Some alpha I was. Couldn’t even take care of myself, much less my pack. Disgusted with myself, I hopped out of the car and onto the gravel driveway.
The scent of the evening air carried with it the faint hint of rain, a stray cat or two, and the sour smell of the garbage cans around the back of the house. I mentally berated myself for not putting out the cans – I’d never done it before. Cash had taken care of it, and I’d forgotten which days were garbage pickup and which weren’t. Now I’d have to smell two-week old milk. Ugh. My wolf-nose could smell it from all the way across the yard.
With my car under the carport, I hurried to the front door, stomped up the wooden steps and the wrap-around porch of my father’s three-story house, and locked the door firmly behind me. There was no scent of anyone recently nearby, but it was hard to tell, since my property always smelled like wolves.
The interior of the house was equally depressing. Wilted bouquets of flowers covered every surface, filling the air with the thick musk of old, dried roses. I hadn’t bothered to get rid of them yet, and at least they masked the scent of the garbage outside. The walls were bare now, and it always startled me to see that and the faded spots on the wallpaper. I’d taken down all the pictures of Cash after he’d died, just like when Mom had taken down all the pictures of Dad when he’d passed on, and then I’d done the same when Mom had died a few months later.
Werewolves weren’t much for changing routines.
The house was a disaster – laundry piled up on every surface, some mine, some belonging to the pack kids. Some was Cash’s, but I couldn’t bring myself to touch it. Ditto the dirty dishes and stacks of pizza boxes – they crept over every inch of free space in the living room. I ignored all of it.
Inside the house, under the stink of rotting flowers, there was a bitter, musky scent in the air that I couldn’t place. I noticed it as I put down my keys and headed to my bedroom. It was very slight and I ignored it as I entered my study, flipping on the computer and sitting at my desk. Probably something else rotting. I wasn’t exactly going to win any housekeeper of the year awards at the moment.
And though I didn’t want to, I pulled my cellphone out of my pocket and glanced at the screen.
One message out of all three calls.
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled at that, and I suppressed the low growl that rose in the back of my throat.
I clicked the ‘Missed Calls’ icon. One number was Len, calling from jail. Probably wanting to know when I’d bail his ass out, and I wasn’t in a rush over that one – not while I didn’t have a male alpha securely at the head of the pack. Len had his eye on Cash’s old position, and I wasn’t eager to jump into bed with Len. Just the thought made my stomach churn. The next call was from one of the kids – surprise, surprise – Holly’s number. The most sensitive of my small pack, she’d been feeling out the waters on a regular basis, and I guessed that she was reporting back to the others if I’d gotten over my sorrow yet.
Not yet. I didn’t know if the ache in my chest would ever go away. My brother – and co-leader of our small pack – was dead. Car accident. Such a mundane thing to happen to a werewolf, but it killed him just as dead as any human. It left a sick feeling in my stomach every time I thought about it. I pushed it at the back of my mind, resolving to call Holly back shortly. The others wanted to know what was going on with their pack, and with the upcoming full moon.
By the time the full moon hit in a few days, I either needed to concede the pack to Roscoe and get the hell out of dodge, or find a new alpha before I ended up as Roscoe’s bitch. Literally. He’d usurp my pack in a heartbeat, leaving us helpless and bent to his will. He’d already made his intentions known, and just thinking of him taking over curdled the contents of my stomach.
The female alpha always mated with the male alpha.
There were a few exceptions, of course. Like siblings that were alphas. Myself and Cash had fallen into that category. Our father had been the alpha of the Savage Pack, our mother the female alpha. When they’d died, we’d moved into their places without a ripple stirring amongst our small pack. The Savage pack had always been an eclectic mix, but with turnover and deaths and some wandering away for a new pack, we suddenly found ourselves an incredibly young pack overnight. Len was two years younger than me. Holly, Spence and Trina were all young. Joanne was barely twenty before she’d up and left the territory behind because she couldn’t finagle the position of female alpha away from me. She’d left baby Eddie in Cash’s care as a replacement for her spot in the pack. That left Carlos, our omega. He was the only elderly person we had, and he’d been fifty before his death in the same car accident that had taken Cash. They’d been coming back from one of the Oklahoma casinos, both drunk as skunks, and ran off the road.
It had left me with a pack of children and grieving my brother’s death.
It had also left me vulnerable. As an alpha female with no male, I was at the mercy of the strongest male werewolf that came into our territory. As an alpha female, I could resist, but only for so long, before I succumbed to the stronger will of the alpha male.
And Roscoe had made it clear that he intended for my alpha to be him. I had a guess as to who had left me the message on my phone, too. With the sour taste of dread in my mouth, I clicked ‘Voicemail’ and listened.
“Hello there, sweet tits,” Roscoe drawled into the message, and I lost my breath. “You know what two days from now is, right? Full moon. Perfect time for a couple of alphas to get to know each other.”
“I just threw up in my mouth,” I muttered to the phone as the message rattled on.
“See, we both know how the law of the pack goes. Your wolves need a male alpha and a female alpha for things to run smoothly. Can’t function with just one, you know. And I happen to be a male alpha, and, well, pretty sure that you’re a female alpha. So maybe you should just accept fate and wear something pretty on the next full moon. I like my women dolled up—“
I deleted the message in disgust. Roscoe was vile. Worse than vile.
He was also correct. The law of the pack meant that if I didn’t do anything to find an alpha, he could show up and challenge for dominance on a pack run. If I couldn’t find anyone to out-alpha him, he’d assume my pack and I’d have no choice but to submit to him. A pack needed two leaders, and it especially needed a male alpha. I could exert my will over the men to a certain extent, but in the end, they’d constantly test dominance, and the moment I failed to dominate one of them, I’d be under him in all ways.
That was how it worked.
I hated how things worked.
The Windows chimes sounded on my computer as it booted up and I tapped in my password with shaking fingers. That a**hole Roscoe had known just how to bug me, to make me tremble with hatred and loathing.
Never had I felt so helpless and out of control.
My email dinged and I felt the dread well up again. Not email too? The messages in my box, however, were safe. A few emails checking in from the pack, and one from Midnight Liaisons. Probably my password or something.
When I clicked on it, though, I saw a personal message from Ms. Ward-Russell.
Ms. Savage, it read. All profiles have been updated with pack ranking. If you do a search for ‘wolves’ you should see all candidates with that designation and their ranking. I hope this helps you. Good luck and I will check back in a few days to see how things are going. – Bathsheba.
Well, well. Bathsheba had included a link to the Midnight Liaisons website at the bottom of the email and I clicked on it. The site itself was nondescript and comprised of blue tones and a familiar unity symbol that I recognized as the Alliance symbol. I typed in the username and password she’d assigned me and it moved into the website, displaying a list of featured profiles for the week. A harpy, smiling tremulously for the camera. A vampy-looking cat shifter. A were-boar that matched his creature – stout and hairy. Ugh. Nothing that appealed to me.
I clicked on the ‘My Profile’ link at the top. Ugh again. My hair looked unkempt and my eyes had dark circles under them. I’d lost too much weight and my collarbones stuck out. And men were supposed to look at this and want to date me? The woman in the picture looked skittish and strung out.
I’d noticed that Bathsheba had thoughtfully left my own pack ranking off my profile – I sensed that was a deliberate measure for privacy, and I thanked her mentally for it. Clicking on the search engine, I began to type in my criteria.
Male (duh). Werewolf. I left age, marital status blank – those didn’t matter half as much as finding an alpha that wouldn’t rape me and try to destroy me if he got a hold of my pack. I’d take an old geezer with a wife any day, just as long as I got to stay with my pack. Just as long as we were together. I could learn to be subordinate. I could learn to like a threesome.
I guess.
It was the subordination part that was really sticking in my craw. Even the thought of being subordinate to another alpha like Roscoe made me ill.
The hourglass on my cursor turned slowly, and I stared at a hair removal pop-up ad. A joke? It didn’t matter – two seconds later, thirteen profiles popped up on screen with small text boxes. The first one had a tiny picture attached to it, so I clicked on the profile.
The guy in the picture seemed decent looking – a bit more gray and whiskery than I’d care for, but he seemed stout and well-muscled (unless all that extra flesh was fat). His profile said he was in Texas, though I didn’t recognize him from any of the nearby packs. Not that we got along with any of those, mind you. Still, the man had a kind face, he wasn’t related, and he wasn’t Roscoe. He had potential.
There was a small flashing button at the bottom that said “New!” next to the field labeled ‘Pack Status’.
Drat. He was a beta. A strong second in command, but not what I was looking for. I closed the profile and moved to the next one. I had to have an alpha. I already had a bunch of boys that would make a great beta.