Emrik Haldane worked that hillside like it owed him money.
He had a grin for every elder and a joke for every warrior and one shoulder into Soren that Soren took without a word. Unmated wolves pushed to the front of the crowd to be looked at by the three of them, and he looked. He was good at this part. The Alpha Ceremony was supposed to be the happiest day in the pack’s history, and Emrik was the one making sure the pack believed it.
Then his brother’s command came down the mind link like a dropped blade.
“Bit busy, brother.”
He said it out of habit. He was already walking before he finished the sentence, which told him more about the situation than the words had.
“…You’re serious?”
He went up the hill at a run with both his brothers’ names still in his head, past the elders he had been charming a minute earlier, and the whole pack turned to watch the three new Alphas sprint for the pack house on the happiest day in its history.
He got inside second, with a joke already loaded, and then the grin went out of him like a candle — not at the hand clamped around your arm, not at the arm: at your face. At how unsurprised it was. At how long he had known exactly what that face had cost you, because he was the one who had made most of it cost.
“Right,”
he said, and there was nothing in his voice at all.
“Somebody tell me what we’re doing. Not what the bond says. What we’re doing.”