Wolf and Soul (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 3) (23 page)

She let out a sigh of relief.

23

G
rady buried his brother’s body in the woods behind the farm. Far enough away and deep enough down that even a wolf with a super nose like him or Tu wouldn’t be able to smell him. Digging a ten-foot grave in the frozen earth was a bitch of a job, though, one that along with shifting after a night of dancing had his lower back aching by the time his task was done. He wanted his bed, needed to lie down and sleep this night off.

Still, he hesitated when he returned to his farm house bedroom, hovering in the doorway.

Tu must have picked up on how he was feeling because she sat up in bed and asked, “What’s wrong? Why are you scared?” with a worried look on her face.

He made a fist and lifted it, but before he could even get it to his chest, she rolled her eyes and said, “Seriously, dude? This again?”

“My beast—”

“Saved me and then gave you back when I put it in a chokehold.” She smirked. “I’m not scared of your beast. I think it knows who’s boss now.”

He waited for his beast to respond to that insult, but there was nothing. Not even a small tingle. It was almost as if it were scared to come out. And, not for the first time that week, he looked upon the she-wolf he had mated with wonder and amazement.

Tu simply patted his side of the bed. “Come on,” she said.

He laid down drawing her into his arms as soon as he was under the covers.

“It’s me who should be scared,” he said. “You’re tiny, but you’re not nearly as fragile as you let everyone think.”

He could feel her chuckle.

“You know, dude, I’m not that tiny. 5’6” is actually above the human average. It’s not my fault you’re gigantic.”

“I’ve been trying to think about the right thing to call you. You know, like one of those terms of endearment. I think ‘tiny darlin’ might be the one.”

“Don’t you dare…” she said, and he could almost feel her wolf growling inside of her.

Grady found he liked this reversal of roles, him teasing Tu as opposed to the other way around.

“Maybe that’s what we should call the reality show? ‘Tiny Darlin and Big Wolf.’”

She laughed. “Okay, well, I’d actually watch that, but in this case, the title would be misleading, because I’m
not
tiny.”

Grady chuckled, thinking she could protest as much as she wanted, but this ship had already sailed. It would be “tiny darlin’” from here on out, case closed.

He should have gotten right down to the business of sleep after that, but another subject came to mind. He must have become a better business wolf under Tu’s tutelage, because he found himself going against his sheriff nature to say, “I’m thinking if we tell everyone about Luke coming back from the dead, trying to use you to blackmail me into giving him your dowry, and then me shifting into a wolf and killing him it might confuse the hell out of folks. Could derail what we’re trying to do with the state pack...”

And Tu, proving herself a better queen than anyone would have predicted five years ago, answered immediately, “I’m all for a good bury job myself.”

He squeezed her from behind, loving that she picked up on where he was going without him having to say outright, “Let’s never speak of this to anyone.” They made a good team. But still, he worried about her.

“You promise you’re okay?” he asked, thinking back to the confrontation in the truck. It now seemed like it had happened days ago as opposed to mere hours.

However Tu’s voice was lighter when she answered him, like a great weight had been lifted off her psyche. “Yeah, I actually am okay. What happened with Luke and your beast… it was like a wake up call, like God called my bluff. When I was facing your wolf down, all I could think about was how much I wanted to live for you and for me. I want to live now. I want to see how this story ends. Oklahoma, the baby, you and me, because… because I love you, Grady.”

Grady’s heart melted right into hers. He had heard her say this same thing when he’d been trapped inside his beast. In fact her “I love him!” had been what rallied his human. It had given him the strength to subdue the beast and return to her, just so he could say to her, “I love you, too.”

He said it now, “I love you, too… tiny darlin’.”

He could feel her laugh against his chest. But on the tail end of that laughter, came… “I’m not going to lie. I’m scared. More scared than I’ve ever been of anything in my entire life.”

“Me too,” he said, rolling her over so she could look into his eyes as he said, “Tell you what. Want to be more scared than we’ve ever been of anything in our entire lives together?”

He felt her giggle again, her body shaking as she delivered a breezy, “Sure, let’s do it,” that belied the many potential minefields on the road ahead of them.

But that “sure, let’s do it” was all Grady needed. He held his she-wolf close and let his eyes drift close with the assurance that the drama had finally come to an end and all was right with their world. At least for now.

N
OW DIDN’T LAST very long. Grady woke up to the sound of Tu’s voice in his head.

“Baby, baby, get up,” she was saying. “Rafe and Alisha are at the door.”

Grady sat up and looked at the clock. It was just after ten, so that meant the king and queen of Colorado must have gotten up at the butt crack of dawn and motored here. But why…?

…and suddenly he realized he’d forgotten something kind of important. To get back in contact with Rafe and let him know what had gone down since last they spoke.

Tu had already pulled on a pair of jeans and was headed out the bedroom door.

“Alisha’s pounding on the door like she’s the police. She’s probably worried out of

her mind,” she said inside his head. “I didn’t exactly give her my two week’s notice.”

Grady went to the wardrobe and pulled on the first clothes his hands landed on. A pair of jeans and a flannel shirt. However a sense of foreboding began gnawing at his insides even before he finished putting on his clothes, and he realized why as soon as he stepped out of their warm room and into the cold hallway.

Tu had gone quiet. She’d stopped transmitting, even though he could see Alisha yelling with big gestures and wide eyes at the door. Alisha, he could smell, was pregnant, the smell coming off of her even stronger than it did with Tu which made Grady suspect Rafe would be welcoming another set of multiples into his kingdom house in nine months. It was the kind of the thing he would have congratulated the she-wolf on if she hadn’t spotted him in the hallway at that very moment and then covered her mouth while she continued to talk to Tu, making it more than obvious… whatever she was saying, it was about him.

24

G
rady’s head swung to Rafe who was rubbing a fist over his chest.

“
Sorry,
” he signed. Just signed, no words, like he did whenever he wanted to talk with Grady privately in a room inhabited by other people. “
We hear you and Tu mates yesterday. Tu sent Janelle and King Tikaani text message about sending dowry money A-S-A-P. Janelle surprised. Tikaani not. He knew, but no tell us. Janelle tell Alisha. Alisha tell me. Feel my surprise, my guilt because we mates. Ask why I guilty. Tell truth
.”

Grady was confused. He could understand everyone’s surprise if Tu announced their mating to Janelle, who served as the Alaska crown’s lawyer, via a text message requesting her dowry as soon as possible. But why would Rafe feel guilty upon hearing about his marriage to Tu? Then he remembered… Rafe sitting at his desk, advising him to find a wife with a big dowry.

Grady signed back, feeling rusty after so many days of mind-to-mind with Tu.
“I don’t mate Tu because money
.”

“I know,”
Rafe quickly assured him.
“Tell Alisha. Alisha don’t believe. Want talk to Tu. I come with. Try to help.”

Grady shook his head. This wasn’t good. Not good at all. He knew he’d never do anything like that, but he had to look at it from Tu’s perspective. Suddenly this wolf she thought hated her shows up out of the blue at the Colorado summer cabin and refuses to leave on the same weekend he finds out her mating scent has completely disappeared. And then he asks her to marry him quick before they get back to Oklahoma, where she finds out the state coffers are pretty much empty. And last night…

He signed to Rafe, “
Dowry have contract? Death…”
he didn’t know the sign for “clause,” so he spelled it out.

His heart sank when Rafe nodded. “
One year, and if daughter don’t survive childbirth, you must return money
,” his friend signed carefully.

Grady inwardly cursed. So what had been a sincere plea with Tu to stay with him could easily now be interpreted as him just making sure he got her dowry—right before he killed her original mate, buried him in the woods, and then asked her to keep it a secret forever.

Grady felt sick to his stomach. If he’d been told the story about anyone else, he would have believed it was a con job, no detective work needed. And the look on Tu’s face as she listened to Alisha wasn’t good at all. A mixture of unwelcome surprise and terrible upset, like her sister had dumped a bucket of ice cold reality over the dream he’d spun for her.

Tu turned away from Alisha then, wrapping her arms around herself like she used to when she was in “Sad Goth Tu” mode.

“Is it true?” she asked him. “Did Rafe tell you to bag a rich wife?”

“Yes,” Grady admitted, because as desperate as he was to keep her in his life, he wasn’t going to lie to her. He wouldn’t ever do that.

But the look on Tu’s face nearly killed him. She flinched like he’d slapped her. And though he’d killed his brother as dead as dead could be, Grady could see his ghost in her deeply troubled eyes.

“Is that why you showed up at the cabin? Were you playing me all along? Pretending to be reluctant about mating me, but then making sure we made it official the next day? Was that the real reason you kept questioning me about how we were going to afford all the Oklahoma initiatives, not because you were looking out for your state, but because you already had plans for the money? Is that why—is that the real reason why you killed your brother? Why you told me you loved me?”

“No, Tu! No!” he said, grabbing her hands up in his. “I know what it looks like, but everything I’ve done, everything I do has been for
you
. Everything I will ever do will be because I love you, because I’ve been into you from the start—I don’t care about your dowry. I’m in this for you. Just you. You’re my heart. My fucking soul. Please believe me!”

Tu stared at him for moments on end, her face harsh and suspicious….

…then she turned the transmitter back on, right before saying to Alisha and Rafe, “Okay, he says that’s not why he married me, so it’s settled. Wanna go out for breakfast? I’m starving.”

Grady’s heart soared, but Alisha looked back at Tu like she was either stupid or crazy or both.

“And you’re just going to take his word for it?”

“Yep,” Tu answered, definitive, as if she’d just come to the most logical conclusion in the world.

Alisha blinked a few times before saying,

“Okay, he’s brainwashed you. That’s obviously what’s happened here. I’m going to

call Janelle and she’ll put a hold on the money until we can get you a psyche eval.”

“Alisha,” Rafe said, taking her by the arm. “Grady’s a good guy.”

“Grady’s a
fucking fantastic
guy!” Tu corrected. She then addressed Alisha. “You don’t know
us
, Alisha. You don’t know what we’ve been through. If Grady says he didn’t mate me for my money, then he didn’t. So you need to stop disrespecting me
and
my mate

and back down from this subject right now. Understand?”

Now Alisha looked a little taken aback, and Grady almost felt sorry for her. After a year of dealing with Sad Tu, it had to be a surprise to get hit with the Tu he’d come to know over the past week. The fierce and confident she-wolf who made a thing true just by pronouncing it to be so.

“Tu, I’m not trying to disrespect you—” Alisha started.

But Tu didn’t let her finish. “Maybe not. But you’re disrespecting Grady and that means you’re disrespecting me.”

Alisha glanced at Grady, as if she were trying to figure out what magical spell he’d cast over her sister.

“Tu, I’m just saying—” She stopped, and for once the tell-it-like-it-is she-wolf actually seemed to be thinking of a diplomatic way to say what she wanted to say next. “I’m just saying that five million is a lot of money. Perhaps you should consider—”

Now Grady interrupted. He signaled for Alisha to stop talking and looked down at Tu, signing so Rafe could understand, too.

“I heard wrong, right? She didn’t say five million.”

Rafe leaned down to whisper something to Alisha. He must have been translating for her.

“Yes,” Tu answered, both with sign and in his head as he had. “She said five million.”

“But Rafe said Alisha’s dowry was two-hundred thousand dollars, one-hundred thousand for Janelle. Yours should be three-hundred thousand at the most.”

“Yeah, but…” she stopped signing now, and it felt to him like she was whispering when she explained, “Alisha and Janelle were virgins. I wasn’t. Plus I’m twenty-six years old, and I’ve had a miscarriage. Five million is pretty standard for a she-wolf princess with my, ah, history.”