Page 18 of The Forbidden Wolf

“But if I do…” Kiana leaned over as much as the dress would allow and took my face in her hands. “You must be prepared to protect what has always been ours, Elyse, and you will be better equipped to do so with Blaze at your side.”

My mouth fell open. “You want me to claim the Bronx Throne?!”

“Well, of course I don’t want that,” Kiana snapped. “It’s mine. But if I’m unable to defend it, then you must do so in my stead. You could never defeat a challenger by yourself, but if you’re mated to Blaze, and I mean that in the fullest sense of the word, then he would be allowed to fight in your stead. You would become the Alpha, your pup would become the Alpha Heir, and control of the Bronx would remain in our family where it belongs.”

Chapter Eight

“My sister is insane,” I hissed into the tailor’s phone, which I had kinda sorta casually slipped into my back pocket before exiting the fitting room seven hours earlier. “I know I’ve said that before, Charlie, and I know you’re going to want me to say more, but I can’t, I’m sorry, you’re just gonna have to trust me, alright? She’s really lost her mind this time.”

The silence on the other end of the line lasted so long that I pulled the device away from my ear to make sure we hadn’t been disconnected. But the digital counter remained on the screen, ticking away the time spent on the call. Three minutes and seventeen seconds, eighteen seconds, nineteen…

“I’m going to need you to say more, Elyse,” Charlie replied at last. “You’re calling from a stolen phone.”

Groaning, I flopped down on the nearest rattan sofa and raked my free hand through my fluttering hair. “I’m going to return it.”

“That’s nice, but not really what I’m worried about.” Charlie paused, and the line crackled with her exhale. “Tell me the truth. Are you in danger?”

I closed my eyes, blotting out the rooftop patio’s breathtaking view of Manhattan’s twinkling buildings jutting up against the purple bruise of twilight. Charlie’s question danced around me like a plastic bag caught in a never-ending breeze, daring me to finally pounce and pin it down. But what could I say?

“Tell me a story,” Charlie said.

“Huh?” I opened my eyes just to scrunch my forehead.

“Tell me a story about what’s going on.”

I rubbed the tender spot between my eyes where all my fears and frustration liked to get together and party. Lights flickered in my peripheral vision, as they often did when my stress levels peaked. “I just can’t, Charlie. I’m sorry.”

“I know. So, don’t tell me what’s really happening,” she said. “Tell me a story.”

“Oh.” My lips froze around the shape of the word. Slowly, I pushed off the couch and walked to the edge of the roof, scratching the back of my head. I understood exactly what she meant, but I had no idea how to go about transforming my facts into fiction that she could understand. Should I make it about the mob? A cult? A futuristic corporation that meddled far too much in the lives of its employees?

Leaning on the concrete banister, I gazed down at the streets my pack ruled but rarely walked on. The sidewalks were teeming at seven o’clock on a Saturday night, normal human beings on their way to dinner with friends or a downtown date or the evening shift at one of the many restaurants offering up their pantheon of global aromas to the sky. Cars and buses full of even more people rushed down avenues built atop tunnels full of trains carrying somehow even more. How many of them hated me without knowing me? How many wouldn’t believe I existed unless I walked into their office and shifted right in front of them?

I inhaled sharply, suddenly remembering what that TV writer had said about using the paranormal to enhance her human stories.

Don’t you dare.

I shoved away from the banister and paced back to the sitting area, circling the empty iron fire pit. Nearly a hundred new moons had passed since the last time Father brought Kiana and I up here to roast hotdogs and marshmallows while he told us the Old Stories about Halo and Leto and their wolf-man sons Chann and Marrak, who could create new shifters with their bite. None of us could do that anymore, if we ever actually could, but the myth lived on in human pop culture, and had probably inspired the ridiculous KEEP U.S. HUMAN slogan. Ironically though, the impossibility of turning humans into shifter via bite was one of the few things Alma Mater Animalis got right.

“Elyse?” Charlie prompted gently. “Are you still there?”

“Yeah.” I looked toward Manhattan, imagining Charlie perched on one end of the threadbare, second-hand couch that took up most of my friends’ living room, and then I sank onto the opposite end of the couch beside the fire pit. “So, there are these, um, werewolves…”

“Ooh! Werewolves!” The line rustled, and I knew she’d tugged a blanket over her lap. “Just like the show.”

“No,” I reflexively snapped. “Not like the stupid show.”

“You’ve never even seen it—”

“Charlie!” I barked. “Do you want to hear my story or not?”

“Sorry!” she squeaked, and I knew the exact face she was making, the same one she made every time we scolded her for talking during the movie. “Sorry. Go on. Werewolves of New York. Action!”

I told her about my parents and my sister and the pack. How we called the boroughs the Five Thrones, and how each Throne was sat upon by a powerful Alpha, who would pass the position down to his firstborn son unless he had no son, which was rare because most Alphas would insist on trying until their mate produced a male, and if she didn’t within a reasonable time frame, they might annul that mateship and enter into another.

“Like Henry the Eighth,” Charlie murmured knowingly, but I didn’t interrupt my flow to ask who that was. As it turned out, I liked telling stories almost as much as I liked watching them, and as I spoke, I found myself pacing the rooftop, burning with the energy of creation. Or the appearance of it, anyway.

I told Charlie how, for the last twenty years, the Bronx Throne had been forced to work twice as hard as any other Throne to defend its borders because all the other Alphas viewed Father as weak for not taking another mate after Mother died and left him with nothing but female heirs. And now he was ill. Which finally made it make sense why he’d ever embarked on this merger with Manhattan in the first place. Our bloodline had sat on our Throne longer than any other family in New York City, and rather than trusting Kiana to continue that legacy undefeated on her own, he had chosen to arrange her mating with another Alpha Heir.

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