My father never made anything easy, so I wasn’t surprised to look out over the Haven males lounging around the green and to notice that both the Chief and my nephew were absent. Rather than becoming impatient, as I’m sure my father had planned, Wolfie simply pulled a trio of juggling balls out of his pocket and began showing off a skill I hadn’t even realized he possessed. The colored orbs whirred through the air, bouncing off Wolfie’s knee and dipping behind his back, and I soon noticed a couple of werewolf children peering out the windows of a nearby house, attracted by the spectacle.
The yahoos followed their alpha’s lead and started turning cartwheels on the lawn … very badly. Blaze and Fen knew what they were doing, but Glen and Wade seemed to simply be tossing themselves from their hands onto their backsides, then laughing uproariously. Despite Haven’s iron discipline, it didn’t take long for a few of my father’s younger enforcers to try to show our yahoos up, and I had a feeling we would have all been sitting down to a cordial dinner within the hour if my father hadn’t interrupted.
“Has the circus come to town?” Chief Wilder asked coldly from the steps of his house at the edge of the green, and every Haven youth immediately drooped his head in embarrassed submission. Our yahoos took a little longer to turn off their playfulness—in fact, I was sure I noticed Wolfie hold his hand to one side to encourage them to keep turning cartwheels for several seconds after my father appeared. It occurred to me that Wolfie had planned this whole charade, and the packless ache inside me grew stronger when I realized I’d been left out of the strategizing. Not that I had been around the compound much in recent days to give the pack a chance to include me.
“I could say something about the clown now being here,” Wolfie drawled, “but that would just be rude.” The younger alpha smiled slightly, my father’s brow lowered, and we all knew who had won round one.
With the ease of a well-oiled team, Chase stepped in to smooth over Wolfie’s insult. “We’ve brought the cash, as requested, and would like to see Keith to make sure he’s okay,” the beta interjected quietly, his eyes not quite meeting Chief Wilder’s. I couldn’t tell whether Chase really was cowed by my father’s dominance, or whether he and Wolfie were simply playing good cop, bad cop, with Chase’s submission part of his role. Either way, the beta’s lack of eye contact brought a bit of humor back into my father’s face, although his words were no more welcoming.
“Well now,” Chief Wilder began, matching Wolfie’s drawl—a speech pattern neither partook of in their normal lives, but which they seemed to think added a bit of dramatic tension to this exchange. “I’ve been thinking about that and I’m not so sure I want to part with young Keith. After all, blood can’t be bought. But if you just want to see him … .”
My father waved a hand back at the house and we watched in silence as Keith was frog-marched out the door and down the steps toward us. My nephew tried to smile when he saw our pack arrayed behind Wolfie and Chase, but I could tell he’d been crying, and his feigned bravery just made the boy seem younger. The tension on our side of the standoff ratcheted up a couple of notches, and Fen laid a calming hand on Blaze’s shoulder as the yahoo took an involuntary step toward his friend.
“Thank you,” Chase said carefully, turning away from Keith to keep his attention trained on Chief Wilder. “We’re glad to see he’s in good health … .”
“But not very well trained,” Chief Wilder spoke over our beta. “Spare the rod and spoil the child, I always say,” he continued. “But we’ll take care of that for you. Don’t worry yourselves over the matter.”
Before I realized what was happening, Milo struck Keith with an open-handed slap across the boy’s cheek and, in nearly the same instant, Wolfie exploded into canine form, pieces of fabric fluttering off in all directions. It took the combined efforts of Chase and Oscar to restrain their alpha from leaping for the other pack leader’s throat.
That was my cue.
***
“Is that really what you want, to start over and train a cowardly adolescent?” I asked, walking from the back of Wolfie’s pack up past our restrained alpha and across the invisible line that separated us from the Haven werewolves. I stopped mere inches away from my father, and looked him directly in the eye. “I don’t doubt you can break Keith, but what use is an heir with no balls?” I continued, ignoring the wounded look that flashed across my nephew’s face.
My father gazed down at me and smiled, the mirth flowing from his face to energize his entire body. I knew I was walking directly into his hands—this is what the wily old alpha had been angling for from the very first day he startled me on the trail—but the way I saw it, there was no solution other than to give Chief Wilder what he wanted. My father craved an heir that he could train up from the cradle the way he’d raised Ethan, and unless he was willing to look beyond his own progeny, my potential sons were the only choice he had. My nephew was far too old to be turned into the cut-throat alpha my father wanted—Keith had been a red herring all along.