Wolf and Prejudice (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 2) (2 page)

Alisha shrugged. “A lot of academics don’t. Up until a couple of decades ago, many female wolves weren’t even allowed to teach beyond the high school level, because there was a theory that teaching college rendered females sterile.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?” Chloe asked, now looking even more distressed than she had a few moments ago, but this time for Alisha. “Even though it means you’d never have cubs?”

Alisha's eyes went to Janelle, who had been left alone with the new king for the first dance of the evening, a waltz. Though Janelle was smiling up at Mag, Alisha could tell her older sister was extremely uncomfortable. Her body was as stiff as a marionette's, and the couple's waltz looked painfully awkward.

With her model-esque looks and delicate features, Janelle was the prettiest of the Alaska princesses, but that didn’t mean she was comfortable being trotted out under the lascivious gaze of any king with enough money and strength to satisfy their father’s lust for continued power.

“No, it doesn’t bother me at all,” Alisha answered. “In fact, the thought of my progeny being used as pawns makes me sick to my stomach.”

“Then it’s a lucky thing your dad’s not staking his throne on you,” a voice said beside her.

Alisha looked up to see Rafe, Chloe’s longtime fiancé, looming over them.

Her breath caught in her throat, just as it did every time she saw him, and shame pinged around Alisha’s chest. Her human understood Rafe was Chloe’s fiancé, and even if he wasn’t, she had no interest in a titled wolf since marrying one would guarantee being caught up in the Game of Wolves for the rest of her life. But all her wolf saw when she looked at Rafe was the teenage boy she’d secretly crushed on as a sixteen-year-old college student visiting his family for the summer.

And though Alisha had put that school girl crush far behind her, her wolf still thought he was beautiful, the most beautiful man she’d ever seen, with his lightly toasted brown skin and hazel eyes. Hazel eyes that never landed on her, even after handing her a not-so-indirect insult. No, his eyes stayed on Chloe as if Alisha wasn’t even there, like she didn’t even matter.

“Hi, Rafe!” Chloe said, in that simpering way she had with the alpha prince. Like she was just oh-so-grateful someone like him would deign to align himself with someone like her. It drove Alisha crazy.

Chloe might be an orphaned nobody as far as wolf society was concerned, but she was smart and kind and talented, whereas Rafe was simply the pampered prince of a thriving state pack, one who’d had everything handed to him his entire life. In Alisha’s opinion, Rafe was lucky to have someone as lovely and decent as Chloe accept his proposal.

But from the way his eyes scanned over Chloe’s dress, Alisha could tell he didn’t see it that way. “Is there a reason I’m out there mingling all by myself?”

“Well, you weren’t happy about my dress, so I thought I’d—”

“Stand in the corner, gossiping with Princess Alisha,” he finished for her. “And this is after you spent all of the aperitifs hour with her and talked back to the Queen of Alaska at dinner.”

“I’m sorry,” Chloe said, bowing her head. “If you want I can go apologize to the queen, too.”

But Alisha couldn’t bear to see her friend cowed this way. “Don’t be a jerk, Rafe. I’m visiting royalty and she was keeping me company. That’s what good hostesses are supposed to do. I mean, believe me, there are always places I’d rather be when your family come up to visit us in Alaska, but I do my duty, and not nearly so well as Chloe.”

She turned to Chloe. “And don’t you dare apologize to my mother. She was out of line for teasing me about not having an intended and unlike some people who are fine letting me be insulted at the party they are supposed to be hosting…” she threw a pointed glance at Rafe, though of course he couldn’t see it because his eyes were glued to his beautiful fiancée as they always were, “…
you
were kind enough not to just sit there and let her do it. And furthermore—”

The opening strains of “Wanna Be Starting Something” interrupted her impassioned defense of Chloe, making it impossible to keep going since Michael Jackson songs were pretty much kryptonite to anything she might be doing, including arguing.

“This is
my jam
!” she said going from angry to delighted in zero seconds flat.

Tu appeared again. “Oh my God! I asked the deejay to play Michael Jackson after the waltz and he did!” she screamed over the loud music, aglow with the power of being young, pretty, and bold. “C’mon! We’ve got to dance. C’mon!”

Tu grabbed Alisha’s arm and started dragging her toward the dance floor and Alisha yelled to Chloe. “Come with us!”

Chloe started to take a happy step forward, but then Rafe shook his head at her.

“Don’t,” she heard him command quietly.

Chloe looked between Alisha and Rafe, obviously torn between her friend and her fiancé. But in the end, she stepped back and tucked her hand into Rafe’s arm.

“I’m sorry,” she mouthed as Tu dragged Alisha away.

Alisha was disappointed but at least Janelle came easily when they snatched her away from her awkward dance with the Wyoming king. Thanks to their Detroit-born mother, the three sisters had loved Michael Jackson songs from the time they were born, and it showed in the way they danced to the upbeat song together. The young women laughed with reckless abandon, not caring that they were princesses, and ignoring the fuming looks their parents were giving them for so rudely pulling Janelle away from the new King of Wyoming.

In fact, Tu had the nerve to yell across the dance floor, “C’mon, Mama! You
know
you want to get in on this.”

Wilma Ataneq, the tall and regal former Princess of Detroit and well-respected Queen of Alaska, dropped her scowl. She did want to dance with her daughters. After all, it had been she who had taught them how to do so in the first place. Also, she had a soft spot for her youngest daughter, who looked almost exactly like her except a few shades lighter and a half a foot shorter.

The Alaska princesses cheered as their mother danced toward them, wagging her head and bumping her hips in perfect time to the music.

But as she pulled her mother into their dancing circle, Alisha felt a pair of eyes on her. She looked toward where she’d left Chloe standing against the wall with Rafe. Chloe was whispering something in his ear, but Rafe…

Rafe was staring straight at her, his eyes smoldering and hard.

The well-loved coda from the end of the Michael Jackson song sounded then, and Janelle, Tu, and their mother started jumping up and down to the music. But Alisha just stood, watching Rafe watch her. Their gazes stayed locked for moments on end, neither seeming to be able to tear their eyes away.

But then Rafe blinked, obviously remembering himself: who he was and the pretty woman he was engaged to. He immediately shifted his attention back to Chloe and said something to her before grabbing her hand and leading her away from his own party. Chloe seemed confused by his sudden desire to leave the festivities. But like a good friend, she looked over her shoulder and when she saw Alisha watching them go, she waved goodbye with an apologetic smile. Meanwhile, Michael Jackson continued to sing the catchy coda through the speakers.

It was an image that would come to haunt Alisha in the year that followed. If she’d known then that this would be the last time she would have a chance to dance to a Michael Jackson song with Chloe, she might have ignored Rafe, and pulled her friend on to the dance floor anyway. But she didn’t, and it would be a regret she’d live with for some time.

2

A
knock sounded
on Alisha’s office door a few weeks after she last saw Chloe.

“Come in,” Alisha called out without looking up from the essays she was grading.

“After seven on a Friday night, and you’re still in your office grading papers.”

She looked up from her work to smile ruefully at Matt Kreuk, the shaggy haired Canadian post-doc who occupied the office right next to hers in the Liberal Arts building.

“Well, last Friday I was stuck turning into a wolf inside a dog cage in my apartment, so I think that’s enough excitement for this month.”

Matt dropped into one of her guest chairs with a chuckle. “I don’t know what’s sadder: that I knew you’d be in here grading papers or the fact that I just finished grading a batch of Wolf Civ papers myself.”

She regarded him with warm eyes as she answered, “Great minds…”

“And by ‘great minds’ you mean, fellow beleaguered post-docs who have to do a bunch of extra work on top of what we already have to do for the human students.”

“That too,” Alisha said, even though she didn't completely agree.

Having to do twice the work for two different student populations, a human one and a werewolf one, was a common complaint among the faculty of werewolves secretly embedded at the University of Alaska-Juneau. However, unlike the mostly male wolf faculty, she'd had to fight her royal family and the Lupine Council Academic Board fang and claw to become one of two wolf history post-docs at UAJ. She considered the double work of teaching wolf and human history classes a privilege.

But she didn’t want to risk losing Matt’s newfound attention by telling him this. The thin, brown-haired wolf was cute, intelligent, and easy to talk to. And, she suspected he was into her. He’d been friendly before, but ever since the last full moon, he’d been visiting her office at least once, sometimes twice, a day. They’d eaten lunch together every day that week, and even discussed her possibly coming to Canada with him during the summer break to teach wolf summer college at his undergraduate alma mater.

“How’s it going?” she asked, picturing the ground-breaking work they could do together, with her specialization in post-colonial history and his in Arab history. The dream wasn’t too far-fetched. While it was true over forty percent of the wolf faculty had passed into their forties (the age bracket at which most wolves were no longer considered fertile) without mating up, there were a few cases of husband and wife academics scattered across the Northern American Wolf Territories—a case she hoped to emulate.

“Same old, same old,” he answered. “Almost got my book on Egyptian coyote shifters drafted out. Maybe it’ll get picked up for the national wolf history syllabus next year.”

“Oh, I’m so jealous,” she said with a good-natured groan. “I still haven’t found any Alaska she-wolves whose feats extended beyond ‘healing spells that were long talked about.’ Even the non-native ones were all about the cooking and cleaning.”

Matt laughed. “You might need to expand your search into Canada. Bigger Inuit population. Might find somebody worthy of a book. Have you heard back from the summer college yet?”

“No, not yet.”

“I’ll call the program director. See why they haven’t sent the best American candidate they’ve ever had an acceptance email yet.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Alisha said, secretly thrilled someone was actually working to help advance her career as opposed to actively trying to derail it, like her parents, who’d not only refused to pay one penny toward her education, but also campaigned against it to the point that she now only went home to their kingdom town in Interior Alaska for major holidays.

“No, I want to,” he insisted. “And on a selfish note, I’d really love to hang out with you this summer.”

He didn’t exactly meet her eyes when he said this, and she wondered if this was his shy way of telling her he’d like to take their relationship further.

“I’d love to hang out with you, too,” she said, hoping her answer let him know she was open to friendship and more with him.

Another knock sounded on the door and Alisha frowned. Who, other than Matt, would be swinging by her office on a Friday night?

It was Tu, reeking of perfume, and dressed in a shredded t-shirt and green miniskirt ensemble, despite the fact it was only twenty-five degrees outside. Alisha inwardly shook her head, thinking that even with wolf DNA, Tu couldn’t possibly be warm enough in that outfit.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “And where’s your coat?”

“Vince said he was flying over here for a party, so I came with him.” She eyed the coat on the back of Alisha’s chair. “And I was hoping maybe I could borrow one from you.” She then shifted her gaze to Matt, giving him a full wattage smile. “Hi, Wolf. I’m Tuuluuwag. But everyone calls me Tu.”

“I’m Matt, and I should probably get going,” he said, standing up. He pointed at the papers under Alisha’s red pen, “Finish grading those. Then maybe we can catch a movie tomorrow night.”

Alisha was very aware of Tu’s curious eyes on her as she answered, “Yeah, maybe. Give me a call.”

“Who’s the Canadian?” Tu asked as soon as he was out of wolf earshot.

Tu had what was referred to in the wolf community as a “super-nose,” and could often tell where a wolf hailed from with just a sniff.

“Another post doc,” Alisha answered without going into further detail. The last thing she needed was for Tu to report a possible love interest back to their parents, neither of whom was above using their juice to get an unsuitable wolf transferred if that meant keeping him away from their daughter.

And speaking of their parents: “Mom was okay with you coming down here for a party?” She handed Tu her coat. “And without your coat?”

“Well…” Tu said, pushing her arms through Alisha’s quilted Patagonia parka, the hemline of which fell below that of her skirt. “Technically I’m here to convince you to come home with me for the weekend. Mom thought me needing a coat would be a good excuse to come by here.”

“So she sent you all the way to Juneau without a coat. Wow.” When it came to matchmaking schemes, their mother made Mrs. Bennett from
Pride & Prejudice
look like a rank amateur. And now that Janelle was pledged to the King of Wyoming, Alisha couldn’t say she was shocked Wilma had recruited Tu for her “get Alisha married off to a suitable alpha” project.

However she was surprised that her youngest sister didn’t seem all that put out by the situation. “Whatever. As long as Vince and I can go to this yacht party as soon as you say no. I don’t care either way.”