Four
Owen introduced the two gorgeous arrivals as Dean and Liam.
If I had seen the three of them out in public somewhere, I might have assumed they were brothers. It wasn’t so much that they looked alike, as it was that they had a similarity in how they moved—they all stalked across the room with eyes of a predator seeking out its prey, glancing in every corner of the room, scoping it out. I might’ve also assumed they were military. They were muscular, all three of them, and toned in that way of men who regularly do manual labor—not carefully bulked up, like someone who spent a lot of time lifting weights at the gym, but stronger and somehow more real.
That’s with the similarities ended, though. Owen’s black hair and bright green eyes were distinctly different from Dean’s light brown hair and almost golden eyes. And Liam had blonde hair and deep brown eyes.
The two newcomers paused long enough to give me a nod in greeting before falling on the burgers as if they hadn’t eaten in days.
It was still a little early in the day for me for burgers, so I picked at one and offered the other on my plate to the men—the werewolves—who were apparently now my comitatus.
“Well,” Dean said long moments later, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin and shoving his now-empty plate aside. “Who gets to bite her?”
My back stiffened. “You’re not talking about me, are you?”
Dean blinked, surprised. “Well, yeah. I was.”
“As far as I’m concerned, no one gets to bite me unless I give express consent. It’s the twenty-first century, boys.”
Owen waved off the comment, but not before he made a soft growl under his breath. “Let’s discuss the Winter Court’s King first.”
“I’m afraid you joined us at a bad time,” Dean said, sliding into the new topic easily. “Not only are you going to have to deal with the usual issues facing any new alpha, but we’re also facing something of an invasion.”
“Not that I would call it an invasion,” Liam interjected.
“No matter what you call it, though, it’s dangerous,” Owen said.
“Tell me exactly what it is, then.” I needed the information.
“The King of the Winter Court of the fairies has taken another wolf pack as his own.”
I blinked at him, uncertain how to respond to that, or even what it meant. Owen’s announcement carried the weight of horror behind it, but I didn’t know why he was horrified.
Taken a wolf pack as his own? The King of the Winter Court consorted with werewolves? It was like a Gilmore Girls and American Horror Show mashup. What the hell does ‘taken a pack as his own’ even mean?
Dean answered as if he had heard my thoughts. “It means that the Winter King is using the members of the wolf pack as his slaves. And we don’t know if the wolves agreed to this, if they are under his orders of their own volition, or if they’ve been somehow taken over.”
“Taken over? You mean, like, mind control?”
Werewolf servitude. Now I’ve heard everything. I hope.
“Something like that.”
“You said that this was another wolf pack, right?” They all nodded. “Why, then, is it our responsibility?”
“Technically, it’s not.” Owen wound his fingers together and rapped them against the wood. “But if it is some kind of mind control, some kind of magic that we haven’t seen before, then we need to be sure that it can’t ever be used against our own pack members.”
“In the end, anything that affects local wolves—werewolves or even natural wolves—affects us.” Liam’s mouth twisted. “But that’s not all.”
“No, it’s not,” Owen agreed. “Regardless of whether the wolves are there under duress or on their own, everyone, wolves and fairies included, will expect us to have a show of power when we confront them about it.”
“And that means?” I had a bad feeling about where this was about to go.
Dean leaned forward, meeting my gaze squarely. “That means an alpha who can shift. At the very least.”
“I think the first thing we need to do is arrange for me to…what did you call it? Taking the bite? And then we should check to see if the rumors about the Winter King are true.”
All three men traded glances among themselves.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“There’s one more thing,” Owen said, tapping his forefinger on the table.
“Tell me.”
I was pretty certain that I’d lost my capacity for surprise.
I was wrong.
Dean leaned forward intently. “Who gets to bite you?”
I was about to make a joke, say that they could flip a coin or something, when the weight of their stares finally hit me. “Why does it matter which of you bites me?” I asked, my tone suspicious.
“If I recall correctly,” Liam said, “if an alpha is named before he or she turns, then whoever gives her the bite is her mate. Is that right?” His question was directed at Owen, but I was one who answered.
“Oh, no, it’s not right. It’s not okay. A mate? That’s not going to happen.”
But even as I said the words, a glance around the table brought home how very attractive these men were, and a rush of heat pooled in my belly. The wave of desire that hit me—not for one, but for all of them—made me almost dizzy.
And from the knowing glances they gave each other, they clearly recognized my reaction.
“That doesn’t matter,” I said, addressing my response. “This is not about sex. It’s about power.”
They all stiffened their shoulders and sat up a little straighter. Yep—that was it exactly. Power. No matter how sexy they were, giving any one of them the opportunity to be the one who bit me and became my mate would be to give him far too much power when I didn’t even know the rules yet.
“You’ll be expected to take whoever gives you the bite as your mate.”
The three of them all stared at me with their wolfy eyes.
“I’m expected to take one of you as a mate?”
Again, they did that thing where they all glanced at each other. “Not necessarily one of the three of us,” Owen said. His voice was more tentative now than it had been. “But it’s more common for an alpha to take a mate from the ranks of his or her top leadership.” He spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully.
“Don’t wolves mate for life?”
All three of them nodded, oddly in sync.
“You’re basically telling me I have to get married?” My voice had gone shrill. Apparently, the thought of marrying a werewolf freaked me out worse than the thought of being one.
“And in order for all this to happen…” I left a question in my voice, but the sentence itself trailed off.
“You’ll have to take the bite by the day after tomorrow in order to survive the first change during this month’s full moon.”
“And if I don’t?”
The three men looked at each other, their expressions anxious.
“You can’t be a pack alpha if you’re not even a shifter,” Liam said quietly.
“If you don’t,” Dean added, “then we will almost certainly have to choose a new alpha.”
“Oh,” I said, my breath rushing out of me in a sigh of relief. “Let’s do that. If you choose a new alpha, they can deal with this. Any one of you could be alpha. And you’d be a lot better at it than I would.”
“She doesn’t get it,” Liam said.
“Don’t get what?” There was a terrible feeling the pit of my stomach again.
“We can’t just choose a new alpha,” Owen said. “With your uncle’s death and you named as his successor, we have only one option for ousting you from your position in the pack.”
“Just say it.” My voice rose, taking on something commanding tone.
“Your death.” Dean spread his hands out open on the table, palms up. “That’s the only thing that will get you out of your position at this point. You’d have to die. And if you don’t take the bite, someone in th
e pack will certainly challenge you.”
Shit. I’ve never been a ride-or-die girl.
Five
“Challenge me? Like to a fight? To the death?” This was insane.
“Yes,” Owen said. “If you take the bite, everyone will give you through the first full moon cycle before anyone challenges you.”
“Wait a minute. You’re saying that even with the bite, I could end up being challenged?”
“It’s a different system once you’re able to shift.” Under any other circumstances, I would have found Liam’s voice soothing. “You’re much less likely to end up fighting to the death.”
“I don’t really have a choice, do I? I can’t fight off a werewolf, not if I’m human.”
“No, you really can’t,” Liam agreed, his voice still gentle.
“Okay, then I’ll take the bite, I guess.”
This took the fear of commitment to a whole new terrifying level.
This is going to be bad. I didn’t really want to be a werewolf. But more than, I didn’t want to die.
“Look,” said Owen, trying to sound reasonable, “we know this is not an ideal situation.”
“Not ideal?” I repeated. “That’s a mild description of it, I would say. Having to turn into a werewolf, take over a pack, and get married to another werewolf? In less time than it takes me to decide what gloss I’m putting over my lipstick. That’s not not ideal. That’s insane.”
Dean turned those expressive hands up and out into a half-shrug. “It beats the hell out of the alternative.” A grin twitched at the corner of his mouth.
Despite myself, I grinned, too, then rubbed my hands over my eyes. “Marriage or death. Those are seriously my only choices?”
“I’m so sorry,” Liam said. “We didn’t know how this would turn out, or we would’ve reached out sooner.”
I couldn’t imagine how that phone call would’ve gone.
“What good will that have done?” I shook my head again. “No—if I have to choose someone from the pack, I don’t know that two weeks makes much of a difference over two days.”
“How will you decide?” Owen asked.
“Oh, God. I don’t know.” For some reason, rock, paper, scissors seemed to be inadequate.
“I volunteer as tribute,” Dean said, that grin tugging at his lips again. Even I recognized the line, and I had never read the book or seen the movie it came from.
As I made eye contact with Dean, heat flared up in his eyes, and my heart dropped down to my stomach, which was busy sending fluttery feelings all over my body. I licked my lips nervously.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Owen said. “You’re not going to jump the line just because you happen to say something first.”
“I agree,” Liam said. “If there’s a pool of volunteers, I want in.”
They all turned heated gazes my direction, almost scorching me with their intensity. I could have melted into a puddle of not-yet-werewolf-alpha right then and there.
“What about the rest of the pack?” I asked faintly. “Are they all going to try to convince me to choose them, too? And will there be wine and flowers involved?”
After the flash of a quick grin, Owen shrugged. “That’s up to you. No one in the pack will be surprised if you choose from the three of us since we’re your uncle’s comitatus. But if you’d like a wider selection…” He shrugged. “That could be arranged.”
“Absolutely not. If I have to do this, I want to keep my options limited.” I had three days. I wasn’t going to try to find my true love. I needed a werewolf mate. Surely one of the men in front of me would do for that.
I just had to figure out which one would be the best choice.
“Three days,” I whispered.
What would I do at some later date, if my true love did show up in my life?
I shoved the voice asking the question back. If that happened, I’d deal with it then. Right now, these were my options.
“I have to make a final call by the day after tomorrow?” They all nodded, watching me carefully. “Then I will spend time with each of you tomorrow and make my decision the next morning.”
It was the only possibility I think of. And it terrified me.
“Today,” Owen said, “why don’t we introduce you to the rest of the pack? Then you can decide how to handle your change.”
“Sounds good. Where can I meet them?”
“Here, in the bar. I’ll call a meeting,” Liam said. Owen and Dean nodded.
“Make it for a couple of hours from now, okay?” I requested. “I need a break.”
That’s when it hit me: even though I hadn’t believed in werewolves less than two hours ago, even though I knew nothing about werewolf pack politics, and even though it was probably a supremely bad idea for me to get involved with whatever was going on with the fairies, I had already made my decision.
I’d come to The Moon Moon planning to rehab and sell the bar.
I was leaving the place planning to become the alpha of a werewolf pack.
Never let anyone tell you that your life can’t change drastically in twenty-four hours.
Six
“I’ll start making the calls.” Liam stood and moved toward the bar where I noticed for the first time an old-fashioned dial phone.
“We have a kind of phone-tree system,” Owen explained. “Any of us can call five or six members, and the majority of the pack will show up here within an hour or two.”
It sounded a lot like an outlaw biker gang.
“But aren’t there pack members who don’t regularly participate?” I asked. “My parents told me that they are technically members, and I know they won’t be here in that timeframe.” It took longer than two hours just to drive here from their house.
“You’re right. Those members—the ones who belong to the pack for the safety of it but don’t really participate—are required to attend one meeting a year. Usually, it’s the Winter Convocation. No one can miss that under penalty of death.”
My parents had always gone on vacation in early December. I hadn’t known why until now. No wonder there were never any cheesy photos of the Grand Canyon or Myrtle Beach.
“I’m going to go for walk, get some air.” I stood up and slung my purse over my shoulder. Owen and Dean stood, as well.
“One of us has to go with you.” Dean looked apologetic, but his voice was firm.
“Why? I’m an adult. I assure you that I’m perfectly capable of going for a walk around the block. Or up and down the street—whatever San Francisco’s version of around the block is.”
“Now that you’re alpha, we need to make sure you are protected at all times.” Dean’s tone didn’t change.
“Especially with fairies out to control wolves,” Owen added.
The supernatural secret service. Fantastic.
“Fine.” I shook my head because it didn’t seem worth fighting over. As much as I wanted to get away by myself for even a few minutes, I wasn’t interested in being kidnapped by fairies.
This stretch of Folsom Street didn’t have any of the steep hills San Francisco was so famous for. I found myself wishing it did—I could’ve used the chance to work off even a little of the nervous energy flowing through me.
Nervous. I laughed to myself. That wasn’t the right word for it, exactly.
I had pretty much already decided not to complicate my choices of mates by looking too closely at any of the other wolves in the pack. The three I had already met were going to make my choice difficult enough. Adding more wolves into the mix? That just seemed extra-stupid. I marched up and down the sidewalk in front of the bar, Owen and Dean flanking me. Under other circumstances, I might’ve felt the need to make conversation. Not now. I was beginning to get over my shock and was headed toward becoming angry. These men—these werewolves—had put me in an untenable position. I should not be forced to choose what was basically a husband. Not at any time. And especially not on pain of death.
Suddenly, I spun around to face
the two of them, who fell back a step in the face of my anger.
“This is not fair,” I announced. Rage flared up in me.
“We know,” Owen said.
“It’s a hell of a system,” Dean added.
“I can’t even be sure I want to be a werewolf at all.”
“I don’t blame you,” Owen said. “Most genetic wolves know they have that choice from the time they hit puberty.”
“That’s when you tell them they’re wolves?”
“Oh, no,” Dean said. “Most genetic werewolves know their options from the time they can talk. They just can’t get the bite for the first time until they hit puberty.”
Years. I should have known about this whole thing for years.
I pushed down my rage at my parents, my mom’s uncle, the werewolves, everyone. I would deal with it later.
“Let’s just go back inside the bar,” I said.
The werewolves of the SoMa pack began trickling in within about ten minutes. At Owen’s urging, I sat back down in the round booth at the Alpha’s table and greeted the pack members as he brought them by and introduced them.
They quickly began to blur together, their names sliding into one another until I could no longer remember who was who.
In a lot of ways, they looked like ordinary people. Old and young, male and female, a few children. Not as many kids as I would have expected, but that might have more to do with San Francisco’s socioeconomics than with the werewolf pack itself. Similarly, I didn’t know if the apparently high number of same-sex couples in the pack was a result of the pack’s location or if those kinds of pairings were standard in the werewolf world.
A few of the members showed up in animal form at the back door. After he let the third one in, Liam slid into the booth next to me and whispered, “Having them show up as wolves is a lot more likely at night. Plus, we’re only a few days away from the full moon, so some of these guys can’t help it.”
I leaned in closer to him, whispering out of the side of my mouth and hoping no one else could hear me. “Some werewolves have to change into wolves at the full moon even if they don’t want to?”
Wicked Souls: A Limited Edition Reverse Harem Romance Collection Page 50