Alpha's Energy Crisis

Interlude

Alpha's Energy Crisis by CA Clarke, exclusively on Dreame

(wishful thinking on my part that one day my story will be advertised on social media, and I don't want people wondering what the title is! Thanks for reading

Stavros's POV

She handed me that paper like she was passing out a flyer. I didn’t even look down at it, I just asked her “What the f*ck?” while it crumpled in my fist. It never dawned on me she wouldn’t come home with me, it was my worst nightmare coming true.

I demanded she come home, I figured it would show her how serious I was.  Of course, Athena wasn’t going to accept that kind of arrogance from me.

I felt so guilty for thinking she ran away, correction escaped, that I became consumed by the idea she was going to reject my sorry ass for sure. I couldn't bring myself to look vulnerable in front of her or admit to having feelings for her in front of Ryan. 

Ryan. One of my very best warriors, someone I can truly rely on. I was so stupid, Ryan already believed wholeheartedly that Caly was an incredible lady. He was someone who knew that she had come to Blood Pact to make our lives better. Not just because she was a gifted werewolf, not because she was my Luna, but because he could see that Caly herself was a gift.

Ryan would never have judged us, and never questioned my decision to hold off telling the Pack.  Hell, he would have been elated that Caly was our Luna. He would have been happy for me and be just plain thankful she was going to be staying with us forever.

It looks like he’s going to get his happily ever after. He has his ass leaning against one of our trucks, casually cradling a young she-wolf in his arms. She’s tracing little hearts all over his chest with one finger. 

“I found her Boss! Baby this Alpha Stavros, Alpha this is my Mate Tabitha.” She gives me a shy wave, he doesn’t even put her down. “I found her in the Pack Clinic. She needs to take it easy for a few days, but don’t worry I’ll take good care of her.” They nuzzle their noses together and it makes me feel sick. I don’t begrudge him his happiness, I’m just feeling Caly’s loss big time.

‘Stab? I’m going to ride in the truck with all the ladies and Ryan. You can go in the second SUV with all the guys.’ Terr mind-links me.

‘Why can’t I ride with you?’ Even I know that I sounded whiny.

‘Because Tabitha is probably special in some way like Caly and Jules. They can’t deal well with a broody Alpha male. I know you, Stab. Ryan and his new Mate are nauseating and you just don’t need to see that s**t right now. When it all sinks into your thick skull you’re either going to take it out on somebody or drink yourself f*cking stupid. We need to get everyone home in one piece before that happens and then Colin can help me deal with you.’

I can’t deny I would rather ride with Terr, but I can’t deny her logic either. She starts ordering people around, reorganizing everyone the way she wants, before getting in the front passenger side.  That’s a good idea. I’ll sit up in the front and close my eyes. They’ll think I’m trying to have a nap and they will keep their mouths shut. I growl at the warrior who touches the handle of the shotgun seat, he steps right back and I hop in slamming the door.

‘Stab! If I have to come over there I will knock your ass out and you can ride home in the back with the f*****g gear!’ Terrier warns me. 

It will give me some time to think about how the f*ck am I going to break the news to Colin that Caly didn’t even want to come home. He’ll be crushed by her refusal. Either that or he’ll be angry enough at my colossal blunder to challenge me for the Pack again. 

*****

“Alpha, we are crossing the border.” I feel a gentle tap on my shoulder as the driver tries to wake me up. I did fall asleep. F*ck my life.

After a few minutes of driving past acres of squirrel-less forest, I can see Colin standing on the front steps, Marc is nowhere in sight. That’s probably for the best, I bet Colin didn’t tell him we were on our way home. Colin looks really happy. Unfortunately, I know it’s not me that is putting that smile on his face.

Might as well get this over with, I am the first person to step out of the truck. Colin’s face immediately falls. I got out of the passenger side of the vehicle, which meant I wasn’t sitting beside my Mate, and he knew it.

With his werewolf speed, he rushes past me and flung the backdoor of the vehicle open, peering inside. Terri’s vehicle comes in right behind mine, and she pops out just in time to be bumped by Colin trying to get a good look into her truck, too. The realization hits him and he lets out a tremendous roar.

“Nice to see you, too, Colin! You almost slammed my f*cking arm in the door!” Terri screeches at him. “What the f*ck is your major mental defect today! I don’t need this s**t!”

“Where is she! I must protect her!” His body is shaking with rage and he’s starting to shift.

“Stab! You seriously didn’t f*cking tell him?” She looks over to me for confirmation. I hang my head.

“Colin, man! You are better than this, let’s get you inside. I don’t want you to scare any of the girls.” Then she adds snarkily, “That’s Stab’s job.” 

I look up and see Terr with her left hand in a tight grip holding Colin’s pointy chin. Her other hand is balled up in a tight fist. I know if he doesn’t calm down she is planning on knocking his ass out cold. He rips her hand away from his face and gives her a solid push so she’s no longer within striking distance before he turns and stomps into the house.

“Caly’s right, you just don’t make s**t easier on yourself. If you had just mentioned she wasn’t coming home right away he would have had three hours to be calm and think up a plan. Maybe he could have called Caly and she would have explained all this s**t to him. She would have made sure he was calmed down enough and probably spin-doctored the whole thing to look like a damn vacation! You know she’s good at that!” Terri doesn’t wait for my response, she just starts handling things like a Boss.

“Ryan, you want nookie time, or are you taking her home to meet your Mama?” she asks.

“I need to introduce her to the family, Ambie will be excited to have another big sister.”

“I need you to keep your link open. We will need to talk about your Mate’s living arrangements. If Tabitha is anything like Caly, we will need to move her into the Packhouse for her safety.” Terr tells him.

Ryan’s eyes go wide. He hasn’t even begun to know his Mate yet, but he may have just signed up for a lifetime of protecting a gifted wolf. “I will protect her. I’ll take home for a bit, and after dinner, I’ll take her to see Doc Murray, and get her sorted in the Packhouse. I’m not sure how I’m going to explain to my folks why she can’t stay with us or how I’m going to survive the night without Tabi, but I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her safe.”

“Your Mama has six kids, she will understand your need to be close to her. Remember, if your Mom gives you a hard time, you just say you are getting two rooms for the time being. She doesn’t need to know if you only choose to use one of them.” She gives him a wink.

“Thanks, Terrier, you’re the best!” Ryan scoops up his new Mate bridal-style and jogs towards his parent’s home.

“Stab, I’m going to put Mist and Jules in one of the spare bedrooms up on the fifth for now. I might take a room in the Packhouse until we get all our poop in a group.” I just grunt and nod. “Oy, everyone else get the s**t put back, clean and ready for next time. Then you can take the night and tomorrow’s training off. I’ll try to get Colin to re-jig the schedules but I have to find him and get him into the right frame of mind. Dismissed!” Being Commander really suits her. “You three follow me.” 

She marches our asses up to the fifth floor. She gives the little Seeker and Aunt Misty the room beside mine and tells them Rose will be by with yummies and clean clothes. I wait for her before I head into the office. I’m pretty sure I’m going to need some form of backup. Caly would tell me I was avoiding s**t until it blows up in my face. 

Caly. I close my eyes and try to picture her. I want to see her happier memories. Her shmoozing with Leo at the cafe-bakery and the cute little wiggle in her seat when she was anticipating something delicious was about to touch her lips. Those lips of hers were soooo good to watch in action.

A hard slap breaks me out of my thoughts. F*ck. Terrier is standing right in front of me with her fists resting on her hips. The fire in her dark eyes let me know she’s pissed that I am standing around daydreaming and I’m lucky she didn’t swing a punch at me when my eyes were closed.

“Sorry to break you out of your reverie Alpha, but we have work to do. Let’s go, in the office, NOW!” 

 “What work?”

“Oh, I don't know, explaining this s**t to Colin in a way that doesn’t involve killing you. Making a plan to get Caly back. Turning your sorry ass into a real man, one who deals with s**t decisively and in a timely fashion instead of sticking his head in the sand or wishing it will all magically go away. A man who is in touch with his feelings for his Mate. A man who is in tune with his Pack and involved in fixing its issues and actively involved in fixing up all his other messes. Someone who is present and involved. You want to daydream about your Mate, save it for the shower! I need both you and Colin to help make Blood Pact Caly’s best choice, her only choice! Office, NOW!”

Colin has left my office door open, so I can see from the hall that he’s sitting in his usual seat pouring himself drink after drink.

“Hey! Put that s**t down, Colin! I need help from someone with a brain!” She races forward and snatches up the booze from the table. He rises up to protest and she wraps her arms around his waist. It might look like an actual hug if she wasn’t purposely keeping the bottle out of Colin’s reach by putting it behind his back.

“Why didn’t she come home!” He wails out. It sounds both pained and pitiful. He finally slumps down to wrap his arms tightly around Terr’s neck and rests his forehead against hers.

“You good? When you’re ready I’ll give you the highlights,” she starts to sway him side to side, moving in a slow dance together.

He kisses her forehead. “Thank you, Terri. I need to know what happened, so I can try to fix this.”

“We all need to work to fix this.” She tells him. She gives him the rundown of everything that happened during the rescue mission, and what was said in Alpha Tucker’s meeting room. She explained what happened when she and Ryan left, how she went to see Tucker and cracked jokes about his useless Beta. She told the story of how Ryan met his Mate in their Pack’s clinic and how happy they both were.

I could be happy with my Mate right now.

‘Except you are a stooopid human. So don’t expect me to feel sorry for you!’ This is the first I’ve heard from my wolf Zeus since Caly walked away from me. He’s blaming me for the loss of his Mate, and he sounds just like Athena right now.

Terrier finishes her story, and Colin is furiously running his fingers through his dirty-blonde hair. That wolf is going to make himself go bald. “Is there any hope at all?” he asks no one in particular.

“Yes, there is a small sliver of good news. We have exactly three weeks to convince her to come home.” Terrier announces.

“What!?!” I sit straight up and stare at Terr. Did she say we might have a chance to get her back? I feel my heart pounding. “Repeat that for me.”

“Stab, if you learned to read the s**t given to you, you would have f*cking known it was a contract she handed you. Caly signed a contract to work for Alpha T for three weeks, I don’t know why it’s so short. She signed with us for three months right?”

“Yes. She was giving Stab enough time to figure out if he could tolerate her long term. Really, it should have been enough time for her to decide if this shithole was worth it. That’s not Caly’s way though.” Colin shoots me a dirty look, I bet I’ll see plenty of his attitude for the next few weeks. “I don’t understand. Why would she stay there? I thought she hated him, he’s such a little prick.”

“The moolah,” Terri says simply.

“What?” Colin says puzzled.

“Tucker offered her 10K for the three weeks. That’s a lot of f*cking money for such a short time. Guess you feel like a cheapskate now, huh?” she adds as she looks my way.

“Wait, how the f*ck do you know that?” I know she didn’t hand Terr a copy of whatever it was, and I don’t know what happened to mine. Maybe Tucker gloated about it when she went up to his office?

“Unlike you, Stab, I pay attention. She handed a copy to both of her Alpha’s and the Elder. When she handed you her new contract, did you not read it?” It’s a stupid rhetorical question, she knows I didn’t have time to read it. “She ensured everyone who needed one had one, so they would know what’s going on in her life! Did you not think for one second that little piece of paper might be f*cking important!” Terr is all about the tough love, I’m surprised this lesson wasn’t given with a boot to my ass.

“I can call Alpha Tucker, maybe I can try to convince him to email me a copy of that contract.” Finally, Colin is back in the game now that he has something to reach for.

“Colin, I knew you would want this info, why wouldn’t you trust me to get it for you?” She says it in a chiding tone but I can see she’s kidding with him. “You should never underestimate me, Colin.” As she talks, I watch her as she pulls out the neckline of her shirt and reaches into her bra. Out comes a piece of paper she’s folded five or six times so it’s tiny enough to hide, and hands it over to Colin. I resist the urge to take it from her, I would only take a glance at it before I handed it over to Colin anyway.

“Did you steal that from me?” I question her.

“No. It’s not stealing, you carelessly tossed it aside, so I recovered it.” She says hotly. It won’t do me any damn good to get her all worked up again, so I shut my mouth and watch Colin’s eyes run back and forth while he speed reads. Terr takes the opportunity to berate me some more, “Dude when the f*ck are you going to pay attention to what’s going on around Caly? She’s your f*cking Mate! She should be your Spark of Joy, the warmth in your soul. The sun in your sky…”

“I get it Terr.”  

“Neither of you are without fault. You didn't read it carefully either, Terri. This contract says ten grand per week for three weeks."

Holy s**t, thirty thousand dollars! Why would his crazy ass do that? Is he planning on buying his way into her bed? I’ll kill him.

“It also gives him buy-in rights to be a partner ‘should she consider creating a consulting business with her extraordinary expertise’. It’s probably not so much the money for Caly, he has finally given her the validation she has craved. He’s basically told her she can be a valued member of a Pack-based society, not just another nameless Omega. He has also given her the means to make something for herself. She has strived to be self-sufficient, so this could help her walk away from Pack life and the oppression of the Elder’s Council entirely. She could be an independent businesswoman able to live a comfortable life in the human world, travelling around to visit Packs who are in need, wolves who will come to appreciate her more than we currently do. I’m afraid we really are the worst of all her options. Getting her to come home is going to be an uphill battle.” He deflates into his soft leather armchair.

“Colin, what are we going to do?’ Terrier whispers, her voice cracking with all her pent-up emotions. She had really thought this contract was going to save us, and Colin just ripped the band-aid right off the wound.

Three weeks. Caly has a golden ticket to get all the things she’s ever wanted in her life, but now I want to convince her she doesn’t need it? That she should come home to be with me?  I have to suffer through three weeks of living without her because I couldn't find it in me to make a f*cking commitment, but she’s supposed to believe I want her back? How f*cking selfish am I?

I grab two more glasses and another bottle of Bourbon. Theressa and I could use a drink, too.