To Be More (Slate/Gray Book #2)

Days ago, Jackson Territory…

“I think we’ve narrowed in on the best prospect, sir.”

The voice is tinny through the phone, but Trenton Barrows, who happens to be the son of John Barrows and who is also conveniently very determined to impress his Alpha, can be heard clearly. Jackson expresses his pleasure with a smug, “Well done, boy. Tell me about them.”

“It’s this young couple--Emily and Kellan. They’ve got a sick baby and connections to the alpha. We think they can get the wolf out here quickly if they spin the story just right.”

“Hmm,” Jackson hums happily. “And how do you plan on getting them to cooperate?”

The smirk can be heard through the phone. “Leverage.”

Present day, Atwood Territory...

When Gray meets Carl Sheffield and his family, she remembers immediately why she does what she does. She’s been healing Sara for months now and feels immensely rewarded by the experience, but there’s something special about seeing such unadulterated fear and desperation painted on someone’s face and knowing you have the power to replace it with relief and gratitude.

He’s an older, salt-and-pepper haired man who comes escorted by Slate and Asher to their father’s office where Gray is waiting with the alpha himself. With them is a frail looking blonde woman with a protruding stomach and a light haired man practically holding her up as she wheezes slightly.

Asher ushers the three visitors to the couches in the corner while Slate lurks nearby, observing. “This is my father, the alpha,” Asher tells the newcomers kindly, always the warm balance to Slate’s coolness. “And this,” he gestures to Gray with a wink, “is the woman you’ve been waiting for. Her name is Gray.”

“Hi,” Gray waves shyly. She usually doesn’t have to approach healing situations like this. It had always been much more discreet, hidden--or else she was a wolf. This kind of confrontation feels like she’s on stage performing for a panel.

Then Slate comes forward and rests a gentle hand on her back and she can’t help the smile that breaks across her face. Ever since the night she’d watched over him while he slept, it was like a threshold had been crossed. They were never so demonstrative in public, they stuck to subtle gestures like the hand on Gray’s back. But in private--a configuration they found themselves in increasingly often--it was like gravity drew them to each other. Gray just loved being near him and it seemed the same for him.

Feeling bolstered by the ballast at her side, Gray shoots a look over her shoulder at Slate to communicate that she wants him to follow as she comes forward and perches on an armchair adjacent to the pregnant woman. True to form, Slate trails behind her submissively, hand landing on her shoulder when she sits and he stands behind her, his thumb swiping back and forth on the back of her neck.

“Hi,” she repeats more directly. “I know your father has been communicating with my alpha and I’m glad he reached out. I believe I can help you. What’s your name?”

Through eyes glazed with pain and discomfort, the woman watches Gray skeptically. “Leanna,” is the response that’s only a hair too polite to be described as curt.

“And I’m Henry, Leanna’s husband,” the man gripping her hand interjects with much more enthusiasm. Evidently he has much higher hopes than his wife, who seems to have become embittered in her declining health.

Gray smiles at them both. “Welcome to our pack territory.” Turning slightly to give Leanna her full focus, she straightens and tries to project confidence. “I understand you’ve become ill?”

Leanna’s eye twitches like she wants to roll them, but manages to resist. “Yes, I’ve been in the hospital with pneumonia for a few weeks.”

Gray nods and smiles when she feels Slate squeeze her shoulder. “Okay, that’s something I should be able to help with.”

Leanna frowns, croaking, “Just like that? You don’t know anything about me.”

Gray and Slate exchange a glance. “If you want to tell me more, it can’t hurt, but I’m not a doctor and you’re not my patient. You don’t need to jump through hoops to get help. You’re ill and I’m a healer, you need help and I want to help. It’s as simple as that.”

Leanna’s eyes become glassy with tears and hope as Gray slowly wins her over with transparency and honesty. “So you...you can really heal me?”

Gray takes Leanna in. She’s skinny–aside from the baby bump, obviously–not necessarily alarmingly so, but approaching that level. Her hair is limp and dry, her skin gray with exhaustion, stress, and sickness. Her breathing is shallow and careful, like she knows if she tries to take a breath too deep, it will send her into a coughing fit and she’s not sure she’d be able to draw in enough air to recover. Gray can see no evidence of the health of her baby, but the stress Leanna’s experiencing on her mind and body can only be damaging. There’s no upside.

“Yes,” Gray nods certainly. “I can help.”

When Gray offers a hand, Leanna tentatively places her hand in Gray’s and a few tears slip out of her eyes. Carl’s face has been wet for a while, leaning forward eagerly, not willing to let his daughter get too far away from him. Henry’s eyes are fixed on the place where Gray and Leanna meet. Gray’s not sure he’s breathing.

She glances back up at Slate one more time and when she receives a nod and a last squeeze to her shoulder, she breathes deeply and starts drawing the illness from Leanna. Gray’s breathing stutters as she feels tightness in her chest and a dull ache in her limbs. When she gets a feeling of breathlessness and finds it hard to draw in the next breath, she reflexively panics, but Slate smooths back a lock of her hair in a gesture that’s usually far too intimate for a setting with strangers and it draws the panic out.

When Gray sees Leanna’s eyes clear and take a deep breath with no rattle, she smiles through the lingering pain and lets go of the woman’s hand to let her celebrate with her family. As the trio stands and exchanges tight hugs and sheds tears, Gray takes the time to continue to breathe slowly until the last of the aches have faded.

Gray stands and skirts around her chair and the ecstatic family to step into the circle of Slate’s arms. Into his shoulder she murmurs, “Thank you.”

His response is to kiss her hair and rub her back for a few strokes before releasing her and gesturing with his head to their guests. When Gray turns back to Leanna and her family, she’s surprised when Carl is the first one to pounce on her and pull her into one of the tightest hugs she has ever experienced.

“Thank you,” he says with choked fervor. “Thank you.”

Gray can barely breathe in his hold, but she manages to pat his back and grunt, “You’re welcome.”

He seems to realize he’s crushing her internal organs after a moment and releases her quickly. “Sorry, sorry,” he laughs with awe in his voice. “I just can’t believe.... You’re amazing, Gray. Thank you so much. How can I repay you?”

Gray beams at the relief and hope she was responsible for inspiring in this sweet father. With a little laugh, she shakes her head, high on the feeling of being able to help. “Your gratitude is enough. The reward is in the healing.”

Carl sheds a few more happy tears and surprisingly turns to Slate, who is usually so good at fading into the background. “You’re a lucky man, Slate. Keep a hold of this one, she’s something special.”

Slate nods and gives the man a smile that lifts half his mouth. It’s small, and may even come across as rude or dismissive, but Slate is incapable of being anything but genuine, and a bright grin would be nothing more than a facade from someone as subtle as he is.

Carl’s enthusiasm fades a bit at Slate’s lukewarm reception, but Gray knows Slate hardly cares anyway. Carl Sheffield isn’t anyone to Slate and probably never will be, so he spares no energy on caring if the man misunderstood him. A bit callous, but it’s Slate.

Gray receives hearty hugs and heartfelt expressions of gratitude from Leanna and Henry before they happily let Slate and Asher whisk them back to their car to celebrate Leanna’s restored health as a family.

And just like that, it’s the alpha and Gray alone in the small building. “Well,” Alpha claps his hands and grins with childlike joy, “I think that went well. How do you feel about it?”

Gray bites her lip on a smile. “I think it went well, too.”

“Is this something you’d like to continue to do?” he asks.

Gray closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Physically, she feels pretty much back to normal, but it is always a bit mentally draining. Dealing with such dramatic highs and lows in the course of less than an hour--with strangers, at that--would tire anyone.

In the past, Gray would have ignored all these signs and tried to see as many people in need as she could fit in a day, but she knows herself better now--knows her worth better. Having the gift of healing doesn’t mean she owes people anything. She’s starting to accept that she doesn’t need to pay penance for past wrongdoings and that her life is more than just her ability to heal.

So now, she’s healthy enough to say, “Yeah, I really would. But...not too frequently. I need to be able to choose who and when I heal. That’s important to me.”

“That can be arranged.” The alpha smiles fondly and puts a fatherly hand on her shoulder. “I’m proud of you, my dear. You had a lot of things working against you, but you are making yourself a beautiful life here.”

When Gray opens her mouth to respond, the alpha shakes his head at her, and she realizes he didn’t stop speaking because he had said all he needed to say, but because he was holding back emotion. She sees the tears come to his eyes now, but the smile won’t be displaced. Through a thick voice, he adds, “And thank you for what you are doing for my son. You are lucky to have each other.”

Gray has to look down before the weight of his gaze and words overwhelm her. To the floor, she says quietly. “You’re welcome.” She lifts her head and drags her eyes up to meet his gaze. “I can only hope to be for him what your wife was for you.”

The alpha wastes no time in pulling her in for a tight embrace.

:::::

They had asked the Sheffield family not to spread word of their experience with the Atwood pack beyond their closest family and friends, but still, it seems like healing Leanna opened the floodgates. Fortunately, no one has come to Atwood land unsolicited yet, but Gray knows it’s only right to be worried about that inevitability with how things are developing rapidly already.

Atwood property is in a pretty rural part of Washington and they never invite other packs for meetings here, so while many are aware of the general location of the pack, not many would know how to find it. It’s not an issue of paranoia or secrecy necessarily, just privacy. Most werewolves are very private purely out of self preservation–it’s hard to hide your true nature if people are all around and in your business all the time.

So the privacy of Atwood territory is intact for now, but Gray is aware talks are happening about how to handle the influx of attention their little pack is getting. She was worried at first that there would be seeds of resentment that would only grow with all the upheaval that has gone on as a result of Gray’s presence in the pack, but Aria has poked around a bit for her and uncovered mostly kind acceptance and a sense of inclusion. It makes her feel a bit guilty for not engaging more with the pack.

After all, if she’s willing to bend over backwards for all these people she doesn’t know and who have done nothing for her, it’s only right that she should put some effort into knowing the people who have protected her at the risk of their lives.

Right now, those are troubles to be fussed with in the future. She and Slate are currently on their way to heal an infant of young parents who are desperate to bring relief to their sweet baby. They are relatives of the alpha just south of the Atwoods and contacted Alpha Atwood directly by phone. Gray had felt conflicted about giving preferential treatment solely based on the fact that this couple is family with an alpha, but she understands that Brett is good friends with this other alpha and that this is a gesture that will forge an allyship between packs with something deeper than just words.

Gray hates to say that this will indebt the other alpha to the Atwoods, because that’s not why she does what she does, but politically...it has basically the same effect.

“So what’s wrong with this baby?”

The voice is quiet and inquisitive, but its suddenness scares Gray out of her daydreaming and she gasps. “Oh my goodness Slate, if one of the two of us has a heart attack, it should be you, so I can heal you. I would appreciate it if you would refrain from sending me to an early grave.”

Slate huffs a laugh and turns away from the road for half a second to give her an unimpressed stare, complete with lifted eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware I had to ask permission to speak in my own car.”

Gray purses her lips and folds her arms. “It’s not about asking permission,” she reasons, “it’s just that I’d appreciate a little warning before you startle me half to death.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Slate rebuts dryly, “let me revise: I wasn’t aware I had to announce my desire to speak anytime you’re silent in my presence.”

Gray can’t help but grin. She loves when he’ll banter with her like this. The more they spend time with each other, the more Gray is learning him. Sometimes he’ll go completely silent, or will answer her shortly when she tries to draw him out, but she’s grown to know that these moods aren’t meant as a rejection or a result of anything she’s done. Sometimes it’s because he just needs time to process and think, but Gray thinks secretly it’s that he still goes through periods daily where the noise in his head is too loud.

On particularly bad days, Gray will catch him just...staring. Sometimes off in the distance, but most of the time it’s down at his hands. Like there’s some sort of sense memory that lingers on his hands that draws his gaze and thoughts like gravity almost incessantly. The only times he has ever been terse with her is once or twice on one of these days. She was able to coax out of him once that nothing gets under his skin more than when he can’t make his brain just focus on anything. He expects so much of himself and he knows his body is physically healthy so he can’t understand why it just doesn’t work correctly sometimes.

Slate is an endlessly intelligent man in many ways, but it seems like there’s a disconnect when it comes to his own self awareness. He deeply understands emotions from others, can understand Gray’s own trauma more than anyone she knows, and yet he gives himself no grace for his own trauma. It’s a bit prideful, in some ways. Like he thinks himself better than others, that mental anguish is something that affects others, but not himself.

That would be a very unbecoming trait if he also thought that others’ anguish was invalid or a form of weakness that is beneath him, but that’s not where it comes from. As far as Gray can understand, the disconnect comes from the fact that he treats himself more like a machine than a person. He sees himself as inherently different from others in that way. Whether this is because he thinks he’s not worthy or deserving of having emotional scars or because he believes this is just how he is now, Gray can’t be sure.

She’s working on chiseling away these cruel untruths, one small tap at a time.

When Slate nudges her with an elbow and shoots a concerned look at her, Gray physically shakes off her thoughts and takes Slate’s free hand, lacing their fingers and squeezing. “The baby, right. The family is Emily and Kellan Freeman and their baby Crystal, who has had a climbing fever for a couple days, poor thing.”

“Why don’t they take her to the hospital?”

“Well that’s actually kind of interesting,” Gray says with all the interest of a sometimes furry pre-nursing student. “Usually werewolves start being able to shift around the age of puberty, but some babies, usually only ones born to two werewolf parents with deep werewolf lineage, go through a phase of pseudo shifting.”

Slate hums in interest. “Which is?”

“It’s when they kind of...flicker. Their claws will pop in and out unpredictably for a couple seconds every now and then, same thing with fangs. In really rare cases, the baby will fully turn into a little wolf cub for a few minutes.”

Slate hums again, murmuring, “Can’t exactly take a wolf cub to the hospital.”

Gray sighs in sympathy for the family, sad that things like this happen to families all over the world but happy she can provide relief to one of them. “Yeah.”

They’re quiet for a few moments until Slate huffs randomly. “What?” Gray asks.

He glances at her, then shakes his head. “Just Asher. He’s been checking in every five minutes, it’s driving me nuts.”

Gray quirks a brow. “What does he need you for?”

Slate shakes his head again and uses his thumb to start sweeping the back of Gray’s hand soothingly where their hands are still joined over the center console. “He was really reluctant to let us go by ourselves. Says he has a bad feeling about it.”

Gray frowns. Normally Slate takes Asher very seriously, even when no one else does. “But you’re not concerned?”

There’s a pregnant pause before Slate slowly admits, “I didn’t say that.”

Gray’s brows fly up. “Well? You’re going to have to expand on that for me please.”

“I don’t revel in going against Asher’s instincts, but I tried every other avenue. Asher’s at work right now, Dad’s still at a meeting for the next two days with Paige and the few other packmates who I might have tried, and Jason’s at work. There’s no one else I’m comfortable bringing to something like this with so many unknown variables.”

Gray purses her lips, now feeling troubled. “We’ll be fine,” she says to reassure herself more than anything.

Slate squeezes her hand to get her attention and when Gray looks over, he’s dazzling with a wolfish grin. “What?” she laughs.

“I’m going to be the biggest, baddest thing out there. I’ll protect you.”

Gray throws her head back with joyful laughter, worries all but forgotten. She’s got the biggest, baddest wolf all to herself. What more could she ask for?