By Hook or by Wolf

by Sophie Stern

  Trevor is the only one of us who has even been close to being mated. He was in love with a female wolf from the pack. They grew up together and we all just knew that one day, he’d present her with his Token and she would give hers to him. Tragedy struck as it so often does and ripped that dream from Trevor.

  He hasn’t loved another since.

  He has a good excuse for being single.

  Lee and I?

  Well, we’re just busy bastards who throw ourselves into work, fuck when we feel like it, and don’t worry about finding the one.

  Only now, we’ve got a problem.

  When we had our portraits done for the gallery, my mother took our Tokens and put them into the frames of each portrait. These pictures were hung here, in the jewel room, for obvious reasons. The jewels aren’t visible right away. It’s not unless you’re looking at them in just the right light that you’ll notice their location. They blend in carefully with the painted frames each portrait is tucked in.

  We all thought it was a nice, safe way to keep them guarded until we were ready to be mated.

  But now they’re gone.

  Our little thief took more than just our pictures.

  She took our gifts to our future mates.

  My brothers and I each shift when we’ve realized what’s happened. We change into our wolf forms, not even bothering to remove our clothes. The room is filled with the sounds of fabric rifting and tearing. Then, in unison, we howl. We cry out, devastated for the loss. I don’t know if there’s even a chance we could ever recover these items. It doesn’t seem like it and the realization hurts. Even if we didn’t get married for years, being able to give our Tokens is an important part of being a wolf shifter.

  It’s part of our identity.

  Now everything hurts.

  It’s not often that our wolves take over, but in this moment, we’re all feeling anxious, frustrated, and worn out. We’re all feeling tired. We’ve all clung to the belief that one day, we would find mates. We’ve all thought this for so long that now, the idea of losing our first gift to those mates seems overwhelmingly terrible.

  We howl until our throats hurt and finally, we shift back, exhausted. Once I’m back in my human form, I stand silently, staring at the wall. Finally, I close my eyes and think about my next steps. There must be something I can do. I don’t know if there is, but I do know that standing here isn’t going to help me figure out what my next move should be, so I dress in the remnants of my clothes. They’re still slightly wearable. Sort of. My brothers follow suit and then quietly, slowly, we leave the jewel room. We close the door behind us and ensure that it’s locked.

  “Who’s going to tell Mom?” I finally ask. The jewels that were taken were rare. My mother painstakingly chose them during her pregnancy with us. They’re not three individual jewels. Rather, the sapphire she chose was broken into three pieces and a portion was given to each brother. Part of the beauty of being triplets is that we’re joined in just about every way possible, including this.

  “I’m the oldest,” Lee says. “I should be the one to tell her.”

  “No,” Trevor says. He stops and looks at us both. Then he shakes his head. “We’re a team. This affects all of us. We should go to her together and explain what happened.”

  None of us wants to do that.

  Our mother is sometimes referred to as the Wolf Bitch of Starton.

  She’s shrewd and manipulative as most mothers are, but more than that, she’s fierce. When my father died, the pack didn’t go the beta. Nope. My father’s pack went directly to my mother who told the beta that he could fight her for it.

  Gerald is a smart man and he stood down. He’s still her right-hand guy, though, and there’s no doubt that when it’s my mother’s turn to pass away, Gerald will be ready to step up and lead the pack. He’s smart and kind: wise beyond his years. Something tells me that no matter what happens to our pack, everything is going to be just fine.

  No matter who leads it will love it.

  We’ve got a great group of shifters who are all dedicated to helping Starton be a more beautiful, more wonderful place.

  My mother is no exception. She’s fierce and she’s strong, but she’s also incredibly gentle and very brave. She does everything she can to lead this pack to the best of her abilities. She’s quite wonderful in her own way, although I’m not alone in being afraid of her sometimes.

  “You’re right,” Lee finally says after some consideration. “And I don’t want you to be, but you are.”

  “Of course, I’m right,” I say. “It just makes sense.”

  “Shall we go now?” Trevor asks reluctantly.

  “No time like the present,” I mutter.

  Together we head out to our vehicles. Lee walked over to the gallery, so he rides with me in the car while Trevor hops on his motorcycle. We drive across town to Mother’s office. She’s got the top floor in a high rise overlooking the city. Technically, she’s also the owner of Claw Real Estate, but she leaves that entirely to Lee and me to run. Mom prefers to spend her time on other endeavors, so she’s in charge of Claw Enterprises, which is basically the head company for every other business she owns, including Claw and Sons, Claw and Friends, Claw Brokerage, and Claw Dining.

  It’s a bit extravagant, really.

  The fact that she runs an empire and manages to find time for pack runs is beyond me, but there you go. That’s our Mom.

  We head inside the lobby, wave to the receptionist who doesn’t even seem to notice our disheveled appearances, and climb into the elevator. I press a button and it moves up, gliding carefully toward my mother’s office. Dread fills my stomach and I know my brothers are just as nervous as I am. It’s not that seeing Mother is going to be annoying or horrible. It’s just that telling your Mom something precious has been lost isn’t a very fun way to spend a day. Not when there are so many other wonderful things to do in the world. Telling Mom about the jewel is literally the last thing I want to do.

  The doors open directly into her office and step out of the elevator in unison.

  To my surprise, my mother doesn’t seem like her usual, vibrant self. She doesn’t seem as strong and bright as she always does. If anything, she seems a little bit...sad.

  What could be wrong?

  My brothers pick up on it, too.

  “Mother?” Trevor, ever the sensitive one, moves over to her and reaches for Mom. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she waves him off. “I’m just a little bit tired.”

  There’s more to it than that.

  “Get dressed, will you?” She asks, motioning toward a wardrobe in the corner of the office. She keeps a supply of clothing here because you never know when someone is going to need to shift unexpectedly. My brothers and I each grab an outfit, go into the attached dressing room, and change quickly. When we come back out, my mother still looks somber.

  “Did something happen with the company?” I ask. “Is everything going okay? Stock prices didn’t fall, did they?” Again, I glance at my wrist, but my device hasn’t given me any alerts about stocks dropping or investments failing.

  What’s the problem, then?

  Lee and Trevor eye my mother, considering her.

  “Nothing’s wrong, boys,” she says. “I’m just a bit tired.”

  “Been working hard?” Lee asks, and my mother nods.

  “Actually, yes. I’ve been working with the art department at Starton University. We’re planning an event next month that should offer an incredible chance for some of the students to show off their artwork and to start learning about showcasing their work.”

  “A noble endeavor,” I comment, but then my eyes slide from my mother’s gaze to her desk, where she has an open letter. She sees where I’m looking and quickly places a book on top of the letter so I can’t read it, but the damage has been done.

  “You’re sick?” Lee says, his throat catching. “When were you going to tell us?”

  Chapter Four
/>   Natasha

  Despite my annoyance at what happened with the gem, I manage to sleep soundly, make a wonderful breakfast for my daughter, and get her in the car on time. As I drive her to school, we make small talk about her friends and her homework. She chats easily, telling me all about her day, and I don’t have to feign interest in what she’s talking about. Rebecca is a cool kid and I’m more than a little proud to call her my daughter.

  We hit a little bit of traffic and we’re at a standstill when Rebecca asks if she can have a notebook and pen. She loves drawing, so it’s no hardship to direct her to my bag. I usually carry a few items for her to use for crafts or crafting. Today, though, when Rebecca reaches for my bag, she doesn’t pull out a notebook.

  She pulls out one of the portraits I took last night.

  “What’s this? He’s handsome,” she says, running her fingers over the picture.

  “Oh, shit,” I say. Rebecca’s eyes shoot up to me and I fake a smile. “Sorry, honey. I just forgot I left those in here,” I say. I’m not sure how I could have forgotten. Maybe because I wanted to.

  I feel bad about taking the pictures and I’m not even really sure why.

  Was it spite that urged me to grab them?

  Maybe.

  Yeah, it was definitely spite.

  It’s just that Emily shouldn’t have tricked me. She had no right to. I’m not the moral police, by any means, but why had she tried to pay me to steal something that she already owned? When I realized what was happening, I felt tricked and betrayed on so many levels that nothing was making much sense anymore. I guess I had just felt really bothered by realizing that I was the last person to know who she was.

  Still, taking the pictures had been shallow.

  Those are obviously her sons.

  She’s told me about them before. Usually, I don’t talk with my clients about anything personal, yet somehow, at our meetings, I found myself opening up to Emily in ways I never did with others. She has three sons and I have a daughter, so we have quite a bit in common as far as parenting. We’re both widows, which gives us another something in common.

  But that is where the similarities ended.

  Emily is rich.

  I’m not.

  Emily works hard.

  I’m a thief.

  Emily has triplets.

  I have a single child.

  Emily’s sons are boys.

  Mine is a girl.

  Emily is brave.

  I’m honestly kind of lame.

  And now my daughter knows I’ve taken something that doesn’t belong to me. Great. I haven’t really hidden the fact that I’m a thief, but I’ve also reveled in the fact that I only steal from bad people who have either stolen or obtained the items they have by questionable means.

  I’m just not the type of person who steals family heirlooms from someone.

  “It’s pretty,” Rebecca says, touching the frame of the picture. I glance over and am surprised just how different the portrait looks in the sunlight. Now I can see the lovely trim and design of the frame. Coupled with the man’s excitement to be posing for the portrait, it gives off a renaissance-era style of loveliness.

  “Very pretty,” I agree. I’m a little worried I’m losing my mind, though, because if it’s not just my imagination, then that guy in the painting? He’s hot.

  Really hot.

  Like, deliciously melt-your-panties-off hot.

  “Where’d you get this?” Rebecca asks. She reaches into my bag and pulls out the other two portraits. She touches them and runs her hands over the frames. The frames are painted with flowers. Roses, daisies, tulips, and chrysanthemums cover the wood with bright, beautiful colors.

  “I got it yesterday,” I give a non-answer. Rebecca either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.

  “Wow,” she says. “It’s really cool.”

  “I’m glad you think so.”

  “I like the sapphires the best,” she says.

  “What?”

  Traffic starts moving again so I turn back to the road and keep my eyes firmly straight ahead. What does she mean, sapphires?

  “Yeah, there are some sapphires here,” Rebecca says. “They’re built into the frame, I think. Either way, pretty cool. Maybe we should do this for ourselves sometime, or I could do it for my art project. The fair is next month. This kind of project could really boost my presentation. We should try it.”

  “What? Putting jewels in our picture frames?”

  “No,” she says. “We should try taking pictures together. As a family.”

  It has been two years since Rebecca’s father passed away. I haven’t taken a lot of pictures since then, which is probably a terrible thing since I only have one child. I know that Rebecca misses her dad. I miss him too. Somehow, though, I’ve just never felt ready to take a “family” picture without him. He was my everything for a long time. He was precious to me.

  Now I feel like I don’t have that much to live for anymore.

  I have Rebecca, of course, but I miss Henry so much that it hurts.

  He was quiet and kind and gentle. He was a very quiet soul. He was good to me, though. He was good to us.

  I think Rebecca might be right, though.

  It’s probably time to move on, or at least to move forward.

  “We can totally take some pictures together,” I say.

  “Cool. Then we can get frames like these,” she says. I chuckle and shake my head.

  “You’ll have to help me make them,” I tell her. “Those are hand-crafted frames that probably took a ton of time to paint.”

  “I’ve got time,” she says, not unkindly, and I have to smile at her words. Rebecca is an easygoing kid who is really fun to take care of. I know so many mothers who hate pre-teens but I’m totally crazy about mine. She’s fun to do activities with, but she’s old enough to understand the word no.

  She’s willing to hang out and have fun with her friends, but she’s also unafraid to get silly, messy, and dirty. She’s willing to be wild. She’s willing to have fun. In many ways, my daughter is just like me. In others, she takes after her daddy.

  Henry was a cautious man. He always liked to consider all of the options. He liked knowing what the pros and cons were in a given situation. He was considerate of everything he did.

  “Well, I’m sure we’ll find some craft supplies we can use to make frames,” I tell her. “And if we don’t have anything at home, I’m happy to take you to the store.”

  “They won’t look like this,” she comments, touching the frames again. “Maybe we can pick up some plastic gems and put them in. Then they’ll look the same.” She puts the picture back in my bag and we sing along to music for the rest of the drive to school. I park and walk her in to her class. I don’t stay and chat with her teacher the way I usually do. Instead, I dart back to the car, open my bag, and pull out the frames.

  Sure enough, there’s a lovely sapphire carefully worked into the design of each frame.

  Fuck.

  I couldn’t have noticed it last night, of course, because each frame is covered in flowers. The art gallery was dark and in the dim lighting, I wasn’t able to see that in the center of a flower on each frame is a little sapphire.

  So what I did wasn’t steal a picture out of spite and being an asshole.

  What I did was steal something that’s probably a family treasure.

  I did exactly what I didn’t want to do and something tells me that I need to make this right as quickly as possible. I’m not exactly looking forward to seeing Emily. Not really, but I also know that I don’t have a choice.

  My motto, by hook or by crook, doesn’t really apply to robbing someone’s family heirlooms.

  Damn.

  I LEAVE THE SCHOOL and drive directly home. I get online and pull up Emily’s contact information. It’s a pseudonym, of course, or possibly her maiden name. Now that I know she’s part of the Claw family, I can search a little easier. I type in “Emily Claw” and find out whe
re she lives, where she works, and where I can find her today. To my dismay, it seems as though she’s actually kind of a big deal in the world of Starton.

  It’s been awhile since I heard someone talk about the Wolf Bitch of Starton.

  It’s a nasty, mean name that nobody deserves, least of all somebody as quiet as Emily Claw, or Emily Bright-Claw, as I’ve come to discover. Apparently, she met me under her maiden name, which is how she was able to produce so much paperwork showing that she was the true owner of the Gem of Malice.

  It was all true.

  She just hadn’t also told me that she’d been married to the person in charge of the art gallery or that they had kids together.

  I have no idea what her final play was or why she hired me for something that she obviously already owned. Was she trying to see if I could break in? Was she trying to see if I could do it? I promised her I was a good thief. I wasn’t lying about that. I really am the best. There isn’t anything I can’t steal. There isn’t any place I can’t break into.

  Why didn’t she just take my word for it?

  With a sigh, I realize what I have to do. When we met before the gig, we met at a coffee shop. It was a small, quiet place that didn’t get a lot of foot traffic. It meant we wouldn’t be disturbed and it meant that nobody would recognize us.

  Now I was going to have to march right into Claw Enterprises and hand over the stolen goods.

  Why?

  Because it was the right thing to do.

  These were pictures of her sons and I took them. I’ve taken them. I’ve robbed the Claw family.

  I feel like crap about it, too.

  I also think that my research before the job must have been weirdly lazy. I researched Claw Enterprises, of course, but there’s no picture of the CEO anywhere online. Despite being well known in the art community, Emily Claw doesn’t spend a lot of time making public appearances. I can’t really blame myself for not knowing, but I at least should have run a background check on the buyer.