by Lori Drake
It was a lame joke at best, but Eric guffawed. There was an awkward moment while he was the only one laughing, but then the others joined in to various degrees. Everyone, that is, but Itsuo. The taciturn fellow stood quietly in the corner, watching with his bottomless brown eyes.
“That was a good one,” Eric said, then paused to study Chris for a moment. “Wait. You don’t know, do you?” He dissolved into another fit of laughter, but this time he was alone.
Chris looked around, seeing confusion on almost every face. There was understanding in Jessica’s eyes, and she shot him an apologetic look but remained silent.
“Okay, I’ll bite. What’s so funny?” Chris asked, brow furrowed.
It was Itsuo who spoke up. “Christopher-san, this is your house. Technically, it is we who are in your territory.”
Joey wanted Chris to get an unfiltered first impression of the Granite Falls pack, so she did the only thing she could think of to keep busy while Eric went upstairs to join the others: she offered to get him a beer. It was a risky precedent to set, but she wanted to stay on his good side. The man was mercurial as hell, all smiles one minute and spitting rage the next. More than once, she’d wondered if he had a split personality.
Still, he could be very charming when it suited him. When her mother had tasked her with getting close to him, Joey hadn’t fully understood why. She had a better idea now, after nearly two months of sticking to him like glue. He was a brute, a con man, and a bully who’d get what he wanted through charm or intimidation—whichever was most expedient. His poor pack bore the brunt of his rage. They were, for the most part, a ragtag group of subjugated sheep. Toothless wolves possessing neither the strength to stand up to him nor the resources to flee. She pitied them, but she didn’t blame them. It just wasn’t in their nature to rebel.
That didn’t explain the actions—or lack thereof—of the pack’s other two alphas, but Jessica was obviously infatuated with Eric, and Itsuo… he was a damn hard nut to crack. She didn’t even realize he knew English for nearly a month after they’d met.
After several months of observation, Joey was certain of one thing: something was off about the Granite Falls pack, and it went deeper than the cock that ruled the roost and the fractures of their broken will. They were hiding something, and she was determined to root it out.
As she headed up the stairs, Joey chewed the inside of her lip. She’d wanted to bring Chris in on her investigation when he arrived, but that hadn’t gone quite as she’d planned. She resolved to talk to him about it on the way home, before things got completely out of hand.
No sooner had she stepped out onto the landing than a door along the hall flew open and Eric stormed out with the scowl of the century on his face.
“What’s up?” she asked, and passed him the beer when he motioned for it.
He lifted the bottle to his lips and downed several long swallows. Behind him, the others began filtering out of the room. He glanced over his shoulder and licked his lips, then looked back at her.
“Pack business,” he said, and brushed past her, smacking her ass on the way by. “Come on, babe, we’re going to play another set.”
Joey’s cheeks heated, but it was anger that surged in her veins rather than embarrassment. She shot him a look over her shoulder, but he didn’t look back. It was probably for the best. He made it difficult to keep her contempt for him off her face sometimes. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
She turned back to find Ben and Brandon approaching. “What’d I miss?”
Brandon grimaced, but Ben grinned. “Homeboy got put in his place.”
Joey blinked. “Chris?”
Ben shook his head. “Itsuo.”
“No shit, really?” Joey looked down the hall in time to see the man in question exit the room. He appeared as unruffled as ever, barely sparing them a passing glance on his way downstairs.
“I shit you not. Eric went at him and he put him on the ground in seconds. I didn’t even see him move.”
Her eyes widened. “I would have liked to be a fly on the wall for that one.”
“You could’ve been. Where were you, anyway?”
“Long story. Chris still in there?” She was already in motion, walking down the hall past loitering Granite Falls wolves.
“Far as I know,” Ben called after her.
Joey nearly collided with Chris on her way in. “Hey, just the man I was looking for.”
Chris stepped back, brows drawn together. “Did you know?”
“Know what?” Joey asked, stepping aside as Jenny slid past them and out the door, the last to exit.
“That this was my birth parents’ house.”
Joey rocked back on her heels. “It was?” She glanced around the room, seeing its shabby details in a new light. The fact that Eric had let the place go for years had never escaped her fastidious notice, but knowing it had belonged to Chris’s parents… that made it particularly tragic. “No, I had no idea.”
He gazed intently into her eyes for a moment, as if searching for some hint of duplicity. Then he nodded and moved past her. She caught his arm as he did.
“Chris, wait…”
He stopped and turned, but what she saw on his face stole her breath. Disgust. “What?”
“I— We— Can we…” she stammered, unable to complete the thought.
“You wouldn’t want to keep your boyfriend waiting. He seems volatile.” A muscle in his cheek twitched before he turned away again.
Joey watched him walk away with a white-knuckled grip on the doorframe. She swallowed a growl and pushed off the doorframe, pacing across the room to lean on the dresser. Fortunately, the moon was new; she didn’t need its power amping up her anger in that moment. It was bad enough that she didn’t know who she was angrier at: herself for not telling Chris what was going on, or him for believing the worst of her even after witnessing Eric in his element. How could he think she’d actually be attracted to someone like that?
A quiet knock drew her from her thoughts, and she looked up. The dresser mirror reflected Jenny’s slight form in the doorway behind her.
“Hey, are you okay?” Jenny asked. Barely eighteen, Jenny was a freshman at the University of Washington on an academic scholarship. She was wicked smart, but even more submissive than Sara. Not merely submissive, but downright flighty.
Joey swallowed her anger along with her wounded pride in one big gulp and turned. She’d been working on getting the shy wolf to open up to her for weeks. Maybe the night wasn’t a total waste after all.
“Yeah. What’s up?”
Jenny hesitated briefly before taking a step forward. “I thought maybe we could talk…”
Joey managed a smile, doing her best to not intimidate the girl. “Sure, what do you want to talk about?”
Jessica stepped into the doorway behind Jenny. “You two coming? We’re about to go on.”
Jenny nearly jumped out of her skin, whirling to face the other woman. Joey mentally cursed the alpha’s untimely arrival, but kept her smile in place.
“We’ll be right down,” Joey said. “Just give us a minute.”
Jessica glanced from Jenny to Joey and back again. “We’ve got your favorite song at the top of the set list, Jen-ster. Wouldn’t want to miss it, would you?”
“N-no, of course not,” Jenny stammered, then scampered around Jessica and out the door.
Joey ground her teeth in frustration, but did her best to keep it off her face as Jessica flashed her a smile and turned to go.
Goddamn bitch. She did that on purpose.
Blowing out a frustrated breath, Joey followed them out and shut the door behind her. She was so close to a breakthrough she could almost taste it. All she had to do was be patient and play the game.
7
Chris paused at the foot of the stairs and glanced toward the back of the house. The music had been silenced, but it was a temporary reprieve. Rather than head back to wait for the band to start up, he headed out the front door
. The cold air assailed him, but he zipped up his coat and trotted down the front steps. He didn’t know where he was going, just… out. He needed to clear his head, to catch his breath and process what had happened.
His footsteps carried him around the side of the house and down toward the water’s edge as his thoughts wandered. He’d known he owned property in the Seattle area, Adelaide had told him years ago, but he’d been content to let her manage the details and focus on his career. She hadn’t mentioned renting it to another pack, and she couldn’t have been aware of the disrepair the property had fallen into. Chris was sure her property manager would be looking for a new job soon.
Chris stopped on the shore and turned back to look at the house in a new light. Nothing about it was familiar to him, but that shouldn’t have been surprising. After all, he’d been a toddler when his parents had died. A flurry of complex emotion swirled inside him. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel about this strange, awkward homecoming, but it was all tangled up in his feelings for Joey and her inexplicable attraction to the man who, it seemed, had desecrated Chris’s house.
Sighing, he turned and walked along the water’s edge. The band started up again, and it didn’t require a wolf’s sharp ears to pick it up from the lakeshore. He listened while he walked, lost in thought until an unfamiliar voice penetrated the fog.
“Hey, man, party’s back there.”
Chris turned. His eyes roamed the darkness until he finally spotted the man crouched in the shadow of a boulder. “Yeah, I know. Just out for a walk. Adam, right?”
“Oh! Sorry, didn’t recognize you at first.”
Chris suspected it might have been because Adam’s long bangs fell across his eyes, but the lanky wolf unclipped a pair of horn-rimmed glasses from the collar of his T-shirt and put them on.
“Good thing you weren’t wearing those, or I might not have recognized you either.”
Adam chuckled. “Clark Kent’s got nothing on me.” He peered up at Chris for a moment before adding, “You’re not gonna enjoy the rest of the show?”
Chris glanced toward the house. “Maybe I’ll catch the encore, I dunno. Just wanted some air.”
“Yeah, yeah. I get it. Hard to hear yourself think in all that racket. What do you think of Seattle so far?”
“It’s… cold.”
Adam grinned. “You think this is cold?”
“Sure, uh, relatively speaking. I grew up in Southern California. It’s kind of lucky I actually own a coat.” Chris blew into his hands and rubbed them together. “What about you? Where are you from?”
“Alaska.”
“No shit, really?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s it like?”
“Cold.” Adam grinned again. “It’s beautiful, really. People tend to think it’s nothing but glaciers and permafrost, but there’s so much more. Forests like you’ve never seen with trees towering over two hundred feet tall, clear blue rivers so thick with salmon that you can practically catch them with your bare hands…”
Chris listened, smiling. “Sounds like you loved it there. What made you leave?”
The joy of remembrance faded from Adam’s face like an autumn leaf shifting from golden to brown. “It’s a long story. You don’t want to hear all that.”
Chris crouched, putting himself on the other man’s level. “I’d like to, if you’ll share.”
Adam hesitated, but nodded. “Well, long story short… my dad’s an asshole. A real man’s man, you know? Anyway, he always loved to brag about how he’d sired the first set of twins in seven generations, but all we ever seemed to do was disappoint him.”
“You and Lucy are twins?” Chris couldn’t keep the wonder from his voice. Lycanthrope multiple births were beyond rare.
“Yup. That’s why Lucy dyes her hair, so no one gets us mixed up.” Adam grinned again, teeth flashing in the moonlight. “Sorry, a little twin humor.”
Chris chuckled, liking the kid the more he interacted with him. Though, to be fair, Adam could have been anywhere from twenty-one to forty-five. It was hard to tell with wolves, but he seemed younger. It might’ve been Adam’s low dominance drive.
“Parental expectations can be hard, especially when the parent is a strong alpha. Joey knows a thing or two about that.”
Adam nodded. “Well, I think it’s safe to say I don’t have an alpha bone in my body. I know, because I’m pretty sure he broke all of them at least once, looking for it.”
Wincing, Chris put a hand on Adam’s shoulder. He flinched, but didn’t pull away, and relaxed after a moment. “That’s shitty. I’m sorry.”
Adam shrugged. “The only way to make it stop was to leave, so that’s what we did. Lucy wouldn’t let me go without her, and I… I didn’t have the strength to tell her no. I needed her as much as she needed me. Always have, always will.”
Chris knew a little something about that. “At least you have each other. That’s something.” He squeezed Adam’s shoulder before letting his hand fall away. “How long have you and Lucy been in Seattle?”
“Not long, hmm. Maybe eight years. We weren’t planning to stay, originally. We wanted to go farther, put more distance between us and him, you know? But Eric made us an offer we couldn’t refuse.”
There was a certain tragedy to the twins fleeing from one bully and ending up with another. Chris wished there was something he could do, but if they were still here, the situation might not be as bad as he feared.
“What kind of offer?”
Adam hesitated, eyes darting toward the house. Eric and Jessica’s music continued to roll out the back door and down the beach like a sonic alibi.
“Sanctuary,” he said after a moment. “Protection.”
Chris wasn’t sure what made that so irresistible, but he was an alpha and had no problem standing up for himself. Regardless, he sensed there was more to the story based on the shift in Adam’s demeanor.
“Oh?” he said, hoping that Adam might go on, but the other man just nodded. “Are you happy here?”
“Yeah, of course.” The words tumbled out a little too quickly. Adam wet his lips. “So you own the house, eh?”
“Apparently.” Chris’s eyes were drawn back to the house in question, but Adam’s next question snapped them back to him.
“Are you going to kick us out?”
“What? No, no, of course not. I mean, it’s more your home than mine now, and I already have a place to stay.”
“With Joey’s pack.”
“With my pack.” The distinction was important to Chris, in that moment. “But yes, Joey’s too.”
Adam smiled, relaxing visibly. “Cool.”
“Does the whole pack live in the house?” Chris asked, uncertain how such things went for packs like theirs.
“Yeah, mostly. Itsuo… he comes and goes. Jenny has a dorm room. She stays there during the week but comes out here on the weekend usually. She doesn’t have a car, so she has to hitch a ride.”
Chris connected a few dots. “She came all the way out here on a school night, just to meet me?”
“Yeah. We were all looking forward to meeting you, I mean… your dad’s a legend around here. I wish I could’ve met him.”
“Me too,” Chris said.
“Aw, shit. I’m sorry.” Adam lowered his eyes and hunched his shoulders. If he got any lower, he’d be on his belly.
“It’s fine.” Chris put a hand on Adam’s shoulder once more. He hadn’t meant it as a rebuke. “Really. I think you’ve all got some mental picture of me as this tragic orphan that grew up alone, but I’ve got a family. I’ve got a father, a mother, the whole package. Henry Martin is just… a guy that I share some DNA with, you know? I’m curious about him, and sometimes I wonder what my life would have been if he and my birth mom had survived. But I’m happy with my life. I wouldn’t change it.”
Adam risked a glance in Chris’s direction as he spoke, but didn’t meet his eyes. He remained wary, and Chris withdrew his hand, not wanting
to make the guy more uncomfortable.
A few seconds passed, then Adam said, “We should head back.” He pushed to his feet.
Chris followed suit, realizing that the music at the house had stopped. He could hear Jessica’s amplified voice as she worked the crowd, so the set wasn’t over quite yet. As he walked back to the house with Adam, he tucked his hands in his pockets, resigning himself to standing around bobbing his head to the music a bit. It wasn’t easy; his feet itched to move to anything with a good beat, and their music certainly had plenty of those.
The music started up again when they were a few feet from the back steps. He could almost swear he felt the air stir around him as the music washed over him, drawing him inside like a moth to a flame. He stood with Adam near the back door while the band played, scanning the crowd and bobbing his head to the rhythm of the bass drum. Ben’s auburn head was easy to pick out in the crowd, but finding Joey’s took him a little longer on account of her short stature.
With his own pack members accounted for, he started looking for Adam’s. It was pure instinct; he didn’t even realize he was doing a head count until it registered that several were missing. Brandon was with Ben. Colt and Kate were wallflowering on the other side of the room. Adam was with him, of course, but Jenny, Lucy, and Itsuo were nowhere to be seen. Granted, Itsuo was barely any taller than Joey, but he should’ve stuck out in this crowd.
It shouldn’t have mattered. It was a big house, and they might have wandered outside like Chris and Adam had. But he couldn’t shake the sense of wrongness that clung to him like cheap perfume, and when the song ended and the applause died down, another sound caught his attention even through the ringing in his ears: a woman’s scream.
He wasn’t the only one that heard it.
“Lucy!” Adam shouted, and darted forward, pushing his way through the alarmed crowd to get to the front of the house.
Chris followed in his wake. They found the blue-haired wolf standing in a doorway, staring into the room beyond with a hand over her mouth.
“Lucy! What is it? Are you okay?” Adam grabbed his twin’s arm, and she turned toward him, her head following her body just a few seconds behind as she tore her eyes from whatever sight had so horrified her.