Alisha pursed her lips. “Tu, you’re just as smart as me. I know this. Forgive me for treating you like there’s a brain underneath all that afro, even though you insist on acting like an idiot.”
Tu rolled her eyes and held up a hand. “Whatever, Professor Princess. Can we just agree this Mag dude is hot and unlike you—not boring?”
Alisha stared at her sister. “I know it would be impossible to fake your lineage given the way werewolves are conceived, but right now I seriously want to order a DNA test on us, because I’m finding it really, really hard to believe we’re related.”
“You know I’m you’re sister, Professor Asshole. You’re just mad because the only reason you agreed to come to this party was to hang out with Chloe, and Rafe’s got her working too hard to spend any real time with you.” She came to stand beside Janelle and rolled her neck, like one of the divas on Rap Star Wives. “Now poor Alisha’s got nobody but us dummies to hang out with.”
“Guys, please don’t fight,” Janelle said, trying to keep the weariness out of her voice. “I love you both so much and we never get to spend time together anymore.”
“Whose fault is that?” Tu asked, staring directly at their sister who had opted for a life in academia and now called Juneau home, as opposed to the kingdom house where Janelle and Tu still resided.
But before Alisha could reply with a salvo of her own, Janelle said, “Please, please, please, for my sake! If you love me, just try to have a good time.”
To Janelle’s relief, the next words out of Alisha’s mouth weren’t another admonishment of pledging traditions or Tu’s continued refusal to take anything seriously, but, “All right, all right. Princess smiles on!”
Then proving she hadn’t been raised inside a textbook as she sometimes led others to believe, Alisha put on a pleasant smile, so seemingly genuine, it was like looking into a mirror (a two-way mirror if you counted Tu, who’d thankfully also turned on her “I’m so pleased and honored to be here” princess smile).
Janelle rewarded them both with a princess smile of her own, one that completely belied how scared she felt about seeing Mag for the first time in three years.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go be princesses.”
JANELLE COULD STILL REMEMBER the day of her pledge dance with Jeffrey. She had only turned twenty-one a few days prior and her father had already received several requests for pledge meetings from his fellow state kings. Jeffrey’s father, the then King of Wyoming, had invited her father down for their annual King’s Day Ball, an event that commemorated his own grandfather’s challenge win, and Tikaani had decided to honor the Wyoming crown with his first pledge meeting. The Wyoming crown had oil interests, along with a prescient investment in high tech that had paid out nicely for the royal family. They were by far the richest state with an unmated prince and her father had been hopeful this pledge meeting would be his first and last. Janelle had been terrified of nip-slipping out of the décolletage-heavy dress her mother had picked out for her to wear to the event.
King Tikaani met with Jeffrey and the King of Wyoming and struck tentative pledge terms. Then Janelle and Jeffrey were kept apart during cocktails and the pre-ball dinner, as tradition dictated. She hadn’t been allowed to exchange any words with Jeffrey until her father and mother presented her to him before the first dance.
But in the end, all the fret and worry had been for nothing. Janelle’s dress had miraculously stayed in place when she curtsied to the Wyoming prince. And, from the way he had coolly regarded her, a smug smile floating on the surface of his thin lips, Janelle had known almost immediately that the prince would agree to their pledging.
However, other than King Tikaani meeting with Mag in private, this current situation was nothing like her pledging to Jeffrey. Thanks to the wonders of double-sided tape, she had faith the sweetheart neckline of her dress would stay in place, yet her heart still beat with fear as she walked into the Colorado kingdom house’s front room for the pre-dinner cocktail hour. Fear and anticipation.
However, whereas Jeffrey had watched her with sly eyes as soon as she came into his sights, Mag didn’t even acknowledge when she entered the room. He simply kept listening intently to whatever Rafe’s mother was telling him, hunched over at the shoulders, like what she had to say was ten times more fascinating than Janelle’s entrance.
Janelle had made a big show of eating heartily during the dinner portion of the evening for Jeffrey, following her mom’s advice that male wolves wanted the fantasy of the rail thin she-wolf who ate well. But tonight, she couldn’t bring herself to take more than a couple bites from each course, and her eyes kept going to Mag who seemed to be engaged in a scintillating conversation with one of Rafe’s cousins, a young widow from New Mexico who had inherited a small turquoise mining fortune after the tragic hunting death of her husband.
However, as she batted her eyes at Mag and tilted forward so the new Wyoming king could get the best view of her cleavage-baring bodice, Rafe’s cousin didn’t look like she was grieving the death of her husband all that much. Jealousy spiked through Janelle, and she gripped her forked tightly, wishing she could at least pretend to be engaged in a delightful and engaging conversation of her own.
But with a mind toward presenting their daughter as someone who wouldn’t dream of talking too intimately to another man, much less flirting with him as Mag seemed to be doing with the young widow, her parents had requested she be seated across from them and between her two sisters.
Alisha hadn’t said one word to her the entire dinner, caught up as she was in a discussion with Chloe about how she-wolves navigated the winter in both Alaska and Colorado back in the days before electricity and central heating. And Tu and Vince were talking about some band she’d never heard of.
Janelle might have tried to engage her parents across the table, but her mother was talking with the Queen of Nebraska about the recently mated Nebraska princess’s upcoming nuptials to the Prince of Wisconsin, and even Janelle didn’t have the acting skills to fake an interest in the oil conversation her father was having with a wolf tycoon from North Dakota.
She muddled through dinner, doing her best to act like she couldn’t care less that the wolf she would be presented to before the celebration’s first dance seemed way more interested in the pretty young widow at his side than the former beauty queen her parents were trying to fob off on him.
And then it was time for her presentation.
Pleasant and sunny, pleasant and sunny, she thought to herself, as her father walked her over to Mag, her mother following behind them, as was tradition. Janelle concentrated on staying in control of her emotions. Wolves could literally smell fear—that and arousal. One wouldn’t be a problem, given her unheated status, but the other…
Mag’s new tattoo lines were scary—there was no other way to describe them. She didn’t care what Alisha claimed about their being a testament to traditional values. They made him look like walking murder, and the way he wore his hair now, fuzzed close to his head like a new Marine recruit, didn’t help. Janelle felt certain she was heading into a pledge dance with a much more dangerous guy than the one she’d met three years ago.
Yet beneath those tattoo lines and the eyes glittering with some un-nameable emotion and the beefcake body, there he was. Her Mag, the man she’d never thought to see again in the flesh, much less at a pledge dance.
And she meant it when she slightly inclined her head in the old way with a dip of her knees.
“I am very honored,” she said in the Inuit dialect of the Alaska state pack. Technically she should have said, “I am honored to meet you” in his dialect, just as she had told Jeffrey she was honored to meet him in Swedish, the language of his long ago ancestors. But of course this wasn’t their first meeting. And it wasn’t like the Bad Wolf dialect was written down anywhere. It was what Alisha had called a fully oral language, when Janelle asked for her help to prepare for the pledge dance. Only wolves from Bad Wolf knew it, and if you wer
en’t from Bad Wolf…
He answered in the Bad Wolf dialect, using words she didn’t recognize but hoped were a repetition of her own.
Perhaps thinking along the same lines, her father broke the tense moment with a hearty laugh. “We’ll have to get Janelle caught up on your dialect.”
Janelle and her mother joined in her father’s deprecating laughter. However, Mag didn’t, and his eyes stayed on Janelle as he said, “I hear you’re a former Miss Teen Wolf. I didn’t know that.”
Janelle fought hard not to let embarrassment heat her cheeks and creep into her scent as she realized how very little she’d actually told Mag about herself despite the highly intimate situation they’d been in three years ago. “Yes, I am.”
“When were you crowned?”
“I won the crown when I was eighteen.” This was a deliberately vague answer, crafted by her mother to keep the subject of Janelle’s age a mystery.
But apparently Mag remembered the one conversation they’d had about her age three years ago, because he said, “That makes you twenty-five then. Only five more child-bearing years.”
At her side, she felt her father tense. “Maybe more. It’s been known to happen and she comes from fertile stock. Her mother had three before the age of thirty.”
Mag’s eyes flickered toward her father then came back to her. “Three girls. I hear you were a little disappointed.”
Janelle’s heart froze and her fear scent released without her being able to stop it. Now he was referring to something she’d told him in private after their first illicit meeting. Was he also going to let her father know what they’d done together after she’d told Mag the partial truth about her family situation?
Her father squeezed Janelle’s arm. His way of saying “get it together” with regards to the unusual fear they could now smell coming off of her.
“Blame that on Mother Nature,” her father said, forced laughter in his voice. “My mother went into heat once and Alaska got an heir. Wilma’s got two brothers—one of them is my beta. You never know.”
“No, you don’t,” Mag said, and his eyes left hers to wander around the ballroom, like what was going on around them was way more interesting than this conversation.
“Do you like Janelle’s dress?” her mother asked, in an obvious bid to get his attention back with a change of subject.
King Tikaani seconded that motion, “Turn around, so he can see your dress, honey.”
Janelle’s eyes instinctively went to the far wall of the ballroom, where Alisha was standing with Chloe. Her sister was shaking her head, her lips tight, and she could all but hear the paragraphs of “this is bullshit” Alisha was conveying to Chloe as they both watched Janelle put on her best game face and do a 360 for Mag.
She wished her skin was as dark as either of her sisters then, because there was nothing to hide the red heat in both her cheeks when she came to a full stop back in front of Mag.
Mag inclined his head toward her dad. “Yeah, we’ll take it from here.”
“Of course,” her father said with a bow of his own. “I’ll see you after the first dance.”
And just like that, she was abandoned.
“I’m sorry,” she said as soon as her parents were out of earshot. “I’m sorry for what happened between us three years ago.”
Unlike most of the apologies she’d made over the years, this one was heartfelt. But Mag’s moon-colored eyes didn’t even flicker in acknowledgement of it. Then the opening strains of the first dance, a traditional waltz, filled the ballroom.
“Do you…?” She wasn’t sure if he even knew how to waltz. Mag didn’t exactly strike her as a slow dance kind of guy, much less someone who knew his way around the more formal steps.
But he pulled her into his arms and smoothly launched them into a flowing forward-side-feet-together with the rest of the dancers.
As they turned around the space designated for dancing, she noticed her parents on the sidelines. They’d wisely chosen the side opposite from Alisha.
She and Mag waltzed for a bit, letting the music fill the awkward silence that hung between them. But then Mag said, “Save your apologies. I don’t need them. Not any more.”
Hope sprang up in her chest. “So you’ve already forgiven me? You’re no longer… angry?”
The hard look he gave her in answer to these questions said more than words ever could.
“But you’re here,” she said. “You took a pledge meeting with my father and you’re dancing with me.”
Another hard look. “Yes.”
A worm of fear entered her heart then, one that had nothing to do with his tattoos and everything to do with a sudden realization. That unreadable look he had in his eyes now, the one she couldn’t quite put her finger on? She’d seen it before, in action movies, on the faces of English-accented villains who had somehow been wronged by the titular heroes. It was the complete opposite of the look of love he’d given her the last time she’d seen him at the Denver airport.
This was the look of revenge.
“Mag,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. “I know you’re angry with me. I understand and I truly don’t blame you for feeling that way. But my father is under the impression that you’re serious about entering into a pledge agreement and he’s about to turn forty-five next year, which will leave him divested if I don’t marry someone who can defend his crown. So if this is your idea of some sort of… punishment, please know you’ve succeeded in making me feel even more terrible about how I treated you and let my dad down after this dance. He really doesn’t have time to waste on empty pledge deals.”
Something ticked in his jaw, but eventually he leaned down and said, “Duly noted, Princess,” his voice an icicle in her ear.
And then the waltz ended.
13
JANELLE drew back from him after he spoke and Mag could smell her fear scent release again as her eyes searched his face. She was obviously trying to get a bead on what was going through his mind. He didn’t give it to her. In fact, his wolf growled with satisfaction inside of him. He wanted her scared. Liked that they had traded places.
Three years ago, she’d had him on the straight edge of pussy-whipped with him scared he’d lose her at every turn. But as the opening notes of a Michael Jackson song cross-faded into the end of the waltz, he reveled in the fact that he held all the power in their relationship now. It meant he got to dictate what happened next. It meant—
Janelle abruptly pulled away from him. “Oh my gosh, is this ‘Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’?!?! I love this song!”
Then her two sisters showed up out of nowhere. “Janelle! Janelle! Come dance with us!”
They tugged her away from him, and Janelle went with them willingly, like he was little more than an afterthought.
Yeah, he was definitely in charge here, Mag thought. He watched the three she-wolves dancing together, shaking their bodies in rhythmic time to the song as they yelled out to the Alaska queen to join them. Their mother all but shimmied onto the dance floor, her hips shaking, and soon they were all jumping up and down together, laughing with girlish glee, despite their grown-up evening attire.
“Sorry about that. Their mother is a Michael Jackson nut and she raised her daughters to be just like her when it comes to MJ,” King Tikaani said, coming to stand beside him on the dance floor. “All the rules fly out the window when he comes on.”
However, from the fond look on the Alaska king’s face, Mag could tell he didn’t really mind his family’s sudden need to pay homage to Michael Jackson. Despite his disappointment in only having daughters, Tikaani truly seemed to love all the she-wolf members of his immediate family. No wonder Janelle had seemed more concerned with her father’s fate than her own when she asked Mag not to lead him on. Her father. She hadn’t seemed to care that she’d been the main target of his revenge plan.
“If it makes you feel any better,” Tikaani said now, “same thing’s happened at just about every wedding we’ve e
ver been invited to.”
It didn’t make him feel any better. Not at all. The sight of Janelle like this reminded him of the person he’d thought she was when they first met. The innocent girl with the twinkle in her eye who’d ask him to take his virginity with a sweet tilt of her head. It made something ache at the center of his chest. It made him… want things he shouldn’t want, that he had learned three years ago to never want again.
Mag forced himself to look away from Janelle dancing, and turned to face her father. “We should talk,” he said to King Tikaani his tone grim.
“Sure, sure. But let’s go back to Dale’s study. It’s quieter up there.” King Tikaani patted him on the back like the father no wolf who’d grown up in Freedom Town had ever had. An eighties sitcom father, purposefully radiating kindness and good humor, just like his daughter. Mag could see why there was only one pack in Alaska who hadn’t submitted to the crown.
“THIS WHOLE EVENT IS BULLSHIT,” Alisha complained as she and Janelle made their way to the guest house, which sat in back of the main kingdom house.
“Alisha, please. I already know how you feel. You’ve made it more than clear,” Janelle said, unable to keep the weariness out of her voice.
Her father had left the ball with Mag for places unknown. They hadn’t returned. And then her mother disappeared just a half hour later, probably having received a telepathic call from King Tikaani, and she hadn’t come back either. Now Janelle was exhausted from the effort it had taken to maintain her perfect princess façade for an entire hour before she could leave the ball without being perceived as rude by her peers.
And the last thing she needed from Alisha right now was a reminder that she was her father’s only chance to stay safe and in power. Her professor sister was so opposed to everything that came with being an Alaska princess, Janelle was beginning to doubt her parents would ever get her married off, much less to someone in a position to provide her father with the strong ally he needed to stay in power until he could name an heir.
Wolf and Punishment (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 1) Page 10
