Chapter 14
When I finally get to the den, the vibes are excessively off. It’s a whole loud, temper-fueled uproar in place of the usual celebratory situation.
It’s certainly not the way a solstice is supposed to feel.
Different packs are shouting at each other in the great cavern, and it’s not just the males I hear going at it this morning. The women have gotten involved too, and the accusations are flying—many of them attached to decades of gossip, because why use claws when rumors land the harder punch?
I pick my way through the threats and occasional scuffles until I make it to the set of couches where a lot of my family are already sitting. Watching the show, not participating in it.
Yet.
“Has this been going on all morning?” I ask, watching an Ohio wolf hurl himself through the air to land on the neck of a South Carolina wolf, who does not take being tackled with anything like grace.
They’re encouraged to deal with themselves by the bucket of water tossed over them by a dour-looking old granny from Missouri.
“You’re acting like you need housetraining,” she tells them in disgust. “For shame.”
“This shit has been going on since last night,” my brother Micah tells me.
He’s sitting on one of the couches, an arm casually extended along the back and his new mate at his side.
She doesn’t lift her gaze, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything about her personality.
It’s considered good manners to keep a downcast eye in the presence of higher-ranked wolves, and a newly mated female of a younger son in a new family is considered the lowest status there is.
Micah continues, “We offered to replace anything that’s missing, just to shut everyone the fuck up, but it didn’t help.”
“In my day,” Aunt Sigrid says with a sniff, “no one would dream of behaving like this in another wolf’s den. Much less on the solstice during a gathering. It’s embarrassing.”
For a change, the rest of my aunts appear to agree with her.
My mother is standing with her arms crossed, peering out at all the bad tempers around her. After a while, she turns back to me, her cool eyes assessing.
“To the casual observer—” she begins.
“Since when are you casual?” I ask.
“When have you ever been casual?” Micah agrees, and we both laugh.
I realize, with a jolt, that this is the first time I’ve been around this many members of my family in quite a while without one of them jumping down my throat about my intentions and my destiny. It feels like a sea change, but I don’t want to call attention to it.
My mother shoots a quelling look at both Micah and me. “This is manufactured,” she states in her unvarnished way. “Someone is clearly invested in a bloody solstice tonight. I won’t be the only one who thinks so, either.”
Micah lets out a grunt, a noise that neither confirms nor denies what my mother said. But something in the way he does it tells me that this is probably something that was already discussed in private. Between Ty and his lieutenants.
That means there are fail-safes in place.
It also means that Ty is really going to do it.
That sizzles in me like gasoline, and there’s nothing to do but let it burn.
“If there’s blood,” I say with perhaps a little too much intensity of my own, because I’m only made of flesh and blood myself and this is getting to me too, “I hope Ty spills it. And may the inevitable deaths of those who challenge him serve as a warning to others.”
For the first time in a very long while—maybe ever—Johanna nods at me, her cool eyes actually . . . approving?
“How bloodthirsty,” one of my softer aunts tuts. “Must we always take the lowest, most animalistic road? Are we truly no better than a pack of rabid street dogs?”
But everyone else is grinning.
“A blood call requires a blood answer, Gretchen,” my mother says crisply, and now I can hear that approval too. I’m tempted to get a little silly over it, but that would reverse any approval in a hurry, so I suck it up. “We’re wolves, not lapdogs.”
Her gaze, however, suggests that maybe poor Gretchen should check herself.
Or maybe be a bit more embarrassed that her mate hasn’t hunted so much as a squirrel in recent memory.
I’m pretty sure I hear Johanna go on to mutter something like Pacifists and vegans deserve to get eaten, just loud enough to make Gretchen’s chin wobble.
The rest of the day feels interminable. Inside me there’s a kind of ticking clock with every last part of me attuned to every single second between now and the coming sunset.
It will happen just before 5:00 p.m. I will feel when it sets—I don’t need a watch, I’m a freaking werewolf—but I feel as if I’m counting every second all the same.
Meanwhile, this is still the last official day of the gathering.
I can’t pace around, counting down the hours, the way I’d like to do.
I can’t indicate I’m overly concerned about what the night might bring.
I watch the entrance to the cavern for a while at first, thinking I’ll be able to tell who the traitorous stalker is by who comes in after me, but I give up.
There are more ways into the den than the entrance to the communal caverns, as I know very well.
I have no way of telling who’s come in from where.
Besides, despite all the muttering and squabbling in the cavern, I have to act as if this is any normal solstice and everyone is getting along.
People are watching me whether or not they also want to kill me.
I make a point of talking to the females in all the currently furious packs, acting as if I don’t notice the simmering tensions.
I’m also taking advantage of my status here, because the packs I wander into have no choice but to talk to me. Politely.
Brawling with other males is one thing. Baring teeth at a king’s fated mate in his own den? That’s the kind of disrespect that leads to the sort of vicious pack justice that wolves swear by—when it’s not being visited upon us personally.
My brothers all congregate in our part of the cavern around midday and I take that as a small break from dispensing my razor-edged version of hospitality. Liam and Asher bring their mates with them, and that means it’s time for formal introductions all around.
Micah’s mate is Leah, a pretty brown wolf from crochety old Janus’s pack.
When her eyes aren’t politely downcast, I think I see a little more fire in there, and that makes me happy.
Asher’s mate is from the always problematic Deep South pack, and I can’t get a read on her at all.
She’s unfailingly polite and makes the most of her gray-and-silver loveliness, but she’s clearly holding her cards close. I can’t really blame her.
“You can call me Magnolia,” she tells my mother and me, her drawl as exquisite as her manners.
When she moves on to the aunts, Johanna lifts a brow. “I wonder if Magnolia is actually her name,” she murmurs, for my ears only. “Or if she prefers to keep her real name to herself. If so, it really does beg the question—what else does she not intend to share?”
“You really do see plots within plots, don’t you?” I ask her.
“I certainly hope that you do, too,” my mother retorts. Sharply. “Or the first plot that comes along will be the end of you. I don’t think the pack can afford it.”
“The pack,” I tell her with a little more temper than I usually deliver in her presence, “will be fine. More than fine. No matter what I have to do to make sure of it.”
Johanna nods as if I didn’t take a tone with her at all. “I approve of this newfound sense of civic duty, daughter.”
“There’s nothing new about it.” I don’t modify my tone any when I say that. “If you can see everything, I wonder why you never saw that.”
When she only lifts a brow at me, it makes me wonder. Did she really never see it? Or has Johanna always believed that her role is to play the most vicious sort of devil’s advocate and critic to help me—to help all of us—stand strong in our positions?
I’m not sure I want that answer, either. It feels more complicated than I need in the middle of an already too-complicated day.
Liam’s new mate I already know. It’s Kendra McCaffrey—old, horrible McCaffrey’s youngest daughter. Also Deirdre’s youngest daughter. A sleek black wolf with Arctic eyes, who has always seemed clever enough to survive any male. Even a male like Liam.
Whether she can handle him or not remains to be seen.
Still, the thought of how furious her parents must be that Kendra has been claimed by a member of our pack makes me smile even more brightly than I might have otherwise.
“Welcome to the family,” I say, inclining my head, because I outrank everyone else—including my brothers—and the honor of welcoming new members into our family falls to me when we’re all being formal.
“It’s an honor and a privilege,” Kendra replies in the old language. She delivers a deep bow.
Her manners are glorious, as expected, but I think I see the kind of canniness in her gaze that reminds me exactly who her mother is. When she’s swept into a conversation with some of my aunts, I look up at Liam. “It’s just as likely that she’s a spy,” I say softly. “I’d be prepared for that.”
“I sure hope so,” says my brother, with a particularly aware gleam in his gaze that I’m not sure I need to see from the closest thing I have to a father figure. “We’re going to have some fun, Kendra and me. Figuring out who reports to who and what they have to say will definitely be a part of it.”
The hours drag by, even with those unsolicited visuals.
I look around the cavern to see the newly mated females doing the same thing in all their new family groups.
Doing their best to integrate themselves into their new packs smartly.
Politely. In ways that will set up the life they’ll have to live with the strangers who claimed them and make it something they can tolerate. Hopefully even like.