He poured himself a glass of Scotch and stood in front of the window, his naked body bathed in moonlight. Tomorrow would be a full moon, and call it superstition, but nothing good ever came of a full moon.
He grimaced as the drink scorched its way down his throat. He swirled the Scotch in his glass and thought of another moonlit night decades ago when his aunt had been found slain. Lorenzo was just a boy then, but the murder marked a transition for his pack… and his family. A pool of blood had surrounded her open arms, empty of the infant she’d once clutched to her bosom. His uncle had blamed a neighboring pack, suggesting they had motive because of a land dispute. They’d laid Lorenzo’s aunt to rest on sacred land. Alone. His uncle had initially told the pack he’d found the dead baby and buried it somewhere on his land—the property in dispute—but suspicion rose among his men when their wolves were never able to sniff out the unmarked grave. It was only last year that Lorenzo discovered the infant had survived.
That baby was Alexia Knight, who also went by Lexi. After years of uncertainty, the truth had finally emerged. Lorenzo’s uncle, in a jealous rage, had hired a hitman to murder his wife and child. Not his child. The baby’s biological father was a drifter from up north. Had the facts gone public, the infidelity would have shamed his uncle and he would have lost the respect of his pack. Because no evidence led to the murderer, the incident became a topic of discussion behind closed doors. Lorenzo’s father had known about the affair, and rumors had cast a negative light on the immediate family—guilt by association. Even now, Lorenzo felt branded by the shame of secrets, betrayal, murder, and lies.
The hitman hadn’t been able to bring himself to kill the infant, so in a panic he’d kidnapped the baby and given it to his wife. Alexia had been raised by the human who’d shot her mother in cold blood.
Her father, Nelson Knight, had paid for the life he’d taken. Lorenzo had made sure of that. After taking him into custody, he’d released Nelson on the property and given him a running start before Lorenzo shifted and hunted him like prey. He gave Nelson the same thing his aunt had been given: no mercy.
Lorenzo set down his glass and folded his arms, cords of muscle tightening as he admired his land. His dark hair fell past his broad shoulders like a mane, and the moonlight accentuated the dark tattoo inked on his left arm.
A few wolves sprinted on the grounds below, and he squinted, making sure they were members of his pack. Packmasters established territories, and those who broke the rules and trespassed were subject to punishment from the pack. Rogues wandered in now and again, but Lorenzo made sure his wolves marked the property regularly to keep outsiders away. Shifters were protective of their land, women, and children. Not so long ago, they hadn’t been afforded such luxuries. The immortals saw Shifters as nothing but laborers; men had been chained, women violated. So modern comforts and organized law didn’t put Lorenzo at ease. The social order could turn on a dime, even among their own kind.
Wolves had worked hard over the years to secure land, and some of the other animals who hadn’t grew envious. A few years ago up in Oklahoma, a pack of twenty had been slaughtered and their territory claimed by a small family of panthers—a mated couple and their two grown sons. Without proof of what had occurred, the local Council assumed a personal dispute had led to war, so the panthers were permitted to keep their prize. Humans might consider it savage behavior, but they weren’t human. Their laws were stripped down to the basics.
Every so often, one of Lorenzo’s men broke the rules, and Lorenzo’s job as a Packmaster was to oversee punishment. Sometimes that meant trading him off.
Other times it meant death.
A light knock sounded at the door, the kind that came from the delicate knuckles of a woman’s hand. “Enzo, do you want some company?”
“Go away,” he said impassively.
“If you change your mind…” It was Rebecca, an alpha female with intentions of becoming the Packmaster’s mate. He’d rather trade her off, but she had taken a dominant role in the house. Men who didn’t fit in with a pack were much easier to trade off than strong women were.