Chapter 8: The Second Square

Maxx’s POV

I still did not know what he meant when he said he felt distant from his pack. That just wasn’t something that happened. Shifters had packs for a reason. You stayed with your pack; you didn’t leave your pack; you didn’t question your pack—those were the rules. They were engrained into every part of life. To imagine anything else would be absurd.

But AJ made it sound like he didn’t have any of this conflict going on inside him. I envied him. I wished I could hold hands with my mate, walking through the woods, without a care in the world.

Only, maybe that was unfair to AJ. If he wasn’t worried about his pack, he probably still had other worries on his mind. At least, I imagined he did. Although, come to think of it, he seemed worried about my pack. In fact, he was far more worried about them than he was about his own.

I highly doubted he had ulterior motives. And although I thought it was a little strange for him to be so interested, he had asked me a head-on question. I wanted to respect him by telling him what I knew.

It was just unfortunate that that really wasn’t very much.

“You really don’t have Satellite Alphas?” I asked.

“Nu-uh.” AJ said. “At least, not that I know of.”

I got the feeling he added that last bit in to make me feel better. I’m not sure if it totally worked, but I appreciated it all the same.

“Okay. Well. It’s, uh. Huh. How can I explain?”

I really had come to a full stop. If AJ didn’t understand typical shifter pack dynamics, then how could I describe to him what mine were like?

I saw the wheels turning in AJ’s mind. “Just start small.” He said.

“Small like you?” I smiled at my little joke.

He smiled back, which again made everything feel better. “Small like me.” He said. “Pretend you had formed a mate bond with, say, a rock. And you have to explain everything to it. Start from square one.”

“But wouldn’t that be sort of belittling to you? Cuz I mean, you’re not a rock.”

“Well, I know that.” AJ said, giving me another playful shove. “But this could be good for me, too. There’s clearly a difference between us, and how we relate to our packs. So start with your square one. That way I can learn more about you, which I would like to do. But maybe I’d learn something about myself too. Who knows?”

It was reasonable enough. For as strange as he could be, I did like that my mate seemed to have a way with words.

So I gave it my best go.

“Okay.” I said. “Square one. So, when a mommy and daddy love each other very much…”

Then AJ punched me in a joking way. “Not like that, idiot.”

“You said square one!”

AJ stuck his tongue out at me. “Okay, fine. Square two.”

“Square two.” I agreed. AJ just nodded and waited for me to go on.

I took a deep breath, trying to figure out where I should even start. I seriously didn’t want to insult my mate’s intelligence by covering super basic shifter stuff. But if he really wanted a sanity check to see if he was normal, then I trusted him on that. So I started with Shifter 101, for better or for worse.

“So, our Alpha is in charge of everything.” I said. “And what the Alpha says goes. And you can’t disobey the Alpha. It’s important that he can reach you at all times. It’s for your own safety, so that he can help you during your challenging times. And it’s important to know that you can always ask the Alpha for help, no matter where you are, because he’s always with you. But you rarely need to ask, because he’s always watching, and always ready to step in, to take care of you when you can’t take care of yourself. We good so far?”

I stopped and looked at my mate. His mouth was a little agape, like I had clearly lost him somewhere.

“Where did I lose you?” I asked.

AJ looked like he was caught between a million responses. Eventually, he settled on saying, “There’s a lot that’s different so far. Why don’t you go on for a bit, and then we’ll work backwards to figure out where I got lost.”

It sounded reasonable enough, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. Even so, AJ wanted to know, and I reasoned there wasn’t any harm in explaining the things any shifter knows. We were just confirming the basics, after all.

“Well. Even the Alpha can only reach out so far. That’s why he has a host of Satellite Alphas. It’s a great honor to be a Satellite Alpha. It’s a chance to prove your worth to the True Alpha, and if you do well, you can get promoted into his Inner Circle. But it takes a lot of work to be a Satellite Alpha. You have to give yourself over entirely to the True Alpha. He needs access to all of your thoughts and feelings, along with perfect trust. That’s the only way he can use you as a conduit, so he can reach the rest of his Children. So far, so good?”

Drat. It looked like I lost him again.

But there was more than confusion painted on his face. AJ had looked confused when I first started talking about the way our Alpha was always present, and could step in at a moment’s notice, no matter where you were. But talking about Satellite Alphas, for some reason, he seemed actually concerned.

I wanted to make sure of something, so I asked him, “Wait. Do you guys really not have Satellite Alphas?”

AJ floundered. “Maxx, we don’t have any of that.”

“Wait, really? But, without a Satellite Alpha, how can—“

“Do you mean a Beta?” AJ asked.

“What? No, no. Beta is something different. They’re a special task force which the Alpha only employs on special occasions. Only a vampire can be a Beta. That’s why people who rank like Aldris are called Satellite Alphas. It’s because they run a sort of mini-pack, with the same—AJ? AJ, what’s wrong?”

My mate had frozen in place. It was impossible to describe the way he was looking at me. No metaphor could do it justice. For instance, it was more than ‘he looked at me like I had grown a second head.’ For all I cared, I could have grown a dozen heads, and it would be better than the stare he was giving me now.

I wondered what it was I had said wrong.