by Debra Dunbar
I’d done it. I’d completely shocked my cool, calm, and collected Alpha. Jake looked horrified. I was pretty sure no one had elicited that expression on him in…probably in forever.
“People don’t…women don’t…why would someone do that? Why would anyone jab a piece of metal through such a sensitive part of their body?”
I was so going to hell. “Because it totally enhances the sexual experience. Dude, every thrust makes that little ball rub up against—”
“Okay. I get it. Do you…I mean, I’m assuming that you…” His eyes dropped to the portion of my anatomy under discussion, then jerked back up to meet mine. I’d flustered my Alpha. I’d completely rattled the guy. Score one for me.
“Of course. I’d hardly be in a position to recommend such a piercing if I hadn’t experienced it myself.”
Jake sucked in a breath and shook his head. “She’s sixteen. Her mother is going to kill me.”
I snorted. “Hardly. You’d kick her ass.”
“I just sat for half an hour while Kathleen chewed me out. I no longer have any confidence that I could ‘kick her ass’. If she finds out her daughter got this hood piercing, we’re all dead, starting with me. I don’t even think the archangels will be safe from her wrath.”
“Then why? Mir said you’d assigned her this job. Why do that to a sixteen-year-old girl?”
“There are good reasons I asked Mir specifically to take you under her wing and help you acclimate to the pack,” Jake said.
I waited a few seconds, then decided that I needed to ask if I wanted him to elaborate. “And those reasons are?”
“She’s young and eager to be of use in the pack. She’s of an age where the idea of a rebel, someone who seems independent and unconcerned with others’ opinions is appealing to her. She wants to go against her parents, to be an adult living on her own and making her own choices, but that’s scary. I knew that she’d admire you.”
“I’m not exactly someone that young werewolf girls should admire,” I told him. “I’m starting to agree with her mother that you screwed up on this decision.”
“Mir has a clear head. She may admire you, but she will only gain confidence in her ability to live independent from her parents from you. She won’t emulate you.”
“That’s what you think. She’s already talking tattoos and piercings.”
Jake winced. “Please try to dissuade her from that, or at least convince her to wait until she’s eighteen. I’d take it as a personal favor if you did.”
It would be awesome to have the Alpha in debt to me, although I was kind of to blame for putting the idea into Mir’s head anyway. “Sure. I’ll do my best.” Which meant Mir would probably have a tramp stamp before the week was out in addition to her genital piercing.
“The reason I wanted Mir in particular to help you fit into the pack was because I think you need her. I get the idea that you haven’t had much of anyone in your life who admired you, or who seemed to enjoy your company without being nervous or suspecting every single move you make. Mir is fascinated by the whitewashed versions of your past that her parents have told her, but she judges you as you stand before her today, she judges you for how you act toward her and treat her. And she likes you, so she’s not afraid.”
In other words, Jake picked someone that he felt would actually be a friend to me. My first friend in…well, in ever. And she was a sixteen-year-old girl. If I was as young as I looked, then Mir could have been my little sister. Instead, she might have been my granddaughter. Was it weird and kind of creepy that my only friend was a minor?
Oh well. It’s not like I had the luxury of being picky about my friends. Mir was it. And I liked her. My beast liked her. My beast really liked her, and seemed to be treating her as if she was my granddaughter or something.
We walked through the compound, the few people still out and about trying hard not to stare at us as we passed. I turned to head to my dorm, and was surprised to feel Jake’s hand on my arm.
“Come with me. I want to talk to you a minute now that you’ve gotten unpacked and a bit settled in.”
I hesitated, wondering what it was he wanted to say that couldn’t wait until tomorrow afternoon when I was supposed to meet with him after lunch. But curiosity got the better of me, and I let him steer me toward the Alpha House, noting that he kept his hand on my arm the whole way up the stairs and in the door. What, was he afraid I’d run off or something? My initial impulse was to pull away once we started walking, but I let it go. It wasn’t just that I didn’t want to piss Jake off by yanking my arm free of his grasp. I kind of liked him touching me. The only touching I’d had or done in decades had either been in fights, or fast, hard, usually drunken sexual encounters. None of them had the same steadying, comforting, guiding feel as his hand on my arm.
He let go once we were inside and I followed him to the office, taking a seat when he gestured.
“How are you feeling? Any issue with your new pack mates? Have you met your roommates yet?”
“Other than Mir’s mom, everyone has pretty much not spoken to me.” Or made eye contact, or even come within five feet of me. “I did meet two of my roommates besides Mir, though. They were friendly.”
They were, and it shocked me to realize that. Muffin Top and Muscles might have been wary, but they’d still initiated conversation with me, and even shared that hysterical story about hair-on-fire woman. I didn’t want to believe it. I kept thinking that I must be mistaken, but something inside me wondered if I’d make friends in this pack.
Nah. Within a few days, we’d fight over something, and my beast would decide she needed to kill them. Hopefully someone would drag me off before that happened, and then they’d drag me to Jake and he’d do what should have been done decades ago.
Which brought me to something I really wanted to ask. “Why didn’t you just kill me? I get that the Alpha down in L.A. didn’t feel comfortable doing it. Actually, I beat her to a pulp, so I’m thinking she couldn’t kill me even if she tried. I half expected that joining Swift River was a pretense for being led out into the woods and put down. No sane Alpha would take me into his pack. I didn’t really expect that you would either.”
Jake sat on the corner of his desk. His stance was relaxed and casual, but I knew that one wrong move and I’d be pinned to the floor. I got the feeling he was fast and strong, and that as crazy as my beast was, she wouldn’t be able to get the jump on him.
“Well, I can’t kill you without provocation. Not now. Mir would never forgive me, and I’d be going against the rules I set up about pack behavior. I asked you to join us. If it doesn’t work, I won’t shy away from doing what I need to do to protect my wolves, but that wasn’t my intention in bringing you up here. And I truly hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Me too. “But why? I’ve failed at every pack I’ve been a member of. Why do you think I’ll succeed here?”
“Because I think you can get control of this thing. I think you can manage to integrate your beast and be a valuable member of our pack. I don’t put wolves down for small infractions. If you kill someone, I’ll put you down. Until then…well, I won’t promise you won’t have a broken bone here or there.”
That was reassuring, but it wasn’t really the answer I was looking for. “Why bring me up here at all? There is no other pack in the world that would have me. I was on a fast track to execution by angel when you volunteered to take me on. Why bother? And don’t give me some crap about thinking I can be rehabilitated. I might not know you, but I can tell you’re not some goody-two-shoes Pollyanna type who thinks there’s sunshine and roses in a garbage pit.”
There was a forced sternness in his eyes that made me think he was fighting not to smile. “When I heard you needed a pack, I had to offer to take you in. I know the circumstances of your birth, Tupper.”
It wasn’t a national secret, although the werewolves that had been alive at the time preferred to let that ugliness become buried, a forgotten sordid part of our
history. “Yeah, I was one of many test-tube werewolves, an attempt to combine two Nephilim and come up with an angel. Hundreds of attempts and I was the only embryo that survived to birth. And once they got a load of me, they halted the experiment and forbade anyone from ever trying again. That’s one of the reasons why Nephilim are placed in packs away from each other, just so they don’t get another one of me.”
He was quiet for a long while, the gaze of his ice-blue eyes disconcertingly intense. “All of those experiments? They were trying to produce another me.”
I couldn’t have heard that right. “You? You’re saying you’re the product of two Nephilim? I mean, no offense, you’re damned powerful, but you’re no angel. Where are your wings?”
“I haven’t been able to manifest them since I was an infant.”
He was serious. Fuck me to the moon and back, he was serious. “You’re an angel.”
“I doubt I’m a full angel. Most likely three quarters, but possibly more. I learned to mute my powers and hide my energy signature since before I could walk. My life depended on it. My parents already had a death sentence on them just for being Nephilim, imagine what the angels would have done to me if they’d found out. Imagine what they’d still do.”
An angel light. No fucking way. “But Dustin told me that there is an angel down in the Juneau Pack. The angelic host hasn’t dusted her, and she’s flying around the state like some damned winged Mary Poppins.”
“She is the product of an angel and a demon, not two Nephilim. And believe me, if the angels had discovered her even five years ago, they most likely would have thrown her through the gates to Hel or killed her. I have no faith that the angels would welcome me with open arms. I’d rather live as a werewolf and lead my pack, than try to live my life as a wingless, almost-angel.”
I still wasn’t sure I believed him. “So your parents were in love? Or they just screwed and your mom got knocked up? How did two Nephilim even meet when they’re rare as hens’ teeth?”
He actually looked embarrassed. “They were pen pals. And my father snuck away to meet my mother because he’d fallen in love with her. He snuck away repeatedly. Eventually they came clean to her Alpha when my mother became pregnant, and that put an end to the sneaking away.”
That…that was a sad story. Like Romeo and Juliet, forced to be forever apart, only no one died. At least, I didn’t think so. “Did your Mom commit suicide after you were born?”
I don’t think I could have shocked him more if I’d spit in his face. “No! Why would you ask that? Of course she didn’t. She raised me. She’s still with her pack. I visit her on holidays and call her weekly. As I do my father.”
Okay. Not so Romeo and Juliet then. Even with the sad story, I felt the stab of jealousy. I was a test tube embryo, born to a surrogate mother and passed around from family to family each year. Or month. Or week. However long it took me to alienate everyone who’d taken me into their home. Even as an infant. I would have given anything to have someone to visit on holidays, who would worry if I didn’t call weekly. Someone. Anyone. It didn’t have to be a parent figure. Even a friend would be nice.
Cut the pity party. I looked up at Jake warily. If he had so much as one ounce of sympathy in his face, I was going to punch him regardless the consequences. But instead of pity, I only found calm disinterest. Strangely it helped. The beast settled, satisfied that I hadn’t appeared vulnerable in any way.
“So, what? You feel somehow responsible for my birth, because they were trying to replicate you, or create a better-than-you? I’m your pet project to assuage your guilt?”
He laughed. “Guilt? I carry no guilt for deeds that are not my own. Just as I’m no Pollyanna, I’m no martyr. I am almost-an-angel. You’re almost-a-demon. If I was given a chance to live and make my home here, you should be as well. That’s why I took you in, not through any sense of guilt or obligation.”
I shook my head, confused. “But my beast…I can’t control her most of the time. She’ll challenge you.”
“And she’ll lose. Do you think it was easy for me to control the beast inside of me? He clamors for me to punish even the slightest infraction, to set rules and procedures so strict that no one would ever stay in my pack. I give him enough leeway to put him at ease, bring him satisfaction, but I don’t allow him to control me, to make me a wolf that would be unable to live among others.”
I’d tried. Didn’t he think I’d tried? Over the decades, I’d begged, badgered, bribed my beast to submit, to compromise, to just calm the fuck down long enough for me to have a home, to have one friend, one lover, someone, anyone. “And how do you propose I do this?”
“Your beast wants to fight, wants to be top of the pack, but doesn’t want to lead, or to rule, correct?”
I nodded.
“Then let her fight.”
I snorted. “Holy shit, why did I not think of that myself? Oh, that’s right, because I’ve spent my entire life beating the crap out of my pack mates and Alphas and it hasn’t got me anything but shuffled off to the next pack, homeless, friendless, reviled and hated.”
“Don’t fight your pack mates. You know you’re more dominant than they are, and they do, too. Fight me. I’m the one who sets your beast the most on edge.”
Strangely enough, he was the one that calmed my beast, but at his proposal, she perked up her head in interest. Adrenaline shivered through me. Something other than adrenaline shivered through me. Lust. That weird electricity. That desire to reach across the few feet that separated us and touch him. Strange how those things all seemed to go together when it came to this Alpha.
“In the gym, in private. You can fight me anytime you choose, with whatever weapon, in whatever form you want. We can fight until first blood, or until one of us yields, or until one of us is unconscious. It won’t be a fight for control of the pack, it will be a fight to give your beast what she wants. And then, when you walk out, and the doors of the gym close behind you, she will be satisfied. She will be at ease.”
“I…I…” I didn’t know what to say, how to reply. I’d never had someone offer to fight me before. Usually I, or rather my beast, challenged, and my opponent accepted with barely hidden fear, to save face. No one willingly fought me. Because everyone who did, lost. And everyone who did barely escaped with their lives.
“Say yes, Tupper.” There was something seductive in his voice, as if he were asking me to his bed, and not to his private battleground. “Say yes, and know the first peace you’ve known in your life. Or say no, and continue to fight with your beast until you both kill each other.”
I inhaled, filling my lungs. I hoped….no, I didn’t hope. For the first time in my life, I trusted.
“When do we start?” I asked.
“We start now.” He grinned, and it transformed him from a stern, unflinching Alpha into a man of unearthly beauty, it transformed him into an angel.
Chapter 6
The gymnasium was down in the basement of the Alpha House, far from the meeting and dining rooms. It was huge, with padded walls and mats on the floors. Across the back was a row of heavy bags. In one corner, a metal rack pulled down and locked into place with speed bags. Jake swung open one of the padded walls and turned on a light switch, illuminating yet another room with boxing gloves and sparring weapons.
“Some of our pack members use the weight room or other workout equipment in the common usage exercise area, but for those who want to practice boxing or martial arts, this room is always available.”
“So the Alpha House isn’t just yours?” I asked. In most packs, the Alpha House wasn’t truly a private residence. It was more of a pack-owned resource where the Alpha may, or may not live. The packs in large cities tended to not have an Alpha House, instead using rented facilities for their gatherings. It was nice having a common space where anyone could congregate, but given the level of order and structure in the Swift River Pack, I’d assumed the Alpha House was Jake’s sole domain, only to be entered with permission.
He gave me an odd look. “I’m not a monarch. I have private rooms here, but this building belongs to the pack. Everything belongs to the pack. I don’t get special exceptions from the rules because I’m the Alpha.”
That wasn’t what I’d expected at all. “So this isn’t all in your name? Just like the others in the pack, all you own is the clothes on your back and a handful of personal belongings?”
I waited, expecting there to be all sorts of reasons why the slick Range Rover, the yacht, the private plane, were all his. But nothing else. Oh no, it was all very communal, aside from a few paltry luxuries that he deserved as the Alpha.
“Yes. The Swift River Pack is incorporated and everything is owned by the corporation. We have a board of directors, a governing body, and a charter. There are rules, regular financial statements and corporate reports. I own no more of the corporation than any other pack member. Once you’ve established yourself and are past your probationary period, you’ll begin to receive shares of the corporation as well. We hold corporate stock aside for new members, and children.”
Was this guy a fucking saint? I would have at least gotten myself a private jet out of the deal. I mean, he was the Alpha, after all. “And if members leave?”
“We buy their shares. Once they leave the pack, they’re unable to continue to hold stock in the corporation.”
Once again I was speechless. I could only gawk at Jake as he walked into the room and surveyed the weapons.
“Bare-fists? Gloves? Do you want to use staffs? Or perhaps fencing?” He turned to face me, his blue eyes eerie in the bright light.