Wolf and Punishment (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 1) (22 page)

She couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t wrap her head around it, even as she was vowing to honor and obey Mag in a ceremony in front of the entire town (the word “love” had been struck out of the original human vows a long time ago, since most royal matings were arranged). It felt to her like another she-wolf was saying those words with her eyes cast downward, a she-wolf completely separate from Janelle receiving Mag’s chaste kiss while the town somberly clapped.

When Mag said he needed to go the bathroom, someone else, not her, said, “Of course.”

And when the angry roar reverberated through the house less than a minute later—like her family had gravely wounded some large animal, then furthered the insult by locking it away in one of their third floor bathrooms—it was some other she-wolf who continued to receive congratulations on her and her mate’s behalf. As if nothing were amiss, as if her husband of ten minutes was truly availing himself of the bathroom, and not sequestering himself away from their wedding guests. From her.

Mag finally came back downstairs thirty minutes later. “You ready to go?” he asked her. “Because I am.”

“Of course,” she answered again.
Honor and obey. Honor and obey. The perfectly pleasant princess will honor and obey.

Mag didn’t say much on either leg of their hastily arranged return flights to Wyoming. Or on the drive back to the kingdom house. He didn’t try to carry her over the threshold or anything like that. In fact, he seemed on edge, like he was nervous about something that was about to happen. Or perhaps upset about something that already had.

She retired to her room, thinking what she needed was sleep. Sleep to recover from her one heat session. Sleep to help her forget. Sleep and maybe she could figure out what to do the next morning.

However, sleep didn’t come. And two hours into staring up at the ceiling, someone opened the door to her room.

She sat up in bed. It was Mag, in nothing but a pair of Los Angeles Suns sweatpants. He had a comforter in his arms.

“I can’t sleep,” he said. “Not in my bed alone. The protection instinct won’t let me. I’ll need to sleep in here with you.”

“Okay,” Janelle said, her voice meek, her she-wolf finally coming back to life inside her numb chest at the prospect of having Mag in bed with her for the first time in three years.

But he didn’t come over to her bed. Instead he laid the comforter out on the floor. “Can I have one of your pillows?” he asked her from below.

“Um, sure,” she said. She grabbed a pillow and began to get out of bed to pass it to him, but he said, “You don’t have to get out of bed. Just toss it to me.”

So she did. Awkwardly, since she wasn’t in the habit of tossing anything, especially inside the house—yet another one of her mother’s rules, which she’d never violated. The pillow actually missed her target by a foot or so, but Mag easily snatched it out of the air, tucking it into his arms like a football, before placing half of it under his head, while hugging the other half to his body.

I wish he’d hold me like that
, her wolf simpered. And she wanted to kick the animal inside her. Of course he wouldn’t hold her like that. He didn’t even want to sleep in the same bed. Last night, while she’d been panting hard with the need to be claimed by him, it had been easy to forget he’d had every intention of dumping her just a few minutes beforehand. He’d been determined to expose her as a not-so-perfect princess to her parents and state pack. Before she went into heat.

But the memory of his revenge plan was more than a notion today. For her and obviously for him. Mag didn’t hold her that night. He didn’t even talk to her. She woke up to find the space on the floor empty and a note left on her bathroom mirror: “Stay close to the house until further notice.”

But further notice never came. Mag continued to carry on business as usual—keeping himself shut away in his office until the wee hours of the night when he came to lie on her floor, like a reluctant dog charged with the task of guarding… well, a pregnant queen. The only other thing that changed was he no longer left the house for meetings. Everyone came to him, and it eventually became a problem on the days Mrs. Coates was off or out running the errands Janelle no longer could, given Mag’s orders.

Janelle usually didn’t mind a little acting. Really, she considered it part of her job to act the part of the warm and happy princess, even when she didn’t feel like one. But accepting the congratulations of the people who came to meet with Mag, answering their questions, like she was nothing but thrilled to be carrying the possible future heir to the Wyoming crown in her womb began to wear on her.

A few weeks into her pregnancy she hired an extra servant to assist Mrs. Coates and run things on her day off. But this was a temporary fix at best. A piece of duct tape placed over a crack in the foundation. All it did was hide the problem. It in no way fixed it.

Days passed into weeks, then into months. Mag barely acknowledged her, though he slept in the same room as her every night.

To keep from going crazy, she threw herself back into planning the Alaska kingdom’s Christmas party, even though she had no idea if she’d actually be able to attend. She’d tentatively asked Mag about it, shooting him an email rather than suffering through the humiliation of not being granted access into his office yet again, and he’d answered back with, “We’ll see.”

Much like “further notice” these words didn’t exactly fill her with the promise of good things to come.

The next call from her mother came just a couple of weeks before Christmas while Janelle was making edits to the Christmas party schedule in her room.

“Have you heard from Alisha?” the Alaska queen demanded as soon as she answered the phone.

“Is everything okay?”

“No. That sister of yours. I can’t believe she’d be so rash and stupid. She’s run off and we can’t find her!”

“She left the University of Juneau? Really? That doesn’t sound like Alisha at all. She loves that job!”

“No—a lot has happened since we talked a few weeks ago. A lot. Alisha basically lost her damn mind. She actually went to Wolf Springs and she was telling everybody she was going to write a book about Chloe. So Rafe had her fired from her teaching job.”

“What? Oh no, Alisha loves that job!”

“Princesses don’t need jobs,” her mother informed her, as if Janelle were an idiot who should know better. “Especially ones pledged to a king as connected as Rafe.”

Was she serious? Janelle couldn’t keep the irritation she was feeling toward her mother out of her voice when she said, “But she’s not pledged to Rafe. I thought she made it clear she didn’t want that at the dinner party back in September.”

Silence.

And dread filled Janelle, from the pit of her stomach to the top of her heart. “Oh my God, Mom. What did you do?”

“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. I raised you better than that. And I didn’t do anything! Your sister went into heat, and Rafe mated her.”

“What do you mean, he mated her? How did he even get to her before another wolf did? The last I heard, he was back in Colorado, and Juneau’s not exactly easy to get to from there.”

“Janelle, I don’t have time to talk about this. Just tell me if you’ve seen your sister or not. Has she called, emailed, texted? Anything?”

“No, I haven’t heard from her at all, but Mom, you have to tell me what happened. How did she end up mated to Rafe? What’s going on?”

“I have to go. There are a lot more people I have to call.”

“Mom, wait—”

But her mother hung up. Janelle stared at the phone in horror, her worries about her own life now replaced with out-and-out fear for Alisha’s.

Mag. Maybe he knew something. Maybe he’d heard from Rafe and could tell her how he ended up mated to Alisha. Janelle ran to his office and pushed open the door without announcing herself first.

“Mag, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I need to talk to you…”

She stopped in the doorway. Mag wasn’t there. He also wasn’t in his bedroom or downstairs, which was more than a little weird because from what she’d thought, he’d put himself under the same restrictions about leaving the house that she had. But she couldn’t find him anywhere. Finally, she sought out Mrs. Coates who was sweeping in the kitchen, thinking the housekeeper might have a clue as to Mag’s whereabouts.

“Mrs. Coates, do you know where Mag might be? I have something very important to discuss with him, and I can’t find him anywhere, even though his car’s still parked in the garage.”

Mrs. Coates paused but only for a mini-second, like a digital TV channel skipping for a bit, right before it took its viewers back to their regularly schedule programming.

“No, I haven’t seen him,” Mrs. Coates said, head down, as she continued to sweep.

Here was the thing about being someone who almost always wore a façade. It went both ways. Janelle kept her own plaster darn near perfect, which made it easier to tell when people who didn’t work nearly as hard as she did to keep up appearances weren’t telling the truth.

“Mrs. Coates, with all due respect, I didn’t ask you if you’d seen him, I asked if you knew where he might be,” she said, her voice as careful as a bomb detonator disarming a minefield. “Because right now, I’m guessing he’s on the premises and maybe you’re reluctant to tell me where.”

Mrs. Coates kept sweeping. “It’s none of my business. I like this job.”

“It’s okay,” Janelle assured her. “You’re a wonderful housekeeper and I’d never let you lose your job because you helped me find Mag in an emergency.”

Mrs. Coates stopped sweeping and gave Janelle a piercing look. “I like you. You don’t look right through me or act like you own me like the last family did. I appreciate that. You’re a nice girl. Pretty, too.”

“Thank you,” Janelle said. Then she waited, sensing Mrs. Coates had more to say.

Her instincts proved correct. After a few more furtive sweeps of her broom, Mrs. Coates mumbled, “Did you check the guest house?”

“No,” Janelle answered, thinking of the guest house and its accompanying garage, which sat at the back of the property. The structures locked up by Mag.

“But why would he be in the guest house? I thought he wanted it permanently locked.”

Mrs. Coates shifted from one foot to another. “There’s a guest there. A human. I’ve been bringing her food. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The king didn’t say how long she’d be staying, but she’s never been here more than a couple of days before, so…”

The blood rushed out of Janelle’s face. “You’re telling me she’s been here before? How many times?”

“A couple days the week after you two came back from getting married. Then a couple of days in October. And a couple of days in November, too.”

Three times. This unknown woman. This human had come out three times before, stayed in the guest house, and Janelle hadn’t had a clue.

She schooled her face, gentling her eyes and setting her lips, so she looked nothing short of completely serene. “Thank you, Mrs. Coates,” she said. “I’ll go look for him there.”

She headed to the guest house, not knowing exactly what she’d find, but knowing for sure that Mrs. Coates was correct about her husband’s whereabouts. He
was
currently in the guest house with a human woman. And that human woman’s name was Sofia. It wasn’t something Janelle had to be shown to know the inevitable truth.

She heard their laughter before she saw them. Hers light, his a deep rumble. As it turned out, she didn’t need to go inside the clapboard guest house to catch them together. There he was, clear as day, in the dinette’s window, chatting over what looked like a mug of tea or hot chocolate with an extremely good-looking and petite brunette dressed in jeans and a Suns t-shirt. She looked comfortable sitting across from Mag, like she’d known him a long time. Comfortable, like someone who talked on the phone with him nearly every day and had come out to visit him right under his wife’s nose.

Janelle had never been so hurt in her entire life. But the pain only lasted for a few excruciating seconds before her furious wolf took over. She wanted to
kill
this woman. Go in there and rip her throat out for even daring to…
What
? her human asked her, a despondent knife of depression suddenly cutting through her anger.
Daring to steal the guy who only married you because he was stuck in the same room when you went into heat?

She thought back to her high school health class, to the teacher who had explained to her mostly aghast students how the heat scent would affect them, reducing them to their base animal instincts, causing them to do things they might not otherwise do, which for males might include mating with a she-wolf throwing off heat pheromones in a frenzy. Mag’s wolf had claimed her, not his human. His human had only wanted to punish her before breaking off their pledge agreement.

So now she felt torn between her unprincesslike desire to beat this human woman down and her equally unprincesslike compulsion to run back to the house, hands over her face, crying like a child. These conflicting desires tugged her so hard in either direction, Janelle was rendered incapable of following through on either. Instead she stood there, rooted to the spot.

Of course Mag chose that moment to look up. On the other side of the window, his face went from smiling to stricken. Caught. Wolfs mated forever, sure. But that didn’t mean they never strayed. And when they did, Janelle imagined they looked just like Mag, staring at her through that pane of glass.

Her princess took over then.
Don’t cause a scene, especially in front of a human.
Her upbringing turned her around and started walking her body back to the house, like a marionette. As fast as she could without drawing any more attention than she already had.

“Janelle?” she heard Mag say behind her, and there came the sound of his shoes crunching over the snow-covered path. “What the hell are you doing here? Janelle, stop walking. I’m talking to you.”

Honor and obey. Honor and obey. The perfectly pleasant princess must honor and obey.
Her mask was cracked, yes, but it wasn’t broken…