Page 5 of Her Fake Mate

“Elaborate.” Briony smiles.

“Very fine.”

“I think you need to understand what’s at stake here,” Thorne says slowly. I wince; it’s his ‘you’re-an-idiot’ tone. “This is my first big move as alpha since we moved to Oakwood.”

“Yes,” I nod.

I had been against it. We’re an old pack on new land. Recovering from the financial ruin that Thorne and Evander’s dad had done back in Alaska hasn’t been an easy task. Currently, we’re running cattle that better sell for a hell of a premium at the markets down in Denver. The vision is to make a kind of farm-to-table connection with a restaurant, so that we can charge them a premium for fancy beef. Which they, in turn, will charge a premium to cook for people.

Ranching isn’t an easy life, but it’s one that our pack is familiar with. What we need to do is break into an investment framework. We need to buy land. Houses. Territory. That way the pack will never have to escape again like we did in Alaska.

Plus, land will always have value. The value of it will always increase. It’s a much better plan than investing in beef.

I also hate cows, as it were. They stink, and they’re slow as hell.

Hopefully, the Jeep tour business the pack is working on pans out, too.

Thorne and Briony are staring at me like I’m expected to say something. “What?”

“It’s really important that the foxes are welcomed into the pack,” Briony says.

I raise my eyebrows at them. “Thorne’s the alpha. He said they were part of the pack. Now they are. How much more accepted can you get?”

Briony tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. “Did you know that three of the seven fox kits have been eating their lunches in the bathroom while at school?”

“Gross,” I say, thinking about how that would literally disgust me. “Who would choose to eat lunch in a literal puddle of germs? “

“Because they’re scared to eat in the lunchroom. Because the lunchroom has wolf pups. And the pups are bullying them,” Briony says slowly.

“Sounds like the teachers need to step up.” I shrug.

Thorne sighs. “Then, there’s the matter of the fact that a fox was almost caught stealing some moonshine for a certain group of teenage wolves.”

Fuck. “Almost got caught?”

He nods. “There’s a little tuft of red hair to prove it.”

That brother of hers. I growl. “I’ll keep him in line.”

“You don’t need to do anything crazy,” Briony says gently. “But I think it would be good if you could just… hang out with Mia more.”

“Hang out?”

“You know. Just be seen around town being friendly. Then people would think that you were on top of the situation, and you’re welcoming them into the pack.”

“And that you’ve got an eye on any would-be moonshine thieves, so the humans don’t end up with yet another teenage shifter in a rehab facility,” Thorne rumbles.

“No,” I say, a little harshly. “No,” I repeat, slightly gentler.

“No?” Thorne’s eyebrows are practically touching his hair.

“I don’t need to.”

“You’re our lead enforcer,” Briony replies. “And your family has been in the pack since the beginning.”

I grunt. That’s true. We can trace the Black family back a couple of hundred years, and it seems that all of those years were spent more or less within the same pack. We’ve been in the pack longer than Thorne Alderwood’s family has held the alpha title.

We just aren’t alphas. Never have been. Never will be.

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