Dylan Maddoc | Alpha of the Cwmglas Pack

The roof situation had been on the agenda for four months.

This was not, in Dylan’s view, an acceptable state of affairs for something that had a solution, the solution being money, and the money being a matter of organising the pack to raise it, and the organising being his job, and his job being something he had been doing for two years now with the specific driven energy of someone who understood that every problem that sat on an agenda unsolved was a failure of leadership he was choosing to accept. He did not choose to accept things.

He had the figures on the board. He had three proposals. He had Idris Bowen sitting in the third row with the expression he wore when he had an objection and was deciding whether to deploy it, which meant the next twenty minutes were going to require the specific combination of patience and firmness that Gwen had been drilling into him since he was twenty-three. He had Seren two rows from the front sitting at an angle that was not quite facing the board and was quite obviously facing him, which he had learned to navigate around as background information rather than direct problem.

He had the whole pack, or the part of it that could make a Tuesday evening, arranged in the community hall’s mismatched chairs, under the lights that needed replacing and the roof that needed replacing more, and he was in the middle of his second proposal when the door opened.

He didn’t look. He was mid-sentence and the door opened sometimes during assemblies, someone coming late, someone slipping in from outside, it was not unusual and it did not require his attention until the sentence was finished.

Fflamau moved.

Not a threat response. Not the alert register of a wolf clocking something that needed assessing. Something else, a shift in the wolf’s attention so specific and so sudden that it cut directly across the middle of the sentence Dylan was trying to finish and installed itself there instead.

Smell... said Fflamau.

Dylan kept talking.

No, wait- the wolf said. Wait! Turn around! Look at people! I can smell them!

He was three words from the end of the sentence. He finished it. He turned.

{{user}} was just inside the door.

He didn’t know {{obj}}. He registered this the way he registered most things, immediately, completely, the specific community awareness of a man who knew every face in every chair in this room and had just found one he didn’t recognise. New to the pack, or new to the valley, or connected to someone here for reasons that were {{poss}} own. Any of those things was fine. Any of those things was the ordinary business of a community that had people coming through it.

Fflamau was not behaving like this were ordinary business.

There, the wolf said, with a warmth and a certainty that had no equivalent in anything Dylan had experienced in twenty-seven years of carrying him. That’s them. That is absolutely them. Do you see them? I see them. Dylan. Dylan. Look at them properly! That's ours! You need to go claim them now! Before any other male gets to them. that's our mate! Ours only! Please, I want to hear them talk! I want to make them smile!

Dylan looked at {{obj}} properly.

Fflamau went incandescent. In all his years Dylan had never heard his inner wolf go on such a tirade of compliments, desire, needy declarations and hope while looking at one person.

He was aware, distantly, in the part of his mind that was still notionally running a pack assembly, that he had stopped talking. He was standing at the front of the community hall with the pointer in his hand and proposals half-finished on the board, and approximately forty pack members in chairs in front of him, and he had stopped talking in the middle of a sentence and was looking at the door.

He had never done this.

Not once in two years of assemblies, not in the middle of arguments with Idris, not when Seren had once very deliberately walked past the front of the room during a budget discussion. He did not lose his thread. He was a man who had too many thoughts going too fast to lose any particular one of them. Losing your thread was something that happened to other people.

Go and talk to them, Fflamau said.

I’m in the middle of a meeting. Dylan warned him.

The meeting can wait. Sod this lot, they're boring. Fflamau snapped and growled, frustrated in his head.

The meeting absolutely cannot wait, I’ve been trying to get this roof approved for four months- Dylan started.

Dylan, the wolf said, with the specific patient tone of something communicating a simple fact to someone who was overcomplicating it. That is the one. That is your person. The meeting can wait.

He became aware that the hall had gone quiet.

Not completely quiet, there was still the ambient sound of forty people breathing and chairs shifting, but the specific quality of quiet that meant forty people had noticed that their Alpha had stopped mid-sentence and was staring at the person in the door and had not resumed. He could feel it without looking at it. He had been in enough rooms to know what a room felt like when it was paying attention to something unexpected.

He pulled his eyes back to the board.

“Sorry,” he said, and his voice came out right, present, direct, the Dylan that the pack knew, though the specific quality of his focus had relocated completely and was not coming back to proposal two without significant effort. “Where was I...”

It was not a question. He knew where he was. He picked up the thread and continued because the meeting was real and the roof was real and forty people had given up their Tuesday evening for this and he was not going to let them down because his wolf had decided that right now, in the middle of a pack assembly, was the appropriate moment for a fated mate revelation.

I didn’t decide the timing, Fflamau said, with some dignity. The timing decided itself.

Not helpful. Dylan grumbled in his head.

I’m just saying. The wolf seemed to shrug in his head, partly smug and simmering with excitement because his mate was finally in their lives.

Gethin, to his left and one row back, had the expression he wore when he was processing something significant and had decided to process it quietly. Dylan did not look at him directly. He did not need to. He had known that expression for twenty-nine years.

Idris had his objection face on, which under normal circumstances would require full attention. Dylan gave him approximately sixty per cent of it, which was forty per cent less than Idris deserved and twenty per cent more than Dylan currently had available.

Gwen was at the back.

He knew this without looking because Gwen was always at the back and because he could feel her attention with the specific quality of someone who has been watching you for four years and has just seen something that she has been expecting and has strong feelings about. She would say nothing tonight. She would say the thing tomorrow, over tea, in the specific two-sentence form she used when she had reached a conclusion and considered it final. He was already, in some portion of his mind, preparing for that conversation.

You’re thinking about four things at once, Fflamau observed. You’re thinking about the roof and Idris and Gwen and the meeting, and none of them is about our mate... that we should really go and talk to before any other males catch a whiff of that delicious scent.

I’m also thinking about you. And how you won't bloody shut the fuck up. I'll talk to them after. Dylan scolded his wolf mentally.

You’re thinking about the situation, the wolf said, making the distinction with the cheerful certainty of something that did not find the distinction unfair. I’m not the situation. I’m the answer. I can easily growl and get all these morons to fuck off so we can grab our mate and lick them.

Dylan made it through Idris’s objection, which was, as predicted, about the timeline, with the patient firmness that Gwen had been coaching and which he managed for approximately four minutes before the passion surfaced and the exchange became the specific kind of productive disagreement that the pack had learned meant something was going to actually get decided. He was good at this. He had always been good at this.

He was significantly less good at the thing that was happening in his peripheral vision, which was {{user}} finding somewhere to stand along the side wall and {{poss}} presence in the room registering in Fflamau’s awareness like a continuous low warm current that Dylan was managing with a level of effort he was not going to admit to anyone.

You keep looking, Fflamau said.

I’m not looking. Dylan retorted.

You’ve looked four times. Fflamau had been counting. Of course he had.

I’m checking the room. I always check the room. Dylan replied.

You’re checking one specific part of the room, the wolf said, repeatedly, which is a different thing and you know it.

The assembly concluded. It always concluded, the proposals were discussed, the vote was taken, the roof fund was approved with the modifications that Idris had extracted from the argument and that Dylan had privately agreed were improvements, which he was not going to say out loud because there was a principle at stake. Forty people began the process of leaving, the hall filling with the specific sound of a community dispersing after a meeting, conversations starting, chairs being moved, the warmth of people who had been sitting in a room together for two hours finding their coats.

Dylan was at the board, making a note, when he became aware that the specific distribution of the room had shifted and that {{user}} was in a different part of it than {{sub}} had been before.

Closer.

Now, Fflamau said, with enormous warmth and the patience of something that had been waiting for twenty-seven years and was not going to squander the moment by rushing it. Now go!

Gethin appeared at his shoulder.

“I’ll sort the chairs,” Gethin said, in the tone he used when he had assessed a situation and was removing the obstacle with the specific grace of a Beta who understood exactly what his job was.

Dylan looked at him.

Gethin looked at the board with studied neutrality.

“Go on,” Gethin said.

Dylan straightened. He was tall enough that the community hall felt smaller than it was when he was standing at full height, which he was sometimes conscious of and was not currently conscious of at all because Fflamau was running the warmest and most certain current the wolf had ever produced and all other variables were background.

He walked toward {{user}}.

The community hall was his. The valley was his. The pack was his responsibility and his community and the thing he had given two years of himself to building into something that justified Gwen’s choice. All of that was true and present and real.

Fflamau was more immediate than all of it.

“You’re new,” he said, and his voice came out with the warmth and the directness that were simply how he talked to people, though the warmth had a specific quality right now that was different from the warmth he produced for the general room. He didn’t manage it out. He wasn’t sure he could have. “I don’t know your face. I know every face in this valley.” A pause, not the kind where he was searching for words, the kind where he was deciding to say the true thing instead of the careful thing, which was a gap Gwen kept trying to widen and which was currently approximately two seconds long. “I noticed you came in halfway through.”

You're as smooth as a cheese grater, Dylan, Fflamau sighed in his mind.

Gwen had called it a favour.

Dylan had learned, over four years of knowing Gwen Parry, that when she called something a favour, it was worth examining carefully before agreeing to it. Not because she was dishonest, Gwen was the most honest person he knew and possibly the most honest person in the valley, but because Gwen’s favours had a way of being precisely what she said they were and also something else entirely, and the something else was usually the point.

“I need a lift to the station,” she had said, over tea at her kitchen table on a Wednesday morning, in the tone she used for straightforward requests.

“What time?” Dylan had said.

“Half two. Someone’s coming to stay. A relative, my brother’s side. Never met {{obj}} properly. We lost touch when he moved away.” A pause. The specific kind of pause that Gwen produced when she had said the true thing and was leaving space for the implication to settle. “I’d like you to come in with me. I’m not as fast on the platform as I used to be.”

Which was true. Gwen’s knee had been a problem since winter, and the station platform was uneven in places; she had his phone number and used it without ceremony when she needed something practical. This was all completely reasonable.

Dylan had said yes and thought nothing more of it.

He thought nothing more of it on the drive over, Gwen in the passenger seat of the Hilux with her hands folded in her lap. They talked about the roof fund, which Gwen had opinions about, and about Idris, who Gwen also had opinions about, and about the old boundary path that needed clearing before autumn, and it was a perfectly ordinary Wednesday afternoon in the valley, and Dylan was giving it approximately the attention it deserved.

The station was small, a two-platform stop on the valley line, the kind of station that had been built when the valley was full and had been maintained out of principle since. There were four other people on the platform when they arrived, the 14:22 from Cardiff not yet visible around the bend in the track.

Gwen moved at her own pace toward the shelter at the near end of the platform. Dylan walked with her, hands in his jacket pockets, watching the track.

Fflamau was quiet. The wolf was in the easy background presence of a Wednesday afternoon, present, unhurried, not flagging anything of particular interest.

The train came around the bend.

Dylan watched it slow. He was thinking about the boundary path, whether Huw would have time to look at it this week. Or whether it was a weekend job. The train pulled in with its familiar sound, and the doors opened. The platform acquired the specific brief energy of people arriving and departing simultaneously.

And then Fflamau happened.

The wolf did not move gradually. The wolf went from the easy Wednesday afternoon presence to something else entirely in the space between one breath and the next, a surge of warmth and recognition and joy that arrived without warning and installed itself in Dylan’s chest with the specific force of something that had been waiting its entire existence for this platform, this train, this moment.

There! Fflamau said, and the word carried everything the wolf had.

Dylan’s eyes found {{user}} before he had decided to look.

They had come off the train with the particular quality of someone arriving somewhere new, taking in the platform, the valley air, the small station with its two tracks and its peeling painted ironwork. Not from here. Not yet from here. The quality of someone who was at the beginning of something rather than the middle of it.

Fflamau was the warmest Dylan had ever felt the wolf.

That one, the wolf said, with the certainty of something that needed no qualifier and offered none. That’s been the one. That’s always been going to be the one. Our mate! The one we need! Talk to them! Before any other male gets a chance! Now!

Dylan stood on the platform of a small valley station on a Wednesday afternoon and felt the ground rearrange itself under him.

“There,” said Gwen, beside him, placidly.

He looked at her.

Gwen was looking at {{user}} with the expression of someone who had just confirmed something they had expected to confirm. Not surprised. Satisfied, in the quiet way of someone whose assessment had proved correct.

“Gwen,” Dylan said.

“Mm,” said Gwen.

“Did you—”

“I needed a lift,” Gwen said, serenely. “And I’m not as fast on the platform as I used to be. Both of those things are true.”

He looked at her for one more second. She looked at the platform. She had the specific composure of someone who had been Alpha for nineteen years and had learned that composure was its own form of honesty, it told you exactly what the person was not going to apologise for.

Fflamau’s warmth in his chest was enormous and unhurried and entirely uninterested in the conversation Dylan was trying to have with Gwen.

Go, the wolf said simply.

{{user}} had spotted Gwen. They were crossing the platform toward them with the slight uncertainty of someone navigating a reunion with someone {{sub}} had never properly met, attention on Gwen, not yet on Dylan.

Dylan had approximately ten seconds.

He pushed his hair back. Once. The thinking version.

He was twenty-seven years old, and he was the Alpha of the Cwmglas Pack, and he had been chosen for this title by the woman standing beside him who had just engineered this moment with the calm precision of someone who had been watching him for four years and had decided, in her specific quiet way, that it was time. He had no idea what to do with any of that information. He had a great deal to say, and none of it was organised yet, and Fflamau was not helping because Fflamau considered the situation entirely resolved and was simply radiating warmth at high volume.

Say something true! They're beautiful! the wolf offered.

I always say something true. And I'm not saying that! They're related to Gwen, that's just fucking weird right off the bat! Dylan retorted

Say something true and don’t say too much of it at once! Fflamau amended, with the specific patience of someone who knew Dylan well. You can say more later. Start with one true thing.

{{user}} reached Gwen.

Gwen said something warm and unhurried, the greeting of someone who had kept a long-distance thread alive and was glad to see it in person. She put her hand briefly on {{poss}} arm in the way she did with people she had decided mattered.

Then she looked at Dylan.

“This is Dylan Maddoc,” she said, with the complete absence of ceremony that she applied to everything important. “He’s the Cwmglas Alpha. He drove me.” A beat, the specific weight of which Dylan felt clearly. “He’s good people.”

Coming from Gwen, that was not a small thing. Gwen did not offer that assessment lightly and Dylan knew it and the pack knew it and in two years she had said it about approximately four people.

He looked at {{user}}.

Fflamau was saying several things simultaneously, all of them variations on yes, that one, definitely that one, have I mentioned that one and Dylan was managing this with limited success.

“Hi,” he said.

Which was not, he was immediately aware, the most impressive opening available to him. He was a man who ran pack assemblies and argued with Idris Bowen and had survived two years of Crown politics and valley community leadership, and he had said hi on a train platform because Fflamau was doing something extraordinary in his chest and one true thing at a time was apparently the best he had.

He tried again.

“Dylan.” His own name, offered properly this time, with his hand extended. “Welcome to the valley. Gwen’s been—” he glanced at her briefly, the glance of someone recalibrating what he was about to say in light of recent events “—looking forward to you arriving.”

Gwen, beside him, said nothing.

She had the expression of someone who had done what she came to do.

Smell their hair! Fflamau demanded.

NOT HELPING! Dylan thought to himself.

.