Wolf and Soul (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 3) (7 page)

“I
NOT TRY TO…”
Tu couldn’t sign the words to finish the sentence.
“I only shoot gun. Fun. Hunting.”

Tu really tried to sell the lie, even mustered up one of her old devil-may-care smiles as she signed the words.

But she could tell Grady didn’t believe her. If not by the skeptical look on his face, definitely by the way he turned away from her to shove the Colt 45 inside the gun safe he’d opened on the kitchen wall. With such force, it was a wonder the thing didn’t go off. She watched the gun disappear behind the small door before Grady cupped the keypad with his hand so she couldn’t see the numbers he was punching in.

Yeah, he definitely didn’t believe her. And strangely, this made Tu feel momentarily like her old self again. Because the irritation she felt was familiar, common among young people whether they be human or wolf: it was the irritation that comes when someone in a position of authority doesn’t believe the shit you’re shoveling.

She remembered how she’d gone through the roof, nearly cussing her sister Janelle out, the morning after her sister’s second wedding weekend. Janelle had dared to call her out for asking Mag’s brother if he was carrying any coke, and then more than insinuated the headache that had made Tu miss the post-wedding breakfast was due to a hangover. Janelle had been spot on. But still. Grady had the same look in his eyes that Janelle had, and by God if it didn’t piss her off now, just as it had back then.

“
Why you here?”
she signed angrily.

“Alisha and Rafe go second H-E-A-T after you leave,”
he signed back.
“Janelle and Mag caught, too.”

Oh. Well, that brought her up short. So he’d come here to tell her to drive back to be with her nieces and nephews while their parents… did other things.

“
Okay,”
she signed. Then. “
Thank you. I return now
.”

The weekend which had loomed so ugly and empty before her just a few hours before, a seemingly insurmountable impasse filled with too much time spent avoiding the awkward company of her parents, now seemed doable thanks to this new situation. And who knew how long Rafe and Alisha would stay in heat? Anywhere from three to seven days. Their heat frenzy might last long enough to get her through the entire week.

She just had to find her purse… she stopped short in front of the row of hooks hanging next to the cabin’s front door. The hook she’d hung her purse on now sat empty.

Where had it gone?

She turned around, knowing without having to be told exactly who had taken her purse and why. No wonder he’d just been getting around to putting the gun away though she’d arrived back at the house at least a full five minutes after he did. He’d been too busy hiding her purse, which not only had her cars keys in it, but also her phone.

“Give back,”
she signed to Grady.

“Children fine. Grandparents there. Don’t need you.”

Well, that hurt.
“Give back,”
she signed again, feeling more stubborn than she had in a good, long time.

“
Storm coming,”
he signed in reply.
“Not safe go out.”

“Don’t care. Give back purse,”
she signed forcefully.

Grady folded his arms across his broad chest, as much of a “this conversation is over” as a deaf person who didn’t talk could give you.

“Serious?”
Tu signed. Then even more furiously.
“Serious?!?!”

Grady didn’t move an inch and Tu let out a frustrated growl before launching herself across the room to begin tearing apart the first floor of the cabin, looking for her goddamn purse.

Meanwhile Grady sat down in one of the recliners in the den, a door down from the front room, and turned on the TV. A little fiddling with the remote and a closed caption box appeared at the bottom of the screen, then he lazily flipped through the channels until he came to a program about a one hundred-year-old fish bait factory, owned and operated by a colorful group of family members.

If he was at all fazed by her anger over being kept in this cabin against her will when her nieces and nephews needed her, it didn’t show in the way he silently watched the antics of the show’s crazy set of same-aged cousins, who were currently out on a pond, seeing if they could catch fish with bait inserted into their long beards.

6

“W
hat this place?”

Grady had never been so embarrassed in his life. His entire life, and mind you, he’d grown up in a small town where the kids had no problems throwing things at the defective wolf in the street—at least, they hadn’t before the first unannounced public appearance of his beast. He’d thought he’d been ashamed when he woke up buck naked inside a cage with a tranq still lodged in his side, the whole town gathered around pointing and laughing.

But somehow this was more excruciating than that. Tu Ataneq was in his tornado cellar.

It was Thanksgiving and he’d been lying on his double dog bed reading a book when he first caught her scent getting closer. She was alone and he thought she might be headed to their barn to meet up with Luke, who was setting the place up for what he called the most epic half-moon party ever. But the scent hadn’t ever seemed to move further away, and the next thing he knew, the door was opening and Tu was coming down the steps, her face lit by moonlight.

She reeked of beer and she swayed a little as she took in the small concrete space with freaked out eyes. Then she signed, “
What sign for ‘dude?’”

He stood up and slowly made the sign for her.

“Dude, W-T-F?”
she immediately signed back.
“Why you down here?”

“Surprised you can sign—so drunk.”

Tu just laughed, throwing her whole head back.

“
I think I sign better drunk. True story.”
She then added,
“Dude!”
with a saucy wink.
“But serious—what this place?”

He almost didn’t tell her. His first impulse was to tell her to leave. No, better yet, to get the fuck out of here, and he almost went with it. But at the end of a few short breaths, he signed.
“My room. Where live.”

Understanding dawned on her face.
“You live here? All time?”

He nodded.

“Why?”

“Can’t live in house.”

“But…”

Luke’s room was too small for two grown wolves of their size to share, but he could tell she was thinking of the kingdom office off to the side of the living room, the one where his father conducted what little legitimate business he had, when he wasn’t laid out in his bedroom in a meth fugue.

“Should live in house. Father, brother should make room.”

He shook his head.
“No. Shouldn’t live in house.”

“Why?”

“My wolf… big… bad… dangerous.”

“All wolf dangerous.”

And with his heart stuck in his throat he told her something he hadn’t told anyone else outside of Oklahoma.

“My wolf MORE dangerous. Better I stay here.”

Tu looked around the space again and shook her head. She obviously didn’t agree.
“Why you come here for really awkward dinner? Why you want watch your father glare at

me and town people stare? Why you don’t stay Wolf Springs?”

It was true. The Wulfkonigs’ Thanksgiving dinner, which they’d eaten at the local diner, had been awkward at best. Luke and Tu giggling and whispering into each other’s ears, like they were the coolest kids in the place, pretending they didn’t notice the Oklahoma king’s obstinate silence or all the stares they were getting from the handful of kingdom town residents—mostly widowed males and addicts who either couldn’t or didn’t want to deal with putting together their own Thanksgiving dinners.

Grady hadn’t been much better. Luke had his arm around Tu’s shoulders in a way that meant she wouldn’t have been able to sign comfortably even if she wanted to. And Grady didn’t want to think his brother had initiated their intimate conversation so Grady wouldn’t be able to read their lips as they talked into each other’s ears, but that was how it came across. And so he’d sat there, like an oversized lump in the booth next to his dad, shoveling food into his mouth until the forty-two minute (he tracked it) torture session disguised as a Thanksgiving dinner came to its merciful end.

But Tu was here now, in his space, without Luke to keep her from signing with him, so once again Grady told her the truth.

“
Things bad there. Rafe…”

He didn’t think she had the vocabulary to understand how bad Rafe had gotten since Alisha ran out on him the morning after their mating was complete. How the formerly noble king had been reduced to a shadow of himself. Shambling around his shuttered kingdom mansion, in a whisky-fueled stupor, refusing to perform his role as king.

He shook his head wearily.
“Rafe bad. Want get away for little bit.”

“Get away?”
she repeated these signs as a question. “
To here?”

“Yes,”
he answered.
“Small and cold but home.”

“Okay, but where you pee?”

A smile came to Grady’s face.
“Climb up. Pee next to barn.”

She laughed. “
Where you pee during Luke party?”

His smile disappeared.
“Leave before Luke party. Can’t be here. Beta.”

She wiggled her eyebrows, and waved her hands around in a mock simulation of fright.
“Yes, you beta king. Almost forgot.”

Watching her joke about the job he took very seriously made Grady’s mood darken. He signed,
“Your parents think you where?”

Tu shook her head, that laughing smile of hers coming to her face. “
I twenty-one now. Don’t have to tell them where go.”

He signed again,
“Your parents think you where?”

She looked peeved now, but not in a way that reached her eyes. A mocking peeved, like she was having all the laughs and he was a dweeb for asking.

“N-E-B-R-A-S-K-A princess house. Her brother single. Mom want me flirt with. Get pledge meeting. His crown very rich.”

Of course her parents didn’t know about her Thanksgiving date with Luke. Folks from a state as prosperous as Alaska would rather their daughter date a rich nobody than a mange state prince.

“This sign for N-E-B-R-A-S-K-A…” Then he modeled the state sign for her before asking, “
What say to parents when you go back?”

“Don’t like Nebraska prince smell,”
she signed, easily incorporating the sign he taught her. She was smart, Grady mused, but she was down here in Oklahoma killing all her brain cells with too much alcohol and marijuana.
“Same say all princes they try pledge me.”

He shook his head, finding it hard to believe she was turning down princes to be with his handsome but fucked up brother for Thanksgiving.

“You love Luke,”
he signed in such a way it could have been a statement or a question.

Her eyes twinkled.
“Luke fun.”

He didn’t understand.
“You don’t love him?”
And this time he raised his eyebrows, making it no doubt it was a question.

She seemed to think about his question for a long time before answering,
“Love F-R-E-E-D-O-M. Holding long time I can. In future husband boring.”

Her syntax was atrocious, but he understood. She was trying to tell him she was having fun with Luke, holding on to her freedom as long as she could before her parents mated her off to a guy with money and a title like they had both her sisters.

He understood what she was saying. In more ways than one. And he stood there at a loss for signs, suddenly in the weird position of feeling sorry for the princess who had everything: brains, looks, title, fortune—but would eventually have to pay the price by sacrificing the things she cherished most: freedom and fun.

Her laughing smile went a little awkward then, like she was forcing the twinkle to stay in her eyes.

“Can’t remember sign for M-A-K-E-O-U-T?”

He went totally still.

She was here for his brother. She had come here to spend her last weekend of freedom with Luke. He knew that. Knew it and understood it. But his body—the erection came on so suddenly, it caused him pain and he had to fight the instinct to fold over. Getting in wolf position would be a disaster. Especially with her down here and the tingling in his lower back… like his beast was walking up and down the bottom of his spine.

“Wait…”
she signed, wiggling her fingers in the air.
“Remember: want MAKEOUT?”

He wasn’t prepared for what happened next. He’d had this dream a thousand times before, both sleeping and awake, and it always ended the same way. Him signing for her to get out, repeatedly and so emphatically it sent her scrambling up the ladder—albeit still laughing. Him watching her go, his beast pulsating inside of him, his heart on cold fire with the feeling that she was warm water slipping through his hands. That was how it had gone down in real life five years ago and in all of the dreams that followed.

But not tonight. Tonight he took her invitation, pulling her into his arms for a makeout session more intense than the one she’d been taunting him with. Aggressive, angry kisses, right on the mouth, like she must have grown multiple inches in the moments it took to pull her to him and they were now the same height.