“WHAT?!?!” Dad yells when I’m done telling him about my plans.
He, Clyde, Uncle Ford, Evelyn, Yancey, and I are gathered around the oval table in the informal dining room where I’ve decided to hold this meeting. An assortment of fruit and other breakfast foods sit on the table, pretty as one of the still life paintings hanging on the surrounding walls. We’d almost look like a normal family enjoying breakfast together…if not for my dad glowering at me from the other end of the table…
…and the fact that Uncle Ford and I are the only ones not currently dressed in leather.
…and if Dad’s elbow wasn’t crooked over his sawed off, like he’s planning to whip it out any minute now.
See, this right here is why I don’t come down to breakfast like a normal person. Why I’ve spent most of my life upstairs. I glance at the table in front of me and think about how easy it would be to forget this whole mess and go work on making our Gamer Challenge feature tablet-ready.
But I don’t do that. I don’t cower in the face of my father’s anger. Or slink back to my bedroom, hoping he’ll forget I’m up there.
Instead, I hold his gaze from where I sit and say, “You heard me, Dad.”
Keeping my voice just as steady as I imagine FJ would if he were in my position, I repeat myself.
“I’m taking over as the Detroit pack’s alpha in FJ’s stead. That means no more wedding rituals of any kind without the bride’s consent. And no more brandings, period. From now on, if someone wants to show they belong to our pack, they can get a tattoo just like me. And as long as we’re on the subject of things that will be changing around here…”
I turn my eyes away from my father and address the other four wolves at the table. “I’ve decided our pack will also be co-sponsoring an initiative with the Kingdom of Oklahoma.”
I think about the long call I had with my cousin Tu, the outrageous queen of Oklahoma. As outspoken as she is now, she suffered for a very long time because her first son didn’t survive childbirth.
“Tu and I have both lost people we love because the doctors in our communities are so behind the times when it comes to childbirth. So we’ve decided to put more she-wolves through medical school so eventually every state pack can have an on-call OB/GYN. It’s time we started investing more into making sure our she-wolves and their young survive childbirth.”
Uncle Ford, who lost both his Inuit wife and mother to childbirth, nods in support of this idea.
But Dad comes all the way out of his seat.
“Nobody’s going to support that!” he sneers with a rough shake of his head. “Every Dark Wolf in this pack is going to turn on you if you try to do any of this shit you’re talking about.”
My eyes flicker up to the angry wolf at the other end of the table. And I take a deep breath.
“Luckily, I don’t need their support. I’m the Detroit Alpha now and FJ left me with a multi-billion dollar endowment. That means this pack is no longer dependent on the Dark Wolves or their shady businesses.”
I come to my own feet at my end of the table as I inform him, “I don’t need anybody’s approval for anything I do, Dad. Yours or your fucked up crew. In fact, you can keep the Dark Wolf gang. Stay on as its president if you want, because I don’t want the title. From now on, I’m the alpha of Michigan and that title is going to stay totally separate from what Dark Wolf has going on.”
“But you’re a female!” Dad practically spits back at me. “A female can’t be an alpha.”
“Funny you should say that,” I answer, tipping my head to the side. “Because I had a seriously illuminating conference call with Janelle and Alisha a couple days ago. And according to them, nowhere in our laws does it say a female can’t be an alpha. Everyone just assumes it’s against the law because a she-wolf has never taken over a pack for fear of being challenged for the throne.”
“And what do you think is going to happen when you start making all these changes?” Dad asks. “Wolves going to be coming from all over to challenge you and get they hands on that multi-billion dollar throne you so proud of now. Unless you manage to get the best beta on earth, you going to lose our pack before you even have a chance to do anything with it.”
I frown as if I’m seriously considering his words.
“That’s true, I’ll lose the pack as soon as anyone beats me in a challenge fight,” I say in a sorrowful tone.
“That’s what I been trying to say. That’s why we gotta—”
I cut off Dad’s smug reply with, “But if anyone’s good enough to beat me at Viking Shifters, then I think I actually deserve to lose my throne.”
Dad falters, his angry scowl loosening as he asks, “What’s that stupid game got to do with it?”
I pull up the documents Alisha sent me on my tablet. “Here’s the exact wording of our state Alpha Law: ‘When Challenge is given to the State Alpha, the alpha is allowed to pick the weapon by which the match will be fought. The match must be fought to the death. The winner of said match will then be considered State Alpha going forward.’”
Dad frowns, looking even more confused. But Clyde, who’s sitting to my left, immediately puts it together. “You’re going to use a game controller as your weapon. And technically every game of Viking Shifters is a fight to the death.”
“Exactly,” I answer, beaming at him.
He smiles back at me, only to break off with a frown. “What happens when the North American Territories change the laws, so every pack king doesn’t try to use a videogame to get around having to fight?”
I shrug. “That will be unfortunate for any other she-wolf who wants to rule like I will. But according to Janelle, I’ll be grandmothered in, so I’ll be alright.”
My father slams his hand down on the table, drawing everyone’s eyes back to him. “I can’t believe this! As much work as I put into this pack, and this is how you going to repay me?” he yells. “By making us a laughingstock?”
“I’d rather be laughed at than let the cruelty we’ve become known for continue one minute longer,” I answer with a glare.
“How about your brother?” Dad asks. “FJ and I made a deal. Plus, I pretty much already told everybody it would be him taking over until your man got back.”
“First of all, you shouldn’t have made promises you can’t keep since you no longer have the authority to do so. As queen of the pack, I’m the only one allowed to speak for my husband. That’s a very old law even you can’t get around,” I tell him. “Second of all, you are no longer in charge of what Clyde does. Neither of us are.”
I turn to Clyde. The brother who inadvertently saved me from my father’s plans by fucking my ex-fiancé at our engagement party. And you know what? I feel nothing but love for him as I say, “You’re really good at Viking Shifters, so if you want to stay on as my beta, you can do that. But if you want to be with Kyle, you can do that, too. Whatever you want, I’ll support you. I just wish I’d told you that sooner. And I wish you’d trusted that I’d accept you no matter what. Because I’m your sister and I’m always going to have your back.”
Clyde’s face softens but Dad gets all up in our warm fuzzies. “How about if he wants to take his rightful place as the Alpha of Michigan—the position he’d be holding right damn now if them Viking wolves of yours hadn’t come along?” he demands. “How about that, huh?”
I look at my brother. “Is that what you want, Clyde? What you really want? Because if it is, I’ll support you, even in that, as long as you back my initiatives.”
My father screws his face up. “What? No, he ain’t backin’ none of that damn mess!”
“I don’t want it,” Clyde says and he comes to his feet, too. “I don’t want to be king. I never have. Especially not here in Detroit.”
“What!?” our dad all but screeches. Then he resets, going back to his Dark Wolf Prez voice. “Listen here, boy…”
But Clyde doesn’t seem to hear him. For the first time ever, he seems to be having his own thoughts and his whole face lights up with happiness as he speaks his own mind. “I want to be with Kyle. I don’t know how or where, but I love him, and I want to be with him.”
I give him a gentle smile. Loving him more than I ever have in my life because it now feels like I truly know him.
“I’ll help in whatever way I can. Just let me know.”
“Thanks, Tee,” he says with a wide smile.
“Nah! Nah! This ain’t how it’s going to go down,” Dad yells.
“Calm down, Wilt,” Evelyn says, standing and trying to grab his arm.
But Dad jerks away from her, his hand still on his gun. “Nah! You think I’m going to let her destroy everything I built? Everything we worked for? Over my dead body—”
I hear the sound of a gun cocking beside me. “Over your dead body? That can be arranged.”
Uncle Ford is now standing, too. With his gun pointed straight at Dad. It’s a relatively small glock in comparison to Dad’s dramatic sawed off, but it does the job of making Uncle Ford’s words ring true.
“Uncle Ford!” I say, completely shocked. “What the…?”
But my dad stands tall, his eyes blazing. “You wouldn’t. I’m your brother!”
“And I’m her father. I left her with you because I thought that was the way it had to be.” Uncle Ford shakes his head with an ugly frown. “But that girl there has taught me more about choice and freedom in the last few minutes than you or Dad ever did in all my life. I didn’t think I had a choice when Dad made me go to Alaska, but I know I have a choice now.”
He nods sideways toward Clyde. “Thanks to my daughter, this boy of yours don’t have to hide who he is no more. And I don’t have to live the rest of my life with her calling me uncle, like I’m a goddamn distant relative. She’s my daughter, and if she lets me, I can finally step up and be the father she deserves.”
I lower my tablet, not even beginning to understand. “Uncle Ford—?”
“Don’t call me that!” he bites out. “Don’t ever call me that again.”
“But…I’m not your daughter. I mean, I can’t be…”
But even as I say it, the words feel false in my mouth, like I’ve just told a lie without realizing it. I look at him. Really look at him.
His deep-set eyes, so much like mine. His awkwardness and his inability to meet other people’s gazes. And most of all, his determination to help me. In Alaska, and here. And suddenly I know exactly why he came to Detroit. He came for me. Because I’m his daughter.
“You were right,” he tells me over the gun he still has pointed at the man I thought was my father. “My brother didn’t love the she-wolf he was engaged to. But I did. And then she went into heat while I was home, visiting for Christmas.” His eyes go dark with the memory, and eventually he says, “Anyway, you wasn’t the first she-wolf in this family to be mated by two brothers. But our dad wouldn’t let it be. He made me go back to Alaska, convinced me the best thing I could do for the pack was leave and let everyone believe both babies she was carrying were Wilton’s.”
The Alaska beta’s face sours with memory. “He was always suspicious about how close me and Wilton was growing up. That’s part of the reason he didn’t let me stay here and be his beta.”
How close they were…
“The Brother Bond,” I whisper, putting more and more of it together. “Can you and Dad—I mean—can you and your brother hear each other’s thoughts?”
Despite the stand off, the two brothers exchange a look, the kind I’ve come to recognize after my time spent with FJ and Olafr.
“Used to,” Ford—my father—answers. “But not after your mother died. After that, I went a little…crazy. But our dad still wouldn’t let me come home, even though Tikaani’s five-year challenge term was over. He said if too many people smelled you and me in the same place, they’d put two and two together. That’s why I never came to visit here with Wilma and her daughters. Pop pretty much banished my ass to Alaska. After your mama died, he told me to stay there and mate with another she-wolf. So eventually I did. I listened to him like a damn fool, instead of coming back here for you.”
Wow. Lupine Council law, which I was scary familiar with now, stated that a state king could only be challenged during the first and last five years of his reign. Clyde and I were born five years after Aunt Wilma and Uncle Tikaani got married, which means if my father—my real father—wanted to resign from his beta job and come back to raise me as his own, that would have been the time to do it.
And that was exactly what he’d tried to do after mating with my mother, I realize with a start. But those were different times then. Wolves were even less understanding of those who were different than they are now. And I know for a fact my granddad ruled over his sons with absolute authority back then.
My real father looks away from his brother to throw me a sorrowful look. “I didn’t want to abandon you. But my head—I wasn’t in no kind of place to raise you, and your mama and me...we was never officially, you know, mated. Officially, your mama married Wilton, took his brand, and I didn’t have nothing to do with it. Nobody knew what actually happened when she went into heat, that both of us…”
“I understand,” I say. In more ways than one. About why he hadn’t been fit to raise me. I think of my reaction to the news of FJ and Olafr not coming back from the Dragon Battle. And I feel so sorry for Ford, because it would have been even worse for him with no marriage certificate or official brand or any acknowledgement whatsoever to back up his claim to the she-wolf he’d lost. Just me. A squalling baby who’d just lost her mother and could easily be claimed along with my twin by my uncle, the Detroit alpha.
I am nothing like your father.
I finally understand why FJ took so much offense at that.
“FJ knew, didn’t he?”
Dad—I mean my uncle, Wilton, nods once, his jaw tight.
“That brother of his has a good nose. He smelled your connection to Ford right off the bat. But I made it a condition of your marriage contract that they couldn’t tell you.”
Do you think I wish to keep secrets from you? So many things I promised. For you. Only for you.
Of course he’d made FJ promise to keep me in the dark. I stare at the man I thought was my father. So much like his own father it feels like I’m staring at a carbon copy of the wolf who so callously decided his younger son’s fate thirty years ago.
Then I turn to my real father, willing to kill his own brother to keep me safe…and I forgive him in an instant.
We have so much in common. Not just the superficial stuff, like our introversion and our eyes. But also the deeper stuff, like our inability to deal with real life. Which led both of us to allow Wilton Greenwolf to have way too much power over us for way too long.
“It’s okay, Dad,” I say to the shifter holding the gun. “I understand and I forgive you.”
“No, it’s not okay. I don’t deserve your forgiveness!” My real dad shakes his head, and there are tears in his eyes as he continues to point his gun at his brother. “He don’t deserve you as a daughter. Trying to keep you under his thumb. For what? To protect his damn pride? Because he can’t wrap his head around having a gay son? Bigger damn fool than me.”
“Put the gun down! Right now, motherfucker.”
I curse myself then. Because Yancey, who was sitting on the other side of Ford, has somehow managed to pull out his gun, too. The chances of this family meeting not ending in bloodshed are dramatically decreasing by the second.
“No, Yancey, don’t shoot!” I say.
“Put the fucking gun down!” Yancey says to Ford again. Then he racks his sawed off, letting him know he means business.
“Dad…Dad,” Clyde says, looking down the table at the man who, as Olafr would say, ‘smelled like him.’ “You’ve got to tell him you won’t go after Tee. You’ve got to tell him or he will kill you.”
But Dad keeps his hand on the butt of his sawed-off. “Nah, nah…it can’t end like this.” His eyes meet Clyde’s. “I made a deal so you could keep your pride, so nobody would ever have to know.”
“Dad, is that what this is all about…?” Clyde shakes his head, his whole face filling with pity. “Because I’ve got my pride. I’m good. I know who I am and I can live my truth now, thanks to Tee. Trust me, that’s all I need. All I ever wanted. Now please, tell Yancey to back down.”
Dad, stubborn as a damn mule, just stands there. Arms crossed, refusing to give anyone any damn thing.
Clyde turns to Yancey. “Please, man—you’re family to me and I don’t want anybody in this family to get hurt more than they already been.”
Yancey looks from the wolf he thought would eventually take over Detroit to his former alpha, begging my father with his eyes to let him stand down.
But Dad doesn’t move and he remains murderously silent.
Just when I’m starting to think I’m going to have to throw myself across the table between Ford and him, Yancey surprises the hell out me by lowering his gun anyway.
“Do you want to tell them, Ev, or should I?” he asks my aunt.
“We don’t have to tell them any of that,” my dad—uncle, rushes out. The hard look has dropped off his face and he suddenly seems less like an MC prez and more like a guy scared to death of whatever Yancey and Evelyn are about to say.
“Tell us what?” I ask, more than a little curious about what other information might be coming to light during this meeting.
Wilton turns a hostile glare toward me. “Fine, you can be the alpha king—or queen bitch—I don’t care what you call it. I’m backing down.” Then he says to Yancey. “We don’t have to tell them nothing.”
“I think we do,” Yancey replies, his voice grim. “Looks like this is the part in the discussion where all the shit comes out the kitchen sink.”
“You got that right,” Evelyn says with a wry chuckle.
“Tell us what?” I ask again. My eyes bounce between Yancey and Evelyn, unable to believe there could possibly be another secret in this family’s closet
“The reason he can’t hear his brother’s thoughts any more,” Yancey answers. “The Brother Bond, or whatever you call it—that ain’t necessarily always between brothers. Say two best friends fall for the same she-wolf. Maybe they start hearing each other’s thoughts. Think they’re going crazy and then they realize…”
“It’s because they both want her,” Evelyn finishes. “Even if she can’t share their mind… or have children.”
“You know I never cared about that, baby,” Yancey says to Evelyn. To my everlasting shock, Yancey Lobo, the toughest wolf I’ve ever known, throws Evelyn the most soulful look I’ve ever seen. Then he half-grins and says, “Plus, Wilt’s already got two.”
“One now,” Wilt grumbles.
“She’s still yours. You know that,” Evelyn answers with a laugh. Then for like the first time ever, she actually throws me a fond smile. “And this girl we raised up is all the way grown now.”
Yancey agrees with a laughing nod. “Did you see how she read Wilt the law? I mean actually pulled out her device and read that shit to him?”
Now both him and Evelyn are laughing while the man I thought was my father, but is really my uncle and I guess Evelyn’s other husband—WTF?—shakes his head. “That bitch literally read me. Don’t ya’ll dare laugh. Don’t ya’ll dare…”
But then he has to stop chastising them, because he’s laughing, too.
“Dad’s gonna be so pissed. At all of us. But he’s the one who made me agree to the deal with them yella Viking brothers. I wish I could see his face when I tell him about this.”
“He might have a heart attack and die!” Evelyn wheezes out. She’s laughing so hard there are tears in her eyes.
“Finally,” Dad and Yancey say in unison.
Which only makes the three of them laugh harder.
While Ford, Clyde, and me are left standing there, like aliens have just crash landed right in the middle of the dining room.
After a few open-closes of my mouth, I say to Ford, “Seriously, put the gun down.”
“But—” Ford starts.
“If you ever want me to call you dad again, put the gun down right now. We’re family,” I say, still staring at the three wolves cracking up at the other end of the table. “A really strange, crazy shifter soap opera of a family, but family nonetheless. Put the gun down.”
Ford puts the gun down.
And I throw myself into his arms, hugging him with everything I have.
An awkward hesitation and then I feel him hugging me back just as tight. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”
I nod against his shoulders, forgiveness flowing out of me like a river. Then I say to the rest of my family. “C’mon, get over here. We’re going to try to do one of those big family hugs like Aunt Wilma’s family.”
That brings the laughing to a complete halt and I’m met with a lot of groans. I get the feeling nobody here, including Ford, particularly approves of how far Aunt Wilma has drifted from her roots since moving to touchy-feely Alaska. But eventually, the wolves start giving in one by one.
Clyde comes first, wrapping his bulky arms around me and Ford. Then I feel Evelyn’s much thinner arms circle around all three of us, and then Yancey, and finally the wolf I’d thought was my father.
We all stand like that for a while, in a weird hug that smells of wolf, leather, and gun oil.
Then comes my former father’s voice. Quieter than I’ve ever heard it.
“I was only trying to keep us protected,” he says. “You think I didn’t love her, Ford, but she’s my daughter, too. I would have died if anything happened to her or Clyde. And I knew the pack wouldn’t accept him if they knew he was gay. I thought I was doing what was best for everybody. I told you back then I’d raise her like she was my own, and I’m telling you now: everything I did was to keep these two protected.”
“I know, man, I know,” Ford says.
And I can feel forgiveness flowing out of him as well.
Which I guess means I have two dads now, along with a stepmother-aunt…and whatever the hell Yancey is. Uncle-in-law? Okay, I’ll figure it out later. Right now, I focus on the hug. Because for the first time in like—well, forever—it’s feels like I’m actually part of a real loving family.
Thank you, FJ and Olafr, I think. Because none of this would be happening if not for them.
I’ve totally forgiven the brothers for leaving. But I’ll never get over them. They are the only wolves I’ll ever love, and I’ll never settle for anyone else like Ford did. Which means I’m going to need this family going forward.
Yours always. I think of my two mates as I hug the family they’ve unexpectedly given me to sustain me through their loss. Yours always.