair, his shoulder pressing against mine in a silent, unyielding barricade.
“She can’t go back to the city, Rowan,” Gavin pointed out reasonably. “Imagine what happens if she shifts during a subway ride or in the middle of a gallery opening. The media would have a field day, and federal wildlife agencies would be hunting down a brown bear in Manhattan within twenty-four hours.”
I buried my face in my hands, groaning. “I have a senior art exhibition in two months. I need to finish my final landscape portfolio.”
“Your art exhibition is going to have to wait, sweetheart,” Mom said gently, though her eyes were filled with sympathy. “You’re carrying something extraordinary. And terrifying.”
“It’s not just the council we have to worry about,” Rowan added, his voice dropping into a dangerous register. “Damon’s pack has been pushing our northern borders for three weeks. They know a new bloodline is stabilizing on this mountain. If they find out there’s a first-generation shifter cub coming—” He didn’t finish the sentence, but the sharp, predatory gleam in his green-gray eyes said everything.
“Who is Damon?” I asked, my protective instincts flaring up again.
“A rival alpha who thinks territory is measured by teeth instead of boundaries,” Gavin said grimly. “He’s been testing our fences. Which brings us to the real problem.” Gavin leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Chloe needs to learn how to control the shift. And she needs to learn it now, before her body decides to change again under stress.”
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“How?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. “By reading a manual?”
“By letting me train you,” Rowan said, turning his head to look directly at me. His expression was completely serious, stripped of all the playful arrogance I had fallen in love with three months ago. “Out on the upper ridge. Where there are no humans, no buildings, and no rules except the ones the forest sets.”
