This should have been a game changer for her. Mag couldn’t enforce the virginity clause now they were mated. Also, he’d have to abide by the pledge agreement, so the Alaska crown and her father’s life would be secure no matter what came to pass between Alisha and Rafe. She should have been happy.
But as Janelle gave in to sleep with her new mate’s hand still on top of her sex, cupping her in a way that felt both like a warning and a decree, all Janelle could do was worry. While it was true Mag’s plan for revenge was no longer viable, it was also true she belonged to him now, his scent bonded to hers in a way that couldn’t be erased with showers or even an entire case of Summer’s Eve.
Many questions remained to be answered: what did he plan to do with her now that he had her? And, perhaps even more worrisome, now that his revenge plan had been foiled, did that mean her punishment for what she’d done to him three years ago was over? Or had it only just begun?
21
MAG woke up the next morning on top of the Alaska kingdom house’s dining table, his arms wrapped tight around Janelle, his hands on her sex and breast, as if he were trying to warn off any other wolves who might think of claiming his she-wolf for themselves.
“Darn, you’re fertile. Can’t say I’m not impressed,” came a voice from out of nowhere.
As soon as he heard the voice, Mag leapt to his hands and feet, crouching back into a wolf’s fighting stance even though he was in human form, and would remain that way until three months after Janelle gave birth to their pup, nature’s way of assuring a she-wolf had human protection for the year of her life that she wouldn’t be able to turn into a wolf herself. However, it didn’t matter what form he was currently in. If whoever was in the room with them posed any threat to Janelle, Mag was ready to take him out, with his bare hands if necessary.
“And your protection instinct’s already gone off. Good gravy you move fast.”
Mag’s eyes adjusted to the gray morning light filtering in through the double hung windows. King Tikaani was once again seated at the head of the table. However, his suit had been changed out for a pair of pajamas and a plush blue robe with a Seattle Seahawks logo on the chest.
Mag relaxed out of his fighter’s stance. He probably would have realized it was Tikaani sooner if not for the now stale heat smell hanging over the room. That and a new smell, but it couldn’t be… he sniffed the air above Janelle and realized yes, yes, it was true.
“Took me seven days to put Janelle in Wilma. Only took you one.” Tikaani said at the head of the table. “Trust me, that’s going to be a story we’ll be telling at this year’s Christmas party.”
Mag tried to wrap his mind around what his nose and King Tikaani were telling him. No, it couldn’t be! But it was true. He could smell the new presence inside of her, its smell mixing in with hers, just as his own had after their mating. No wonder he’d been set to kill whoever had invaded their space. He was now officially mated with a pup on the way. A she-wolf stayed in heat until she was impregnated, so her heat session usually lasted anywhere from three to fourteen days. But they’d done in it in one night.
Mag looked down at Janelle, who was still sleeping in the same position. Curled up on her side, seemingly oblivious to the fact that her father was in the room.
“Can I have your robe?” Mag said to the king. “I want to cover her up.”
Tikaani stood and took off his robe, his eyes staying on Mag as he placed the plush robe over Janelle’s prone body. “So this is happening with you and my daughter now, right? Heard a lot of talk about Bad Wolf, but last I checked, you were still all wolves. You mate for life—no deadbeat dads. I wouldn’t want my sweet girl abandoned by the wolf who claimed her… just because of politics.”
Mag looked up from Janelle, back to the king. “I’m sure you know there’s more than one way to be a deadbeat dad. Or maybe you don’t, and that’s how your ‘sweet girl’ ended up with a guy from Bad Wolf.” Mag let that insult sink in for a few seconds before saying, “But if you’re asking about how Freedom Town wolves do it, you don’t need to worry about that. We mate for life, yeah? And we don’t let politics keep us from taking care of our pups.”
All Tikaani seemed to hear were the parts about him mating with Janelle for life and taking care of their pup.
“Good to hear, good to hear, son.” He clapped his hands together. “I know in Wyoming and Colorado, mates wait a few months until they officially get married. They like to do it up big. But here in Alaska, we do a traditional ceremony and cub blessing as soon as possible, then we have a big party after. Don’t know how they do it in Freedom Town.”
“We don’t wait in Freedom Town, either,” Mag answered.
“Good, good, we’re in agreement then. You two will be married as soon as Janelle wakes up.”
Things moved fast after that. Tikaani hustled Mag out of the dining room, saying, “Wilma and Tu are chomping at the bit to get Janelle ready for the big day. I wouldn’t put it past them to not let her sleep in, even though she’s fresh mated. Poor kid.”
Mag frowned. “How about Alisha? She won’t be taking part in the wedding?”
“She’s ah… already gone back to Juneau. But Rafe’s still here. You’ll probably want him to stand with you, right? And if you can get that brother of yours on the phone, we can maybe hold off on the ceremony until he can fly in.”
Mag considered the date. The Freedom Town pack would be all the way in the far north-west of Alaska by this time of year, hunting caribou. Even if they were somewhere Mag could fly Kang out of easily, it might take his brother a day or two to get here. Also… he didn’t want his brother here. Not yet. Not after what had gone down last night. And definitely not when the urge to go back to Janelle, to stand over her and make sure no harm came to her, was thrumming through him.
“No, we can do it without him,” he answered Tikaani.
“Good, good!” Tikaani boomed. “The quicker, the better.”
Mag had been a little inexact when he told the king about how Freedom Town handled weddings. While it was true they didn’t wait, that was because they didn’t have them. Once two wolves were mated, they were considered married. Period. No ceremony needed. Just as most Inuit wolves had done it before Christianity came to their culture.
But the kingdom town wolves had praised the Christian God for nearly three generations, and the Alaska queen was a Baptist born. A backyard ceremony was set up in under three hours, and the whole town came out.
The tailor they’d sent to the kingdom house with a tux for Mag barely had time to make the necessary alterations to accommodate his heavily muscled body before Rafe was at the guestroom door, saying it was time to get down to the dock.
Seeing how easily the whole ceremony had come together, he shouldn’t have been surprised when Janelle came down the aisle in a white wedding dress with the same kind of heart-shaped neckline as the dresses she’d worn for their pledge dance and at the dinner party the night before. He got the feeling this dress had been chosen long ago as part of the final act in Janelle’s mating story. Maybe even before they’d ever met. More a calculation than a symbol of their forthcoming union.
Yet, his breath caught at the sight of her coming out of the house and down the recently made aisle on her father’s arm, her long hair lying over her shoulder in a thick fishtail braid. There was some stuff between her father and the kingdom town pastor about who was giving her away. Then Janelle let go of her father’s arm and placed her hand into his, with more regal grace in her five fingers than he had in his entire body. She looked not like a princess now, but a queen. His queen.
And that made everything inside of Mag curdle.
He turned with Janelle toward the pastor, and mumbled his way through the ceremony. But as soon as it was over, he excused himself.
“I gotta use the bathroom,” he told Janelle.
“Of course,” she answered softly, her eyes still cast down. She hadn’t looked at him for the entire length of the ceremony
and though she appeared the very picture of a happy bride as they made their way back into the house, he could tell she was back on auto-princess mode.
He went all the way to the bathroom on the third floor. The one furthest from the gigantic front room where the reception would be taking place. It was almost too far for him to make it. The angry roar started in his chest before the door was even fully closed behind him, ripping out of him like a runaway train as he punched the wall. He wished like hell it was plaster so he could put a hole in it. But it was brick, double layered, in order to keep the bathroom insulated and warm against the Alaska cold. His hand came back with bloody knuckles, not broken, but throbbing like a motherfucker.
Mag was grateful for it, though. It steadied him. Yanked him back from the edge of crazy town before he could rip the toilet off the wall, which he’d been thinking about doing next. Instead, he cradled his not-quite-broken hand against his chest, and used his non-dominant hand to pull his phone out of his breast pocket.
Sofia picked up on the first ring. “Hello?” she said.
Her voice rushed through him like a dose of antibiotics injected straight into the bloodstream. “Sofia?” he whispered.
“Mag? I didn’t think you’d call after our last conversation. Are you all right?”
“No.”
“Mag, please tell me you didn’t go to Alaska.”
“I can’t tell you that.”
On the other side of the line, he heard Sofia sigh. And though he couldn’t see her, he could practically feel her disappointment radiating over the line.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Believe me, I’m more than sorry I came up here. But I need to see you, Sofia. Not over the phone. Face-to-face. If I buy you a ticket how soon can you get to Wyoming?”
22
JANELLE was now the Queen of Wyoming. Not in theory or in a someday sort of proposal on a pledge agreement. No, she was the real Queen of Wyoming, with the heartbeat of the king’s firstborn now gestating inside her womb.
She couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t wrap her head around it, even as she was vowing to honor and obey Mag in a ceremony in front of the entire town (the word “love” had been struck out of the original human vows a long time ago, since most royal matings were arranged). It felt to her like another she-wolf was saying those words with her eyes cast downward, a she-wolf completely separate from Janelle receiving Mag’s chaste kiss while the town somberly clapped.
When Mag said he needed to go the bathroom, someone else, not her, said, “Of course.”
And when the angry roar reverberated through the house less than a minute later—like her family had gravely wounded some large animal, then furthered the insult by locking it away in one of their third floor bathrooms—it was some other she-wolf who continued to receive congratulations on her and her mate’s behalf. As if nothing were amiss, as if her husband of ten minutes was truly availing himself of the bathroom, and not sequestering himself away from their wedding guests. From her.
Mag finally came back downstairs thirty minutes later. “You ready to go?” he asked her. “Because I am.”
“Of course,” she answered again. Honor and obey. Honor and obey. The perfectly pleasant princess will honor and obey.
Mag didn’t say much on either leg of their hastily arranged return flights to Wyoming. Or on the drive back to the kingdom house. He didn’t try to carry her over the threshold or anything like that. In fact, he seemed on edge, like he was nervous about something that was about to happen. Or perhaps upset about something that already had.
She retired to her room, thinking what she needed was sleep. Sleep to recover from her one heat session. Sleep to help her forget. Sleep and maybe she could figure out what to do the next morning.
However, sleep didn’t come. And two hours into staring up at the ceiling, someone opened the door to her room.
She sat up in bed. It was Mag, in nothing but a pair of Los Angeles Suns sweatpants. He had a comforter in his arms.
“I can’t sleep,” he said. “Not in my bed alone. The protection instinct won’t let me. I’ll need to sleep in here with you.”
“Okay,” Janelle said, her voice meek, her she-wolf finally coming back to life inside her numb chest at the prospect of having Mag in bed with her for the first time in three years.
But he didn’t come over to her bed. Instead he laid the comforter out on the floor. “Can I have one of your pillows?” he asked her from below.
“Um, sure,” she said. She grabbed a pillow and began to get out of bed to pass it to him, but he said, “You don’t have to get out of bed. Just toss it to me.”
So she did. Awkwardly, since she wasn’t in the habit of tossing anything, especially inside the house—yet another one of her mother’s rules, which she’d never violated. The pillow actually missed her target by a foot or so, but Mag easily snatched it out of the air, tucking it into his arms like a football, before placing half of it under his head, while hugging the other half to his body.
I wish he’d hold me like that, her wolf simpered. And she wanted to kick the animal inside her. Of course he wouldn’t hold her like that. He didn’t even want to sleep in the same bed. Last night, while she’d been panting hard with the need to be claimed by him, it had been easy to forget he’d had every intention of dumping her just a few minutes beforehand. He’d been determined to expose her as a not-so-perfect princess to her parents and state pack. Before she went into heat.
But the memory of his revenge plan was more than a notion today. For her and obviously for him. Mag didn’t hold her that night. He didn’t even talk to her. She woke up to find the space on the floor empty and a note left on her bathroom mirror: “Stay close to the house until further notice.”
But further notice never came. Mag continued to carry on business as usual—keeping himself shut away in his office until the wee hours of the night when he came to lie on her floor, like a reluctant dog charged with the task of guarding… well, a pregnant queen. The only other thing that changed was he no longer left the house for meetings. Everyone came to him, and it eventually became a problem on the days Mrs. Coates was off or out running the errands Janelle no longer could, given Mag’s orders.
Janelle usually didn’t mind a little acting. Really, she considered it part of her job to act the part of the warm and happy princess, even when she didn’t feel like one. But accepting the congratulations of the people who came to meet with Mag, answering their questions, like she was nothing but thrilled to be carrying the possible future heir to the Wyoming crown in her womb began to wear on her.
A few weeks into her pregnancy she hired an extra servant to assist Mrs. Coates and run things on her day off. But this was a temporary fix at best. A piece of duct tape placed over a crack in the foundation. All it did was hide the problem. It in no way fixed it.
Days passed into weeks, then into months. Mag barely acknowledged her, though he slept in the same room as her every night.
To keep from going crazy, she threw herself back into planning the Alaska kingdom’s Christmas party, even though she had no idea if she’d actually be able to attend. She’d tentatively asked Mag about it, shooting him an email rather than suffering through the humiliation of not being granted access into his office yet again, and he’d answered back with, “We’ll see.”
Much like “further notice” these words didn’t exactly fill her with the promise of good things to come.
The next call from her mother came just a couple of weeks before Christmas while Janelle was making edits to the Christmas party schedule in her room.
“Have you heard from Alisha?” the Alaska queen demanded as soon as she answered the phone.
“Is everything okay?”
“No. That sister of yours. I can’t believe she’d be so rash and stupid. She’s run off and we can’t find her!”
“She left the University of Juneau? Really? That doesn’t sound like Alisha at all. She loves that job!”
“No—a lot h
as happened since we talked a few weeks ago. A lot. Alisha basically lost her damn mind. She actually went to Wolf Springs and she was telling everybody she was going to write a book about Chloe. So Rafe had her fired from her teaching job.”
“What? Oh no, Alisha loves that job!”
“Princesses don’t need jobs,” her mother informed her, as if Janelle were an idiot who should know better. “Especially ones pledged to a king as connected as Rafe.”
Was she serious? Janelle couldn’t keep the irritation she was feeling toward her mother out of her voice when she said, “But she’s not pledged to Rafe. I thought she made it clear she didn’t want that at the dinner party back in September.”
Silence.
And dread filled Janelle, from the pit of her stomach to the top of her heart. “Oh my God, Mom. What did you do?”
“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. I raised you better than that. And I didn’t do anything! Your sister went into heat, and Rafe mated her.”
“What do you mean, he mated her? How did he even get to her before another wolf did? The last I heard, he was back in Colorado, and Juneau’s not exactly easy to get to from there.”
“Janelle, I don’t have time to talk about this. Just tell me if you’ve seen your sister or not. Has she called, emailed, texted? Anything?”
“No, I haven’t heard from her at all, but Mom, you have to tell me what happened. How did she end up mated to Rafe? What’s going on?”
“I have to go. There are a lot more people I have to call.”
“Mom, wait—”
But her mother hung up. Janelle stared at the phone in horror, her worries about her own life now replaced with out-and-out fear for Alisha’s.
Mag. Maybe he knew something. Maybe he’d heard from Rafe and could tell her how he ended up mated to Alisha. Janelle ran to his office and pushed open the door without announcing herself first.
Wolf and Punishment (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 1) Page 17