Wolf and Punishment (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 1) (12 page)

“Yes, those terms and one more.” Tikaani leaned forward. “I want Bad Wolf—I mean Freedom Town—to come back into the fold. No more pack king. I want you all under the state crown.”

First things first, Mag worked to keep his expression blank. No need to let the Alaska king know he’d taken him completely by surprise with his request. Then only when he was sure his face and voice were set to neutral did he say, “That’s a big ask. My brother’s pack king, and as you’ve probably guessed, we value our freedom.”

“I don’t want to take any of your traditions away. And I doubt I could put a stop to the drug dealing, especially in Alaska. But from what I understand, your unmated males have been going around sleeping with unheated girls. Also killing each other in mate challenge fights, which the Lupine Council doesn’t allow. That all stops with this pledge. No more getting away with murder for your mated males. Plus, I know a lot of parents would be upset if they found out what some of your Freedom Town boys were up to with our innocent girls—they deserve better than that.”

Somewhere in a parallel universe, Mag was telling the king the story of how his very own innocent girl had come on to him—asked
him
to take her virginity—and then had come back for more. But in this one, Mag played it cool. “I might be able to work with those terms. Let’s see how tonight’s pledge dance with your daughter goes, then I’ll make my decision.”

12

“T
HIS is bullshit!”

“Alisha, please don’t start…” Janelle said with a heavy sigh as she pulled herself into the red mermaid dress her mother had picked out for her to wear to her pledge dance with Mag. “Not tonight.” Her stomach was already a mess of nerves and she did not want to add having to listen to one of her sister’s anti-wolf tradition rants into the mix.

“Well, it is,” Alisha said, tugging up her own dress, a mermaid gown just like Janelle’s except hers was blue and the neckline on her dress didn’t swoop down quite so dramatically low. “They had a meeting about the possibility of
you
marrying the guy who killed your last fiancé without
you
. And now they’re going to present
you
to him like a gift for murdering his way into a state crown. Total bullshit!”

Janelle rubbed her temples. “It’s tradition. You’re a historian. I’m sure you can cite plenty of examples of she-wolves pledging the wolf who killed their original pledge in challenge fights.”

“You’re right, there are lots of examples of this in our history and that’s why I’m calling bullshit on it—because it needs to stop. Just because there’s historical precedent doesn’t make this situation anything less than patently ridiculous.” She tugged the bodice of her strapless dress higher. “Almost as ridiculous as Mama still insisting we wear matching gowns at all formal events despite the fact that we have wildly different body types.”

“I like this dress,” Tu said, twirling around in the mirror. She was the darkest of the sisters, and the butter yellow version of the mermaid dress looked fantastic against her deep brown skin, especially paired with a turquoise statement necklace and the large puff she wore her afro in for formal events.

“That’s because you don’t look like Ursula from the Disney version of
The Little Mermaid
,” Alisha groused. “We have
got
to stop allowing Mama to pick out our dresses.”

“You don’t look like Ursula. You look lovely. Really lovely,” Janelle assured her sister, and she meant it. Alisha might have a variation of Ursula’s hairstyle, with her unruly black curls falling into a short and flocked coif that perhaps did put one in mind of the animated sea witch. But Janelle wished Alisha could see what she saw when she looked in the mirror: a big, beautiful woman whose bra cup-size was only outdone by the size of her brain.

However, Janelle did agree it was time to put a stop to their mother’s self-appointed royal stylist activities. Janelle was just as uncomfortable with the on-the-bleeding-edge-of-tasteful dresses her mother picked out for these events as Alisha was.

“Seriously, you don’t find it the least bit insulting that our parents are treating you like a pawn?” Alisha asked her, going right back to the pledge issue.

Janelle looked at herself in the mirror and decided not to wear her hair up like Tu for fear of the headache she could now feel coming on. “That’s the way these things are done, Alisha. The way they’ve always been done. The way it will be done for you, eventually.”

“If you think I’m going to let the king and queen sell me off to the highest bidder, you don’t know me,” Alisha said in that irritating way of hers, like she was dealing with two malevolent strangers from her history books as opposed to her own parents, who had been nothing but loving and kind—when they weren’t trying to match them off.

“Whatevs. If Mom and Dad want to hook me up with a hottie pro-baller…” Tu pointed at her pelvis and rocked it forward. “
Sign me up
. That Mag is
foine
—and those face tats? Woo! Bad boy for the win!” She then sing-songed, “Isn’t that right, Janelle? I think you’re a big fan of bad boys yourself--maybe you always have been.”

Janelle ignored the innuendo in Tu’s voice. Ever since finding out that Janelle’s potential pledge was from Bad Wolf, Tu had been more than hinting that the new Wyoming King and the “Bad Wolf” she’d smelled on her oldest sister three years earlier were one and the same. Janelle hadn’t confirmed or denied Tu’s insinuations, just hoped that if she ignored them hard enough, her sister would eventually stop.

Luckily Alisha came to her rescue with a pedantic correction for their younger sister. “If you’re basing your assessment of Maguyuk’s character on his facial tattoos, I think you mean ‘deeply traditional boy’ for the win. Keep in mind, the founding king of our own wolf line got facial tattoos to mark his challenge win, so when you think about it, the new Wyoming king’s face markings are less of a rebellion and more of a return to a formerly revered tradition.”

Tu squinted at her. “Okay, real talk… why are you such a nerd? Everybody else in our family is cool… Dad, Mom—I mean, just about every she-wolf I know wants to either be Janelle or look as good as she does doing what they do. But you? One hundred percent nerd. Can you just act for one night like you don’t have a total smart stick stuck up your butt?”

Alisha pursed her lips. “Tu, you’re just as smart as me. I know this. Forgive me for treating you like there’s a brain underneath all that afro, even though you insist on acting like an idiot.”

Tu rolled her eyes and held up a hand. “Whatever, Professor Princess. Can we just agree this Mag dude is hot and unlike you—not boring?”

Alisha stared at her sister. “I know it would be impossible to fake your lineage given the way werewolves are conceived, but right now I seriously want to order a DNA test on us, because I’m finding it really, really hard to believe we’re related.”

“You know I’m you’re sister, Professor Asshole. You’re just mad because the only reason you agreed to come to this party was to hang out with Chloe, and Rafe’s got her working too hard to spend any real time with you.” She came to stand beside Janelle and rolled her neck, like one of the divas on
Rap Star Wives
. “Now poor Alisha’s got nobody but us dummies to hang out with.”

“Guys, please don’t fight,” Janelle said, trying to keep the weariness out of her voice. “I love you both so much and we never get to spend time together anymore.”

“Whose fault is that?” Tu asked, staring directly at their sister who had opted for a life in academia and now called Juneau home, as opposed to the kingdom house where Janelle and Tu still resided.

But before Alisha could reply with a salvo of her own, Janelle said, “Please, please,
please
, for my sake! If you love me, just try to have a good time.”

To Janelle’s relief, the next words out of Alisha’s mouth weren’t another admonishment of pledging traditions or Tu’s continued refusal to take anything seriously, but, “All right, all right. Princess smiles on!”

Then proving she hadn’t been raised inside a textbook as she sometimes led others to believe, Alisha put on a pleasant smile, so seemingly genuine, it was like looking into a mirror (a two-way mirror if you counted Tu, who’d thankfully also turned on her “I’m so pleased and honored to be here” princess smile).

Janelle rewarded them both with a princess smile of her own, one that completely belied how scared she felt about seeing Mag for the first time in three years.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go be princesses.”

JANELLE COULD STILL REMEMBER the day of her pledge dance with Jeffrey. She had only turned twenty-one a few days prior and her father had already received several requests for pledge meetings from his fellow state kings. Jeffrey’s father, the then King of Wyoming, had invited her father down for their annual King’s Day Ball, an event that commemorated his own grandfather’s challenge win, and Tikaani had decided to honor the Wyoming crown with his first pledge meeting. The Wyoming crown had oil interests, along with a prescient investment in high tech that had paid out nicely for the royal family. They were by far the richest state with an unmated prince and her father had been hopeful this pledge meeting would be his first and last. Janelle had been terrified of nip-slipping out of the décolletage-heavy dress her mother had picked out for her to wear to the event.

King Tikaani met with Jeffrey and the King of Wyoming and struck tentative pledge terms. Then Janelle and Jeffrey were kept apart during cocktails and the pre-ball dinner, as tradition dictated. She hadn’t been allowed to exchange any words with Jeffrey until her father and mother presented her to him before the first dance.

But in the end, all the fret and worry had been for nothing. Janelle’s dress had miraculously stayed in place when she curtsied to the Wyoming prince. And, from the way he had coolly regarded her, a smug smile floating on the surface of his thin lips, Janelle had known almost immediately that the prince would agree to their pledging.

However, other than King Tikaani meeting with Mag in private, this current situation was nothing like her pledging to Jeffrey. Thanks to the wonders of double-sided tape, she had faith the sweetheart neckline of her dress would stay in place, yet her heart still beat with fear as she walked into the Colorado kingdom house’s front room for the pre-dinner cocktail hour. Fear and anticipation.

However, whereas Jeffrey had watched her with sly eyes as soon as she came into his sights, Mag didn’t even acknowledge when she entered the room. He simply kept listening intently to whatever Rafe’s mother was telling him, hunched over at the shoulders, like what she had to say was ten times more fascinating than Janelle’s entrance.

Janelle had made a big show of eating heartily during the dinner portion of the evening for Jeffrey, following her mom’s advice that male wolves wanted the fantasy of the rail thin she-wolf who ate well. But tonight, she couldn’t bring herself to take more than a couple bites from each course, and her eyes kept going to Mag who seemed to be engaged in a scintillating conversation with one of Rafe’s cousins, a young widow from New Mexico who had inherited a small turquoise mining fortune after the tragic hunting death of her husband.

However, as she batted her eyes at Mag and tilted forward so the new Wyoming king could get the best view of her cleavage-baring bodice, Rafe’s cousin didn’t look like she was grieving the death of her husband all that much. Jealousy spiked through Janelle, and she gripped her forked tightly, wishing she could at least pretend to be engaged in a delightful and engaging conversation of her own.

But with a mind toward presenting their daughter as someone who wouldn’t dream of talking too intimately to another man, much less flirting with him as Mag seemed to be doing with the young widow, her parents had requested she be seated across from them and between her two sisters.

Alisha hadn’t said one word to her the entire dinner, caught up as she was in a discussion with Chloe about how she-wolves navigated the winter in both Alaska and Colorado back in the days before electricity and central heating. And Tu and Vince were talking about some band she’d never heard of.

Janelle might have tried to engage her parents across the table, but her mother was talking with the Queen of Nebraska about the recently mated Nebraska princess’s upcoming nuptials to the Prince of Wisconsin, and even Janelle didn’t have the acting skills to fake an interest in the oil conversation her father was having with a wolf tycoon from North Dakota.

She muddled through dinner, doing her best to act like she couldn’t care less that the wolf she would be presented to before the celebration’s first dance seemed way more interested in the pretty young widow at his side than the former beauty queen her parents were trying to fob off on him.

And then it was time for her presentation.

Pleasant and sunny, pleasant and sunny
, she thought to herself, as her father walked her over to Mag, her mother following behind them, as was tradition. Janelle concentrated on staying in control of her emotions. Wolves could literally smell fear—that and arousal. One wouldn’t be a problem, given her unheated status, but the other…

Mag’s new tattoo lines were scary—there was no other way to describe them. She didn’t care what Alisha claimed about their being a testament to traditional values. They made him look like walking murder, and the way he wore his hair now, fuzzed close to his head like a new Marine recruit, didn’t help. Janelle felt certain she was heading into a pledge dance with a much more dangerous guy than the one she’d met three years ago.

Yet beneath those tattoo lines and the eyes glittering with some un-nameable emotion and the beefcake body, there he was. Her Mag, the man she’d never thought to see again in the flesh, much less at a pledge dance.

And she meant it when she slightly inclined her head in the old way with a dip of her knees.

“I am very honored,” she said in the Inuit dialect of the Alaska state pack. Technically she should have said, “I am honored to meet you” in his dialect, just as she had told Jeffrey she was honored to meet him in Swedish, the language of his long ago ancestors. But of course this wasn’t their first meeting. And it wasn’t like the Bad Wolf dialect was written down anywhere. It was what Alisha had called a fully oral language, when Janelle asked for her help to prepare for the pledge dance. Only wolves from Bad Wolf knew it, and if you weren’t from Bad Wolf…