Wolf and Soul (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 3)

by Taylor, Theodora

  Grady went to the wardrobe and pulled on the first clothes his hands landed on. A pair of jeans and a flannel shirt. However a sense of foreboding began gnawing at his insides even before he finished putting on his clothes, and he realized why as soon as he stepped out of their warm room and into the cold hallway.

  Tu had gone quiet. She’d stopped transmitting, even though he could see Alisha yelling with big gestures and wide eyes at the door. Alisha, he could smell, was pregnant, the smell coming off of her even stronger than it did with Tu which made Grady suspect Rafe would be welcoming another set of multiples into his kingdom house in nine months. It was the kind of the thing he would have congratulated the she-wolf on if she hadn’t spotted him in the hallway at that very moment and then covered her mouth while she continued to talk to Tu, making it more than obvious… whatever she was saying, it was about him.

  24

  Grady’s head swung to Rafe who was rubbing a fist over his chest.

  “Sorry,” he signed. Just signed, no words, like he did whenever he wanted to talk with Grady privately in a room inhabited by other people. “We hear you and Tu mates yesterday. Tu sent Janelle and King Tikaani text message about sending dowry money A-S-A-P. Janelle surprised. Tikaani not. He knew, but no tell us. Janelle tell Alisha. Alisha tell me. Feel my surprise, my guilt because we mates. Ask why I guilty. Tell truth.”

  Grady was confused. He could understand everyone’s surprise if Tu announced their mating to Janelle, who served as the Alaska crown’s lawyer, via a text message requesting her dowry as soon as possible. But why would Rafe feel guilty upon hearing about his marriage to Tu? Then he remembered… Rafe sitting at his desk, advising him to find a wife with a big dowry.

  Grady signed back, feeling rusty after so many days of mind-to-mind with Tu. “I don’t mate Tu because money.”

  “I know,” Rafe quickly assured him. “Tell Alisha. Alisha don’t believe. Want talk to Tu. I come with. Try to help.”

  Grady shook his head. This wasn’t good. Not good at all. He knew he’d never do anything like that, but he had to look at it from Tu’s perspective. Suddenly this wolf she thought hated her shows up out of the blue at the Colorado summer cabin and refuses to leave on the same weekend he finds out her mating scent has completely disappeared. And then he asks her to marry him quick before they get back to Oklahoma, where she finds out the state coffers are pretty much empty. And last night…

  He signed to Rafe, “Dowry have contract? Death…” he didn’t know the sign for “clause,” so he spelled it out.

  His heart sank when Rafe nodded. “One year, and if daughter don’t survive childbirth, you must return money,” his friend signed carefully.

  Grady inwardly cursed. So what had been a sincere plea with Tu to stay with him could easily now be interpreted as him just making sure he got her dowry—right before he killed her original mate, buried him in the woods, and then asked her to keep it a secret forever.

  Grady felt sick to his stomach. If he’d been told the story about anyone else, he would have believed it was a con job, no detective work needed. And the look on Tu’s face as she listened to Alisha wasn’t good at all. A mixture of unwelcome surprise and terrible upset, like her sister had dumped a bucket of ice cold reality over the dream he’d spun for her.

  Tu turned away from Alisha then, wrapping her arms around herself like she used to when she was in “Sad Goth Tu” mode.

  “Is it true?” she asked him. “Did Rafe tell you to bag a rich wife?”

  “Yes,” Grady admitted, because as desperate as he was to keep her in his life, he wasn’t going to lie to her. He wouldn’t ever do that.

  But the look on Tu’s face nearly killed him. She flinched like he’d slapped her. And though he’d killed his brother as dead as dead could be, Grady could see his ghost in her deeply troubled eyes.

  “Is that why you showed up at the cabin? Were you playing me all along? Pretending to be reluctant about mating me, but then making sure we made it official the next day? Was that the real reason you kept questioning me about how we were going to afford all the Oklahoma initiatives, not because you were looking out for your state, but because you already had plans for the money? Is that why—is that the real reason why you killed your brother? Why you told me you loved me?”

  “No, Tu! No!” he said, grabbing her hands up in his. “I know what it looks like, but everything I’ve done, everything I do has been for you. Everything I will ever do will be because I love you, because I’ve been into you from the start—I don’t care about your dowry. I’m in this for you. Just you. You’re my heart. My fucking soul. Please believe me!”

  Tu stared at him for moments on end, her face harsh and suspicious….

  …then she turned the transmitter back on, right before saying to Alisha and Rafe, “Okay, he says that’s not why he married me, so it’s settled. Wanna go out for breakfast? I’m starving.”

  Grady’s heart soared, but Alisha looked back at Tu like she was either stupid or crazy or both.

  “And you’re just going to take his word for it?”

  “Yep,” Tu answered, definitive, as if she’d just come to the most logical conclusion in the world.

  Alisha blinked a few times before saying,

  “Okay, he’s brainwashed you. That’s obviously what’s happened here. I’m going to

  call Janelle and she’ll put a hold on the money until we can get you a psyche eval.”

  “Alisha,” Rafe said, taking her by the arm. “Grady’s a good guy.”

  “Grady’s a fucking fantastic guy!” Tu corrected. She then addressed Alisha. “You don’t know us, Alisha. You don’t know what we’ve been through. If Grady says he didn’t mate me for my money, then he didn’t. So you need to stop disrespecting me and my mate

  and back down from this subject right now. Understand?”

  Now Alisha looked a little taken aback, and Grady almost felt sorry for her. After a year of dealing with Sad Tu, it had to be a surprise to get hit with the Tu he’d come to know over the past week. The fierce and confident she-wolf who made a thing true just by pronouncing it to be so.

  “Tu, I’m not trying to disrespect you—” Alisha started.

  But Tu didn’t let her finish. “Maybe not. But you’re disrespecting Grady and that means you’re disrespecting me.”

  Alisha glanced at Grady, as if she were trying to figure out what magical spell he’d cast over her sister.

  “Tu, I’m just saying—” She stopped, and for once the tell-it-like-it-is she-wolf actually seemed to be thinking of a diplomatic way to say what she wanted to say next. “I’m just saying that five million is a lot of money. Perhaps you should consider—”

  Now Grady interrupted. He signaled for Alisha to stop talking and looked down at Tu, signing so Rafe could understand, too.

  “I heard wrong, right? She didn’t say five million.”

  Rafe leaned down to whisper something to Alisha. He must have been translating for her.

  “Yes,” Tu answered, both with sign and in his head as he had. “She said five million.”

  “But Rafe said Alisha’s dowry was two-hundred thousand dollars, one-hundred thousand for Janelle. Yours should be three-hundred thousand at the most.”

  “Yeah, but…” she stopped signing now, and it felt to him like she was whispering when she explained, “Alisha and Janelle were virgins. I wasn’t. Plus I’m twenty-six years old, and I’ve had a miscarriage. Five million is pretty standard for a she-wolf princess with my, ah, history.”

  But Grady still couldn’t believe it. “Five million,” he said, feeling the shock roll around in his head.

  “Yes, five million.”

  “Five million,” he repeated again, his head starting to swim.

  Tu shook her head impatiently, like his response was just silly. “Grady, yes, five million.”

  And that was the last thing he heard, before his legs gave out from underneath him.

  The next thing he felt was
a glass of water being splashed into his face. Then Tu and Alisha’s faces came into view overhead as he spluttered liquid out of his mouth and nose.

  Tu turned the transmitter back on and said, “See, I told you, Alisha.”

  “Yes, I suppose he most likely didn’t know. Sorry,” Alisha responded, her face and voice a study in how to deliver the most begrudging of apologies.

  Grady shook the water off like a wet dog and sat up. Tu. She had saved him. Not just his heart, not just his soul, but the future of both his crown and state. He pulled her into his arms.

  “Your dad’s an idiot. You know I would have paid him five million to marry you, right? I mean I would have had to ask Rafe for a loan, but I would have.”

  The smile she gave him could have lit up their entire kingdom town, it was so luminous.

  “Yeah, I know, Wolf,” she said, pressing a sweet kiss to his mouth. “But don’t tell

  my dad that when he and my mom come down here tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? Your parents are coming here tomorrow!?”

  “Yeah,” she answered, tugging at his hand. “So get up, Wolf. We have a lot of work to do before they arrive…”

  THE NEXT DAY, Grady found himself waiting outside his little farm house in the first suit he’d ever bought for his own kingdom’s business. Tu was on his right, Rafe on his left, while Alisha flanked Tu’s other side.

  Tu and Alisha were talking with their heads together, probably a last-minute strategy session for how to handle the impending visit. After he fainted, Tu had gone from telling her sister off to acting like her presence was an early Christmas gift. Grady and Rafe had done more signing over the past day than over the past year, because their wives pretty much ignored them as they talked and talked and talked—Grady suspected they hadn’t talked like this in a very long time, even though they’d been living in the same house for the past year.

  And when Tu finally returned home after staying up late with Alisha, drinking tea in a nearby hotel bar, it had been all, “Alisha says Daddy might try to block the dowry, so we should… and Alisha says she wants to help us get a wolf program at Oklahoma Northeast University. She says it’s the only way to keep our best wolf talent in state—though she thinks we’ll still lose our best football players to Denver U. We’ll have to show her on that one.”

  It was funny because when he’d first observed the two sisters at Mag’s celebration six years ago, they’d been on opposite sides of the same coin. Alisha, an academic who thought she knew everything, Tu, a party girl who thought she knew everything.

  Life had beaten them both up since that night, but it hadn’t knocked them out. No, not at all. And now that they were finally both women, it turned out they had a lot more in common than they’d originally thought. No, better than that, now they knew each other’s value and would never let anything come between them again.

  Seeing their heads together, their hands joined like they were preparing to do battle with a common enemy, did Grady’s heart good, even if he was too nervous to concentrate on reading their lips.

  His anxiety only increased when the Cadillac Escalade appeared in the distance, kicking up dirt as it headed toward them, shiny and black and looking way out of place in their small Oklahoma kingdom town.

  “House too small,” he signed to Rafe. “Shouldn’t meet here. Should meet town hall or—”

  “Too late,” Rafe signed and spoke back. “Plus, it’s tradition. The king would respect you less if he sees you’re ashamed of your house.”

  Rafe leaned in and signed further, “I know you started out as a beta, but you’re the alpha now. Remember that. When he’s here, he’s on your land. He is owed the respect of a king, but he owes you even more respect because he is in your state. He’s going to try to top dog you. Don’t let him. This is a business talk. Treat it like business.”

  Good advice that Grady fully planned to take, until Tu’s cousin Vince climbed out of the driver’s seat and opened the door for the small king, who then came around the back of the car to open the door for his queen. Tu was the smallest wolf in her family, but the king looked to be a close second. Along with his stature, he was also plump, with a perennially pleasant expression that put Grady in mind of a laughing Eskimo cartoon, even though he was wearing a business suit with a black overcoat. However, there was no doubting his status.

  He carried himself like an alpha, crossing the distance between him and the greeting party with the confidence of a president, before parting from his wife to clasp Rafe around the forearm and pull him in for a fatherly hug.

  “Good to see you again, Son,” he said.

  Wilma was talking to both Tu and Alisha now, her hands on their shoulders, so it would have been awkward for Tu to take attention away from their conversation to transmit for Grady. Grady might have thought it an unfortunate coincidence a week ago, but after seeing how Tu had handled his pack leaders, he quickly assessed Wilma’s sudden need to talk to her youngest daughter as what it was—a business tactic. The king had effectively disarmed Grady’s most important business weapon in a matter of seconds.

  Grady looked over at Rafe who was on the receiving end of some small talk from the king. Tikaani’s face was warm as could be, but his eyes didn’t once go to Grady. It was like having the most important man in the room come up to your friend and then totally ignore you, in a way neither you nor he could get around without coming off as rude.

  And Tu’s words came back to him.

  “King Tikaani Business Rule: Strategy. Everything you do. It’s all strategy from the moment you step into a business space.”

  He could see now if Tu was Luke Skywalker. Tikaani was Yoda, all cute and wrinkly until he pulls out that light saber in Episode II.

  Grady would have bet money Rafe was looking for a break in the conversation to make an introduction, but Tikaani didn’t even let them have that. After telling Rafe how his father, Dale, had tried to get in on this trip, but had been shut down by his mother who loved her three grandsons but refused to babysit them alone, he abruptly turned to Grady, and signed, “Hello, Grady.”

  “Hello,” Grady signed back. Then he awkwardly pocketed the phone he had pulled out to talk with Tu’s parents and signed. “I didn’t know you signed.”

  “Only little. Learn fast after I see my daughter in Wolf Springs clinic. Think I might need to know for wedding.” His eyes went cool then, and it had a very chilling effect, somewhat akin to having Santa Claus glare at you. “But we never get invitation.”

  Beside him, he felt Tu open up her mind, a sign that she was about to start transmitting to him, but Grady pushed into her head, “No, let me talk to him. Just me.”

  “But—”

  “Tu, this is my duty to you and to my kingdom. Let me do it.”

  He didn’t wait for Tu to respond before signing to the Alaska alpha, “Your signing very good.”

  “Thank you,” her father signed back.

  Grady tapped Rafe on the shoulder. “But I’m asking Rafe translate, make sure you and queen understand what I sign. I want both you to understand what I say. Okay, Rafe?”

  “Sure,” Rafe signed and spoke, although he was probably wondering along with everyone else why Grady didn’t ask Tu who had a direct link to his mind to do his translation work.

  Grady didn’t keep them wondering long.

  “You hurt Tu. When she need you most, you make her feel like shit,” he signed slowly to her parents, giving Rafe the time he needed to speak what he said. From the appalled looks that came over Tikaani’s and Wilma’s faces, he guessed Rafe had done him the service of translating his words precisely, and he continued on.

  “My wife is amazing, best wife any wolf could have. She don’t see I’m not good enough for her. Because of you, her parents. It will take me years to make her not think she ruined. Because of YOU. No, we don’t invite you our wedding.”

  He stopped, waiting for Tu to make him stop talking to her parents this way. But for once she didn’t s
ay anything, didn’t try to impose her own agenda on the business conversation. And that spoke to the truth of his words more than anything else could have.

  “You her parents. If Tu want, you can stay in our lives. But if you ever say words make her feel she not amazing, I will ban you from my kingdom.”

  Tikaani’s eyes narrowed as he signed. “You ban after you take my money!”

  “Yes, after. Tu wants your money for many Oklahoma business deals we make. Tu has vision for our crown. She need your money, but WE don’t need YOU.”

  It was always silent in Grady’s world when Tu wasn’t in his head, but at that moment, it was even more silent than that. The King and Queen of Alaska were looking forward in such a way, there was no doubt a furious conversation was taking place behind their eyes. But other than that, nobody was talking. Nobody was moving. They all waited to see how Tikaani would respond to Grady’s signed words.

  The king took a step toward Grady, bringing them nearly wingtip to cowboy boot, and Grady stood up straight, hoping to God this conversation didn’t end up with him having to easily deflect the much smaller wolf’s punch.

  But then the king burst out laughing.

  “See Wilma, didn’t I tell you? I knew I picked right!” he said out loud. He then explained to Tu, “Your mom didn’t think I made the right call sending you back up to Grady after you showed up at the clinic. Near chewed my ear off about it—you know how prejudiced she can be when it comes to wolves from mange states, even though she’s from one herself, but I said, ‘I’ve been watching that deaf beta over the years, and mark my words, he’s going to make a great king.’ I told her I could see it in him, the way I saw it in Rafe’s dad back when we met in college and he was just some no-name wolf from a Colorado rez pack. And I told your mom you two would be a good match. Your mom called me crazy, told me I was flushing good dowry money down the toilet.”

  The Alaska king slapped his knee, looking happier than a fox who’d eaten all the chickens in the hen house as he turned to his wife and said, “But look at these two now, Wilma! He’s all wolfed out over her. Defending her, making sure she gets the money she needs to make her crown thrive. And look at your daughter! Cute little orange dress, none of that black and grey crap. Going all over the state, making business deals.” The king pumped both fists in the air like a boxing champion. “Who called it? Who called it?”