Wolf and Punishment (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 1) (13 page)

He answered in the Bad Wolf dialect, using words she didn’t recognize but hoped were a repetition of her own.

Perhaps thinking along the same lines, her father broke the tense moment with a hearty laugh. “We’ll have to get Janelle caught up on your dialect.”

Janelle and her mother joined in her father’s deprecating laughter. However, Mag didn’t, and his eyes stayed on Janelle as he said, “I hear you’re a former Miss Teen Wolf. I didn’t know that.”

Janelle fought hard not to let embarrassment heat her cheeks and creep into her scent as she realized how very little she’d actually told Mag about herself despite the highly intimate situation they’d been in three years ago. “Yes, I am.”

“When were you crowned?”

“I won the crown when I was eighteen.” This was a deliberately vague answer, crafted by her mother to keep the subject of Janelle’s age a mystery.

But apparently Mag remembered the one conversation they’d had about her age three years ago, because he said, “That makes you twenty-five then. Only five more child-bearing years.”

At her side, she felt her father tense. “Maybe more. It’s been known to happen and she comes from fertile stock. Her mother had three before the age of thirty.”

Mag’s eyes flickered toward her father then came back to her. “Three girls. I hear you were a little disappointed.”

Janelle’s heart froze and her fear scent released without her being able to stop it. Now he was referring to something she’d told him in private after their first illicit meeting. Was he also going to let her father know what they’d done together after she’d told Mag the partial truth about her family situation?

Her father squeezed Janelle’s arm. His way of saying “get it together” with regards to the unusual fear they could now smell coming off of her.

“Blame that on Mother Nature,” her father said, forced laughter in his voice. “My mother went into heat once and Alaska got an heir. Wilma’s got two brothers—one of them is my beta. You never know.”

“No, you don’t,” Mag said, and his eyes left hers to wander around the ballroom, like what was going on around them was way more interesting than this conversation.

“Do you like Janelle’s dress?” her mother asked, in an obvious bid to get his attention back with a change of subject.

King Tikaani seconded that motion, “Turn around, so he can see your dress, honey.”

Janelle’s eyes instinctively went to the far wall of the ballroom, where Alisha was standing with Chloe. Her sister was shaking her head, her lips tight, and she could all but hear the paragraphs of “this is bullshit” Alisha was conveying to Chloe as they both watched Janelle put on her best game face and do a 360 for Mag.

She wished her skin was as dark as either of her sisters then, because there was nothing to hide the red heat in both her cheeks when she came to a full stop back in front of Mag.

Mag inclined his head toward her dad. “Yeah, we’ll take it from here.”

“Of course,” her father said with a bow of his own. “I’ll see you after the first dance.”

And just like that, she was abandoned.

“I’m sorry,” she said as soon as her parents were out of earshot. “I’m sorry for what happened between us three years ago.”

Unlike most of the apologies she’d made over the years, this one was heartfelt. But Mag’s moon-colored eyes didn’t even flicker in acknowledgement of it. Then the opening strains of the first dance, a traditional waltz, filled the ballroom.

“Do you…?” She wasn’t sure if he even knew how to waltz. Mag didn’t exactly strike her as a slow dance kind of guy, much less someone who knew his way around the more formal steps.

But he pulled her into his arms and smoothly launched them into a flowing forward-side-feet-together with the rest of the dancers.

As they turned around the space designated for dancing, she noticed her parents on the sidelines. They’d wisely chosen the side opposite from Alisha.

She and Mag waltzed for a bit, letting the music fill the awkward silence that hung between them. But then Mag said, “Save your apologies. I don’t need them. Not any more.”

Hope sprang up in her chest. “So you’ve already forgiven me? You’re no longer… angry?”

The hard look he gave her in answer to these questions said more than words ever could.

“But you’re here,” she said. “You took a pledge meeting with my father and you’re dancing with me.”

Another hard look. “Yes.”

A worm of fear entered her heart then, one that had nothing to do with his tattoos and everything to do with a sudden realization. That unreadable look he had in his eyes now, the one she couldn’t quite put her finger on? She’d seen it before, in action movies, on the faces of English-accented villains who had somehow been wronged by the titular heroes. It was the complete opposite of the look of love he’d given her the last time she’d seen him at the Denver airport.

This was the look of revenge.

“Mag,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. “I know you’re angry with me. I understand and I truly don’t blame you for feeling that way. But my father is under the impression that you’re serious about entering into a pledge agreement and he’s about to turn forty-five next year, which will leave him divested if I don’t marry someone who can defend his crown. So if this is your idea of some sort of… punishment, please know you’ve succeeded in making me feel even more terrible about how I treated you and let my dad down after this dance. He really doesn’t have time to waste on empty pledge deals.”

Something ticked in his jaw, but eventually he leaned down and said, “Duly noted, Princess,” his voice an icicle in her ear.

And then the waltz ended.

13

J
ANELLE drew back from him after he spoke and Mag could smell her fear scent release again as her eyes searched his face. She was obviously trying to get a bead on what was going through his mind. He didn’t give it to her. In fact, his wolf growled with satisfaction inside of him. He wanted her scared. Liked that they had traded places.

Three years ago, she’d had him on the straight edge of pussy-whipped with him scared he’d lose her at every turn. But as the opening notes of a Michael Jackson song cross-faded into the end of the waltz, he reveled in the fact that he held all the power in their relationship now. It meant he got to dictate what happened next. It meant—

Janelle abruptly pulled away from him. “Oh my gosh, is this ‘Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’?!?! I love this song!”

Then her two sisters showed up out of nowhere. “Janelle! Janelle! Come dance with us!”

They tugged her away from him, and Janelle went with them willingly, like he was little more than an afterthought.

Yeah, he was definitely in charge here, Mag thought. He watched the three she-wolves dancing together, shaking their bodies in rhythmic time to the song as they yelled out to the Alaska queen to join them. Their mother all but shimmied onto the dance floor, her hips shaking, and soon they were all jumping up and down together, laughing with girlish glee, despite their grown-up evening attire.

“Sorry about that. Their mother is a Michael Jackson nut and she raised her daughters to be just like her when it comes to MJ,” King Tikaani said, coming to stand beside him on the dance floor. “All the rules fly out the window when he comes on.”

However, from the fond look on the Alaska king’s face, Mag could tell he didn’t really mind his family’s sudden need to pay homage to Michael Jackson. Despite his disappointment in only having daughters, Tikaani truly seemed to love all the she-wolf members of his immediate family. No wonder Janelle had seemed more concerned with her father’s fate than her own when she asked Mag not to lead him on.
Her father
. She hadn’t seemed to care that
she’d
been the main target of his revenge plan.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Tikaani said now, “same thing’s happened at just about every wedding we’ve ever been invited to.”

It didn’t make him feel any better. Not at all. The sight of Janelle like this reminded him of the person he’d thought she was when they first met. The innocent girl with the twinkle in her eye who’d ask him to take his virginity with a sweet tilt of her head. It made something ache at the center of his chest. It made him… want things he shouldn’t want, that he had learned three years ago to never want again.

Mag forced himself to look away from Janelle dancing, and turned to face her father. “We should talk,” he said to King Tikaani his tone grim.

“Sure, sure. But let’s go back to Dale’s study. It’s quieter up there.” King Tikaani patted him on the back like the father no wolf who’d grown up in Freedom Town had ever had. An eighties sitcom father, purposefully radiating kindness and good humor, just like his daughter. Mag could see why there was only one pack in Alaska who hadn’t submitted to the crown.

“THIS WHOLE EVENT IS BULLSHIT,” Alisha complained as she and Janelle made their way to the guest house, which sat in back of the main kingdom house.

“Alisha, please. I already know how you feel. You’ve made it more than clear,” Janelle said, unable to keep the weariness out of her voice.

Her father had left the ball with Mag for places unknown. They hadn’t returned. And then her mother disappeared just a half hour later, probably having received a telepathic call from King Tikaani, and she hadn’t come back either. Now Janelle was exhausted from the effort it had taken to maintain her perfect princess façade for an entire hour before she could leave the ball without being perceived as rude by her peers.

And the last thing she needed from Alisha right now was a reminder that she was her father’s only chance to stay safe and in power. Her professor sister was so opposed to everything that came with being an Alaska princess, Janelle was beginning to doubt her parents would ever get her married off, much less to someone in a position to provide her father with the strong ally he needed to stay in power until he could name an heir.

But if Alisha heard the weariness in her sister’s voice, she ignored it, continuing on like Janelle hadn’t said anything. “I’m just saying, that pledge dance between you and King Mag looked awkward in every sense of the word.”

“I know,” Janelle said, inwardly cringing at the memory.

“Awkward like the meeting between Ulysses S. Grant and whoever had to tell him about what happened at the Battle of Little Bighorn while the nation was celebrating its centennial. Like manifest-destiny-idealism-dying-on-a-vine awkward.”

Janelle wasn’t 100% sure what Alisha was talking about and it wasn’t the first time. Her sister had a bad habit of peppering her conversations with obscure historical references and analogies. But it didn’t take much for Janelle to get the gist of what Alisha was trying to say now.

“Yes, I get it. It was really awkward. I agree. You’re exactly right.” Over the years, she’d found the best way to get her sister to stop talking was to agree with her, thereby taking the contrarian-fueled air out of her sails.

“I’m just saying…” Alisha seemed about ready to throw more salt her way, but then she trailed off. “Is that Tu?”

A few meters away, in the shadows to the side of the guest house entrance, Tu was having a serious make-out session with a man who was definitely not the tall, thin deejay she'd been flirting with earlier, the young Brad Pitt look-alike she'd gotten to play that block of Michael Jackson songs.

No, this man had the same shade of sandy blond hair as the deejay, but that was where the comparisons ended. This guy was big. Even taller than Mag, and wider, too. Also, this guy…

Janelle scoured her memory and recalled that yes, she’d met him before. Briefly. Three years ago while walking into her first and last night club with Mag and Rafe. She couldn’t recall his name, but she knew for sure Tu shouldn’t be kissing him out here in the open where anyone could stumble across them.

Alisha looked about ready to go straight up to their youngest sister and pull her out of the clench, but Janelle took her by the arm and silently shook her head. She walked her sister back to the copse of the trees they’d just rounded on the way to the guest house, and said as loudly as she could, “That was such a delightful party, but I am exhausted. I’ll certainly sleep well tonight.”

Alisha rolled her eyes but played along, letting Janelle reset their pace to nearly slow motion as they once again rounded the copse. “Yes, many of the diaries I’ve read by royal she-wolves have included passages to the effect of ‘am overtired after the ball, must go to bed without writing, will tell all tomorrow.’”

“You don’t say,” Janelle replied as loudly and dramatically as she could. “That’s
fascinating
.”

They didn’t have to keep the act up too long. When they cleared the copse of trees this time, they found Tu standing at the door. Alone.

“Hey, guys,” she said, waving like she hadn’t just been all over some wolf she wasn’t pledged to. “Did you have fun at the dance?”

And just like that, ranting Alisha came back. “Well, I was having fun talking to Chloe until Rafe came up, and was, like…” she pitched her voice low and broke into a decidedly dorky accent, “‘Chloe you’re talking to Alisha too much. Stop talking to Alisha. Why are you always talking to Alisha when I’m Rafe and you could be talking to me and all the other people
I
want to talk to?’ Then when I tried to get her to dance with us, he actually told her she couldn’t go! Can you believe that? Pulls her out of there like I was the she-wolf version of the bubonic plague and was going to infect her with my dancing. Heaven forbid I give her any ideas about having fun at the party she and his mother—not him—threw in his college buddy’s honor. What an asshole!”

“Or maybe he was dragging her off because he was tired of you hogging her all night,” Tu said, leading the way into the guest house. “They’re supposed to be the couple, not you and Chloe… unless there’s something you want to tell us, professor?”

“Tu…” Janelle said, rubbing at her temple. “Please don’t.”

“I’m just saying I’m here for our sister whenever she’s ready to come out,” Tu said, her voice as inauthentically sweet as a packet of sucralose.