Chapter 2
Chapter Two
B illy
I stare at an Instagram page on my phone. A siren in the shape of a human smirks back at me in front of a giant mural. I’ve seen the mural firsthand. It’s decent. The artist is not decent. She’s a menace to society.
For the thousandth time, I study her silky brown skin. The high cheekbones and full, pillowy lips. Black hair that falls in wild gold and scarlet-tinged braids down her back. Her hair is more colorful than the last time I saw her at Brick and Madi’s engagement party.
The time she fed me more of her insolence and flipped me off.
The desire to take her to task for that sass makes my dick hard, also for the thousandth time. I’d love to bend her over the counter of the Bohemian cafe where she works and listen to what sounds she makes when I’m smacking her ass.
The fact that I have an errant desire to touch a human is insane. What makes it even more disgusting is the fact that I haven’t touched a female–wolf or human–since said engagement party.
“Mr. White?” Annabeth, my executive assistant, interrupts through the intercom. She’s a redheaded she-wolf and extremely efficient, which is why I employ her.
She usually knows better than to disturb me.
“What is it?” I snap, hurriedly closing the phone.
“Your–uh…Mr. White the Second is here to see you.”
The second.
As in, my dad .
What the fuck does he want?
I stand from the desk, instinctual respect too beaten into me to deny him that courtesy. Not that he deserves it. “Send him in.”
My dad strides through the door.
Just the sight of him brings on a self-loathing rage. This is the asshole I was born to. I carry his odious DNA in my blood.
William, Bill, White II is a tall wolf–six foot two, and despite the greying at his temples, he still looks every inch the alpha of his pack. He reeks authority. Cruelty. Entitlement.
I never quite reached six feet despite the synthetic growth hormone he fed me during my childhood. But I did grow strong. Not because of all the beatings and tests he put me and my wolf through but despite them. My sister helped me survive him, and I chose to thrive. To escape.
Now, I stay behind my desk rather than come out to greet him. It gives me a position of power in the wall-to-wall windowed executive office.
That’s right, asshole–the son you tossed away is a Wall Street billionaire now. Second in command of the largest and most powerful pack in New York. A far cry from your backwoods Maine pack now.
I’ve worked at Moon Co since we helped Brick start it while still at Yale, but my dad has never been to Manhattan to see me here.
Until now. What does he want?
He takes in the office and my power position with a sneer.
“What are you doing here?” I skip the niceties.
“Your mother wanted me to say hello.”
My mother. The meek rabbit he mated to solidify his position as alpha. Her dad was the previous alpha. Another cruel leader, as I recall.
It certainly wasn’t a fated match. Their union was arranged. A strategic union for both my dad and my grandfather. My mother had absolutely no say in the arrangement.
Medieval much?
“What are you doing in New York?”
“I had some business to attend to.”
Something about the vagueness of his comment sets off alarms in my head. What business could he have here? Something that had to be done in person.
I draw in his scent through my nostrils, knowing full well it will trigger a trauma response.
It does. My body goes into a kind of shock, ready to fight or be beaten.
I have years of practice in working around my triggers, though. I examine his scent for traces of others in it. I catch the stench of New York–car exhaust and hotel lobby. Humans out on the street.
Nothing else.
Fine, I’ll bite. “What business?” I demand.
My dad casts a cruel smirk at me. “You gave up the right to inquire about my business when you abandoned your pack.”
“I found a better one.” My voice and my gaze are dead. “I don’t recall you ever missing me.”
My dad lifts his upper lip in a sneer. “I had no use for a traitor. But that could change.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. He must be joking.
“What? Now that I have money, I’m worth something to you?” I saunter out from behind the desk and then lean casually against it, folding one of my legs across the other. “Or is it Brick’s power you want to use?”
“Brick is not as powerful as you think,” my dad sniffs. “That human mate of his will be his destruction. You should jump ship before it’s too late.”
My dad despises humans. He has made a powerful place for himself as the leader of hate-mongering focused on humans. I was raised completely apart from humans. I never mixed with them, never interacted until Brick, Nickel, Jake, and I had to live amongst them in boarding school and later at Yale.
My father taught me at a young age to fight for my survival, so that’s what I did.
I latched onto the bluest blooded wolves on campus and made myself indispensable.
During our first year at Yale, Brick’s mother poisoned his dad, and the Adalwulfs ripped his wealth from him.
He needed a right-hand man to help him exact revenge and fight to regain everything the Adalwulfs stole.
I had enough vengeance within me to power all the electricity in Manhattan.
I now know we all trauma-bonded. Nickel–a royal wolf from England–had also been escaping family trauma and political machinations.
Jake was a quiet loner who’d never had a pack to rely on until Brick brought him into the fold.
The four of us became a found family, united around a single cause–to rebuild the Blackthroat pack’s wealth and status, so Brick could maintain leadership.
“The pack has accepted his luna,” I say stiffly.
Granted, I wasn’t exactly in Madi’s court, and I fought Brick on his decision to mate a human, but I’m not about to tell my dad that. I would never let him see any chink of weakness in my pack or my alpha.
My dad watches me closely. “I heard it was a bloodbath. He had to kill hundreds of his pack members to maintain dominance. His pack will organize the next coup better.”
His words send a chill up my spine. If I were in wolf form, my hackles would raise, but I’m careful to show no emotional response.
I don’t like that he’s given so much thought to our pack’s defenses.
I don’t like his cruel attention shining on the Blackthroat pack in any form.
My dad is dangerous and unpredictable. I’ve spent a lifetime learning to control myself and my surroundings to prevent the destruction he wages.
“I expect I’ll have a chance to assess things for myself at the wedding,” he continues.
What? “You’re not invited.”
“Not yet.” My father fiddles with his cufflink. “But I expect you can put a word in with your alpha to change that. I am a blood relation to his second, after all.”
Figures my father would spend the first half of a conversation tearing my pack down, and the second half angling for an invite to what he sees as the most prestigious event in our pack’s history.
I shouldn’t be surprised at the hypocrisy.
In my father’s eyes, the Blackthroat are the wealthy bluebloods of the shifter world, and he wants proximity to all their wealth and power.
I raise a brow, acting cool. “I’m surprised you want to be there, since he’s marrying a human. I know what you think of them.” He drilled that hatred into me as a pup.
For a moment, I’m back in Maine, standing with the pack on our land. I can hear my father shouting, “It’s time to hunt the human.” I remember how my sister held me tight, as if trying to protect me from the wolves around us and the violence they would wreak.
My fangs grow sharp in my mouth. The thought of allowing him near my luna makes my blood run cold.
But I keep my expression controlled. Never show weakness.
“It’s the wedding of the century,” my father is saying. “Surely you can swing an extra invite?—”
Fuck this. I’ve got to shut him down. “Don’t hold your breath.
” I match him, sneer for sneer. “I can tell you now–there will not be another coup. Madison Evans isn’t just a human mate.
She’s a true luna. She claims and holds a power that the pack recognizes.
No amount of hate-mongering can override nature’s law. ”
It’s true. Even I have conceded her position and power at my alpha’s side.
I’ve accepted my punishment for trying to keep them apart. A punishment that now involves me playing fucking ambassador to the humans.
This reminds me–I should visit Cafe Girl to discuss those duties.
Bill White II lets out a derisive scoff. “My own son is now a human lover.”
His words knot and twist in my gut. One part of me snaps and roars at the implied weakness he projects at me. The other part hates any of it that might be true.
I refuse to think about Cafe Girl or her nutmeg and honey scent. The way her hair would look wrapped around my cock. The noises she might make if I fucked her hard from behind.
“Your own son wants nothing to do with you.” Again, my voice and gaze are dead. I show no emotion and project strength, as he taught me to do. “Tell my mother I’d prefer a visit from her rather than you as her messenger.”
My father’s nostrils flare with anger. I don’t know what he thought he’d accomplish by visiting me, but he didn’t get whatever it was he wanted.
Good.
“You’re a disappointment.” Neither his words nor the bitterness in my father’s tone are anything new.
“I’m everything you are not,” I say. It’s taken me time to realize that’s a fact worth celebrating. I’ve had to be ruthless and work my ass off, but Brick Blackthroat, the most powerful alpha in the country, finds me indispensable. I have a place beside the king. My father is nothing to me now.
“That’s for sure,” my father snorts as he turns on his heel and walks out.
I pick up the stapler on my desk and crush it into a tight ball, then hurl it at the closed door. It embeds itself in the wood and remains there, suspended.