Hāmweard, ðu londadl hǽðstapa, in 11 days
Homeward, you landsick heath-wanderer, in 11 days
I should probably get a mate.
A bedfellow at the very least.
Bedfellow. Leonora once tried to explain that a fiancée is like a bedfellow except neither of you have to fight challengers claiming cunnan-riht. Fucking rights.
Celia has been a stalwart shielder, but she is too closely related to be a bedfellow.
Besides, being Alpha of the Pack is different from being Alpha of the echelon. Especially in the beginning, one cannot afford even the appearance of weakness or indecision in front of a pack of wolves just spoiling for a fight. For that reason, it is helpful to have someone who can talk you through any doubts and concerns in the privacy of bed. Wolves tend to be receptive to Alphas, so the list of possible candidates is long. Limiting it to strong hunters narrows the list down somewhat. Limiting it to fund managers who can offset my weakness with numbers narrows it to Tilda.
She’s been at Bank of Boston for seven years and is probably anxious to come home.
I try to imagine Tilda by my side and in my bed. I even try to picture her wearing the braid of a mated wolf around her neck, with her coal-black hair and her skin the gold of rye and her ironwood eyes and her ass like a Japanese pear.
Except that Tilda has hazel eyes, ruddy skin, fine blond hair, and the body of an East German shot-putter.
“Good morning, Mr. Sorensson. I believe Mr. Trianoff is looking…”
I nod distractedly and keep walking.
At my office, I flip on the light and turn to the large envelope in the emptiness of oak next to my telephone.
Personal and Confidential, it says. The opening on the back is sealed, and across the seal is a signature. Samuel Borston.
There are two folders inside. The thicker one has a tab with LIEBLING/DARLING printed on it in ballpoint. As he’s uninteresting and dead, I put it aside.
Instead, I open the other, thinner one, the one that says VILLALOBOS.
There isn’t much. She is thirty-five. Born in Fort Benning, Georgia. Her mother was a housewife. Her father was a sniper, first for the army, then for the Tucson police force. Both dead in a car accident nearly five years ago. DUI. She went to college in Texas for one year before transferring to Syracuse, which must have come as a shock to a girl who’d apparently never made it north of the 34th parallel before.
She kicked around a little. Worked at a cider brewery. At a veterinary clinic. As a tour guide in the Finger Lakes. Did some work—mostly clerical—for the police department in Ithaca. Then went to Pulaski to train as an ECO. Spent some time in the City and Long Island before transferring to Hamilton County.
And that’s it. She has managed to glide through a third of a century leaving barely a trace. Barely. Samuel did include an article from the Austin Beacon about a girl who died in a fall from the roof of a campus building. It wasn’t much of a story, but Samuel has highlighted both the caption to the photograph and a few lines from the story. “One distraught young woman started ripping off her clothes before school officials escorted her away. ‘Our students were all deeply affected by the tragedy,’ said school counselor, Solange Marisco. ‘Some more than others.’”
The other side is blank.
The photograph shows a building: a wood-sided house with Greek letters under the gabled roof. A group of girls and boys stand to one side, the girls almost all burying their heads in the boys’ shoulders. But standing alone is another girl. I turn on my desk light and look closely. It looks like Thea, and it doesn’t.
She has been “dolled up” as humans sometimes say. I’m used to seeing women “dolled up” and never really cared enough to notice the difference between a simulacrum of a woman and the real thing.
But none of this looks right on Thea. Not the hard black around her eyes, not the soft black above them. Not the dark lips or the pale skin or the waved hair or the jewelry or the cropped T-shirt laddered down the back. Nor the tiny, tight skirt that she is in the process of removing.
She looks both utterly calm and completely furious, her thumbs hooked around the waistband that is already at her thighs. The Austin Beacon reporter is probably himself barely more than a child. He’s got a story that combines death and nudity and coeds. To him, a hysterical college girl makes good sense and makes good copy.
A girl who has decided she is done with make-believe… That requires experience.
Another light snaps on in the office, and Maxim stalks past windows lit by the pale-purple morning light, looking as dark and threatening as a man with a face like a basset hound can look.
“Good morning, Max. What are you doing here so early?”
Even though Dahlia is the only other person here and the architectural glass is quite soundproof, Max closes the door. There is no disguising his fury as he turns on me, his hands splayed on my desk.
I ease back in the Titan, my fingers woven behind my head, and watch him yell. With his mouth yapping furiously, he reminds me of Tarzan.
“I don’t know what is going on with you, Sorensson.” He’s used my last name to indicate the high degree of his pissedness. “But you need to get a grip. Do something. Get a wife, have some kids, settle down. Or go fuck a string of women. I really don’t care. But don’t ever waste this firm’s time and money and political capital on a stunt like that again.
“The political capital,” he snaps again.
Slowly and deliberately, I unweave my fingers. Then I just as deliberately push my computer’s On button.
“Did you hear me?”
I deliberately stand and deliberately lean forward, bending my back until my nose is an inch from Maxim’s. A low rumble burbles in the depths of my chest. My wild remembers the image of Sarah in the crosshairs and strains with the need to claw flanks and rip muzzles.
I am the Alpha of the 9th. This time next week, I will challenge the Alpha of the Great North. Then I will fight, and I will win. And I will be the Alpha of the Great North.
The growl escapes, and any wolf would recognize it as the prelude to an attack. With a sprightly drrriiing, my computer comes to life.
“Close the door on your way out, Maxim.”
I pull out a tissue to wipe away the lingering damp handprints.