Fated for Two

Brenton stepped out onto the porch then stood for a moment breathing deeply of the evening air. Seeing a movement to his left, he turned with a low growl. Seeing who it was, he relaxed and said, “Beta Mason.”

“Alpha Phillips,” Mason said, respectfully bowing his head, though there was a touch of anger on his face.

“Are you here to see Everard?” Brenton asked, ignoring the anger for now.

“I am. I didn’t know he had company though,” Mason said. “I’ll just come back in the morning.”

“No, it’s fine. He’ll want to see you since you’re here,” Brenton said. He then opened the door and called, “Everard, your beta is here to see you.”

Everard came from the kitchen and joined Brenton on the porch, asking, “Mason, is something wrong?”

Mason looked at Brenton, frowning at his presence there. He then turned back to his alpha, giving him a questioning look, as if to say, “why is he here?”.

“It’s fine, Mason,” Everard soothed, “whatever you have to say can be said in front of Alpha Phillips.”

“We almost finished the roof, but ran into a problem,” Mason began. “The far back corner has been leaking worse than we first thought and one of the men fell through it when the plywood gave way. He cut a big gash on his leg, but other than that, he’s okay. Anyway, the best we could tell the rafter there needs to be replaced too. It looks as if it is either dry rotted or…”

“Or what?” Everard questioned when his beta went silent.

“Or has termites,” Mason stoically answered, knowing this meant more expense when they had no money, to begin with.

Everard’s shoulders drooped even more if possible, and Brenton could tell he was barely holding it together. So, he stepped forward and wrapped an arm around Everard’s shoulders, pulling him close, lending him strength. Everard stiffened, then relaxed into Brenton’s side as his body shook in the effort not to completely break down in front of his beta.

“Do you need to have someone come to see if it’s termites?” Brenton asked, the leader in him surging forward to get things accomplished.

Mason shook his head, answering, “No, at least I don’t think so. I figured we would look at it again in the morning, the light was too far gone tonight to tell much.”

“Did you at least put a tarp over it for the night?” Brenton asked then.

“We did,” Mason agreed. He gave an angry frown though as if Brenton’s questions meant he was incompetent to do his job.

“Good,” Brenton said, ignoring the anger. “I’ll come over in the morning along with Everard and we’ll see what the problem is. From there we’ll work on a solution.”

“Very good, sir,” Mason said, though he looked upset still. He then looked at Everard, almost as if he wanted him to disagree with this decision.

Everard glanced up at his beta. He saw the disagreeable look on Mason’s face and gave an almost silent sigh before adding, “I’ll explain everything tomorrow, Mason. After we solve the problem with the roof, I’ll call everyone together and let them know what is going on with Alpha Phillips being here.”

“Alright, good night then Alpha, Alpha Phillips,” Mason murmured with another head bow. He then turned and faded into the darkness.

“Help me take the food inside since you’re here. Farrah probably has some luggage she’ll need also, might as well get it too,” Brenton told Everard after giving his shoulder another squeeze and stepping away. “What is Farrah doing in there anyway?”

“She’s cleaning the kitchen,” Everard told him. “She said she refuses to eat there the way it looks.”

Brenton laughed and said, “Ah, I think we’re going to have our hands full with that one.”

“Hm… maybe that’s why she has two mates,” Everard muttered nervously as if addressing the elephant in the room.

Brenton sighed as he agreed, “Maybe so.”

“I wonder if her mom is anything like her,” Everard mused.

“I guess we’ll find out when we meet her,” Brenton said.

“I suppose,” Everard agreed as they stepped off the porch to get the things their mate had requested.

Neither of them noticed the wolf that lurked in the dark shadows of the tree line watching them.

By the time the two men had finished hauling everything into the house, Farrah had the kitchen as clean as she could get it without any real cleaning supplies. Now at least they didn’t have to fear having dirt in their food and they would have something to eat on since she did the dishes.

There was very little food, Everard had been right about that, but she had found some precooked sausage and thrown it in the microwave and a package of canned biscuits into the oven. She’d also found a dozen eggs and was working on those when she heard the door close one last time and heard the guys heading for the kitchen.

Turning to look at them she said, “Just put the bags on the counter and the drinks in the fridge. You weren’t lying when you said you didn’t have much food.”

Everard’s face flushed, and he looked down before telling her, “Yes, well, as I said, I tend to eat with everyone else. I’m not the best cook and I don’t have money to waste on burned food.”

Farrah cocked her head, feeling as if he was holding something back, and softly asked, “Everard, how bad are things around here, really? It seems to me from what little I’ve seen that the pack is barely holding it together.”

Everard turned away from them and began placing the water and canned juice in the fridge, answering, “Bad. It’s been bad for a while now and I sent most of the pack away to join other packs. Some of them wouldn’t leave though, so we figured we’d fix up the pack-house so most could live there.” He then closed the fridge door and shoved his hands in his pockets as he leaned against it, saying, “Once the pack-house was finished, I thought I’d work on this house next. There are six bedrooms and they’re all quite large. Then, if there still isn’t enough room for everyone, there’s one more house close that is almost as big as this one.”

“How many are left in your pack?” Farrah asked then as she dished up food into plates and placed them on the table.

Everard and Brenton sat down, and Everard continued, “Seventy-five at last count.”

“Seventy-five!” Brenton exclaimed as he stared wide-eyed at Everard. “There used to be at least two hundred and fifty, and that was after the pack wars.”

Everard looked down shamefully whispering, “I’m not an alpha like you are Brenton, and it showed after… after we quit being friends. I encouraged as many as I could to leave, I wanted them all to leave. I figured then I’d see if you wanted to buy these lands for a cheap price, and then I’d leave too since I didn’t have a reason to stay anyway. Those few wouldn’t leave though, so we’re trying to survive on what little income the few that are still able to work make. I myself have taken a job at a local garage. I make good money, but it’s just a drop in the barrel at what we really need. The war took more than lives, it destroyed homes and a lot of them are uninhabitable. If you think mine is bad, you should see some of the others.”

Brenton let out a long breath as Farrah reached out and took Everard’s hand.

“We’ll figure this out Everard, between the three of us, we’ll figure this out,” Farrah said.

“So, is the real reason you have no food in your house because you don’t cook, or because you don’t have money for food?” Brenton asked, a growl in his voice.

Everard wouldn’t look at him.

Farrah knew by the growl that left Brenton; he had his answer.

“So, you do without to make sure everyone else has something to eat,” Brenton stated. He’d noticed how bony Everard was when he’d put his arm around him earlier. Everard had always had the leaner build of the two of them, but never this lean.

Everard looked up then and solemnly asked, “Isn’t that what a good alpha does? I’m trying Brenton, I am. I just don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m trying to deal with a crumbling pack, my guilt at what happened between us, and my grief at the loss of my family! I’m not a strong person like you are! I don’t deal well with so many people depending on me when I’ve never even been able to fend for myself without someone helping me. I’m sorry, I know I’m a huge disappointment to everyone,” he whimpered as he bowed his head again.

“Oh, Honey,” Farrah murmured. “You aren’t a disappointment because we all go through things that we can’t handle. Life, as we knew it changed with the pack wars, and many lives were destroyed by greedy alphas who thought their way was the only way. We all lost things and the people we loved. I lost my dad and my two older brothers along with most of our pack. All that was left was a hand full of us and no one to lead us. You may not feel like you’re an alpha, but those that stayed, believe in you and you’re trying your best to do what is best for them. That is what being alpha is all about.”

“Maybe, but I feel as if I’m failing them all,” Everard told her. “We’re all about half-starved and our houses are falling down around us. Some don’t even have running water or electricity, so they only sleep in their homes. They then get up and head to the pack-house for showers and food. That’s why I was trying to get the roof fixed so that they could move in and have those things at least. Then we could work on getting one home at the time livable until we’re all housed more comfortably.”

“Brenton, how many are left of your pack?” She asked as she glanced over at where he sat silent.

“I still have roughly three hundred left of the original four hundred plus,” Brenton said. “Our pack wasn’t hit as hard financially as some were, but Everard’s pack was hit twice. Once by the pack wars and once by…” he stopped speaking and looked over at Everard.

Puzzled, she glanced back and forth between the two men. “And once by… what?”

“You might as well tell her, she’s our mate and with you being here, it’s going to come up at some point anyway,” Everard muttered as he pushed his half-full plate away.

She pushed it back at him, scolding, “Eat, Sweetie, you need it. Don’t let your emotions keep you from getting nourishment because a sick alpha is no good to his pack.”

Everard huffed but picked his fork back up anyway.

“It was roughly a year after the pack wars finally ended, we were both twenty-one at the time. Everard’s parents and brother were killed in the pack wars and Everard had taken over as the alpha. I helped him out as much as I could because I’d been groomed to be alpha, but he hadn’t been because his older brother was the alpha-heir.

“Everard met a girl, Fiona, and he told me she was his mate. My mom began helping her, grooming her to become the alpha female of the Steward pack. She was a nice enough woman I suppose, and he told us she was good to him,” Brenton began. He then paused slightly as if thinking before saying, “Although I honestly never liked her, something about her made my wolf upset, but Everard was my wolf brother and out of respect for him I tried to like her. My parents were a bit wary of her also because she was a rogue, and claimed she’d never had a pack. Yet, she seemed to know a bit too much about pack dynamics not to have been in one at some point. Everard seemed happy with her though, so they stayed out of it because he was a grown man and she was his mate.

“Anyway, I suppose they’d been seeing each other for a year when Everard decided it was time to make her the official alpha female. Everard came to me one day though and told me he was worried. He told me how she had started acting secretive, going off at odd hours of the morning or night and staying gone for hours. Nobody seemed to know where she went and when he asked, she told him she’d just gone for a run because her wolf was restless.

“He also told me he feared she might be seeing someone else because she always returned with a strange male scent on her. I told him he needed to know for sure before she officially became his alpha female. He also admitted to me at that time that he wanted to wait for their official ceremony before being intimate. He said she’d been fine with waiting but now wondered if she wasn’t. He also wondered if she could have grown tired of waiting on him and had found someone who didn’t care that she had a mate.

“That’s when I told him if she was truly his mate, waiting shouldn’t be an issue because her wolf wouldn’t want anyone but him. I then again pushed him to confront her about it. He agreed and told me he would talk to her as soon as she returned. However, when she returned three days later, she wasn’t alone, she came back with a rogue pack whose alpha claimed she was his mate, not Everard’s.

“She came back in the dead of the night and they killed a lot of the patrols before anyone really even knew what was happening and sent out warriors. Our pack heard the howl for help and came. I believe it was a trap because both my parents were killed as soon as they stepped over the border, along with Dad’s beta and his delta. By the time I made it to the scene, Fiona was dead and lying next to Dad with Everard standing only a few steps away, covered in blood. There were dead bodies, rogue and pack alike, laying everywhere.

“I was late getting to the fight because Dad wanted me to make sure the women and children were secured before I left. The rogue alpha shifted long enough to yell he would kill us all for killing his mate, then he took off running along with the few rogues that were left,” Brenton said. He then turned to look at Everard. “What I didn’t know was that she planned to kill me too, but Everard killed her first. I always thought Dad killed her before she could get to me though, until recently.”

Everard looked at Brenton, his eyes were wide and scared. With a whimper, he asked, “H-how d-did you find out?”

“I had a dream where the moon goddess visited me,” Brenton answered. “She told me I needed to let you explain, to repair our friendship.”

“I agree because it is going to be awfully hard to be mates if the two of you are constantly at odds,” Farrah mentioned as she held both their hands, lending them her strength.

“I’m sorry, Brenton,” Everard whispered. “I thought if I denied it all, it would go away. When I realized that wasn’t going to work, you were so angry and refused to listen to anything I said. Then you stopped coming here at all and told me our friendship was over because my stupidity had gotten your family killed.”

“I’m sorry too, but I’m willing to listen now,” Brenton told him.