by Lola Gabriel
“Clearly, that’s not true,” Marin said before she left the room.
It was the one little streak of rebellion she had allowed herself since her father had made it clear to her that the discussion about the boys’ behavior was over. As much as Marin disagreed with her father’s philosophy, she knew when to stop pushing him and that had been the time. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t be speaking to the boys tomorrow when they were alone, though. She had to try something to make the boys see that her parents’ attitude wasn’t normal and that adults followed the rules because it was the right thing to do. If the twins wanted to be treated like adults, then they needed to start to do the same thing too.
2
Rocco Lang was surprised when he was asked to come to his parents’ place. He had over a week to wait until his twenty-ninth birthday when he would take the enchantment the heir of every shifter pack alpha couple took. The enchantment would lead him to his true mate, his soulmate who would lead the pack alongside him one day, and he was excited to take the enchantment and find the woman who would be by his side for all of eternity. He had expected that to be the next time he was officially summoned to his parents’ place.
He made his way to their house and sauntered up the garden path. He wasn’t nervous. If anything, he was excited, hopeful that maybe the enchantment was going to be given to him early. He went into the house and made his way to his parents’ study. He found both of them in there as he had known he would. They sat at desks opposite each other, both of them engrossed in some task or another. Rocco’s father looked up when he tapped on the open door. He smiled at Rocco and took his glasses off.
“Rocco is here, Evelyn,” he said.
“I know. I’m not blind,” Rocco’s mom laughed. “Just give me a second to finish this.”
Her fingers danced over her keyboard for a second and then with a flourish, she hit a final key and looked up from the screen and smiled.
“Good morning, dear,” she said to Rocco. “How’s things?”
“Good,” Rocco said. “How about on your end? Anything I should know about?”
“Nothing major,” his mom replied. “Although we do have a rather important job for you to complete today.”
Rocco nodded and smiled, although his heart sank a little bit. He had pretty much convinced himself that he would be getting the enchantment early for some reason, and hearing that he wasn’t brought home to him how fruitless his hope had been. It also made him want it more. He was desperate to find the one and settle down.
“Michael, you explain what we need him to do,” Rocco’s mom said.
Rocco turned his focus to his father, who nodded his head.
“The Bailey twins,” he said. “Do you know them?”
“I know of them,” Rocco said. “Aren’t their parents friends of yours?”
“Friends is a stretch,” Rocco’s father replied. “They move in the same social circles as we do, but they’re hardly friends.”
“Okay,” Rocco said with a shrug. “So, what about them?”
“The twins turned into their wolf form in front of a human for no good reason. There was no emergency or anything like that. Luckily for the pack, the story sounds too ridiculous to be true so the human is assumed to have been hallucinating. Nevertheless, we can’t risk this kind of thing becoming the norm. We need someone to go and have a word with the twins, make sure they understand the potential consequences of their actions, and get their word that they won’t do this again,” Rocco’s father explained.
“Okay,” Rocco said, nodding his head. “So I take it the consequences will be exile?”
His father nodded gravely.
“Yes. And not just for the boys—for their parents too, as they don’t seem to be doing enough to keep the boys in line,” he replied.
“They don’t seem to be doing anything at all to keep the boys in line,” Rocco’s mom put in.
Rocco nodded his head.
“Got it. You think they might hear it louder coming from a member of the ruling alpha couple’s family than from their own people. And, of course, if one of you goes, it makes it seem like a much bigger deal than it actually is in this moment,” Rocco said.
“Something like that,” his father said with a smile. “The boys are obviously at school right now and I believe that both of their parents work, and I don’t know what arrangements they have in place for the boys until their parents get home, so I would suggest you visit maybe around six p.m. tonight.”
“Okay. Six o’clock it is, then,” Rocco said with a smile.
He said his goodbyes and left his parents’ place, heading back toward home. He was a little bit disappointed that the meeting hadn’t been about the enchantment, but he knew he didn’t have long to wait for that anyway. And if he was honest with himself, Rocco was pleased that his parents were trusting him with this task. It felt important and Rocco was happy to start doing jobs within the pack. If somehow he could get through to the boys and help them get back onto the right path, then he would consider that a job well done and something to be proud of.
Rocco raised a fist and knocked on the Baileys’ front door. He made sure his knock sounded official enough to make sure his call was answered fairly quickly, but not loud enough to be scary for the people inside. Within seconds, a harried-looking Mrs. Bailey opened the door. She smiled when she saw Rocco standing on her porch.
“Rocco. To what do we owe this pleasure?” she asked.
The Baileys were known within the pack to be trouble. The twins ran wild and pretty much did what they wanted to do. But the family was well-to-do enough that they were known to the ruling family. Until the meeting with his parents that morning, Rocco had always believed his parents and the Baileys were friends. Now he thought it was more likely a case of his parents maintaining a courteous relationship rather than being friendly with them. Clearly, Mrs. Bailey didn’t see it that way, if she was smiling at Rocco dropping in. It was easier in the moment to let go of all of that, though, and just let the Baileys still think they were friends with his parents.
“I’m actually here to talk to the twins,” Rocco said, returning Mrs. Bailey’s smile. “Are they home?”
“The twins?” Mrs. Bailey said, raising an eyebrow. “What on earth could you possibly want with them?”
She didn’t step back to let Rocco inside and it was clear to him that she was waiting for him to say more. He knew how to play this; if he kept the reason to himself for now, her curiosity would get the better of her and she’d play along. If he gave too much away, she might refuse him access, and then he would have to call in the royal guard, otherwise the pack would get the impression the ruling family was going soft, and as much as the Baileys could be irritating, Rocco didn’t want to go down that road. If the royal guard became involved, then everything would become super official, and this meeting would no longer be an informal conversation where Rocco gave the twins a stern but friendly warning and hoped they complied.
“Yes, the twins,” he said simply, ignoring the second part of her question.
Mrs. Bailey peered at him for a moment longer and Rocco forced himself to remain silent, letting the awkwardness drag on for a couple of long moments before Mrs. Bailey sighed and stepped back.
“I suppose you’d best come in, then,” she said.
Rocco breathed a sigh of relief and smiled his thanks at Mrs. Bailey as he passed her. She nodded to a door off the hallway.
“You can go in there to wait,” she said. “I’ll go and get the boys.”
Rocco went through the door Mrs. Bailey had gestured to, surprised to see a young woman in there in the process of putting a light blue jacket on. She had her back to him, but she turned to face him as she heard the noise behind her.
“Who was at the…?” she started. She trailed off when she saw Rocco and not her mother standing there. “Oh.”
She sounded a bit startled to see Rocco rather than her mother, and while Rocco would have liked to have rea
ssured her, he was frozen, unable to speak, his eyes glued to the vision of beauty before him. The girl had long, red hair and the most beautiful, shining green eyes Rocco had ever seen. They were like two emeralds and Rocco saw her long, dark lashes as she cast her eyes down for a moment, her cheeks flushing pink as she bit her bottom lip.
Rocco tried to look away from the girl, aware that too much time had passed with his eyes on her, but she had him mesmerized and he found that all he could manage to do was move his gaze from her face down to her feet and back up again. He saw her womanly figure, her hips curvy and her breasts large. He saw how her waist nipped in and he imagined himself putting his hand on the curve of her hip, rubbing over her waist, pulling her toward him and holding her against his chest.
Rocco swallowed hard, and he felt a wave of pleasure start between his legs and undulate through his body. His eyes were back on the girl’s eyes now and for a moment, they looked at each other, drinking in each other’s eyes. Rocco felt his wolf stirring within him, responding to the lust he felt for the girl.
“Hi. I’m Marin,” the girl said after another few moments had passed by.
Her voice broke the spell for Rocco, allowing him to move and speak again, although he still had trouble taking his eyes from Marin. He was slightly less concerned about it now that he had noticed that Marin seemed to have been having the exact same problem with him.
“Hi, Marin. I’m Rocco,” he replied with a smile.
“I know who you are,” Marin said, laughing softly.
Rocco cringed inside. Of course she knew who he was. But to not introduce himself to her in response to her introduction would have seemed too rude. The silence stretched out between them then and Rocco knew that he had to say something quickly before the awkwardness consumed him completely and he missed his chance to talk to the girl for a little bit longer.
“So, you’re the Baileys’ prodigal daughter, then?” Rocco said.
“I wouldn’t say that as such,” Marin laughed. “I was only traveling for a couple of years.”
Rocco raised an eyebrow and Marin laughed again.
“Okay, so I was traveling for almost ten years,” she conceded. “I left when I was eighteen before I lost my nerve and became too afraid to travel the world alone.”
“How does it feel to be back?” he asked.
Marin shrugged.
“Oh, you know. Good in some ways, bad in others,” she said.
Rocco opened his mouth to ask her if she was planning on traveling again in the immediate future, but he closed it when the door to the living room opened and Mrs. Bailey came in, followed by two sheepish-looking young boys.
“Good afternoon, boys,” Rocco said, shifting his focus from Marin to the twins.
It was an effort, but he knew what had to be done and he didn’t want to let his parents down. Not now that they were trusting him with more important pack jobs. He kept his eyes on the twins as they shifted awkwardly on their feet, looking down at the ground.
“What do you say?” Mrs. Bailey prompted them, nudging the one nearest to her gently with her elbow.
“Afternoon,” one of them muttered.
“Hi,” the other one managed, rubbing the back of his head where his mother’s elbow had connected.
“Sit down,” Rocco said to the boys.
No one seemed to think it was at all strange that Rocco was taking control and inviting the boys to sit down in their own home. They crossed to the couch and sat down side by side. Mrs. Bailey took the armchair where Marin was perched on the arm. She had her coat on now, but she was making no effort to leave. Rocco hoped it was because she was as taken with him as he was with her, but he suspected it was more likely to be a case of her wanting to know what was going on with her brothers.
“I have been getting reports that you two have shifted into your wolf form in the presence of a human. Is that true?” Rocco asked.
He kept his voice firm but not angry. He wanted to get across the seriousness of the situation, but he didn’t want to scare the boys to the point where he would never get them to open up to him. Rocco kept his focus on the boys, flicking his glance from one twin to the other. One of the boys shrugged, his eyes on his shoes. The other one looked up at Rocco and nodded his head.
“Yeah. We did,” he said, ever so slightly defiant. “But there was a good reason for it.”
Rocco shook his head slowly.
“There’s never a good reason for risking the safety of the pack like that,” he said. “Do you have any idea of the potential consequences of your actions? Not just for yourselves but for all of us?”
“We’re stronger than them,” the more forward of the two boys said. He looked at Rocco fleetingly, but he wouldn’t meet his eye. His defiance faded a little as he seemed to sense that Rocco wasn’t in agreement with him on this at all. His final words seemed to be almost an afterthought. “What can they do to us?”
“You’re missing the point,” Rocco said. “It’s not about the fact that if we wanted to, we could overpower humans. The point is that we don’t want to do that. We want to live in peace alongside the humans and be free to live our way and have the humans be free to live their way.”
“So, what are the consequences?” the boy who had remained silent until this point asked in a quiet voice.
“Well, there are a few options ranging from me giving you two an official warning and you promising me this will never happen again, all the way to you and your parents being exiled from the pack,” Rocco said.
He had no intention of exiling the Baileys, at least not for a first offence, but it was a suitable punishment in some circumstances and he wanted the boys, particularly the louder one, to really appreciate how serious their actions could be, and not just for themselves, but for their family too.
As he spoke, Marin gasped. He looked at her. Her hand was pressed to her lips, her face looking pale.
“No. Please don’t do that. They’re just kids,” she said.
As much as Rocco hated to see that expression on Marin’s face because of him, he knew he couldn’t back down quite yet, not until the boys had at least apologized and reassured him that this wouldn’t happen again.
“They’re old enough to know better,” he said.
“We won’t do it again,” the quieter boy said. “Really, we won’t. Please don’t send us away.”
Rocco looked from him to the other boy, who looked back at him.
“Can you make me the same promise as your brother has?” he prompted him.
The room was silent for a moment, the air thick with tension, and Rocco was starting to think the boy was going to call his bluff.
“Kyle,” Mrs. Bailey hissed. “Answer him.”
“I promise,” Kyle said and the tension seemed to melt away.
“Right. In that case, just this once, I am willing to issue a warning. But be warned—this will be the one and only warning you boys will get. If word gets back to me that either of you have stepped out of line again, then I will be taking further action. Is that clear?” Rocco said.
Both of the boys nodded their heads and Rocco nodded back at them. He turned his attention to Mrs. Bailey.
“Might I suggest you and your husband ensure this is a promise the boys keep? And feel free to issue your own punishment as well,” he said.
Mrs. Bailey nodded her head.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
Rocco nodded again.
“I shall take my leave now,” he said.
“I’ll see you out,” Marin said quickly, jumping to her feet. She blushed slightly as Mrs. Bailey looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “What? I’m leaving anyway. I only stayed to make sure the boys weren’t in any more trouble.”
“See you later, then, love,” Mrs. Bailey said, giving Marin a look Rocco couldn’t read. “Goodbye, Rocco.”
“Goodbye, Mrs. Bailey. Goodbye, boys,” Rocco said. “Remember your promise, okay?”
The boys nodded in tandem an
d Rocco headed for the door with Marin on his heels. He could smell the scent of her perfume, a sweet vanilla fragrance that washed over him and made him wonder how Marin’s skin would taste. He wanted to lick her all over and find out. He imagined her to taste sweet like her scent, but with a salty undertaste that was all her. He adjusted the waist band of his jeans before he reached up and opened the front door, hoping that his erection wouldn’t be visible.
He stepped outside and Marin followed, pulling the door closed behind her. If she could see that Rocco’s cock was hard inside of his jeans, she made no comment on it. Rocco was glad to be saved the embarrassment of her pointing out his erection, but part of him was a bit upset that she didn’t see it and decide to ask him back to her place. He pushed the thought away before his mind could run away with it any further than it already had gone.
They walked down the garden path in silence. Rocco tried to think of something to say to break the silence between them, but everything he came up with sounded lame and so he kept his mouth shut, deciding that awkward silence was slightly better in the big scheme of things than awkward conversation. When they reached the gate, Marin pointed to the yellow car that was parked behind his red one.
“That’s me,” she said.
Rocco nodded to the red car.
“And that’s me. Good night, Marin,” he said.
He walked to the car. He had his hand on the driver’s door handle when Marin spoke up, saying Rocco’s name in a quiet, timid voice. He turned his head to look at her. She had her driver’s side door open, but she hadn’t gotten into the car yet. The breeze moved her hair around her face and she reached up and absently tucked it behind her ears.
“They’re not really bad kids, you know,” she said, her voice louder now, more even.
Rocco shrugged.
“I’m sure they didn’t mean any harm by their actions, but like I said in there, they are old enough to know better. They are old enough to know and respect the rules,” he said.
“Maybe,” Marin said, no longer looking at Rocco but looking at the ground instead.