Gifted: A Holiday Anthology (10 page)

First two chapters of
Forsaken

The only thing worse than being summoned to a pointless meeting? Being summoned three thousand miles away to a pointless meeting when you’re about to embark on your annual family vacation.

Clay and the twins were in a lovely log cabin in Vermont. And me? I was sweating in a tiny oven of a meeting room somewhere in London. For absolutely no goddamned reason except that the British Alpha insisted I come, and I was trying to claw my way out of the hole I’d fallen into three years ago when I became Alpha of the American Pack.

“As long as we have your assurances that he’ll behave himself, he’s welcome in the States,” I said. “We won’t bother him.”

“I should hope not, considering he’s my son.” That was Hollis John Parker, British Alpha, Lord something-or-other. I could never remember his title. Nick called him Lord Asshole. Not exactly poetic, but apt.

“The fact that he’s your son doesn’t mean he isn’t . . .” I struggled for a polite way to phrase it. “Young and spirited. I understand the French Pack kicked him out of Paris for changing into a wolf in the catacombs?”

“He was a child then.”

“It was six months ago.”

“He’s eighteen now.”

And so it went. Parker’s son had been accepted to Berkley, and he’d summoned me to England to discuss the transfer, which I’d thought proved he was actually taking me seriously as Alpha, but as it turned out, he’d ordered me there because he seemed to be under the impression America was still a British colony.

He didn’t care to convince me his son could handle life abroad without another “Paris incident.” He expected my Pack to act as bodyguards for the boy. For me to order one of my guys to move across the country to do it.

Two hours later, I was striding down a London street with Nick beside me. When my phone rang, I yanked it out of my pocket so fast it slid from my fingers. Nick managed to grab it before it hit the pavement.

He started to hand it back, still ringing. Then he glanced at the screen and made a face. “Private caller. You want me to—”

“Please.”

He answered with a, “Hello?” Then another one.

“Hang up,” I said. “Bad enough I still get telemarketers when I’m on the do-not-call list. Worse when I get charged international rates for them.”

As soon as I took the phone, it rang again, Private Caller flashing on the screen.

“Okay,” I muttered. “Someone is about to get the brunt of my very bad day.” I answered with a snarled, “What?”

“It’s six o’clock,” said a sing-song voice. “Do you know where your puppy is?”

Click. I pulled the phone from my ear and stared at it. Then I laughed.

“Not a telemarketer, I take it?” Nick said.

“No, a kid making a prank call. My first in about thirty years, I think.”

“What’d he ask?”

“If I know where my puppy is.”

Now Nick laughed. “Okay. Well, I think we can declare the fine art of phone pranks has officially died out. That makes no sense.”

“Unless I had a puppy.”

“Do you want a puppy?”

“No, but I’ll take a drink.”

He smiled. “I have a feeling that’ll cheer you up better than a puppy. And that looks like a pub right there. Shall we?”

“Please.”

Alpha of the American Pack. The only female werewolf in the world, ascending to arguably the highest position in our world. Sounds impressive. The truth? It’s like getting elected town sheriff because no one else wants the damn job. And like taking it—not because you’ve always dreamed of being sheriff—but because, well, someone has to.

I like being Alpha. There are days—hell, even weeks sometimes—where I feel like I’ve found my place. Like I’m blessed with a damned-near perfect life. I’m forty-three, fit and healthy. I’m crazy about my mate, even when he
drives
me crazy. Same goes for my eight-year-old twins. I have great friends and an incredible Pack. And, of course. . . .
Alpha
.

I can say there were no other contenders, but the others would argue that they didn’t want the job because they knew it was mine, that Jeremy had been grooming me since I got my shit together and recommitted to the Pack thirteen years ago. The only other possibility had been Clay, who really didn’t want the job.

While he’d never admit it, I think Clay removed himself from the running so Jeremy didn’t have to make a very tough choice. Clay is perfect twentieth-century Alpha material. He’s the best fighter in the country—remorseless and relentless. Also brilliant. But that doesn’t fly in the twenty-first century, when Alphahood is more about politics than pugilism. Jeremy says he’d have given me the position anyway, but I’m not sure he could have done that to his foster son. I suspect it would have been a joint ascension—an Alpha pair, like in a real wolf pack.

Sometimes I wish he’d actually done that. Made us both Alpha. Because to most of the world, I’m a figurehead, placed in a false position of power to appease those werewolves who’d freak out if “that American psycho” got the job. We’ve spent three years unsuccessfully trying to convince the world Clay isn’t the real Alpha, and the situation has gone from damned annoying to downright dangerous.

We’ve made enemies of the Australian Pack, which is a lot scarier than one might expect. It started by us defending our own young Australian member—whose only crime seemed to be his very existence— and had somehow escalated into warmongering. The Australians wanted our territory, and they used me to gain allies, saying that even pretending to have a woman in charge proved the American Pack was weak.

The Australians have amassed an army of allies from smaller Packs, mostly third-world and developing countries who’d love a piece of the American dream. On our side, we had the Russian Pack. That’s it. Other Packs—French, German, Italian—support us in theory, but in practice, if we’re invaded, their troops are staying home and cheering us on from the sidelines.

The biggest problem is the Brits. They’re a big Pack and they’re spoiling for a fight, and they haven’t yet decided whose side they’d take. Parker has said there is a way to secure his help. Just let him deal with the real Alpha: Clay. And if my leadership isn’t a ruse, then I should
make
Clay the Alpha and step the hell down. I don’t dare tell him what I think of that suggestion, so all I can do is show up here without Clay in tow and try to prove I’m the real deal. So far, I’m failing miserably.

Noon the next day. Back in a meeting with Parker and struggling to hold my temper.

“I want Marsten,” Parker said. “Antonio Sorrentino has a better reputation as a fighter, but he’s old.” Beside me, Nick stiffened at the insult to his father. Parker smirked. Lord Asshole indeed.

“Karl Marsten has a wife and three-year-old daughter. He’s not moving to California for the school year.”

“Are you saying you can’t make him? That you would allow a Pack member to claim
family responsibilities
and ignore a direct order?”

That barb hit home. Of all my Pack, Marsten was the only one not completely under my control. I can boss him around better than Jeremy could, but if I was to
order
him to California for eight months? I’d fail.

“I could send Morgan Walsh for a month, to help Kevin get settled in.”

“Who?” Parker’s face screwed up. “Oh, yes. The
Canadian
.” He added a derisive twist to the word, knowing full well where my own passport came from. “He’s a nobody. I want someone with a reputation.”

“Reese, then.”

Parker sputtered. “Send my son to school with the Aussie brat at the center of this whole crisis? Not unless I want him to major in rape.”

I struggled to keep my tone steady. “Reese was seduced by the Alpha’s mate when they were in college together, because she wanted to secure her position by handing over Reese’s parents. Which she did. And the Australian Pack slaughtered them.”

“So Reese says. You believe him because he’s a confused young wolf and you’re a mother. It makes you susceptible.”

“Excuse me? If I had absolutely any doubt—”

Nick’s hand tightened on my leg. I had to calm down, and what made that even harder was knowing that if Clay was here, he’d go for Parker’s throat—figuratively and perhaps even literally. And Parker would respect him for that. If Clay snarled and raged, he was a proper werewolf. If I did, I was a hysterical woman.

“You can have Morgan or Reese for two months,” I said. “Or you can have Karl for one. Your choice.”

“Karl for the entire school year. September to May.” He smiled, showing his teeth. “Of course, he’ll get the holidays off, to visit his family.”

“If he goes for one month, his family will go with him.”

Nick murmured, “I’ll do it. Two months.”

I looked over. He nodded.

“All right,” I said. “Nick for two months.”

Kevin—sitting beside his father—snickered. “The omega? I’d rather take the retard.”

Nick shot to his feet, his face hard. “Don’t you—”

“—call you the omega?”

“I don’t give a damn what you call me, boy. But you don’t use that other word for
anyone
. Presuming you’re talking about Noah, I don’t know what you’ve heard, but he’s in college with an IQ of a hundred and ten, which I’m going to guess is about twenty points higher than yours.”

“Enough,” I said. “Noah has school, so he’s not an option. Nick is, and considering he sent Malcolm Danvers running, I don’t think you really want to call him the omega. Let’s cut through the insults and—”

“About Malcolm Danvers,” Parker said. “He’s still on the run, I hear.”

“We’re—”

“On the run for three years now, since he escaped Nast custody. Two years since Nicholas here found him.”

I tried not to growl. Parker knew exactly what was going on with Malcolm, because I’d kept him in the loop. When Nick and Vanessa tracked down Malcolm, she’d implanted a tracking device. But just because we could find him didn’t mean we could catch him, not without losing some of my Pack. Malcolm high-tailed it to Bulgaria, where the local Pack refused to extradite him.

For over a hundred damned years, the American Pack had little to no contact with our international brethren. Now I seem to spend half my time putting out cross-border fires.

“We’re handling Malcolm,” I said to Parker.

“Not very well.”

True, and if you’d get off your ass and pull your weight with the Bulgarians, maybe we could get the psychotic bastard extradited.

“Back to the point, again,” I said. “I’m offering—”

My cell started playing
Bad Moon on the Rise
. Clay’s tone. Our daughter, Kate, had set it up. She thought it was hilarious. The British Pack stared like I’d broken out in song myself.

“Interesting choice,” Parker said.

“My daughter’s,” I murmured, taking the phone. I looked at the accompanying picture. Clay with Kate—her choice again.

“It’s Clay,” Nick said. “And he wouldn’t interrupt unless it was urgent Pack business.”

Thank you.
“Right,” I said. “Sorry, but I need to grab this.”

I took the phone and hurried into the hall. I answered just as it was about to go to voice mail.

“Hey,” I said. “What’s—”

“Where are you?”

I paused. The voice on the other end wasn’t my mate’s Louisiana drawl, but a little girl’s, pitched high with annoyance.

“Kate?” I said, then lowered my voice quickly, before anyone heard me talking to my kid. “Is something wrong?”

“Yes. We’re on vacation. Our one family vacation a year. And you’re not here. You’re on business.”

I squeezed my eyes shut.
Not now, Kate. Damn it, not now.

Kate has always been very vocal in her objections to either Clay or me traveling. I could point out that ninety percent of our lives are spent at Stonehaven, where the kids have only to shout to find us. Jeremy says that’s the problem—they’re so accustomed to having us close that they get out of sorts when we aren’t. As they’ve gotten older, though, Kate’s complaints have softened. She understands why we leave, and she still doesn’t like it, but she’s more likely to tease and cajole than actually complain. Until now. My not-quite-nine-year-old daughter had apparently hit adolescent mood swings early.

“When are you coming home?” she demanded.

“Watch your tone. If this meeting wasn’t urgent—”

“It’s one week a year. One damned week—”

“Kate!”

She barreled on. “—and you can’t even be bothered showing up.”

“I will be home tomorrow,” I said, through gritted teeth. “Your father has my flight information. And you and I are going to have a talk—”

“Hard to do when you’re not here. You won’t be on that plane. You never—”

“I have never, ever missed a family vacation or any other important event—”

Kate let out a howl that made me jump. The line crackled. Another voice sounded in the background. Logan, who seem to have wrested the phone from his sister. Then Clay’s pounding footsteps and, “What the hell—?”

“She called Mom to whine,” Logan said.

A commotion in the background as Clay apparently trotted Kate off. Another crackle on the line, then, “Hey, Mom.”

I rubbed my face hard and forced a smile. “Hey, baby.”

“Sorry about that. She’s being a brat, which is nothing new these days. Hormones.”

“She’s too young for that.”

“Then she has no excuse, does she?”

I laughed and leaned against the wall. My kids. Neither is your typical prepubescent, but they’ve never been your typical anything. Having werewolves for parents pretty much guarantees that, but it’s their upbringing, too. In a Pack—wolf or werewolf—children are cherished and adored, but never treated like babies. It doesn’t help that despite all my efforts to socialize them they’ve never shown much interest in kids their own age. They have school chums, but mostly to humor me. They’re content with their Pack and with each other.

Kate has always been my wild child. Fiercely intelligent and prone to hobbies that involve noise and activity, like music and sports. People joke she’s her father’s daughter, but I see as much of him in Logan, my quiet, brilliant boy.

“She shouldn’t have called,” he said. “Dad’s giving her proper hell now.”