King Tikaani let out a jolly laugh, like an Eskimo version of Santa Claus. “I can move a few things around on my schedule. Don’t worry about that, sweetie.”
“Janelle, you could come, to,” Queen Wilma said.
Janelle blinked and looked up, disoriented, like she’d just realized she was actually in a room with other people.
“To Colorado. For the holidays,” her mother explained. “We could all go right after the annual Christmas party.”
“That sounds lovely,” Janelle answered, her voice faraway. Then she went back to staring at her desert with a hollow look in her eyes.
“A couple of weeks in Colorado actually sounds like fun,” Tu said, sitting up in her chair. “We’ve never had New Year’s away from home. But I’d miss the sweet potato pie Mama always makes for us on New Year’s Eve.”
“The Colorado kingdom house has a kitchen,” Queen Wilma reminded her youngest daughter with an indulgent smile. “I can make a sweet potato pie there for New Year’s Eve, just like I do here. Ooh, I can’t wait! I bet Wolf Springs looks so pretty all lit up for Christmas.”
Alisha clapped her hands together. “Oh, that would be fabulous! Everybody could come along to Wolf Springs and while you’re all eating sweet potato pie, and sledding on the mountain, and ice skating down at the Wolf Springs Resort, maybe I could look into finding out what the hell happened to Rafe’s last fiancée!”
A deathly silence fell over the room, but Alisha kept going, her voice lit up with false enthusiasm. “I mean, I haven’t been able to get in touch with Chloe since she and Rafe broke up. She’s not answering her phone. She hasn’t returned any of my emails. And she hasn’t been updating her ‘Black Mountain Woman’ blog. That’s weird, right?”
The queen threw her daughter a killing look. “Alisha.”
“But, Mom,” Alisha said like a bad Brady Bunch extra. “I thought you wanted me to get to know Rafe better. Shouldn’t I be interested in the unexplained disappearance of the last she-wolf this true prince pledged?”
An image of him fucking her hard overtook Rafe’s brain then. He wanted to dominate this insolent she-wolf, and his wolf howled inside of him, demanding she be dealt with in the most primal of ways.
But his human bore down on his wolf with an icy grip. “If your only reason for wanting to visit Wolf Springs is Chloe, then you’ll be disappointed,” he informed Alisha. “She no longer lives there.”
“And good riddance I say.” The queen gave him a sympathetic look. “That little nobody strung you along for years.”
Alisha leveled her mother with a scathing glare. “She-wolves don’t have any control over when they go into heat. She wasn’t stringing him along. She was doing her best to honor her agreement to marry Rafe. And she’s still my friend.” She turned back to Rafe. “So I’d like to know where she went.”
“I don’t know, princess” Rafe answered, barely holding on to the manners he’d been raised with. “And I don’t care.”
“Really. Just a few months ago when we visited you guys in Colorado, she was your best friend in the whole wide world, the she-wolf you were planning to spend the rest of your life with, and now you don’t know or care where she is?” Alisha gaze went to her father. “Yes, I can see why you want me to pledge my troth to this one. He’s obviously very loyal.”
The king set down his fork. “Alisha, you will show Rafe respect when you are under my roof.”
Alisha’s eyes fluttered with disgruntled bemusement. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware I was still expected to adhere to a certain standard of respect, considering the only reason I’m here is because Mom had me kidnapped.”
Her father slammed his hand on the table. “Alisha, you are embarrassing yourself and this family!”
“I am in no way embarrassed, Dad,” Alisha informed him quietly. “And if you are, I think it’s for the wrong reasons.”
This conversation seemed to be too much for Janelle, Rafe noticed. There was actual sweat glistening on her forehead, like she was afraid of what was going to happen next.
For good reason. The king looked like he was either going to have an aneurysm or order Alisha’s execution.
Rafe stepped in before he could do either. “Sir, respectfully, I would request to handle her on my own,” he said, figuring that addressing Alisha in the third person would swing her attention back to him.
He was right, her dark eyes landed back on him, radiating with unchecked fury. And for once, Rafe met her stare, knowing any evidence of his heavy arousal would be camouflaged by his even heavier anger.
“Chloe betrayed me,” Rafe informed her. “She mated with another wolf, after I stuck by her all those years. I’m not the one to blame here.”
Alisha’s brow wrinkled. “So she left town with another wolf and that somehow rendered her incapable of returning emails, texts, or calls? And it’s also stopping her from updating her blog, which she kept faithfully up until you two broke up?”
“Alisha. Drop this subject. Now!” her mother said in a tone that brooked no argument.
But a thoroughly unchastened Alisha merely smiled at her mother, batting her eyes. “Oh, I’m sorry, Mother, was that not what you meant when you told me upstairs to make sure he didn’t come to regret asking for my pledge?”
Both the Alaska king and queen looked angry enough to spit fire at their daughter and who knew how they would have responded if a sweet and tangy scent hadn’t suddenly hit the air, so pungent and thick that, like a baby’s cry or a scream, it couldn’t be ignored.
Alisha’s face went from defiant to confused, “What’s that smell—”
Silverware scattered and dishes were crushed underfoot as Mag literally ran on all fours across the long dining room table toward Janelle.
Oh, hell, Rafe thought, realizing what had just happened. Oh, holy fuck. Then the blinding white pain that accompanied a non-moon-inspired shift was upon him.
And when he opened his eyes next, all he could smell was the heat and all he could see was Alisha.
4
The world seemed to move in slow motion as Alisha watched Mag run across the table to get to Janelle.
Alisha’s own confused terror was mirrored in Janelle’s face, but even more so as it was she the large Wyoming king was barreling toward. She actually threw her arms out in an X as if to protect herself from a certain attack, but then Mag came to a sudden stop in front of Janelle’s chair and hunched down, planting one fist down between his legs for balance, as he sniffed the air around her sister.
Alisha stood there, frozen with fear for Janelle. Mag looked more feral than human at that moment, and she had to remind herself that a werewolf couldn’t shift during the mating process.
“Mag?” Janelle said tentatively, her voice shaky.
Mag pulled Janelle out of her seat and threw her onto the table like a rag doll.
“Janelle!” Alisha screamed, going toward her sister. But a pair of hands wrapped like steel bands around her arms, keeping her from moving forward.
“No, Alisha!” she heard her father say behind her. “It’s dangerous to interrupt a heat mating.”
Alisha struggled to get free as Mag flipped Janelle over and shoved up the skirt of her cocktail dress, the one that matched Alisha’s own, except it was red. “I can’t let him do this to her!”
“He’s her mate,” her mother reminded her. “Janelle agreed to their pledge.”
“But—”
Mag entered Janelle from behind with a triumphant bellow.
And Alisha stopped struggling. It was too late. Her sister was mated. And she knew once a wolf was inside a heated female, his penis expanded so he remained there until he was spent. Even if Alisha was strong enough to pry Mag off her sister, their wolf biology wouldn’t allow her to separate them—not without hurting Janelle.
King Tikaani started pulling her toward the door, “We should all get out of her before her heat hormones—”
A low, feral growl cut him off, and Alisha turne
d her head slowly, as if she were in a horror movie. A very large wolf with glowing hazel eyes knocked chairs aside as he emerged from under the table. The creature had black and tan fur and stood at least four feet high. He also wore a torn white collar that had once been part of a dress shirt and a tie—a tie she recognized as the one Rafe had been wearing just minutes ago.
A wolf in a tie. It should have been funny. Yet it wasn’t. It really, really wasn’t.
“Daddy…” she said, now grabbing her father as tightly as he had grabbed her earlier.
In the background, Mag either didn’t notice or didn’t care that Rafe had turned. His large body continued rutting on top of her sister, low growls emanating from his throat as he claimed his mate roughly.
“Alisha, stay very still,” she heard her father say. “Wilma, get Tu out of here.”
Out the corner of her eye, she saw her mother pull a gaping Tu out through the swinging door on the other side of the table. A door that seemed impossibly far away given the mating taking place on the table and the wolf approaching her with a predator’s slow lope.
“His nose is open. Now might be a good time to turn,” her father whispered behind her.
“What?” Alisha whispered back, though she knew exactly what her father was getting at. Occasionally, in the more remote wolf villages of Alaska, when a she-wolf took too long to heat she was caged with her intended mate before a full moon night in the hopes they would mate in wolf form. It was understood that werewolves couldn’t be held responsible for what they did in wolf form and therefore, it was a way to get around the law against taking a she-wolf before her first heat. It wasn't a practice Alisha respected and from the accounts she'd read in her research, it had led to quite a few miserable marriages for a number of post-colonial she-wolves.
“You and Janelle could have a double wedding,” King Tikaani said, wiggling his eyebrows.
Alisha’s wolf disappointed her by scrambling forward at the suggestion, not caring about the distasteful history of the practice. But Alisha pushed her down. She forced herself to think of Matt, what the two of them could have together if she didn’t let her wolf take over as a result of the contact high from Janelle’s heat stench.
“The only reason I would turn right now is so I’d have a better chance of getting away if he tries to come at me!” Alisha whispered back, ignoring the tug of her wolf.
But then Rafe’s wolf started walking toward her, as if calling her bluff.
“You sure?” her father asked behind her.
“Yes, I’m sure!” She took a few steps back even though she knew running would only make him come after her more aggressively. She’d never born witness to a first heat, but every unheated she-wolf was taught to run and lock herself inside a closet or room as soon as a fellow she-wolf went into heat. There was something biological about the smell, something that could cause any non-related male shifter who wasn’t mating with the she-wolf in heat to lose control of his wolf if he didn’t have enough self-discipline. However, she would have thought Rafe of all wolves would be able to control himself. Other than choosing Chloe, he’d always been a by-the-books prince.
But the wolf currently staring her down with Rafe’s eyes disproved that assumption, and as if sensing her intended flight, it launched itself toward her.
“Daddy!” she screamed, back pedaling as fast as she could in the heels her mother had insisted she wear.
“Fine, if you want to be stubborn about it...” Looking mighty aggrieved, her father pulled a small tranquilizer gun out of his suit pocket and shot Rafe in mid-air.
Rafe flipped sideways with a hurt whimper and dropped to the ground.
“Man, he’s a big one.” Her father came to stand over the downed wolf with the impressed air of a man descended from a long line of big game hunters. Then he shot Rafe again. “Just in case,” he said.
It was easy to tell when the tranq had taken full effect because Rafe morphed back into his human form before their eyes, his large, lightly toasted brown body curled up on its side.
Alisha stared down at him, fascinated by the naked specimen now lying at her feet, with his rock hard chest and abs that looked like they had been carved out of sculpting paste. Her wolf whimpered inside her, as if Alisha had done them both a grave injustice by not turning when she had the chance.
“Like what you see?” her father asked, nudging her.
Irritation snapped Alisha out of her daze. She glared at her father, the man who’d been willing to wait until the last minute to put Rafe down if it meant making a titled match for his daughter.
“No, I don’t like what I see,” she said. On the table, her sister cried out underneath Mag. It was fitting she was being claimed on their dining room table, because just like the seven courses put on the table during the interminable dinner party, her parents had served her sister up to Mag. A pretty dish for a Bad Wolf king.
“I don’t like any of it,” she said. “And I know you want this alliance with Colorado, but I won’t let you do to me what you’ve done to Janelle.”
With that, she walked out of the room, but her father followed her, swinging her back around by the arm once they cleared the door, like she was a petty child in need of disciplining.
“I’ve put up with your shenanigans for a long time, Daughter. But a good prospect, the best prospect I could have hoped for any of my daughters has come forward. It’s time for you remember your place. You are a daughter of Alaska. You were raised to this, and you owe it to your pack and my crown to honor our wishes exactly as your sister has. As a princess—”
“I don’t want to be a princess. I never asked for it.”
“Nevertheless—”
“Nevertheless, nothing, Daddy. I abdicate my title.”
The king stared at her, stunned speechless. With good reason. As a history professor she knew this announcement was without precedent in North America. Werewolf princesses had complained, a few had run off with wolves of their own choosing. But most had married as commanded and not one of them had abdicated.
Panic flared in her father’s eyes, and she could almost see the calculations going off in his head before he decided to change his tactic.
“Alisha…” King Tikaani said, opening his arms as if she were still a little girl. As if a hug could undo what had gone down that night.
She raised her hands. “No, Daddy, I’m done with this,” she said. “Quiet as it’s kept, she-wolves have pride, too, even princesses who have been raised to marry at the will of their king. I won’t be offered up as chattel in your latest alliance building project.”
Then before he could try to coddle her out of her decision, she flipped open her phone and called her cousin. “Vince, I’m ready to go home now.”
THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN IT. She went back to ignoring her mother’s calls, this time without even the benefit of a text message to let the queen know she had gotten any of them, and she threw herself into her research. Rafe, according to Tu, had gone back to Colorado the morning after Janelle’s first heat began, but he returned to Alaska just a few weeks later to oversee their father’s resort project.
“Janelle’s gone to Wyoming, and the last time I tried to flirt with Rafe, he told me to set my sights on somebody my own age, so I guess he really is just here to work on the resort project now,” Tu said. She sounded disappointed.
But Alisha’s human felt relieved upon hearing this news. This, plus her abdication of her title meant she was finally out of the Game of Wolves, and she could concentrate on Matt. He still hadn’t kissed her, but they’d spent nearly every weekend together since that full moon back in February, and he’d invited her to his pack town in Canada for the holidays, which meant she’d be meeting his parents. She wouldn’t be surprised if he proposed to her by Christmas.
Everything, it seemed, was finally going to Alisha’s plan. But then shortly after the November full moon, she received a call on her office line from a Professor Henley. He told her he was with the Denver Uni
versity history department and would love to meet with her.
“Are you sure you don’t want the Alaska archives?” Alisha asked, referring to the collection of historical materials kept in a secret section of the university’s library. The section had been built under the cloak of night when the university was first established, and none of the university’s human students knew one of the largest stashes of historic wolf miscellany was hidden in a secret corridor right beyond the main wall of their library.
“If I’m remembering right, your department is mostly concerned with the Viking Age, and my research foci is American she-wolves. But Dr. Matt Kreuk is our archive fellow and he’d be more than happy to help you out. Would you like me to transfer you over?”
“That’s very kind of you, but no,” Professor Henley answered. “Chloe Adams said I should specifically work with you if I wanted to find the clues she promised to leave me regarding her life after she departed with her mate.”
Now Alisha sat up in her seat. “Chloe? Chloe came to visit you herself? I thought she’d left town.” With town being the whole state of Colorado. If Chloe had really mated with another wolf, she’d no longer be welcome anywhere in her former fiancé’s state.
“I’m sorry,” the professor said. “I’m so caught up in recent events that it’s easy to forget not everyone is privy to Chloe’s story. I can tell you the long version when I meet with you. But the short version is this: your friend Chloe was claimed by a Viking King named Fenris who came forward in time through the Colorado time portal, using a fated mate spell. She came back for a few months a short time ago, but she’s now living in the Viking Age with him and their newborn wolf cub.”
Several seconds of disbelief ticked by before Alisha screwed her face up and said, “Wait, WHAT!?”
Wolf and Prejudice (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 2) Page 4
