All The Small Things

Rose

I sat back against my headboard with a huff. My pack had gone off to a huge battle last night and no one - no one - had given me an update. And on top of that, the entire battle stemmed around one of my closest friends. One of my closest friends who had been held hostage for weeks at this point. 

Sure, I was more or less assigned to be her friend at first, but she had quickly proven to be a friend, not an assignment. I was looking forward to her being our luna. 

Lya was kind, and honest, and she would be good for the pack. I don’t think anyone expected the strongest alpha in all of North America to be mated to a werewolf who didn’t realize she was a werewolf. But they worked. They worked really well. 

Jealousy was not my thing. I mean, I was jealous, but not that the new girl got the guy. I didn’t want the guy. I wanted the bond. It was probably silly to be bemoaning something like that. Twenty-one wasn’t exactly on the old side of still looking for your mate, but it felt like all my friends were off and shacking up while I was just… here. Alone. Lya and the Alpha, Anna had found Trevor, Cody - who I had not really been friends with before Lya had come along - had his own situationship with his mate. 

Sure, I was the youngest of the group, but it was starting to get lonely. Brandon and I had talked a bit about starting something, but he just wasn’t my type, mostly because he wasn’t my mate. I really wanted to wait for my mate. 

Maybe I’m just a hopeless romantic and this shouldn’t even be the sort of thing I was thinking about.

This was my first big assignment. Initially, I had hoped that being on an assignment off of pack territory - kind of - would lead me to my mate. 

But then Lya got kidnapped.

No, Lya didn’t get kidnapped. She gave herself up to the hunters. Yeah, I know she did it “for the greater good,” which included my good, but I was still upset with her. And scared. 

So, for the second time, I asked to be taken off an assignment. Actually, I begged and pleaded. I just wanted to be part of the army that brought my friend home. 

Initially, I asked Cody, our Gamma and head of security, but he said no. I felt like I was going to the other parent when I went to Alpha Oliver and asked him to reconsider. He, too, refused. He said it was because I was the best of the best and he needed top class on this assignment. My theory, though, was that he wanted me out of the fray. He wanted as much of a guarantee as possible that all of his mate’s chosen family stayed intact. I respected him for that.

But I was still mad. 

And that is exactly how I ended up sitting here, worried sick, left out of the action, waiting for someone to remember to update me. If I didn’t hear back from someone soon, I was fully intending on abandoning my post, driving back to the packhouse, and figuring out exactly what was going on. 

I had to think no news was good news. If the Luna had died, especially in such a noble way, everyone would be talking about it. I mean, I may have been in a different town at the furthermost point of the territory, but I was still on pack territory. Kind of. This town was still kind of refusing to integrate with the pack, but they were pack. They would care if their Luna died. Their wolves would make them care. 

I swear, in all my training for my position as a scout, I never expected to be on an assignment within the pack. They had good reason to have him monitored, but it just didn’t sit right with me. If you felt like you had to have a scout following a gamma that had a history of confrontation, shouldn’t they just be stripped of their rank? Better yet, when they became confrontational, shouldn’t they have been stripped of their rank?

Once upon a time, this town - which used to be a quite small pack - was absorbed by the Snow Moon Pack. With the Alpha family dead, they needed another pack to take them in, or they would all become rogues themselves.  Alpha Oliver’s father, the alpha at the time, instated the old beta’s adopted son as a gamma to oversee the town. Having a gamma for each town was the pack’s usual modus operandi, so at first no one was concerned. As Snow Moon was the largest pack in North America, with four towns total, the Alpha needed a bit of assistance overseeing everything. But, when the Alpha was killed by the same rogue that destroyed that little pack, the newly instated gamma tried to challenge the newly appointed Alpha Oliver for the alpha position. He failed miserably, and Alpha Oliver being just as kind hearted as his newfound mate, allowed the disgraced Gamma to keep his position. No one quite knows why. 

Even though Snow Moon had seen a horrible amount of destruction because of rogues, Alpha Oliver had done everything he could to mend relationships with rogues, going above and beyond to provide them protections and safeties. As he would say, the bunch deserved better than to let one bad apple spoil them. So when Alpha Oliver caught wind of Gamma Derek having rogues killed for no reason, he took it extremely seriously.

Which meant the best scout Snow Moon Pack had was up here in middle of nowhere Wyoming trying to dig up dirt instead of standing beside everyone else trying to bring our Luna home. 

Well, soon to be Luna. 

Lya and Alpha Oliver had a weird dynamic going on. Neither of them had declared each other as their fated mate, even though it was painfully obvious to everyone. Lya had marked him in a heat of the moment sort of thing. She hadn’t let him mark her yet though. Prior to Lya leaving, he had been going hog wild leaving… other marks on her. No one else seemed to care, but little old me whom everyone else would have no problem calling a prude was getting uncomfortable seeing the evidence of what was going on behind closed doors. 

All that being said, I still wanted to be there when my Alpha and Luna finally dropped the act. 

My phone buzzed - finally - jolting me out of my thoughts. I picked it up without even checking the caller ID. 

“Hello?”

“Rosie!” Cody, our primary gamma, nearly shouted. “Rose, how’s it going in Wyoming?”

“It’s fine, but how’s Lya?” I demanded. 

There was a pause. “Lya is fine - will be fine, at least. She’s in surgery -”

“Surgery?” I demanded, cutting him off. “What happened?”

“That’s a long story,” he huffed. “Look, I’m gonna send someone up to take over for you for a bit. Getcha down here for a bit to see Lya.”

I let out a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank god. Thank you so, so much, Cody!”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, brushing you off. “I’ll have someone lined up for the day after tomorrow. Sorry it can’t be sooner.” 

“Thank-”

The line was disconnected before I could even get the words out. Regardless, I got to go home and see my friend. Even if I didn’t have a very valid excuse to get a break, I needed a recharge. I had not found a single thing here. I felt useless and the monotony was redundant. Maybe Gamma Derek had caught wind of being followed, or maybe rogues had learned that being around this town was no longer safe, but there had been nothing to report. Not a single thing.