Wolf and Punishment (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 1) (2 page)

It wasn’t even ten, the evening had barely gotten started, but Rafe, ever the gentleman, inclined his head with respectful acquiescence. “Of course, Janelle. I’ll walk you back to your hotel.”

“Oh no, there’s no need! It’s right across the street, and I’d hate to tear you away from your friend…” she glanced at the man beside him and that shiver went through her again. The one she’d never felt before.

That shiver had been what made her accept his invitation in the first place. The perennially good princess inside her had known it wasn’t the best idea in the world, but something had pushed Janelle forward, wanting to know more about the wolf who had made her mind hiccup if only for a few seconds.

He had the name, brown-tinged skin and almond-shaped eyes of an Eskimo—he also smelled like an Alaskan Inuit wolf. However, there were two things that set him apart from most other Inuit wolves. The first was his eyes. Most Inuit wolves, even half-Inuit ones like her, had brown eyes, but his were a color too dark to be blue, too light to be gray. A mesmerizing silver that made her usually docile wolf raise up on it haunches and crane its neck. And even though the rest of his face was roughly planed with a hawkish nose, she hadn’t been surprised when Kenny had crudely alluded to his high success rate with human women. No doubt those moon-colored eyes of his drew them in, just like they had drawn her.

The second thing that made her wonder if she wasn’t smelling him wrong was he hadn’t seemed to recognize her as one of the Alaska princesses when they met, which was… odd. Especially for someone who had been raised to know she would be recognized—recognized and judged by every Alaskan wolf wherever she went, not just because she was a princess, but because she was the first half-black princess the state had ever had, the product of the surprise mating between the state’s Inuit king and her black mother, the former Princess of Detroit. The thought of someone from Alaska not automatically knowing who she was intrigued her. Intrigued her enough to accept an invitation from someone who clearly didn’t walk in the same social circles as she and Rafe. But she could see now that accepting the invite had been a mistake.

She turned to the wolf and said, “Mag, I’m sorry for accepting your invitation only to bow out so suddenly. I’m usually not this rude. I’m just really tired.”

The imposing football player, who from the brutal look of him, was probably also in line to be some prince’s killer beta, maybe even Rafe’s, studied her for a few beats before saying, “Nah, don’t worry about it. Not a problem.”

“Are you sure I can’t walk you to your hotel?” Rafe asked again.

Janelle smiled. “The only thing I’m more sure of is how much I’d rather you stay here and enjoy the rest of your evening.” She gathered her small Coach clutch to her chest and started to walk away with a wave before Rafe could argue any further. “Next time I’m in town I’ll call you beforehand, and we’ll schedule brunch, I promise.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Rafe called after her.

Janelle made a speedy retreat. As she walked to the door, she glanced at Kenny. He was sloppily kissing the blonde human, his beer still in hand and resting against her flat bottom. Apparently he was so confident she’d do as he ordered—like a good little princess—he didn’t even bother to watch her go.

Sadly, his confidence hadn’t been misplaced. Janelle rushed out of the club and across the street to the little boutique hotel where she was staying, like a child who was afraid of getting in trouble if she didn’t mind.

But just as she passed the doorman who politely held one glass door open for her, she heard a voice behind her say, “Janelle.”

She turned. It was the Inuit wolf from the club.

“Mag!” she said in surprise. He was so huge, he seemed to take up all the space beneath the canopy. But his silver eyes… they were kind and soft. Not dead and hateful like Kenny’s.

“You all right?” he asked her in his deep, gentle voice. “I saw Kenny talking to you, then suddenly you had to go. Did he say something? He upset you?”

The way he asked the question made her wonder what he would do if she answered truthfully.
Yes, Kenny did say something to me. Yes, he did upset me.
But she was a first-born princess, which meant living a life made up of white lies.

She smiled politely. “No, he was just saying hello. We have friends in common. Like I said, I’m tired. But again, I’m sorry for leaving so early.”

“Was it me?” he asked. “Did you cut out because of me? Cuz if you want to hang with Rafe, I can take the bus back to campus. They’ve got a shuttle, goes right through here.”

“No! Please don’t think you had anything to do with my leaving,” she said, though technically he did, since his “hooking up with human chicks” was what prompted Kenny to demand she leave the club.

“Really, I’m tired,” she said, even though she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so awake. Talking to him, from the very first moment they’d clasped hands in greeting, had felt like waking up from her sleepy, well-ordered life on a roller coaster. And now that he was standing here in front of her hotel, sleep was the furthest thing from Janelle’s mind. “But, um.... I was thinking of having a cup of hot chocolate before I went up to my room. Would you, ah… like to join me?”

2

R
AFE’S friend, Janelle, seemed to be good at covering up her real feelings. If she was nervous about sitting in a hotel bar with a wolf she just met, sipping hot chocolate, she didn’t show it. He, on the other hand, was nervous as hell.

He couldn’t believe he was here, sitting close enough to touch the most beautiful she-wolf he’d ever met. He could just imagine how the other guys on his team would laugh if they saw him now, sweating bullets over a virgin she-wolf after all the human girls he’d gone through during his three years at Denver U.

But here he was, a senior in college, Mr. Big Wolf on campus, and he could barely talk to this girl who’d invited him to sit down with her for a drink.

“So you play football with Rafe,” she said after they’d received their steaming, fragrant mugs. She gave him another of her twinkling smiles, and he had to admit her game was tight. Like he could maybe see her hosting one of those morning talk shows his grandma loved so much.

“How do you like playing on a team together?” she asked. “It must be nice to share the field with your friend.”

Mag shrugged. “He’s a receiver and I’m a linebacker, so we don’t really spend that much field time together.”

She squinted a little, and a cute but confused look came over her face.

“We’re on two opposite sides of the team. He’s offense. I’m defense. The only time we ever play together is at practice and usually I’m trying to tackle him.”

“Oh, I get it now.” Her smile turned sheepish. “I suppose I should pay more attention when my father watches Seahawk games.”

He inclined his head. “You from Alaska?”

That question seemed to throw her. “Yes, yes, I am,” she answered.

He nodded. “Yeah, I should’ve guessed. You smell like Alaska and your dad roots for the Seahawks. Sounds like an Alaska wolf to me. I’m from Alaska, too.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” she said, but she seemed tense now, as if she were bracing herself for something.

He’d never met an African-American wolf from Alaska before, and that made him even more curious about her. “Where do you live?”

“Wolf Lake,” she answered carefully.

“You’re from the kingdom town… oh…” He took a big interest in his napkin. So that confirmed it. She was out of his league. Way out of his league. Ever since the official King of Alaska got the state pack involved in the very lucrative oil business, only the richest wolves could afford to live in Wolf Lake, the kingdom town located in interior Alaska. From what he’d heard, you needed a plane just to get to the lake the town was named after. And then, if you didn’t have a floater plane, you either had to row or walk across the large body of water, which took up the one side of the kingdom town that wasn’t already surrounded by mountains.

“Yes,” she said. “The lake should be freezing over soon, and we’re already gearing up for the Arctic Wolf Games. Have you ever been?”

He peeled a strip of his napkin. “People from where I live aren’t exactly invited to stuff like that.”

“People from where you live,” she repeated, then she realized out loud, “Oh, are you part of the Inu-Amaruq pack?”

Mag flexed his hands around the torn napkin. Inu-Amaruq—literally Bad Wolf. They were what used to be called a gypsy pack, back before Alaska officially joined the North American Lupine Union, and back before people, including the Inu-Amaruq themselves, had started taking offense at the word gypsy. Like their nomadic ancestors, they still followed the fish and game and built igloos for hunting—though only for hunting. When it came time to sleep, they hauled their asses back to their RVs like any sane hunter would if he had a choice.

Also, like their ancestors, they considered their own pack alpha their king, refusing to acknowledge the sovereignty of the state king or abide by the rules of the North American Lupine Council. All he knew of the kingdom town was it was hard to get to, even by their nomadic standards. He wouldn’t have even been able to say for sure who the current state king was, though Rafe had mentioned when they first met that his father, the King of Colorado, and the Alaska king were best friends who’d played football together for Denver U.

When Rafe realized Mag knew absolutely nothing about his own state’s royal family or politics, he’d dropped the subject, a renaissance wolf realizing he was speaking with someone who’d only known hunting and fishing and, if necessary, selling drugs and/or thieving, his entire life.

“Yeah, I’m from Inu-Amaruq,” he said. “But we don’t call it that. We call it…” He told her the words, using the dialect of their tribe.

“What does it mean in English?”

“Freedom,” he answered, refusing to be ashamed of where he was from, even if it sent her running for the hills, like it would have a lot of nice Alaska girls. “Technically Freedom Town, which I know sounds strange since we’re always moving around. But we call ourselves a town because even if we’re on the move, that don’t mean we aren’t a community, you know. And we call ourselves Freedom, because we make the rules. We’re not living under some wolves in suits who probably don’t even know how to hunt.”

“Freedom Town,” she repeated. She seemed to like the taste of the words in her mouth. “I’ve always wondered about Freedom Town.”

This, Mag sensed, was true curiosity, and not her just trying to make conversation. “You got questions about my pack, you can ask ‘em. Long as you’re cool with me asking you about the kingdom town. You go first.”

“Okay,” she said with a grin. “First question: when you fly home from college, how do you find your pack if you’re always traveling around?”

He chuckled. “We got satellite phones. I call my brother before I buy my ticket and he tells me where he thinks they’re going to be when I come through. Then when I get to the airport closest to that place, he sends me the GPS coordinates for wherever they’re at that day. It’s kind of complicated. Too complicated. I’m going home with Rafe for winter break this year.”

She took in what he’d just told her with a slow shake of her head. “Wow, I can’t even imagine,” she said. “Okay, it’s your turn.”

“Rafe told me the Colorado kingdom town has an invisible gate up in its mountains. Like a time gate, and he says wolves can travel through them if they have the right spell. I called him a liar, but Grady said Oklahoma has one, too. He said all the states do and that’s how the werewolves know where to establish their kingdom towns. I think they’re pulling my chain, but since you’re from the Alaska kingdom town…”

She chuckled a little. “No, actually it’s absolutely true. It’s the—I mean, I hear it’s the royal family’s job to greet any visitors who come through. It’s only gone off twice since I’ve been living in Wolf Lake. Both times it was she-wolves who’d traveled through time to meet their fated mates. But from what I hear, the Colorado gate gets a lot of activity. Apparently, Colorado wolves are way more attractive to the winds of destiny than Alaska wolves.”

Mag laughed incredulously. “Yeah, I guess so. I still can barely believe they were telling me the truth, though. I better apologize for calling them ten different kinds of liars.”

“Well, that would be the polite thing to do.” She smiled at him again. “I wish I could tell you more about the gate. If my sister, Alisha, were here, she’d be able to tell you all sorts of stuff about it. She’s in grad school to become a history professor, and I know she’d have so many questions about Freedom Town, too. Better than the ones I have—for instance, is it true your pack still get face tattoos whenever you kill someone?”

“Yeah, that’s true,” he said, his thoughts going to a dark place as his father’s heavily tattooed face floated across his mind’s eye.

“But you don’t have any face tattoos,” she said.

Her observation brought him back. “No, I don’t.”

She grinned. “So you’re safe!”

“I’ve been called a lot of things before. Safe ain’t one of them,” he answered ruefully.

“I don’t know,” she said, taking another sip of her hot chocolate. “We’re sitting here and you’re from Bad Wolf and you’re like this big, strong football player—you look like someone’s beta—but I feel safe with you.”

Her words warmed him, even more than the hot chocolate. “You are safe with me. You’re Rafe’s friend and you’re nice, and you’re… really beautiful.” He admitted he’d been affected by her looks, even though he knew it was a thin line between admiring a girl and really creeping her out. “I’d never hurt you or let anyone else hurt you.”

Her eyes softened and she looked at him for a long, long time before asking, “Is it also true what they say about male wolves from Bad Wolf? That you’re not bound by Lupine Council law, so you guys can have sex with a she-wolf before she goes into heat?”

Mag considered lying to her. He hadn't thought about it much back when he'd been living in Alaska, when he'd slept with several willing she-wolves, not even aware such a law existed until he came to Colorado. Rafe had let him know about it during a wolf mixer, told Mag he could flirt with she-wolves in Colorado but if he wanted to go any further than that, he'd need to stick to human girls. It had seemed like a fucked up rule to him considering she-wolves couldn't contract sexually transmitted human diseases or get pregnant if they weren't in heat. Why not let the girl wolves have some fun before they mated up, too?