by JJ King
Everything was running according to schedule, leaving Katherine’s mind free to review the situation at hand. She went over the details that her brothers had told her or rather the details they hadn’t told her, and combined it with what she had heard from the pack en masse.
Rogue wolves were causing her father trouble. That much was obvious but the part that wasn’t obvious was her father’s reaction to the situation. Normally the wolves would be taken into custody, given a hearing and either incarcerated or killed, simple and tidy.
The hype over the situation also insinuated that this had been occurring over a matter of months rather than weeks, which was strange because her father had left Canada just a month ago to attend an unscheduled Alpha conclave.
She chewed her lip absentmindedly and thought about the call for the conclave. It had been totally unexpected as far as she knew and the suddenness of the call had upset her father’s usual routines. Not enough to warrant her coming home to help out, of course, not when there were three willing and able young men who also happened to be potential Alphas hanging around to fill in where her father left off. The only reason she knew anything about the conclave really was that her mother had told her, voice anxious, when Katherine had called last week after feeling the pull of family ties.
Katherine sighed. She hadn’t really thought much of the sudden conclave when Sylvie had told her about it but now that she’d been called home, by her father no less, it seemed a tad more important. Why would the Elders call conclave? What was so important that they would risk taking her father away from his territory while he was dealing with rogue wolves? And, for that matter, why would a couple rogue wolves necessitate her coming home?
“Son of a bitch.”
Katherine’s customary curse was swept away by the rushing air around her but the sentiment filled her mind and she switched into overdrive as she finally realized just what this little situation must really be about.
Her father had a rival Alpha.
It wasn’t an unprecedented event. She had learned about a similar rival in her wolf history classes as a young child. The Asian Alpha had been presented with a rival wolf whose bloodline was just as impressive and whose physical and psychological power had far outstretched the current leader. According to history, the world Alphas had gathered to hear out the rival and, after one month’s conclave, had determined him to be the better wolf for the job. The removed Alpha had been crushed by the decision and had chosen to take his own life in a Samurai-type move that had only proven his lack of worth for the title.
Katherine wondered just who this upstart was and why she hadn’t heard anything about it before now. Surely she deserved a phone call to let her know that her own father might be replaced as Alpha.
But of course, he hadn’t been. If he had returned from the conclave as Alpha then he still held the role and his opponent had been voted down.
That knowledge, however unsubstantiated it was, cheered Katherine up only slightly. She still felt on edge not knowing the particulars but at least she wasn’t completely in the dark anymore. Of course, there was the chance that she was wrong in her conclusions, though that chance was very slim. She was good at figuring out what others simply couldn’t see an answer to, which is why her father probably felt she was needed at home.
Katherine’s musings were interrupted when she heard the siren of a police car behind her and glanced in her rear view mirror to confirm that she was being pulled over. She checked her speedometer and sighed, 137 km/hr. She pulled to the curb, retrieved the zebra stripped leather packet containing her license and registration from the dash and pushed the little button that made her window descend.
“Ma’am. Do you know how fast you were going just then?”
“Yes I do, Officer and I apologize. My mind was on family trouble.”
Mildly upset that she had put herself in the position to be ticketed, Katherine chose to work with the officer rather than fight him. There was really no excuse for her speed anyway. She should have been more observant.
She handed over her information and took a moment to mentally calculate how much time she would lose due to this unfortunate little ticket.
She could easily hear him calling in her information over his dispatch radio, and smiled as she heard him acknowledged “10-4.” He was obviously a rookie trying his best to look good to his fellow police officers.
She adjusted her rearview mirror and took a moment to really take him in. She had always loved a handsome young man in a uniform and she would be coming back eventually.
He was really cute, young and sweet looking with pale gray eyes and Katherine felt her interest start to pique. As he walked back towards her, long legs swinging casually underneath a pair of remarkably sexy uniform pants, Katherine debated taking the time out of her plans to seduce him right here and now, but almost instantly rejected the idea as frivolous. She had much more important plans to see to, and one young hot cop couldn’t be a good enough reason to throw them off.
The officer walked back towards her car with a casual gait, eyeing both her vehicle and her chest as he leaned over to talk to her through her open window.
“I’m sorry to have to do this, Miss LaFlamme, but you really were speeding a lot.” His sheepish grin was so cute that she instantly forgave him the inconvenience.
She lowered her eyes momentarily, looking penitent, then opened them and gazed up at the young officer with an intensity that was a convoluted mixture of sheer sexuality and flirtatious innocence.
“I promise I won’t do it again officer...?”
“Officer Green, Miss.”
She bit her bottom lip and moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. She could feel his eyes following her every move. She smiled, half innocence, half knowing and reached out to lay a hand on his forearm as it lay on her car door. “Office Green, I really am so very sorry. Forgive me?”
The blush that spread quickly up the young man’s neck at her touch was reward enough but the stammering as he bid her a safe ride and issued another warning about the dangers of speeding was the cherry on top of a very cute encounter.
Katherine smiled and thanked the officer, taking back her information and putting it in her glove compartment. Looking in the rearview mirror she sighed heavily and smiled. He sure does have a great ass, though. Note to self…Officer Green…remember that name for later. She was smiling as she started her engine and pulled away from the curb.
♀♀♀
Airport security let her pass blissfully without any searching or questioning. Traveling post 9/11 was a hassle yet she couldn’t quite make herself get upset over the inconvenience. After fifteen years the terror of that day still lingered in her memory. The extra security wasn’t such a big thing anyway.
Katherine absolutely loved flying, unlike all three of her brothers who kept the fact of their fear a carefully guarded secret. It wouldn’t do for possible future Alphas to show any weakness so Katherine guarded their little secret with her life. She teased them about it in private, but that was a whole different story.
She settled into her first class seat and accepting the leggy flight attendant’s offer of a glass of Burgundy then searched her oversized purse and hauled out the novel, “Frostbitten” by Kelly Armstrong. Armstrong wrote about supernatural beings like witches, demons and even wolves, something that amused Katherine to no end. The fact that Armstrong occasionally got some of the details right concerned Katherine somewhat, so she made it a personal point to read all of the Canadian author’s novels whenever they were published. That and she found they made for a good read when immersed in a giant bubble bath surrounded with candles, Lindor truffles, and fine wine. The keeping track reasoning was mostly just an excuse. After all, she wasn’t reading “Twilight” just in case Stephanie Meyer got a few wolf details right; which, other than the heightened temperature thing, wasn’t often.
The flight from Vancouver to Montreal passed quickly. Though the distance was extreme, the fl
ight her father had paid for was direct and cut down on the annoyance of layovers in Edmonton or Toronto. She had very little patience with layovers. The idea of being trapped for hours on end, even in such a large building, made her feel antsy and it brought out the mostly hidden wildness in her personality.
The touchdown was a bit rough, though Katherine really didn’t mind turbulence at all. She had adored flying ever since her first plane ride in 1938 with Stout Airlines. She had traveled with her father, a special daughter-father trip, to Detroit in the body of a Ford Trimotor. The flight had been terrifying and exhilarating, and Katherine had fallen in love with the sky. She had her private license to fly but, as of yet, she had no plane. Maybe on this trip home, she could convince her father that a private plane would be worth his while. She would argue that it would bring her home most often; an argument that she was sure would win over her already overly giving father.
She mulled over the thought of her very own plane while she disembarked and made her way to the luggage retrieval area where she waited for her luggage to appear on the conveyor belt in front of her. Though the airport was packed, the people on either side of her didn’t jostle or bump into her. It could have been her perfectly coiffed hair or her beautiful outfit, but Katherine gave off an untouchable vibe when she wanted to, and public buildings made her want to.
She was so focused on searching for her luggage that she almost missed the distinct scent of another wolf in the crowd around her. The scent was unfamiliar so her senses heightened as she breathed in. Outwardly, she remained exactly the same, her expression unchanging.
She glanced around, appearing casual, taking deeper breaths and trying to narrow down the location of the wolf. If he was an unfriendly then she would need to be certain of his location and know if he had come with friends. That he was male was obvious. His scent reminded her of a thirteen-year-old boy with little belief in deodorant and it repulsed her.
She thought quickly about her vulnerability and decided that no wolf would try anything against her in such a public location. She knew instinctually that he meant her harm, physically or other because he didn’t approach or acknowledge her. Any wolf would be able to smell another in such close proximity so to evade introduction was tantamount to a snarl. It was unthinkable in polite society really.
Shyness or loner issues rarely came into consideration in this context. Wolves didn’t need to become best friends with others of their kind that they came across; they just needed to acknowledge them. It was law.
She continued scanning the airport and found nothing that would indicate another of her kind. The scent was also beginning to fade, as though the owner of such a rank stench had taken only a moment to watch her, and then left in a hurry.
Resigned to her situation, Katherine finally gathered her luggage and started toward the carport where the Mustang she had ordered and paid for was waiting to be picked up. Her nerves were dancing as she walked, continuously drawing breath and searching for any sign that her anonymous stalker had returned. There was no sign of him anywhere but Katherine couldn’t help but feel in danger. She felt that way until she was free of the city, on the open road to Wild River, speeding along with little to no chance that anyone was following her.
The long ride soothed her and allowed her to retrace every step she had made after getting off the plane. Her stalker hadn’t been on the plane, she was certain of that. In such close quarters, his scent would have been like a slap in the face the moment she boarded. No, he had been waiting for her at the airport and had known just what plane she was on and when she was arriving.
She was pissed.
After living away from the pack for such a long time, Katherine had forgotten that the first child of the Alpha sometimes experienced rude wolves that wanted to stay anonymous yet couldn’t resist a peek at her, usually through a window while she was getting dressed. At home she was protected by bodyguards, or rather, the family home was protected and her own safety came as a bonus.
She had long since asked her father to forgo paying a security guard to shadow her own movements in Vancouver. It had taken a while, but she had convinced him that she needed her own space and that she could take care of her own problems, should they arise. Of course, she had to promise to call immediately if such a problem arose. So far she hadn’t had to deal with any such inconvenience; until now.
The big question was whether this little incident was related to her father’s troubles. If it was, then this was something to be concerned about and something which would, almost certainly, enrage her father. Katherine had little choice in the matter of telling him, however. Knowledge was her father’s weapon and she would be damned if she would deprive him of any power.
It was 3:00 am when she pulled the car through the gates of Wild River. The house was dark and quiet. Katherine wondered at this as she pulled a small overnight bag out of the car, leaving the rest to be collected in the morning.
There was usually someone awake at all hours of the night around here. Granted, wolves needed their rest like any other beings, but the family home contained so many members that there was almost never a completely sleeping household.
Loathe to wake any of her family, Katherine crept silently into the house, closing the door behind her. The foyer was the same as it always was, decorated with lush rugs from the orient and beautiful fabrics that draped over beautiful windows. The floor was a polished marble that just screamed “money!” to guests but to Katherine, it just screamed “home”.
The stairs extended up and around in a spiral of dark wood, which she caressed as she climbed to the third floor and her waiting room. The plush carpet in the hall above silenced her footsteps.
She pushed open the heavy mahogany door then paused and gazed at her childhood bedroom. Memories rushed through her mind and she smiled. It was exactly the same as it had been when she left for Vancouver so many years ago. The cream and lavender wallpaper was faded near the windows and her Victorian vanity still held the silver brushes and combs that her father had given to her on her one-hundredth birthday.
She walked into the room, feet treading softly on the still thick carpeting, and picked up a beautiful antique porcelain doll dressed in highland garb with flowing red hair. Her grandmother had given this to her as a child, thinking that any small girl would love such a beautiful doll. She had been wrong. Dolls of any kind, especially porcelain ones, freaked her out to no end. There was just something about those endlessly staring eyes that made you think you were being watched. Katherine took a small sick amount of pride in the fact that her phobia existed long before the movie “Child’s Play” was released in theaters, in itself creating the same lifelong fear in many a child and adult. She hated running with the crowd.
She set the evil doll down and walked to her window to search the forest line for signs of life. The late hour usually meant that there would be one or more of her family members out for a run but tonight there was nothing to see. The house was eerily quiet; the corridors empty of the usual raucous sound of heavy footsteps and laughing children. It seemed as though the entire house was sleeping. It felt wrong.
Resolved to wait until morning for an update, Katherine closed the door, walked to her suitcases, and got herself ready for bed. The sheets were freshly washed, courtesy of her mother, and smelled like country air. Katherine curled into a fetal position and quickly drifted off to sleep cradled by familiar scents of her childhood and the familiar feel of her bed. She would deal with everything else in the morning.
Chapter Six
Pierre LaFlamme was an imposing man. He sat behind a desk of granite and mahogany and frowned deeply, his tough face highlighted with time-worn wrinkles. His eyes flashed a green as deep as the forest trees and reflected his current emotions perfectly as he spoke quietly into the telephone. Pierre maintained his control and tone of voice as he listened to a report given to him by one of his operatives; detectives on the permanent payroll who were at all times searching for problem
s within his empire and country. Canada might be a big country, vast and seemingly endless, but Pierre prided himself in knowing, at all times, how his pack was faring and who was playing in his arena. The call ended and Pierre set the phone in the cradle gently. He was a man of many passions, but he rarely showed physically what he was feeling. His eyes were his only giveaway, showing too much love and pride in his family and position. Right now Pierre’s eyes were troubled.
Katherine knocked gently at the door and pushed it open wider. She hadn’t wanted to interrupt her father during this early morning phone call but, now that it was finished, she wanted to know exactly what they were dealing with. She needed to know who or what was terrorizing her pack. Well, her father’s pack technically.
As the first born in her family Katherine was technically the heir to the pack. She knew, however, that she would never lead the pack because of antiquated notions of Alpha Males versus Beta Females. She would, however, be a valuable asset to the next Alpha as he took control of the pack, if only through her council. One of her brothers would assume control when their father decided to back down, probably Anthony who was so level-headed and quietly intelligent. He would make a good Alpha, she acknowledged, just not as good as I would. Katherine smiled warmly at her father when he looked up at her, noting how quickly he tried to hide the apparent feelings in his eyes.