To Be More (Slate/Gray Book #2)

One week ago, Jackson Territory…

“So, why is it that we needed everyone to know about the wolf? What if someone else gets there first?”

Jackson rolls his eyes. “This is why you’re the foot soldier, Kyle. It’s like this--are you listening?”

“Yeah, yes, yes sir.”

“I have no need for healing, I’m not so desperate. But I know many people who do and who are--and what have I told you is most important?”

“Leverage.”

“Exactly,” Jackson grins proudly. “And I have the utmost confidence no one will be able to capture the wolf before we will.”

“So…” he frowns in concentration. “We get everyone drooling over this wolf before we snatch it up and then we have all the cards?”

Jackson nods and bares his teeth to the boy in a savage grin. “Leverage.”

Present day, Atwood Territory...

A few days later, Slate is taking a shift at the schoolhouse, helping keep track of the pack’s little hodge podge of students. It depends on the day, but there’s usually somewhere between fifteen and thirty kids there during the school day, ages ranging from toddlers and infants--present strictly for daycare--to high school students. There are a couple parents who homeschool their kids or a group of kids themselves here, but there are a few who are in completely independent online school programs as well.

Regardless of level or method of study, the schoolhouse offers the kids a great sense of community without them having to brave public school with people they’d have to hide their true natures from. Pack members from around town and ones on the property all converge to create this little haven for the kids.

Raven, a first grader, is lucky enough to study under the tutelage of Mrs. Kiddman, a semi-retired teacher currently living in town who makes her way to the Atwood property everyday with her six-year-old granddaughter, Amy. In her prime, Lenora Kiddman taught grades K through three at a public school over the course of forty years in the next county over, but now she teaches first and second graders in the Atwood pack, a group of five kids in total.

Needless to say, she’s an angel.

Mrs. Kiddman, Mr. Woolley, and Mrs. Gardiner come daily to teach, but they generally have to focus just on their pupils, leaving the rest of the kids, particularly the ones who aren’t old enough for school yet, needing more attention, so the parents who have kids in the “program” coordinate who will come in and be a kid wrangler depending on the day.

Of all the hats he wears, kid wrangler is definitely Slate’s favorite. He usually spends two or three mornings or afternoons a week down at the schoolhouse. He has too much to do on a daily basis to commit a whole eight hours--or more, for after school care--but he can afford to give a couple mornings or afternoons throughout the week.

It was...hard, the first few times he came back after the battle. With his face, that is--his scars. The older kids were wary, some even shied away just from his gaze. The younger kids were either grossly fascinated and unable to keep from staring or frightened enough that Slate almost considered just not coming back for their sake.

But the babies never betrayed him. Slate smiles at the thought. That first day he’d entered the building holding Raven’s hand, the whole place had gone silent. Raven had frozen with wide eyes at all the people staring at them, but Slate had just tried to soften the hard edge he knew had entered his gaze in the last weeks and urged Raven to hang up his backpack and go to his table.

Unusually unsure of himself, Slate had stuck to the walls for a bit, observing and trying not to distract. About an hour into the nightmarish endeavor, the Kims’ baby would not stop crying. Poor Daisy Wilcox wasn’t having much luck getting little Kira to go down for a nap and was looking increasingly frazzled. Feeling physically unable to stand hearing an upset baby for a minute longer, Slate slunk over to the middle aged woman and asked if she wanted a break.

When Daisy had first gotten a look at him, she’d visibly startled and started to shake her head warily until Brianna Adamson, the mother of a set of adorable twin girls who’d been in their pack since before her daughters were ever a thought, nudged Daisy with a knowing smile and said, “Trust him. Slate was around all the time when the girls were newborns and Sam had just been deployed again. He and the Alpha are the only reasons I survived.”

Daisy had hesitated for another long moment before relenting and transferring the red faced, wailing baby to Slate’s capable arms. He isn’t a miracle worker, but Slate had been around kids and babies enough to have developed a few tricks of the trade. He cradled and adjusted and rocked Kira much more gently and with more patience than Daisy thought him capable of until he found a position that worked. She was awed when he finally got the baby to zonk out so far she was drooling all down his forearm. Turns out the little one just liked to sleep on her stomach.

Daisy Wilcox may not yet have fully warmed up to Slate, but Kira never has any reservations with him, that’s for sure. Slate still gets stares from little children who just don’t know better--and some from parents who really should--but he has accepted that staring is just a part of his existence now. He knows his face is shocking, scary. While Slate is just as unapologetic about his scars as he is anything else, he doesn’t revel in the fact that he can never really be anonymous again. He doesn’t care that adults whisper where they think he can’t hear, but when children shy away from him...he cares.

He wouldn’t take it back. But he cares.

Today he’s taking an afterschool shift, hanging around with the kids whose parents work or need a break. There’s less than an hour to go before parents start coming by for pickup and he can feel himself flagging. He hasn’t been sleeping well and he and his father are still trying to figure out where to delegate the responsibilities that usually fall under Sara’s umbrella as her work hours taper off.

The thing is, it should be getting easier. Slate and his father may not have things completely figured out, but they’ve been getting closer and closer to a comfortable, new balance. Slate is always going to worry about Sara, but the baby seems to be growing normally and Gray’s healing is working flawlessly. The orchards need a lot less attention now that harvest season is over. Patrols have returned to a more routine schedule and have given Slate many fewer headaches than they had been for the weeks surrounding the face-off with Silas and Alpha Jackson.

So then why does it feel like every day is harder than the last?

Slate isn’t stupid, he understands that he’s experienced some traumatic events recently, but surely nearly two months is enough time to have recovered, right? Slate has always been incredibly resilient, he knows he can adapt to anything life throws at him. He’s proud of that trait. Or he was, at least. Right now he doesn’t feel resilient at all. It feels almost like he’s...fracturing.

Slate honestly can’t remember feeling like this ever before. Definitely killing men and women at age sixteen was more traumatic than what has happened in recent months and losing his mother was inexorably the worst and most traumatic thing to have happened in his life, but even that felt different than this. When he was sixteen, he had no responsibilities. He still had schoolwork and was always very active in his siblings’ lives, but no one depended on him like they do now.

And then at nineteen following his mother’s passing...well, at least then he had something to focus on--nothing is a better distraction than a crying newborn. And he had people to share his grief with, to understand. He may have rarely taken advantage of that fact, but he found immense comfort in the knowledge of it. It felt like he and Sara were a team that lead their business and then the pack, that he and Asher were a unit that worked together to keep the family going.

Now...he has never felt more alone.

He might have considered going to Sara for support, but even if he could find the words to say what he’s feeling, he refuses to add any more stress to her life right now. Maybe Slate used to be one of her top priorities, but now she has a child to think of and Slate believes more in the sacred nature of the relationship between a parent and a child than he does anything else. He won’t put stress on that bond by distracting his sister’s thoughts and energy elsewhere.

Asher and his father would really be the only other two realistic places Slate would search for support. Slate knows his father is perpetually busy with the pack and the orchards, especially now that their three-legged stool is two-and-a-half-legged at best and decreasing. Slate can’t possibly imagine himself going to his father and not feeling immensely guilty in acting like he’s more important and more deserving of attention than the pack.

And Asher...well, Asher is an option, but he’s struggling in the aftermath of the last couple months himself. Asher is gentle and kind, peaceful, nonviolent--and what he was forced to do to those rogues and Silas’ men goes against all of his natural proclivities. Slate has tried to go around to the Atwood home more often, has taken Asher with him and the younger boys to the orchards most of the past Saturdays, but it never feels like enough.

And besides, Asher is there for him in all the ways that matter. The two brothers are still in frequent contact daily through the iron tight bond that links their minds. It hardly takes a thought to send a snapshot of something funny he’d read or tell his brother to remind him to empty the dishwasher later because the dishes are piling up. In fact, a little while ago, Slate had sent an image of the schoolhouse to Asher just to let him know where he was. Asher had sent back an image of a half finished essay and asked if he could send it to Slate later to proofread.

It’s the little things, for Slate. He can live off of very little, he’s learned.

And anyway, anything he imagines himself saying to Asher or his father just sounds so dramatic. He’s not a teenager anymore and he’s been through worse things than getting clawed across the face. There’s no reason for him to be struggling so much right now, not when he’s getting everything he would usually need to battle the darkness. But this time...well, he’s starting to think he desperately needs a break, and that’s a feeling that is both uncomfortably new and incredibly frustrating. Shameful.

This is so stupid, Slate grumbles to himself impatiently. He can’t stand being inside his own head any longer, it’s becoming fuzzy with exhaustion and anxiety. He shakes his head in an effort to clear it before going to a little boy playing in the play-kitchen and asking to take a look at the menu.

He’s so tired, but he can make it one more hour, just one more hour.

:::::

“This is going to continue to be hard, Gray,” says Dr. Feldman, “but I want you to know you are incredibly strong for making the choice to start therapy. It takes guts just to say a lot of these things out loud, much less let someone else try to sort through the lasting effects it has had on you with you. I’m honored that I get to go on this journey with you.”

After an hour-long session with her new therapist, Dr. Janice Feldman, Gray only has enough energy to nod and blink teary eyes.

“We’ll be in touch, have a great week.” And with that, the screen goes black and Gray is left looking at the dark reflection of her own pale skin and glassy eyes on the screen of her laptop.

Therapy hadn’t been exactly as she predicted it would be. She’d imagined there would be a lot more needling from the shrink and a lot less gently provoked reflection. Dr. Feldman hadn’t really seemed concerned with the facts unless she felt like Gray was being an unreliable narrator--in which case, she’d led Gray through the process of reframing events in different contexts and seeing things a bit clearer than she’d ever be able to on her own. Overall, she’d focused a lot more on how past events were affecting Gray in the present than the events themselves.

It wasn’t Gray’s favorite hour of life to say the least and she feels more than a little windblown by it all, but...she thinks it helped. It was emotionally exhausting, but the feeling of emptiness she has now isn’t hollow or lacking, it’s...relief. It’s the absence of the acute pressure that has been pressing down on her since she left her home pack three years ago, maybe even before that.

It’s hope.

Gray checks her phone and sees that it’s now six pm and Slate should be coming around anytime in the next hour to pick her up for their run. They’d seen each other early this morning just after Sara had woken up to heal her, but if not for Slate’s warm hand in hers, she might have forgotten he was there. He’s always quiet, especially these days, but this time his silence seemed different. It was the kind of silence that happens when your head is so loud that you just can’t bear to add your own voice to the noise.

Her concern for him is only growing, and she knows it’s a sentiment shared by his family. Sara is already trying to convince her father to redistribute Slate’s responsibilities drastically, preferably cutting his duties in half. She knows better than to go to Slate directly, and that he would listen to their father if pressed.

The Alpha, however, is more of the mind that taking responsibility away from Slate would only be reinforcing Slate’s inner fears of being inadequate or letting people down. And besides, Slate has always said that keeping busy is the way he stays sane. Alpha knows he can’t take away Slate’s coping mechanisms all at once and expect him to get better.

Gray is afraid to add any input of her own to those conversations. Sara and the Alpha might be adamant that she’s a part of the family already, but...it’s not her place. And even if she felt more comfortable inserting herself into family matters, she thinks she would make the choice not to anyway. It would feel too much like a betrayal to Slate. She’s always loved that their relationship is unique and theirs alone. Talking about Slate with his family behind his back is something she’s not willing to do.

As she grows more comfortable with Slate, she has learned that while she might get more mileage out of asking his family about him, the answers are much more meaningful when she asks him. He has actually told her quite directly that she can ask him anything, to not be afraid.

“Gray?” A knock on her door shakes Gray from her thoughts. “Are you done?”

Gray had quietly asked Aria and Zander if they would put on headphones and listen to something else while she had her therapy appointment in her room. “Yeah, Aria,” Gray calls back. “You can come in.”

The door opens and Aria pokes her head through the opening and studies Gray carefully for a moment. Apparently deciding she isn’t eternally traumatized by her therapist, Aria grins smugly. “Your boyfriend is here,” she sings lightly.

Gray rolls her eyes, but has to press her lips together to stop the smile. “You know he’s not my boyfriend, Aria.”

“But you want him to be,” she declares with a smirk and no amount of uncertainty.

Gray sighs and hip checks Aria out of the doorway as she passes by. “I think you want him to be,” Gray smirks playfully right back.

When silence is the only response, Gray turns back to see Aria with a soft grin and a small blush on her face. Gray pauses. “You really do, don’t you?”

Aria’s smile becomes more shy as she ducks her head. “You could do worse, is all I’m saying.” Then she quickly ducks back into her own bedroom and slams the door dramatically behind her.

Gray blinks as she tries to process exactly what just happened. The last Gray knew, Aria wanted nothing to do with Slate. Apparently something had changed in the last two weeks. “Huh,” she mutters to herself as she slowly makes her way to the door. She’ll have to do some probing tonight to see if Slate had anything to do with this change of heart.

Gray can hear Slate breathing on the other side of the front door and she has to bite down on a giddy smile. Earning Aria’s approval is no small feat and it warms her to think Slate has managed to earn it when he started at an unfair deficit. She could do much worse.

However, when Gray swings the door open and lays eyes on him, her smile fades fast. He’s not dressed for running. “Slate?” She asks with soft confusion. “Are we running tonight?”

He visibly swallows. His hands are stuck in his pockets and his shoulders are slightly hunched. He hasn’t looked her in the eye yet, has just stared at the ground very uncharacteristically. When he looks up, his face is impassive, but...tight. Gray can tell it’s taking effort not to let his face tell it all.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her tiredly. His voice is quiet. “I can’t tonight.”

Gray’s eyebrows can’t decide if they want to fly up in shock or pull together in confusion. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” he sighs, working his jaw. “Just...I need to take a night off.” He can’t even look at her while he says it, gaze fixed somewhere to his left.

Gray frowns. She’d wager a guess that Slate has broken commitments very few times in his life and it’s obviously killing him to do it now. She takes another moment to examine him. He’s pale and tense. Something is definitely not right. Something has been not right about Slate for months now, but tonight something is very wrong. She can’t let him go like this.

“Have you eaten yet?” She asks impulsively.

He finally meets her eyes. “What?”

He’s sluggish and unfocused. Gray swallows and tries not to let her concern show. “Dinner tonight--have you eaten?”

“No,” is the slow response. Then he blinks hard and shakes his head. Eyes a little clearer, he straightens his shoulders and stands at his full height. He clears his throat, “No, no I haven’t, but I’ll grab something when I get home. Thank you, and...I’m sorry.”

He starts to turn away, but there is no way Gray is just going to let him walk away when he looks like this. She grabs his shoulder before he can take two steps away. “Wait here,” she says firmly.

He almost wilts in exhaustion. “Gray,” he croaks, “I really can’t tonight, I’m--”

“Don’t you dare apologize to me, Slate Atwood,” Gray huffs sternly. “Not tonight. I’m going to take care of you and you are going to let me. Understood?”

His eyes skitter away and his jaw clenches. “Gray,” he says firmer, “I really can’t--”

“Ah, ah,” Gray wags a finger at him in warning, brooking no argument. “What did I say? Don’t mess with me tonight, Slate.” When he gets a pleading edge to his gaze, her smile fades and she slides her hands down to his biceps and squeezes. “Just let it happen,” she coaxes quietly. “It’s okay to let go a little, I’ve got you.”

When his next breath catches infinitesimally at the inhale, she feels tears prick her eyes stupidly. She really cares about this man. Unable to leave him like this, she wraps her arms around his neck and just holds him close. It takes him a second, but his arms eventually settle around her waist and cradle her gently against him. His body is still mostly hard lines, but she can feel him thawing slowly.

“I’ve got you,” she whispers into his neck. She holds on tight for another moment before letting him go enough to look him in the eyes, holding him by his forearms this time, his own hands still resting on her hips. “Wait here?”

This time, he huffs a sigh, but she can see the right side of his mouth twitch like it wants to smile but hasn’t got the energy. Right now, she’ll take it. She smiles back at him and runs inside, hustling around the kitchen and grabbing the ingredients for homemade mac n’ cheese with toasted panko breading on top--comfort food at its finest.

Alexander wanders out of his room right as she’s about to leave. His eyes flicker between the grocery bag stuffed with pasta and cheese and her face a few times. He lifts an unimpressed eyebrow slightly judgmentally. “Ditching Slate?”

Gray glowers at his quick judgment, but it has no bite. “No,” she clips, but the crinkles by her eyes broadcast easily that she’s really just teasing. “I would never. We’re having dinner instead.”

Alexander’s eyebrows fly sky high. “Uh, is there something you’re not telling us here? Because if you want someone to give him the shovel talk, you’re better off asking Aria.”

Gray rolls her eyes. Admittedly, the scene she’s presenting does look rather intimate even if you don’t know Gray and Slate are True Mates, which...her siblings still don’t. She really needs to get on that. It’s a secret that has been kept too long, really, but part of her has been holding back on purpose. In the beginning it was because she’d had too many doubts about the relationship progressing beyond tentative friendship for reasons that were various and sundry, but then...then she wanted to keep it private. Special. But the time to reveal the identity--and existence--of her True Mate has come. Not this second, but soon.

“I think I can take care of myself, but the offer is noted,” Gray ends up saying dryly.

Alexander raises his hands in innocence. “Okay, message received. Have fun on your...not-date,” he says with a vague hand gesture before disappearing back down the hall as quickly as he arrived.

Feeling satisfied with the interaction, Gray double checks the contents of her bag and walks right out the front door, ready for the challenge ahead.