Kieran saw Alexandra the second he entered the bar. She sat by herself in the section usually reserved for the restaurant customers and twirled the little decorative stick in her drink. He walked over and took a seat at her table without being invited. She looked up at him, wide-eyed and too pale.
“Well, hello there.” She sniffed. “Kieran Montgomery. I guess you decided to join me.”
Before he could answer, the waiter came by and dropped off her order. He grinned at the food. The bar, Jewell’s Watering Hole, was famous for its version of nachos. Instead of tortilla chips, the entire thing was made with Doritos. If he ate them, he’d be ten pounds heavier, but the little werewolf would never gain weight.
“Comfort food?” He stole one chip from her plate and closed his eyes. There were some benefits to being human. Taste was one of them. This was decadent. But if he wanted his future, he couldn’t get fat.
“Yep.” She took a sip of her drink, and he watched as her mouth came around the straw.
“Why not? They usually fawn over their legacies.” And after his father’s phone call, it was everything he could do not to curse himself for not coming to Earth as a female werewolf with a Lambda legacy.
He could hardly believe the number. Thirty million dollars….
“It’s complicated.” She looked away, and his heart clenched.
Oh, what the hell. Just die already, Kieran.
Why was his human host taking so long to fade away? He had no doubt about his own strength and ability. So what the hell was the deal with this human? Just die.
A pause, then the word “No” resonated through his mind. He jumped in his seat. Unacceptable. His human shouldn’t respond. Ever. Somehow he’d deal with it later, one way or another, but right then, he needed to focus on the hottie across the table.
“So uncomplicate it. If you don’t like the house, don’t pledge there.” Except if she didn’t, the little plan he’d concocted would be for naught.
“My mother is the legacy. I thought, I mean, I knew her history might be a problem, but I didn’t realize the huge amount of hate I would receive.”
He leaned forward. How far should he tip his hand? Seeing the waiter, he got the man’s attention. “Vodka tonic.”
The man asked for his identification, and he showed it. Being twenty-two had its perks in a college town where they carded everywhere. He didn’t drink, but it was useful for other people to think he did. He stared at Alexandra’s drink. “What are you having?”
She ran a hand through her blonde hair. “A Shirley Temple.”
“Oooh. Hot.”
She laughed, covering up her mouth to stop some of the sound. Why did she hide her amusement? They were in a public place. Why not laugh as loud as she could? Was it he who didn’t understand her, or did no man understand a woman ever?
The waiter returned with his drink, and he passed it over to her. “Here, it’s for you.”
“I’m not twenty-one.”
He leaned forward. “Do you always do everything you’re told, Alexandra? It’s one drink. Most of your classmates have been drunk every weekend since they got here. You have the look of a woman who needs to relax. Have at it.”
She shook her head. “I need my head clear.”
Damn it.
“Okay.” He smiled even though he didn’t know why he did so. He should be fuming. What the fuck was up with these human emotions? “What went wrong? What went right?”
She shook her head. “Look, you’ll never understand it. I wish I could tell you. I could really use a friend. I’ve even contemplated getting in touch with this help line just to get some good advice. Frankly, I’m at a loss.”
He needed to get this woman talking—“so I can help”—no, so he could make thirty million dollars and finally have his father tucked away in his back pocket. She was his key to getting what he desired. One way or another. He would take down the family of Lambda’s bitch president, do his father that favor, and then Kieran’s future endeavors would be funded. No more figuring out how to pay for his world domination. One way or another, he’d always have what he needed. He had a game plan. Alexandra would get him what he wanted.
Kieran leaned forward. “I know you’re a werewolf.” Her eyes widened, and she gasped. A delayed reaction. Interesting. “Don’t be afraid. I’ve always known about all of you. And no one has ever been outed or hurt based on my knowledge. So, let’s cut through the bullshit. You need Lambda so you can be a member of a pack.”
She picked up his drink, then, and took a large sip. Disgust in himself flooded his blood stream, and goose bumps popped up on his skin. He ignored the sensation and focused on the goal. The first step in world domination went through Alexandra O’Henry, and he might even be able to make her life better before he left her alone.
“How do you know?” Her hand shook. “I thought humans never knew. My mother said humans don’t know.”
He raised his hand and smiled. “I told you. You’re in no danger. I’m a…man…who knows things. I promise. I don’t care if you go all furry under the full moon. I think it’s fascinating, actually. The hows and whys of the transformation might be interesting to hear about some time. But I think you need to get past your shock so we can talk about what happened and figure out what you’ll do next.”
She stared at him, red rimming the outside of her eyes. “I want to shift. I’m wishing it was a full moon so I could tear you to shreds.”
“Sorry, princess, three full weeks until then, and by the time the pretty ball of cheese rises, you won’t wish to claw out my eyes anymore. You’ll want to drop to your knees and thank the stars you ran into me.”
Alexandra snarled, and it was a sight to behold. He wished he had a camera to capture her feral beauty. The way her blue eyes dilated, the way the red in her cheeks made her look alive; no longer defeated, but all woman and a creature of danger wrapped up in a pretty little package.
“You need the sorority, the feeling of pack. I’d like you to get what you want. And I think you can help me get what I need. We can be…partners.” He hadn’t quite thought of his plan in those terms, but, hell, the idea had merit.
“What do you mean? What can my getting into Lambda possibly do for you?”
“Smart question.” He liked the way her mind worked. “I need Mellee Martin. Well, I want information about Mellee Martin, something to make her father, Senator Campbell Martin, shake in his boots and give up his presidential bid.”
“Why do you care if he runs for president?”
“I’ll tell you what.” He sat back. Her scent, all vanilla and roses, made him dizzy. He needed to stay focused. “You can keep some of your secrets, and I’ll keep some of mine. I don’t need to know what your mom did. Okay? Just tell me what happened today, and we’ll see what we can do. Or better yet, what I can do since you’re obviously doing all you can already. Start talking. Then when the time comes, you’ll give me info on Mellee. Straight out trade.”
“Well.” He could see from the way she bit her lip she wasn’t comfortable with his proposal. Still, she kept talking, which had to be a good sign. “Since you mention it, she’s really the one who was the problem. She told me she would make my life hell, and I should go away. The other girls, well, they were okay. Friendly even. But Mellee’s venom. I’ve never heard anything akin to it.”
He drummed his fingers on the table. “Did she actually say ‘hell’? Did she use that word?”
“She spelled it. You know. H-E-Double sticks. The whole nine yards.”
Mellee’s outburst was too precious for words. “I know a little bit about hell. You can take my word on this. Nothing she could ever do to you would be anything close to hell. She’s a spoiled, pampered, pack princess, and by the time we’re done with her, she’ll rue the day she ever bothered you.”
“Kieran….” she sighed.
“Look, I get this is hard for you, but if you let her, Mellee Martin will ruin this for you. Or you can take charge of the situation, and we both get what we need.”
Nothing frustrated Kieran more than indecision. He could read her difficulty. It was written all over face—in the way she couldn’t quite meet his eye, in the way she kept scratching at her head. They were all nervous tics he guessed she didn’t even know she possessed.
But he didn’t have time for nonsense. Part of him—the particular part that is seriously starting to piss me off—longed to give the poor girl a hug, show her some alternatives to the bitchy Lambda house, and maybe take her on a date or twelve. But doing so wasn’t on the agenda, and Kieran knew how to get what he needed.
“This is a one-time offer, sweetheart. You tell me yes, or I leave, and I never come back. You tell me no, and I never offer again. You tell anyone I offered this to you, then I deny it, and I ruin your reputation here. Forget Lambda; no one will ever even acknowledge you on campus. I’m really popular. You know it. I know it.” He paused and put his hand, which had fisted for no apparent reason, into his pocket. “What’s it going to be? I get you a pack. You get me Mellee.”
She stared up at him, and her throat clenched when she visibly swallowed. “Okay.”
“Okay as in you understand what I’m telling you, or okay as in you take the deal?”
Alexandra took another long pull of his drink from the straw. “Okay, I want the deal.”
“Smart girl.”
“But I have a stipulation.”
He groaned. “No can do, baby cakes. This is a take it or leave it situation. We do it my way, or it all ends here.”
“I’m afraid I have to insist on this, or I can’t do it. I just can’t.” She shrugged. “Take it or leave it.”
“So, the wolf has a backbone. Nice to see.” Why did he feel proud of her? This was getting ridiculous. “What are your terms?”
Alexandra pointed her finger right at him. “You don’t use one more stupid nickname for me. Not one. No sweetheart. No honey. No princess. Certainly no baby cakes. Not one. You use one more of those terms or anything similar, and I’ll back out of this and find a way to screw you. Get it?”
Well, then.
***
Her roommate snored in the next bed while Alex watched the slow tick of the clock. Why couldn’t she sleep? She groaned and tossed in her bed for the hundredth time. It felt as if she had sold her soul to the devil.
Why did I say yes to his ridiculous idea? Because it was better than her own idea, the one where she stayed in her room for the next four years and spent the rest of her life living in her mother’s basement.
She rolled over and pulled out the card she’d been carrying around for over a year. It seemed silly to still be hauling it around everywhere she went, but ever since her father had slipped it in her jacket—an incredible moment of parental caring in an otherwise horrible track record from the man—she’d come to think of it as her good luck charm. Someone to call if she should find herself completely alone.
After rising, she walked out into the hall, careful to not wake her roommate. The industrial carpeting irritated the bottom of her feet, and she leaned against the wall. At three a.m. on a Tuesday night, most people would be sleeping. But not Alex, not since she’d agreed to help Kieran take down Mellee Martin’s family.
She stared down at the card. The ROAR Hotline. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and texted the number on the other side. Someone had to tell her what to do, and if this desperate step made her even more pathetic, she had to live with it.
Hello. It seemed a dumb text, but she sent it without thinking too much about what she said. When texting perfect strangers in the middle of the night to ask for assistance, a greeting seemed in order.
Hello, Alexandra. The reply came fast, and she gasped. How the hell did whoever answered her know who she was?
No. No. No. She stood up and went back into her room, turning off her phone. Maybe they had some kind of caller ID. But her cell phone was registered to her mother. There was a logical explanation. She crawled back under the covers and forced her eyes closed. Hell would bang down her door the next day. Another Rush event. More smiling and God knew what skirmishes she’d have to face with Mellee.
She certainly couldn’t do it exhausted. Somehow she had to sleep. She dug deeper under her covers. How had whoever had been on the opposite end of the phone known her name?
***
The rest of Rush Week went by in a blur. Soon, she found herself wearing a white dress and standing in a circle while she held a lit candle. The sisters sang and offered each one of the potential pledges a hug before handing them their bid to pledge Lambda. Despite her best attempt to stay stoic, tears swam in her eyes.
She’d craved this for so long it almost didn’t bother her when Mellee skipped hugging her. Almost. She stared at the back of Mellee’s head and suddenly didn’t feel so bad about the deal she had struck with the ever stranger Kieran.
With weeks, maybe months left ahead of her of pledging, she couldn’t let her guard down. Before the end of the evening, she was surrounded by her fellow pledges in sleeping bags on the basement floor of her new sorority house. Everyone giggled and laughed as they sipped champagne. None of them seemed to hate her or resent her presence there, at least not yet.
They were supposed to get to know one another, so they could go through the next few months as pledge sisters, and then, maybe someday, be part of the same packs. A cohesive pledge class got through the process a lot faster. The more divisive the class became, the longer the sisters would drag out the day to initiation. Or so they said. With everyone’s schedules, Alexandra suspected they had the end written in bright red letters on a PDF document somewhere.
One of the other new pledges, Livie, a girl with brown hair and glasses, said something, and Alex laughed. They were taking turns around the circle talking about themselves.
Alex would be up next.
Truthfully, she had no idea what she would to say. Not in the slightest. They’d all had interesting lives, funny times with a pack. She supposed she had a couple of amusing anecdotes about the time her mother and she had snuck into a movie theater to see the cartoon movie Up and had gotten caught. Her mother had sweet talked the police.
But that was about it.
All eyes turned on her, and she knew she had to talk.
With a deep breath, she started. “Hi, my name is Alexandra O’Henry.”
“And her mother is a raving slut.” Mellee’s voice resounded in the basement, and Alex jumped in her sleeping bag. She hadn’t had much interaction with the woman other than being ignored, and she flinched at the sound of her voice.
“Listen up, bitches.” Mellee stepped forward.
She had two women behind her, Sisters of the House named Cher and Lois. They were both dark haired although Cher was tall and lanky while Lois appeared small and curvy. The three of them standing together were quite a striking threesome. Men would definitely take several glances if they walked around together. As for Alex, the fact they stood there together made her shudder. This couldn’t be good news.
“This is Alexandra O’Henry. Her mother disgraced her pack and this House. She had a mate she left to take off with another male. A lone wolf with no pack and no affiliation. She humiliated her mate and her family. In disgrace, she had to raise this packless bitch alone.”
One of her pledge mates gasped. Alex heard the sound, but didn’t turn around to see who had produced the noise. She didn’t care. Her emotions warred inside her, making her skin buzz. She didn’t know whether to weep or dart forward and attack Mellee until she ripped apart her face.
Who cared if she couldn’t shift until the full moon? Human hands could do plenty of damage. She had long nails. They could scratch out Mellee’s eyes.
“I’m going to put it to you this way. Any of you who want to be my sisters, who dream someday of being the type of sought-after pack mates that you know I can make you, will never speak to this packless, worthless cunt again. Any who do speak to her in any way will never be made sisters of this House. She might be able to force my hand; we have to give her pathetic legacy ass a bid here. I can’t say the same for any of you. Do you understand me? Not one word. Ever.”
The tears finally won their war and streamed down Alex’s face.
“And remember one more thing. If any of you leave here tonight, you’re out. Legacy or no legacy, if you take one step outside this door tonight, you’re done. Got it?” She smiled brightly as if she’d just told them all the world consisted of pancakes and lollipops. “Night. Get some good sleep.”
Alexandra waited. Not one pledge sister in the room said a word. She looked around the group. Whereas before, they had all been friendly and open, not one of them would make eye contact with her anymore. She sat alone, in a circle of people, weeping.
She sniffed and tried to stop her tears. It took a minute, but she regained control.
“Not one of you will speak to me now, will you?” She waited a beat, and no one moved. “Right. I guess we’re all subscribing to the idea of the sins of the mother being placed square down on the head of her daughter. Well, you can all screw yourselves. I’m not leaving.”
She sat back against the wall. Kieran’s plan seemed better and better. She’d get the horrible woman if it were the last thing she ever did.
***
“And that was it?” Kieran took a sip of coffee, and she watched him drink as if it was the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen. “You just sat there all night, and no one spoke to you?”
“Correct.” This had to be a terrible idea. She should call the whole thing off. Give up and go home. Enroll in community college so she could get her prerequisites done and then finish off at her local state school. It made more sense. At some point, she bordered on unredeemable to herself. She’d look back on this for the rest of her life and just know she should have gone home.
“Well, we’ll make her pay for treating you so badly.”
His statement stopped her thoughts immediately. “How?” When had she gotten so vengeful? She groaned at the internal question. She’d begun wanting the revenge the second Mellee had told her pledge sisters not to speak to her.
“You’ll have to trust me. I’m not without my resources, and I’ll use them to help you assist me.” He tugged her into an embrace, and then he paused. “Oh, what the hell.” Kieran wrapped his arms around her. “Listen, this woman, Mellee, is in a position of power. And maybe she’ll always be the woman filled with the false admiration of others. Nothing about her role in life will change the fact that she’s small, uncertain, and weak. Not to mention she’ll regret the day she ever spoke to you with anything but respect.”
She closed her eyes and let him hold her. She was a werewolf, and he was a human. Granted, he knew about her kind, which didn’t change anything. She shouldn’t like being held. Not by him.
Only she did, and nothing good could ever come from it. Humans and werewolves didn’t mix without serious consequences. But, really, what did she know? Her plans seemed to be falling apart.