Wolf and Prejudice (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 2) (8 page)

And this report would be a whole lot longer if Rafe Nightwolf wasn’t such a selfish, entitled, jerky douchebag!!!!!!!

Alisha punched this last sentence in with particular force, before letting her head drop into her hands. Her recent visit to Wolf Springs had been such a bust. She couldn’t believe Rafe kicked her out of Colorado.

And that new sheriff of his was even worse than the one who had prevented Chloe from leaving Wolf Springs. The burly blond had not only handcuffed her, but had also ignored every single one her questions as he drove her to the airport in the back of his gigantic truck like a prisoner.

At least she’d thought he was ignoring her questions. When they’d gotten to the ticket counter, he’d pulled out a smart phone and showed it to the clerk dressed in a smart blue blazer with “Alaska Way Airlines” embroidered across the front pocket.

“One first class ticket to Juneau coming up,” the attendant said, and just a few minutes later, she handed the sheriff an envelope with two paper tickets—a non-stop to Fairbanks and a puddle-jumper to Juneau. She didn’t even ask to see Alisha’s ID.

“Are you deaf?” Alisha asked as he escorted her through security still handcuffed. “Mute?”

But this time he really must have been ignoring her, because he didn’t answer. And he didn’t let her out of the cuffs until he’d deposited her into a seat in the first class section. He handed her the envelope with the tickets in it and typed something into his phone, which he turned around to show to her:

“Don’t come back.”
Then he left without so much as a wave good-bye.

If Alisha hadn’t been so furious, it would have been humiliating. But she’d refused to let embarrassment creep in, and had instead used her impotent rage to fuel six hours worth of note taking on her flight back to Alaska. If Rafe thought a little banishment would be enough to make her abandon her book project, he had another thing coming.

Now she was back in her office typing up a very rough draft of what little of Chloe’s story she’d been able to piece together with the help of Rafe’s father. It wasn’t much, she’d discovered upon setting the whole thing down on paper. There were still so many questions left unanswered… but then she thought about the USB copy of the contents of Chloe’s desktop, which she’d managed to swipe and slip into her purse before getting hauled out of Colorado. With whatever notes Chloe left behind and her access to the Alaska Archives, hopefully she’d be able to piece together enough material to write her book.

A knock sounded on her office door, interrupting her book-plotting thoughts. But she smiled when Matt poked his head in.

“You busy?” he asked.

She gave him a friendly smile. “I can make myself un-busy. What’s up?”

He edged himself into one of her guest chairs. “Well, I have some good news and some bad news and some possibly good news.”

Before she could ask to hear the bad news first he said. “The good news is I think I might have found those diaries you asked me to keep a look out for.”

Ever since receiving Professor Henley’s call, she had all but abandoned her research on she-wolves in post-colonial Alaska and started putting most of her time and energy into finding out as much about the Viking wolves as she possibly could. She’d asked Matt to look for a few things for her, including the diaries of an Arab diplomat named Ibn Fadlan.

According to the annals of history, he’d traveled around Norway, meeting a host of Vikings, and journaling his experiences. But many of his diary’s manuscript pages had now “disappeared.” As a Lupine History post-doc, she knew whenever a set of ancient records were found with a few missing pieces, that usually meant the wolves had gotten to them and gone through them first, or some other paranormal force—but in this case, she had her finger crossed for the wolves.

The North American Lupine Council was near fanatical about keeping evidence of their existence out of the human purview, and very few universities even dared keep a secret wolf collection. When they did, it was usually in fairly libertarian places like Alaska, South Dakota, and New Hampshire, states that liked their freedoms and weren’t as scared of the North American Lupine Council as others.

“You found them,” she said to Matt, leaning forward.

“I think so. Or at least a few manuscript pages one of our wolves smuggled out of the secret collection at the University of Baghdad back in the nineties before the first Gulf War. My Arabic isn’t that great, but I scanned it and put it through a translator and this passage caught my eye.”

Matt pulled a few photocopied pages out of a manila folder.

“If the translation program is working right, he talks about coming upon the village of King Fenris the Serious, which he finds puzzling, because the king is actually quite jovial. Fadlan is only received because the villagers think their queen, who he describes as ‘a beauty, dark of skin,’ might be interested in talking with him, because he also has dark skin. She speaks Old Norse, but in a dialect that is often hard for him to understand, and she won’t tell him where she came from. And she is said to have three children, but he only meets two of them, a boy and a younger girl. But he says she also has a rather large wolf puppy that stays crouched at the queen’s feet and seems to be afraid of humans. The king and queen, who he describes as ‘happy with each other in every way’ receive him for three nights. But then the queen tells him though she’s enjoyed his company, it is best he move on before the next full moon. She tells him it is very important he and the Vikings he is with sail in a different direction than they originally planned, saying something to the effect of though they themselves are tame, she cannot be so sure about the village to the north of them that calls no man king. They take her advice, but later on, one of the Vikings manning the ship Ibn is on says he suspects the foreign queen, the king, and their entire village are creatures of legend, ones who transform from human to animal in the light of the full moon.”

Alisha’s eyes widened and she took the translated pages from him. “That’s her. I’m sure of it. I’m getting closer.” But then her excitement dimmed when she remembered what he’d said when he’d sat down. “How could there possibly be any bad news?”

“I was hoping you’d see it that way.” He grimaced. “The bad news is the funding for your fellowship here has just been pulled and as of next semester, you’ll no longer be employed by the University of Alaska.”

“What!?”

He raised his hands defensively. “The only reason I’m here telling you this is because I thought it should come from a friend as opposed to the head of the department, who’s still pissed at you for pissing off the new King of Colorado.”

Alisha’s eyes narrowed. “Tell me this sudden defunding doesn’t have anything to do with Rafe Nightwolf.”

Matt lifted his shoulders up and down. “What did you expect, Chloe? His family is one of the most influential wolf dynasties in the United States. He has a seat on the council
and
the Nightwolf trust gives millions of dollars to the wolf residency program so shifters can attend state colleges all over the U.S. and enroll in wolf-based classes. He’s not a guy you want to piss off. And you basically announced that you plan to write an entire book about the woman who left him for a Viking.”

She shook her head. “How is no one understanding the impact Chloe Adams might have had on our own history? For all we know, she’s influenced facets of our culture we don’t even know about. How can you all stay so busy bowing and scraping to this jerk that you can be totally okay with not finding out what happened to her? Where’s your curiosity?”

Matt gave her a sad smile. “Believe me, Alisha. I’m not happy about this situation either. It sometimes feels like the Council only funds us so they can keep us in check. But that brings me to the possibly good news. Now that you don’t have a class load next semester, you can dedicate more time to solving the mystery of what happened to your friend.”

She was still fuming, but she realized Matt was right. She would find out what happened to Chloe, she vowed. And she wasn’t going to let anyone, especially not Rafe Nightwolf, stop her.

As if reading her thoughts, Matt leaned forward and looked over both shoulders before saying, “And if you’re thinking of going rogue with your investigation, like travelling to Europe or something, I was thinking I could go with you, help you with your research or whatever else you need.”

Her heart melted at his offer. “Really? You’d do that for me? What about your class load? I mean
you
still have a job.”

“I could take a sabbatical. Tell them it’s for research.”

Alisha nodded, thinking of how much better it would feel to go wherever her research led her if she knew Matt was by her side. Many unheated she-wolves her age, especially princesses, didn’t travel for fear of going into heat somewhere inconvenient and even worse, mating with someone inappropriate.

But if she did go into heat and mate with Matt, she could see herself living a nice boring life with her untitled co-worker, a life of intellectual pursuit, a life free of the Game of Wolves.

“That’s a great idea,” she said to Matt. “I think our first stop should be the wolf collection in Russia…” Her excitement dimmed. “But first, I suppose I better clean out my office.”

Matt stood up and gave her arm a sympathetic rub. “Let me help you with that.”

With Matt’s assistance, she packed up her office with her head held high, ignoring her fellow liberal arts wolf professors and post-docs who just happened to walk by her open office door, shortly after Matt delivered the news. She figured they must have known what had happened and exactly why, because no one stopped in to offer her condolences on losing her job. It was like she had a contagious disease and they were afraid talking to her would call Rafe’s wrath down upon them as well.

“Ignore them,” Matt said, picking up three of her five boxes in his long arms. “I’ll help you get these out to the car.”

“Thanks,” she said. As she bent to pick up the other two boxes, she thought of Rafe, pictured his handsome face with a smug smile on it, because he’d gotten her fired. Well, she’d show him. He thought he’d shut her down, but he had only fueled her determination to get to the bottom of this mystery—

Out of nowhere a tingling sensation overtook her. Like the worst case of static electricity, but all over her body.

She stood back up, frowning.

“What’s wrong?” Matt asked her. His voice sounded distorted, like he was speaking to her on a telephone with a faulty connection.

“I don’t know,” she said, barely able to hear herself.

But then there came the smell: sharp and lush and alive, like a feral animal had just entered the room, dangerous and uninvited.

Dear Lord, she was in heat. What had been a hypothetical mere moments ago was now happening… to her…
at this very moment.

Her breasts swelled, her nipples tightening to the point of pain, to the point that she felt compelled to massage them over her blouse, in an attempt to give herself relief.

But relief didn’t come. In fact, her pussy clenched so hard when she touched her own breasts, that her back arched and the static electricity disappeared, only to be replaced with something she had heard and read about, but had never experienced for herself before. Lust. Red-hot lust. A need so strong and clear, she could feel it coming out of her, soaking her panties.

“Matt,” she whispered. “I’m in heat.”

Matt stood there, frozen in place. “I know,” he whispered back. “I can smell you.”

The cunning section of her brain fired up despite the fact that her hypothalamus was soaking her body with twenty-five years of previously dormant hormones. “This is perfect,” she said. “We can be mates!”

But for some reason, her wolf seemed to shrink back at this statement. She had to force herself to step forward, to physically offer herself up to Matt as his mate, and her stomach roiled when she laid her hands on his thin chest despite the insistent need roaring inside of her.

Matt tensed up. Could he sense her wolf’s hesitation?

“Matt?” Her voice was tremulous with the effort of talking through her haze of lust. “It’s nothing. I think my wolf’s a little scared—just ignore it okay?”

Then she had to take her own advice, and ignore the roll of nausea in her stomach. “Kiss me,” she said in the best come-hither voice she could manage, considering the unsettling mix of lust and nausea playing havoc with her systems.

Matt didn’t kiss her. In fact, he stepped back. “I’m sorry, Alisha.”

Alisha crooked her head to the side, beyond confused. By the very laws of wolf nature, they shouldn’t even be having this conversation. Spending this long in the company of a female in heat should have sent him into a frenzy, too. But Matt just stood there with his hands up, as if to ward her off.

“Matt? What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

“I’m gay,” he said.

Alisha stared at him open-mouthed.

“I don’t… I
can’t
be with you that way,” he continued. “Most male academics are. It’s an open secret. At least I thought it was.”

And suddenly several things fell into place—why so very few of her colleagues were mated. Why so many of them lived together. She’d thought it was just pack mentality—even she’d had a hard time adjusting to living alone in her apartment after she turned twenty-one, and she’d been more than eager to leave behind the “auntie” she’d been forced to live with when she came down to Juneau to pursue her studies. But now it was becoming more than obvious what had really been going on.

Any other day, this would have been a fascinating discovery for Alisha. Were all long-time unmated wolves actually gay? But today… today was not a good day to discover the only candidate for her mating who hadn’t been handpicked by her parents, was gay.

She cursed. “No, Matt. No. This is not good. This is
so
not good.”

Her body was screaming with need now. She could feel her heat overwhelming her panties and dripping down the insides of both legs. How long would she be able to hold on to herself before running out of this office and throwing herself at the first heterosexual wolf she could find? Not much longer, she suspected. Time for Plan B.