Chloe started to take a happy step forward, but then Rafe shook his head at her.
“Don’t,” she heard him command quietly.
Chloe looked between Alisha and Rafe, obviously torn between her friend and her fiancé. But in the end, she stepped back and tucked her hand into Rafe’s arm.
“I’m sorry,” she mouthed as Tu dragged Alisha away.
Alisha was disappointed but at least Janelle came easily when they snatched her away from her awkward dance with the Wyoming king. Thanks to their Detroit-born mother, the three sisters had loved Michael Jackson songs from the time they were born, and it showed in the way they danced to the upbeat song together. The young women laughed with reckless abandon, not caring that they were princesses, and ignoring the fuming looks their parents were giving them for so rudely pulling Janelle away from the new King of Wyoming.
In fact, Tu had the nerve to yell across the dance floor, “C’mon, Mama! You know you want to get in on this.”
Wilma Ataneq, the tall and regal former Princess of Detroit and well-respected Queen of Alaska, dropped her scowl. She did want to dance with her daughters. After all, it had been she who had taught them how to do so in the first place. Also, she had a soft spot for her youngest daughter, who looked almost exactly like her except a few shades lighter and a half a foot shorter.
The Alaska princesses cheered as their mother danced toward them, wagging her head and bumping her hips in perfect time to the music.
But as she pulled her mother into their dancing circle, Alisha felt a pair of eyes on her. She looked toward where she’d left Chloe standing against the wall with Rafe. Chloe was whispering something in his ear, but Rafe…
Rafe was staring straight at her, his eyes smoldering and hard.
The well-loved coda from the end of the Michael Jackson song sounded then, and Janelle, Tu, and their mother started jumping up and down to the music. But Alisha just stood, watching Rafe watch her. Their gazes stayed locked for moments on end, neither seeming to be able to tear their eyes away.
But then Rafe blinked, obviously remembering himself: who he was and the pretty woman he was engaged to. He immediately shifted his attention back to Chloe and said something to her before grabbing her hand and leading her away from his own party. Chloe seemed confused by his sudden desire to leave the festivities. But like a good friend, she looked over her shoulder and when she saw Alisha watching them go, she waved goodbye with an apologetic smile. Meanwhile, Michael Jackson continued to sing the catchy coda through the speakers.
It was an image that would come to haunt Alisha in the year that followed. If she’d known then that this would be the last time she would have a chance to dance to a Michael Jackson song with Chloe, she might have ignored Rafe, and pulled her friend on to the dance floor anyway. But she didn’t, and it would be a regret she’d live with for some time.
2
A knock sounded on Alisha’s office door a few weeks after she last saw Chloe.
“Come in,” Alisha called out without looking up from the essays she was grading.
“After seven on a Friday night, and you’re still in your office grading papers.”
She looked up from her work to smile ruefully at Matt Kreuk, the shaggy haired Canadian post-doc who occupied the office right next to hers in the Liberal Arts building.
“Well, last Friday I was stuck turning into a wolf inside a dog cage in my apartment, so I think that’s enough excitement for this month.”
Matt dropped into one of her guest chairs with a chuckle. “I don’t know what’s sadder: that I knew you’d be in here grading papers or the fact that I just finished grading a batch of Wolf Civ papers myself.”
She regarded him with warm eyes as she answered, “Great minds…”
“And by ‘great minds’ you mean, fellow beleaguered post-docs who have to do a bunch of extra work on top of what we already have to do for the human students.”
“That too,” Alisha said, even though she didn't completely agree.
Having to do twice the work for two different student populations, a human one and a werewolf one, was a common complaint among the faculty of werewolves secretly embedded at the University of Alaska-Juneau. However, unlike the mostly male wolf faculty, she'd had to fight her royal family and the Lupine Council Academic Board fang and claw to become one of two wolf history post-docs at UAJ. She considered the double work of teaching wolf and human history classes a privilege.
But she didn’t want to risk losing Matt’s newfound attention by telling him this. The thin, brown-haired wolf was cute, intelligent, and easy to talk to. And, she suspected he was into her. He’d been friendly before, but ever since the last full moon, he’d been visiting her office at least once, sometimes twice, a day. They’d eaten lunch together every day that week, and even discussed her possibly coming to Canada with him during the summer break to teach wolf summer college at his undergraduate alma mater.
“How’s it going?” she asked, picturing the ground-breaking work they could do together, with her specialization in post-colonial history and his in Arab history. The dream wasn’t too far-fetched. While it was true over forty percent of the wolf faculty had passed into their forties (the age bracket at which most wolves were no longer considered fertile) without mating up, there were a few cases of husband and wife academics scattered across the Northern American Wolf Territories—a case she hoped to emulate.
“Same old, same old,” he answered. “Almost got my book on Egyptian coyote shifters drafted out. Maybe it’ll get picked up for the national wolf history syllabus next year.”
“Oh, I’m so jealous,” she said with a good-natured groan. “I still haven’t found any Alaska she-wolves whose feats extended beyond ‘healing spells that were long talked about.’ Even the non-native ones were all about the cooking and cleaning.”
Matt laughed. “You might need to expand your search into Canada. Bigger Inuit population. Might find somebody worthy of a book. Have you heard back from the summer college yet?”
“No, not yet.”
“I’ll call the program director. See why they haven’t sent the best American candidate they’ve ever had an acceptance email yet.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Alisha said, secretly thrilled someone was actually working to help advance her career as opposed to actively trying to derail it, like her parents, who’d not only refused to pay one penny toward her education, but also campaigned against it to the point that she now only went home to their kingdom town in Interior Alaska for major holidays.
“No, I want to,” he insisted. “And on a selfish note, I’d really love to hang out with you this summer.”
He didn’t exactly meet her eyes when he said this, and she wondered if this was his shy way of telling her he’d like to take their relationship further.
“I’d love to hang out with you, too,” she said, hoping her answer let him know she was open to friendship and more with him.
Another knock sounded on the door and Alisha frowned. Who, other than Matt, would be swinging by her office on a Friday night?
It was Tu, reeking of perfume, and dressed in a shredded t-shirt and green miniskirt ensemble, despite the fact it was only twenty-five degrees outside. Alisha inwardly shook her head, thinking that even with wolf DNA, Tu couldn’t possibly be warm enough in that outfit.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “And where’s your coat?”
“Vince said he was flying over here for a party, so I came with him.” She eyed the coat on the back of Alisha’s chair. “And I was hoping maybe I could borrow one from you.” She then shifted her gaze to Matt, giving him a full wattage smile. “Hi, Wolf. I’m Tuuluuwag. But everyone calls me Tu.”
“I’m Matt, and I should probably get going,” he said, standing up. He pointed at the papers under Alisha’s red pen, “Finish grading those. Then maybe we can catch a movie tomorrow night.”
Alisha was very aware of Tu’s curious eyes on her as sh
e answered, “Yeah, maybe. Give me a call.”
“Who’s the Canadian?” Tu asked as soon as he was out of wolf earshot.
Tu had what was referred to in the wolf community as a “super-nose,” and could often tell where a wolf hailed from with just a sniff.
“Another post doc,” Alisha answered without going into further detail. The last thing she needed was for Tu to report a possible love interest back to their parents, neither of whom was above using their juice to get an unsuitable wolf transferred if that meant keeping him away from their daughter.
And speaking of their parents: “Mom was okay with you coming down here for a party?” She handed Tu her coat. “And without your coat?”
“Well…” Tu said, pushing her arms through Alisha’s quilted Patagonia parka, the hemline of which fell below that of her skirt. “Technically I’m here to convince you to come home with me for the weekend. Mom thought me needing a coat would be a good excuse to come by here.”
“So she sent you all the way to Juneau without a coat. Wow.” When it came to matchmaking schemes, their mother made Mrs. Bennett from Pride & Prejudice look like a rank amateur. And now that Janelle was pledged to the King of Wyoming, Alisha couldn’t say she was shocked Wilma had recruited Tu for her “get Alisha married off to a suitable alpha” project.
However she was surprised that her youngest sister didn’t seem all that put out by the situation. “Whatever. As long as Vince and I can go to this yacht party as soon as you say no. I don’t care either way.”
“Seriously, she agreed to let you go to a yacht party? You’re only twenty.” And yacht parties were known for the copious amounts of drugs and alcohol that flowed through them. “You and Vince aren’t humans. Messing around with that stuff could send him into an accidental shift and you into an early heat.”
“We’re just going to dance, and I’ll be twenty-one in a few months!”
“Yeah, still not a great idea, which is why I’m finding it hard to believe Mom is cool with her precious youngest flower going to a yacht party.”
“Well, she might not know about the party part,” Tu admitted with a shrug. “In my version of the story, I stayed in Juneau until the wee hours of the morning, trying to convince you to come back with me.”
Alisha didn’t know who to be more annoyed with, her mother for coming up with this scheme or Tu for exploiting it to her own purposes. “All right, all right. Might as well get this over with. Who is Mom trying to set me up with now? The first-born son of a Texas oil tycoon? The alpha prince of a state that’s poor but has several fracking opportunities?”
“Actually, it’s Rafe Nightwolf.”
Both Alisha’s heart and her red grading pen dropped. “What!?”
Tu leaned in, cupping a hand around her mouth like an old-fashioned busybody. “He showed up on our doorstep a few days ago. Get this, he and Chloe broke up, but he won’t say why.”
“What?” Alisha said again. Then, “But I don’t understand, why would he come to Alaska?”
Tu sucked her teeth. “Dad said something about Rafe consulting on a resort project. He wants to develop that old hot spring up the road from us into a resort like the Nightwolfs have in Wolf Springs. And I’m like, ‘Okay, but why would an Alaska oil baron be interested in something as small change as building a resort?’ And they’re all like, ‘No, it’s a great opportunity, blah, blah, blah, people can come there to see the Northern Lights, blah, blah, blah’… then I got bored, so I just let it go. Though you know Dad’s got to be super pissed he pushed Janelle at King Mag so hard now that Rafe’s back on the market. Anyway, Rafe’s been here maybe five days, and Mom’s all like, ‘Go get Alisha. Make sure she comes home for the weekend!’ like it’s Defcon 1. So here I am attempting to fetch you.”
Tu finished her explanation with the bored shrug that only a hip, young person could manage after telling such a soap opera of a story.
Alisha, on the other hand, was shocked to the core by this news. Shocked and vaguely guilty. She fumbled to pick up her phone and text Chloe. “WHAT HAPPENED??? Do you need to talk? I’m here if you need to talk.”
“So what do you want me to tell Mom?”
Alisha stared at the text screen. No answer, not even a little gray box with ellipses inside to let her know Chloe was typing. And that made her feel even worse about the break up, even though Alisha couldn’t exactly explain why. It wasn’t like she was still a teen crushing on the alpha prince who only had eyes for Chloe. In fact, she was so beyond that stupid infatuation, she was offended her mother would even consider matching her up with Rafe just because Janelle was no longer available.
“Tell Mom it’s the middle of the semester, and I’m knee-deep in my ‘She-Wolves in Post-Colonial Alaska’ research,” Alisha answered her sister.
“Do you think she cares?” Tu asked, her voice as frank as their Detroit-raised mother’s got whenever she dropped her queenly airs.
“I know she doesn’t,” Alisha answered. “But there’s no way I’m getting caught up in the Game of Wolves.”
“Why not?” Tu asked with what looked like genuine confusion. “Rafe is so freaking hot. I mean hotter than Mag and he’s got that bad boy tribal thing going for him.”
“First of all, I’m appalled you just reduced something as steeped in history as the Inuit practice of face tattooing down to a ‘tribal thing.’” Alisha ignored her sister’s huge eye roll and continued on, “Second of all, there’s more to compatibility than being hot.”
“Really freaking hot,” Tu corrected, fanning herself with her hand.
Alisha pressed on, “And last but not least, I’m a history professor. That means I like to keep all the drama in the past.”
“Alright, well, I tried,” Tu said, giving up on her mission with almost comedic speed. She headed for the door. “See ya at Easter.”
“Not coming home for Easter either,” Alisha informed her sister. “Not coming home until Mom stops trying to mate me off.”
Tu laughed. “In that case, see you next lifetime!”
NOT SURPRISINGLY, Alisha’s mother didn’t take her “no” or Alisha’s many follow-up “Sorry mom, so busy” texts well. After receiving increasingly blatant threats about what would happen if she didn’t come home as soon as possible, Alisha had to turn off her phone and put it away in a locked drawer. She also had to change her office number, and put her mother’s email address on her account’s blacklist.
It seriously felt like she was being stalked. By her own mother. And she was more than happy when the semester ended and she was able to travel to Canada with Matt to teach summer college at a university thousands of miles away from Alaska.
However, her summer escape plan proved to be too short term.
“What do you mean he’s back here?” she asked when Tu called her right as she was pulling up in front of the modest, twenty-unit brick apartment building she called home.
“I mean, I’m watching him play basketball with Dad on the back deck right now. That’s how back here he is.”
“I thought you said he left right after I went to Canada,” Alisha heaved her heavy suitcase from the trunk of her car. It must be a weak moon tonight. With her wolf strength usually she wouldn’t have had any trouble picking up her suitcase, even if it had been filled with bricks as opposed to a bunch of books she’d brought back from Canada. However the daytime hour combined with a weak moon meant she actually had to put in some effort.
“He did leave. But now he’s back, and Mom’s throwing this dinner party for him tonight, because you know how she is, and even Mag came up from Wyoming for it. But don’t worry, she didn’t ask me to invite you, so maybe she’s finally given up on trying to make Rafe and you happen.”
“Maybe. But if she’s given up, why is Rafe back?” Alisha asked, setting her suitcase on ground.
“I don’t know,” Tu answered. “I mean Janelle just moved back in with us, so maybe he’s waiting for her to go into heat… although that doesn’t make
any sense since Mag is like his best friend.” Tu cut herself off with a gasp. “Wait, do you think he’s waiting for me to go into heat?”
Tu sounded excited by the possibility, even though, in Alisha’s opinion, she was still too young to go into heat. However, Alisha knew it had happened to girls even younger than Tu and it was a distasteful possibility that Rafe might claim her sister as a mate despite her only being twenty—she could actually see her mom going for this.
Wilma had only been eighteen when she went into heat while their father, the newly-dubbed Alpha King of Alaska, had been visiting their home for a formal business meeting with her father, the Alpha of Detroit (technically Michigan--but the royal alphas had taken the city name as their title ever when her great-grandfather won the state from his white predecessor in a challenge fight back in the sixties). It was supposed to be a diplomatic trip--the newly appointed twenty-year-old Tikaani had been interested in taking on Wilma's second oldest brother, Wilford, a college linebacker, as his beta. But one look had passed between the new king and the princess, and the Michigan alpha had ended up clearing out of his own home for several days while her parents rutted in a heat frenzy until Janelle was conceived.
Her mother had often recounted this as a sort of wolves-meet-cute tale, but the story had always unsettled Alisha. And now, she couldn’t imagine Tu having her whole life overturned because of what basically amounted to supernatural body chemistry established a long time ago when wolves tended to mate much younger. In her opinion, Tu was still way too young and ditzy to get saddled with a cub and an alpha husband.
“Maybe you should come stay with me for a while,” Alisha said to her sister as she walked toward her first floor apartment with her suitcase. “It’s never too late to go to college. And since you’re such a fan of underage drinking, you could do it here. Plus, we have one of the best wolf programs in the country.”
“It’s also never too late to shoot myself in the head and I am old enough to buy a gun in Alaska and do just that if I come out there and let you bore the hell out of me,” Tu said.
Wolf and Prejudice (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 2) Page 2