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“Rowan,” I greeted the alpha I’d known would be lying in wait for me. The one who’d given me the card in my pocket. The one I’d hoped never to see again.
“Ace’s daughter.”
As if I had no name other than a relationship to an absent father. My face twisted but I didn’t argue. After all, I was the one in the wrong.
Instead, I dug in my wallet for the card that had granted me safe passage through this alpha’s domain for the last year and change. I’d known what I was risking when I took the furry shortcut at the museum. Had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but had accepted that it might.
Losing access to Harper’s visiting hours was a gut punch, but it would be worth the loss now that I could afford to pay for the rest of her high-school career and part of college. Our relationship would survive the hiatus. I could always call my sister and bug her with endless emails and texts.
Swallowing down bitter regret, I held out the card representing an in-person relationship with my sister. “You want this back.”
Rowan didn’t snatch it out of my hands the way I’d expected him to. Instead, he stepped in closer. The musk of alpha werewolf made me choke on my own inhale.
“That’s not enough, Ace’s daughter. You fucked up. You really fucked up this time.”
“Did I?” I straightened despite the fact my ankle was trying to tell me how much it missed the couch and pillow. “If you already know about my mistake, then you’ve had plenty of time to cover up any leaks. Admit it. You have the police in your pocket. The story won’t even show up on social media let alone in the evening news.”
Rowan’s head shook slowly. “No.” His eyes glinted in the darkness. “You stole from a museum. They filed a report with a national alert network at the same time they contacted the police.”
Goosebumps rose on my arms. I’d sent Tank away so he wouldn’t do something stupid while I accepted the knocks I had coming. But...this was bad. Rowan wasn’t taking my card and tossing me out of his territory the way he’d threatened to. The story of my furriness had escaped his control.
I swallowed. “What do you want then?”
Rather than answering, Rowan peered down over the railing into the darkness beneath us. When the apartment complex had been built, I suspect there’d been a rather nice view from each balcony. Since then, more buildings had sprung up cheek to jowl. By the time I moved in, the only view was of a dirty alley, now barely lit by a couple of lights above back doors.
Still, I could make out two lupine forms down there, moving toward the center from each end of the alley. Of course Rowan hadn’t come alone. He was the alpha. He travelled with lackeys for appearances’ sake. Plus, he wouldn’t want to be the one huffing and puffing after me if I thought running was a good idea.
I shifted my weight, well aware that I had no ability to run tonight.
“Alpha?” I prodded when the silence stretched longer than I’d expected it to. But Rowan didn’t answer. Just kept peering downward, brow wrinkled as if he wasn’t just staring off into space.
Of course. Pack-bond communication from alpha to underling was common among werewolves. But the effort didn’t usually last this long or cause so much facial contortion.
I sidled away from Rowan’s overwhelming presence to give myself a little breathing space then leaned over the railing, pulling on a little wolfishness of my own. Vision enhanced, I finally saw what Rowan was reacting to.
There was a cat down there—Mr. Fletcher’s tabby, I was guessing—being stalked by Rowan’s lupine underlings. They had the feline cornered in an indented stairwell and seemed an inch away from progressing from tease to torture.
They were going to tear the poor thing apart. Or would have if their alpha hadn’t stopped them.
Rowan’s frustration was bitter on my tongue. His words, when he gave up on the pack bond and went audible, came out as a bark.
“Leave the damn cat alone and get up here!”
The wolves ignored him. One slammed his paw down on the cat’s back. The other widened his jaws as if to swallow the hissing feline whole. And....
“Now!”
The cold blast of alpha compulsion froze both me and the shifters in the alley. As the effects faded, I stumbled back onto the cheap plastic folding chair that had come with the apartment. What happened to the wolves in the alley I could no longer tell.
I could, however, see Rowan turning away from the railing. He had no interest in the cat’s survival. He’d only snapped at his crew because a wolf-mauled pet threatened shifters’ ability to slide beneath the radar.
After all, Rowan was alpha. His priorities revolved around the future of his pack.
Which was bad news for me. My theft in wolf form was ten times as dangerous in that regard as tearing apart a house cat would have been.
***
WHEN I OPENED MY EYES, Rowan stood above me. Barely restrained fury pinned me in place the way it had a decade ago when I tracked him down in his office to beg for help.
“You’re not my father,” I’d said then, bamboozled by the fact that the name on my child-support checks had materialized into someone only a few years older than me.
“You figure?” Rowan leaned forward, sniffing as if he was in wolf rather than human form. Just like today, I’d backpedalled until I fell onto my butt.
I had no weapon other than words, so I used them. “I want to speak with my father.”
“About what, exactly?”
“My mother’s dead.”
Rowan nodded and strode to his desk, giving me a second to pull myself together. By the time I scrambled to my feet, he’d drawn a checkbook out of a drawer, uncapped a fancy fountain pen, and raised one eyebrow. “How much extra do you need?”
“My little sister....”
Both eyebrows pulled down into a V over his nose. “Harper stinks of humans. She’s not my problem.”
Rowan had been close enough to smell my sister? “I don’t want your money!” I exploded, the four feet between us enough to unleash my teenage temper. “And I don’t want you close to my sister either!”
If I’d taken the time to think about it, I would have expected to be slapped down. After all, Mom had warned me so many times about male werewolves, alphas especially. She might have only spent one night with my father, but she’d made other connections—and later severed them—when I turned old enough to shift.
But Rowan didn’t live up to her warnings. Instead, he merely cocked his head. “What do you want then?”
So I told him. The whole sad story in three short sentences. “My stepdad is a drunk. I can take care of my little sister on my own, but I need someone over eighteen to be in charge on paper. All I’m asking is my father’s signature on a few forms....”
As I spoke, Rowan came out from behind his desk. He advanced on me, step by step, something sharp and interested in his eyes.
“I could, perhaps, make your life easier if you had something to offer.” His voice was low and lupine. “Something that would make the effort worth my while....”
The air stank of an aroma both pungent and wild. I couldn’t pull in enough breath to deny him. Could only frantically shake my head.
And Rowan shrugged. Clicked the cap back on the pen he held, as if nothing had happened between us. “In that case, your sister isn’t worth the hassle.”
The only reprieve I’d been able to dream up was disappearing like the shreds of my own childhood. And while I couldn’t accept what Rowan had offered, I wasn’t too proud to beg. “Just let me talk to my father. Tell me his name....”
Rowan breathed out through his nose, not quite a snort but more than an ordinary exhale. “You don’t get it, do you, pup? I’m the alpha. I say no and your father won’t speak with you. Now, how much extra money do you need?”
He twirled the pen around his fingers, the motion captivating my attention. This was a leash and I knew it. If I took his money, I’d also be accepting the barely concealed deal his wolf was offering.
So I swallowed back terror. Ground out: “None. I need none.”
It was a lie, of course. Without Mom’s steady paycheck, our family was floundering. But I could get a job. I could fend for myself and my sister....
And I could find my father. It wasn’t really all that hard. The day after slamming out of Rowan’s office, I paid for a copy of my birth certificate at the county courthouse. Memorized my father’s name from the appropriate line and used that information to track Ace to his lair.
There...my father had refused to so much as speak to me without his alpha’s permission. Pack wolves. They had no concept of self will. No interest in family outside the alpha-approved clan.
And, despite all that, my child-support checks kept coming. They doubled, in fact. Started being made out to me instead of to my mother.
I cashed them. Had to when my employment prospects as a sixteen-year-old high-school dropout became obvious. I cashed the checks and waited for the other shoe to drop.
But the shoe just hung there above me for a decade. Checks arrived every month like clockwork. Long past the point where I needed the cash.
Which is what gave me the idea, a bit over a year ago, to make a new deal with Rowan. At that point, Harper was starting school much closer to the center of the pack’s territory than I’d dared travel after my sixteen-year-old slap down. I needed to be able to visit Highlands without being hassled by Rowan’s pack mates more than I needed additional money.
So I’d traded in my chips for the card in my hand. The card Rowan now said wasn’t enough to make up for my museum lapse.
Thirteen months ago, Rowan had made me another offer. A more overt one. But he’d let me walk away when I refused.
Unfortunately, I had a bad feeling I wouldn’t be able to walk away this time. I swallowed down bile as I stared up at the alpha who had grown older and more powerful since I first met him. He took a single step forward and my wolf bowed down my head.
Sure enough, the scent emanating from Rowan now wasn’t the sour scent of annoyance he’d exuded earlier. Instead, his aroma had morphed into something sweeter that was even less appealing.
“You’ve grown into an appealing woman. So I’ll deal with your mistakes.” Rowan’s murmur should have been heartening, but it wasn’t. Instead, my blood chilled as he continued to let me off the hook. “I’ll stand up for you when other packs call for your blood. It’s an alpha’s prerogative.”
I felt sixteen years old again. My reply came out as a squeak. “And in exchange?”
“In exchange, you’ll take your proper place in my pack.” He leaned in closer. “Assuming, that is, you want access to the territory your sister calls home.”