TIARA
It’s strange the difference a couple of weeks can make, I think to myself early the next morning after a seven hour drive and an overnight stay in a nearby hotel. Two weeks ago I was engaged to another man, Kyle Wolfgood, the alpha prince of North Dakota. Two weeks ago I was completely obsessed with my video game company, She-Wolf Industries…so much so, I could hardly be bothered to attend my own engagement party. Two weeks ago, I was a workaholic videogame designer with zero social skills and negative percent desire to go anywhere without wi-fi. Or Red Bull.
And now here I am, walking up my second mountain in as many weeks beside my twin brother, with my dad and Yancey in front of us. Actually hardcore praying inside my head that this ends with my dad using me as an incubator for my brother and his lover while the loves of my life vanish forever.
Two weeks later, I’d actually rather be at the Detroit kingdom house right now, pledging myself into a miserable marriage than on this mountain with these three wolves.
We had to abandon our Cadillac Escalade at the bottom of the road and continue on foot toward the old kingdom house via a narrow snow-covered trail. Before our species learned how to seamlessly integrate with humans, we spent a lot of time in isolated villages, close to humans but tucked away to reduce contact between our species. So like many kingdom houses built in the earlier part of the twentieth century, this one is just a short distance from the state’s time gate and well-hidden.
The nearly mile-long hike uphill through dense forest makes it just about impossible to sneak up on the house. Unlike most other kingdom houses that serve as the first line of defense against potential invaders—it has happened from time to time—ours is situated at the very back of a collection of rustic log cabins, all that’s left of our former kingdom town. If the town were ever invaded, the king and his family would have ample time to get to safety. Leaving the rest of their pack to fight for their lives.
Nice.
No wonder my grandfather, Leroy Greenwolf, an upstart black biker from Arkansas, ended up taking over the pack in the sixties. You can accuse Granddad of a lot of bad things—and I do mean a lot. As in, I’m pretty sure the FBI still has a file on him somewhere in a dusty archive. But he is not a coward.
Not only did he relocate the kingdom town to Michigan proper, he made Detroit, his adopted town, our home base. Even going so far as to name our pack after it. Which is why it came as a complete surprise to just about every damn body when Granddad decided to retire to the old kingdom house after officially handing over the state pack to my father.
Granddad turned out to be a lot like me. He enjoys his solitude. We’re technically never invited up here unless it’s Thanksgiving. And even then its not a one hundred percent guarantee he’ll let us spend the night after dinner’s done. There have been a couple of years when Granddad’s gotten so irritated with having all of us “up in his house too long,” that we’ve ended up heading out early to a hotel, with him yelling after us that we might not be invited back next year. No wonder Uncle Ford never visits.
Speaking of which, on the drive up here I’d had a furious back-and-forth WTF??? text conversation with him. Because his promise to keep FJ and Olafr contained back in Alaska obviously hadn’t been kept.
He texted back a long grumble about Uncle Tikaani interceding on their behalf because of something my cousin Alisha told him. And FJ pulling a sword. And how there wasn’t “nothing he could do about it.” In other words, he’d been forced to let them go.
Ford had hoped their remote location in the Alaska wilderness and lack of knowledge about planes, trains, and automobiles would keep them from coming after me. But after going into town for a few hours, they holed up in FJ’s room, talking to Alisha on a cell phone.
At some point in the evening, they slipped out of the kingdom house and that was the last anybody saw of them.
It didn’t take long for Uncle Ford to realize what they planned to do. But by then, it was too late. With Alisha’s apparent help, the brothers simply waited out the hours it took me to land in Michigan. Then they went outside and spoke the fated mate spell again.
And so here I am. Tramping through the snow with a pup in my belly. Their pup. Trying to figure out how to tell my murderous alpha king father I have not one, but two mates. And desperately trying to come up with a plan to stop him and Yancey from shooting both of them on sight.
Something chitters a short distance away and my father actually pulls his sawed-off. Until he sees that the small squirrel racing up a nearby tree trunk is not the shifter he’s looking for. He lowers his weapon with an aggravated shake of his head.
“Why do all these portals have to be up in the fuckin’ mountains? Always out in the middle of nowhere,” he complains.
My father hates the middle of nowhere. Aside from a few visits to my grandfather, he’s spent his entire life mostly within the city limits of Detroit, and he still doesn’t understand why his father retired here. Especially since Dad’s inability to become one with nature is technically Granddad’s fault. Back in the late sixties, he moved our kingdom town to Hidden Hills, a gated community recently abandoned due to white flight. And now we’re one of the very few states with a kingdom house situated in a city rather than in a small town close to the state’s portal.
The move to Detroit was never an issue because our state’s portal hadn’t worked in, well, forever. Until now, that is. Which is why my father was forced to drive several hours from Detroit to kill whoever it was that came through the gate.
Poor Dad, I think to myself, with a totally unsympathetic roll of my eyes.
I try opening my mind link again. “Are you there? Olafr? FJ?” I ask, mentally reaching out to both of them over our mate bond. “If you can hear me, you need to run. My dad is on his way and he will kill you if he sees you.”
Silence.
I mentally kick myself once more for not anticipating this. Not just that Uncle Ford would fail to keep the brothers contained in the Alaska kingdom house, but for not realizing they could easily track me down in Michigan by simply repeating the fated mate spell.
If I’d been a few miles south or west of here, the brothers could have easily ended up at the Wisconsin or Indiana gates. Which would have been better. Both those kingdoms are legitimate. In other words, they don’t depend on illegal activities to fund their crowns like Detroit does. If my two Vikings had landed elsewhere, it would have bought me some time and kept them safe. And provided some potentially supportive witnesses, who, I like to think, would not have been okay with my dad showing up out of the blue and killing two time-traveling wolves in their territory.
Of course, dwelling on all of this is totally pointless now. Because the brothers are here, not in Wisconsin or Indiana.
What am I going to do? I wonder, mind in total panic mode. How am I going to keep them alive?
Far too soon, the time for frantic worrying comes to an end. We walk through the collection of cabins, and the two-story kingdom house appears just over the first rise. Yancey abruptly halts, sniffing the air.
“Old king’s got company,” Yancey tells my dad. “Two visitors.”
My father’s face goes hard with an unspoken question.
Which Yancey answers with, “I don’t smell any blood.”
I let out a pent up breath. No blood means no death.
No blood. Good. That means my mates are still alive.
However, my moment of relief is cut short by Dad, Yancey, and Clyde all pulling out their matching sawed-off, pump-action pistol grip twelve-gauge Mossbergs. The official shotgun of the Dark Wolf pack.
“Stay here,” Clyde says to me, and then he starts creeping toward the house in silent commando mode along with Yancey and Dad.
But like hell I’m just going to hang back here while they sneak up on the house with my two mates inside.
Knowing I need to get in front of this—like, literally get in front of this—I rush past them.
“Get back!” I hear Dad hiss behind me.
But I don’t stop running until I reach the cabin door.
“Granddad! Granddad!” I yell, banging on the door. “It’s me! Tee!”
Granddad’s nose isn’t what it used to be, but he swings open the door so fast, I know he must have been right on the other side waiting for us to arrive. He stands in the doorway, his long, slightly stooped body adorned in the usual Dark Wolf uniform: black leather jacket, black leather jeans, black leather boots, topped off by a black leather bandana tied around his head.
He no longer rides with the Dark Wolves. In fact, he no longer rides at all. But he looks exactly like what he once was, and what he probably still considers himself to be: the baddest wolf king in the entire land.
“Granddaughter…” he says to me with a shake of his leather-wrapped head. “You got any idea how complicated you done made shit for this family?”
I can also feel Yancey, Dad, and Clyde staring daggers at my back.
Feeling very meek under Granddad’s censuring gaze, I lower my eyes and mumble, “Sorry, Granddad.”
Granddad just harrumphs and opens the door wider. “Whatever. All of you better come on in here.”