Wolf’s Princess

by Maddy Barone

  Rose got ready for bed late that night. Sky still hadn’t returned from the Plane Women’s House. Why was she disappointed? They would have plenty of time to get to know one another. It was just that she wanted to see him. Even to herself she was reluctant to admit why, but she despised people who ignored things they didn’t want to face. The truth was, he was very handsome, and she couldn’t wait to be courted.

  She settled under the blanket, feeling like a little girl on Christmas Eve waiting for Santa Claus. Tomorrow would be present-opening day and her present was wrapped in a slick city suit. She wanted to see what was under the wrapping. Not just the body, although she certainly looked forward to seeing that, but what his heart held. And, since she was facing truths tonight, she admitted she wanted to play with the body beneath the suit.

  Rose rolled over to stifle that thought before any sharp wolf noses scented her body’s reaction to the mental image of Sky naked. Good night, Rose, she told herself firmly.

  But she wasn’t responsible for her body’s reaction in dreams, was she?

  Chapter 5

  When Rose entered the dining room the next morning the first thing she noticed was Sky. Her present was still wrapped up tight. Out of the two dozen men eating breakfast, he was the only one wearing a shirt and shoes. And the shirt, though in a casual style, was an expensive one, made from machine-knit fabric. In her old life in the Times Before, a polo shirt or T shirt would have been cheap, but now, with the technology she’d taken for granted almost unknown, a machine-knit shirt was what a city man wore. Intricate hand knits were far more common in Kearney than the store-bought, machine-made ones.

  She went to the serving window and helped herself to the fried potatoes and ham, and carried her plate to the head table where Taye and Sky sat. Sky stood up with a smile and pulled out the chair beside his own.

  “Good morning, Rose. Come sit next to me.”

  She sat. Actually, he seated her, the gallant way her mom’s dates seated her while trying to impress her mother with their manners. “Good morning, Sky. Hi, Taye.”

  She began eating, feeling the gazes of the men in the dining room on her. To shake off an odd sense of self-consciousness, she smiled at Sky. “How was your visit to the Plane Women’s House last night?”

  Sky’s dimple appeared when he smiled. Taye had the same dimple, but his didn’t make Rose’s breath catch. When Sky smiled, Rose couldn’t help but notice his lips. “I enjoyed seeing what Des and his pack have done with the old place. Each family has their own apartment, and they’ve set it up so everyone has jobs, working in the restaurant or minding the children. Red Wing and Hawk and Des are all fathers. It’s amazing.”

  She cut her ham into small bites to avoid looking into his eyes. The blue was vivid between dark, thick lashes. How unfair that a man had such gorgeous eyes. “I bet Raven was happy to see you.”

  “Yes. We talked until after midnight. I’m all caught up on every bit of family news.”

  Rose noticed Taye watching them with the expression of an indulgent uncle. He caught her staring and turned to Sky. “I’m going to run a wide perimeter patrol. Wanna let your wolf out for a run this morning?”

  Rose saw Sky hesitate and then shake his head. “No. I promised all of today to Rose.”

  “That’s okay,” she said quickly. “I have things to do this morning. We can do something together after lunch.”

  “No.” He touched a fingertip to her chin. “I promised I’d spend all of today with you, and I don’t lie or break my word. And especially never to you. I can help you do whatever you usually do in the morning.”

  “Well, it’s not all that exciting.”

  He lifted a brow, so she listed what a normal day consisted of. “After breakfast, I go out to the garden for an hour or so to pull weeds and harvest whatever has ripened. It’s getting to the end of the growing season, but there are still cucumbers and tomatoes, and the pumpkins aren’t ready yet so I try to keep up with the weeds. Then I do some cleaning and laundry. The kids always create lots of laundry, especially with Little Feather here now. His dirty diapers are a full load by themselves. Then while the laundry is drying, I play with Patia for a couple of hours to give Carla a break. Are you bored yet?”

  He shook his head, smiling.

  “After lunch, I brush the cat and then I knit or spin or I go to town to visit friends. Twice a week I spend a couple of hours with the men for fight practice.”

  “Brush the c—” Sky began, but interrupted himself. “Fight practice?”

  She frowned at his incredulity, but before she could snap something out, Taye cut in.

  “That’s right. All the women in both packs practice self-defense. Carla’s been excused for the past three months, but she was at fighter’s practice up to her seventh month and next month she’ll begin again. No woman of the Pack will ever be helpless if she is attacked.”

  Rose couldn’t read Sky’s face; it was shut down to show nothing but mild teasing. “I’ll have to be sure to treat you right, princess,” he said to her. “If I don’t, you’ll teach me a lesson, won’t you?”

  She froze. “Princess?”

  Sky shrugged, smiling. “I heard last night that some of the people around here call you that.”

  “Yeah, they call me that. I hate it.”

  “Sorry.” His smile was light and teasing. “So do we go to the garden now?”

  “If you want.”

  “I want.” His hand deliberately brushed over hers. “I’m not giving up a single minute with you.”

  She couldn’t stop the feeling of subtle excitement dancing in her throat. He was courting her. “You should get changed to work in the garden.”

  He looked down at his cotton khakis and thin polo shirt. “No need.”

  Rose shrugged to cover her appreciation of the way the light blue polo hugged the curves and planes of his muscled chest, and led the way to the shed outside the kitchen where the gardening tools and baskets were kept. As she walked, she covertly studied him. She liked his build, the way his shoulders tapered to a narrow waist and his long legs. Honestly, who could blame her for admiring the view? He was the most appealing man she’d ever seen. He even smelled good. Her step hitched at the thought. That was the sign of a mate, wasn’t it? Taye told her the scent of a mate was always pleasing.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She jerked open the door of the shed. “Fine.”

  He took the weed puller and garden claw from her and grabbed a basket from a shelf. “Where to?”

  “Let’s start weeding by the pumpkins.”

  They worked side by side kneeling in the dirt, and Rose frowned over his nice pants getting dirty at the knees. “Why are you wearing clothes?” she asked.

  He turned his head and lifted his brow. “Trying to get me naked?”

  Why did she have to blush? Before she found a reply that wasn’t full of blazing sarcasm or embarrassed titters, he lifted his hands.

  “Sorry. That just slipped out.”

  Mollified, she nodded. “But why are you fully dressed?”

  He pulled a weed up. “I’ve worn clothes every day for over seven years. I think it would feel strange to strip down. I’m in casual wear today.”

  She couldn’t catch the snort before it came out. “Well, I’m not used to seeing a wolf warrior wearing so many clothes. Around here casual wear is an even rattier pair of shorts than usual.”

  “I know.”

  Rose looked at him, wondering if that was wistfulness in his voice. “Well, suit yourself. Wear clothes or not, whichever you like.”

  His scent poured over her when he leaned to wag a dirty finger in her face. “Admit it. You want to see me without my shirt.”

  Dang it, now the blush was back, even hotter than before. She refused to acknowledge it. She let her gaze roam over his chest to his abdomen and back up to his face. “Maybe I do.” She turned her attention back to a weed just barely poking out of the ground and changed the subject. �
�Everybody expects us to be mated.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “Do I detect reluctance in your scent? Yesterday at the train station you didn’t seem happy to see me.”

  She almost hunched her shoulders. Instead she drew a calming breath and sat back on her heels to face him. “I was shocked,” she said carefully. “I haven’t seen you in eight years, and you look different. I don’t know you.”

  “So you said yesterday.”

  “I mean it, Sky. I wrote to you regularly. You wrote to me only a few times a year. I know nothing about you.”

  He wrapped a hand lightly around her wrist. “I sent you presents every year on your birthday and at Christmas.”

  He had, Rose acknowledged to herself. Expensive jewelry and perfumes she had no place to wear. “The presents were beautiful. But they didn’t tell me much about you. Everything of importance I learned about you came from Quill and Paint. For instance, you own a whorehouse?”

  He seemed to flinch the slightest bit. “I’m a co-owner, yes.”

  “Quill and Amanda told me a little bit about it, but I’d like to hear what you have to say.”

  Sky grasped her hands before settling himself cross-legged in the grass at the edge of the garden. “You deserve to know.” He seemed to be struggling to be completely open and honest. “I wasn’t trying to ignore you all these years. But every time I sat down to write to you, my heart broke a little because I couldn’t see you. With all the responsibility on my shoulders, I can’t afford to be an emotional wreck. And I couldn’t write the truth of what I was doing in case it fell into the wrong hands. Rose.” His hands clenched almost painfully over hers. “Rose, I missed you so much that if I let myself think about you for too long I would break down in tears. I wanted you to be with me so much it hurt.”

  She absorbed that, a little flattered and trying not to be. “Okay, tell me why you run a whorehouse.”

  His gaze was fixed on their hands, where he ran the pads of his thumbs over the backs of her hands in small circles. “You know about the laws regarding women in Omaha?”

  “Some. It sounds pretty wild, though, so I don’t know what’s true. Women have to pay a special tax to be married? And they have to pay to stay single too?”

  “Those are both true. When a woman turns eighteen years old, she has three options: pay one hundred gold strips to marry, pay ten gold strips each year she is single, or go to work in a house.”

  “One hundred gold?” she squawked. “That’s twenty years’ wages for most people.”

  “Yes. Not many people can afford to get married. Even paying ten gold strips for the annual Single Status Tariff is out of range for a lot of families.” His face, when he lifted his gaze to hers, was set in unyielding lines. “So many women have to work in houses like mine.”

  “A whorehouse.”

  “I don’t like to call them whorehouses. It’s demeaning.”

  “So is being forced to be a prostitute.”

  “Yes.” He met her gaze squarely. “I hate it, and that’s why I’m working to change it. When I first went to work at Ms. Mary’s, I read the law back and forth and found a loophole. The law says a woman must work at a house. It doesn’t specify what kind of work she has to do. In the other houses, cooking and other housework is done by men. In my house, those tasks are done by women. I don’t force anyone to have sex for money. Do you understand?”

  Rose thought he sounded desperate for her to accept what he did. “That must have been hard on your wolf. He must have hated it.”

  “He did.” Sky let go of her hands to run his fingers through his short hair. “He wanted to come back here to you immediately. The trip to Omaha wasn’t what he wanted in the first place. But when he discovered what was happening to the women in Omaha he wanted to tear apart every man involved. He accepted our stay in Omaha.” His voice lowered to a soft mutter. “For a while.”

  Knowing what she did of the wolves and their drive to protect women, she could believe it. “How did you end up working at a whor—I mean, a house? When you left the den you were going to work on the railroad.”

  “That was the plan.” He laughed. Maybe it was bitter, or maybe it was just tired, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. “When Quill and I first arrived in Omaha we found out the railroad wasn’t hiring workers until spring. We were allowed in the city on a one week visa. If we didn’t have work by the time it expired we’d have to leave.”

  “A visa?” she echoed, remembering the foreign students at the University.

  “Yes. It’s a permit issued by the city. Everyone in Omaha has to have papers they can produce on demand. Since we didn’t have anyone in the City to vouch for us, we were given a week to find jobs. But there weren’t any jobs. No one else would hire us for anything. We had no money, so we had nothing to eat and nowhere to sleep. If we left the city to let our wolves hunt we wouldn’t be allowed back in.” He smiled, a rueful twitch of his lips. “And I was too proud to give up and come back here like a puppy with its tail between its legs.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “We were both young back then, and maybe a little stupid. I was scared and grieving, and I handled everything wrong.”

  “No.” He took her dirty hand again and lifted it to his lips. The warmth of his kiss on her fingers made her swallow. “I was too excited to have found a mate to give you the time you needed to adjust to your new life.”

  “See?” She was much too aware of his lean, alluring body beside her. She took her hand back and picked up the trowel to continue work. “We were both young. That doesn’t tell me how you came to be the owner of a house.”

  From the corner of her eye she could see him reach for a weed. “Quill and I were going from business to business in Omaha, looking for work or even just a handout of food, when we saw a woman in an alley with three large men. They were pushing her from one to another and punching her. Quill and I stopped them.”

  His prim tone made her laugh. “Did you kill them?”

  “No. We broke a couple of jaws and dislocated some shoulders, but they ran off, still breathing. The woman was Ms. Mary, owner of one of the business establishments in Omaha. She took us home with her, gave us a hot lunch, and offered us each a freebie in gratitude.”

  “A freebie?” She could guess what a freebie at a whorehouse would be. A slender snake of jealousy uncurled in her belly. “Did you accept?”

  “No. Be careful with that claw thing. You could hurt somebody.”

  Rose sent the claw thudding deep into the earth and glared at him. “I bet you wanted to.”

  He raised his hands. “I was a seventeen-year-old boy. Of course I wanted to. But even if I had tried to go through with it, my wolf wouldn’t have let me. You were the only one he would accept, and you were the only one I wanted.”

  Mollified, she nodded and shifted a few feet down the pumpkin patch to continue weeding. When he followed her, she moved a little more so he could work beside her. “Good. I’ve never been within five feet of a man outside the Packs until yesterday.”

  “You’re a virgin, then.”

  She spun on her knees to stare at him. Her teeth were clenched so tightly her jaw hurt. “What do you think?”

  “I think I’m glad we’re both virgins. We can learn how to please each other together with no memories of other partners between us.”

  How could she hold on to her anger when he gave such a soft answer? “Go on with your story about how you got to be the owner of a house.”

  “Ms. Mary made Quill and I house monitors. Bouncers. We made sure none of the patrons became abusive with the women. The longer I was in Omaha, the more I wanted to help the women there. All the women. The mayor instituted the Women Acts about fifteen years ago. The Acts reduced women to a means of income for the city and especially the men who ran it. I decided I had to stay and work to change things.”

  Rose tried to reason it out. “Why didn’t the people in Omaha vote him out? Or change the laws? Or rebel and kill him?”

 
“I’m sure they wanted to. There are no elections in Omaha. Mayor McGrath is guarded by a handpicked group of soldiers. Besides his personal bodyguard, there’s the Omaha City Guard. The City Guard is seven hundred men strong, and most of them are fanatically loyal to him. Rewards are offered for any information about discontent. Any hint of rebellion is punished. Fatally. All a man has to do to find his neck in a noose is make an offhand remark to a neighbor.”

  What a terrible position for the people of Omaha to be in. It explained why fathers allowed their daughters to work in such places. “But you could kill him, couldn’t you?”

  He lowered his voice to the merest thread of sound and moved closer to her, as if afraid of being overheard. “I could. But it wouldn’t help the people in Omaha. The mayor’s cronies would fight to see who would be the next mayor. It would be full scale war. People would be killed in the fighting. Half the city could burn. And at the end, who says the new mayor would be any better?”

  “That’s terrible.” It reminded her of a depressing novel she’d had to read for a class in ninth grade. “I’m so sorry for the people there. Something has to be done.”

  “I’m trying.” His eyes gleamed with an intensity that made her want to lean closer. “You understand why I had to stay? You know I wasn’t just ignoring you?”

  She dragged her gaze from his face and took her time cleaning the clods of earth from the prongs of the garden claw. “I suppose. I wish you would have written to me more often.”

  “I should have,” he admitted in a whisper. “There were things I wanted to tell you. So many of them would have gotten me killed, though. Rose, look at me, please.” His voice sunk even lower. “You’re so beautiful. I want to kiss you.”

  She swallowed. With all the couples in the Pack happily mated, sex was all around her but she had never been kissed. Her curiosity and longing had grown every year. Kissing could be part of courting and not necessarily lead to marriage. Right? “Kiss me, Sky.”

  He froze. She saw the exact moment her words sunk in because his eyes flared a hotter, deeper blue. His fingertips touched her jaw, tilting her head. His lips brushed lightly over hers. The kiss was over almost before it began. Sky lifted his head and brushed his thumb over her lower lip with an expression of tender wonder on his face.