Chapter 123

** Callen’s POV ** My heart swells with pride as we leave the meeting with Josh and Marcus. Since I took my place as Alpha, I’ve never been able to negotiate a deal with those two. They’ve always been polite enough, in an arrogant alpha werewolf sort of way, but they’ve been distant, never offering real cooperation, never seeing us as equals. I thought it was me they didn’t respect, that they saw me as too inexperienced or too easygoing to lead. When Ronnie found Ryder and brought him back here, I thought maybe they’d change their minds if they saw someone more serious beside me. They didn’t. But today was different. Today, they listened. They didn’t talk down to us. They didn’t laugh when we discussed uniting the packs to work together. It still feels unreal. The other packs have never been hostile toward us, but they’ve kept their distance. We were the misfits, the half-formed pack of orphans and strays that Ronnie had pulled together when he first arrived here. He’d refused every of