NAGO, His Mississippi Queen: 50 Loving States, Mississippi (The Brothers Nightwolf Trilogy, Book 1)

by Theodora Taylor

  “No, I’m Rafe Nightwolf Sr., Nago’s father.”

  Oh. Oh!

  Halle looked down and was relieved to find she was still wearing her t-shirt, despite what had happened last night. Thank God, because this wasn’t even close to how she’d imagined her first meeting with Nago’s father. Like not at all…

  Her embarrassed thoughts ceased with a new realization. Nago was gone. “Where’s Nago?” she asked looking around the room. “Is he okay? Did something happen to him?”

  “No, he’s fine,” Rafe Sr. answered. “But he has…”

  The older man looked down as if the hotel room’s plush carpet might reveal the words he was looking for. “Ah, well, he’s decided to leave.”

  “He’s decided to leave,” she repeated. “But…I’m in heat.”

  “Yes, well…” Mr. Nightwolf continued to gaze at the carpet. Then at the window, and the old-school desk lamp. Pretty much everywhere in the room except where Halle sat half-naked underneath the covers.

  “Where is he, Mr. Nightwolf? Can you please just tell me that, sir?” she asked, her respectful tone straining under his alarming announcement.

  “I’m…not at liberty to say.”

  Every word that came out of his mouth sounded carefully calculated. Like they were at a Senate hearing rather than a hotel room—the morning after she and his son just had heat sex.

  “No, this doesn’t make any sense. Nago wouldn’t just…leave—or whatever you’re calling it.”

  She threw back the covers; modesty be damned. But then stopped when she felt something foreign on her stomach. What the…? She lifted the bottom of her shirt.

  And felt her entire body seize up with shock when she saw the white square patch layered over her stomach’s dark skin.

  Now, this she recognized. Mainly from the warning posters in the kingdom clinic’s office. It was a HeatAway patch, designed to stop the estrous cycle of a she-wolf who’d already gone into heat. And like heat control, it was highly illegal in Mississippi.

  She didn’t understand. Any of it. Why was there a HeatAway patch on her stomach?! Where was Nago?

  As if in answer to her question, Mr. Nightwolf informed her, “Nago has decided, as is his legal right, not to finish the mating process with you and accordingly, he has left the state.”

  “He has…what?” she whispered, not believing him, wanting him to stop talking. Stop talking right now.

  But he continued, “We weren’t sure how to handle this. I’m aware of your state’s ban on HeatAway, but since we’re in Florida, we took the liberty of staying your heat so you could make some important decisions with a clear mind. As you may or may not know, that patch is only a temporary stay, but one that can be extended as long as you wish. You can replace it with a new one every twenty-four hours. And if you ever wish to go into heat with another wolf—another more suitable wolf—all you need to do is remove it. If you do decide to go with the patch option, we will provide them to you for as long as you wish since we know it’s currently not possible to purchase in your home state…”

  Nago’s dad had fallen out of focus again. Gone blurry. But this time it wasn’t because of the morning sun. It was because of the tears in her eyes.

  “What do you mean gone?” she asked, interrupting the older man’s lengthy speech. “Why would he do that? He loves me. I love him! He said—”

  “I’m sorry, Princess. He didn’t share those details with me,” Rafe answered, perhaps as gently as could be expected from a father who’d been sent in to tell the she-wolf his son abandoned in a hotel room that not only would she not be mating his son…but she’d need to switch out her illegal-in-Mississippi heat patch every twenty-four hours until she learned to love again.

  10

  Which she never had.

  Ten years. Ten years she’d been trying to get over him. Ten years of trying to forget. Ten years of putting herself out there again and again for relationships that never worked out until she finally found a mateship that was all but guaranteed. And now he was back?!

  “Why?! Why did you do that?” Halle screamed, running toward him.

  She punched him. The first time she’d seen Nago in ten years, and she punched him like a crazed animal. “Why did you do that!?”

  He didn’t answer. Only stared at her like she was the ghost and not him.

  “Take it back! Not you! Not you!” She shoved him, pushing with all her might. But he was bigger now. Wider with muscles packed on top of muscles. Like he lived in the gym. He didn’t budge.

  He just continued to stare. His face hard. His eyes kind.

  This was the Nago she last recalled seeing. But he wasn’t the one she’d fallen in love with.

  Why was he here? Why had he done this to her? After all this time?

  “Why are you doing this to me?” she demanded. Shoving him. Slapping him. Kicking him.

  Not seeing. Not caring about all the witnesses to her behavior. A few who were probably recording her outburst this very moment to post on WolfNet.

  Halle hated him. More than she hated her mother. More than she hated racism and rats in drainage lines and numbers that didn’t add up and pretty much any other shitty thing she could think of. She hated him more than all that combined. And despite that, he was here.

  Bidding for her.

  Upping his bid to a million fucking dollars, so it wouldn’t and couldn’t be matched by anyone in the crowd, including Eric.

  What the hell?! Why did he do that? Why?!?!!

  She hit and hit him. But it was like wailing on a wall. He stood there. Taking it. Without response.

  Nago. Who used to compete with her to see who could get the last sleepy word in as they drifted off on late-night bio calls. Nago, who could go on for hours about his aunt’s latest video game, but who also listened to her like he really gave a fuck when she told him stories about all the old things around town she’d taught herself to fix.

  Halle punched at him. And he stood there like a wall. While distant voices called her name and told her to stop, get ahold of herself.

  She swiped a hand across his face, drawing blood. And even then, he only watched her with his kind brown gaze. His trickster eyes wide with what looked so much like sorrow, it made her want to scratch them out of his goddamn lying face.

  She lifted clawed fingers, prepared to do just that. But suddenly a pair of large hands clamped around her wrists, and a dark voice growled, “I tried. I tried to leave you alone. But if you are going to give yourself away, Halle, then I will be the one to make your claim.”

  The voice was loud, but his lips hadn’t moved. And for a moment she struggled to comprehend what was happening until she remembered…the mate bond. It allowed for a kind of telepathy. And though they’d only mated once, ten years ago, without a new mate bond to replace it, theirs had remained intact. Halle’s mind bonded to his. Her emotions bonded to his. Like they were one and the same.

  “Just calm down, Halle,” said a different male voice directly behind her.

  It was Bill, her father’s long-time beta, dragging her away from the wolf inside her head. Oh God, he was in her head!!!

  Bill didn’t say much on their way back to the house. This time she was escorted to the back door without ceremony. Now that she’d calmed down, she noticed how tired her father’s long-time beta looked. Besides serving as the Wolf Hills beta, which meant all policing duties were on him, he also had a part-time construction job with the humans. And unlike her dad, he hadn’t used dye and concealer to cover up all signs of aging for tonight’s event.

  “I’m sorry I made you do that,” she said, a wave of guilt passing over her. “I know you already got a lot to do with keeping the Chivaree folks in line all by yourself.”

  “That I do,” Bill agreed with a weary sigh. “Can’t say I’m not looking forward to another beta coming on in my place.”

  “I bet,” she murmured, glancing toward the gazebo where the loud hick-hop was playing again now that the main even
t was over.

  Her scene with Nago probably riled the crowd up that much more. “Sorry,” she repeated. “I just…I just wanted this to go to plan. And it’s not now that he’s bought a Chivaree spot.”

  “Yeah, well, ain’t much we can do about it now,” Bill pointed out with a shake of his head. “You already done took the pill.”

  Wolf Hills was small, and Dr. Lowe’s wife, and head nurse, Janet, was the worst gossip.

  Which is why Halle wasn’t at all surprised Bill, and probably the entire town, knew she’d taken a Heat Kickstart pill earlier at the clinic before returning home to prepare for the auction.

  However, what Bill didn’t know was how true taking the pill had made his words. If not for that, she’d be able to put another HeatAway patch on and stop the whole process in its tracks. After all, she still had a half-year’s supply left from the last shipment sent by Nago’s father.

  But the Heat Kickstart pill—which had not been declared illegal by her grandfather—was much more powerful than the HeatAway patch, and it was designed to kick-start a she-wolf’s heat no matter how long she’d gone unmated.

  So it didn’t matter what Halle wanted now. Because she’d be going into heat tomorrow. Giving her hand in marriage, and the Mississippi throne, to whichever wolf caught her first.

  A minute after saying good-bye to Bill, Halle walked into her bedroom in a complete daze. Her room was exactly as she’d left it. The dark green paint. The threadbare carpet. The old canopy bed she’d been sleeping in since her mother bought it brand new when she was fourteen.

  It was all still there, still the same. But everything had completely changed.

  She sat down on the edge of the bed and stared down at the bouquet of flowers Eric’s family had bought her.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about what had just happened. The bid called out in the dark…the parting of the crowd…then Nago in her head. In her head.

  She stayed there for a very long time. Staring out the window. The music from the event got louder and louder, and then there was a flash of blue and red light in the distance. Bill yelled something through a bull horn and the music abruptly cut off.

  Then everything became quiet. And eventually, the night was filled with the rising and falling hum of cicadas, or katydids as she’d called them as a child. It was a sound Halle usually found soothing. But not tonight.

  Nago was still out there. Close enough that she could sense him through their mate bond. She needed to do something. She had to fix this. But how?

  The answer came to her in a flash, and she sent an emergency bio to bypass the bioware sleep function of the person she wanted—no, needed—to connect with.

  “Halle?” Eric’s voice sounded sleepy. Most guys weren’t used to getting bio’s over their audio feeds these days—much less emergency ones in the middle of the night. “What’s going on? I need to rest up for the Chivaree.”

  “Meet me at these coordinates in fifteen minutes,” she answered.

  She sent a set of coordinates directly to his bio’s gps system. Then she ended the bio before he could ask her why.

  11

  An hour later, Halle and Eric walked back toward the house after she’d explained her plan to him. Now that she’d figured out a way to fix this whole mess, she felt better.

  Also, it was a beautiful evening for a late-night stroll. A crescent moon hung high in the sky, adding its luminous glow to the firefly light show blinking in and out of the trees. A soft breeze plucked at Halle’s braids, briefly surrounding her in the heady scent of magnolia blossoms. And it was all set to the familiar soundtrack of a Mississippi summer evening: buzzing cicadas, peeping frogs, and chirping crickets.

  This is almost romantic, Halle thought as she walked beside Eric. And pretended not to feel Nago on the other side of the tree line they were fast approaching. Not to sense him scanning for her, trying to get back inside her head.

  Anything to do with that man will come to an end tomorrow, she reminded herself. But the memory of the first words he’d spoken to her in over ten years continued to haunt the edges of her mind: I tried. I tried to leave you alone. But if you are giving yourself away, I will be the one to make your claim.

  “We should part here before anyone sees us, dear,” Eric whispered since unlike Nago, he couldn’t push words into her head.

  Yet, she reminded herself, forcing a smile as she stopped and looked up at her soon-to-be mate.

  Eric was perfect for her. He was only a few inches taller. And easy on the eyes, but not a freaking model like a lot of royals. And maybe he was a little…well, skinny wasn’t the right word for it. Maybe a bit too in-between. Neither chunky nor cut. Just average. And yeah…maybe he was a little pastier than she usually liked. But at least he wasn’t downright Hulk-like, and didn’t tower over her, or look like he’d been cast in the next Viking Shifters bio-game—

  Halle stopped, cutting off her litany with an inner ugh! Why was she still comparing every guy to Nago even ten years later?

  “So, we’ve got a plan in place,” she said to Eric, once more shoving the ex-boyfriend who ran away from her mind. “And you know exactly where to find me tomorrow.”

  “Yes, thank you for that,” Eric answered. “Not that I wouldn’t have won your claim fair and square without this information. But it was kind of you to provide me with this extra bit of…insurance.”

  “It’s the least I could do after the way I acted tonight. Again, I’m sorry. Nago and I…we dated for a little while when I was a teen. But he’s nothing to me now. Nothing.”

  She’d said this to herself so emphatically over the last ten years that she almost believed it when she said it now. Almost.

  Eric gave her a stiff smile. “No need to apologize, dear. Your father explained that the drug you took to kickstart your heat has some…side effects. I understand that…no matter what people are saying on WolfNet. And that’s what I told my father, as well.”

  Oh shit. Had it made it to WolfNet already? Given how concerned Eric was about his family’s reputation, she could only imagine how awkward the conversation with his father had been.

  “I’m so sorry I put you in that position,” she said, trying to ignore the nip of guilt in the back of her head as she said this. Yes, it was true the heat kickstart had the potential for awful side effects—ones her father’s father had blithely ignored when he’d declared it legal while continuing to forbid the use of the HeatAway Patch and heat control shots. So Halle could easily blame her behavior on the drugs. But it somehow felt like lying when she said, “I probably should have read the list of side effects more carefully.”

  Eric patted her shoulder. “At the end of the day, all that matters is our alliance. As I explained to my father, the story will read even better when it comes out that I competed against a Nightwolf in the Chivaree, and won.”

  Yes, it would make a good story, wouldn’t it? Halle shifted, uncomfortable with the idea of being splashed all over WolfNet, and not just because of the Chivaree, but also because of her billionaire ex-boyfriend.

  Mistaking her discomfort for continued remorse, Eric reached down to cup her shoulders as he said, “You should know, dear, I don’t blame you in the slightest. I tried to be open-minded, but that whole family is more than a little odd. I told you about my experience with his cousin, Ola Greenwolf, didn’t I?”

  Yes, he had. More than once. To the point where it almost seemed like maybe his one date with Nago’s cousin had been the most exciting thing that had ever happened to Eric in his otherwise completely planned life.

  Well, that and this Chivaree he’d insisted on…

  Not liking the road her mind was going down, she turned her fake smile up a few more watts and said, “Well, guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Yes, see you then, dear.”

  He leaned down to give her a quick peck on her cheek. Like a true gentleman. Perfectly polite, her human pointed out.

  Perfectly boring, her wolf shot back as she
watched him walk away.

  But boring was fine, Halle reminded her wolf. Better than fine—it was great. Really great, she told herself…while doggedly ignoring the myriad emotions she felt over the old mate bond she still shared with Nago.

  Nago watched Halle scurry up the crumbling brick stairs of her rundown kingdom house from the shadows of one of the estate’s flowering magnolia trees. Where had she been?

  He suspected but didn’t want to know for fear of what the thing inside of him might do.

  So he hung back in the shadows, willing her to give him a sign. Willing her to look his way and acknowledge she could feel him out here. Just as he could feel her.

  But she didn’t acknowledge him in the least. Leaving Nago to watch her duck back into the kingdom house without so much as a glance in his direction.

  “Ell request from President Rafesson Nightwolf! Ell request from President Rafesson Nightwolf!” his bioware bleated. Again.

  With a heavy sigh, Nago elled his fingers to accept the call.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Rafes demanded inside his elled fingers. Now that Rafes was president of the North American wolves, all he could do was ell since hacker-proof bioware had yet to be invented.

  Nago leaned against the side of the magnolia tree that smelled so much like Halle, almost instantly regretting his decision to take his brother’s call. But then again, it wasn’t like he’d had a choice. Rafes was the most powerful wolf on the planet. If he refused one more hail from him, he’d probably send a drone in, Mississippi law be damned.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know,” his brother repeated as if Nago were an idiot and not a world-renowned engineer. “Are you telling me you just spent one-mil of your kingdom’s money on I don’t know?!”

  “My money,” Nago corrected him. “I’d never take a cent from my kingdom’s coffers for something like this. And I wouldn’t need to since before I became King of Alaska, some douchebag paid me a shitload to design his unpopular blackbox system.”