Janelle had stayed so quiet through the entire story, he became worried she felt the same way about his situation as his pack did.
But when he glanced up, he saw nothing but understanding in her eyes. “I’m glad you followed your dreams, Mag. So few of us get the opportunity to and I’m really glad you took yours.”
A knock on the room’s door saved Mag from having to answer.
“Do you mind getting that?” she asked him. “I still have to put on my mascara.”
Of course he didn’t mind, but he was a little confused when the uniformed clerk outside the door handed him a medium-sized square box with a FedEx logo on it.
“This arrived yesterday, but you weren’t here when we came up to deliver it the first time. We wanted to make sure you got it before you left.”
“Thanks,” Mag said, frowning down at the shipping label. It was from Erico Motorsports and addressed to him, but he’d never been to that motorcycle shop in his life, much less ordered anything from them.
“Open it.”
He looked up. Janelle was standing in the bathroom doorway, watching him with a small smile on her face.
So he opened it… and pulled out a helmet. Sleek and matte black with the name Ducati racing up its jawline. The helmet was so well designed, it seemed to have an engine of its own underneath its triangular red logo, one smoother and much quieter than his Ninja’s. He stared at it, speechless.
“I thought you might be more open to wearing a helmet if you had a nicer one,” she said.
“I don’t…” He had to struggle a few times to finish the sentence. “I don’t know how to thank you for this.”
She bent her chin down and looked up at him with a sweet smile. “The only thank you I need is you actually wearing it. I know you’re tough, but I really don’t want anything bad to happen to you, so I need to know you’re safe when you’re on that monster bike of yours. I need you to always wear a helmet. Can you promise me that?”
What she didn’t understand was that a Ducati helmet, especially one this slick, cost more than his used Kawasaki Ninja had. It would be like putting Asanti rims on his family’s shitty two-bedroom RV. He’d look like a wannabe douche to anyone who saw him if they knew anything at all about motorcycles.
But he didn’t tell her any of that. He just said, “Yeah, I can promise you that.” Then he promised himself that one day he’d buy a motorcycle to match the helmet she’d gifted him. If he had to kill himself at practice, kiss the Lupine Council’s ass, tackle every quarterback who tried to get past him, he’d do it if it meant getting a multi-million dollar contract. He do it with a big-ass smile on his face if it meant he could one day wear the helmet she’d given him without embarrassing the shit out of himself. And until that day, he’d just wear the scratched up Bell helmet that had come with the bike when he bought it on Craigslist.
“Good,” she said, smiling up at him like he’d made all her dreams come true.
It made his heart ache. She made his heart ache. This whole situation made his heart ache. And he suddenly wished he’d thought to put her on top that weekend. Girls with as little experience as her usually found it hard to steer when they got on top, especially with him being as big as he was. But he wished he had taught her, that he’d been able to feel her hands warm on his chest as he watched her riding him, taking pleasure in him.
Next time, he told himself. Then he said to her. “We better get going.”
There was traffic on I-70 and they got to the airport with only forty minutes to spare. They both removed their helmets when they got off his bike, and he had every intention of just giving her a quick hug and a kiss.
But when she looked up at him with a sad smile in her eyes, the words he’d been trying not to say all morning fell out of his mouth. “I love you, baby.”
She stared up at him, her mouth o-ing in surprise.
“I know it’s a real pussy move on my part, but I couldn’t let you leave here without telling you that.”
The most tragic look of sadness came over her face then, like he’d just confessed to running over her puppy with his motorcycle. So it was a surprise when she answered, “I love you, too. And when I go home, I’m going to figure out a way to tell my parents about us. I thought I could go along with their plan—but I can’t. I don’t want to. I want to be with you.”
The feeling that came over him when she spoke was like every good thing that had ever not happened to him in Freedom Town arriving in the mail, like a debt owed for a life of hard scrabble.
“I want to be with you, too,” he said, pulling her into his arms and holding her so tight, there just might be a chance of his smell staying on her long enough for her to make it back to Alaska and tell her parents she was with him now. “I love you, baby. I want you to be my girl, and I want to be your boyfriend, okay? Can you let me be your boyfriend? I want us to be together so bad. You don’t even know…”
But maybe she did know. The way she kissed him then, strong and hard, like she wasn’t ever going to back down from the decision to love him back—it left no doubt in his mind she’d meant every word she said and wanted to be with him as badly as he wanted to be with her.
9
JANELLE loved him, too. Janelle loved him, too. Mag played the best game of his life that afternoon. Fifteen tackles, two interceptions. The defensive line coach slapped him on the back as he came back off the field, their team having easily won the game 45 to 17.
“You keep playing like that and you’re going top three in the draft pick, son!”
His teammates praised him with a shower of Gatorade inside the locker room. Then Rafe made a speech about his performance at the after-party at a local bar. The only thing that could have made the day any better would have been if Janelle had been there to see it. And if his asshole teammate, Kenny, hadn’t.
The defensive tackle sat in the booth closest to the door with three of his football buddies and yet another of his townie blondes. But while his teammates and the blonde were having a good old time, you wouldn’t know Kenny was on the winning team by the way he’d been scowling at Mag all night.
When Mag caught him glaring at him for the fifth time that night while he was walking over to the bar to get another free round of beers, he decided to do something about it.
“Something wrong with your eyes?” he asked Kenny as he passed by the table. “Cuz I don’t swing that way.”
Kenny’s eyes flicked over him, his hatred clear. “Notice you haven’t been talking to any girls all night. Maybe you do swing that way.”
Mag shrugged, keeping his face as expressionless as possible, even as the thought that none of the girls in this bar could hold a candle to Janelle popped into his head.
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m on the fence. But I still wouldn’t do your ugly ass, yeah?” He knocked on the table and left it at that.
Mag would rather have Kenny and his buddies think he was bi than cause any trouble with Janelle at home. One: he didn’t really care what Kenny and his buddies thought of him. None of them were draft-level material, even with their extra wolf strengths. And two: he was secure enough in his manhood that he didn’t have to take offense if he was mistaken for someone who got down with other dudes.
Still, he made sure to flirt with the pretty brunette bartender as she pumped beer into four steins for him. She had a body like Janelle’s, he noticed, but without the butt and thighs he loved to grab onto as he was… and now he was hard again. Hell.
He went back to the high round table where Rafe was standing, his arm slung around his pretty little fiancée’s shoulders while he talked about the game with Grady.
Mag was a big, tough motherfucker, often compared to a truck by the players he took down. However, Grady made him look like a Mini-Cooper, with his barrel chest, legs the size of tree trunks, and a buzz cut that not only made you think of the army, but of the tanks the army guys got around in. If anyone deserved to go to the NFL, it was the blond wolf from Okla
homa. But the reason he wouldn’t be going was evident in the way he used his hands to talk with Rafe rather than his mouth.
It was shitty but true: there was no way in hell the Lupine Council would be giving what they considered a defective wolf a wild card to play in the NFL. Still, Mag respected the hell out of him. Like Mag, Grady had come from a less than pretty background. He’d been born the first son of a mange king, as they called the alphas whose state packs didn’t have a shitload of money and made up for their lack of resources with small-time meth dealing… mostly to humans but they had no problem selling to wolves, too.
Not only had the crown that was supposed to go to Grady already been earmarked for his younger brother, his mean-as-fuck dad hadn’t even considered Grady fit to serve as his brother’s beta. Grady had been forced to teach himself ASL, and to this day, no one in his kingdom pack understood a word of it. From what Grady had told Rafe and Mag over the years, it had been an upbringing that made Mag’s look like an episode of Family Ties. Mag’s parents had been fucked up, but at least they’d loved him and his brother equally.
So Mag had mad respect for his fellow linebacker. Grady had made it out of Oklahoma and he was glad Rafe had no plans to let their friend go back to that life. Rafe would be inheriting the state crown the year he turned twenty-five, and he’d already formally asked Grady to be his beta, his first line of defense between him and any would-be challengers to the throne.
Proving how close the three of them had grown during the years since they met at their first college football practice, Grady had quickly agreed to lay down his life for Rafe and fight anyone who would think to take Rafe’s crown.
“Here let me help you with that,” Chloe said, taking two of the beers Mag had clamped under his arms. “You know, I was thinking of trying out this beer recipe that belonged to Benjamin Franklin while you guys are at your away game next weekend. I found it online and it looks pretty solid. If I get the brew right, it might be ready in time for a big celebration after finals!”
Mag rubbed his hands together. “Tell me more, tell me more. Especially about the food part of this celebration.”
Chloe had a talent for cooking, crafting, and recreating anything she wanted, completely from scratch. Rafe called it “extreme DIY,” and he acted like it was an out-of-control hobby he indulged but wished Chloe would just let go of already. However, Mag’s stomach rumbled at the thought of the back-to-school dinner she’d prepared for them. A lamb dish so succulent and tasty, Mag, who hadn’t even known he liked lamb, ended up asking for fourths.
Chloe laughed. “Well, I could make a party version of that lamb curry dish you liked so much and maybe…”
His phone went off in his back pocket, and his heart lit up when he saw Janelle’s number pop up on the caller ID. “That sounds great, Clo. Hold that thought… I got to step outside to take this call.”
“Who is it?” Rafe asked.
Mag cringed a little inside. Rafe might be richer than every other wolf on the team, but unlike Kenny, he’d never been a dick about his wealth. He’d given his pledge to Chloe, a girl who’d been fostered by his kingdom town, seen the value in a “defective” wolf from Oklahoma, and hadn’t hesitated to befriend his first-year dorm mate, even after finding out he’d grown up in an RV and came from the trashiest pack in Alaska. Mag felt worse than bad about lying to him
But he’d promised Janelle early on that he wouldn’t tell Rafe, and he’d rather lie to him than break even his smallest promise to her.
“Kang,” he answered, hating that he was using his brother to sell his lie.
He answered the phone as soon as he cleared the back entrance of the bar. “Hey, b—”
“Hello, Maguyuk. It's Janelle, the she-wolf you ran into yesterday.”
Mag froze. He could tell immediately something wasn't right, just by the way she said his full name.
“Yeah, hey Janelle.” He thought about her parents, the ones she'd promised to tell about their relationship before she left that morning. Maybe they were there with her? “Everything alright?”
“Everything’s fine. And I’m sorry for interrupting, as I know you probably weren’t expecting me to call,” she said. “But there’s something I want to discuss with you. I should have told you this before, but I’m one of the Alaska princesses. The oldest daughter of the family.”
“What?” he said, wondering if he was hearing her wrong. He had to be hearing her wrong. “You’re black.”
“I’m half-black actually,” she said. “My father is King Tikaani, my mother is the former Princess of Detroit. I’m sorry if I didn’t make that clear to you when we last spoke.”
She sounded so cold. Like a businesswoman with a stick up her ass, not like his Janelle.
“Janelle,” he said, suddenly growing scared for her. “Are you okay? Where are you? Who are you with?”
“Actually, I’m in Alaska with my fiancé, Jeffrey Varg, the Crown Prince of Wyoming.”
His heart stopped, like someone had put a shotgun straight to his chest and blasted a hole through it. “You’re pledged to the Prince of Wyoming?”
“Yes.” Her voice was clipped, no emotion whatsoever.
He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe… “Why— why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“It didn’t come up,” Janelle answered. “But I am engaged. Happily engaged, and I won’t be visiting Colorado again unless I’m being received by Rafe at his home. Anything else would be inappropriate, and I hope you can understand why we can no longer remain friends, especially given your background.”
When he would think back to this night in the years to come, he’d wonder why he didn’t blow her cover right there. Why he didn’t yell, “Fuck you, Janelle. Fuck you like I fucked you all over that hotel room for the past two days!” into the phone, loud enough for Prince Jeffrey to hear. Why, instead, did he just say, “Okay, yeah, whatever,” and hang up by whipping his phone against the bar’s brick wall, receiving exactly zero percent satisfaction when it shattered into pieces upon impact.
He guessed it was for the same reason he never breathed a word of what had happened between them to anyone. Not to Rafe, to Grady, or his brother—no one. Love—that’s a pretty powerful emotion, but hate—that’s something else. And a hate so bad you know you won’t be able to rest until the person who made you feel that way is punished? You can move mountains with that kind of hate. You can do just about anything if you have enough of it in your heart.
Fuck, love. That night Janelle gave him enough hate to change the course of his life forever.
10
Three years later
THE sun was not shining when Janelle woke up. Of course it wouldn’t be. It was January in Interior Alaska. Their small town would be lucky if the sun rose before ten o’clock, and even then, it would only hang out for a little while before sinking right back down around three in the afternoon as if it couldn’t be bothered anymore.
Yet you wouldn’t be able to tell by the pleasant expression on Janelle’s face that it was anything less than a sunny day: gentle eyes, a relaxed forehead, lips set in such a position as to make it easier for them to spread into a warm—but not too big—smile. (“Nobody needs to see your gums” her mother had told her).
Janelle pulled on her workout clothes with that same pleasant expression. And she kept it on her face as she jogged for a few miles on her treadmill, just long enough for a dewy sheen to break out across her forehead. She got off before her exercise “glow” stepped over the line into a heavy sweat and an image crashed into her brain: Mag collapsing on top of her after he came, after he made her come… her not knowing if the slick dampness she felt where his chest lay against her breasts was her sweat or his…
Yoga. Next she did her Monday yoga routine under the light of the moon shining through her picture window—moons. His eyes had been like moons…
No, Janelle, she admonished, plastering the pleasant expression back onto her face. She didn’t let i
t fall off again. Not when she showered, not when she pulled out today’s outfit: a classic, checkered black-and-white pencil skirt, which she paired with heavy black tights, a black boat neck sweater, the beaded nephrite jade necklace her grandmother had given to her before she died, and the slouchy wedge boots Tu gave her for Christmas.
She also put on a heavy silver bracelet, which her father had gifted her with on her twenty-fifth birthday. Many of the same symbols that graced the large totem pole outside the house, the one that told the story of how the first alpha in their ancestral line had become the King of Alaska in the early 1900s, also graced this bracelet. It was made out of silver from the mine her ancestor had owned, the mine that had stayed in the family even though it was now depleted.
Secure in outfit, she picked up her flat-iron and straightened her long hair and fringed bangs, smoothing in heat protectant as she went along. After she was done, she checked the final silken results in her three-way mirror, then inspected herself for stray hairs at every angle.
There were none. She looked every bit the perfect princess, steeped in history and tasteful designer clothes with a pair of fashionable boots on her feet. The person staring back at her in the mirror had definitely never had sex. Didn’t know anything about the act, and certainly hadn’t been haunted for three years by a wolf she’d only spent three days with in person. The pleasant expression remained in place, and she deemed herself ready to go downstairs.
Her mother was already at the breakfast table when Janelle arrived, flipping through a two-month old tabloid and sipping a cup of tea. She was dressed in a leopard print robe, even though as early as she could remember, one of her mother’s most steadfast rules had been that none of her girls were to come out of their rooms anything less than impeccably coiffed and dressed.
“Why do we have to get dressed up every day and you get to walk around in whatever you want?” Alisha had once asked her mother after some intense back and forth about whether Alisha would be allowed to leave the kingdom house wearing jeans.
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