“Thank you,” I said, gently pulling my hand away from Cherry and straightening. If my sister thought anything about the stressed pheromones I was releasing, she didn’t say so. She simply waited for me to join her, then pressed a kiss to my cheek.
God, when was the last time she’d done that? Maybe when she’d gone away to get her master’s degree? It seemed that in trying to be the best alpha family for our pack, we’d lost what it meant to be a family. I aimed to change that.
Provided we survived.
“Let’s take our places.”
There were so many people.
I was acutely aware of not only how many people were in our pack, as spread out as it was, but also the approximate pack numbers of the two other great families. Between the Marchendi, McElroy, and Bouchard packs, we could practically make a whole city.
“We’re so sorry for your loss,” Alpha McElroy said, approaching me and shaking my hand.
“Thank you,” I murmured, a phrase I was going to be saying a lot.
The alpha was a short, shrewd man who wasn’t unkind but was rather known for his spendthrift ways. He was always looking for one discount or another and had caused enough contract renegotiations to justify my entire career for the family.
But he wasn’t an evil man. Apparently, he ran all sorts of programs for his pack, including a book-a-month literacy program. From what I heard, he got the idea from a country legend (or was it a pop star?) and it had been a huge success.
“Sorry for your loss,” his wife said. I didn’t know her well. I wasn’t really interested in social gossip, but as far as I knew, she was fairly anti-social and hated crowds.
It was hard to look at either of them and think they could be the ones who put out the hits on my siblings and contracted a magical assassin to kill my father and brother.
“Sorry for your loss.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Sorry for your loss.”
“Sorry.”
“I’msosorry for your loss.”
On and on it went, down the line of their children and then their higher-ups until it was the Chevalier family’s turn. The Chevalier family headed the Bouchard pack, and they were always late to everything, so I wasn’t surprised that they were behind the McElroys, just that they were so early in the lineup of shifters waiting to express their condolences. I had expected them to be more toward the back.
“Sorry for your loss.”
“So sorry, so sorry…”
Those phrases were beginning to merge together into meaningless sounds, an endless drone that served as background noise for the macabre gathering.
Funerals were supposed to be a celebration of life, but there wasn’t really anything about our gathering that felt remotely close to that. If I had to guess, it was because most people were either curious or shocked by the sudden deaths, since the details of the murders hadn’t been released to the public yet, and therest of my family was on high alert for someone to sweep in and kill us. Not exactly a recipe for a rip-roaring good time.
Hmm, I’m starting to sound like Cherry.
I supposed she had that effect on people.
After the other two great shifter families of the East Coast came a lot of their heads of command, and then the Parracidas. No doubt Alexandria had prepared quite a few things for the meal after the funeral. Catering really hadn’t been on my radar, but someone had handled it. I wasn’t sure who, actually.
“This truly is a tragedy,” their father said. I didn’t really interact with him much. That was more of a Chris thing, as he dealt with the personnel contract side of operations. None of the Parracidas had wolves, save for those who married into the line, but they still had skills that helped all the great families. Still, I appreciated that it was a sentence without the word “loss” in it, so I took his hand and shook it.
Then his wife. She’d been more active in our house when my mother was alive, partially because they’d work in the garden together, partially because she gave dictation lessons to Chris, Penelope, and me when we were younger. She was a rather severe woman, but not unkind, and had an uncanny affinity for roses. She always said their kisses were from beings beyond or other kookie stuff that more mystically minded shifters were into.
Then there was their son and daughter, both of whom I’d never seen out of their normal uniforms. They didn’t give condolences as much as they tilted their heads and bowed, but I took it at face value.
“Did anyone think to bring gloves?” Jackson murmured quietly once they moved on. Except it wasn’t quietly enough considering we were in a cathedral full of shifters.“I feel like my palm is going to fall off if I have to shake one more hand.”
“Use your eyes,” Penelope whispered. “The line goes out the door.”