Friends
The rest of the day went fairly smoothly but Grant's question still plagued my mind. Cooking had always relaxed me and helped me think so I started on dinner. Nothing elaborate, just spaghetti. I was half-way through browning the meat when the Omega from earlier joined me in the kitchen. "Beta Greyson!" he said startled to see me there. "What are you doing?"
"I'm making dinner," I answered. "I'm usually the one who cooks at our pack house."
"Oh," he said. "Well would you like some help?"
I wasn't much in the mood for company but it was nice to have a member of my old pack around who didn't hate me. "Sure." So he joined me by the stove and helped me cook. I listened to him chat conversationally with half an ear while I thought about the Grant situation. "What's your name?" I suddenly interrupted. I felt rude for not knowing.
He grinned. "Oscar Beckerman." Now I saw the similarities. The dark hair, the deep brown eyes. The slight curve of his nose.
"I used to babysit you," I said surprised. "And I worked for your grandmother Patricia. She owns the used book shop on Second Street."
He nodded sadly. "She used to own it. She passed away a couple years ago. My aunt and uncle own it now."
I felt a swell of sadness in my chest. Patricia was a sweet woman. Some of my favorite memories of this pack was working in that shop. I still remember the musty smell of old books. "I'm sorry," I said sincerely. "She was a good person."
He smiled, "She talked about you, you know. Considered you family. Even after what Alpha Holden did." His voice had turned hard surprising me.
"I didn't think anyone really felt that way," I confessed.
He nodded again. "Not everyone agreed with what he did. You should hear the way my cousin talks. You sat for him too, but he was young when you left so he doesn't remember you. But he remember the way our grandmother talk. It broke her heart when you left."
I grimaced. "It seems I did a lot of damage by leaving."
He shrugged, "She never blamed you. She always said that she understood why you had to go."
I smiled a real smile. "She was an understanding person."
He smiled back. "Yeah she was."
After that we chatted. Oscar was a really easy person to talk to. He was easygoing and good-hearted. We finished cooking about thirty minutes later. "I should get going," he said and I frowned.
"Aren't you going to stay and eat?"
"Nah," he said shaking his head. "I've got a roommate who starve if I don't make something for him."
I laughed. "Then I'll see you tomorrow Oscar."
He tipped an imaginary hat. "Tomorrow my lady."
With that last moment of dorkiness he left and I called everyone down to eat. "When did you learn how to cook?" Tyler asked suspiciously as he poked his food with a fork.
"Mrs. Greyson taught me," I answered nudging Jason with my shoulder. "She said that as least one of her children better know how to. And this knucklehead couldn't cook a piece of toast."
Jason ruffled my hair. "I can too, it's just a little burnt."
I snorted. "Your cooking is almost as bad at Trina's!"
"My cooking is not bad!" Trina butted in.
I raised an eyebrow. "You set the stove on fire! Fire, Trina!"
"That was one time!" she argued.
"It was five times!" I corrected.
She crossed her arms over her chest. "Clearly that head trauma you suffered a couple years back had permanent damage after all."
I huffed. "I wouldn't have suffered any trauma if it weren't for you!"
She gasped. "That was not my fault!"
My eyebrows shot up. "You dropped me for a third-story window!"
"I was in a compromising situation!" she shot back.
"And I was dangling out of a window!" I rebutted.
Lily stood pressing her palms against the wood of the table. "Enough! You both got in trouble because you were trying to prank the room I was staying in!"
"First of all," I stated factually, "it was a once in a lifetime opportunity considering you weren't in your bedroom so it could be painted. Secondly would you stop living in the past, Lily? That was like three years ago." Can you believe her? She is always focused on the past.
Jason laughed and pulled Lily down into her seat. "There's no point in arguing with them."
She huffed and muttered under her breath, "Children."
Dinner was nice despite the glares I'd been receiving from some of the Silver Moon members that were there. I had a feeling the only reason they didn't do worse was Grant's presence there. I helped clean up, mostly to delay the conversation I was about to have.
I'd made my decision. It was actually talking to Oscar that helped me finally make the decision.
Even though I had my answer I still doubted it, doubted myself. Maybe I was about to take the wrong path. Maybe I was about to make a mistake. I wasn't used to not knowing how to go when it comes to mates. Tristan was always there to tell me what to do. He knew the correct path whether it was due to doing this correctly or his mistakes. I really hated the self-doubt that curled itself around me like a cat curling up to sleep.
All too soon I was left with a nonentity of things to occupy my times. Still I tittered around until I couldn't put it off anymore.
I made my way up the stairs to the Alpha floor. I knocked on his door, a little more softly than necessary. I was half hoping he wouldn't hear it. He did. "Katrina?"
"Kate," I corrected. "No one calls me Katrina." I kept having to tell him this.
"You'll always be Katrina to me," he replied. "I assume you want something, why else would you be here?"
I bit my lip for a moment. "You asked me something yesterday and I never really gave you an answer."
His expression turned hard. "We both know what your answer is so you can save me the slap in the face."
He turned to go back in. I debated quickly on leaving it at that. I couldn't. "Yes," I said softly and he froze. "You asked if I could forgive, the answer is yes."
He turned around and wrapped his arms around me. I saw him bend his head down to kiss me and I turned my face so he missed. I stepped back out of his arms. He looked at me with confusion. "You said-"
"That I could forgive you," I cut him off. "But that isn't the same as saying that I want to be with you, that I want to be mates."
"Then...? "
"Friends," I answered his mostly unasked question. "Or at least try to be friends. I'm going to be here for the next few weeks. There's no need to make that harder than it has to be by bickering."
He, to my surprise, smiled. I thought for sure he'd say no to my proposal. Okay, I hoped he would say no because it would be much easier to hate him than to try to get along. "Okay, friends. It's a place to start."
My brows furrowed. "Place to start?"
He grinned, "You may not want to be mates now but eventually I'll wear you down. Being friends is a place to start for getting you to fall in love with me."
I jerked by at that word. Love. Being rejected by Silver Moon gave me serious commitment issues. "I'm not going to fall in love with you. Ever."
His grin only grew. "You will. I'm persistent."
I scowled. "And I'm not interested."
"Not yet," he said.
"Not ever." I spun on my heel and started back towards the stairs. I shouldn't have come here.
"Hey Katrina," Grant called out. "You will love me one day," his voice was serious and lacked the joking tone it had before.
"Don't hold your breath," I replied softly, just as serious, before leaving.
I ran into Tristan and the bottom of the stairs. "You made your decision."
I nodded. "I did."
"You forgave him."
I nodded again. "But I have a feeling you knew that I would."
He flashed me a crooked grin. "Knew is a strong word. But I was fairly certain that you would."
"Why?"
"Because you believe in second chances," he answered kindly. "You have for as long as I've known you."
I sighed. "Because Jason gave me one." It was the unfinished thought he was explaining. And it was true. "Jason gave me a second chance by offering me the Beta position so it's only fair if I extend the same opportunity for redemption to others."
"You're very generous that way," he teased.
I was too somber for jokes. "I said that we could be friends."
This amused him more. "I can only imagine how well that went."
I raised an eyebrow. "Maybe he thought that it was a wondrous idea.
Tristan snorted. "No one wants to be in a friendship where one person is in love with the other."
"He isn't in love with me," I said softly. "Not really. You can't love someone you don't actually know."
Tristan turned serious at my words. "You act like you're an entirely different person now than when you left here."
I laughed softly, humorlessly. "Aren't I?"
He didn't answer. He didn't need to. We both knew the truth. I am a different person than the one who left here. More than just growing up. Memories shape us, mold us into who we are. And since I left not all of my memories have been pleasant.
I went to my room but I didn't sleep. I pulled out a small leather covered journal. I hated the days I had to write in this. Not because the actual task was very taxing, but the reason behind the task. The lives lost.
Later tonight I would join those who would burn the bodies. They'd learned all they could from the Rogues so it was time to deal with the bodies. Wolves of no pack were not permitted a ground burial with a tombstone. They were unmarked in life and would not be marked in death. So the bodies were burned, turned to nothing more than scattered ashes.
I had little love for Rogues but I'd never been found of how we handled their dead. We left them to be forgotten as if their lives were nothing. That's how most pack wolves thought of Rogues. They thought they were nothing, their lives meant nothing. I've always disagreed. When the time came I went outside, in the cold.
I stood apart from the others who attended the burning of the bodies. No one was celebrating, not yet. That would come later after there was only ash. I wouldn't join in. I watched them start the flames. I watched the fire dance up the wood, twirl around cloth covered bodies. The others complained of the smell.
Burning flesh was very distinctive. I kept silent. I'd attended far too many of these. The smell, the fire, the bodies, all of it was sadly familiar.
"You don't have to be here." Jason said joining me.
I jutted my chin out at the group of complaining wolves. "Someone should be here who respects the fact that lives were lost in the past two days."
He sighed. "When will you stop punishing yourself?"
"When I no longer deserve it," I answered. It wasn't the first time he'd asked the question of me. "When I no longer have names to write in that book."
He put his hand on my shoulder but my eyes never left the flames. "For someone who believes she is damned you are awfully noble, Kate."
"I don't believe I'm damned," I told him. "That involves believing there is a hell, a heaven, and an all-powerful deity. None of which I believe in."
"I know," he replied. "But some of us do. You've done a lot of good, Kate. If there is a heaven, like I believe, then it's where you'll go."
"Do you say that as my Alpha or my brother?" I asked.
"Neither," he answered. "I say it as someone who has stood by you and known you for years. I say it as your friend. And are we not friends?"
I finally turned my gaze away from the growing flames to look at him. "We're more than that. We're family. Perhaps you are right and I wrong, Brother. Maybe there is a heaven. But if there is then there is also a hell. I don't know if either exists but I do know that my sins far outweigh my good deeds." I turned back to the fire. "Since I do not believe in an afterlife where I will be punished for those sins I shall contend to pay for them while I live."
He didn't respond. It wasn't needed. There were few things Jason and I truly disagree on and this was among them. There would be no changing my mind on this matter and he knew that.