Scion (Norseton Wolves Book 4) (2 page)

Vic didn’t agree with his father on most things. If he had to be perfectly honest about it, he’d have to admit they agreed on very little that didn’t have to do with the pack. The generational divide made them view life through different lenses, but Vic tried to at least understand where the man was coming from. His father was a damned good alpha. No one could dispute that—especially not Vic—but the man seemed to get way too many chuckles from making Vic’s life miserable on occasion. “
You’re my only son. It’s my prerogative
,” he’d always say.

Apparently, his newest
prerogative
was to set Vic up for a lifetime of matrimonial misery, and Vic couldn’t even rightfully bitch about it. His pop had always had a clear connection on the goddess hotline, and if the wolf goddess thought that Vic’s mate was the one who’d arrived reeking of some other alpha, Vic would suck it up. Eventually, his mate’s scent—
her father’s
—would go away. The rest of the shit that was wrong with her probably wouldn’t.

He knew her type—a pampered wolf, and from a pack with a reputation for making trouble. He’d done his research on all the women, just in case, but had kept his mouth shut so as not to make his pack fellows anxious. Every one of the four women that answered the mate call his pop had put out had to be chock full o’ neuroses, but none like the coddled wolf princess in his house at the moment. He just bet that while he was out doing his job, she’d gone through his house and itemized every little thing that didn’t meet her exacting needs.

Probably with her nose turned up
.

She was going to be in for a huge shock if she thought he had any desire whatsoever to subsidize her former lifestyle. Her father could send all the money he wanted, but if Vic didn’t like how she was spending it, he wasn’t going to be quiet. Too many alphas got their wealth from the dues they collected from the members of their pack. That money was supposed to pay into a salary of sorts, but it was also supposed to go back into the pack’s coffers to pay for community benefits. More often than not, though, alphas collected more and more money each year to maintain the lifestyle they’d become accustomed to, and none of the dues trickled back down.

He couldn’t help but to take it personally. When his father had been expelled from his birthpack along with his mother and a young Vic, the expulsion had not only been about his father’s threatening power, but about his resistance to paying more dues.

Life on the road wasn’t an ideal situation for any child—wolf
or
human—and after nearly two decades without a place to belong, Vic and his pack had finally found a permanent home. A
territory
for a bunch of unwanted, could-be alpha wolves. A different kind of pack.

Not like Ashley’s.

He stepped into the house via the garage door at around eight and found Ashley at the kitchen counter dipping a teabag into a mug.

He didn’t drink tea, but he recognized the scent. It was that stuff his mom blended and bagged herself.

Fuckin’ great. Mom’s been here.
He hit the light switch in the garage and closed the door behind him.

“So,” she said. “I’m Ashley, by the way.”

“Yeah. I know.” He knew everything he thought he needed to know about her already.

“All right, then.” She tossed the teabag into the sink and walked past him, sipping that cloyingly sweet brew.

His mom said it was good for nerves, but the powerful smell had always upset his stomach. He flicked the bag down the drain and chased it with some water as he let the garbage disposal do away with it.

“I’m a full moon shifter, by the way,” she said from the sofa and took a long sip of the tea.

“I’m aware of what you are.”
And who you are.

“Well, that’s good. Seems like you know far more about me than I do about you, though. Mrs. Carbone would only say so much. She said we’d have plenty of time to chat before the ceremony tomorrow morning.”

“Right. The
ceremony.
How could I possibly forget
?
” That was the way it always went. The women got their mates’ bites, which not only activated their ability to shapeshift into their wolf selves, but also changed their scents. They’d smell like their mates, and it’d be clear to any other male wolf that they were taken. Very soon after receiving their bites, most mated pairs were legally married. Not all bothered with the paperwork nowadays, but Vic’s mother would certainly insist on it. She was a bit old-fashioned.

“Ask your questions,” he said. “You want to know something, ask it outright.”

“You have a problem with friendly conversation? My, this’ll be a gold star relationship, for sure.”

He rolled his eyes. “I don’t have a problem with conversation. I just don’t believe in beating around the bush. Speak pointedly. I assure you that you won’t hurt my feelings.”

“Fine.” She shrugged, and leaned back against the sofa cushions, bringing the teacup to her lips for a long sip. “You seemed disturbed by my presence here. I just want to know why.”

“Okay.” He leaned his forearms onto the counter and steepled his fingers. “I asked you to speak pointedly, so I’ll do the same.”

She kept on sipping that tea, probably hoping she’d be a changed woman by the time she made it to the bottom of her cup. He wouldn’t hold his breath.

“I know about you. All four of you. When Dad approved the call responses, I was the one who did the background checks on you.”

“Obviously, whatever you found couldn’t have been so awful if you let me come anyway.”

“I hoped you’d be some other wolf’s problem.”

Her mouth opened, but no words came out immediately. She set down her teacup and folded her hands atop her lap. “I—
wow.
That wasn’t very nice. Why would you say that?”

Seriously?
He’d warned her that he was all about simple truths, so she shouldn’t have been surprised.

“I’m
not
a problem.”

“Aren’t you? You going to tell me your hands are clean of all the dirty shit your father cooked up for your old pack?”

Her bright eyes went from round as saucers to dark, narrowed slits as she slowly shook her head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. You might as well be speaking in code.”

“Of course you don’t. You don’t know anything about anything, I’m sure, exactly the way your father probably wanted.”

“I’m not sure what it is you think we did, but whatever it is, it has to be imagined on your part. My father never broke any laws.”

Vic entwined his fingers again and again, and stared at her.
Seriously?

She obviously believed that. That doe-eyed expression and wan complexion hinted to her being stunned, but he didn’t understand how she could possibly be. A woman of twenty-nine wouldn’t have been so clueless about her pack’s modus operandi. Vic’s little pack never made itself out to be anything but what it was—a group of unwanted losers who made their money doing dirty work. More often than not, they were on the right moral footing, even if they weren’t on the right side of the law. Ashley’s pack, though—there was no way to ignore what its leaders did. Too many people went missing, too many assets mishandled…too many wolves out in the streets, being turned away with empty hearts and empty pockets.

His father probably had his reasons for not telling Vic that Ashley was from their old pack before he’d run the checks. They’d been expelled along with all the other Eurasian wolves that had found safety in the group for so long. Maybe Pop had hoped—like Vic—that Ashley would go to Anton, Darius, or Colt, and the Carbones could pretend they didn’t know nothing about nothing.

Funny how the Fates work.

“Let’s just get this out of the way, shall we?” he asked.
Might as well get it over with.
Once mates showed up in response to a call, they rarely left, and if she was going to play dumb, he’d humor her.

“The bite, you mean.”

“Yep.”

She pushed the mug farther back on the overturned milk crate he used as a makeshift coffee table and fisted the hem of her T-shirt.

He shoved away from the counter and made his way slowly out of the kitchen and through the living room.

Her breathing sped, and cheeks glowed red as he approached. She may have finished the tea, but his wolf sense of smell said her adrenaline level was through the roof. She might have been still and feigned calmness, but he could read her fear—her tentativeness.

He wasn’t sure what she was expecting from him, but pissed though he was, he’d never hurt her. He might hurt her feelings, but that was to be expected given the Carbones’ history with the Madeira-led wolfpack.

He grated his back molars as he stared at her. The dark, glossy hair swept over one shoulder, the full, pouty lips currently pressed into a tight line, the curious grey eyes that held a glint of terror.

He might have been suspicious of her, but she was
afraid
of him. Hell of a way to start a relationship, but it was the hand they were dealt. He’d wanted a mate, and had agreed it was time for them to put out the call, but after the life he’d had, he’d really hoping for a mate he didn’t have to work so hard to get along with. Ashley was the worst possible scenario.

He let his incisors extend into his mouth, and before she had a chance to flinch, lifted her shirt and sank his teeth into the unmarred flesh over her high, taut breast.

And then he drew back, pressing her hand to her shirt hem for her to hold it out of the way of the blood.

He passed his tongue over his teeth as they receded into his gums and watched her expression shift from pain to curiosity to…

Nope. Not sticking around for that
.

He strode to the patio door and slid it open. “If you feel like you’re going to shift tonight, come on out. Make sure you take off your clothes when it starts, or I’ll have to cut them off you to get you out of the tangle.”

“Don’t feel like you have to do me any favors.”

“I’m not. Don’t worry.” He closed the screen door. Bare minimum was the way he was going to do it. He’d keep her confused wolf-self from flinging herself into any canyons, but beyond that, she was on her own.

He started around the path to his parents’ house. Obviously, they needed to have a family meeting.

Ashley didn’t remember much about what had happened after Vic bit her besides the fact that she’d been incredibly horny and things were kind of hazy. The horniness wasn’t surprising. She couldn’t have lived to be twenty-nine without knowing at least from hearsay what happened after a female wolf took her mate’s bite. Given the hormone surge activated by her mate’s enzymes, it wasn’t unheard of that she’d want to do her part in marking him, too. Her sex would mix up his scent just as his bite had done to hers.

But, he’d bounced. He’d left the house like he had fire in his pants and didn’t come back, as far as she could remember.

She must have shifted sometime after he bit her, but she couldn’t remember it. She’d woken up nude, curled into fetal position at the back door, and Vic had been in the kitchen—dressed, shaved, and staring at her through the glass as he sipped his coffee.

She’d stomped to the shower, and as she scrubbed the desert dust out of her hair, she cursed him up, down, and sideways.

“Fucking savage.” She tossed a twig from her hair over the shower curtain. “I could have stayed back east and endured this crap. What the hell is wrong with me? I should have walked away the moment he looked at me like garbage. Daddy would have found way to get me home. Daddy would have—”

She stopped scrubbing and let her gaze fix on the gray water swirling around the shower drain.

Vic had said awful things about her father. He’d accused him of being dirty—of treating his wolves badly.
Why would he think that?
Or rather, what had he learned during his so-called background checks? Her father had done his fair best to keep Ashley out of the loop on pretty much all wolfpack concerns. She wasn’t exactly sheltered, but in hindsight, there was no specific thing about the pack’s business she could speak intelligently on.

She resumed her scrubbing and turned to let the hot water strike her sore back. Evidently, as a wolf, she’d used muscles she didn’t even know she’d had.

“Could it be possible an outsider would know more about my pack than I do?”

If they had a reputation, she wanted to know about it. She wanted to know what people knew about her—the information she’d been shielded from.

She gave her hair one last rinse and nudged the water handle to the off position.

She’d never been a coward—or at least she liked to tell herself she wasn’t one. If there was something going on back at home, she’d find out what it was and make judgments for herself. She could certainly set aside her affection for her father to use rational judgment and common sense. She would have bet that some of the biggest monsters in history were kind to their daughters.

“Where are my suitcases?” She pulled her towel a bit tighter around her chest and held her head up high as she faced Vic in the kitchen.

He eyed her up and down and warmed his hands around his coffee mug. He gave her no words.

She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest.
Unbelievable.
“I’m sure you saw it all last night when I was writhing around out on the patio with no clothes on. Thanks so much of bringing me indoors and out of the elements, jackass.”

He shrugged. “Best you get acclimated to it. There will probably be a lot of evenings when you find yourself naked and outdoors.”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Well, you’d better get that wolf of yours reined in, then, because last night, you were all over the place, sweetie. Me and my cousin chased you across half the damn canyon, and let me tell you, the canyon isn’t so close to here.”

“Sorry for the inconvenience.”
Asshole.

“Your suitcases are in the guest bedroom. First door on the left, down the hall.”

She turned on her heel and growled.

“The ceremonies are in half an hour. I guess you’ll need your birth certificate and photo identification.”

“I’m surprised you still want to go through with it, given that you obviously despise me.” She padded just inside the door of the guest room until she found the light switch, and swatted it on. “Jerk.”

“Does that make you feel better?”

“What, calling you a jerk?” She laid the largest of her suitcases on its bottom and popped the latches. She’d tried to pack everything important into those bags and had fretted through both flight legs that she’d left things she’d intended to bring back in her apartment. Her father could have her things packed up and shipped, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to contact him just yet. She needed some time to figure out what was what.

“Yes. Calling me names when you think I’m not in earshot. Your hearing will improve, supposedly. I don’t hold out any hope that anything else about you will.”

“What is your
fucking
problem?” She rooted through the suitcase corner and found clean underwear…which made her wonder where the ones she’d had on the night before were.

“I’m hoping you won’t be a problem, but I’ve always been a realist.”

“Why did you even request a mate if you planned to be an insufferable shit to her?”

“I didn’t plan on being an insufferable shit, believe it or not.”

“Sure.” She stood, let the towel fall, and flicked her wet hair over her shoulder.

Scowling, he ran his hand over the droplets on his face.

Ha.

She stepped into her panties and grabbed a maxi dress from the suitcase. “I don’t need supervision. Go finish your coffee.”

“I think you
do
need supervision. Can’t trust what kind of trouble a Madeira will get herself into when she thinks no one is looking.” He backed into the hallway and bobbed his eyebrows. “But, hey. I’ll give you some space to tie your own noose.”

He walked away, and she stood there seething, and twisting her ninety-dollar dress into a wrinkled mess.

What does he mean about Madeiras and trouble?
“Hey! Come back here and finish the discussion. If you’re going to talk shit, go ahead and spew it all at once. You’ll feel better when you get it all out.”

She waited. Again, he made no response.

“Ugh!”

She stepped aggressively into her dress, and dropped to her knees to dig a pair of sandals out of her suitcase. Then she remembered what she was dressing up for—a
wedding
. She was about to marry that asshole.

Her second manic laugh in two days burst through her lips, and she gave her head a shake. “This is what wolves do. Oh my
god
, this is what we do.”

Mates stayed together, in spite of their incompatibility, because they couldn’t extricate their scents from each other. Reeking of some other wolf was a huge turnoff. Besides that, everyone knew that mated pairs tended to behave more like business partners than devoted lovers. No one really married for love. If she wanted love, she couldn’t look to a wolf to get it.

She drew in a long, bracing breath and wrung the top of her toiletry bag in her hands. “I’m gonna have to marry him anyway. Fuck.”

She couldn’t go home. If she went home, her father would have no choice but to pair her off with someone the day she arrived, and she wouldn’t have the luxury of being choosy. She had another man’s bite.

We could probably postpone the wedding…

At least, perhaps, until they’d worked out their enmity between each other, but it seemed pointless to her. She had a little money to live on her own for a while if she needed it, but when that was gone, there would be no replenishment unless she called her father. She couldn’t let her father know what why she needed it. There’d be questions, and she already had too many of her own already.

She pulled herself up using the dresser’s edge and let out a breath. “I’m so screwed.” Yet, she didn’t even understand what the contention was, and Vic didn’t seem particularly forthcoming about sharing.

In thirty minutes, she was going to become Ashley Carbone, and the wife of a wolf who probably wouldn’t even spit on her if she was on fire and there was no other water around.

She tossed the makeup into her suitcase and pushed her hair back from her face. “Why bother?”

He didn’t give a shit, so neither would she. And if he as going to give her hell, she’d do the same. She was used to getting what she wanted.

She just wasn’t so sure what it was she should be wanting, but she’d figure it out soon. Hopefully before she shapeshifted again for the evening and woke up the next day alone, wondering which way was up.