by Debra Dunbar
“So do you guys grow all your own crops? Cows and pigs and chickens out on the back forty somewhere?” I asked.
Mir giggled. “We’re not a hippy commune. Some of the cafeteria employees do food runs. Produce and perishables are bought weekly, where meats and other groceries are bought in bulk monthly. We do have fresh meat and fish from hunts, but it’s hard to feed the pack off hunts alone. You should see the freezers and the storage rooms. I think we could survive a zombie apocalypse with all the food they have in there.”
“Are you always this cheerful?” I teased. She’d been at it for hours now, her happy enthusiasm never fading. It should have irritated the crap out of me. By this point I normally would have been either clawing my eyes out, or clawing her eyes out. But for some inexplicable reason, I liked Mir. And instead of grating on me like nails on a chalkboard, her chipper commentary was infectious. No, I wasn’t about to start skipping and singing pop tunes, but I did feel less hostile than usual. Even my beast had begun to take notice of my companion and now seemed somewhat charmed by this young wolf.
“Yes. Well, most of the time. I’m excited to meet you. I mean, I was kind of scared, but you’re so cool. You’ve got purple hair, and piercings and tattoos, and you’re like older than my Mom, but look like you could be my big sister. And you haven’t hit me or anything, so maybe we can be friends.”
I blinked, not sure what to address first. “Is that your criteria for friends? That they don’t hit you?”
She laughed. “No, silly. It’s just that your reputation…well, I heard that you fight a lot. I’ve never been in a fight. If you hit me, I’d probably cry. But I get the idea you’re not going to hit me.”
It was getting hard to keep from smiling. And my beast was practically purring, filled with some weird maternal, or possibly fraternal, instinct that she’d never exhibited before. “No, I’m not going to hit you. Do you want purple hair, piercings, and tattoos?”
Her brown eyes grew huge. “Yes! But I think my parents would kill me. They’re not happy about me living in the dorm, but I’m safe here in the compound, and it’s not like they live far away. I think if I showed up for dinner with purple hair, I’d be living back at home before lights-out.”
Lights-out? Werewolves could see really well in the dark, so it seemed kind of silly to have a lights-out rule, but I wasn’t in any position to be complaining about the rules. I just needed to shut up and follow them.
“I wish I could at least get a tattoo, though.” Mir looked at my arms with envy.
“You do know that you can get piercings in places where your parents aren’t likely to see them?”
I didn’t think her eyes could get any bigger. “We’re werewolves. We see each other naked all the time. The only place I could get a piercing where no one would see was—oh. Oh! Wouldn’t that hurt? I mean, really, really hurt?”
I winked. “Hell, yeah. But, once it’s all healed up, then it’s game on, girl.”
She grinned. “I want one. Like, I want one now. Could you do it? Maybe I could steal some whisky and do a few shots first so it won’t hurt as bad.”
“That’s something that really calls for a professional,” I told her. “I’m sure there are tattoo and piercing places in town. Or we could go to Anchorage and make it a weekend trip, assuming I ever get a day off whatever work I’m given.”
Wait, she was sixteen. Was that too young to get a piercing? I’d seen human children with pierced ears and noses, so I was assuming it was okay. I’d probably need to lie and say I was her parent or something and sign a consent form, none of which would be a problem for me.
“Let’s do it! And once I get brave enough, I’ll get a belly button ring like yours, and a tiny tattoo on my ankle. Something cool, like a dragon, or a rose with flames, or Mickey Mouse.”
My head whirled trying to figure out what was cool about those three things. Maybe a dragon, but a cartoon mouse? And a rose with flames?
“Let’s start with the piercing, then when you think you parents will be open to it, a little tattoo.”
“I’ve got an idea.” Mir grinned. “I’ll tell my parents I want to get a tramp stamp, then when they’re done screaming and yelling, we’ll compromise on a pretty little ankle tattoo.”
Huh. There was a little more devil in Mir than I’d ever imagined. It made me wonder what other surprises were in store for me here at the Swift River Pack.
Chapter 3
Mir gave me some time to myself, promising to return in time to escort me to dinner. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do with this time. Nap? Contemplate my precarious position in life? Deciding to combine the latter two, I lay on my bed and thought about my new Alpha.
Hot. Scary. Suffocatingly dominant. And what the hell had been that thing between us? I’d experienced insta-lust before, and although I had no doubt that Jake could rock my world in bed, what had happened in his office had been more than lust. If I were one of those sappy chicks who read romance novels, I would have thought we were destined to be together, or some shit like that. I didn’t read romance novels, and I wasn’t a sappy chick, so I was going to explain it away as a weird reaction to a guy who was the most powerful Alpha I’d ever met in my life.
And yeah, I did want to fuck him. But then again, I wanted to fuck just about every good looking guy I came across—werewolf or human. No biggie. Nothing special. Time to forget about the weird electricity thing and move on to think about more important things, like how I was going to be able to survive in a pack with this many rules and this much order.
Swift River Pack wasn’t so much a commune or university than a military camp without all the marching. I wondered what job I’d be assigned to do. I wondered how long I’d manage to toe the line here until I fucked up and got myself killed. It would probably happen sooner than at the other packs. In the past I’d usually managed to avoid other werewolves and humans and throw myself into an isolating work-rest routine. But although I’d physically wear myself out, I never could stand being alone for long. Funny that everyone was afraid of me and hated me, and although that was usually due to my own actions, I longed to be around them. Well, I longed to be around them and sometimes to pick a fight.
In the other packs, the werewolves had been skilled at de-escalating the conflict and getting me the heck out of there before I got to brawling. On the occasions when I did fight, I’d always win, and usually had to be hauled off my opponent by my pack mates before I killed him or her. Then they’d cover it up out of pride, until they could cover it up no more. Which usually happened when the Alpha got tired of my defiance and disrespect and finally decided to try to teach me a lesson.
Try. That was always the end of my membership in that pack. We were werewolves, and both dominance and a mixture of strength and smarts were necessary to be a leader. But that wasn’t all. The pack needed to want to follow you. They had to see their Alpha as someone who would look out for their best interests, who would put the good of the group above his or her own personal gain. No one would have followed me as an Alpha. And neither my beast nor I wanted to lead a pack anyway. We just wanted to fight. And win.
The idea of leading a pack and being responsible for others scared the fucking crap out of me. And it scared the crap out of my beast too. I think for all her ferocity and bravado, she was just as lonely and scared as I was. And the more lonely and scared she got, the more difficult it was to control her. I gave myself two days before I tried to rip someone’s throat out. I got the impression Jake wouldn’t brush that sort of thing under the rug. I could tell things were strict here. The incident would be brought to him, no doubt along with me, and he’d take me out in the woods and do it.
The thought was oddly comforting. I’d been a mistake, a monster that never should have been born. And I had gotten to the point in my life where living was harder than dying. I’d try my best to make this work, but I didn’t have a lot of faith that after all these years I’d be able to fit in with this pack. After all t
hese years, I didn’t have a lot of faith in anything at all.
Two women who I was sure I was safe to assume were some of my new roomies came in. I’d heard them enter the building, taken their scent, caught snippets of their conversation as they came down the hall. One looked to be in her late twenties with a bit of muffin-top visible between the waistband of her jeans and her too-short tank top. She had brown hair scraped back into an unflatteringly severe knot at the back of her head and had been a bit heavy-handed with the mascara. The other looked about five or so years older and was slightly shorter with the kind of build that looked like she could bench a couple of elephants. She also had on an excess amount of mascara. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of ultra-black lashes and a thick line of kohl around my eyes, but these girls had the clumpy, overly curled, long lashes that made them look like kewpie dolls.
They both ignored me. Because, of course, they’d scented me and knew I was here long before they entered the room. And, as everyone else in the compound, they knew who and what I was. I was positive Jake wouldn’t have brought a viper into his pack’s midst without warning them first.
I ignored them as well, gathering from their conversation that Muffin Top had a job that had something to do with scheduling, and Muscles was in security. Or accounting. Accounting security? I had an easier time envisioning her patrolling the compound for wrong-doers than running accounts receivable reports, but maybe not. I’m sure there were accountants out there in the world who liked to spend their off-hours lifting at the gym.
I gave my beast the side-eye, trying to gauge how she felt about these new roommates. She wouldn’t care about Muffin Top, but Muscles had enough dominance and swagger that my beast might suddenly awaken and decide she needed to teach this poor woman a lesson.
“Nice tats,” Muffin Top said, finally glancing my way.
“Thanks.” It was safer not to engage in lengthy conversation until I knew I had my beast under control.
Muscles glanced my way and frowned. Oh no, here we go.
“How often do you have to touch-up the purple in your hair?”
Okay. That was a safe question. “It fades pretty quickly. Usually I do it every two weeks, when I bleach my roots.”
She nodded. “I tried to put a streak of red in my hair last year, but it didn’t show up at all.”
Because her hair was nearly black, that’s why. “Pre-bleach the strand just ten minutes or so, and the red should take. If you want it really bright red, you’ll need to bleach the streak a lot. As in probably two steps and some toner a lot.”
Wasn’t there a stylist on the compound she could go to? At the very least a barber or someone? Was I going to bond with these women over hair color techniques? Maybe I should suggest a different mascara.
“Cool. I’ll have a professional do it next time I go to town. I’m half afraid that if I do it myself, I’ll burn a chunk of my hair off.”
Muffin Top snickered. “You’d look like Sandra that time she caught her hair on fire.”
What? What? I had no idea who this Sandra was, but I had to know this story.
Muscles laughed. “She was at dinner trying to flirt with Jake and did this hair flip thing. Her hair hit the candle flame, and with all the product she had going on, it went up like a torch. Jake grabbed her head and dunked her face-first in a pot of spaghetti sauce to put her out.”
Holy shit, that was funny as hell. “So I take it she bombed out on any attempt to score with our Alpha?”
Both women shouted with laughter. “She bombed out even before the hair-on-fire incident. Jake doesn’t date inside the pack. I doubt he dates at all. I mean, I’m sure he probably gets some action whenever he feels like going into the city because he’s smoking hot, but nobody in the pack knows about it.”
Or nobody wanted to risk their lives telling anyone that they knew about it. Still, it made me curious. Everyone had needs, and I couldn’t believe a guy like that, an Alpha, wasn’t getting stroked regularly by someone besides himself.
Chapter 4
Muffin Top and Muscles had left, and no one else came to the room by the time Mir arrived to get me for dinner. I was bored. And I was a bit anxious about meeting the other two women who shared this room with me. I’d always lived alone in an apartment. The idea that I was going to be in a dormitory with two dozen women, and in a bedroom with five others worried me.
The moment that plane had landed and I’d entered this pack, I’d felt off kilter, anxious and uncertain of what to expect next. You’d think that would cause someone like me to go on the attack in some sort of fear-based aggression, but if anything the weird situation seemed to defuse my normal hostility. I was scared. And instead of stepping up to give me the sort of confidence that would get me killed, my beast took the confusion as a cue to retreat. Bitch had gotten me kicked out of every pack I’d ever joined, and now that I felt afraid and on-edge, she’d abandoned me.
But at least I had Mir. And the irony didn’t escape me that I was clinging to a sixteen-year-old girl as my anchor in an unfamiliar environment.
“Do I need to dress for dinner or something?” I asked her, jumping from my bed in relief when she came through the doorway. Lying in bed alone wasn’t helping my anxiety any. In fact, all the silence and solitude was making me question what the hell my life was going to be like going forward.
Mir added to that anxiety by handing me a large envelope. “No, silly. It’s not Buckingham Palace or anything. Even if you get invited to dine at Jake’s table, or at the Alpha House, you don’t need to get all swanky. Most people are there in their work clothes. We’re not a fancy-dress kind of pack.”
Good, because I didn’t even own a dress, let alone anything remotely formal. I opened the envelope, reading the note inside while Mir peered over my shoulder.
“Garbage collection.” Mir pronounced my job assignment like it was a death sentence. “Yuck. But I guess someone’s got to do it. I wonder what the ‘special assignment’ thing is?”
I wondered as well. I was to report to a building at the edge of the compound at seven in the morning tomorrow where I would given a four-wheeler with a trailer attached to go around and collect garbage that pack members had put out in the approved receptacles. Then I was to take it to the incinerator and burn the lot. This was a twice weekly activity. Another twice weekly activity was to go around and collect the recyclables, sort them and box them by type, then take them via truck into the nearest recycling center which was most likely a hundred miles away.
“You’ll get to sign out a truck for recycle days,” Mir pointed out. I assumed from her tone of voice that signing out a truck was a perk. “And that’s only four mornings per week of work. I wonder if you’ll get a secondary assignment for the afternoons?”
I hoped so. Sitting around and doing nothing while everyone else in the compound worked would drive me crazy, and it would foster resentment among my pack mates. “Maybe this special assignment thing is the full time gig?” I asked.
“You’re meeting with Jamie at the Alpha House after dinner to find out.”
“Jamie?” My stomach twisted at the thought that I’d be taking orders from someone. The garbage job was ideal. I’d be working solo, and outside of some initial instruction, I’d be completely on my own. Those types of jobs tended to be what I preferred, and tended to last longer than the ones where I had to play nice with others, or follow orders.
“Jamie. She’s Jake’s second. Have you met her yet?”
I immediately thought of the Baywatch Babe who’d driven me in on the four wheeler. “Blonde? Pretty? Looks like she could be a pin-up model?”
Mir giggled. “That’s her.”
My mind cycled back to the conversation with Muffin Top and Muscles. “Are she and Jake an item?” It wasn’t unheard of for an Alpha and their second to be involved. They usually worked together closely, and sometimes that closeness led to bedroom activities and occasionally a mated pair.
Mir shrugged. “Mayb
e. She’s really beautiful, and Jake relies on her a lot. I know there are nights where she stays overnight in the Alpha House, so I guess they could be doing it.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?” It bothered me. If I hadn’t wanted to kill the woman before, I certainly did now.
“No. It’s not like I’d ever have a chance with him. If he ever even looked at me like he was interested, I’d probably pee myself in fear. Jake is scary.”
Yeah, scary hot. Wait, Jake was scary? “So he’s scary, but I’m not?” I was kind of insulted by that.
Mir laughed. “You’re not scary. I don’t understand what all the fuss was about. I mean, don’t get me wrong, if bad things were happening, I’d really, really want you on my side. I’m pretty sure you could take down a grizzly single-handed and not smear your make-up. But being kick-ass and being scary are two different things. You’re kick-ass. Jake is kick-ass and scary.”
Yep, I was definitely insulted.
“Now hurry up,” she continued. “It’s prime rib night, and if you get there late, all the good cuts are gone.”
Now that was motivating. I freshened up in our bathroom, noting the amount of makeup and products lining the shelves, then headed out with Mir. We walked across the compound, past the Alpha House and through a tidy garden to a long low building that smelled of meat and potatoes. Inside, the cafeteria was one giant room with long buffet tables and two sets of doors that I assumed led to the kitchen. There were rectangular tables that seated ten, and smaller round tables. Along the edge of the room, next to the windows overlooking the garden were a series of two-person tables. I would have called it romantic, except that I couldn’t imagine having a romantic dinner in a cafeteria with my entire pack staring on.
