“Okay, relationship expert,” I snort, pushing his shoulder lightly as he grins at me, “we'd better get going. You know how my mom likes punctuality.”
Rob pales a little. “Yeah, punctuality,” he mutters, raising his brows. Loren and I both fold ourselves into Rob's little backseat, and then he pulls out into traffic, heading toward my mother's house.
Ma lives in a pretty wealthy neighborhood on the outskirts of Boston, where the houses are huge and widely spaced, with plenty of privacy. The Swift house—or, you know, estate, as Ma likes to call it—is situated on thirty wooded acres. The house itself is old brick, three stories, black shutters, gated driveway, impeccably maintained lawn. You know, the whole nine yards. When I was a kid, I remember reading “The Three Little Pigs” in school (Ma would never have let me read it if she'd known; it kind of demonizes wolves) and realizing that we lived in the strongest house—the brick one. Now, as we drive up to the gate in front of that house, I stare at it with a sigh, thinking about wolves that huff and puff and blow houses down.
Ever since I read that fairy tale, Ma has always struck me as the type of wolf who really would eat three little pigs.
Don't get me wrong—Ma has her soft side. Sometimes. But she never married and has always called herself a lone wolf. Has always been really, really hard on me, trying to mold me to take her place. It's not her fault. From what I've heard, my grandmother treated her the same way when she was growing up. I never met my grandmother, and my mother has always been pretty evasive about what happened to her. Sometimes I kind of wonder if, when my mother fought her for control of the pack, she killed her.
Yeah, I had a totally normal childhood...
Please don't let this be a disaster, I think to myself over and over again, like a mantra, as I open up the side door of Rob's car and hop out. I have to punch in the security code at the gate (even though Ma was having a dinner party tonight, she would never leave the gate open. That's just now how she does things. She'd say something like, “Pack security,” and I'd then point out that we're a pack of werewolves, and no one messes with a pack of werewolves, but she'd still give me a withering look), and then I hop back into the car as the wrought iron starts to swing open.
As I fold my long legs in front of me in the car, a wave of anxiety comes over me in a rush. I stare up at my mother's well-lit house and take a deep breath in order to try to calm my sudden panic. I think Rob is having the same difficulties as me (half-considering making a u-turn and getting the hell out of Dodge), but then he tightens his fingers on the wheel and puts his foot gently on the gas pedal, glancing back at me with wide eyes.
There's no turning back now.
A sort of “this is definitely going to be the worst night ever” gloom descends over me. But when I glance over at Loren, I see her staring up at the house, too, her eyes wide, her mouth open a little, as if she's in awe.
“I've never been to a dinner party in such a fancy house...” she murmurs. Then she licks her lips, looking at me nervously. “Maybe I should have brushed up on my etiquette.”
Rob and I both erupt into laughter at that moment (I can't help but laugh when I think about how all of my cousins eat, and I'm fairly certain Rob's thinking the same thing). “Your etiquette is fine,” I promise her, as Rob pulls up behind the last car in the line along the edge of the driveway. “My relatives may have money, but they aren't posh. Like, at all.”
Rob snorts his agreement but wisely adds nothing else to my declaration.
Loren casts me a sidelong glance to indicate that she doesn't quite believe me.
“Come on,” I say, reaching across the space between us to scoop up her hand and give it a squeeze. “Let's get this over with.”
My mother's butler Roderick (yeah, his name is really Roderick. Werewolves sometimes name their kids weird things; what can I say?) greets us at the wide double front door, opening it up for us and flashing me a big grin—and then immediately wiping the grin from his face when he notices Rob.
“Loren, this is Rod,” I say, indicating the salt-and-pepper-haired gentlemen with a wave of my hand, smiling weakly. “He's an old friend,” I tell her.
“Miss Becca,” he chides me, taking off my coat before reaching for Loren's, who's already pulled hers off, and piling them in his arms, “what's he doing here?”
“Nice to see you, too, old buddy,” Rob mutters.
“It's not that I don't like seeing you, Rob,” Rod murmurs, and I can tell that he genuinely means it, especially when he steps forward and curls his fingers around Rob's right shoulder with a compassionate smile. “But I know someone,” he says, his voice falling to a whisper, “who won't be happy to see you, I'm afraid.”
“I wonder who,” says Rob in a deadpan voice.
“And, anyway,” Rod sighs, flustered, “you're late, Becca, and your mother is about to become fury incarnate,” he mutters softly, pointing us toward the sitting room.
When I glance at Loren, she's as pale as a ghost. “Late?” she whispers to me, as I thread her arm through mine and start to pull her toward the sitting room with a little salute in Rod's direction. Rob follows along behind us, his shoulders hunched forward, his hands deep in his pockets. “I thought we were perfectly on time?” Loren splutters.
“We are,” I tell her with a shake of my head. “Don't worry—if my mother's pissed that I'm not early... Well, I'll deal with her.”
But Loren doesn't look thoroughly convinced (and, hell, neither does Rob) as I pull open the sitting room doors and venture inside. When Loren goes through first, I exchange a meaningful glance with Rob, and then we step through the doors together.
My mother's sitting room (which, by the way, who the hell has a sitting room anymore? My mother, that's who) is shockingly red—bright red walls the color of blood, a sumptuous reddish wood floor, red tapestry sofas straight out of the Victorian era—and the big red marble fireplace at the far edge of the room is blazing, the flames dancing about inside the grate as tall as a person. About twenty or so adults and kids are lounging on the sofas, leaning against the fireplace or the walls when we enter the room, and every single one of them looks up when Loren and Rob and I walk in. I pull the doors shut softly behind us, and I lift a brow in my mother's direction. Waiting.
Ma is sitting, her back poker straight, her long fingernails gripping the arms of her overstuffed Victorian armchair (also the color of blood; it's been reupholstered to be just as bright-colored as it was on the day the Victorian carpenter carved the wolf-pawed feet of the chair), her eyes...
Well, if her eyes possessed the ability to shoot laser beams, I'm fairly certain I'd be one dead werewolf right about now.
My relatives, who were all talking, have become completely silent, and when I tear my gaze away from my mother (it looks like waves of fury are emanating from her, but that might just be the heat from the fireplace) to look at the others, I'm surprised to take how wide their eyes are.
They're not looking at Rob, as I expected.
They're looking at me.
By the way, Sonia—Rob's mom—is here, just like she always is. And, just like she always is when she's around my mother, she has a very sour look on her face. Sonia and Sophia are sisters, and they look very much alike, right down to their facial structures, their high cheekbones, and their long, wolfish noses. But Sonia's eyes have always been a little softer and a little kinder than my mom's.
She's staring at Rob right now with wet eyes, and her sour expression vanishes as a few tears slip over her cheeks.
I feel weird as I follow the paths of those tears. We all knew that it was unfair for Rob to be barred from the family gatherings, but I don't think I had any real idea how much Ma's edict bothered my aunt.
When I glance at Rob, he's staring in astonishment at his mother.
Yeah, I don't think Rob had any idea it bothered her this much, either.
Loren, by the way, has no idea that Rob's been disallowed from coming to family gatherings. She has no idea w
hy my mother is staring at me as if looks could kill, and she certainly has no idea why the rest of my relatives are watching the scene in horror.
So, even though all of this is pretty damn overwhelming, I shove my hands deep into the pockets of my pants, and then I swagger toward my mother.
“Hey, Ma!” I tell her, my voice falsely bright and cheerful. “What's for dinner?”
The air in the room, in that moment, is heavy and dense, and it seems that every single one of my relatives is holding their breath, waiting for something. Perhaps they're waiting for lightning to strike. There certainly seems to be something crackling between my mother to me, and it's pretty damn unpleasant. But as I rock back onto my heels, giving her a cheeky, wide grin...for some reason, the spell is broken.
My mother rises, and as she rises, her face completely changes. One moment, she's the Alpha wolf, looking like she wants to tear me limb from limb (this is, perhaps, an exaggeration, but only a slight one), and the next, she's all sunshine and unicorns, her smile as sincere and warm as the ones women wear in yogurt commercials.
As my mother comes toward us, her heels clicking on the wooden floor, I wonder why she decided to change her mind. Her mood went from World War III to Happyland, all in the blink of an eye. Why? But then I glance beside me at Loren, and I realize that it...worked. My pie-in-the-sky hope was that my mother wouldn't be able to unleash her true fury because we had a guest.
And that's exactly what happened.
When my mother finally reaches me, her arms are extended, and her smile is genuine as she embraces me tightly—but my mother isn't looking at me, and, shockingly, she isn't even looking at Rob.
Nope. She's staring at Loren.
“So,” Ma intones, stepping back and holding me out at arms' length—again, still not looking at me. “This must be your lovely date...” she says, finally flicking a gaze from me, back to Loren. For half a second, her smile wavers when she glimpses Rob standing behind me, but then she affixes the smile a little more firmly onto her face.
I gulp a little. Her incisors are showing right now.
That's probably not a good sign.
“I'm Loren,” Loren says smoothly, wearing her sweetest smile as she holds out her hand to my mother. “It's so nice to meet you.”
My mother lets go of my shoulders, and she takes Loren's hand, shaking it gently as she returns Loren's smile.
Behind me, I can feel Rob relaxing just a teeny, tiny bit. At least, his shoulders aren't up around his ears anymore. So much of how the pack interacts is expressed through body language, just like actual wolves, and through our other senses, like hearing and scent. I can smell that Rob has relaxed, and I can smell that my mother's fury hasn't completely evaporated but is, thankfully, being held in check for Loren's benefit.
The other thing I notice, as I watch my mother and my girlfriend shake hands, is that Ma is very interested in Loren. Her nostrils flare just a little as she takes in Loren's scent, deciphering little things about her in an instant. For example, my mother surely knows right now that Loren either works in a bookstore or a library, because Loren always smells faintly of books.
Thankfully, there's nothing dissatisfied in Ma's being as she curls her fingers over Loren's hand with a bright smile.
“I'm Sophia, Becca's mother,” my mother tells her, her smile deepening, “and I'm delighted to have you here.”
I know, in that moment, that my mother is telling the truth.
Well, at least that crisis has been averted. Ma likes Loren.
Now we just have to dodge the “You brought Rob here explicitly against my orders; are you undermining my authority?” bullet.
“I hope you like duck,” my mother finishes with a flourish, and she watches Loren, her head tilted to the side a little, her eyes bright and shrewd, not missing a thing.
“Oh,” Loren says, her eyes flicking to mine, “I've never had it before—“
From behind my mother, someone calls out, “It's fresh off the pond!” and then there's quite a bit of laughter as all of the blood drains from my face. I'm fairly certain that it was Charlie who just said that. He's my cousin, is roughly seventeen, and thinks the world revolves around him. My mother has started implying that if I don't step up and try to become Alpha, in a few years he might want to try for the job.
I remember Charlie gnawing on his little brother's leg once when he was seven years old because he was hungry. It was not a joke.
I...really don't think he'd make a good Alpha. The thought kind of terrifies me.
My mother turns, and with a single look, she shushes the entire room, including Charlie, who was laughing hardest of all. But then, when she turns back to look at me, the same flashing, terrifying gaze is still on her face when she catches my eye.
“Here,” she says smoothly, looping an arm around Loren's shoulders and steering her toward the fireplace, “why don't you have a seat by the fire?” Ma glances at me again, her eyes flashing with the heat of a thousand suns. The kind of heat that could torch planets. “I've got to go check on the souffles. Becca, will you join me for a moment?”
Oh, boy. Here it comes.
Rob gives me a “don't leave me!” sort of look (the exact same look that Loren is giving me, actually), but I offer them both an apologetic smile. Then I push forward at the small of Rob's back, practically shoving him toward Loren.
“It'll be fine,” I tell him in a hushed whisper. “Just steer them clear of being werewolves for, like, five minutes. And go give your mom a hug.”
“Are you kidding? That duck joke was the tip of the iceberg,” Rob mutters to me, but then my mother breezes past after depositing Loren onto a plush couch, and her arm hooks mine. Then I'm all but dragged toward the kitchen, just as I see Rob make a bee-line toward his mom, arms extended.
“I'll be right back,” I mouth to Loren before I'm pulled through the swinging doors and out into the hallway.
Chapter 11: The Goat
My mother doesn't say a single thing until we're in the kitchen itself. But the minute we enter the large, state-of-the-art, restaurant-quality kitchen (it's even more ironic when you realize exactly how little cooking a werewolf actually does. We love most of our food raw), my mother rounds on me, her eyes sparking. If I didn't know better, I'd wonder if the ground was quaking beneath my feet.
“Really, Becca?” she says, her lips drawn up and over her teeth, her voice rumbling in a deadly growl, “you brought Rob here? In front of all the others?”
“What does that have to do with—” I start, but my mother takes a step toward me, and I stop talking, gritting my teeth.
“You deliberately undermine my authority in front of the others in the pack,” she hisses, the growl continuing deep in the back of her throat. “And if you undermine my authority, one by one, they start to think they all can.”
Suddenly, I'm pretty pissed. I just brought my cousin, who didn't do a damn thing to incur my mother's wrath, to a family dinner party. I didn't go out and kill someone. I didn't do anything wrong.
I brought Rob, a member of the the pack, to a dinner party.
This is ridiculous.
“This is ridiculous,” I tell her, the second I think it. “And you know it.”
She pauses, still and silent, which kind of surprises me.
“Our family loves you. It's not so cutthroat as you make it out to be,” I tell her, spreading my hands. “No one's trying to usurp you, even if you think they are. We're not like that, Ma, and we never have been. You need to stop thinking of this as some kind of dictatorship.”
My mother actually splutters for a moment before her eyes narrow, and her teeth are bared again. “In a pack, everything is about control,” she murmurs to me.
“It isn't,” I tell her then, emphatic. “I've never known another werewolf pack,” I say, lowering my voice into its own growl, “but I've watched nature documentaries, okay? I know how wolves work, and we're mostly wolves. And it's not as dire as you claim. There's not some
constant fight for supremacy. It'd be ridiculous if there was. Most of the time, wolves are just trying to hunt down enough food to eat. I know you take your job seriously,” I tell her, lowering my voice further, “and I know that you care about the pack. But I brought Rob to a dinner party. That's it. He never deserved your being mad at him, never deserved to be banished. You're a smart woman, Ma. You know what I'm saying is true.”
There's a flicker in my mother's eyes, but I can't read her expression, can't tell what she's thinking as she stares me down. For a long moment, neither of us says anything. We're simply facing off in the kitchen, my hands clenched into fists at my sides, my shoulders curved forward, the same stance I take when I'm about to turn into a wolf and start fighting. My mother is a mirror of me, poised in the same position.
But neither of us turns into a wolf, and neither of us starts fighting. After another long moment of silence, my mother straightens her shoulders, straightens her back and opens her hands, smoothing her palms against her thighs and taking a deep breath.
“He shouldn't have come here,” she says, but she's no longer growling and no longer looking like as if she wants to tear out my throat.
So that's an improvement.
“But he's here,” I tell her with a shrug.
Ma takes another deep breath, and it looks as if she's internally counting to ten. And then she stares at me again, her eyes glittering.
“You didn't tell me she was a human,” my mother mutters pointedly.
I lean against the wall beside the door and shrug my shoulders. “Well, what difference does it make?” I ask her.
Ma smooths the front of her dress again, a nice black affair, and schools her features. “You know I'm not opposed to interspecies relationships,” she says, in a tone that indicates that she is opposed to them, “but I can't guarantee discretion from the rest of your family.”
“Yeah,” I growl, gritting my teeth. “I know. That's why I didn't want to bring her here.”
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