Wolf and Prejudice (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 2) (23 page)

Rafe shrugged. “If I’d had moonwalking skills like that when I was four, I’d probably show them off, too. And I bet it was mind blowing for them to hear Michael Jackson for the first time.”

“It was wondrous,” Rafesson informed him, in the same tone of voice one might use to talk in retrospect about a miracle witnessed. “Mama, is it true what father says? There be machines in this land—they let you hear musicians whenever you wish?”

And that was how they ended up spending their morning together as a family, dancing to Michael Jackson songs. As expected, Knud and Rafesson were disappointed to find out “their” songs actually had different names, and were about much heavier and considerably more confusing subject matter than the family-friendly lyrics she’d come up with. But they enjoyed the dance party immensely and fought when Rafe said it was time to go home.

“Mama can come back home, too,” Rafesson informed his father in that overly adult way of his, as if he were already an alpha king and expected his wishes to be granted.

But Rafe shook his head. “Not yet,” he said.

“When?” Knud asked Rafe. Then her second born looked up at her with eyes so pitiful, it nearly broke her heart. “When are you coming home, Mama?”

“I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. But then his crushed look forced her into a hopeful lie. “In this land, unmarried wolves must stay in separate houses until their wedding. It’s kind of like a tradition. So I have to stay here.”

Rafesson frowned. “You’re not in jail? Our she-wolf cousin said Father put you in jail.”

Alisha somehow hung on to her reassuring smile and said, “Does it look like I’m in jail?”

Rafesson looked around the homey space, which had been lovingly filled with furniture and knick-knacks, much of it made by Chloe with her own two hands. “No,” he said. He heaved a sigh and said to his brothers, “Come, we will go with Father.”

But Nago broke rank and threw his arms around Alisha’s waist. “No! I want to stay here with Mama!”

“Nago,” Alisha said gently, bending down to address him at his level. “Your father missed you very much and now he wants the chance to know you. I had you guys all to myself for nearly four winters, let him have you for a few more days, okay?”

Nago looked like he was fighting off tears, but he nodded nonetheless and went to stand with his brothers near the open door.

Rafe, however, didn’t immediately leave. He stared at her.

“What?” she asked him.

He looked away and she felt something akin to pain flare inside her mind. And then the words,
“You’re a good mother,”
appeared in her head.

“
Oh…”
She hadn’t been expecting him to say that. “
Thanks. But like you said, they’re good boys
.”

“They miss you. The only reason we’re here is because they kept asking to see you, and I’m finding it hard to deny them anything they want right now.”

She gave him a sympathetic grin. “
That explains why they each got their own tablet.”

“They’re cheaper now than when you left.”

She laughed.
“If you say so.”

Rafe gave her grumpy look.
“You could have used my not being able to say no to them against me, but you didn’t, so… thanks.”

“You’re, uh, welcome?”
she answered carefully, more than a little weirded out that he was thanking her for keeping their kids from freaking out about him imprisoning her in Chloe’s house.

“I’ll repay the favor,”
his eyes flicked over her.
“Where did you get that dress?”

“My mother strikes again. She made me give her all the sweats out of the basement and sent these clothes over.”

His eyes stayed on her, dark and inscrutable.
“Do you like that dress?”

“Not even a little bit. It’s only a stop-gap until I can convince someone to buy me a nice, simple pair of jeans.”

The corner of his mouth hitched up in a sorta smile.
“Good.”

Then he left before she could ask what her dislike of the skanky dress had to do with anything.

23

A
lmost as soon as Rafe left with the boys, Alisha’s sisters showed up at the door with an entire dish of Janelle’s veggie lasagna and the two nieces she’d never met. She and Janelle spent the next few hours reconnecting and giving one another carefully worded life updates—Sarah, her oldest niece, Janelle warned, was known for being the worst kind of snoop: one who reported back on what she’d eavesdropped in the most embarrassing ways. Apparently she and Mag had to whisper fight now, because the last time they’d argued without a mind to who might be listening in at the door, they later found out from Sarah’s preschool teacher that their entire argument had been repeated verbatim in lieu of a physical item on Share Day and then acted out as imaginative play by Sarah and her group of friends.

By the time Janelle finished the story, Alisha was bent over with laughter. She had missed her big sister, and though she'd changed a lot over the years-she'd come in declaring she would have been here sooner if their parents hadn't kept Alisha's return a secret from her, and not to worry because she was already preparing to take legal action over Alisha's unlawful detention, and where did Rafe get off keeping her locked up, anyway-Janelle's gentle good humor remained a fixed thing.

Unfortunately, Alisha couldn’t say the same about Tu. Her little sister, who despite living in a grey and dour mountain town, used to dress exclusively in bright colors, showed up in black jeans, a black turtleneck, black Doc Martens, and a black scarf worn over a set of dour French braids. Her clothing color seemed to reflect her current mien. Tu had turned into a walking black hole with Alisha sending several words in, but getting hardly anything but an occasional “yes,” “no,” or “not really,” to come back out.

Tu didn’t seem to be interested in reconnecting with Alisha, or talking, or really anything at all save Janelle’s two little girls. She rolled around on the ground with them and swung them in the air and kept them entertained with simple games while Janelle and Alisha talked, but whenever Alisha tried to include her in any grown-up conversation, Tu either shut her down with a one-word answer or pretended to be too distracted with the girls to answer.

Alisha was happy to see Janelle doing so well, content as could be as a mother, wife, and, to Alisha's great astonishment, a kick-ass lawyer. But she found herself more than a little worried about Tu. She desperately wanted to know what had happened to her younger sister during the last five years. And when the town's clock went off, it's carillon bells announcing the six o'clock hour with a somber melody, Alisha grabbed Tu's hand.

“I know you have to get back to the kingdom house for dinner, but can you come back for breakfast?”

Tu’s eyes went to the girls.

“No, just you and me,” Alisha said. Then she added, “Please?”

“Okay,” Tu said, her voice little more than a quiet pinprick of sound. There was a scent to her now, distant as a memory, but lingering all the same like the last note of a sad song. Her mange state king, maybe? Was he dead? Alive but estranged from Tu after the death of their child? Alisha had so many questions, and she was determined to get answers, if only so she could figure out how to help her little sister.

“See you tomorrow,” she said to Tu. Then she watched them all go, cursing herself for not putting more effort into getting Tu to go to college. Maybe if she’d been safely ensconced in an academic program, she wouldn’t have gone down a bad path, would never have met up with the pain that was obviously still haunting her.

And maybe if she hadn’t gone back in time, she would have been here for Tu in her time of need. Guilt assailed Alisha, and she had to busy herself with making a microwave dinner to keep from letting the silence in her two-bedroom prison eat her alive.

The doorbell rang just as she was about to pierce the frozen dinner’s plastic film with a fork, and she smiled. Janelle had seemed reluctant to go back to the king’s house for dinner. Maybe she’d sent the kids on with Tu, and come back so they could have a real conversation without fear of Sarah reporting it back. She all but ran to the door, excited about the prospect of getting some answers to the mystery of Tu.

But it wasn’t her sister on the other side of the door. It was Rafe, with what looked like two plates of food, covered in tin foil and stacked on top of each other.

“Rafe? What are you doing here?”

He held the plates out to her. “Returning the favor. I brought you dinner.”

She took the two plates from him. “Thank you. But is all of this for me?”

“If you want it to be. You don’t have to invite me in.”

She looked up at him sharply and tried to read his face, but got nothing back but a neutral expression. She could no longer feel anything coming off of him, and this made her a little sad.

“Why don’t you come in?” she said, stepping back and holding the door open wide.

She breathed in his scent as he passed by and her wolf ate up the sight of him. He’d long since discarded his Cheyenne warrior clothes, his leanly muscled body fully covered in a dark green cable knit sweater, wide-legged trousers, and a gray pea-coat. His hair was pulled back into one efficient black ponytail as opposed to coiled into two braids.

But he threw off the same energy he had when he’d fought in Norway, striding into Chloe’s house as if he owned it—which he technically did—and throwing his pea-coat over the arm of one of Chloe’s hand-upholstered chairs like a challenge.

This made her human very, very tense. Why had she invited him in? Why hadn’t she taken the food and sent him away?

“Would you like water with dinner? Or a beer? I’m not sure what Grady put in the refrigerator.”

“Water,” he answered. Then he took the two plates from her and set them down on opposite ends of Chloe’s small kitchen table.

She felt his eyes on her as she filled up two glasses with water from the refrigerator tap, and she adjusted the hem of the ridiculous dress, wishing anew that she hadn’t given her mother the sweats Rafe had provided for her. Yes, they made her look like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, like a chunk of body, completely devoid of curves, but at least they afforded her some modesty.

However, if Rafe thought anything good or bad about her dress, it didn’t show on his face or read over their mental connection. The whole set-up made her nervous, like she was sitting down to a dinner of mashed potatoes and turkey breast with a robot.

“So how was your day?” she asked.

“Fine,” he answered. Then with some more thought. “Good. I enjoyed spending time with the boys.”

“They weren’t too much trouble?”

“Other than asking any adult who sat down in their vicinity for more than two seconds to read to them, no. They definitely have your priority set.”

“And that bothers you?” she asked. “You’d rather they didn’t enjoy books so much? You’re afraid they’ll grow up and become academics like me?”

Intelligence was a funny thing in the werewolf community. Valued only if the end result was more money. Unlike in the human community, children weren’t particularly encouraged to read outside of school—least of all boys. Panic flared inside her mind. Was this how marriage would be to Rafe? Would she have to defend her parenting decisions, even down to encouraging a love of reading in the boys?

“No, I like that they’re smart,” he answered. “And while I’d expect each of them to take whatever crown they’re given seriously, I’d also like for them to go to college with the humans like I did. It’s important they know how to conduct themselves outside the wolf community, especially for business matters.”

“Oh… good,” she said, relieved. She didn’t love that the boys wouldn’t necessarily have a choice about becoming alpha kings, but at least he wanted them to go to college, which was more than her own parents had condoned for their daughters.

“And, you know, Alisha. I also like to read.”

She tilted her head. “Really?”

“Yes, really. You don’t have to sound so surprised.”

“It’s just I’ve never seen you with a book in my life.”

“That’s because it’s not something I do all the time to hide away from the rest of the world. It’s a pleasure I enjoy in private. You should see my bedroom in the kingdom house. I’ve got a bookshelf lining an entire wall.”

She sat forward. “No way! What kind of books do you read? Wait, let me guess. A lot of military histories. Ooh, and memoirs of successful human businessmen. Oh—and everything George R. R. Martin has ever written, right?”

Rafe seemed almost close to cracking a smile. “Yes, those are all up there. Also, a lot of Stephen King. Sherman Alexie, and a few other Native writers.” He glanced down at his plate. “While I was in Alaska, I read all the assigned reading on your Wolf History 101 syllabus.”

Alisha’s heart nearly caught in her throat. Rafe, she knew, probably wasn’t intending to touch her emotions with his confession. But she was a professor born, and the thought of him reading over all the books on her Wolf History 101 syllabus struck her as wildly romantic, an act as intimate as putting his hand on her beating heart. “That’s why you knew about Knud Rasmussen.”

“Yes,” he said.

She took a sip of her water. “I don’t know whether to be touched or impressed.

Either you actually cared enough to read all the books on my syllabus—something most of the freshmen taking my class didn’t even bother to do—or you’re that thorough when it comes to analyzing your prey.”

He seemed to be studying her when he asked, “Which one do you think it is?”

She studied him right on back. “I think it’s both. I think maybe you have a hard time distinguishing between what’s good for a relationship and what’s good for business.”

She waited to hear or feel his response, but if anything, there was even less emotion on his part, like he’d thrown up a few extra mental blockades just to make sure she had no idea how he was feeling about this line of conversation.

So she kept on talking. “And I think that’s definitely something we should work on after we’re married.”