by Lola Gabriel
Marin’s mom snorted down her nose.
“Since when have we cared what other people think?” she said. “Maybe those busybodies should spend less time judging our boys and more time worrying about their own behavior. I bet if everyone in the pack did a little more of that, then we could all get along so much better.”
Marin opened her mouth to tell her mom that this was more than just idle busybodies gossiping. The things they were discussing had actually happened and the neighbors were getting sick of putting up with the twins and their lack of discipline. Before she could respond, her father spoke to her.
“Marin,” her father said gently, speaking up for the first time since Marin had entered. “It’s not that we can’t control your brothers’ behavior, it’s more that there’s nothing to control. They aren’t doing anything wrong. They’re wolves, Marin, and they’re following their natural instincts. The people who are complaining are just jealous because they’ve become so conditioned to act in a way that goes against their nature that they forget there is another way. They see the boys acting like wolves and they crave that freedom for themselves.”
“That’s not true and you know it,” Marin said, shaking her head. “We’re all wolves and none of us three feel the need to go out and wreak havoc, do we? The natural instinct of a wolf isn’t to go off and do whatever the hell they like. The natural wolf instinct is to be a pack member and to follow the rules set forth by the alpha couple so the whole pack can flourish. And Lewis and Kyle are doing the opposite of that. They are the epitome of doing whatever the hell they like, despite the consequences to themselves and others.”
“Don’t you think you’re exaggerating a little bit there?” Marin’s mom said. “I know they’re not exactly the model of good behavior, but they’re hardly doing the opposite of what the alpha couple expects. What did they do this time? Skip school again? I’m sure the alpha couple isn’t ready to banish us all because of that.”
“No,” Marin sighed. “I wish that was all it was. If it was, I might even agree with you. But this is so much more serious than that, Mom. This time, they turned in front of a human. Some guy that caught them acting out in public and told them off. They turned and scared him half to death. Luckily, no one believes him that two teenagers turned into wolves before his eyes—they think he was hallucinating or something—but that’s hardly the point, is it? They could have believed him. Please tell me you can see how serious this is. They could have given away their identities—all of our identities. What if the man had been a hunter? They could have put the whole pack in danger.”
Marin stopped and waited for the seriousness of the situation to register with her parents. After a moment, her jaw dropped in surprise when she saw the look of amusement pass between her parents.
“Are you smiling?” she demanded of her father.
He looked at her mom and she smiled back at him. He looked back at Marin and nodded, the smile stretching across his whole face.
“Of course I’m smiling. Marin, like it or not, we’re superior to humans. They’re weak, we’re strong. And I for one am sick to death of us always cowering away in the shadows, hiding from them. If anything, it should be the other way around. So, yes. I’m smiling at the thought of my boys putting some interfering old human in his place,” Marin’s father said. “And the fact that the other humans now think he’s crazy is just the cherry on the sundae, isn’t it?”
“And you don’t care at all that their actions were reckless and they could have compromised us all?” Marin asked with another loud sigh.
“Relax, honey. You said it yourself—no one believes the man saw what he saw. No harm has been done,” her mom put in.
Marin sighed in exasperation, shaking her head. Talking to her parents was frustrating her more than she had anticipated. It would be easier to reason with the boys than with them, Marin thought.
It was becoming clearer to Marin by the minute that she was never going to get through to her parents about the boys needing to be reined in a bit. It wasn’t so much that her parents were bad parents or that they didn’t care about the boys, it was just that the boys knew exactly where the line was and they made damned sure they never crossed it. They knew that their parents believed they shouldn’t bow down to humans and so they knew this latest stunt wouldn’t land them in the kind of trouble it should land them in. The trouble here was that Marin’s parents’ line in the sand was in a much different place from the line the rest of the pack were expected to toe.
Marin knew that at some point, if the boys’ behavior continued to go downhill in this way, the rest of the pack would intervene and force her parents to deal with them or send the whole family away. Marin didn’t want it to come to that—a pack at war with each other was not only unpleasant for everyone involved, but it made them weak. While they were fighting with each other, they were less likely to notice a common enemy encroaching on them. And the thought of being exiled, shamed, and alone was almost too much for Marin to bear.
Despite knowing all of this, Marin also knew that it was pointless to try and explain any of it to her parents. She had tried enough times in the past and her parents had always insisted that enough of the pack felt the same way they did about cowering away that if the issue came up, things would finally change and the wolves would get the recognition they deserved. Marin didn’t think that was the case at all. Even if enough of the pack secretly believed that, Marin was certain most of them would keep that opinion to themselves and continue to follow the alpha couple. And where would that leave her and her family? Back in one of the predicaments she kept imagining, that was where.
Marin was pulled out of her thoughts when the front door opened and slammed shut again. She heard laughter from the hallway, voices calling out and bangs from the owners of those voices shoving each other playfully into the hallway walls. Marin looked up as her brothers came into the room, matching grins on their identical faces.
“Hey, Marin,” Kyle said, grinning at her.
Marin started to return his smile and then she remembered that she was mad at the twins and stopped herself. Lewis elbowed Kyle.
“Uh oh, Marin’s pissed off,” he said.
“Again,” Kyle agreed.
They both laughed and Marin rolled her eyes, trying to swallow down her annoyance at the boys’ dismissal of her anger. She reminded herself that they were the kids. It was her parents she should be angry at really, not them.
“Enough with the language,” she said. “And…”
“And I hear you turned into your wolf form in front of a human?” Marin’s father interrupted her, finishing the sentence she had been about to say.
Marin glanced at her father. He was looking at the twins expectantly, awaiting their response. Marin bit her tongue, letting him take over, pleased that he was finally stepping up. Kyle nodded his head.
“Yeah,” Lewis said. “But he was yelling at us, thinking he could scare us. We had to show him that he can’t go around acting like that toward us. Right, Dad?”
“Right,” he said, his serious expression melting away and becoming a grin.
“You did the right thing, boys,” their mom added.
Marin felt her temper rising again and she stood up. This was the last thing she had been expecting when her father stepped in, although now that it had happened, she figured she probably should have seen it coming.
“No,” she said, shaking her head furiously. “No. They absolutely did not do the right thing. Kyle, Lewis, you both know that, right?” She didn’t pause for them to respond, afraid that they didn’t really know it. “The man only yelled at you two because you were causing trouble. If you behave yourselves, then people won’t yell at you. And if something like that happens again, you must never ever show your true form to a human. What is it about this that you two can’t seem to understand?”
“That’s enough, Marin,” her father said. “In case you haven’t noticed, your mother and I are the parents here.”
<
br /> Are you? Marin thought, but didn’t say. Because surely then you should be stepping up and having this conversation with the twins instead of me.
“But…” Marin started, trying to think of a nicer way to voice her thoughts.
“No, Marin. No buts. The boys did nothing wrong and I won’t have you chastising them and making them feel like they did. Am I making myself clear?” her father said, interrupting her before she even had a chance to speak.
“Perfectly clear,” Marin said coolly.
“Good,” her father said.
“Boys, why don’t you tell us what happened? I want to know what that nosy old human’s face was like when you turned,” Marin’s mom said.
Marin shook her head and headed for the door. Her mom sounded like she was excited to hear more, as though the boys were giving her some juicy piece of gossip and Marin didn’t want to hear any more. She didn’t think she would be able to bite her tongue for long enough to hear the twins telling their story and watch her parents lapping it up.
“I’m off,” she said. “I’ll be by tomorrow to watch the boys after school until you come home from work.”
“We don’t need to be watched. We’re not children anymore,” Kyle protested.
“Clearly, that’s not true,” Marin said before she left the room.
It was the one little streak of rebellion she had allowed herself since her father had made it clear to her that the discussion about the boys’ behavior was over. As much as Marin disagreed with her father’s philosophy, she knew when to stop pushing him and that had been the time. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t be speaking to the boys tomorrow when they were alone, though. She had to try something to make the boys see that her parents’ attitude wasn’t normal and that adults followed the rules because it was the right thing to do. If the twins wanted to be treated like adults, then they needed to start to do the same thing too.
2
Rocco Lang was surprised when he was asked to come to his parents’ place. He had over a week to wait until his twenty-ninth birthday when he would take the enchantment the heir of every shifter pack alpha couple took. The enchantment would lead him to his true mate, his soulmate who would lead the pack alongside him one day, and he was excited to take the enchantment and find the woman who would be by his side for all of eternity. He had expected that to be the next time he was officially summoned to his parents’ place.
He made his way to their house and sauntered up the garden path. He wasn’t nervous. If anything, he was excited, hopeful that maybe the enchantment was going to be given to him early. He went into the house and made his way to his parents’ study. He found both of them in there as he had known he would. They sat at desks opposite each other, both of them engrossed in some task or another. Rocco’s father looked up when he tapped on the open door. He smiled at Rocco and took his glasses off.
“Rocco is here, Evelyn,” he said.
“I know. I’m not blind,” Rocco’s mom laughed. “Just give me a second to finish this.”
Her fingers danced over her keyboard for a second and then with a flourish, she hit a final key and looked up from the screen and smiled.
“Good morning, dear,” she said to Rocco. “How’s things?”
“Good,” Rocco said. “How about on your end? Anything I should know about?”
“Nothing major,” his mom replied. “Although we do have a rather important job for you to complete today.”
Rocco nodded and smiled, although his heart sank a little bit. He had pretty much convinced himself that he would be getting the enchantment early for some reason, and hearing that he wasn’t brought home to him how fruitless his hope had been. It also made him want it more. He was desperate to find the one and settle down.
“Michael, you explain what we need him to do,” Rocco’s mom said.
Rocco turned his focus to his father, who nodded his head.
“The Bailey twins,” he said. “Do you know them?”
“I know of them,” Rocco said. “Aren’t their parents friends of yours?”
“Friends is a stretch,” Rocco’s father replied. “They move in the same social circles as we do, but they’re hardly friends.”
“Okay,” Rocco said with a shrug. “So, what about them?”
“The twins turned into their wolf form in front of a human for no good reason. There was no emergency or anything like that. Luckily for the pack, the story sounds too ridiculous to be true so the human is assumed to have been hallucinating. Nevertheless, we can’t risk this kind of thing becoming the norm. We need someone to go and have a word with the twins, make sure they understand the potential consequences of their actions, and get their word that they won’t do this again,” Rocco’s father explained.
“Okay,” Rocco said, nodding his head. “So I take it the consequences will be exile?”
His father nodded gravely.
“Yes. And not just for the boys—for their parents too, as they don’t seem to be doing enough to keep the boys in line,” he replied.
“They don’t seem to be doing anything at all to keep the boys in line,” Rocco’s mom put in.
Rocco nodded his head.
“Got it. You think they might hear it louder coming from a member of the ruling alpha couple’s family than from their own people. And, of course, if one of you goes, it makes it seem like a much bigger deal than it actually is in this moment,” Rocco said.
“Something like that,” his father said with a smile. “The boys are obviously at school right now and I believe that both of their parents work, and I don’t know what arrangements they have in place for the boys until their parents get home, so I would suggest you visit maybe around six p.m. tonight.”
“Okay. Six o’clock it is, then,” Rocco said with a smile.
He said his goodbyes and left his parents’ place, heading back toward home. He was a little bit disappointed that the meeting hadn’t been about the enchantment, but he knew he didn’t have long to wait for that anyway. And if he was honest with himself, Rocco was pleased that his parents were trusting him with this task. It felt important and Rocco was happy to start doing jobs within the pack. If somehow he could get through to the boys and help them get back onto the right path, then he would consider that a job well done and something to be proud of.
Rocco raised a fist and knocked on the Baileys’ front door. He made sure his knock sounded official enough to make sure his call was answered fairly quickly, but not loud enough to be scary for the people inside. Within seconds, a harried-looking Mrs. Bailey opened the door. She smiled when she saw Rocco standing on her porch.
“Rocco. To what do we owe this pleasure?” she asked.
The Baileys were known within the pack to be trouble. The twins ran wild and pretty much did what they wanted to do. But the family was well-to-do enough that they were known to the ruling family. Until the meeting with his parents that morning, Rocco had always believed his parents and the Baileys were friends. Now he thought it was more likely a case of his parents maintaining a courteous relationship rather than being friendly with them. Clearly, Mrs. Bailey didn’t see it that way, if she was smiling at Rocco dropping in. It was easier in the moment to let go of all of that, though, and just let the Baileys still think they were friends with his parents.
“I’m actually here to talk to the twins,” Rocco said, returning Mrs. Bailey’s smile. “Are they home?”
“The twins?” Mrs. Bailey said, raising an eyebrow. “What on earth could you possibly want with them?”
She didn’t step back to let Rocco inside and it was clear to him that she was waiting for him to say more. He knew how to play this; if he kept the reason to himself for now, her curiosity would get the better of her and she’d play along. If he gave too much away, she might refuse him access, and then he would have to call in the royal guard, otherwise the pack would get the impression the ruling family was going soft, and as much as the Baileys could be irritating, Rocco didn’t want to g
o down that road. If the royal guard became involved, then everything would become super official, and this meeting would no longer be an informal conversation where Rocco gave the twins a stern but friendly warning and hoped they complied.
“Yes, the twins,” he said simply, ignoring the second part of her question.
Mrs. Bailey peered at him for a moment longer and Rocco forced himself to remain silent, letting the awkwardness drag on for a couple of long moments before Mrs. Bailey sighed and stepped back.
“I suppose you’d best come in, then,” she said.
Rocco breathed a sigh of relief and smiled his thanks at Mrs. Bailey as he passed her. She nodded to a door off the hallway.
“You can go in there to wait,” she said. “I’ll go and get the boys.”
Rocco went through the door Mrs. Bailey had gestured to, surprised to see a young woman in there in the process of putting a light blue jacket on. She had her back to him, but she turned to face him as she heard the noise behind her.
“Who was at the…?” she started. She trailed off when she saw Rocco and not her mother standing there. “Oh.”
She sounded a bit startled to see Rocco rather than her mother, and while Rocco would have liked to have reassured her, he was frozen, unable to speak, his eyes glued to the vision of beauty before him. The girl had long, red hair and the most beautiful, shining green eyes Rocco had ever seen. They were like two emeralds and Rocco saw her long, dark lashes as she cast her eyes down for a moment, her cheeks flushing pink as she bit her bottom lip.
Rocco tried to look away from the girl, aware that too much time had passed with his eyes on her, but she had him mesmerized and he found that all he could manage to do was move his gaze from her face down to her feet and back up again. He saw her womanly figure, her hips curvy and her breasts large. He saw how her waist nipped in and he imagined himself putting his hand on the curve of her hip, rubbing over her waist, pulling her toward him and holding her against his chest.