Annie's POV:
Because Jesse was right. I knew he was right. Jack had spent his entire life on the margins. Watching other cubs shift and play and grow into their wolves while he remained human, small, vulnerable. He'd never had a father to teach him the things boys learned from their fathers. He'd only had me. And I was wolfless. I couldn't teach him any of it.
"Boys need to learn certain things," Jesse continued, reading my expression like an open book. "How to sit tall. How to hold on. How to not be afraid of something bigger and stronger than them." He smiled. A real smile, warm and faintly sad. "How to be a man, even when they're still small."
My throat closed.
If Louis were here.
The thought came unbidden. Piercing and sweet and agonizing all at once.
If Louis were here, he would
