Chapter 9
Conrí
“Mum and Dad really filled your head up with all that Alpha bullshit,” Cuán drawled.
“You’re an alpha too,” I said, and gave him the middle finger.
It wasn’t as satisfying over a laptop camera. The gesture deserved to be in person. I made a mental note.
“Yeah, but they named you wolf king.” He leaned back in his chair with the ease of a man who had never once in his life felt the need to justify his comfort. “What did I get?”
I’d heard it a million times.
We were twins. Identical, which Cuán had opinions about, as he had opinions about everything. I’d beaten him out by eighteen minutes. How that was my fault was a question I’d never been able to answer to his satisfaction, and I’d stopped trying somewhere around our twentieth year.
“Little wolf,” he said, as if the words still stung after three decades. “Little wolf.”
Thirty-six years I’d been listening to this. Thirty-seven if you counted the womb, which apparently we were doing now.
“For fuck’s sake, Cuán.” I felt my patience, never abundant where he was concerned, finally give out. “Don’t you have a company to run?”
He had the audacity to sigh. Long. Suffering.
“I called,” he said, straightening slightly and tapping his fingers on whatever obscenely expensive desk he was sitting behind, “because I want my project finished. Implemented. Done. I have a board breathing down my neck and I’d like to give them something to look at other than a timeline.”
He ran finance. I ran tech. Between us we covered enough ground to make most competitors nervous, which was exactly how our father had designed it when he’d handed us the reins—divide and conquer, keep each other honest, and for the love of all things sacred try not to kill each other before forty.
Two out of three wasn’t bad.
“I can get you an update,” I said, “but the contract still has time on it before the deadline. Your board can wait.”
“My board does not wait.”
“Then your board needs a hobby.”
He stared at me through the screen.
Everybody said we were identical. I’d never seen it. I was convinced he was the ugly one—slightly weaker jaw, slightly less focus in the eyes. I’d probably kicked him on the way out. The thought made me smile.
“Why are you smirking?” he demanded.
“Nothing.” I got back to business. “Come down here. In person. We’ll do an update meeting, I’ll walk you through where the project sits, and you can take something concrete back to your board.”
“Hm.” He rubbed his jaw—the weak one—and appeared to consider it with great ceremony. “No. I’d rather sit at my laptop.”
“Your office is a twenty-minute walk from mine.”
“I’m accustomed to a certain degree of comfort that your office cannot provide.” He was already reaching for something off screen, already done with the conversation in the way he always was—completely, and on his own schedule. “Message my secretary the details.”
The screen went blank.
I sat back in my chair and looked at the empty call window for a moment.
My parents had a lot to answer for.
Kael stirred somewhere at the back of my mind, dry and unhelpful.
You did kick him.
“I know,” I said to the empty office.
Lorcán and Croía Gallagher were remarkable parents.
They’d let us run wild when we were younger—not spoiled, never spoiled, but free in the way that mattered.
Our wolves had been allowed to develop naturally, at their own pace, without being forced into submission or rank before we were ready for it.
Some packs pushed their young hard and early.
Our parents understood that what grew slow grew strong.
Once we were on our own two feet though, once the business was built and the territory established and two fully grown alpha sons stood before them needing nothing—they’d handed us the reins without ceremony and gone home to Ireland.
Every time we saw them now they were worse.
Worse being relative. They were happy. Disgustingly, privately, completely happy in the way of two people who had found the one thing that made the rest of the world make sense.
Newly mated wolves, even after all these years—still reaching for each other across a room without thinking, still speaking in the shorthand of two people who had long since stopped needing full sentences.
It was remarkable.
It was also a stark and persistent reminder that my brother and I were without ours.
We’d tried every part of the United Kingdom. Cities, coasts, highlands. Every pack gathering, every introduction, every carefully arranged meeting that Cuán had complained about and attended anyway because even he wasn’t above hope.
Nothing.
Perhaps we needed to travel further. Cast wider. The world was large and fate, in my experience, had a poor sense of urgency.
Now?
Now we sat in separate offices twenty minutes apart and bickered over laptop cameras like two old women with nothing better to do.
If Cuán found his mate before I did—
No.
It was unthinkable. I refused to entertain it. The fallout alone would last decades. He would never, not once, for the rest of eternity, let me hear the end of it.
I closed the laptop and got back to work.
My brother was a client and I needed to find out what was happening with his software system. The last thing I needed was for a delay to reflect badly on Kilcullen Tech’s name.
Or worse.
He would never let me live it down. Every Christmas. Every birthday. Every phone call for the rest of our very long lives.
Fuck that.
I lifted the phone and asked for Claire.