Chapter Text
Tom gives a brief knock to the door of Talia’s study before poking his head inside. She glances up from where she’s sitting with her feet up on her desk and gestures him in. He smiles a little at the blatantly unladylike behavior but comes in, closing the door behind him. She sees him do so and sighs. “That bad?”
“Just something I want to keep private for now,” Tom says. He gestures towards the rest of the house and says, “That seems to be going well.”
“Yes, thank God,” Talia says. “I mean, I figured, if Isaac really was meant to be her mate, he would understand, but he’s been so good about letting her have her space and not pushing her too hard. I mean, I think he has his own reasons to want to take things slowly, but he’s really helped her a lot.”
Tom nods and sits down in one of the other chairs. “Well, it’s Isaac that I wanted to talk to you about. Stiles expressed a concern to me a little while back that he might be getting bullied at school. Well, I’ve checked into it, and he’s not. Which raises the question of where those bruises Stiles saw came from.”
Talia’s jaw tightens. “Admittedly, I’ve had a suspicion or two myself,” she says, “especially since he’s always in such a rush to get home before his father realizes he’s gone. I thought – I couldn’t really ask him about it. He finds me very intimidating, and I know he won’t confide in me. I was sort of hoping that he would talk to Stiles or Derek or even Cora about it, but so far he hasn’t.”
“I’ve worked with a fair number of abused kids over the years,” Tom says, shaking his head. “It’s always amazed me how reluctant they are to speak out against their abusers. The psychology of it is kind of fascinating, if we’re going to be honest. These kids love their parents. They don’t want to see them get in trouble or get hurt.”
“Which is all the more reason that we need to do something,” Talia says. She sighs and rakes a hand through her hair. “Most of my pack are smart enough and . . . stable enough . . . that they know they can’t do anything to Isaac’s father. But Cora . . . if she realizes the man is physically abusing Isaac, she might not be able to stop herself. Not after everything that’s happened.”
“I was more worried about Peter,” Tom says.
“Well. Peter.” Talia’s voice is somewhat sour. “At least we know he wouldn’t leave evidence.”
Tom laughs despite himself. “Okay. Well, I thought maybe you and I could go have a little chat with him. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t even know that his son is involved with a werewolf, and I think it’s high time he found out about that.”
“All right.” Talia pulls up the calendar on her phone. “I imagine he’d be difficult to catch on a weekend, and I’d prefer to do it while Isaac is at school, in any case. I can make some time on Tuesday around lunch.”
“Sounds good to me,” Tom says. “Anything else I should know about?”
“Unless you want to hear about Peter’s efforts to remove the GPS chip from his anklet, no. Anything on your end?”
“I got warrants for what Stiles and I narrowed down to the eight most likely alphas,” Tom says. “I’m working through their phone and financial records now. I’ve already ruled two of them out. It’s slow going, but we’ll work it out. I don’t even want to know what kind of illegal voodoo Stiles is working on.”
Talia shakes her head fondly. “Probably better not asked,” she agrees with a nod. Then she glances down at her watch. “Oh, it’s nine already. I’m going to go evict my daughter from the sofa and watch Masterpiece Theater. Care to join me?”
“I’d fall asleep five minutes in,” Tom says. “I think I’ll head home for the night. See you Sunday for brunch?”
Talia nods. “I’ll see you then.”
~ ~ ~ ~
Derek watches Stiles type surreptitiously while he waters and mists the plants on the shelves in his room. He thinks for a long minute about what he wants to say and how he wants to say it. When he’s finished with the plants, he walks over and gently puts a hand on Stiles’, on the keyboard of his laptop. “You want to go out somewhere?” he asks.
It’s such an innocuous question that he’s really hoping it won’t cause any strife. But Stiles looks up at him and seems to immediately grasp the undertones. “Shit, I’m the worst boyfriend in the world, aren’t I,” he says, with a wince.
“Thinking about your competition in that category in this past six months alone?” Derek asks dryly. “Not even close. But it would be nice to do something other than watch you type and feverishly mutter to yourself for three hours before you fall into bed with me.”
“Well, at least the last part is fun?” Stiles asks, trying for a smile.
Derek rubs his shoulders. “I know that you’ve got a lot on your plate right now. I just – ”
“Nope, you are one hundred percent correct, no apologies and no take-backs,” Stiles says, slapping the laptop shut. “Let’s go out. I’ll even try to keep my talking about the mysteries to a minimum, although unfortunately I can’t make any promises, given the way I can go off on tangents.”
“Okay.” Derek smiles and kisses him on the temple, then pulls him to his feet.
They decide to go to Jungle. That will certainly keep any discussion about mysteries to a minimum. The bouncer knows Stiles’ ID is fake, but he lets him in anyway. He knows that he won’t get into any trouble as long as Derek is there with him. They both get a soda and then head out onto the dance floor.
Stiles is a terrible dancer, but this never stops him, and Derek really loves watching him gyrate and groove and generally behave like an idiot in his search for rhythm. He also loves the way Stiles does it all right up against him. They alternate between the dance floor, downing sodas at the bar, and frantic groping in a dark corner. It’s about eleven when they leave, and there’s no way that they’re going to get home. They wind up in one of Stiles’ favorite parking spots, making out.
“This – this was such a good idea,” Stiles says, grinding against Derek’s lap and twisting his fingers into the werewolf’s hair. “You have the best ideas.”
“Yes, I do,” Derek says, nuzzling at his neck.
“I – oh fuck,” Stiles says, shuddering against him and then going still.
Derek licks at his ear and rubs a hand down his spine. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Sorry.” Stiles laughs a little. “That was a bit anticlimactic, huh? I guess I’ve been kinda stressed lately.”
“You don’t say.” Derek shifts Stiles off his lap, back into his own seat, then makes a startled noise as Stiles just dives right over and starts mouthing at the bulge in his pants. It takes a moment of fumbling to get the button undone and the zipper down, after which Derek doesn’t last a lot longer than Stiles did. “We should do this more often,” he says sleepily.
“Another great idea,” Stiles remarks. “I’m starting to recognize them when I hear them.”
Derek sighs, content, considers driving home, and decides against it. His legs still feel like jelly.
“Hey, can I ask you something that’ll probably completely ruin the mood?” Stiles asks.
Derek glances over at him and says, “You can ask me anything.”
Stiles rubs a hand over his hair. “I think – Peter’s mad at me. And I’m not sure why. But he’s avoiding me a lot again. And it’s not like before, where he was just trying to get me to figure stuff out on my own. I can track him down, but then he just ends conversations abruptly and leaves. I don’t know why he’s doing it, and it really . . . bothers me.”
“Have you asked him about it?” Derek asks.
“I asked him if he was avoiding me and he said ‘I suppose I probably am’ and then wandered off.” Stiles shakes his head. “I even tried texting him about it, thinking maybe it was something he didn’t want to say to my face, but he just didn’t reply.” Stiles fidgets. “I know that his time in jail was really hard for him, and he’s been kind of . . . I don’t want to say . . . flighty? That’s . . . not the word I mean . . .”
“Erratic?” Derek suggests, thinking of how he would describe Peter’s behavior since his return.
“Maybe. That’s not it either. I don’t know. But we got in that fight about Seth, and since then he hasn’t really talked to me.”
“Ahhh.” Derek lets out a breath. Then he shakes his head. “I know what you’re thinking, and that’s not it. Trust me. Peter’s not upset at your opinion of his morality. He’s not questioning all the decisions he’s made over the years, wondering if he’s killed people he didn’t have to. That’s . . . not Peter. He is what he is, and he’s always been aware of that. I think this is less about him being who he is and more about him realizing that . . . you’re not him. You might be a great Left Hand, but you’re going to do things very differently from the way he would do them.”
“You think so?” Stiles asks anxiously. “I didn’t mean to upset him. But I couldn’t just let him kill Seth. I mean, it’s not that I liked the guy. I just didn’t think he deserved to die, you know?”
“I know.” Derek leans over and kisses him. “You want my advice? Corner Peter and make him talk to you. He’s bad at shit like that. He’ll never do it if you don’t make him.”
Stiles makes a face. “I kind of figured that’s what you were going to say.”
“Sorry,” Derek says.
“I guess I’ll put that on my ‘list of things to do in my copious free time’,” Stiles says, and yawns. Derek shakes his head a little, but turns the car on and heads for home.
~ ~ ~ ~
Isaac isn’t surprised at all to find a text from Stiles on Monday morning that reads ‘pick u up after schl?’ He stares at it for a few moments, chewing on his lower lip as he debates how to respond. He hasn’t seen Cora since Friday night, and after a truly horrific weekend, he’s desperate to see her. But his father had given him a pile of chores about ten miles high, and he knows that things will only get worse if he doesn’t do them, so after some thought he texts back, ‘can’t, too many chores’.
He presumes that will be the end of it, but Stiles asks ‘what chores?’ and Isaac figures, well, he’s being friendly, and he needs the practice at texting anyway. He’s not about to tell Stiles that he had gotten home on Friday to find the house in complete shambles and that he had spent almost all day Saturday on the floor picking up shards of glass. His hands were cut in a dozen places, and he had still missed a lot of it. He had stepped on a piece the previous evening, and now he was limping.
‘gotta mop and vacuum’, he tells Stiles. That sounds innocuous enough. Then he realizes it’s nowhere near enough chores to account for not being able to come over. ‘laundry and stuff,’ he adds.
Stiles doesn’t reply for a while, and he doesn’t think much of it, because they’re both in school, so he presumes that Stiles is in class. After fourth period, he finds a text that says, ‘we could come over and help!’ which is deeply unnerving.
‘it’s just chores,’ he says, hoping Stiles will drop it.
He does, sort of. Instead, he responds with, ‘Cora rly wants 2 c u but she’s worried she got u in trouble with ur dad’
Isaac cringes. There’s no way he wants Cora to know that his father broke every glass in the house and then made him pick up every single piece without the aid of a vacuum or a broom or anything but his bare hands. ‘I’m fine.’
‘just come over for 15 min or so, let her see ur ok, I’ll drive u straight home afterwards, s2g,’ Stiles says, all of these sent in little bursts.
Isaac has no idea how to respond to that. He’s pretty sure that once he’s over at the Hale house, he’s not going to want to leave. But he’s also pretty sure that he’s going to go nuts if he doesn’t see Cora today, and he hates the idea of her hurting and worrying about him. He’s equally certain that if Cora sees him in his current condition, she’s only going to end up more worried about him. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he mutters to himself.
He’s still thinking about how to reply when he gets another zing of deeply unnerving texts from Stiles. ‘ok gonna be honest here, if u don’t come over I’ll probably just drive her over to ur house, bc she’s gonna get all worried and I can’t say no 2 her, so u have been warned’.
‘I thought you were trying not to be a creeper,’ Isaac replies, scowling.
Stiles replies with a picture of Popeye and the phrase ‘I yam what I yam’.
After a long pause for thought, Isaac texts, ‘just pick me up after school.’
‘Will do!’ Stiles replies, as if Isaac was asking him for a favor and he hadn’t just arm-wrestled Isaac into it. Isaac shakes his head and goes back to his schoolwork. He knows that the day his father is going to find out about this is rapidly approaching, but he just doesn’t know how to handle it.
Stiles is, of course, waiting outside his school when the last bell rings. Isaac glowers at him and says, “You’re kind of a jerk.”
“Yeah, I know,” Stiles says, without much remorse. Isaac is just glad that he’s already wearing a shirt where the sleeves are too long, so nobody will notice the cuts on his hands if he’s careful. The limp, well, he’s not sure what to do about that. Put as much weight on his aching foot as possible and hope for the best.
Cora’s actually waiting for him on the front porch, and her hands are white-knuckled on the railing while Stiles parks the Jeep. She trots up to Isaac the moment he exits the car. “Are you – hi,” she modifies hastily.
“Hi,” he says, finding himself smiling and blushing now that he’s seeing her, regardless of everything else going on. “And yes, I’m okay. I’m fine.”
“Oh,” she says. “Okay. I’m sorry. I mean, I’m such a mess. Let me know if I’m being too clingy and driving you crazy, okay?”
“Okay,” he says, and then adds, “I wanted to see you.”
Cora flushes pink. “That – that’s okay then,” she says. She twines her fingers through his and tugs him into the house. As he had expected, now that he’s there, he has absolutely no desire to go home any time soon. He sits down at the kitchen table and starts his homework. Stiles makes absolutely no mention of the fact that he had promised to drive him home. He’s in the kitchen, preparing a ham to put in the oven, while Scott quizzes him on history.
Still, despite how much he’s enjoying their company, he does manage to tear himself away at five instead of six. He wants to be gone before Stiles puts dinner on the table and he’s suckered into staying another two hours. If his dad gets home and finds him working on the chores, that’ll go over better even if he hasn’t gotten a lot of them done.
Stiles can’t leave because he’s in the middle of dinner stuff, so tosses the keys to the Jeep to Scott so he can drive Isaac home. Cora wants to ride along so he she can have more time with Isaac, even a measly twelve minutes. They’re just walking out the front door when Talia arrives home. She gives Isaac a warm smile and says hello, but doesn’t say ‘leaving already?’ which is what Isaac was really afraid of. She does notice the way Cora is clinging to Isaac’s side and ask her daughter if she’s all right, but Cora says she is.
Rather than pressuring Isaac to stay on this particular evening, she says, “I do hope you can come over tomorrow, Isaac. My husband is getting back from a business trip from San Diego and he always brings marvelous pastries or chocolates with him.”
“Who could say no to that?” Isaac asks, laughing nervously. Cora clings a little tighter.
“She means well,” she says, once they’re in the car.
“Who, your mom?” Isaac asks, blinking. “I know.”
“I just – she’s not coming on too strong, is she?” Cora asks. “She’s kind of got her own issues surrounding the whole mate thing.”
“I know,” Isaac says. “I mean, she’s a little intimidating, but that’s just kind of who she is. I think, uh, think she kind of tries too hard. She should mellow out.”
“I’m gonna tell her you said that,” Scott says, grinning.
“Dude! No!” Isaac protests, mostly to make Cora laugh. It works, so everything is worth it.
~ ~ ~ ~
After some time to think, Stiles texts Peter with a message that says, ‘we need 2 talk, avoiding me will stop. we can do this in front of everyone or u can meet me at the shed after dinner and we’ll go for a walk’. Peter isn’t present at dinner, and Stiles can’t even be sure that he’s seen the text, since he doesn’t reply to it. But when Derek and Scott are doing the dishes, he goes to the shed, and finds Peter there.
“Have you been waiting here ever since you got my text?” Stiles asks, and Peter shrugs. “You know, there was food inside and stuff.”
“I wasn’t hungry.” Peter’s playing with his wedding ring. “What do you want?”
“The answers to a few questions. Okay?” Stiles asks, and Peter just gestures for him to get on with it. Stiles takes a deep breath, lets it out. “Are you mad at me?”
Peter blinks at him, but answers readily enough. “No.”
“Are you mad that I didn’t want to kill Seth?”
Now Peter frowns slightly. “Angry? No. A bit perplexed, perhaps, but I learned a long time ago that my definition of morality rarely matches other people’s. And you were probably right, you know. He’s been unexpectedly helpful. And I don’t imagine him turning up dead or missing after saying he planted my fingerprints at Gerard Argent’s house would have helped my case very much.”
“Okay. Then why won’t you talk to me anymore? Why do you leave whenever I come into a room?” Stiles sees Peter’s face tighten and continues to babble. “I’m still working on these cases, you know, and you said you were gonna help me, and suddenly I feel like I’m all on my own again and I don’t know why.”
Peter sighs and heaves himself to his feet. “Walk with me,” he says, and Stiles does. He walks in silence for several long minutes before he says, “Lately, I’ve found it . . . difficult to be around you. It came to my attention that I was viewing you as a substitute for my child that is dead. Now every time I see you, that’s what I think about.”
“Oh.” Stiles nearly trips over a root and barely catches himself. He has no idea what to say to that.
“I suppose it was obvious to everyone else,” Peter muses, “but we’re often blind to that which is closest. Yes, you do have some of the same traits as Olivia, and in some ways you are like me. But you’re also very different from both of us. Which is fine, I think. We would never expect our children to be carbon copies of ourselves. But, well. Your father – whom I hold in the highest regard, by the way – became somewhat offended that I was training you to be the Left Hand without his permission. He reminded me that I am not your father, and I should most likely stop making decisions about your life.”
“Oh,” Stiles says. “Oh, geez. My dad means well, he just . . .”
“No, don’t try to make excuses for him. He’s absolutely correct. But since then, admittedly, your presence reminds me a little too much of what I’ve lost.”
Stiles shoves his hands into his pockets and tries to figure out how to handle this. “I still want to be your friend,” he finally says.
“Well, I do appreciate that,” Peter says. He shakes his head a little. “There’s no cure for this, Stiles. Nothing besides time. So please give me that.”
Stiles nods, feeling unbearably awkward and miserable. “What about, uh, figuring out who killed Gerard and stuff?”
“Your father has been keeping me up-to-date on your investigations by e-mail,” Peter says, “and everything I’ve found, I’ve given straight to him. We’ll get it done.”
Stiles nods again. He doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to explain the lump in his throat or the fact that the words ‘please don’t do this, please don’t leave me alone’ are threatening to escape his mouth. Peter has every right to need some space, and Stiles can’t make demands of him. But he feels lonely and abandoned and strangely guilty, as if this is somehow his fault. “Okay, but . . . you shouldn’t be alone. Will you go see Talia when we get back to the house?”
Peter glances over at him, clearly surprised. Then he says, “No, not Talia. But I will . . . seek the company of someone who understands. I won’t be alone.”
“Okay,” Stiles says.
~ ~ ~ ~
Tom takes a moment to size up the offices of the Beacon Hills First Cemetery. They’re small, and a little bit rundown. The house he had swung by earlier out of curiosity is the same way. Roger Lahey doesn’t really take care of himself or his business. That probably explains a lot about how the latter is doing.
He’s a few minutes early, so he waits in his car, thinking about how he wants to tackle things. He’s going to let Talia do most of the talking. Hilariously, in this sort of situation, he’s the muscle. Talia doesn’t actually have authority to do anything to Lahey, as much as she’s probably going to want to. He double checks to make sure all his things are in order, although they always are. He’s prepared to arrest Lahey if he has to, although he doubts it’ll come to that.
He can’t help but yawn as he sits there, waiting. It was a long night. Peter had showed up on his doorstep at about half past eight, clearly on the verge of some sort of nervous breakdown. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it, he said, he just wanted to get drunk. He had brought some sort of drug that would allow him to do so, but said Talia doesn’t approve of it and would kick his ass if she knew he had it. Tom agreed not to tell her. He’s friends with Talia, but Peter’s a grown man capable of making his own choices. Besides, Peter’s trust isn’t granted lightly. Tom isn’t about to give it up, now that he has it.
So Tom had produced the whiskey and Peter had drunk half a bottle in the first ten minutes and gotten fall-down, blind-and-stupid drunk. He told Tom the story of how he and Olivia had met and when he had found out that she was pregnant. He had raged and sobbed equally, and it had lasted for hours. Tom just let him get it out of his system. It didn’t seem like Peter had ever taken the time to really process his grief before, and Tom is honestly happy to help. Peter had finally passed out around midnight, and Tom had left him on the sofa and covered him up with a blanket.
Peter had been gone when he got up, the blanket neatly folded and the coffee maker started, which Tom assumes is what passes for a thank-you from the werewolf. He has a suspicion that Peter will never mention this, but that’s okay too.
He’s startled from his thoughts by the noise of a car door, and looks up to see Talia emerging from her car. She greets Tom with her usual embrace, then knocks on the door of the office and goes in without waiting for a reply. There’s no secretary, and it’s not exactly a clean place. Tom supposes that’s fair. It’s a cemetery, not a hospital. Dirt is somewhat of a given. And he doubts that it gets many visitors; it’s not exactly a public office. But they had decided that this would be less intimidating than if they went to the man’s house.
Of course, he greets them with a sharp, “What do you want?” and Tom has to resist the urge to pull out his badge. He’s prepared to arrest Lahey, but he doesn’t want to present as a cop. He’s dressed casually, even though he’s carrying his gun and his handcuffs.
“Mr. Lahey?” Talia asks, her voice brisk but not unpleasant. “My name is Talia Hale.” She reaches out a hand, and after a moment, he shakes it. “Do you have a minute? It’s about your son.”
Lahey grunts and then gestures to a couple chairs that look worse the wear. “What’s he done now, then?”
Talia doesn’t rise to the bait. “Well, actually, I just met him this past weekend,” she says, which is fudging the details a little, but nobody’s going to complain. She’s doing her best to make it seem like Isaac met Cora completely as a coincidence, and certainly hasn’t disobeyed any of his father’s edicts. “Apparently he’s on the lacrosse team at Beacon Hills? And my pack-son, Stiles, still has friends there, and they wound up hanging out, whereupon he met my daughter Cora.”
“Yeah, so what?” Lahey asks.
“Well, he and Cora really hit it off,” Talia says. “Cora would like to get to know him better. But Isaac says he isn’t allowed to date . . .?” She allows the question to trail off, obviously hoping that Lahey will correct her or back down.
“Yep,” Lahey says, picking up a stack of papers and starting to jot notes on them.
Talia glances at Tom, and he sees her make a fist and relax it. “Mr. Lahey, I’m not here to tell you how to raise your son. But let me explain a few things about werewolves to you. Once we find the person we think is our mate, we don’t let go. We can’t back off the way a human can. Now, if Isaac were unwilling, obviously Cora would have to find a way. But Isaac seems to agree with Cora on this. He seems to want to spend time with her.”
“Well, once he’s eighteen and a legal adult, he can do whatever the hell he wants,” Lahey says, “but until then, if he lives under my roof, he’ll follow my rules.”
“Do you understand that this could cause him a lot of mental and emotional anguish?” Talia asks. “Being separated from his mate?”
Lahey snorts. “Isaac’s not a werewolf. And I don’t believe half that bullshit anyway.”
“Well, Mr. Lahey, that bullshit is my life and my daughter’s life,” Talia says, and her voice has that pleasant edge to it now which Tom knows bodes ill for whoever’s on the receiving end. “And unfortunately for you, I’m going to do everything in my power to help Cora and Isaac have a healthy relationship. She’s had a rough year, my baby girl, and I care a lot more about her happiness than about your rules.”
“You – you can’t say that to me,” Lahey blusters.
“Here’s the thing, Mr. Lahey – I can. I’m just one parent expressing an opinion to another parent. I think not allowing your seventeen year old son to date is perfectly reasonable, particularly if it’s based on his school performance or his behavior at home. But I think not allowing your seventeen year old son to spend time with his mate is harmful. And you have to understand that there are certain instincts that become very difficult to override once someone is part of a pack. Isaac is part of my pack now, and that means I want to protect him.”
“So all that talk about how you’re just animals,” Lahey sneers, “I guess that’s true.”
“To a certain extent, maybe it is,” Talia says. “But there’s a saying about glass houses that I think you should keep in mind here, Mr. Lahey. I’m not the one who’s abusing and tormenting my child. I think that makes you quite a bit worse than an animal.”
Lahey jolts to his feet. “Whatever you think you – ”
“I saw the bruises. I can smell his pain.” Talia’s voice is tightly controlled, but the rage seeps through. “Do you think I didn’t notice yesterday? Do you think I’m unaware of what you did to him after he stayed at our place past his curfew? It’s going to stop. That is the last time you will ever lay a finger on that boy.”
“Or what?” Lahey challenges. “You gonna come down here and rip me apart? Risk your whole pack to teach me a lesson?”
“Or you’ll be arrested,” Tom says. He takes the handcuffs out and sets them on the table. “I’m pretty tempted to arrest you right now. You’ve all but admitted you’re abusing your son.”
“It’s none of your business how I treat my kid!” Lahey retorts.
“Actually, it is,” Tom says. He’s careful to keep his voice mild, even though he really wants to put this asshole through a wall. “You see, I’m an officer of the law, and what you’re doing is illegal. I came here to support Talia, as my son’s alpha, secure your blessing in Isaac joining her pack. I can see that that isn’t going to happen. So, let me put this to you differently. A concerned citizen came to me and reported fear that Isaac was being abused. I’ve seen evidence that he is. So this is your one and only warning. Do not lay another finger on him. Or I will throw your ass behind bars so fast that you’ll get seasick. The only – only – reason you’re not already under arrest is because I think it would be more traumatizing for Isaac if I have to put him on a witness stand to testify against you. He’s old enough that he won’t be under your roof much longer, so I’ll let this slide. Once.”
“He still – still isn’t joining your God damned pack!” Lahey shouts at Talia.
“Officially, apparently not,” Talia says. “But all the official papers provide us with is legal protection if something goes wrong and we have to step in. The lack of them won’t make the bond he has with Cora any less real. So he’s going to spend time with her, and with the rest of the pack. And I don’t care if you ‘allow it’ or not.”
With that, she rises to her feet, leaving Lahey still sputtering behind her. She takes a deep breath once she gets outside and says, “That could’ve gone better.”
Tom glances over his shoulder and says, “Actually, given his attitude, I’m pretty sure that that’s about as well as we could have hoped for. But we’d better warn Isaac before we send him home tonight . . . or if I have my preference, don’t.”
~ ~ ~ ~