So much for getting any homework done tonight, I thought as I moved down a long hallway, draped with the spiked, creeping tendrils of blackberry bushes. This entire part of the hall smelled like them, too, and as I walked, I picked off a plump purple berry and popped it between my lips. Technically, it wasn't the right time of year for the plant to be producing fruit, but wild growing things had a strange way of reacting when this many werewolves were gathered in one place.
Nic paused outside a set of white double doors, leading into what used to be a ballroom, a place where weddings and conventions were held, where hotel guests danced and laughed and sipped champagne, picked food off of silver trays carried by waiters in suits. Now, the roof was caving in and the room was a thing of derelict beauty, succumbing to blackberries, honeysuckle, and wild roses. The part of me that was human mourned the loss of the historic old building, but the part that was wolf rejoiced in nature's violent reclamation.
The part of me that was still a teenager, however, was already trying to think up a way to answer one of the thirty-two text messages I'd received from Faith. I'd essentially left her trapped alone in the countryside with nothing but her phone for company, and she was pissed.
Montgomery Graves had certainly thrown a wrench in everyone's plans.
With a nod from me, Nic opened the doors and I stepped inside to find all of the alphas waiting. There were two from each pack—save my mother who ruled alone—as well as their heirs, one pup from each alpha's firstborn litter, whichever was the strongest. It just so happened that I was the only female. Unlike humans, werewolves didn't participate in sexism. Power was based on strength, intelligence, cunning, and numbers.
Ebon Red was the largest pack; I was the strongest heir.
The alpha-sons would need to win my favor if they wanted to rule.
Inside the pocket of my dress, my phone vibrated yet again and I ignored it. First, I'd deal with this then I'd get Faith and we'd do some digging into her mother's disappearance. I hadn't forgotten those vials of vampire blood in the upstairs bathroom. Whatever Diya was using them for, it was nothing good.
For my people, vampire blood was pure poison.
Obviously, I wasn't going to jump to conclusions and start claiming my best friend's mom was out murdering werewolves—more likely she was using the blood on herself, taking daily injections to start the process of becoming a vampire—but I wasn't going to rule the idea out either.
In my world, there was no such thing as coincidence.
I glanced over my shoulder, met Nic's eyes, and then waited as he closed the door behind me.
“Zara,” Nikolina said informally as I turned back toward the room and tried to ignore all of the eyes focused on me—four sets of eyes in particular making that extremely difficult. On my left was Silas and on my right, Anubis. Standing not a dozen feet away from him was Jax, the Alpha-Son of Pack Azure Frost that I'd run into the other day. He was fair-haired and blue-eyed and not-smiling at me in a bemused sort of way that made my fingers curl into fists.
I could feel each one of them like they were on a radar inside my head, these bright blips of sound and color that were almost impossible to ignore. But I did. I focused on Nikolina as she waved me forward and I paused next to the fourth boy—Montgomery of Pack Ivory Emerald.
He looked much better now, a slight pink tinge to his cheeks that wasn't there before. That, and he was standing on his own which was always a good sign. I let myself smile and noticed that, despite everything, he smiled back. And Montgomery Graves, he had a nice smile. It was nothing at all like the wicked curve that took over Silas' lips, or the sensual shape of Anubis'.
Maybe my wanting him to take part in the Pairing was partially personal?
It'd be nice to have at least one choice for a mate that wasn't a serious a-hole. As far as I could tell, Jax, Silas, and Anubis all fit that particular bill. Montgomery had an open, unguarded expression that drew me in, made me feel like there was a chance I could actually relax around him. If he'd been a guy I'd met at school, I might have actually asked him out.
“Clearly, this entire meeting goes against the traditional rules of a Pairing,” Nikolina began, still naked and proud and dressed in silver jewelry and red-red hair. Her words explained why we were here in the second floor ballroom instead of the assembly hall. If there was one thing the older generations cherished, it was tradition. Circumstances might've required them to step outside their comfort zone, but they'd be damned if they'd hold a non-traditional meeting in a room steeped in ritual. “But obviously, time is of the essence. We're granting you permission to take your mates and begin assessing the situation regarding Ivory Emerald.” Nikolina paused and looked the boy over, dressed in a robe and nothing else, his white hair braided down his back and his eyes the color of the forest. My mother flicked her gaze in my direction. “For this year's Contribution, you're to find the source of, and put a stop to, the disappearances of the North American pack members. The Convocation has agreed that anything you get accomplished in the next few days will be considered part of the usual Pairing ritual.”
I nodded my chin, as if that was some sort of gift that they were letting me fix all their problems a few days ahead of schedule. But really, it was kind of a big deal. The packs were old and slow to change, and they liked things done the way things had always been done. Unfortunately, the world around us was changing and if we didn't change with it, it'd move on and leave us behind for good.
I wouldn't let that happen.
“Take the Alpha-Son of Ivory Emerald with you,” Nikolina added, giving him a once-over that said the Convocation had already discussed and agreed to include him in the Pairing as was originally planned. A good portion of his pack might be missing, but out of the thirty-five thousand werewolves living in Canada, about half of them belonged to Ivory Emerald. Whether we found his family or not, he was still the heir to an important throne.
“Yes, Alpha,” I said carefully, nodding my chin in acquiescence.
As I turned to go, I noticed the other boys following along behind me.
“And Zara,” Nikolina called, just as Nic was opening the door to let us out. “The Contribution is the only part of the Pairing that's been extended.”
I looked back briefly and met her eyes—but only for a second.
We both knew exactly what she was talking about.
No kissing, no touching, no intimacy whatsoever.
It would've been an easy directive to follow if the person I planned on breaking it with was a part of the Pairing at all.
A strange sort of silence descended as the six of us walked down the hall together, under clusters of hanging berries and thorny green arms. We were all well aware that our parents' collective hearing abilities extended throughout the Hall. Although I wasn't surprised by the Convocation's decision, I wasn't exactly prepared either, and I didn't know quite what to say yet.
Nic stood closer to me than he probably should've, but I wanted him there, as near to me as he could get. I knew what he was thinking; we both were having the same thoughts. Our last two days together gone, ruined, wasted. Stolen.
I headed straight for the front doors, moving down the lobby steps with the four alpha-sons fanning out behind me. My skirts swept across the stones as we passed curious faces—both human and wolf—and exited the building in a hushed, tense silence. The air hung heavy with expectations and pine, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief once my bare toes were digging into the wet earth outside.
As soon as I closed my eyes, I realized my heart was pounding furiously in my chest. I couldn't tell if it was trepidation … or excitement.
I spun around near the door to one of the SUVs, red hair flying, my dress fluttering like a sea of satin butterflies around my ankles.
“Zara Castille,” I said, even though I knew the boys were well aware of who I was. But keeping things as normal as possible was one of my goals for the Pairing. There was no way in hell that I was spending an entire year dancing a
round obscure rituals and lupine power plays with these guys. “This is Nic Hallett, my guard.”
“You won't be needing a guard anymore,” said a voice I didn't recognize. I shifted my eyes to the right and managed to catch Jax's blue-eyed stare, the same one he'd given me when I encountered him in the hallway the other day. That same laughing, mocking sort of look etched his features and made my lips turn down at the corners.
He was testing me, and I didn't like it.
Still, I couldn't keep my heart from skipping a few beats when he smiled at me.
“I'll decide when or if I might need a guard,” I said, taking advantage of the fact that my mother had neglected to mention Nic entirely. She was the one that had thrown that ominous parting line my direction, essentially telling me that what happened in the Pairing stayed in the Pairing. Nic would remain my guard until I was forced to give him up.
“Yes, Alpha,” Jax said, but his eyes were crinkling at the edges as he spoke. Cheeky bastard, I thought as he glanced away from me and toward the patches of gold light filtering through the trees to the forest floor. “Jaxson Kidd,” he added after a moment, looking back toward the other boys.
The other three introduced themselves in turn, but they didn't shake hands. Instead, they took turns staring each other down. The looks didn't last long, and thankfully, the dominance displays didn't escalate. Maybe because they all knew it didn't matter right now? Whoever I picked would become the Alpha Male not just of Ebon Red and his own pack but of all the packs. At that point, if they wanted to challenge him for his position they could, but they'd have to get past whoever I chose as my betas first.
It'd been almost fifty years since the last successful attempt. Let's just say, the odds of that happening were slim to none. Getting past one beta maybe, but both? You'd have to be ridiculously confident to take on a task like that—or ridiculously stupid.
My phone buzzed again and I sighed, reaching into my pocket to grab it, and sending off a quick text.
Sry. Crazy fam emergency. Stay put. B right there!
I was going to have to make up a good lie to get out of this one—especially considering that now that I'd been given the boys, I'd be expected to keep them. Dumping them to run off with Faith wasn't something that was likely to happen anytime soon. For the next year, I'd be with these guys nearly everyday—living with them, hunting with them … sleeping with them.
Deep breath, Zara.
While it was unusual for a Pairing to take place with more than one possible mate, it had happened in the past. A long, long, long, long, long time ago, but still. It wasn't something that was forbidden or even discouraged in either our oral or written history. Unfortunately for the, um, losers, they would no longer have their alpha status once the choice had been made. They'd be absorbed into the pack as high-ranking officers, maybe even as betas.
My decision was bound to piss a lot of people off.
Including my best friend.
Emergency?! R u ok?!!!!! she texted back, and I felt instantly guilty. Faith was way too trusting, too sweet to be involved with someone like me. Sometimes I wondered if I really loved her, would I let her go? She'd probably be safer that way. But she was the only friend I had that I knew for sure saw me as plain old Zara Castille and not as an alpha, not as a stepping-stone, a challenge.
I was too selfish to give her up.
“Climb in boys,” I said as I grabbed the handle of the front passenger side door of the Yukon and yanked it open. “We'll talk on the way—and maybe one of you can help me come up with a plausible reason why you'll all be dogging my steps for the next twelve months.”
Usually, I was pretty good with puzzles.
This one, it had me totally stumped.
I probably should've just had Nic take Faith home and drop her off, put some distance between us and hoped there wasn't enough contact with her to even facilitate a need to explain the four slightly unusual looking guys that piled out of the SUV.
“Your … suitors?” Faith asked, chewing on the end of her long, dark braid. That was a bad sign. She stopped doing that the summer between junior high and high school. The only time she ever regressed was when something truly disturbed her. I guess hearing that my mother was trying to marry me off to another well-to-do family was as creepy as learning our tenth grade science teacher had a foot fetish by finding a stack of photos of his wife's bare feet on his desk. “Um, Zara, isn't that a little medieval?”
It was. I totally agreed with her. Hell, one of our favorite pastimes was getting together and talking about how unfair it was that Diya kept trying to set up arranged marriages with nice Indian boys for Faith. Her mother often said marrying Faith's dad been a mistake and she wished she'd taken the boy her parents had picked out for her instead of running away from home to marry Craig.
“Totally,” I agreed as Nic scoffed and paced just outside the front door, the other boys milling around behind him. Well, when I say milling I mean Silas was leaning against the SUV smoking a cigarette, Jax was playing with his phone, Anubis was sitting in the front passenger seat browsing satellite radio stations, and Montgomery … was staring off into the distance with a drawn, tired expression.
As soon as I dealt with Faith, I needed to hear his recollection of what'd happened all over again. Maybe a dozen more times. A hundred. Whatever it took until we could come up with some sort of lead, some place to start our search. Of course, the Convocation would be running an investigation of their own simultaneously, but if I wanted the packs—and their current alphas—to take me and the boys seriously, we needed to make more progress than they did. As a matter of fact, my becoming alpha at all depended on it.
“So … if you agree with me than why are you doing this?” she asked, looking at me with an expression that cut right to the core. Faith was looking at me like she had no idea who I was right now, like an alien had taken over my mouth and was making me tell her that I was entertaining six suitors of my mother's choosing. I was trying to stay as close to the truth as I could, but now I was starting to wonder if that'd been a mistake.
“It's …” I started, but how did I explain the culture of an entire species to Faith when she didn't even know we existed? She was human; I was werewolf. This yawning gap seemed to open up between us all of a sudden, one that I desperately wanted to close.
“Besides, isn't lover boy going to blow a serious gasket over this?” she asked, casting a sympathetic glance in Nic's direction that surprised me. Maybe she didn't hate him quite as much as I'd thought? The question made me smile. It was a sad, resigned sort of a smile though. Nic was blowing a gasket over this; Faith was right. But what were either of us supposed to do about it? “I thought you two were, like, soul mates or something. He's been in love with you since sixth grade, Zara.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, running my suddenly sweaty palms down the front of my jeans. At least Nic and I always had a duffel bag each full of clothes in the back of the SUV for wardrobe emergencies. The dress I was wearing earlier would not have been easy to explain to Faith; the robe Montgomery had been wearing would've been even worse.
“Look,” I said, taking a deep breath and trying to ignore the hurt in Faith's eyes. I knew she looked up to me and this, thinking that I was succumbing to some whim of Nikolina's to marry into money, was not at all in line with my true personality. “It's not quite as black and white as it seems okay?”
“It seems like you're letting your mom auction you off like chattel to the highest bidder,” Faith said, her cheeks reddening slightly as she glanced through the front windows at the guys. Wait until she found out that there were two more. “Zara, you're eighteen years old; you're an adult. You don't have to do what your mother says anymore. Move out, leave. You can stay with me for a while.”
This time, my smile was more genuine.
If Faith only knew that it was the guys that were the chattel. I wasn't the commodity here; they were. But Faith had grown up human, so sexism, racism, homophobia, those wer
e unfortunate realities in her world. It probably really did look like I was being auctioned off. In the world of werewolves however, those things didn't exist. Gender, skin color, sexual orientation … unimportant. We dealt with different rules: speed, strength, tooth and claw. That's how pack hierarchy was determined.
“I'll make you a deal: let's just hang out with them while they're in town and … if you don't like any of these guys, I'll tell Nikolina to go to hell.”
Faith eyed me suspiciously, like she didn't believe a word that was coming out of my mouth. The thing was, I was telling the truth. Well, sort of. While they're in town was a bit of a misnomer considering they'd be hanging around for an entire year. But I was serious: if Faith didn't like a single one of the alpha-sons, I would turn them all down. The tricksy part of this equation was that I knew Faith Cassidy all too well; she liked everybody. Honestly, Faith was almost too trusting, generous to a fault sometimes. If it turned out that she really didn't like any of the guys, then I was in trouble because she always let her boyfriends get away with murder.
After a moment, she sighed, the wariness draining from her face like it was never there. Faith released the death grip on her braid and swung the long hair over one shoulder.
See what I mean: too trusting.
“Fine. Let me grab my stuff and you can introduce me to your … suitors.”
She turned and headed up the steps to my room to grab her things while I stepped outside and surveyed the alpha-sons and their slightly unnatural pigmentations. Jax was just a little too blue-eyed, Montgomery's hair slightly too pale. Silas' eyes were clearly not natural, and Anubis … his blue-black hair and crimson eyes were definitely not human.
Normally, wigs or contacts would be in order before the boys would be allowed to have contact with humans, but I didn't want the divide between my old life and my new one to get any bigger than it already was. Colored contacts and hair dye should do the trick—at least when it came to Faith. You know, the whole trusting thing again.
Pack Ebon Red (The Seven Mates of Zara Wolf Book 1) Page 7