“Is a man?” Silver gave the words a mocking twist. “But your argument is that Portland is not suited by her particular personality to maintain the position of authority while raising a child, is it not? You are not saying that all women are so unsuited?”
Eliza flushed slightly. “Didn’t raise her, was what I was going to say.”
Felicia crossed her arms in annoyance. She knew that was common knowledge, but it still felt too private for someone else to use as ammunition. “Well, he raised me since I was fifteen. So once Portland’s kid hits his or her Lady ceremony, she can do whatever she wants without affecting the kid?” She flicked a glance to Silver, hoping she didn’t mind Felicia snapping back an answer like that, but she smelled decidedly pleased.
“Well, no…” Eliza floundered for a few moments longer before Silver stepped in.
“And if your father was forced by circumstances outside himself to step down from being alpha, how do you think he would react?”
Felicia winced. It didn’t bear thinking about. “Are you kidding? He’d go Lady-fu—” She coughed. “Lady-darned insane in, like, a day. He’d turn it inward and get all”—she curled both sets of fingertips into her palms—“silent and always hurting.”
Silver dipped her head in agreement with the assessment. “And if you knew you were the reason?”
Even though Felicia knew this was all imaginary, all aimed at Eliza, visceral fear tore at her voice even thinking about it. Everything else she was struggling with was too close to the surface, and the question brought it surging up. She’d made mistakes enough in her life, mistakes that had hurt many people, but to have put her father through that … She couldn’t find the words right away, but that didn’t seem to matter. Everyone in the room seemed to have smelled or read her reaction on her face. Portland made a small noise of shock.
“My sister would never blame her child for such a thing,” Eliza said, defensiveness sharpening her voice.
Felicia looked at Silver first this time. She nodded. “Kids aren’t stupid!” Felicia’s volume crept higher than she’d intended, but she didn’t bother moderating it. “No one needs to blame them for them to know they were part of whatever bad thing happened. They know. They especially know if everyone’s trying to hide it from them. You know they tried to tell me my father had ‘gone away for a while’? Later, they fed me lies when they claimed to be explaining it, but in the beginning they tried to hide it. I was four, five, but I knew. Knew my mother hadn’t ‘just died accidentally’ and my father hadn’t ‘gone away.’”
Silver moved her hand to rub Felicia’s back once, and Felicia realized she was panting. She’d been annoyed by private matters being brought up before, and now she’d brought them up herself. A deep need to make Eliza understand had taken hold of her, though. She suspected Silver felt something similar.
“Would you like to be the one who consigns a child to hurting so much, because his or her parent hurts so deeply in turn?” In contrast to Felicia’s volume, Silver’s voice was low and smooth.
“Shut up.” Craig dropped a big hand on Eliza’s shoulder when she would have spoken again. “Lose with some Lady-damned dignity.” He removed his hand and dropped to one knee in front of Silver. Felicia edged quickly to the side, back to watching rather than participating.
“I never meant for this to extend beyond the child’s birth, but it’s clear the issue is much deeper than that. I withdraw my petition. My apologies, Roanoke.” Craig dropped his head.
Portland released a ragged breath of relief. Craig looked hopefully up at her, but she shook her head. “It’s not that easy. Even if all of this hadn’t happened, Silver’s right, you can’t properly be my beta anymore, not when the rest of our relationship is so complicated. It’s your child too, but we need to”—she caught her lower lip in her teeth—“figure out how it’s going to work.” She came forward and offered Craig a hand up. He accepted, though it was clear he didn’t rest any of his weight on the contact.
Eliza smelled like stewing anger, but she didn’t say anything else. The other two ignored her completely as Silver ushered them all to the door, offering wishes for safe travels home.
Felicia slipped away, searching for her father. As she’d suspected, she didn’t have far to go. She found him in the living room, well within eavesdropping distance. She felt weird, having said all those things about being his daughter, and maybe he did too, because he didn’t say anything right away.
The awkward pause gave his appearance time to finally register. He was wearing a sport coat, hair combed so that the white locks stood out at either temple. He looked polished, the charming alpha who would set you completely at ease so you gave concessions before you even realized. “Are you going somewhere?” Felicia asked him.
He drained his coffee and headed to the kitchen. “The owners of the house you lured Silver to. They’ve agreed to talk to me. The Caballeros. I’m meeting him and his wife at his office.”
Felicia winced at his choice of “lured,” but she couldn’t really object. She followed him after a slight delay. “I should come.”
No answer, and the dishwasher door slammed. Her father must be pretending that he hadn’t heard her in the distraction of putting his mug away. Felicia caught up with him and gathered herself. Confidence. She could show them all how confident she could be, and help fix things too. “Please? It’s my fault, and I can help explain.” Felicia suddenly remembered what he’d said about apologies earlier. Maybe that was why he didn’t want to her to come. “This isn’t just to make myself feel better. I want to do something that actually helps.”
Her father sighed. “I appreciate that, but status was already difficult even when I talked to him on the phone. I’m going to have to play it delicately, and you’re of very low rank in human terms.”
“Wouldn’t that swing the balance in your favor, though? Having a follower along who stands silently and looks contrite? I can look contrite. And I won’t say anything unless you prompt me to, promise.” Felicia dropped her head to demonstrate how low ranked she could look. Her father took her shoulder and nudged her around to face out of the kitchen.
“I’m leaving in fifteen minutes. If you can make yourself look presentable that fast, you can come.”
Felicia bolted for the stairs. It took her sixteen minutes, all told. She changed into one of Susan’s fitted jackets over a camisole. Susan wouldn’t mind her borrowing it. Hopefully. She had more bust than Susan did, so she left the jacket unbuttoned. Her hair took the longest, getting it braided back without curls escaping everywhere. Her father was just climbing into his car when she hit the front door. She paused on the doorstep to tug on the hem of her jacket then hurried over to climb in with him.
Rather than a high-rise downtown, they pulled into an office park with shorter buildings and trees liberally planted among the parking lots. Except for the big logo over the entrance, Mr. Caballero’s office building could have held any company. Felicia thought she recognized the name of the man’s company as something to do with insurance.
They checked in with reception and were directed up a floor to the man’s office. Felicia practiced looking apologetic as they walked down the hall. Her father seemed surprisingly comfortable in this kind of environment. He nodded in pleasant greeting to passing workers, and they smiled back and made room for him like he was high ranked in their hierarchy and not a stranger. Felicia felt vaguely like she should be taking notes for when she got a job.
The man who met them in the office doorway wore his power much more ostentatiously than her father did. He held himself very straight, and his suit was immaculate. The room wasn’t full of antiques, but the complex multilevels of expensive wood desk covered with the latest in electronic equipment spoke of wealth in another way.
The men shook hands and Mr. Caballero introduced his wife, a woman who matched her husband in projecting ostentatious power, including a very masculine cut to her suit and graying hair in a tight twist at the back of
her head. Susan always seemed to manage to look authoritative without anything so stark.
Felicia didn’t take part in the handshaking. Her father introduced her a bit dismissively, like a naughty child dragged along to rub her nose in what she’d done, and she did her best to play along, making her body language droop.
Her father sat in a chair in front of the flat table wing of the desk monstrosity, and the wife sat with her husband inside its curve. Felicia listened more to her father’s tone than to his words. He was being coaxing, as she’d expected from how he’d dressed. The charm wasn’t working, though. Mr. Caballero apparently valued his territory quite highly.
It struck Felicia that he looked much more like a person, not a ranked position, in the photos on the walls. There were plenty of them: Mr. Caballero out fishing, smiling with his wife in vacation destinations, and posed with different combinations of what she presumed were his three children, though they were all teens or adults themselves.
But none with both wife and children, she noticed. She subtly turned and found none with both on any of the office’s other walls.
Mr. Caballero cleared his throat. “You say your daughter has admitted to tracking footprints off the path to lead your girlfriend there as a joke, but I don’t understand the point of this joke.”
“Because she’s practically my stepmother.” The words burst out before Felicia could stop them. So much for her promise to keep quiet. Better see it through now that she’d spoken. She stepped forward. “If Dad would just get around to asking her.” Her father sputtered, and Felicia smiled when she saw a flash of amusement in the wife’s eyes.
She caught the woman’s eyes, appealing to her. “That’s been getting clearer lately, and I didn’t know what to think about it. I mean, my mother died so young I can hardly remember her. So Dad’s away on his business trip, and I end up fighting with S—” Felicia remembered at the last second, Silver’s old name would be on the court documents. “Selene over something incredibly stupid, and I stomped out, and I could only sort of…” She rubbed at her cheeks as if to scrub away the flush they should hopefully read as embarrassment over her behavior in front of Silver. Really, it was more from worrying about her father’s reaction now. At least he wasn’t interrupting, just watching with his go-on-keep-digging-we’ll-see-if-you-come-out-the-other-side-or-end-up-crying-in-a-hole-you-can’t-climb-out-of expression.
“I could only think of showing her how angry I was. When I walked up to your house so she’d follow me, I thought she’d be embarrassed, you know? Give someone a surprise and they’d yell at her for being stupid and getting the wrong house.” Mr. Caballero’s expression was unmoved, but his wife looked exasperated, as if she recognized the sentiment exactly. Recognition didn’t mean she was willing to let Felicia off the hook for it, though.
Felicia took a deep breath. All right, here was her last possible lunge after retreating prey. “Selene shouldn’t be the one paying for this, I should. I wish I hadn’t done it, but I was mad, and sometimes you just … do things, you know? Without knowing quite why. But it was wrong, and it’s my responsibility. I don’t want her punished for me being stupid.”
“The stepparent role is difficult.” The wife caught Mr. Caballero’s eye. “And it wasn’t like Ms. Powell damaged anything inside the house. The way Ramon describes her behavior matches someone who had been misled that way.”
Mr. Caballero’s brows drew down, but Felicia’s father spoke before he could. “My daughter will be punished. I’m cutting off her allowance completely. If she can’t find a job, there are plenty of community-service opportunities to keep her out of Selene’s hair and out of further trouble.”
Mr. Caballero shared another look with his wife and then stood. “Fair enough.” He offered a hand across the desk to shake on it. “We’ll speak to the prosecutor’s office to ask them not to pursue the case, since it was a … misunderstanding.” His expression went very dry.
Felicia held herself together until the car, where she bent over her knees and pressed the heels of her hands to her temples. Lady, if that hadn’t worked …
“Where did that come from?” her father said as he started the car.
“The pictures. I think he has kids from a previous marriage.” Felicia lifted her head to draw a deep breath. No anger from her father.
“Good.” Her father concentrated on the road as they approached a stop sign and his scent gained an undertone of confusion. “Has Silver ever mentioned marriage to you?”
Felicia couldn’t help herself. She laughed, a little longer than she should have because the release of tension was so great. “No, don’t worry. Anyway, you should ask Susan. She’d be the one to know.”
Her father sank into deeply thoughtful silence, and Felicia waited with a little glee to find out what he’d say next. “I didn’t think all the human trappings, the ring and all that, would mean much to her.”
“You were married to Mama. I assume that means something to Silver.” Felicia picked at a piece of lint on the hem of Susan’s jacket. That had sounded too serious. She wanted to tease her father, not make him feel guilty. There was enough guilt sloshing around lately. “If you don’t know what she’d think of a ring, you could show her one and ask her.”
Her father reached over and shoved her shoulder without looking. “You think you’re a helpful one, don’t you?” But she could hear the resigned laughter in his tone.
25
The idea of a larger house must have been percolating in Silver or her father’s mind in the three months since Portland and everyone were tromping through the pack house, because Felicia came home from work one day to find the dining room table spread with fliers for home-construction firms.
She’d carpooled with Susan—silly not to when they worked at the same branch—but Susan was already deep in conversation with her husband at the table when Felicia returned from her shower upstairs. A customer’s perfume had lingered annoyingly in her hair today.
Felicia stepped around Edmond, who was loading plastic pigs and chickens into his mother’s kicked-off high heels, and snagged one of the fliers. It pictured in vivid color a backwoods cabin clearly made for someone who never planned to step outside its comfort into the actual woods. One might as well hang photographs instead of having windows, as far as Felicia could see.
“We probably are going to have to custom build, if we want this many bedrooms as well as decent common-living spaces,” John said, tapping a booklet full of floor plans. “If we try to remodel a hotel or something, it’s going to still feel like a hotel when we’re done.”
“If we can find adjoining properties, we could do something like a main house and a guesthouse,” Susan offered. “That’s what’s driving this, isn’t it? We’re fine here until people come petitioning the Roanokes and want to stay the night. They can walk across the yard to go to bed.”
Felicia slid into a chair down at the end with Silver. She didn’t appear to be listening to the others as she pored over one of the glossiest of the booklets. Felicia swapped for a different one and paged through. Ugh, gold-plated faucets. She scrubbed at her eyes. Lady, being pleasant to people made her tired. Susan had showed her the trick of it, but it still wore her out.
She took out her phone and brought up Tom’s entry in the address book and stared at it for a while. She’d followed her father’s orders and hadn’t even e-mailed him for three months. She liked to imagine what she’d say to him every so often, though. Well. Frequently. No more than once a day.
“Felicia!” Her father’s tone told her that wasn’t the first time he’d called her name. While she’d been lost in her thoughts, they’d cleared away all the other fliers, and people were getting up. Her father leaned back in his chair, encompassing everyone in werewolf earshot with his next comment. “I had an idea for something a little different instead of hunting tonight. A surprise, if Felicia’s willing.”
That sounded ominous. Felicia frowned deeply at her father, but he just winke
d and held up his hand for her to wait a moment. “Go ahead, everyone. We’ll catch up to you out there.”
Felicia had to sit on her curiosity as all Were past their Lady ceremonies got themselves organized, deciding who would ride in which car and who would watch the children—Susan as usual, since she couldn’t shift anyway. It seemed to take a Lady-damned long time before she and her father were alone downstairs.
“You kept Enrique’s whip, didn’t you?” Her father seemed completely nonchalant about the question, but Felicia’s heart picked up speed. He knew she had. She hadn’t done anything wrong. They’d relieved Enrique of all his weapons before shoving him on the plane, of course, and Felicia couldn’t bear to see such a well-crafted, expensive weapon go in the trash. It was stuffed as far back under her dresser as she could shove it.
“Calm down.” Her father stood up and came to set his hand against the back of her neck. “I was thinking. I doubt this will be the last time we tangle with Madrid or his people. This pack should learn how to defend themselves against those kind of tactics. You learned defensive techniques, right?”
Felicia licked her lips. Her immediate reaction was that her father should leave well enough alone and let people forget what she could do with a whip. She opened her mouth to say that, but then her mind started to actually work it through. If people worked with whips a little, maybe the weapon wouldn’t seem so scary. “The unarmed defensive techniques mostly revolve around getting the other person’s whip and using it. But yes.”
Her father gave a low chuckle. “True.” He squeezed her neck. “Consider it a project. Getting everyone willing up to Spanish defensive standards.”
Felicia twisted around. “What do I need a project for? I have a job!” Parents were infuriating.
“And you’re moping. You need a challenge to keep you occupied.” Her father kissed the top of her head and retreated immediately out of smacking range. “C’mon. Get the whip, they’ll be waiting for us.”
Reflected Page 27
