A Bond Takes Two

Beck POV I closed the bar early, and within fifteen minutes half the pack was sitting in it anyway. They took the tables. I stayed behind the bar. It gave my hands something to do, and it kept three feet of oak between me and everybody's opinions. The only one who didn't sit was Cade Mercer. He leaned on the wall by the door in his sheriff's uniform, with his hat in his hand, where he could see the whole room. He has been my best friend since we were six, and my beta since the day I buried my father. He looked at me once and didn't say a word. He didn't have to. Paula went first. She had driven to the county office and back before it closed, and she looked like she had chewed the steering wheel the whole way. "It's recorded," she said. "Deed, stamp, all of it. Paid in cash, in full. That house belongs to those two humans as legally as this bar belongs to the Alpha." "So unrecord it," somebody said. "That is not a thing." "Matthew could say he changed his mind." "Matthew can say whatever he likes. It isn't his house anymore. The only way it comes back is if they agree to sell it to us. Willingly." She said the word like it tasted bad. "And where is Matthew?" Gene asked. "Gone," Matthew's mother said from the corner, with her arms crossed. "He left his phone on the kitchen table." Donald raised a hand. He was still wearing the slippers. "For the record, we told him to deal with it." "We know," about six people said. One of the elders, Hollis, leaned back in his chair. He was the kind who had been waiting forty years for a reason to say I told you so. "Then we make them want to sell," he said. "Nobody hires them. Nobody waits on them. Their water gets unreliable. In two months they're gone, with a fair price in their pocket, and nobody's broken a law." A few heads nodded. It was more than I liked. "No," I said. I didn't raise my voice. I never have to. The room went still. "Nobody runs them off. Nobody touches that house, or that truck, or their water." "Mate or not, a human is a human," the elder muttered. "This is how it starts." "Then it starts." It was quiet for a second. Then Walt grinned into his beer. "Well, of course we can't run them off," he said. "That's our Luna. You don't evict the Luna." That got a laugh, the big relieved kind. Somebody whistled. Somebody lifted a glass at me. I wiped down a bar that was already clean and let them have it. It wasn't like that, and every one of them knew it. A mate isn't a Luna. A Luna takes a bond, and a bond takes two. She would have to know what I was. She would have to look at all of it and say yes. Right now she was across town in another man's house, unpacking his kitchen, and she had every right to stay there. She could reject me. She could look me dead in the eye and pick the boy who handed her that box, and the bond wouldn't lift a finger to stop her. It would only make sure I felt it. My wolf hadn't shut up since Alder Lane. I could still smell her. I had spent the whole afternoon stocking the cooler half hard, thinking about that flush climbing her throat, and how far down it went, and what it would take to put it there on purpose. "I don't follow," Donald said. "She's human. I was standing right there, I smelled her. How is a human anybody's mate?" Heads turned toward the back booth. The oldest of the elders sat there with the one beer she had been nursing all night. She hadn't said a word yet. She usually doesn't until it counts. "It's common," she said. "More than you'd think. Most likely she comes from a line that had wolf in it once, mixed with human so many times that she's human through and through. It makes no difference. She can still mate." "And if she doesn't want to?" Paula asked. The old woman didn't look at her. She looked at me. "Then she doesn't." Nobody laughed at that. I set the rag down. "Here's what happens," I said. "They're neighbors, so you treat them like neighbors. Nobody says one word to her about me. Nobody goes near him. She came here with somebody, and that's the end of it." "Yes, Alpha," went around the room, fast and easy. Cade didn't say it. He only looked at me, and one corner of his mouth went up. It was too fast. I had known these people my whole life. They only agreed with me like that when they had already decided to do something else.