He pauses, his eyes tightening a degree as he evaluates me.
“I suggested it,” Thompson says, putting a hand on my shoulder. I hate that he feels the need to vouch for me, but until I’m the official alpha, I have to act like these men are in charge of me. “I thought it would be good for her. As the new beta female.”
The way his voice trembles at the word beta gives me an idea of how his father treats him, and another wave of anger and defensiveness rises inside me. What exactly has Kenneth done to Thompson, anyway?
He still doesn’t speak, glancing up at Anderson.
Ah. I’d read the entire situation wrong. Despite being his son, Kenneth doesn’t think of Thompson as the pack’s beta. Anderson is bigger, stronger, and more confident. Even if the position isn’t official, he’s the one Kenneth trusts. Why didn’t I notice it before?
“Fine,” he says. “I have just the job for you.”
I smile, grinning and acting excited. I even do a little jump and squeal. Kenneth wants to see an eager wolf ready to do his bidding, and until I tear his heart out of his chest, that’s exactly what I’ll be.
I expected the work to be boring, but I didn’t expect it to be this terrible. I follow Thompson down to the basement when Anderson goes to perform his pack duties, and we take the first door on the right to an enormous storage room with filing cabinets that seem to stretch for an eternity.
“Sorry,” he says, hunching his shoulders.
I shake my head. “This is exactly what I asked for. It’s gonna suck, but I need him to trust me.”
He nods, then pushes his glasses further up on his nose. I reach out and brush a hand across his bare face, and he closes his eyes with a sigh. He seems so miserable and afraid. I don’t want him to feel like that around me. If we can’t be lovers, at least we can try to be friends.
“Did you know I had the biggest crush on you when we were younger?” I ask with a whispered chuckle.
His eyes snap open, and he watches me with confusion written all over his face. “Me?”
I nod and begin to pull my hand away, but he reaches up and grabs my wrist before I can. We stand in the dark room, connected by the most fragile of threads. There’s pain in his eyes, something that goes deep into his soul.
“What happened to you?” I ask.
He frowns and pulls my hand down, my fingers tracing over his jaw, then his neck. He unbuttons the top two buttons of his shirt, and I let him lead my hand where he wants. When it finds the raised skin right across the center of his chest, I suck in a breath but don’t pull away. The scar is enormous, and I shift my eyes to see better. The skin is silver with red around the edges, and I trace it to each end while he watches me.
“What is this?” I breathe, pain bubbling into my throat.
“Silver,” he says, his hand tightening on my wrist just a little before he lets go. I still don’t pull away, though. There’s something horrible about this mark, unnatural.
“Who did this to you?” I ask. “Hunters?”
But I already know the answer. Of course I do. I don’t need the bond to tell me how awful Kenneth has treated him. Anyone who looks can see it in his eyes.
He shakes his head, then looks at the ground. My heart reaches out toward him, and I want to wrap him in my arms and tell him everything is going to be okay. I have no idea where these protective instincts are coming from, but I don’t fight them.
I reach up and tangle my hand in his hair, dragging him down to my shoulder and wrapping my arms around him. The angle is awkward because of how tall he is, but he shudders and puts his arms around me, too. Tears fall on my throat, his body trembling as he lets me comfort him.
“I’m going to tear his fucking heart out,” I growl, staring at the ceiling. My father was always so good. He cared so much about every member of the pack, and he never would have allowed something like this to happen under his leadership. Thompson was quiet and confident when we were young, but now he’s just broken.
Chapter Fourteen
Anderson
I look around the small apartment that Gloria shares with her mate, Richard. I don’t know how I’ve never been here before, but my parents asked me to check in on her while they’re out of town since they usually do Wednesday night dinners together. It’s homey, the decor old and cozy, filled with dark wood and patterned wallpaper. There must be a dozen blankets and pillows between the huge sectional and slightly smaller sofa, and the aroma of tamales floats throughout the space despite the open balcony door that looks over the pack’s courtyard.
Eve takes her shoes off when she enters, something I hadn’t even considered. Thompson and I look at each other and scramble to do the same. Gloria leans out of the kitchen and smiles, her eyes crinkling.
“Looks like you were raised right,” she says, gesturing with a wooden spoon at our neatly lined-up shoes. I don’t miss the way Thompson’s shoulders tighten, but I don’t call him out on it or bring attention to his discomfort.
I stride into the living room, greeting the wolf there. Richard is leaning forward on the couch, a puzzle taking up the entire coffee table. Pieces are scattered all around, and I take a seat on another part of the sectional.
“Mind if I join you?” I ask, picking up a puzzle piece. His face is older and grizzled, and he just grunts in response. He’s already completed the edges of the puzzle, so I start looking for pieces of the starry sky that moves from violet to dark teal through the design above the mountain range.
Eve walks in after chatting with Gloria for a short time, but instead of sitting on the couch, she fiddles with an ancient radio that Gloria and Richard must have bought half a century ago. Everything in this apartment is a testament to their nearly two-hundred shared years together, from the radio to the mish-mash of nineteenth century rugs that cover the hardwood floors.
Eve finds a pop song on the radio, to my surprise. I expected her to be the classic rock type, but that could just be her motorcycle talking. Cardi B raps through the stereo, and Richard rolls his eyes, the tiniest hint of a smile tickling the corners of his lips. Eve grins and weaves her hips expertly, and Thompson laughs at her exaggerated dance moves. Her eyes zero in on him before she gestures for him to join her. He shakes his head but comes into the living room anyway.
“You kids and your rap music,” Gloria says, watching us from the kitchen while she prepares food.
It’s clear in an instant that Eve and Thompson have no idea how to dance, their bodies moving awkwardly to the beat. “You guys are terrible,” I laugh, tears coming to my eyes as Eve braces her hands on her thighs and attempts, I’m assuming, to twerk like the song is saying. Instead, her back just moves up and down. I stand up and put a hand on her arm. “Let me show you how it’s done.” I’ve never actually done it, but how hard can it be.
“Wait!” Thompson says, digging his phone out of his pocket and pointing it at me. “Okay now go.”
As it turns out, I also cannot twerk. I try to match the beat of the song, but I’m so distracted by thinking about the mechanics of the move that it probably just looks like I’m trying to not throw up like a cat.
Eve cups her hands over her mouth and hollers, and I throw my hands over my head and swirl my hips in circles. She sits on the couch, and I put a foot to her side, doing my best to imitate moves that I may have learned from Magic Mike while she laughs hysterically at me.
“If you show this video to anyone,” I tell Thompson, pointing at him while I continue to grind, “then I will probably have to beat the shit out of you.”
In response, he rolls his eyes and keeps the phone’s camera pointed at me.
Gloria walks in, jabbing me in the waist with a bony finger. I squeal and stumble away, trying my best not to trip on the coffee table. “Children,” she chastises, a smile spread across her face. She reaches her hand out to her husband. “Let me show you how it’s done.”
Richard smiles at her, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He stands and wraps her in his arms,
her back pressed up against them.
“Get it, Rich,” Eve calls, and Gloria throws her head back in laughter, the moment illuminated by the setting evening sun that filters gold through her flyaway hairs. Richard whispers something in her ear in Spanish, and her face reddens as her laughter turns more subdued.
I take Eve’s hand and pull her up. We stand face to face, and I put my hands on her hips, encouraging her to move to the tune of the music. Thompson puts his phone down and walks up behind her, and she leans her head back on his chest. The moment is unexpected, and when the song ends, I come back to myself, the radio announcer talking about a commercial break.
My face is hot, and dancing with Eve and Thompson like that is doing things to me that I don’t want to think too much about. We all split up, Richard going back to his puzzle and Thompson and Gloria going back to the kitchen. I stand awkwardly while Eve sighs and rests on the couch, contentment lining her face.
If I could freeze this moment right here, everything might be okay. I can’t, though, and there’s so much that has to be done. Eve is still insistent on taking back her title of Alpha, and something happened between her and Thompson that I can’t totally understand. They seem closer now, their bond strengthening as the days wear on. I’m not sure where that leaves me, and it scares the hell out of me. Will I be left behind? With the way Eve looked at me while we were dancing, I felt unbreakable. Now, though, I’m not so sure.
Chapter Fifteen
Thompson
Eve and I spend long days in the basement storage room, sorting through thousands of files in an attempt to make some sort of order. She doesn’t see the point in it, but I know it’s because my father is looking for something. David had connections before he died, but the information he kept disappeared. My dad is convinced that it’s hidden somewhere in these files, or that there’s some sort of code. And that if we just keep looking, we’ll find it.
“There’s a dead lizard in here,” Eve says, her voice filled with disgust as she blames the drawer shut. We’ve been at it for hours today, but we’ve barely made a dent. We could go back to the apartment, but I’m not sure I want to face Anderson. I still haven’t told him how I feel, only that I know about Eve’s identity and support her plans.
“At least we haven’t been attacked by raccoons,” I say.
She gapes. “Are you fucking serious?”
I nod. It’s been a while since I’ve found any living animals in the building, but it has happened in the past. Some of the other wolves ended up pooling money together to hire an exterminator while Kenneth was out of town. If he’d known about it, he would have raised the tax on the entire pack, a strain nobody can afford.
I blow a thick layer of dust off a stack of folders that are just strewn across one cabinet. Grocery receipts, May 1993. Grocery receipts, June 1993. Grocery receipts, July 1993.
“Did your dad keep every sheet of paper he ever touched?” I ask, dropping the folders right back where they were. I’m so sick of this monotony. I remove my glasses and clean them with the sleeve of my shirt. I shouldn’t do that, but that’s why I paid for the scratch-resistant lenses.
“You’re gonna scratch them,” Eve says, watching me with interest. I pretend I don’t notice her checking me out, but her gaze on me is like a fire that I can’t quell or ignore. We aren’t mated for the usual reasons, though. I’m not going to try hitting on her when she clearly doesn’t want that. If anyone is to make a move, it will have to be her first.
“They have a special coating,” I say, putting them back on.
She frowns. “That doesn’t mean you should clean them with a shirt.”
I shake my head and open another drawer. The grocery receipts on the cabinet can just stay there for another thirty years or so. My father is delusional to think that there’s any rhyme or reason to this mess.
“You don’t happen to know where your dad kept his high-dollar contacts, do you?” I ask jokingly. Eve was twelve when she disappeared. That night, my father had come into our apartment covered in blood. When I questioned him about it, threatening to go to the rest of the pack, he took an antique knife and sliced it across my skin. I learned pretty quickly not to talk.
Eve shakes her head, looking through another folder beside me. Our arms are almost brushing, heat rushing over me. One curl of hair falls out of her messy bun, and I reach over to tuck it behind her ear.
She chooses that exact moment to turn her face toward mine, and my fingers brush across her soft, plump lips.
Time stops. There’s nothing but Eve and me, like we’re the only people in the world. Slowly, I lean forward, pressing my lips to hers as gently as possible. It’s not even a kiss, not really. It’s a question. Is this okay?
Her eyes flutter shut, her lips parting as I pull away. We’re suspended in time, the two of us in this abandoned room. The darkness is comforting, and dust motes drift lazily below the lights that hang from the high ceiling. It should be quiet, but my heart pounds so loud that I can hear the blood rushing beneath my skin and behind my ears.
“Eve,” I mumble, and she opens her vivid green eyes, dark as the forests where real wolves run. I imagine that, my black fur brushing against hers, our bodies moving in sync as we sprint through the brush, our prey completely hopeless. I’m picturing her wrong, though. Instead of a wolf beside me, there’s just a vague shape where one should be. “What do you look like as a wolf?”
She blinks slowly, then smiles. “Black. My eyes are the same, though.” She reaches up, resting her thumb on my cheekbone right by my eye. “Not like yours. Yours turn red.”
This is all getting far too real. Every second that ticks by is another where I’m losing myself despite our purely platonic relationship. I can’t help but swim deeper into the abyss that is Eve, though. “I’d like to see that,” I admit.
She smiles. “Then let’s go.”
I tilt my head, resting it in her calloused palm. We have work to do, and I don’t usually leave the downtown area. Instead of arguing, though, I say, “Okay.”
Eve
We take my motorcycle, weaving through the early evening as the shadows grow and the light turns golden. Thompson holds onto me loosely, his helmet bumping mine occasionally as the machine thrums beneath my thighs. I’d been so close to tearing his clothes off in that musty basement that I had to get out of there.
I pull off the highway and drive down several roads until the tires hit gravel. It’s been years since I’ve been here, but my dad made sure I would never forget my way. Very few people in the pack are aware of the huge chunk of land in Northeastern Missouri that my family has owned for decades, but Dad always wanted me to know how to get here.
I turn the bike off and kick the stand out, shaking my hair out as I dismount and remove my helmet. Thompson gets up and removes his as well. I expect him to look around, but instead, he watches me, setting the helmet on the handlebar and leaning on the seat.
“What?” I ask, the silence of the country far louder than the roar of the motorcycle. Was this a bad idea?
He reaches forward and takes my hands in his. “I’m sorry about your dad,” he whispers against the growing night.
My throat thickens, and I shake my head as my heart stutters. The look in his eyes is so genuine that I can’t help but feel like I’m going to cry. I step closer to him, our knees nearly touching as he leans on the motorcycle.
“It was a long time ago,” I say, my voice far huskier than I’m comfortable with.
He shakes his head. “That never goes away, though.” That’s when a memory floods into my mind. A funeral in the rain. It’s so distant that I’m surprised it’s even there. Thompson and Kenneth were standing at the front, heads bowed beside the casket. When Thompson almost started crying, Kenneth clamped a hand on his shoulder and lead him away.
“Do you still miss your mom?” I ask. As far as the pack knows, she was killed by hunters.
He grits his teeth and looks off into the forest. “All the tim
e. But sometimes, I realize I’m forgetting her. Like when I can’t quite remember her face. Or her laugh.”
I nod. We have that in common. “I don’t remember my mom, either,” I say. “Not really. But Dad…I can remember the way his eyes used to crinkle at the corner when he smiled, or how much his beard itched when he gave me those embarrassing kisses after dropping me off for class.” I let out a little laugh, the sound surprising me. It had been a memory I’d nearly forgotten, but it floods in. Dad’s aftershave was strong, and he gave me a wet kiss on my cheek even though I was only a few floors above his office for the school day.
Thompson nods, then takes my chin with his thumb and first finger, forcing me to look deep into his eyes. “I believe in you, Eve. I think you’re the last bit of hope this pack has, and most of them don’t even know it.”
If I don’t do something, I’m going to cry. So I lean forward and press my lips to his, my sadness turning to hunger, a need so strong that it’s overwhelming. I’m so sick of pretending that I don’t want to be with Thompson, staying at arm’s length just to make everyone else comfortable. I’ve spent so much time pretending to be someone I’m not, and right now, I can’t do it. He grabs my thigh with one hand and moves the other to the back of my neck, his thumb tracing little circles on the nape. I kiss him like it’s the end of the world, and he’s the one thing keeping me alive.
I fumble for the clasp on his jeans, and he pulls back to drag my shirt over my head. My body shakes with anticipation as I go back to kiss him. I need to be touching him or I might just fall apart. After his pants are open, I hurry up and unbutton his shirt. He may be incredibly sexy in a button-up, but it’s frustrating as hell to remove. When I finally get it, I drag it off his arms and toss it on the ground.
“Are you sure we should be doing this?” he growls against my lips. I pull away and look at him, searching for any type of hesitation. Instead, his eyes are thick with lust. I take the opportunity to fully inspect him. There are tattoos all the way up his arms and over his torso, running down his ribcage. There’s even a little triforce symbol on his left pec, and I run my fingers over it. The skin is slightly raised where the ink has been injected into his skin, so subtle that I almost miss it. I find myself wondering where else he might have these deliberate marks.
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