The first time I shifted, I was eleven. I still remember the matching looks of shock on my parents’ faces. Where my mother’s gaze had remained wide, my father’s had crinkled with a smile. He’d crouched with his arms wide open to corral me. Disoriented and unsteady, catching me had been a swift affair. Dad had pinned me against his chest until my wolf quieted, until I morphed back into a naked child made of flesh and tears instead of fur and claws. And then he’d wrapped me up in a fleece blanket, whispering, “It’s okay, Ness. Everything will be okay.”
He was wrong.
After that day, nothing had ever been okay.
What are you thinking about, babe? Liam’s voice resonated inside my skull, making me jump. I could morph into a furry beast, yet communication without sound was still bewildering.
I wasn’t sure I would ever get used to hearing my Alpha speak to me through the pack’s mind link.
My Alpha…
With blood pledges, Liam had been sworn in mere minutes ago as the Boulder Pack’s new Alpha. His dream had come true. And mine along with it, because I’d gotten to swear my allegiance to him. I was now part of the pack who’d shunned me because of my gender. Take that, Heath Kolane.
How Heath had birthed a son as fair and good as Liam was almost as mystifying as an Alpha’s ability to speak into minds.
Smiling up at Liam, I threaded my fingers through the soft, black swoop of hair that fell into his reddish-brown eyes and pushed it off his forehead. “Nothing. Nothing’s on my mind, besides how proud I am of you.”
Tonight was his night. I wouldn’t spoil it with my glum thoughts.
His gaze hunted my expression. Although Alphas could speak into minds, they couldn’t read what crowded them. “Ten more minutes, and we’ll head out.”
I looked around the large stone-walled room of Headquarters where the pledging ceremony had taken place. Outside, the world was going to sleep. Inside, the party was just beginning. The animated chatter and the tinny scent of blood drying on the pledges’ wrists made my head spin.
“We can stay longer, Liam. I’m not in any rush.” It wasn’t as though I had anywhere to go… anyone to see.
No, that wasn’t completely true. I’d made a friend in Colorado: Sarah Matz. She was a deejay on Thursdays and Saturdays at a place called The Den, and a Pine wolf the rest of the time. Technically, she should’ve been my enemy-the Boulders and the Pines despised each other-but since we’d met at her brother’s engagement party, she’d been nothing but friendly. Actually, Sarah was only pleasant after her first cup of coffee. Before that, she was a major grouch.
Still, her personality beat the fake pertness of the Boulder wolves’ girlfriends who all seemed to resent me because I possessed something they didn’t-the werewolf gene-and because I’d defied Liam Kolane, the boy reared to become Alpha.
As I watched Liam talk animatedly with the pack, my stomach throbbed. Hunger, I supposed-I’d had a sandwich, but that was hours ago. Unless the throbbing was emanating from my nervousness. Liam had asked me to go home with him once the evening concluded. I’d never gone home with a man before.
I pressed my palm against my abdomen that was hardening by the second and walked toward one of the walls where drinks, cold cuts, and energy bars had been laid out on a long wooden table. I fished out a peanut butter bar from a glass salad bowl and was about to peel off the wrapper when headlights flashed over the window, blinding me in the process.
My first thoughts were that my traitorous cousin, Everest, had come to right the wrongs he’d caused by blackmailing me into believing I’d killed Liam’s father.
But then the driver got out.
The energy bar slid from my fingers and toppled back into the bowl.
I could almost feel the earth shake as his boots hit the ground.
After pledging himself to Liam, August Watt had stalked out of Headquarters. And yet, here he was again, minutes later. I hoped he’d returned to apologize for his odd behavior, but his rough stride and narrowed eyes told me that was most definitely not his intent.
As August approached Headquarters, my entire body tightened. I felt as though someone were winding me up and up, like one of those tiny ballerinas in jewelry boxes. Crossing my arms, I watched him approach and, like those ballerinas, I whirled as he rounded the square building toward the heavy door. Had he returned to apologize for acting so distant toward me earlier or had he forgotten something?
I willed it to be the former. I willed him to walk toward me and say he was sorry, because I’d done nothing to deserve his aloofness. August had always been one of my favorite people in Colorado. And I wanted it to stay that way, in spite of the miles of land and ocean that would soon separate us when he returned to active duty.
The second he stepped inside, his green gaze pummeled into mine, before roving over the room toward the white-haired elder bent over my gaunt-faced uncle.
Liam intercepted August as he made his way toward Frank. Something must’ve been said through the mind link because August’s expression became thunderous.
He brushed past Liam. “I need a word with Frank.”
Liam squared his shoulders, eyes flaring with annoyance. At least I wasn’t the only recipient of August’s moodiness.
Frank straightened out slowly, leaving my catatonic uncle to stare at his tan loafers. Finding out his son was a traitor would haunt him for a long time.
Why did you do it, Everest? Why did you make me fight Liam? Were you hoping I would die or were you hoping he would? I yearned to get answers because a part of me couldn’t believe the boy I’d grown up with could backstab me and his pack so guilelessly.
I tried to make out August’s hissed whisper to Frank, but the lively banter in the glass and stone room drowned out my friend’s deep timbre. Unable to leave well-enough alone, I strode through the small clusters of men chugging celebratory beers, uncrossed my arms, and poked August in the bicep. He didn’t brush away my finger, but he squeezed his eyes shut a moment.
“What the hell, August? What did I do to you that merited-”
He opened his eyes, and the force of his gaze made me stop talking.
Frank sighed. “I was worried it had happened.”
“That what had happened?” I asked, scowling at August.
“Both of you, follow me.” Frank started toward the back of the building.
Neither August nor I moved.
“Now,” Frank said.
August lowered his eyes.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“I don’t either, Ness.” August’s voice was infinitesimally softer, which wasn’t to say soft. It was still as strained as the cream-colored Henley on his back.
“What do you mean, you don’t understand?” I kept my voice low. “You’re the one who snubbed me. Not the other way around.”
“Ness, now.” Frank’s voice brooked no argument.
Stomach writhing with nerves, I started across the room that had fallen way too quiet. Lucas and Matt stared at me as I passed by them, and then they stared at August, who was a step behind me.
Ness? I felt Liam’s voice inside my head, looked for him through the fence of enormous male bodies. He wasn’t hard to spot. It wasn’t so much that he was taller than all the others-he wasn’t-but because he emitted something the others didn’t, this intractable pull… an Alphaness.
“I’ll be right back,” I told him as August went around me.
Liam’s eyes had shifted to amber, as though the wolf in him was trying to surface. He was protective and possessive of the people he liked. Since he’d climbed onto my balcony and we’d shared our first kiss, I’d become one of those people.
I pasted on a smile to reassure him that everything was all right. But was anything all right? Why did Frank want to talk to me? And why was August acting like someone had wronged him? He hadn’t coveted the title of Alpha, so it couldn’t be jealousy. Before he’d left Boulder, he’d even urged me not to fight Liam for it.
I walked toward one of the two small rooms in the back of the building. August was already inside. As I treaded past him, he shut the door, then planted his boot against the wood and leaned back.
I dropped down onto the black leather couch, folded one leg over the other, and laced my fingers around my knee, which had started bobbing with crackling anticipation. “Why did you need to see the both of us?”