Wolf and Punishment (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 1)

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Wolf and Punishment (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 1) Page 14

by Theodora Taylor


  “You said you like to stay in your robe until your wolf takes over. I don’t like being overtaken like that. Pisses me off.”

  “I can see why you’d feel that way, but we’re werewolves. There’s not much we can do about…”

  Mag let out a loud grunt, and suddenly he smelled… different. Janelle looked. She couldn’t help herself.

  An exceedingly large—at least five-feet-tall, even on all fours—arctic wolf with a coat of fur as white as snow now stood in Mag’s cage, its moon-colored eyes glowing. And even though this particular breed had been a long time mascot of the Arctic Wolf Games, she gasped.

  Arctic werewolves were extremely rare. Most Alaskan weres were either gray like her father, or some combination thereof. She and her sisters had mostly black coats with gray muzzles and gray fur on their stomachs, necks, and paws. Janelle knew humans sometimes went to the treacherous northern regions of Alaska to hunt the non-hybrid variety of arctic wolf, but Janelle had never set eyes on one. Not until now.

  “You’re beautiful,” she said, even though she knew Mag’s human was too far down to hear her compliment. He hadn’t let his wolf overtake him, instead, his human had stepped back and pushed his wolf front and center. A prideful move, to say the least, especially considering changing before a full moon was both painful and unnecessary.

  The wolf tipped his muzzle through the bars.

  “Oh, do you want me to…?”

  She got on her knees and carefully petted his muzzle, but then the wolf’s long tongue suddenly flashed out, the soft tip of it, running over her exposed nipple.

  She gasped and fell backwards onto her elbows. The laws on bestiality among werewolves were quite clear on this matter. Werewolves could have relations in human or wolf form, and never the twain shall meet.

  But tell her body that. She looked down at her bottom half to find the lips of her mound quivering as if in anticipation. And she suddenly realized her breasts might be out of the Arctic wolf’s reach, but another part of her was now fully exposed to its tongue.

  She lay there, frozen in place, staring at the beautiful white wolf. He wouldn’t…

  The wolf dipped his head and his tongue met the surface of her mound, so warm and wet and soft that every lap sent a bolt of mind-melting sensation through her entire body.

  That was the last thing she remembered before she felt a familiar tingle go down her back and her own gray and black wolf overtook her.

  The next morning, she awoke completely naked with her back curled up next to the barred wall she shared with Mag’s cage. It was obvious she’d fallen asleep trying to get her body as close to the bars as possible—or as close to the wolf on the other side of the cage as possible. Also, her throat hurt, raw and burning like she’d used it hard the night before. Howling? Whimpering?

  And what was that smell? She sat up quickly and saw the droplets of blood in the other cage. Mag’s blood. What the… what had happened? But Mag was gone, the door to his cell having slid open now that daylight was upon them.

  17

  “BIG house. Mysterious male running hot and cold on you. You’ve obviously fallen into a Victorian-era novel. She-Wolf Eyre,” Alisha said. “Ooh, or maybe he’s committed some kind of crime that has him racked with guilt and slowly going crazy! This Sophia—are you sure she doesn’t spell her name with an f? Because if she’s a prostitute with a heart of gold, then I’m calling this novel Wolf and Punishment!”

  Janelle instantly regretted calling Alisha. She’d been so shaken up all morning, she’d decided to reach out to her sister who always seemed to have some fascinating piece of human or wolf history to counteract any story she was told—according to Alisha, there was no such thing as an original story, just wolves who didn’t know their history well enough to avoid making the same mistakes twice. But in this case, her middle sister was proving to be less than helpful.

  “Alisha, please don’t joke about this. I’m very confused now, and I don’t know what I’m going to do if this pledge agreement doesn’t work out.”

  “You mean you don’t know what Dad will do if this pledge agreement doesn’t work out. You’ll be fine. He’s the one who needs to wrap his head around abdicating his title.”

  Janelle bit her lip. It must be so nice to be a middle sister, she thought bitterly, to go through life thinking the rules of being a princess just didn’t apply to you. Rafe had come all the way to Alaska to pledge her sister, but instead of cooperating, Alisha had not only refused to go home since February, she’d also run off to teach history to wolves at a Canadian summer college program. To top it off, she’d taken the trip with a fellow academic, one, which, according to Tu, had Alisha’s nose, open, “even though he’s a nerd and Rafe’s way hotter.”

  Of course, Alisha didn’t care how her actions affected the Alaska crown. She’d never had to, and even though her sister knew perfectly well what was at stake if one of them didn’t find a quality mate soon, she kept acting like Janelle was an idiot for caring about their father and the century-old title they’d be throwing to the wind if one of them didn’t marry “well.”

  The whole situation suddenly made Janelle very, very tired. “I don’t want to fight with you, so I’m going to get off the phone now,” she said.

  “Oh, come on, Janelle! I’m just teasing you. If you want to talk about this seriously, I can do that.”

  “Actually, I don’t think you can,” Janelle answered. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Alisha, but you seem to think this is all a joke, like none of it matters.”

  “No, Janelle, that’s where you’re wrong. I make jokes, because I know none of this is any good. I had to come all the way to Canada to keep Mom and Dad from throwing me at Rafe. I hate seeing you tied up in knots over a wolf who, while a step up from Jeffrey, still isn’t treating you all that great. I joke because I’m worried about you, and I’m worried about Tu, but there’s nothing I can do to save either of you.”

  Janelle could hear the sincerity in Alisha’s voice, and her irritation was replaced with the need to reassure her younger sister.

  “No, I’m just being silly. I’ll go into heat. Mag and I will get married, have a pup, and everything will be fine.”

  “Ah… well, contrary to what those romance novels you used to like so much would have you believe, historically speaking, adding a baby to an already rife marital situation never helps. In fact, in real life it almost always makes it worse, whether you’re talking about Mary, Queen of Scots or Cleopatra—neither of whom came out winners in their stories.” Alisha then abruptly dropped her professor voice. “The main point is, if you think this guy is crazy or cheating on you with somebody else, then you need to find away to get out of this pledge fast, because going into heat with him will only make things worse.”

  She was right. Mag didn’t love her anymore. He could barely stand to be in the same room with her. And from what she could tell, he’d been talking to this Sophia person nearly every night. Every sign pointed to heartache and pain if she didn’t end this, but… “You know I can’t. You know I can’t do that to Dad or to our state pack.”

  On the other end of the line, Alisha sounded even sadder for Janelle than Janelle was for herself. “Yes, I know…” But then her voice perked up. “…and that’s why I’m going to have insist on calling him Mr. Rochester behind his back from now on.”

  Janelle snickered. “Well, I suppose it’s better than Joffrey.”

  They talked for a few more minutes, mostly about Alisha’s Canada research—she’d been hoping to find an Inuit she-wolf worthy of a historical biography while there, but so far no luck. She’d be returning to her post at the University of Juneau in a couple of weeks, and she still didn’t have a good subject on which to focus her post-doc work. But as usual with Alisha, her complaints about the lack of historical materials on she-wolves were just snarky and intelligent enough to keep Janelle laughing until they finally got off the phone.

  Janelle felt better after talking with
her sister. And worse. On the one hand, she hadn’t laughed that much in months, on the other, the anxiety that had been plaguing her since Mag’s return from L.A. felt even sharper now. Indeed, it had metastasized from a steadfastly ignored twinge of pain into a full-blown ache, one she didn’t think she could continue living with—

  Her ruminations on the sorry state of her relationship with Mag were interrupted by a pinging sound. Janelle frowned and looked down at the touch screen of her phone to find a text message from her mom.

  18

  “HEY, wanna tell me what’s going on between you and Janelle?” Rafe asked before Mag could even say hello.

  “Hey to you, too,” Mag said, leaning back in the ridiculous white-and-gold Baroque-inspired office chair, the one he’d been forced to park his ass in since returning to the Wyoming kingdom house. He decided to ignore Rafe’s question.

  “Thanks for calling. I’m going through all these email complaints, and I’ve got to say, you couldn’t have interrupted at a better time.”

  Rafe chuckled. “The bureaucracy of being a king. File that under stuff they don’t tell regular guys to keep them from challenging for alpha status.”

  “Seriously, if I had known…” Mag joked.

  “You probably still would have challenged that prick. You were about done with football, and I couldn’t see you settling for being a coach or an onscreen personality.”

  “Hey, I also had a few endorsement deals in the works…”

  “Whatever, man. Even if you were born a little brother, you know you were built for alpha status. If you hadn’t been, you wouldn’t have put in all that work with Grady and you definitely wouldn’t have won both your challenge fights.”

  “True that,” Mag said. “I guess I should stop complaining. Beats being my brother’s beta in Freedom Town.”

  “Speaking of betas, you know Grady handles all that petty email complaint stuff for me, right? Part of the job description. I know you’re probably not going to get any challenges any time soon after how thoroughly you ended King Jeffrey and your old friend, Kenny, but can I ask why you haven’t engaged a beta yet?”

  Mag rubbed a hand over his eyes, and immediately regretted it. The entire left side of his body was still aching… from what? He didn’t know, but it felt like he had either been hit by a car on one side of his body or had spent most of the night before throwing himself against a barred wall, either trying to get out of his turning cell… or get in to a she-wolf on the other side of the barred wall. In either case, it wasn’t a soreness he wanted to think too hard about.

  “It’s complicated, man,” he said, shaking off the pain and bringing himself back to the conversation at hand. “Kang agreed to let go of his pack leader status in Freedom Town and bring it under Lupine law—but only if he can come down here and be my beta.”

  “That’s great. Your brother’s tough and nasty, just like you, and that’s what you want in a beta. Sounds like the perfect deal.”

  “Yeah, but…” Mag struggled to find words. Rafe knew his whole back-story, but he wasn’t Sofia. How could Mag explain why the thought of his brother coming down to Wyoming to serve as his beta made his blood run cold?

  Suddenly going back to Rafe’s opening question didn’t seem quite so bad. “All right, why you wanna know what’s going on between me and Janelle?”

  “Because I just got a phone call from her father. He got the capital together for his resort project and he wants me to come back up to Alaska to see it through to breaking ground… plus, the school year’s about to start, so…”

  Mag shook his head. He’d thought he was obsessed with Janelle, but Rafe had already spent three months in Alaska, supposedly to consult on the Alaska king’s hot spring resort project, but really because he wanted to court Alisha.

  “So you’re running back up there like a well-trained dog, even though you didn’t get to see her once the last time you were up there.”

  “Tikaani says they’re going to throw a dinner party and her mother is guaranteeing Alisha will be in attendance. But, um… he added Janelle would be there, too.”

  Now Mag sat up in his seat. “What?”

  “He said Janelle’s coming back home, and he said he didn’t know if things were going to work out between you two. Don’t get angry at me, Mag, because you know I wouldn’t be telling you this if we weren’t brothers from another mother, but… it was like he was dangling a fish to see if I’d bite.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I told him my pledge offer was for Alisha, and only for Alisha. I told him I was happy to consult on his project, but I’ve got my endgame on lock. So he knows I’m not going to settle for anyone but Alisha—not that Janelle would be settling. I’m just saying, he knows who I want.”

  Mag turned over this new information in his mind. “I think you should go to the party.”

  “Seriously? I mean, I was already planning to go. This phone call was just a courtesy, but I thought you’d be like, ‘don’t do it, don’t go up there, they’re playing head games with you’—because you know that’s what you’ve been saying ever since I decided to pledge Alisha.”

  “Yeah, well… now they’re playing head games with me, too. I’m thinking I want somebody on the inside. Somebody I can trust.”

  His eye caught a glimpse of Janelle coming into the viewfinder of the security camera he’d put up outside of his door, just so she wouldn’t be able to sneak up on him again while he was talking to Sofia. She raised her hand to the door and seemed to hesitate before finally knocking.

  “Hey man, I’ve got to go. But keep me posted, okay?”

  “Yep,” Rafe said. “Later.”

  “What do you want, Janelle?” he asked after he hung up with Rafe.

  “I’d really like to talk to you,” she answered on the other side of the door.

  “About what?”

  He watched her look down then up, like she was trying to figure out what to do next, then to his surprise, the perfect princess actually put her hand on the knob to his study and turned it.

  The door opened and she stepped in, her face wearing an expression of unholy fear, like her whole control board was about to spark off because she had dared to step into his office without his permission.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “But Mrs. Coates is downstairs, and I didn’t think this was an appropriate conversation to have through your study door.”

  She closed the door behind her and came to sit in one of the guest chairs, crossing her feet at the ankles and smoothing a hand over the sleek ponytail draped over her shoulder.

  An image of her between his legs, his hands fisted in her ponytail while her mouth worked his shaft, hit him then. And he had to readjust himself in his seat before asking, “What can I do for you, Janelle?”

  “Actually, I was wondering if there was anything you needed me to do.”

  The look on her face was so serene, so weirdly sunny, Mag could immediately tell her question wasn’t what it seemed.

  “Anything I need you to do,” he repeated carefully.

  “Yes,” she answered. “I’ve redecorated the house, and now I’m at a loss as to what else I can do here.”

  “You haven’t redecorated the whole house,” he said. He took the sketchpad out of the front desk drawer, which was where he’d been keeping it ever since he found it on top of the ornate desk when he came back from Los Angeles.

  Janelle’s eyes widened when he handed it to her. “I’ve been looking everywhere for this,” she said. “I must have left it here. I’m sorry.”

  “Why didn’t you do my office before I returned?” he asked, his eyes going to the pile of yellow cedar wood paneling, which he assumed had been ordered for this room.

  “I didn’t want to overstep my boundaries. Traditionally a new king gets to decide how he’d like to redecorate his office.”

  “So you sketched out how you wanted the room to look and ordered a bunch of wood paneling from your family’s lumber c
ompany because you wanted to leave the decision-making up to me?”

  Janelle was too much of a stateswoman to be rattled by this blunt question. “I was merely offering you some options. I thought you might enjoy using a wood native to Alaska to panel your office. If I overstepped, I apologize. I’ll have Mrs. Coates arrange to get it removed.”

  The truth was, Mag had no desire whatsoever to do any redecorating himself. He more than liked what she’d done with the rest of the house and if things hadn’t been so awkward between them, he would have invited her to do his office, too.

  But right now, he found himself wanting to ruffle the fur of the perfectly poised she-wolf sitting across from him. Like he had last night when he’d made her take off her robe to reveal nipples as hard as diamonds. Nipples so hard, he’d let himself go wolf extra early for fear of what his human might do.

  He leaned back in his seat. “I’m new to all of this, so why don’t you tell me? What’s so great about you princesses? I mean, Rafe says I need one, and he’s still trying to pledge your sister. But can you tell me what exactly it is that makes you so valuable? I mean other than looks, because from what I’ve been told, beauty fades. ”

  The only sign that this question bothered Janelle was the way she folded her hands tightly on top of her closed knees. “Alisha is smart, one of the smartest people I've ever met, but really easy to talk to.”

  “Smart, check. But I don’t see how that would make her a good queen.”

  “Well, she believes all women deserve to have their voices heard. A society that appreciates its women folk is one that has a good chance of surviving and thriving into the future. She could have studied anything but she decided to go into history because wanted to help tell the hidden stories of our she-wolf ancestors. Half of any given kingdom is going to be made up of women, and any king would be lucky to have a queen who cared so much about the often ignored “other half” of his domain.”

  Mag nodded, impressed by Janelle’s answer. She and Alisha were so different that he wouldn’t have guessed she actually admired her sister.

 

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