Blacktail Deer Plateau Discretion of the Mind · PACK MEET

…And Peregrine being your new Alpha.

He didn't hear anything else she said after that. A door slammed shut inside him, and only cold numbness remained. He felt breathless, as if he'd been kicked in the ribs. His eyes fell, unseeing, to linger on the ground somewhere between himself and the two talking heads that stood before the pack. Later, when he had a chance to process this, a malevolent and poisonous mixture of emotions would roil within him, but for now, there was only stricken silence. Emptiness and nothingness.

It was like having the same nightmare all over again.

He remembered Tyrannus rising to claim the Alpha position. He remembered feeling the happiness that every wolf feels when the mantle of power falls to a newer, healthier, stronger wolf. The same happiness that he was expected to feel now. When Tyrannus had risen to Alphaship, he remembered the security of knowing they were in good hands, that they would be fed and protected and valued.

...And then they were driven out. Banished. It had all come crashing down on him on the rest of his brothers. Finding them here had been a miracle, he felt. And since then, he'd done his best to pick up the pieces of his shattered life and his fractured identity and re-assemble them in some way that made sense. Things had been weird and awkward here lately because of the three-way tension between himself, Hawkeye, and Peregrine, but he would find a way to accept it. Losing a love interest to a bigger, bolder male was nothing new to him. But this…this Alpha thing…he couldn't just swallow this shit like the good little peon he was going to be expected to be.

In that moment, he hated his brother. He hated Perry with the same heat that drove his hate for Tyrannus. He had never thought he would be so disrespected, treated as if he were so insignificant and unimportant, by Peregrine. His brother had to know how this news would affect Atticus and Crete. The wounds inflicted by Tyrannus were still too fresh, still open and bleeding. And yet here was Peregrine, doing the same shit Tyrannus did. Why hadn't Peregrine taken his brothers aside before this meeting was called and told them first?

Because he didn't care, that was why. All he cared about was himself. Just like Tyrannus. And so, as anger seeped into him and began to fill his shell-shocked emptiness with its heady, intoxicating warmth, he looked at his brother for what he really was. He said absolutely nothing in response to their stupid drivel about togetherness and co-ranks and blah blah blah — silly, mundane little topics that paid no heed whatsoever to the damage that had just been done. He just sat there, silent, and stared at his brother with eyes that simmered with frigid blue fire.