Janelle had asked herself the same questions many times over the past few weeks, and hearing her mother repeat them nearly verbatim made her feel queasy. But why was Wilma suddenly so determined to get answers to these questions today? Why had she called Janelle out of the blue?
“Mom?” Janelle said, carefully setting her sketchpad aside on the desk. “Is everything okay there?”
“Everything’s fine here. Better than fine, really, it’s just that…” Her mother lowered her voice dramatically. “Chloe and Rafe broke up.”
“What!?!?” Janelle exclaimed. “When? Why?”
“A few days ago, and I don’t know why. Rafe’s not exactly opening up about whatever happened between them. And all Erylace would tell me is that Chloe ‘left’ and she won’t be coming back. So I can’t say for sure, but this has ‘third wolf issues’ written all over it.”
Wolves mated for life, with girls often going into heat with the first guy they dated. Most often, this was a good thing, which had led to thousands of long-standing marriages throughout the years for their hybrid species. Unlike the humans, wolf divorce rates were in the single digits. However, the same instincts that made wolves so unwilling to divorce each other, even if they were miserable in their marriage, made them extremely hard to deal with when issues of infidelity came up.
Since wolves weren’t allowed to make use of human courts, King Tikaani served as a one-man version of the Alaska state pack’s Supreme Court. And most of the cases that kicked up to him from the pack leaders involved what the king referred to as “third wolf issues”: male wolves cheating on their mates with another mated wolf, unmated male wolves mating with an already mated she-wolf in second heat, male wolves killing their she-wolves for having sex with another male wolf, female wolves killing a she-wolf who she found with her husband, and hundreds of domestic violence cases that rotated around a he said/she said web of affections shared or gone astray. But the number one kind of case King Tikaani oversaw were nasty pledge vow battles, after one of the pledgees ended up mated to a wolf he or she hadn’t officially pledged.
“You think Chloe mated with another wolf?” Janelle said to her mother, finding it hard to believe. From what she had seen, Chloe considered Rafe both her best friend and her soul mate, and she couldn’t imagine her betraying him with another wolf.
“Like I said, I can’t say for sure what happened since Rafe isn’t talking about it. But he showed up on our front step just a few days after whatever happened between them. I mean, he wouldn’t even wait for Vince to get back from his hunting trip up north! He hired a human bush plane to get him out here, and hiked in on his own two feet across Wolf Lake—lucky for him, it’s still frozen. In another couple weeks, he wouldn’t have been able to get across without falling in.”
“Poor Rafe…” Janelle could understand why Rafe had come to Alaska. Because of their fathers’ long-standing friendship, the families had always been very close, visiting each other at least twice a year, with Janelle and her sisters calling Dale and Erylace “uncle and aunt” and Rafe calling Tikaani and Wilma the same, despite the fact that they weren’t truly related by blood.
But… “Why was Rafe so desperate to get to Alaska that he’d hike across the lake? I mean, why couldn’t he have just waited a few days for Vince to get back and pick him up?”
“Because he’s gone crazy, that’s why. Here he comes knocking on our door. Doesn’t even take off his coat when he gets inside. Says he wants to talk to your daddy as soon as possible.”
“Talk about what?”
“Janelle, you’re not going to believe this, but he asked your father for Alisha’s pledge.”
“Rafe wants to pledge Alisha?!” Janelle’s mouth dropped all the way open. Her mother was right. She didn’t believe it, couldn’t believe it.
But her mother answered, “Yes.”
“Our Alisha. The one currently teaching at the University of Juneau? Not like a cousin or some other she-wolf in the state pack?”
“Yes, my daughter, your sister, Alisha. That’s the who he says he wants to pledge.”
“Mama, that’s absolutely not going to happen. Alisha hates Rafe these days, and she’d never agree to his pledge.”
Her mother’s tone became as hard as the acrylic nails that adorned her fingers. “If Rafe wants to mate into our family, I’m not going to let anything or anyone stop that from happening.”
Janelle noticed her mother referred to it as mating into their family, and the rest of the pieces began to fall into place. “That’s why you were asking how serious Mag was about our pledge. You’re trying to figure out how to get me out of it.”
Her mother didn’t even try to deny it. “Well, you have to admit, it would certainly be easier to arrange a pledge agreement between you and Rafe, than between him and your fool sister.”
Janelle pursed her lips, not liking the feeling this conversation was giving her. A word Alisha often used popped into her mind. “Objectified”—that’s how she felt, like an item her parents were more than willing to pass around if it got them what they wanted.
“Daddy just signed my pledge papers.”
“Technically, yes. But if Mag were to agree to cancel his half of the pledge, then we could cancel our half of the pledge. No harm, no foul.”
“Except Mag is one of Rafe’s best friends. I really don’t think Rafe would ever betray him like that.”
“I know,” her mother said, sounding more than a little glum about this. “That would be an issue we’d need to think on, but we could probably come up with a work around.”
Janelle blinked into the phone. Her mother was truly incorrigible. “Most importantly, Rafe asked for Alisha. Not me. Alisha.” Then she said something she’d assumed her mother knew, but she could now see it might have to be said out loud. “You do realize Alisha and I aren’t interchangeable, right?”
Silence, then… “Anyway, you’re dad asked Rafe to consult on a project to build a resort around some hot spring we own in some place or another. So he’ll be here at least three months. That should be enough time to get Alisha up here and pledged to Rafe.”
Janelle didn’t believe in sarcasm. She considered it rude, and tried to never employ it out loud. But right now she was thinking a whole lot of “Yeah, good luck with that, Mama,” and she couldn’t be certain it didn’t creep into her voice when she said, “Okay, Mama, well let me know how it goes.”
For the first time in a month she felt a chuckle rising up within her as she hung up the phone. But that chuckle died a quick death when she looked around the study. The study that still reflected what the house used to look like, because Jeffrey had never finished redecorating it to suit his tastes. And also, because Mag had yet to return to Wyoming from Los Angeles.
And she wondered if her new fiancé would ever come back to claim her.
15
THREE months, Mag thought as he drove across the stone bridge that stood over the babbling body of water Wolf Creek was named after. It had been three months since he last saw Janelle. And somehow, the time spent apart seemed both too long and not long enough.
He’d thought he’d be able to do it. Kill the wolf Janelle had been engaged to when she hooked up with him, then walk away from the pledge dance, free of her ghost. It had all been meant to be one huge “fuck you” to a she-wolf who had allowed herself to be pimped off to the highest bidder. He’d wanted her to know he was no longer out of her league—she was out of his.
But he hadn’t counted on her pleading for her dad’s life. And he definitely hadn’t counted on the dancing. The dancing that had made him want...
He’d found himself signing pledge papers in the Colorado kingdom house study, his blood boiling at the thought of another wolf claiming her. He guessed the part of him that had killed two wolves in order to prove to Janelle he was a wolf of worth—just like her original fiancé—that part of him still wasn’t satisfied. The killer part of him wanted his prize: her beneath him, crying out his name
while he claimed her.
And that was why it was also too soon to come back. Killing two wolves in a row had been a son of bitch, even after all the brutal training Grady had put him through in his off seasons. But facing Janelle after three months? He sensed that was going to be even harder.
He soon entered the kingdom house’s circular driveway and peered up at the large and imposing stone mansion that had come with his challenge win. According to the vice president of the pack council who’d shown him around the kingdom house the day after the challenge fight, the mansion was built in a style called Romanesque. Whatever. All Mag knew was he didn’t need near that much house, and despite having killed its last owner, he found it overwhelming after his simple Los Angeles condo.
But wait, had all the rose bushes outside the mansion been replaced? He brought his red and black, special edition Bugatti Veyron to a stop at the front steps. He’d planned on driving it all the way to the garage on the other side of the house, but now he got out to look at the messy assortment of colorful wild flowers replacing the neat rose bushes that used to occupy the garden space on the other side of the driveway.
He liked it. Made the place look… he didn’t know… he guessed “inviting” would be the word. Like you wouldn’t have to break out the lah-di-dahs with the wolves that lived here.
The inside of the house was even better. Most of that ugly, flowery wallpaper had been replaced with dark green paint. And the huge great room had an accent wall done up with patterned wallpaper he could tell had been designed by an Alaska Native.
The fancy white-and-gold furniture had been switched out with rustic tables and chairs made of a wood that looked like it’d been something else, like a barn or boat, in a past life. Probably a boat, he thought, looking up at the new rice paper lighting fixtures, which looked like kayaks turned upside down. And in the middle of the great room stood a huge polar bear sculpture made of white soapstone.
The room was… perfect. A tribute to both the culture he hailed from and the fuck load of money he’d made since growing up in an RV.
“Mrs. Coates!” he called out. No answer. Then he remembered she had Mondays off.
So he tried again. “Janelle!”
Still no answer, but he saw a flash of movement beyond the windowed doors at the back of the great room, the ones that led out to the many acres of land behind the estate.
A gardener maybe? he thought as he approached the figure. He or she was wearing overalls and digging the fourth in a row of medium-sized holes in the ground with a shovel.
But as soon as he got within twenty feet of her, he knew this wasn’t a gardener, it was Janelle, with a layer of fresh dirt scent over her usual one of perfume and snow.
And she must have smelled him, too, because her back went rigid with surprise before she slowly turned around. “Mag! What are you doing here?”
He stared at her, unable to believe what he was seeing. Janelle in denim overalls and what looked like a white string bikini top underneath. A sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead and her normally gleaming, long hair had been replaced with a bunch of frizzy curls, all of which seemed to be trying to pull a Hogan’s Heroes to get out of the haphazard bun she’d used to contain them. No makeup on whatsoever. She looked like a slightly tired, sweaty, and dirt-strewn version of the beautiful princess he’d last seen in Colorado. And for some reason that warmed his heart in a way it hadn’t been warmed in the past three years.
“I mean, I know why you’re here. It’s your house,” she said, obviously flustered. “Of course you should be here. But no one told me you were coming today.”
He got the feeling she rarely allowed people to see her this way, if ever. All her perfect princess poise seemed to have left her, and her hands stuttered in front of her, like she didn’t know where to start putting her princess back together again.
“If I’d known you were coming back, I would have been waiting for you at the bridge to give you a traditional greeting. But I didn’t. And Mrs. Coates is off on Mondays, so I thought I’d get these trees planted.”
That explained it. No one was here, so Janelle, who probably came down to breakfast in full hair and makeup, had felt free to go about the property in her natural state.
“Did you plant the flowers out front, too?” Mag asked.
“No, no, we had gardeners come in to do that earlier in the month.” She then went into primp mode, stuffing errant curls back into her bun, and wiping the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand.
Mag had to fight not to smile. She was only making it worse. The curls just popped right back out, bringing even more of their friends with them when they did, and now instead of just sweat, she had streaks of dirt everywhere she’d tried to wipe off her face.
“You’d never be able to grow fruit in Alaska, but I know there are a lot of fruit trees in L.A., and I didn’t want you to miss them when you moved here permanently,” she explained. “But I shouldn’t have done it myself. I should have asked the gardeners to do it. I just got excited and I…”
She stopped, and looked everywhere but at him. Panicky, like she was about to hyperventilate.
“Janelle,” he said, not knowing whether to be amused or weirded out. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. You’re back and I look a mess. I’m so sorry. I’ll have to figure out some way to make it up to you.”
Mag shrugged. “I forgot to put on my make-up this morning, too. Don’t worry about it.”
There was a moment of shocked silence as Janelle processed what he said, then she covered her mouth and let out a little laugh.
“I want to hear more about this traditional greeting I was supposed to get at the bridge, though.”
“Oh, it’s nothing. I mean it’s this thing all the women do in our kingdom town whenever someone goes away for a while—like more than a week. Everyone does it a little differently, but whenever my dad got back from big trips, my mom would have my sisters and me sing this song while she did the welcome back dance… but pregnant and pledged she-wolves have to sing it themselves, since they don’t have children yet.”
“All right, then you can make it up to me. Let’s hear this welcome back song.”
Janelle’s eyes widened. “Oh no, I couldn’t. I’m not dressed for it. Plus, you’re already here.”
He lifted his eyebrows at her. “So you were lying. You don’t really care about making it up to me.”
“Of course I do!”
“Then make it up to me. Let’s hear the song. Right here, right now.”
He could almost see her doing the princess calculus inside her head as she decided whether to give in to his request. And it made him wonder what kind of math she’d done when she hooked up with him three years ago.
“Okay,” she said. “It’s just a silly little song, and it sounds better with a drum, but here goes…”
She tapped her hand against her leg to keep the rhythm and sang a song in a dialect he recognized as belonging to the state pack even though he’d never heard a few of the words before. He could tell she was embarrassed as she sang, yet her voice was high and strong, and he liked the soulful undertones she brought to the otherwise chant-like song.
She was right, though. It was a silly little song, which mean it ended way too soon. She quit after just a minute of singing.
“I thought you said there was a dance that went with it,” he said. “What happened to that?”
Janelle looked truly appalled now. “Well, like I said, I’m not dressed in the proper attire. I’ll do it for you next time, I promise, but—”
“Do it for me now. Exactly like you would if I were visiting you at home. I want to see it all.”
She stared at him, and Mag stared back, curious to see if she’d drop the perfect princess routine and refuse him.
But in the end, she put on that pretty smile of hers and sang the song again, this time with movements that made the meaning of the song clear, even if her pack dialect only shared a di
stant relationship with his own. It was a song about a male who hunts… the white bear over great ice hills… the whale in the great sea… the caribou in the great tundra… the bird in the great trees. The song ended on a line that was repeated four times and could be translated into English as “And then he always comes home to me. And then he always comes home to me.”
Janelle’s eyes followed her hands for most of the dance, but on the last line her eyes came back to his in a way that seemed so intrinsic to the song, Mag couldn’t tell if her looking straight at him like this was choreographed or not. “And then he always comes home to me,” she sang in her language. Her voice was a siren’s call, and though Mag had been the one to make her sing the song again, he now felt trapped in her web.
This time when she finished the song, she asked “Um, are you sure you want me to do all the moves?”
More sure than he’d ever been of anything in his life, but Mag answered with a light shrug. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Okay then, we’re supposed to end the song like this…”
She took his face in her hands and gave him a kunik. An actual fucking kunik of all things, putting her nose right next to his, and sniffing so hard it felt like she was hoovering his scent into her nose. Then she put her nose to the other side of his, and did it again. This was a real Eskimo kiss, not the bastardization of it that had been popularized by people ignorant of their culture.
It shouldn’t have turned him on, since the real version of Eskimo kissing was pretty much the least erotic form of kissing on the planet. His own mother had given him and his brother plenty of Eskimo kisses, especially after she’d had a few Natty Lites. But this… this. His cock strained against his jeans, wanting Janelle so bad, he could—
“You’re supposed to do it back,” she said softly.
He took her face in his hands, but instead of a few quick suctions back, he put his nose next to hers, breathed in her scent… and just stood there. Holding her face to his, breathing her in for what might have only been a minute or two, but felt like hours.
Wolf and Punishment (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 1) Page 12
