TIARA
“No! No! I didn’t do nothing! NOOOOO!!!!”
Two days before Christmas, I watch Yancey, my dad’s Beta/Sargent of Arms/Future Danny Trejo Impersonator If He’s Ever Hard Up For Money, haul a prospect up on stage. Normally this would be an honor for a young wolf. Patches would be bestowed or a brand pushed into the prospect’s naked back. Painful, yes, but well worth it in any young wolf’s mind since after getting burned, he’d be an official member of the Dark Wolf MC, the outlaw motorcycle club at the heart of our Detroit state pack.
But in this case, the pack’s hooting and hollering is a call for blood. And my father is waiting for the young wolf prospect with a sawed-off shotgun, not a patch. And instead of pulling out a brand, Yancey pulls a pair of silver handcuffs from his leather jacket, which he uses to bind the prospect to a hitching post. The hitching post, like the stage, is all black and all metal. The stage is a permanent structure in our kingdom house’s huge open ballroom, a monstrosity of metal scaffolding adorned with decorative steel spikes (courtesy of the Detroit pack’s steel factory). And it looks completely out of place in our 19th-century French Chateau-style mansion—like maybe it got lost on its way to a heavy metal concert—but hey, it does the job.
Whether they’re on the ballroom floor, on one of the two sweeping staircases leading to the upper floors or, like me, standing on the third-floor landing outside my suite of rooms, every wolf in the place has a good view of the prospect losing his shit. He’s screaming in pain, since both his wrists are bound in silver. And he’s making it worse, because he keeps tugging at his silver cuffs, trying to escape.
Watching the scene below, I feel sorry for the prospect who, only a few minutes ago, was just another guy on a crowded ballroom floor. Having a good time, drinking beer with his fellow Dark Wolf prospects, while looking hard as gangsta nails in our pack’s standard uniform of leather motorcycle pants and a jacket with the giant, blood-red wolf head logo on the back.
But now he’s shackled to the hitching post, the flesh on his wrists sizzling thanks to the toxic silver, as the crowd chants, “Party Favor! Party Favor! Party Favor!” His screaming and their chanting is so loud, if it weren’t for my sensitive wolf ears, I wouldn’t be able to make out exactly what the prospect is shouting. The gist of it is it wasn’t him who’d been skimming guns to sell on the side for profit. It wasn’t him who’d put all that cash in unmarked trash bags in the basement of his mama’s house. It was a set up. It was all a set up!
“It wasn’t me!” he screams again at the crowd, before bursting into messy tears. “It wasn’t me!”
Unfortunately, it was.
See, I would never go so far as to call my father an honorable wolf. But he’s second in the current line of bad-as-fuck Detroit Alpha Kings, and he takes a certain pride in that. He never, ever performs a Party Favor ritual unless he’s absolutely certain the guilty party is, in fact, guilty. And I know he would have had Yancey check and recheck the evidence against the now sniveling prospect before announcing his crime publically.
“So…uh…you guys do this sort of thing at every party?” my handsome prince asks beside me.
I glance over at Kyle, the insanely hot Alpha Prince of North Dakota. He’s also my fiancé—though he’s probably reconsidering his proposal as we watch my state pack chant for the blood of a sobbing male shifter.
“Yeah, I’m afraid so,” responds my twin brother, Clyde, who’s standing on Kyle’s other side.
And I quickly glance away after only a few beats of eye contact.
Despite our status as a newly engaged couple, I continue to feel really awkward around him. Maybe because I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that he asked me to marry him a few weeks ago. Or maybe because I feel awkward around pretty much everyone except Clyde and Iggle, the lead developer at my video game company, She-Wolf Industries.
But Kyle isn’t a work colleague and he’s not related to me by blood. And for whatever reason, I’m still having trouble believing my brother’s best friend from college took a sudden interest in me after he visited Clyde last New Year’s Eve.
Maybe you’re wondering why the Princess of Detroit can’t believe a storybook handsome Alpha prince is interested in her…
Well, for starters, I wouldn’t exactly call myself a traditional princess. I’m too dark-skinned, for one thing, and several sizes too large to be considered anybody’s idea of a Disney Princess stand in. Also, just a few days before I met Kyle, I shaved one side of my head and started wearing my hair in waist length white yarn locs for a strange mix of reasons that can only be described as “Storm Is the Shit, Why Not, Too Many YouTube Tutorials, and Happy New Year!” Added to that, as of September, I’m officially over thirty—seriously past my sell date as far as werewolf princesses go. Oh, and when I’m not doing my Detroit Princess thing, I spend the vast majority of my time in my rooms creating games and worlds for others, like me, who prefer the company of digital people to real ones. So all that alone time has made me what the nice wolves in our pack call “a little awkward,” and what the not-so-nice wolves call “crazy-ass weird.”
In other words, I’m not exactly “love at first sight” material. Hell, I don’t even think I’m “love after months of getting to know me” material. But they say love works in mysterious ways. So here we are, I guess…
I slide another glance over to Kyle. He looks queasy. Almost green, like he’s going to ralph all over the blood-thirsty party goers below, any second now. I wonder if I should try to overcome my considerable self-consciousness in order to give him one really awkward pat on the back.
Luckily, my brother steps in.
“Don’t worry about it, man, we got you covered. This is just for the engagement party.” Clyde reassures my fiancé with a strong shoulder squeeze. “Tee and me already talked to Dad about this. There won’t be any Detroit pack rituals going down at your wedding in North Dakota. Which is why I told Dad if he wanted to do any of this shit, he’d better get it out of his system now. Tee wants a traditional North Dakota wedding. However you do it, that’s how she wants it to go down. Ain’t that right, Tee?”
Actually, my wedding plans aren’t even that specific. I don’t care how we get married. As long as I don’t have to get his wolf mark burned into my back and can make it through the entire ceremony without anyone’s blood getting spilled on my dress, I’m good. Seriously, that’s how low my wedding standards are at this point.
But I nod enthusiastically, throwing my brother a grateful smile. He’s so much better at this stuff than me. Sometimes it’s hard to believe we have the same parents, much less shared a womb.
“Okay, that’s good to hear,” Kyle says, giving both of us a shaky smile.
Down below, Yancey forces the sobbing prospect to his knees while Dad pumps his sawed-off Mossberg 500 twelve-gauge shotgun.
And Kyle visibly gulps. “Do we really have to watch this?”
“Fraid so, man,” Clyde says, giving his friend another shoulder squeeze, like he’s trying to transfer some of his self-possession on to his less bad-ass buddy. “You ain’t going to get any respect from the pack if you can’t even make it through a Party Favor.”
That’s for damn sure, I silently agree. Though I do respect Kyle for still being moved by the scene below. I’d grown numb to such things by—actually I can’t even remember a time before my first Party Favor. Only the Alpha King had changed. My dad holding the Mossberg 500, instead of my grandfather. And by this time next year, it would be my brother deciding who lived or died so that the Dark Wolves could “start this party off right.”
Kyle takes a deep breath. “Okay.”
He turns to me and tries to look deep into my eyes, instantly failing because sustaining eye contact is just not on my extremely short list of real life social skills.
But my handsome prince isn’t daunted and he tells the side of my face, “I’ll do it for you, honey. If this is what I have to do for us to—”
The sound of my father’s twelve-gauge explodes across Kyle’s solemn vow. Then comes a loud cheer as the prospect falls forward, the top half of his head now in bits and pieces on the stage’s black metal floor.
“Just smile and wave,” my brother says in a resigned tone. “Smile and wave.”
Which is what we do, smiling and waving to the crowd below like macabre pageant queens as they cheer the prospect’s death.
ARE YOU STILL AT THAT STUPID PARTY?
My watch lights up with a message from Iggle, the she-wolf I consider my closest friend, even though she‘s only twenty…and refused to come anywhere near this party.
“Nah, girl, that’s too much Detroit for me,” she’d said, when I asked if she was coming.
Despite our age difference, she’s like me, a Detroit wolf, who has always felt like she was born into the wrong pack. Like me, Iggle would rather code a gun for an awesome videogame than shoot one. And like me, she spends the majority of her time in her room doing just that.
But unlike me, she’s not the princess of our state pack. And also unlike me, she’s not three hours into an engagement party, but is instead working on the concept package for the Korean firm we hired to help us with the back-end for our next game, Ninja Shifters.
Lucky bitch, I think as I pull my phone out of the bodice of the ridiculous black leather gown Evelyn made me wear and type: Sorry. Yeah. Saw you downloaded the new material and will stay up late to get you my notes. Anything else getting in your way?
Other than you being at that party?
Yes, other than that, Iggle, I type back with a roll of my eyes. The problem with her having been gainfully employed by my company since the age of thirteen is she really has no concept of adult life problems, like having to accept invitations to parties you don’t want to go to. I’ll be back in my rooms as soon as it’s over.
Thank the Lord for the law that prohibits male wolves from sleeping with she-wolves who haven’t gone into heat yet, or else Kyle might expect to get some on top of me having to make it through this horrible-ass party.
Wait, I think. Should I be feeling relieved that I can’t sleep with my husband-to-be? Ugh! I’m not sure. Real life normal is so hard.
I assure Iggle. Hour more, tops.
Iggle responds promptly. K. Text me when you do. I’m going to 420 with the crescent until you’re done with your Alpha Princess cosplay.
That was Iggle. If she wasn’t coding, she was smoking. Which is why I’m in charge of implementing all the boring agile management stuff, leaving her free to live out every would-be video game designer’s dream of smoking, eating, and coding to her heart’s content.
Still, I feel bad. Like I’m letting her down by focusing too much on my upcoming wedding, and not enough on She-Wolf, which was founded by a recluse who figured she’d never get married. Yet here I am…
I’m not saying I don’t appreciate what I’ve got: the four-figure leather Valentino dress I’m wearing, the diamond boulder on my finger, and, you know, the seriously handsome prince who gave it to me. It’s all great, especially Kyle, who I’m lucky to have. I know that. Really, I do…
…but I can feel the inner sanctum of my room calling to me like a siren. Plus, I spend the majority of my time—I mean, like, eighty percent on a good day, one hundred percent on a bad day—with computers. So the huge ballroom of wolves expecting me to wave and say, “Hey, what’s up!” to them while pretending I wouldn’t rather be in my room doing the thousand things that need to get done before the Ninja Shifters concept presentation? I’m just saying that’s tough.
I’ll try to get out of here as soon as I can.
“Tiara! Tell me you are not texting in a corner at your own engagement party!”
That’s exactly what I’m doing so I quickly paste on my best contrite look.
“Sorry, Aunt Evelyn.”
“All of this is for you!” my aunt says, her tone beyond exasperated.
“I know,” I mumble, casting my eyes down and to the side.
Evelyn glares at me. “Then act like it!”
I look away and barely manage to contain a heavy sigh. The issue with my aunt isn’t just that she’s considered it her job to mother me and Clyde since our real mother died in childbirth—even though she married my dad as soon as she was legally allowed to after Mom’s death. But also that she’s my aunt. And not like my play aunt, but my aunt-aunt. As in she and my mother were the only daughters of the Silent Wolf president, the Silent Wolf gang being the most powerful black shifter MC in the nation. However, my mom was a huge nerd, like me, who happened to be really fertile. And my aunt was a smoking hot bombshell who wasn’t.
I don’t want to say my parents’ marriage wasn’t the romance of the ages. But, well, it totally wasn’t. Both my grandfathers wanted a Dark Wolf/Silent Wolf alliance, and neither of them gave a damn how they got it.
My dad and Evelyn were clearly better suited, but she’d been infertile since coming down with a hybrid strain of parvo. Unlike a lot of wolves who caught the virus, Aunt Evelyn was lucky enough to live past childhood, but by the time she was old enough for her first heat, it was pretty clear, based on mounting evidence from other parvo survivors, she was sterile. In other words: no heat, no babies.
So my parents married out of duty. Then less than a year after putting my mom in the ground, my father married the sister he’d wanted in the first place. And he only waited that long because it’s against Lupine Council law to mate an unheated she-wolf. So he had to wait for a special medical dispensation to marry my hot-ass aunt.
So pretty much since birth, I’ve had to put up with my step-aunt Evelyn trying to recode me into the daughter she’d never be able to have. Aunt Evelyn puts a ton more effort into presenting herself in ways males of our species appreciate than my mother ever did. She’s also very social and flows seamlessly between conversations with biker wives and the comparatively refined regular Michigan she-wolves, like Iggle’s mom.
And for all my life she’s treated me like some kind of less-than reflection of her. Like if she pokes and prods hard enough, she’ll crack the protective coating of my jeans and sweatshirts to reveal the sexy and socially adept Tee lurking just below the surface. Otherwise, she’d have to finally accept I’m nothing more than the yarn-locked nerd she shoved into a leather evening gown for this party in order to pretend I’m worthy of someone as handsome and respectable as the Dakota prince.
Speaking of which…
“Why are you yelling at me?” I ask, staring at my feet. “It’s not like Kyle is doing a much better job. I don’t even see him here.”
Evelyn looks around with a frown. “He’s probably in your brother’s rooms playing that damn Viking Shifters game of yours.”
I perk up. “Really? You think so?”
My aunt’s eyes slit so hard, it seems like it should be accompanied by an angry sound effect. “It’s not anything to be proud of, Tiara.”
Another thing I don’t love about my aunt. She insists on calling me by my full, super-ridiculous name as opposed to “Tee” like everybody else.
“I’ll go find them,” I offer, hoping to mollify her…and make my escape. Playing She-Wolf’s bestselling game to date with my twin and my fiancé seems like just the thing to save an otherwise useless night.
“You do that,” she says. “But come right back afterwards, and bring that damn brother of yours, too. All this money we paid for this party and we got the Prince of Detroit missing in action.”
I leave her grumbling, and make my way up the stairs to my brother’s wing of the house on the second floor. It seems unfair that she’s mad at Clyde, even though he’s done almost every single thing our dad has ever asked of him, including setting his nerdy sister up with one of his best friends from college.
And as for Kyle, the truth is he barely knows me. I remember our ten months of dating as mostly IM conversations with the occasional date thrown in. With me mumbling my way through answers to his questions, and him responding with what I can only guess is some kind of special North Dakota brand of relentless cheer. The truth is, I don’t blame him for preferring to spend time playing my video game with my cool-as-hell brother instead of hanging out with me at our engagement party. I know that’s what I’d rather be doing right now.
I can hear the game blasting as I approach Clyde’s door, along with the groaning of fallen shifters. One round, I decide. One round of Viking Shifters and then I’ll go back down to the party and try like hell to pretend I’m a shifter princess and not a super-awkward videogame developer in disguise.
Throwing the door open, I call out “Okay, I’m playing the…”
Only to stop dead in my tracks, the word “winner” falling pitifully from my mouth.
Because yes, the video game is on. But the groans aren’t coming from the game.
They’re coming from Kyle, the Prince of Dakota, who my brother, the Prince of Detroit, currently has bent over one of his gaming chairs. And he’s doing something to him that would definitely get us banned on several console platforms if we ever dared feature it in any of our shifter games.
Clyde’s eyes go wide and he abruptly stops his enthusiastic pumps into my fiancé’s backside when he sees me standing wide-eyed in the doorway.
But Kyle’s eyes are closed and he doesn’t notice me, or maybe he’s just too far gone to care.
“Oh fuck! Oh God, don’t stop, baby! Don’t stop!”
“Kyle,” my brother says.
“You fuck this ass so good. Oh baby, you don’t know how much I’ve missed you. How much I’ve missed this!”
“Kyle,” my brother says again, his voice a shade louder.
“What? Why did you…” my fiancé whines as he finally opens his eyes…and registers my presence in the doorway.
Now it’s his turn to trail off.
“…stop?”