Page 13 of The Forbidden Wolf

Both doors swung open so quickly that I tumbled face first into my father’s chest. Without looking up, I threw my arms around him. A grotesque sob exploded from my mouth and nose.

“Goodness,” said an oily, affected voice that was not my father’s rich baritone. “Whatever could be making you so… so rainy on such a sunny day, my dear?”

I jumped back into the hallway, swiping my face across the sleeve of the simple black tunic I wore over my shiftskin. My twin might feel comfortable strutting around like Catwoman, but I always opted for the more modest coverings most females chose to wear inside the high-rise. The loose tops and high-waisted skirts or trousers were sewn on site and designed to tear away easily in case of emergency shifting. Typically, females wore trousers prior to their first whelping and skirts thereafter to denote their change in duties.

I wasn’t quite done wearing trousers. No matter how ugly they were.

“Damian,” I tried not to infuse the Bronx Beta’s name with the complete and utter distaste I felt for him but judging from the slight falter in his big plastic smile, I had done a piss poor job. “I need to speak to my father. Now.”

“Mmm.” Damian pressed his thin lips together, along with all five fingertips. “While I would never dream of overstepping so much as to tell you no—”

“Then don’t.” I shoved past him into the apartment. Damian was the second most powerful male in our pack, but he was still beneath me. I might not have been highly regarded among all the wolves in the high-rise, but I answered only to my father and Kiana.

“Of course.” Damian bowed his head and swung his arm out in welcome behind me. “But I must warn you, your father is feeling rather out of sorts at the moment.”

I marched to the middle of the large but sparsely furnished living room. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out on the Manhattan skyline, halfway cast in shadow, halfway bathed in gold. It had always seemed a bit odd to me that you could see nothing of the Bronx from this vantage point, not unless you took the elevator all the way up to the rooftop deck and stood at the rail and looked straight down.

Please never do that again.

We’ll see how this conversation goes…

“Where is he?” I turned to face Damian with my hands on my hips. “I know he’s awake.”

Damian hesitated, rubbing his palms together with a dry swishing sound that set my teeth on edge. I was not a violent person, but there had always been something about that man’s sallow, clean-shaven cheeks that made me want to punch one and then the other. There was no particular thing he’d done to deserve my ire, but it had been thrumming in my veins since my first conscious memories of him as a child. I think it just bothered me how he was always hovering at my father’s side even during family time.

I wouldn’t have minded having a second male parent if that’s what made Father happy, and if that male treated Kiana and I like equally beloved daughters, but neither of those things could be said of Damian. He had doted on Kiana for as long as I could remember and far more than Father, who had always done his best to treat us exactly the same within the walls of our own home. There had been times when he had pushed Father to the point of losing his temper, but they always seemed to smooth things over. An Alpha is only as good as his Beta, Father would often say, to which Kiana had always responded, Or hers.

Damian gestured toward the spiral staircase leading up to Father’s bedroom loft. “But I really must warn you—”

I drowned him out with the clatter of my feet on the metal steps. Grasping the center post as I spiraled up to the loft made me feel like a young pup, racing up the stairs behind my sister to wake our father on Wolfmoon Day. We would fling ourselves onto his bed and bounce back and forth over his body until he sprung up from the sheets and tackled us into a tickle party. More than anything, it was knowing his private, tender, playful side that had made me feel like a princess. That part of him had only ever been for us. And Mother.

When I reached the top of the stairs, I stopped in my tracks, still gripping the center post behind me. Father had… gone back to bed? He sat with his back against a massive pile of pillows, arms resting on the outside of his sheets. At first, he seemed to be staring at something a little to the left and beyond me, but then he blinked and turned his face toward me. A tired smile cut through the neatly trimmed beard that hugged the strong angles of his face. A salt-and-cumin beard, I liked to call it now that flecks of white had appeared among his golden blonde whiskers.

“Elyse.” He held out one hand, which also somehow seemed tired. “It’s been a long time since I’ve known the joy of seeing one of my daughters standing there. Come.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

He waved a dismissive hand. “My eggs didn’t agree with me this morning.”

I eyed his red silk pajamas. “They must have been very surly.”

“Old age is a terrible thing.” He patted the side of his bed. “Now, to what do I owe this pleasure?”

I released the stairway pillar and stepped fully into the loft. “Then you admit that men in their forties are downright elderly?”

“Ah.” Father ducked his chin. “You’ve spoken to your sister then.”

My fingers curled into fists that ached to become paws. But then I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and channeled the essence of Rose Dewitt Bukater standing up to her mother. My fated mate might not be trapped on a sinking ship, he might not even exist, but I would freeze to death all by myself before I let Kiana bully me into this.

“I had hoped it was a cruel joke.”

“Cruel?” Father sighed heavily. “To secure you a strong and caring mate with proven devotion to his pups?”

“I don’t deny that Blaze is a good male,” I said carefully. “But that doesn’t make him the right male for me. Or me the right female for his situation.”

“There are no others,” Father said. “We are in thankfully short supply of high-ranking widows at the moment.”

“Then let him mate below his rank!” I snapped. “He already has five well-bred pups. He doesn’t require more. There are plenty of widows among the foot soldiers and unmated females among the servants. Let him find a companion his own age—your age.”

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