Page 22 of The Awakened Wolf

The sneer in his tone hinted at something amiss, and I suppressed dueling urges to shift and go all Alpha on Archer and see what he said then, and to shrink into the farthest corner of the room where none of these males could smell me. I wondered if they were close enough now. I hated having to think about that.

I hardly felt mated any more as it was. It had been less than twenty-four hours since I’d been in a pink cloud of pleasure, and now the winds of reality had chased all the softness away. I was mated, and Sebastian was nowhere to be found. Kiana was right. I was in deep doggie doo-doo.

As I contemplated ways to get off the rocks and back away that wouldn’t look odd or cowardly, I was saved by the arrival of a breathless Cerys, who did a double take when she saw my twin and I standing on top of the playground.

“There you are, Your Grace,” she gasped. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. You have an urgent phone call in the War Room.”

Kiana jumped down and sauntered over to her helpmaid. It amazed me that my sister didn’t have a walk in her repertoire of movements. Everything from a sexy slink to a full-on predatory sprint, yes. But a walk? No. Too basic.

“From whom is this call that it was worth running yourself ragged?”

“It’s from the Acting Alpha Heir of Manhattan.” Cerys gulped. “Your Grace.”

Kiana paused. “And that would be?”

My sister’s effort to keep her face straight was admirable. The Guard, except for Atlas, seemed to perk up, flickers of smiles wending their way across their faces. These idiots were too shortsighted to understand that if things were going that sideways in Manhattan, it wasn’t good for us either.

“It seems to be the one called Kenzo, Your Grace.” Kiana whirled, grabbing my upper arm so hard I’m surprised the bone didn’t snap. “Come with me.” She pointed at Evan. “You too.”

Chapter Nine

I’d never given the Bronx Alpha’s office much thought when I was growing up, since I never thought I’d be Alpha, but after seeing Kiana’s apartment, I’d half expected to find secretaries on wooden stools scratching messages with quill pens. So I suppose it made sense that when I followed her through the frosted glass doors into a veritable shrine to technology, I tripped over a non-existent threshold. For a moment, my arms twirled in space like a cartoon before Evan grabbed my shirt from behind.

“Walk much?” His comment was punctuated with a devilish grin, but he still took care to see I was steady before letting go.

His care was the only reason I didn’t respond with an elbow. That and him keeping me from splatting face-first onto the spotless terrazzo floor. Still, it was easy for him to say. He hadn’t just walked through the Looking Glass. I stared open-mouthed at the digital wonderland I’d stumbled into right in the center of my pack’s home—a bastion to traditions so dusty even we didn’t remember their age. I mean, we used electricity and cars, of course. We weren’t Amish.

But mobile phones and computers?

Ummm, rare and rarer.

Streaming?

Nope.

Social media?

Hell no, why would we condone access to such morally bankrupt and wasteful silliness? That last part might have sounded like my father in my head. Possibly.

Yet here I stood, facing an entire floor that was a 21st century working office suite, with one long wall covered in floor-to-ceiling UHD screens so crisp my eyes watered.

A few newsfeeds were running at the edges, and in what seemed to be Kiana’s only nod to her decorating sensibilities, a digital reproduction of a Queen Victoria Grandfather Clock was displayed at the far-right side of the wall of screens. It produced a digital reproduction of clock hands ticking, the digital pendulum swinging to keep the time.

I turned my focus from the old-timey clock to the center screens, which displayed a massive map of the city marked with a handful of symbols. I didn’t know what they all meant but the four red “X”s in Washington Square park and many more surrounding Belvedere Castle needed no explanation. A shiver ran up my spine.I felt like Ally Sheedy in War Games.

At one end of the room several young male shifters with headphones tapped on laptops at a shared desk. Kiana nodded at them.“That’s our social media team.”

She said this like one would say, ‘This is the break room.’

Breezy. Nonchalant. Like I should know we had a social media team.

A few more airy gestures to knots of male shifters behind glass walls.“Sentiment monitoring. Cybersecurity. Crypto management.”

Holy Leto, make it stop. Crypto…? What Wall Street hustler had Freaky Friday-ed my Luddite of a sister?

Evan elbowed me. “What the hell, Elyse? You said the pack does no tech. So, what am I looking at and why the hell aren’t I allowed to stream Love Butter Island here?”

“I’m as floored as you. If a reality TV host doesn’t pop out at us in ten seconds, I’m out of ideas.”

---