“Then you’ll receive a smaller weekly retainer to make yourself available,” I informed him. I should have been gauging his reaction, but just saying the words made me slightly queasy so I kept my eyes on my phone as if I needed a cheat sheet. “First pregnancies have a 25% chance of miscarriage, so we might be forced to circle back around to the beginning. That will be determined at the discretion of both parties, using the same structure of recompense. At the time of birth, your job will be complete.”
I paused, expecting him to say something. But he didn’t. Shrugging, I continued on to the legal side of the equation. Butch would be expected to sign papers asserting his total lack of rights to the child. “They’ll hold up in human court,” I informed him. “But that’s unlikely to be necessary. If you attempt to use the child to gain a foothold into our pack, I will personally rip out your throat.”
His chair leg scraped against the floor. That had gotten a reaction.
Meanwhile, air currents promised Megan was passing close to check on the state of my silverware. Her human ears couldn’t overhear my murmured threat, but body language must have clued her in to the intensity of the conversation. No wonder she thought our meeting was going badly.
Only...she and I both thought wrong. When I looked up, I saw that I’d misread the chair scrape. Rather than preparing to leave, Butch had worked his way through the quiche while I was speaking. He hadn’t touched his latte after that first sip, but he now consumed the entire cupcake—rosettes and all—in two voracious bites.
When my pause lengthened into a third second, his mouth quirked. There was the tiniest dot of yellow frosting on his upper lip and I had the oddest inclination to reach out and touch it. “May I speak?” he murmured, gaze lowered.
I closed my eyes for half a second, disappointed. Butch’s wolf must be very weak to so easily accede when I insisted upon laying out the ground rules. I hadn’t put a hint of alpha compulsion behind the demand. He shouldn’t have obeyed.
Which made our interview easier, but also meant Butch was an instant reject. A weak father would mean a weak child. Even with my familial ace in the hole, the secret boost that promised Whelan Alphas were always able to bark down anyone within their territory, neither Heir nor Alpha could afford to start out weak.
I set down my phone and picked up my fork, preparing to stop wasting our time. But before I could cross the silverware, my wolf rose up through me. She’s smelled something. Or seen something. Whatever the reason, she was there, glaring through my eyes at someone I thought was weak but she thought was a threat to us.
And Butch’s wolf responded. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it. Smell it. The energy, the wildness of fur seeping out of his human body....
His wolf wasn’t cowering the way I’d assumed it would in the face of my dominance. Nor did Butch’s beast fight then submit the way Willa’s had.
Instead, the intensity of his inner animal set chills running through my entire body. I was the one struggling, chiding my wolf when she would have retreated. I was the one who gritted my jaw and ignored the sweat beading at my hairline.
Never since my father died had I met a wolf so powerful. In six months, no one had given my wolf any reason to stretch her muscles, let alone cave before them.
And yet, here I was unwillingly lowering my eyes.
Chapter 3
Guardian, I begged, wriggling my toes in shoes that sat atop a concrete floor and had no way of contacting the soil. Was that why the unthinkable had happened? Our pack’s secret weapon couldn’t reach me through the veneer of human civilization?
Whatever the reason, Butch’s dominance was so great that my fingers refused to cross silverware over my untouched plate of quiche and cupcake. Couldn’t change their trajectory and reach for one of the half dozen razor-sharp knives I had secreted about my person either.
I could, however, speak.
“If you’re refusing my offer, you may go,” I ground out. “You don’t have to prove your point by overpowering me.”
“Your offer,” Butch countered, “although intriguing, is not why I’m here.”
I shouldn’t have felt disappointed. After all, the role of Consort was a business transaction. One of the less appealing ones involved in the transition of power...or it had been unappealing until I’d set eyes on this unexpected specimen of a wolf.
“Then why did you let me make a fool of myself by telling you all the details?” My cheeks were hot again, which made me furious. Almost furious enough to break Butch’s hold over me...but not quite.
His dominance really was greater than mine. Also his patience. He waited until my wolf stopped struggling then shrugged. “You asked me to let you speak. I let you speak.”
And now he’d challenge me. Why else would another dominant werewolf jump through such extreme hoops to get me alone? Within my clan, politeness dictated that challenges wait until moonrise. But there was no politeness when dealing with dangers from outside the pack.
I tried again to beat back Butch’s hold over me. As before, there wasn’t even a ripple of strain on his features. Instead, he spoke as easily as I had when laying down the Consort ground rules.
“Your pack refuses admittance to outsiders,” he continued, telling me what I already knew. “There is no publicly available contact information for any of you besides this one application.”
There was one other available contact number, but to argue that point would be hairsplitting. Butch was right—the Consort application was the primary chink in our armor.
One I should have paid more attention to. After all, while few outside the Whelan clan understood our centuries-old bargain with the fae, those who did could have read the signs and known we were presently at our weakest moment in a generation. I hadn’t allowed any of our wolves to attend mate-seeking Solstice gatherings last December. Had put out the call for a Consort even before that.
I might as well have ordered a billboard stating that we were unprotected by our hereditary fae Guardian until I had the Heir issue sorted. It had been naive of me to think I could drag my heels until the last possible minute just because I found the task distasteful.
Well, I was Alpha. I would fix this.
“The honorable way to challenge is to meet away from humans. Away from coffee shops,” I growled.
Or, well, I tried to growl. To my disgust, the words came out closer to a whine.
No wonder. My inner wolf had given up, rolling over and showing her belly to the stronger shifter. I clenched my eyes shut, hoping Butch hadn’t noticed the transition from threat to submission in my pupils. But the warmth of his proximity heightened. He’d leaned in closer until his breath slid across my skin.
This wasn’t even going to be a challenge. He’d leave me frozen while he vanquished me. Killed me perhaps.
I couldn’t allow that. My pack needed me alive. Even if I was no longer Alpha, I could find a way to help them survive Butch’s coup.
So I did it. Hating myself, knowing Father’s ashes would be rising up out of the forest floor at this disgrace to his bloodline, I tilted my chin upward to reveal my neck.
Then I waited, teeth clenched and lungs frozen. Most wolves wouldn’t bite a submissive. Most wolves. Not all.
“I’m not challenging you.” The whisper of his breath flitted across my unprotected jugular. “You have nothing to fear from me.”
I opened my eyes. I couldn’t help it. Butch’s face was so close I could see that his irises were brown rather than the black they’d appeared from a distance. The color of fallen leaves soaked for half a week in pooled rainwater.
There was no longer wolf visible in them either. Instead, his pupils appeared to have turned human and kind.
“Nice trick,” I told him. My fingers still refused to budge, but Butch’s compulsion appeared to be fading. I was now able to shift my torso the tiniest bit.
As I flexed the only muscles that would move at the moment, the knife at my hip slid a quarter of an inch out of its
sheathe. If Butch lost the rest of his hold over my will for even a second, I could grab the weapon, stab him, and run.
Then what? Would Megan call the human cops? Would Butch tail me as I fled to pack central? Attack wasn’t much of a solution. My chin dipped downward as I gave up on the plan.
“Tara.” My name on his tongue pulled my face forward. “You’re not listening.”
Of course I wasn’t listening. The dominance behind his eyes had said everything, even if he’d hidden it afterwards. My pack was in imminent danger. I needed to think of something unbelievably clever so I could overpower a much stronger wolf.
Too bad the only thoughts in my brain related to Butch’s scent—a deep, woodsy baseline sweetened by persimmon. The focus I required slipped through my fingers every time I tried to grab for it. My inner wolf refused to even consider a fight.
While my brain whirred, Butch humphed deep in his throat, a lupine sound of put-upon annoyance. But when he spoke, there was no overbearing beast in his voice. Instead, his words were bell-like, musical.
“I swear that I mean no harm to you or your pack, Tara. As proof, I give you my true name—Rune Pelletier.”
A TRUE NAME MEANT.... “You can’t be fae,” I countered. “You have a wolf inside you.”
His lips pursed, somehow managing to remain beautiful in the process. This time his eyes were the ones averted. “Half fae. Half wolf,” he murmured, as if he didn’t want to share the information. “Now will you listen?”
A true name wasn’t given lightly. With that knowledge, I could do more than freeze his muscles. I could force him to obey.
I cleared my throat. “May I test it?”
His muscles tensed but he nodded. “Of course.”
“Rune Pelletier”—I whispered the words, not wanting them overheard—“leave me.”
It was the obvious use of his true name. The one thing he clearly didn’t want to do.
But he rose to his feet. Half-bowed. Turned toward the exit.
If Rune was pretending, he was doing a fine job of it. His scent had dropped from dominant to disappointed. Plus, an Alpha learned when it was worth going out on a rickety but useful limb.
That, I told myself, not Rune’s beauty, was why I let him off the hook. “I release you.”
The traditional words were almost musical. Not as melodic as Rune’s had been, but still redolent with something more than humanity.
Rune turned, one eyebrow raised. “You realize your inability to move will fade within minutes if you send me out of here.”
I nodded. “If what you have to say is important enough to trade a true name for, I’ll listen.”
He half-bowed again. Then he subsided into his seat.
I expected him to release me from his compulsion now that I’d agreed to stay, but he didn’t. Maybe he didn’t trust me not to run, or maybe he was too intent upon his own goals. Either way, he leaned in until my wolf whimpered then backed up a millimeter. Finally, he breathed out a story about beings I’d seldom heard mentioned outside my pack.
“Last October, fae came through a node two hundred miles from here.” His voice was as seductive as the trail of a buck scented when my stomach was empty. “Many of them crossed over, but only three made it past our swords. Three is a powerful number for fae. If all three survive until next Samhain, the devastation could be....” He closed his eyes, his voice trailing off.
I cocked my head, detecting something personal in his reaction. But the momentary lapse disappeared so quickly I almost thought I’d imagined it. Rune’s voice hardened as he returned to the point.
“I’m one of the Samhain Shifters tasked with finding those fae and expelling them back to Faery before they can wreak further havoc. We suspect one has settled within your territory.”
I’d been nodding along until the final sentence, but now I cut him off. “Not possible.”
“No?” He raised one perfectly formed eyebrow.
I didn’t answer the unasked question. The Whelan Bargain wasn’t spoken of outside our pack. Instead, I just nodded. “Thanks for checking, but we’re good.”
It was a dismissal, but Butch ignored it. “You don’t understand. You may think hungry fae are just stories, but they’re not. I’ve seen what they can do. How they invade, feed on pack bonds, break strong clans apart like kindling.”
He leaned in closer, and this time my body didn’t respond to his proximity either with fear or attraction. He cared about this story, but it was irrelevant to me. Still, I gave him the same courtesy he’d provided and heard him out.
“I formally request the opportunity to walk through your territory seeking fae, Tara,” Rune continued. “It won’t take long. A few hours. If there’s an issue, I’ll inform you. As I said, I will take every precaution to prevent harm to your pack.”
“Are you finished?”
He nodded once, a slow dip of his chin.
“Then it’s your turn to listen to me now.” I enunciated slowly to make sure he got the message. “There are no fae here.”
None but the one my grandfather had made a deal with. The Guardian, who slept...mostly.
Rune didn’t lean in closer, yet his persimmon scent consumed me. “You sound certain, but you had no idea I bore fae blood until I revealed that fact.”
Even when I’d used his true name, Rune hadn’t released me from his alpha compulsion. But now his agitation did what the true name hadn’t. Tingles of feelings shot back into my fingertips. My hands continued their earlier aborted trajectory before I could freeze them into stillness.
Fork crossed over knife atop my plate. And Megan must have been hovering right behind me, waiting for the signal.
Because something cold and gloppy poured over my back, my front, my head. I was drenched in milkshake, rich and sweet and full of chocolate. Curls flattened, clinging to my jawline. I swiped one hand across my face to clear it of the dripping mess.
I hadn’t heard him move, but Rune was standing by the time I pried my eyes back open. The kindness was gone from his face now. Instead his features had frozen into a mask, pure beauty so perfect it was horrible.
This time, he didn’t use my name. Just my title. “There was no need for evasive action, Alpha. I get the picture. I’ll take that as a no.”
Chapter 4
“Alpha, the moon will rise in fifteen minutes.”
“I know,” I told the sentry who’d stopped my car. Digging the ID placard out from under my shirt, I held it out to be scanned.
Ever since Father died, everyone coming in and out of pack central had their ID checked. Now, with Butch’s tale of unbound fae in the area, I was more glad than ever of the security. Even if this particular sentry’s chattiness seemed inclined to make me late.
“And your human friend is here,” he continued rather than raising the gate arm.
I frowned. That was unexpected. “Natalie?”
“Should I have kept her out?” The sentry’s eyes fell to the gravel of the driveway. “Her ID worked. So did the kid’s.” He winced, then admitted: “I didn’t scan the baby.”
An oversight. No wonder his wolf was terrified, almost whimpering despite the human skin that housed his vocal cords.
I rested a hand on his shoulder, calming his inner animal. “You did nothing wrong.”
After all, even fae couldn’t hide themselves in the form of a squalling baby. Glamour only went so far.
On the other hand, Natalie’s presence pointed to another sort of problem. She understood that my nightly round of challenges would begin as soon as the moon rose. She’d only have come at this hour if there was a real emergency.
I leapt out of the car, leaving it for the sentry to park, then broke into a run.
As I sprinted, my brain rewrote my schedule. Looked like I wouldn’t have time to shower. Would fight with dried chocolate caking my fur together. Didn’t matter. Instead, I headed straight for the third living room of the huge Whelan mansion, the one with plush couches that Natalie’s so
n had liked to hide behind as a small child.
Kale had been Katrina then. A girl rather than the young man he was growing into. Still, a change in gender hadn’t changed his affinity for the animal carvings on the arms and legs of the couches. I knew Natalie would be waiting in his favorite room.
And she was. It was lighter inside than out, so I could see them easily through the sliding glass door panels. Natalie perched on the edge of the eagle-footed couch, long hair loose the way she wore it when not in the lab. Kale was closer to the door, an androgynous silhouette with shoulders rounded.
That was familiar and expected. Two things, however, jarred.
The first was a pile of luggage sufficient to fuel a three-week journey. And the second? The eleven-month-old baby wriggling in Natalie’s lap.
I froze. Natalie usually found a sitter to keep the infant when we got together, so I hadn’t seen it in quite a while. I’d never been a fan of the stickiness of infants, but now the sight of tiny fingers didn’t make me wince. Instead, adrenaline coursed through me, demanding fight or flight.
If I wanted to remain Alpha, I’d have to bear one of those. Soon. An Heir who wouldn’t speak English. Who’d cry for no particular reason. Who’d break if it was dropped.
I’d never been a fan of babies. Having one of my own was a duty I’d hoped to put off for a long, long time.
I might have stood there forever if Kale hadn’t tapped on the glass between us. His eyebrows rose as he met my gaze, proving he’d noticed me even though my attention had been riveted upon his little sister.
At twelve, Kale was shorter than me by a few inches, his pale hair sticking out into chunks that were as much spikes as curls. He cradled a potted plant in his hands, which wasn’t entirely out of character but was odd nonetheless. “Are you coming in?” he mouthed.
I was. Of course I was. The fact my feet had turned away from the glass was irrelevant.
I opened the door. Tousled Kale’s hair to incite a duck and giggle. Tamped down my own issues as I turned to face Natalie.
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