Chapter 9: Boundaries

Liam

I was not surprised when I heard Ivy calling for a meeting.

I hoped that she had finally come to her senses and realized that not only was mating for love an inadequate choice but that my brothers were idiots. I was the only logical choice for her, and for this role.

Damien, arguably my favorite sibling, in the sense that we got along the most, was an irresponsible child. And Garrett was a loose cannon, ready to fire in whatever direction he deemed fit.

Neither of them were fit to lead, and neither of them were right for Ivy.

I made my way down the stairs and into the living room. I glanced around at them all - clearly, something had happened while I had been in my room.

Damien looked as though he was a breath away from ripping Garrett’s throat out. And Garret, as usual, looked angry. But Ivy looked upset.

I frowned. “What’s going on?”

“Pack meeting. Right now,” she said, wiping her face. She looked as though she had been crying. I glared at my brothers, I just knew that one of these idiots was to blame for it.

Damien shot a look at Garrett, and that told me everything that I needed to know. Of course, it was Garrett’s fault.

“Alright,” I said, taking a seat on the couch across from Ivy to give her space. “Ready when you are.”

Damien sat beside me and Garrett next to him. A smell caught me, and I couldn’t help but wrinkle my nose at it. It was something acidic. It burned, but there was almost something almost rotten under it, like meat that had been out in the sun too long.

I tried to ignore the stench as Ivy addressed us.

“Look. I know that you guys may be used to living a certain way with each other. I

don’t have any siblings, so I can’t really imagine what that would be like,” she said.

“But we are a pack now. We can’t just fight amongst each other.”

“We have to look out for each other and take care of one another. But part of that means that we have to respect each other. I want there to be boundaries in this house, not just for me, but for you all too. I get the feeling that you guys didn’t have a lot of those growing up together,” Ivy continued.

“How’d you know?” Damien chuckled.

I was pleasantly surprised at how insightful Ivy was. I can only imagine what my brothers and I looked like from the outside. I loved my father, but he had done a lot of toxic things to us in our youth for the sake of ‘toughening us up.’ I hadn’t realized just how bad it had been until I had finally moved out on my own.

He had encouraged us to compete with one another, to do whatever we had to get ahead of our siblings. He pitted us against each other, and openly condemned the losers.

I will never forget the number of times as a pup I’d come crying to him about how badly Garrett had beat me up, only for him to encourage me to win the next time.

I would be lying if I said that there wasn’t a part of me that resented him for denying my siblings and me a normal childhood. We had still managed to have our good times, of course.

But none of that changed who they were, who I was. I love them, I think. At least, I don’t hate them. Hating anything is a waste of time, and my brothers had devoured more of mine than I ever wanted to admit. They would have nothing more of mine.

“Well, I don’t want us to live like that here,” Ivy continued. “We are all adults and we all deserve the same respect. If one of us sets a boundary, we accept it. Deal?”

“Deal,” Damien concluded

“Deal,” Garrett nodded.

“Deal but,” I added. “On the condition that if one of us is in danger, that rule no longer applies.”

Ivy worried her bottom lip with her teeth as she seemed to consider what I said. She really was beautiful. Not in that cool, aesthetic sort of way that models or celebrities were. No, I’d had my fill of that.

Ivy Lynnd was nothing but warmth - from the freckles that painted her skin, to the brightness of her scarlet hair. She was soft, with a full figure, with an even softer stomach. I liked looking at her in a way I had never really liked looking at a woman before.

“Alright,” she settled. “Deal. But I am setting one boundary now.”

“Yes?” I asked.

“I don’t want you guys to fight.”

“You’ll find that I’m not one to start things,” I assured her.

“Bullshit,” Garrett snapped. “What about that time that you convinced me to eat a whole roll of dimes?”

Damien burst out laughing, and I couldn’t hide my own smile at the memory. It had been a pretty great idea, and if I could, I’d go back and do it again. “You had that coming,” I answered with a shrug.

Ivy glanced between the three of us. “Is it a deal or not?”

I nodded, and my brothers did the same. The smell, which I was expecting to change or dissipate, did not. As disgusting as I found it, there was something familiar about it.

“Not to be impolite,” I said, glancing at Ivy and Garrett as the two of them smelled of it the most. “But what the hell is that Moon awful smell?”

“You can smell it too?” Damien said, covering his mouth. “I was trying not to be rude but it's bad! You both smell like ass!”

Ivy blushed a little, and it was one of the cutest things I had ever seen before. “I don’t know what it is, but I think it got on Garrett and I while we were in town,” she admitted “It made me sick. I fainted.”

I did my best not to allow my concern to read on my face. “What happened?”

“I don’t really know, it just came out of nowhere while I was in the bakery, and I blacked out.”

“I see,” I said, immediately racking my brain for an answer. Yes, we shifters had incredibly sensitive noses, but a smell that was so strong it could make one of us pass out? That I had never heard of.

“Maybe you should shower and see if you can get this scent off of you?”

“We could grab that shower together, Ivy,” Garrett offered with a smirk. Idiot.

Ivy, instead of responding verbally, shot Garrett a death glare and headed upstairs without a word to any of us.

Once she was gone, Damien tossed a pillow from the couch at Garrett.

“Nice one, Gar,” Damien chuckled. “You sure did piss her off.”

“I didn’t do anything!” he cried, catching the pillow, and throwing it hard back at our brother.

“I’d reassess that stance if I were you,” I said, standing. “And go take a shower, you’re making me ill.”