The Duty of the Pack

2.

Something shattered. Slammed into the linoleum covered concrete and broke into a million tiny pieces. Looking back, I think it might have been my heart.

I can't remember if there was any noise. Logically the medical alarms should still be going off but my sensitive ears didn't hear anything.

I fell onto the floor, my knees hitting the ground painfully as I threw back my head, still clutching the cooling hand of my dead mate. His grip was loose, too loose, but I held tightly on for the both of us.

I wanted to reassure him, my beautiful perfect mate, but the words caught on the glass dust that made up my throat. I couldn't even scream like I wanted to as I stared numbly at my mate. The other man, Not-Thomas, reached over and closed his eyes gently. I growled at his touch, wrapping my mate's corpse into as much of my body as I could. Even as sick as he had been, he was heavy.

I pulled Thomas to the edge of his bed, fighting against the IVs and Not-Thomas and the way my heart felt like a leftover granite pieces in the back of a delivery truck at the end of a Friday.

I would hold my mate until the end of time or the end of my life. I would hold on to him enough for the both of us. I would... I would...

Not-Thomas made a move, stepping closer, and a ferocious growl filled the room. Theoretically it must have come from me, but my hands shook too violently for that to make sense.

"Maddie." Not-Thomas whispered. I hated the way my name rolled across on someone else's lips. I hated that Thomas had only ever said my name twice. I hated that and I hated everything else.

The growling doubled.

Maybe it was coming from me.

"Maddie." Not-Thomas said again, his eyes focused intently on me. "Listen to the thud of your heart." His words were gentle, and I wanted the opposite of gentle right now. I snapped at him, half shifting into a wolf as I snarled at Not-Thomas.

"Please." His voice was still calm, as if he hadn't heard the snarl.

"Thud." He whispered. "Thud thud thud."

I growled again, but with less vigor as I tightened my hold on Thomas' body. His words did match the way my broken heart beat against my rib cage.

"Thud. Thud." He continued. He was so on time with the unusual beat of my heart that I paused, the growling finally ending.

"How-" I croaked out, the words as uncomfortable as pulling engorged toads out of sewer lines.

"I know how it feels for your mate to leave you." His words were gentle, but I could feel the undercurrent of steely pain he tried to hide.

"The way your heart feels like a ticking bomb and it's difficult for even breath." He continued and I paused everything to listen as he took a step closer.

"It's ok to fall apart. I've got you." He promised, coming behind me so that his arms were on either side of me as I held my beloved.

He wasn't my mate and my body didn't yearn for his touch the way it had for Thomas even in the short time I had known him, but his arms held me together as I cried silently.

...

Eventually hesitant knocks came on the other side of the door.

"Maddie?" Ellie's father asked. I swallowed back a bucket of fresh tears that had been brimming. Not-Thomas' arms tightened around me and he pulled Thomas and I closer.

"I'm here." I replied shakily.

"Are you ok?" Alpha asked. I was so jealous over my mate I didn't even want to share his death with anyone else.

"I'm ok. I'll be out soon." I forced out.

After a few seconds of waiting, Ellie's father the Alpha of Ash Hollows sighed into the door.

"We will continue the tour. Meet us back at the hotel."

I could tell he was suspicious. Ellie must have told him that I found my mate. Facing them and explaining what happened felt like breaking my heart all over again.

"How do I keep going?" I asked quietly. It was intended to be a rhetorical question, because I had almost forgotten about the other man in the room. I jumped slightly when his arms tightened around me.

"One step at a time." He murmured, his face so close to my ear that I felt the breath of his voice.

"I can't do it." I said finally, staring at my mate's eyebrows. The hairs were messy and I reached out to brush them straight. I think he was a dirty blonde, but the color was so perfect, so... I wish I had the rest of my life to run my hands through him.

I wish I had him.

"Me too." The man murmured. I jumped a little bit again. Maybe I had said that last part aloud.

"Maddie. This is the worst timing on the planet and I am so sorry about it. But as far as anyone else knows, you entered this room and met your mate. Rocky Mountain pack needs a Luna. Would you be willing to..." He trailed off and stepped to my side, so he could cradle his brother and me at the same time. Not-Thomas swallowed.

"Pretend to be my mate and become the Luna of this pack?"

"What?" The word was ripped out of my mouth before I had a chance to think it through. I glanced at my dead mate. In any other universe or time he could be sleeping. But already his limbs were beginning to stiffen in my arms. "How could you even-"

"Because as soon as we open this door, if you haven't made a decision, everyone will know whose mate you really had. I know this is moving so fast and I deeply apologize for that, but that's what Thomas wanted. If there was any other way I would change everything about this meeting. I need a Luna to become the Alpha and you were destined for this. I will do anything and everything you would ask, just as if we were soul mates. My claws and hands would be yours as you see fit. I would confide in you, protect you, care for you with every bit of emotion I can manage, but the choice is entirely yours."

"Alpha..." I replied, almost without thinking.

"For you? Call me Nathan."

I gazed at the tiny room made of concrete blocks and thin linoleum. It smelled like death now, and the barest hint of my mate's bergamot. The infection smell was present too, as well as a scent of gunpowder and lilacs that twisted into an undeniably masculine scent.

I breathed it in. It wasn't an unpleasant smell, but not one that made my heart skip a beat or make me want to lean in closer.

I gazed into Nathan's eyes as my fingers curled around my mate's greasy hair.

I would protect every trace of Thomas there was with everything I had.

"I'll do it." I said finally.

"Thank you." Nathan breathed.