Her Viking Wolves: 50 Loving States, Michigan (21 page)

I
wake suddenly
from a nightmare in which FJ and Olafr are fruitlessly searching the Alaska mountains for me, calling out my name with despairing voices…only to find I’m now inside another nightmare. Except this one is happening for real on a plane.

The flight, according to the cheerful voice overhead, has landed and we are now taxiing toward a terminal gate at the Detroit Metropolitan airport. After that the line to deplane moves quickly. Too quickly. Even though I purposely flew economy the whole way. One last stupid and uncomfortable way to defy my father, who prefers everyone in his crew fly first-class because “flossing is a habit” as he likes to explain to the few bold enough to ask. This was meant to be my last act of defiance before I give in to his plans for me entirely. Like using all your weapons when you’re only a quarter of the way through a level, because you’re down to your last man.

But the joke’s on me, because the plane clears out in what feels like record time. And despite not sending anyone my flight details, I find my father, Yancey, and my brother, Clyde, waiting for me at baggage claim. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Dad has always had a way of finding things out. Just ask any of the dead prospects who’ve tried to go behind his back.

No words are exchanged when I come to a stop in front of the small group. Just an angry sniff from my father, followed by a confused sniff from my brother. Yancey remains a true beta though, tough as the leather Dark Wolf vest he wears over his long-sleeved tee. If he can scent the changes in me, he doesn’t give any indication of it, and his face remains the same dead-eyed mask he always wears.

I have no idea how much advanced warning Uncle Ford gave Dad when he called to tell him I was on my way. But it doesn’t matter. They know for sure I’m pregnant now. My nose isn’t that great, but even I can smell the shift in hormones. The seed now growing inside me, strong and true.

However, there are humans everywhere, so no one makes a scene. My brother grabs my luggage and, like silent actors in a kabuki play, we head out to Yancey’s black Cadillac Escalade.

Not until we’re in the car, safely behind closed doors, does my father turn from the front passenger seat to demand, “How many people know about this?”

“Only the Alaska kingdom house,” I answer, my voice dull. “It happened during the full moon.”

My father nods, as if doing some kind of mental calculation. “Good. We can control that. I’ll talk to Wilma.”

I start to look at my brother, but my father says, “Don’t look at him when you’re talking to me, girl.”

So instead, I fold my arms and look out the window, giving him nothing. The backseat equivalent of locking myself in my room.

But this time he refuses to let me retreat. “I can’t believe you did this!” he all but growls between clenched teeth a few moments later. “And after skipping out on your engagement party—do you know how much that party cost me?”

“You mean the party you threw to celebrate my engagement to my brother’s lover?” I ask, my voice filled with stale candy. “Would you like me to pay you back? Because if you want, I can do that.”

My father turns all the way around in his seat, and out of the corner of one eye, I can see my twin staring at me, his mouth hanging open. I know why. Neither of them are at all used to me standing up for myself.

Dad recovers first, glaring at me even harder as he says. “No, Tiara. I ain’t going to make you pay me back. We gonna forget about all that. Tell everybody you ran off, Kyle went to get you. He put the hammer down, and ya’ll ended up getting heated out there in Alaska. Evelyn and me already started making arrangements for the wedding. What you got to say about that?’

I have so many things to say about that. But I keep my mouth clamped shut, because I know anything I say might lead my psychopath of a father straight to FJ and Olafr.

Dad smiles in that asshole way of his into my answering silence. “Nothing. Good, that’s what I thought. We’ll tell Evelyn to start preparing you for the wedding as soon as we get home. I’ll text message the Dakota Royals now.”

Again I say nothing. But when my father’s head lowers to his phone, I look over at my brother. He’s staring back at me, looking like he desperately wants to say something. But I shake my head at him to stay quiet.

He’s still my brother. Still my best friend, even if I kind of hated him for a second after finding out his part in the set-up with Kyle.

I grab his hand and squeeze before he can say anything that will get him in any more trouble than he probably already is. Let him know I’m still his sister, no matter what happens in this car. Let him know I have his back.

But I let go right before Dad looks back up from his texting.

“So you’ll do it?” he asks with a suspicious expression. “You’ll marry the Dakota Prince and raise this pup you carrying as his? No more running off to Alaska?”

I nod, but agreeing to this causes my stomach to burn with pain. Like I’m one of the characters in
Ninja Shifters
who takes a knife to the gut, committing
seppuku
after losing a level. It feels like I’m betraying FJ and Olafr in the worst way possible, even though I’m doing this for them. To keep them alive until they get what they need to return home and save their village.

“Good, I’m glad we understand each other,” Dad says with a big grin, like we’ve just struck an important deal. “Now all I need is a name.”

A name. He’s only asking for one. My heart rallies a little bit, knowing Uncle Ford must not have told him everything if he doesn’t know I’m now mated to not one, but two wolves.

“No,” I answer my father, training my eyes on his seat back. “No name.”

My second act of defiance since getting into the car, and my father looks confused, like his daughter’s been replaced with a pod monster.

“You expect me to let this boy live? After he claimed what wasn’t his to claim?”

My father has no idea how much I belong to FJ and Olafr. That our mate bond was preordained by whatever or whoever created the system of portal gates long ago. No idea.

So I just refold my arms. “If you want me to marry Kyle without any mess, those are my terms. You can take them or leave them.”

That last line is a bunch of junk code for real. Because the truth is, I don’t know what I’ll do if my father decides to call my bluff. He could just call in a favor with Aunt Wilma. Those two might have their differences, but I know without a doubt Aunt Wilma would do anything to make sure what happened to her mange niece in Alaska stays buried in Alaska. Maybe even have Uncle Ford remove FJ and Olafr, two wolves she’s not bonded to by any kind of family tie.

Lucky for me, Dad actually seems to be considering my offer. “If I let this boy go, you’ll do everything I say?” he asks me.

I nod, hating myself almost as much as the situation I’ve put myself in.

“And how about him? Am I going to have to worry about one of them Alaska wolves showing up to the wedding and asking for the Speak Now Ritual?”

Wow
, I think, somewhat amazed. Uncle Ford really didn’t tell him a damn thing. Just the bare minimum. It’s enough to make me rethink my original assumption about him being my dad’s total minion.

“No,” I promise, thinking of Uncle Ford’s plan to keep FJ and Olafr caged until Alisha can figure out how to help them with the dragons. “You won’t have to worry about him coming here.”

My dad gives me a long, hard look, but then says. “All right, I guess it’s a deal.”

But he turns to face forward in his seat with a hmphh, like a king denied his hunting prize. I can tell he doesn’t love this spine his previously meek daughter has suddenly grown.

“Get Tikaani on the phone,” he tells Yancey. “We’ve got to set this story up right—”

He’s interrupted by the electronic beep of an incoming call.

Yancey glances down at the number, then back to my father. “It’s Grif.”

Grif, the orphan Dark Wolf thug Yancey has been training to take over as my brother’s beta. Sons usually inherit the beta position just like kings. But Yancey had never gotten around to settling down with a mate. No surprise there. He barely speaks and he always looks like he’s setting up to punch somebody. Not many women who’d want to put up with that for a lifetime.

“Pop quiz,” Yancey says in his usual barebones way.

And Dad nods.

“See what he needs. We’re done here.”

How my dad got all of that from Yancey’s two words—I have no idea. But I am happier than probably anyone else in this car to change the subject.

Yancey pushes a button on the steering wheel. “Yeah?”

“You cool?” comes Grif’s gruff voice through the car’s speakerphone.

“Kind of hot. But with cool people,” Yancey answers. “What you got?”

“Old weird dude just called here talking crazy. Talking about you and the Prez have to get up to the Upper right fucking now—his words, not mine.”

I sit forward.

“Granddad? Granddad wants us to come up to the old kingdom house?”

Granddad is currently living out his retirement in the old kingdom house on the Upper Peninsula. But once in a while he calls the Detroit kingdom house and starts throwing around orders like he’s still the alpha.

Grif, being new, wouldn’t know about that.

“Yeah, maybe it was him. Like I said, he sounded old…and kind of crazy, but like he was in charge.”

Up front, Yancey and Dad exchange a look.
Yeah, that’s him all right
, they seem to silently say.

“Did he say what he wants?” my Dad asks, his voice tight with irritation. Granddad is the only wolf on Earth who can truly get under my dad’s skin—at least without a Mossberg ending the conversation.

“Yeah, he did. And that’s why I thought he was a crazy. He said the time portal went off, but that can’t be right because that ain’t ever happened before, right?”

Silence drops like a bomb in the car.

Oh, hell no
! I say to myself, somehow already knowing exactly who’s come through Michigan’s formerly long dormant time gate.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
I think.

Or at least I thought I said that to myself. But then I notice everybody in the car is staring at me. My dad. My brother. Yancey, through the rearview. I’m fairly sure even Grif is staring at me via the Cadillac’s touch-screen phone.

“Tiara,” Dad says, his tone murderous. “What you know about this?!”

I
t’s strange
the difference a couple of weeks can make, I think to myself early the next morning after a seven hour drive and an overnight stay in a nearby hotel. Two weeks ago I was engaged to another man, Kyle Wolfgood, the alpha prince of North Dakota. Two weeks ago I was completely obsessed with my video game company, She-Wolf Industries…so much so, I could hardly be bothered to attend my own engagement party. Two weeks ago, I was a workaholic videogame designer with zero social skills and negative percent desire to go anywhere without wi-fi. Or Red Bull.

And now here I am, walking up my second mountain in as many weeks beside my twin brother, with my dad and Yancey in front of us. Actually hardcore praying inside my head that this ends with my dad using me as an incubator for my brother and his lover while the loves of my life vanish forever.

Two weeks later, I’d actually rather be at the Detroit kingdom house right now, pledging myself into a miserable marriage than on this mountain with these three wolves.

We had to abandon our Cadillac Escalade at the bottom of the road and continue on foot toward the old kingdom house via a narrow snow-covered trail. Before our species learned how to seamlessly integrate with humans, we spent a lot of time in isolated villages, close to humans but tucked away to reduce contact between our species. So like many kingdom houses built in the earlier part of the twentieth century, this one is just a short distance from the state’s time gate and well-hidden.

The nearly mile-long hike uphill through dense forest makes it just about impossible to sneak up on the house. Unlike most other kingdom houses that serve as the first line of defense against potential invaders—it has happened from time to time—ours is situated at the very back of a collection of rustic of log cabins, all that’s left of our former kingdom town. If the town were ever invaded, the king and his family would have ample time to get to safety. Leaving the rest of their pack to fight for their lives.

Nice.

No wonder my grandfather, Leroy Greenwolf, an upstart black biker from Arkansas, ended up taking over the pack in the sixties. You can accuse Granddad of a lot of bad things—and I do mean a
lot
. As in, I’m pretty sure the FBI still has a file on him somewhere in a dusty archive. But he is
not
a coward.

Not only did he relocate the kingdom town to Michigan proper, he made Detroit, his adopted town, our home base. Even going so far as to name our pack after it. Which is why it came as a complete surprise to just about every damn body when Granddad decided to retire to the old kingdom house after officially handing over the state pack to my father.

Granddad turned out to be a lot like me. He enjoys his solitude. We’re technically never invited up here unless it’s Thanksgiving. And even then its not a one hundred percent guarantee he’ll let us spend the night after dinner’s done. There have been a couple of years when Granddad’s gotten so irritated with having all of us “up in his house too long,” that we’ve ended up heading out early to a hotel, with him yelling after us that we might not be invited back next year. No wonder Uncle Ford never visits.

Speaking of which, on the drive up here I’d had a furious back-and-forth WTF??? text conversation with him. Because his promise to keep FJ and Olafr contained back in Alaska obviously hadn’t been kept.

He texted back a long grumble about Uncle Tikaani interceding on their behalf because of something my cousin Alisha told him. And FJ pulling a sword. And how there wasn’t “nothing he could do about it.” In other words, he’d been forced to let them go.

Ford had hoped their remote location in the Alaska wilderness and lack of knowledge about planes, trains, and automobiles would keep them from coming after me. But after going into town for a few hours, they holed up in FJ’s room, talking to Alisha on a cell phone.

At some point in the evening, they slipped out of the kingdom house and that was the last anybody saw of them.

It didn’t take long for Uncle Ford to realize what they planned to do. But by then, it was too late. With Alisha’s apparent help, the brothers simply waited out the hours it took me to land in Michigan. Then they went outside and spoke the fated mate spell again.

And so here I am. Tramping through the snow with a pup in my belly. Their pup. Trying to figure out how to tell my murderous alpha king father I have not one, but two mates. And desperately trying to come up with a plan to stop him and Yancey from shooting both of them on sight.

Something chitters a short distance away and my father actually pulls his sawed-off. Until he sees that the small squirrel racing up a nearby tree trunk is not the shifter he’s looking for. He lowers his weapon with an aggravated shake of his head.

“Why do all these portals have to be up in the fuckin’ mountains? Always out in the middle of nowhere,” he complains.

My father hates the middle of nowhere. Aside from a few visits to my grandfather, he’s spent his entire life mostly within the city limits of Detroit, and he still doesn’t understand why his father retired here. Especially since Dad’s inability to become one with nature is technically Granddad’s fault. Back in the late sixties, he moved our kingdom town to Hidden Hills, a gated community recently abandoned due to white flight. And now we’re one of the very few states with a kingdom house situated in a city rather than in a small town close to the state’s portal.

The move to Detroit was never an issue because our state’s portal hadn’t worked in, well, forever. Until now, that is. Which is why my father was forced to drive several hours from Detroit to kill whoever it was that came through the gate.

Poor Dad
, I think to myself, with a totally unsympathetic roll of my eyes.

I try opening my mind link again.
“Are you there? Olafr? FJ?”
I ask, mentally reaching out to both of them over our mate bond.
“If you can hear me, you need to run. My dad is on his way and he will kill you if he sees you.”

Silence.

I mentally kick myself once more for not anticipating this. Not just that Uncle Ford would fail to keep the brothers contained in the Alaska kingdom house, but for not realizing they could easily track me down in Michigan by simply repeating the fated mate spell.

If I’d been a few miles south or west of here, the brothers could have easily ended up at the Wisconsin or Indiana gates. Which would have been better. Both those kingdoms are legitimate. In other words, they don’t depend on illegal activities to fund their crowns like Detroit does. If my two Vikings had landed elsewhere, it would have bought me some time and kept them safe. And provided some potentially supportive witnesses, who, I like to think, would not have been okay with my dad showing up out of the blue and killing two time-traveling wolves in their territory.

Of course, dwelling on all of this is totally pointless now. Because the brothers are here, not in Wisconsin or Indiana.

What am I going to do? I wonder, mind in total panic mode. How am I going to keep them alive?

Far too soon, the time for frantic worrying comes to an end. We walk through the collection of cabins, and the two-story kingdom house appears just over the first rise. Yancey abruptly halts, sniffing the air.

“Old king’s got company,” Yancey tells my dad. “Two visitors.”

My father’s face goes hard with an unspoken question.

Which Yancey answers with, “I don’t smell any blood.”

I let out a pent up breath. No blood means no death.

No blood. Good. That means my mates are still alive.

However, my moment of relief is cut short by Dad, Yancey, and Clyde all pulling out their matching sawed-off, pump-action pistol grip twelve-gauge Mossbergs. The official shotgun of the Dark Wolf pack.

“Stay here,” Clyde says to me, and then he starts creeping toward the house in silent commando mode along with Yancey and Dad.

But like hell I’m just going to hang back here while they sneak up on the house with my two mates inside.

Knowing I need to get in front of this—like, literally get in front of this—I rush past them.

“Get back!” I hear Dad hiss behind me.

But I don’t stop running until I reach the cabin door.

“Granddad! Granddad!” I yell, banging on the door. “It’s me! Tee!”

Granddad’s nose isn’t what it used to be, but he swings open the door so fast, I know he must have been right on the other side waiting for us to arrive. He stands in the doorway, his long, slightly stooped body adorned in the usual Dark Wolf uniform: black leather jacket, black leather jeans, black leather boots, topped off by a black leather bandana tied around his head.

He no longer rides with the Dark Wolves. In fact, he no longer rides at all. But he looks exactly like what he once was, and what he probably still considers himself to be: the baddest wolf king in the entire land.

“Granddaughter…” he says to me with a shake of his leather-wrapped head. “You got
any
idea how complicated you done made shit for this family?”

I can also feel Yancey, Dad, and Clyde staring daggers at my back.

Feeling very meek under Granddad’s censuring gaze, I lower my eyes and mumble, “Sorry, Granddad.”

Granddad just harrumphs and opens the door wider. “Whatever. All of you better come on in here.”