“What are you suggesting?” the Chief drew me out, his words as sweet as honey, tantalizing me with that parental acceptance I’d always yearned for. I shivered, glad I’d already made this decision for the right reasons, not for the sake of a blessing that would never come.
“I’m suggesting that you turn Keith back over to this pack of misfits where he belongs and let me come home to live in your house and give you a real grandson,” I answered. Behind me, I could hear Wolfie shifting back to human form so he could speak to me, and I took a deep breath before firing the final arrow home. “I’m sick of living among halfies and humans,” I said, my words pointed toward my father, but aimed at Wolfie. “I want a real werewolf mate, not a bloodling.”
I didn’t look back, just trusted Chase to do as we’d agreed and to keep Wolfie from challenging the older alpha. I could hear a strangled moan, muffled by werewolf hands, as Wolfie fought to speak, but I stood firm, filling my head with images of the yahoos and Keith joking around in the compound’s living area. This is the only way, I thought toward Wolfie, and my focus was so firmly behind me that it took me a moment to realize that my father was laughing.
“Bravo!” he proclaimed loudly, clapping one huge hand onto my shoulder so heavily that I staggered back a step. “Very commendable, very nice. But,” he added, lowering his voice and letting the alpha dominance creep into his tone, “what’s to keep me from hanging onto young Keith just in case you don’t make a good mother?”
Silence hung across the green as werewolves on both sides held their breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “I guess that’s just a gamble you’ll have to take,” I said quietly, “if you want my willing cooperation.” There it was, my counter-bluff. I was sure … well, almost sure … that my father had set up this whole painful charade to win me back over to the Haven way of life. I had realized one dark night while waiting for this endless week to be over that my father had to know that I was the only one of his children who had inherited his cold-blooded control. I was the one who had left home, severing all ties, not even writing back to the family the way Brooke had. I was the one who had found a way to squash my wolf, consequences be damned. Of all of his children, I was the one most like my father, and Chief Wilder would want that wolfishness passed on to his heir.
Or so I hoped. Because if my father didn’t care about my willing cooperation and chose to keep Keith as a backup, I had no plan C. This was it—my entire hand played in one fell swoop.
There was a scuffle behind me as Wolfie broke free of his pack mates and called toward my back. “Terra, you don’t have to do this!” he promised, true warmth in his voice despite the disdain with which I’d spoken of his pack. My father raised his brows, and I knew this was my final test, the Chief’s way of determining whether I truly was as cold-hearted as I was pretending to be. So, even though I couldn’t bear to see his face, I turned to face the wolf I loved as I threw the bitterest words I could muster back at him.
“You’re just a bloodling, Wolfie. I deserve a man as well as a wolf.”
Chapter 16
It all happened so fast, I could barely take in the scene. With an anguished howl, Wolfie retreated back into his preferred canine form, the yahoos piled on top of their alpha to hold him in place, and Chase yanked a slip-knot-looped rope around his friend’s neck. Unlike the piddly collar Wolfie had been wearing when I first met him, this was a real restraint, but the alpha still lunged against the rope repeatedly, snarling as he tried to break free. My heart felt like it was bound to break in half when Wolfie finally collapsed into a panting heap on the ground, his eyes still trained on me and my father. It was unclear whether the young alpha had been trying to tear out my father’s throat … or my own.
In the ensuing silence, Chief Wilder’s booming laughter rolled out across the green, and I struggled not to let tears come into my eyes. Wolfie’s reaction had been even worse than I’d imagined, and I ached to think of the sores he must have rubbed around his neck. Even worse would be the intra-pack strife when Chase finally let his friend free back in their compound, and I regretted that there hadn’t been some way to achieve the same goal without enlisting the beta’s aid.