Wolf and Prejudice (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 2) (26 page)

But he hadn’t counted on not one, but three children—the youngest of which was particularly skilled at getting adults to do things they didn’t necessarily want to do. And he hadn’t counted on the change in Alisha’s attitude. The stubborn she-wolf who had given him hell was still there for sure, but she had mellowed with age and unlike him, she’d obviously spent a lot of time regretting her actions.

He also hadn’t calculated on his response to reading Alisha’s journals. It was true, after spotting them in the duffle bag she’d brought back from Old Norway, he’d started to read the first one in the same way he read the annual report of a rival casino resort. With an eye toward what he could use to suit his interests.

But her journals had sucked him in. They were good. Better than good. Well-written and compelling—Rafe hadn’t been prepared for that. He’d stayed up into the wee hours of the morning reading her chronicle of Chloe’s life in Norway, and it had been unlike anything he’d ever read in his wolf studies class, a full accounting of what it had been like for Chloe, a foster wolf, who’d wanted desperately to marry Rafe, her alpha prince, but had been forced into another life in another time.

Rafe had grown up with tales of wolf warriors and kings who claimed the prettiest she-wolves and defended her against all would-be suitors in the same way he defended his weapons against jealous enemies and his crown against all challengers. Rafe himself had always dreamed of being such a wolf, and had been prepared to get and keep Alisha at any cost. However, reading her handwritten biography, which bore no resemblance to the tales he’d grown up with, allowed him to finally understand Alisha’s frustration. Why she’d had the burning need to tell history’s story from a she-wolf’s perspective, one that was missing from most wolf studies classes, even at the college level.

It made his feelings about what Alisha had done… complicated. He didn’t like that. So the night before had been about finally getting some answers from her. He’d wanted to force her into the realization that traveling back in time had been stupid, that she never should have left him to go chase after her book. He’d fully expected to get the argument he’d been spoiling for when he asked her if it had been worth it.

But her “no” had ruined everything, turned his punishment into a game between lovers as opposed to the penance he’d meant it to be. And hours later, he still couldn’t conclusively say who had won that fight, but he knew it hadn’t been him. He thought about the way he had released everything he had into her the night before, his entire body and soul. No, he definitely hadn’t come out the winner in that battle.

And now he was stuck here with his sons, trying to come up with a decent excuse for why he couldn’t let their mother come home. “I can’t control myself around her. I can’t trust myself to keep on hating her,” didn’t seem like answers they’d understand.

“You smell of Mama this morn,” Rafesson informed him, coming to walk on the other side of him. “Our Fenris and Aunt Chloe don’t sleep in a different beds. They go together to their bed closet and many nights, our Fenris did make our queen scream.”

“Please, not another Fenris and Chloe sex story,” Rafe nearly begged. While he understood his sons had grown up in a different time and place, he didn’t think he’d ever get used to four-year-olds who proudly repeated the tale of his killing two Vikings who dared try to claim their mama to anyone who would listen, and who spoke freely and practically about sex.

“Maybe you can try to make Mama scream the next time you do lay with her—” Knud suggested, falling in beside Rafesson.

Rafe cut him off right there. “Little dudes, I don’t care where you were raised. In this time, men don’t discuss what’s going on in their bedroom with their four year old sons.”

“Does Mama have pens?” Nago asked.

“What?” Rafe asked, confused by the sudden change of topic.

“Last winter, Mama’s only pen stopped writing. She was very sad, said she can’t do her work,” Rafesson explained.

“She cry and cry for many days. Without stop. And she did not wash her body.” Nago said. “Aunt Chloe made us sleep with Fenris Junior and Olafr. She made Mama go to the cabin by herself for two full moons. We missed her very much. But it’s okay. She stopped crying and came back to us. She said she was sorry for scaring us. She said she would not leave again, but…”

“We came here,” Knud said, his voice dark and glum. “And she’s gone… again.”

A clear story began to form in Rafe’s head. Alisha had used her last pen and had a nervous breakdown. After reading her journals, he could well imagine. She was living in a place without heat or any kind of entertainment other than simple songs and stories she couldn’t understand told around the fire. Before her work had gotten her through, but then her last modern pen had run out, in the middle of the winter, in a land where one had to sail several nautical miles to find a simple bottle of ink.

Alisha, he realized then, hadn’t gotten away with anything. She may not have suffered much recrimination from her family or the community at large, but she had suffered for what she had done. And just like he had given himself over to craziness before finally bringing himself back from the ledge in order to go after his mate, she had let the madness consume her before bringing herself back from the ledge in order to take care of her children.

“She has plenty of pens at Chloe’s house,” he assured his sons. “More pens than she’d ever know what to do with. And Grandma Erylace got her a laptop, so don’t worry, she has everything she needs to do her work.” He thought of her typing on her laptop in her basement cell, and what she’d said the night before about having a year’s worth of events to add to her recording, and it all fell into place. “And she’s probably writing as we speak.”

Knud blinked up at him. “Cousin Sarah said Mama lied to us. She said brides don’t have to stay in another place here. But Mama said you didn’t put her in jail. And she’s got pens…”

“Knud…” Rafe scrambled to think of a valid excuse for Alisha’s staying at another house.

But Knud kept going. “I think she don’t want to live with you because you don’t want to make her happy like our Fenris makes Aunt Chloe happy.”

Nago’s bottom lip wobbled. “Or maybe she don’t want to live with us because she hates you.” He tugged on Rafe’s pants. “Make her stop hating you,
please
.”

“She doesn’t hate me,” Rafe said. The scene from last night replayed in his head:
I want you, Rafe. I wasn’t ready for you back then, but I am now. I want you now, Rafe. All of you. I’m ready for you
.

“Then why is she not living with us?” Nago asked him, with tears in his voice. “I miss her!”

“I know, but—” He stopped.

Seriously, why was he keeping Alisha at Chloe’s house? She was going to be his wife, had claimed she wanted to be with him the night before. Why not let her live at the house with the boys and him and make her prove she was serious about wanting them all to be a family?

At the thought of Alisha coming to his home, of her sharing his bed, his heart constricted. Maybe… he thought, very carefully letting a sliver of hope steal inside his chest, they could make it work this time. Maybe they could reclaim the years they lost. Starting now.

“You know what, your mom doesn’t hate me and I’m going to prove it,” he said to the boys. “How about instead of going back to the kingdom house, we go help your mom pack her things, so she can come live with us?”

The boys cheered even louder than when he’d announced they’d each be getting their own smart tablet and it warmed his heart, because it meant they had their priorities in the right place. As a matter of fact, now that he had decided to forgive their mother, it felt like they
all
had their priorities in the right place.

“Let’s go,” he said, ruffling Knud and Nago’s hair as they turned around and made their way to the residential road leading to Chloe’s house.

However, when they passed by Grady’s trailer, his sheriff came running out. He looked agitated as he signed,
“We need talk. Not town business. Personal.”

Grady, Rafe knew, had his demons, but he didn’t advertise them. He was more likely to work off steam, destroying punching bag after punching bag in his basement’s gym, rather than coming to Rafe with anything that was bothering him.

So even though Rafe knew good and well what this was about, and had hoped to avoid the subject for a few more days since he already had enough drama on his plate, he turned to speak with his best friend.

“Boys run on ahead,” he said to them. “Tell your mama the good news. I’ll catch up.”

He waited until his sons were well out of earshot before saying, “What’s up?”

Grady signed, “
I see Tu and Janelle talking yesterday.”
Grady’s jaw set.
“Tu say staying in Wolf Springs. Say help with your cubs. I go out trailer, say ‘hell no.’ I say she can’t stay here. She say
—”

“Wait, sign slower. I’m barely understanding you.” Rafe said. “Tu wants to stay here? That’s the first I’m hearing about that, by the way. And you said no, and she understood you?”

“Yeah, she know sign language,”
Grady signed impatiently, like that was neither here nor there.
“She say staying. Say I can’t stop her because she princess and I am beta.”

Grady was nearly punching his signs into the air now, and Rafe inclined his head to the side, not just because his beta was so angry, but because…. “Tu said that to you? Tu Ataneq? She’s barely said two words to anybody but the children since she got here.”

“
She say more than two words to me
,” Grady signed. “
She say I have problem with her, talk to my boss.”

“Grady…” Rafe started.

“
I have problem with her.”

“Come on, Grady.”

“I am not sheriff if she stay here. I can’t.”

Now Rafe was truly alarmed. Grady hadn’t even threatened to quit during the years Rafe left him unable to do his royal job, taking on all challengers himself as opposed to routing them through his beta.

And Grady kept going.
“Oklahoma border five hours from here. My pack no have king. If they know she here, they—
”

Rafe went from conciliatory to alpha in zero seconds flat. “No,” he said with the full authority of the Colorado kingship ringing in his voice. “No harm can come to Tu, especially while she’s here. I won’t allow that.”

Grady’s eyes flared with frustrated anger.
“Tell her go home.”

“I can’t do that either. She’s my future sister-in-law and a princess of a state to which Colorado is allied. I can’t just tell her to get out because my beta has a problem with her.”

“You with her? I your friend long time… always! Tu is bitch, only care about herself. Alisha same.”

Rafe’s eyes narrowed. “Alisha is my queen. Don’t disrespect her.”

Grady looked at him like he was crazy. Then his hands really started flying, reminding Rafe that Alisha had betrayed him, taken his sons from him… Grady signed that the only reason she wasn’t still rotting away in her turning cage was because she had Rafe—

“Grady, you’re coming real close to saying something that will get you fired,” Rafe told him before Grady could sign “pussywhipped.” And Rafe meant it. He refused to let another wolf talk badly about his mate, even if he’d thought the same vicious things about her himself over the course of the last week.

Grady frowned, but finished his rant with,
“I help you. Now you help me. I want Tu go.”

It was true. Grady had served him well as beta and he deserved better than having to live in the same town with the she-wolf who’d brought such misery to his family. But…

“You said you would quit if Tu stayed. Maybe that’s not a bad idea.”

Grady’s expression went from absolutely infuriated to crushed.
“You want me leave?”

“No, man, of course not! You’re the best friend I’ve got. But kicking Tu out of town won’t bring back your brother. It wouldn’t change anything.”

Grady deflated a little when Rafe said that. And his hands were less aggressive when he signed,
“Tu think me nothing. She say me nothing.”

“You know who she’d never be able to talk to like that—an alpha king.”

Grady both shook his head and slammed the pads of his index and middle fingers into his thumb in the sign for
“No.”

“You said it yourself. Your pack is without a king. That makes them dangerous. And you’re the rightful heir now.”

Grady kept shaking his head and signing “no,” but Rafe pressed on. “I like having you as a sheriff, but no one’s come after me in years and I’ve already proven I could handle it if they did. I don’t need a rabid grey from Oklahoma to serve as my first line of defense. Hell, my dad’s old sheriff beta is already sick and tired of fishing every day. He’d probably take over back here in a heartbeat. You wouldn’t have to worry about leaving me in a lurch.”

But Grady kept shaking his head, seemingly no more willing to take his rightful place on the Oklahoma throne than he’d been after his brother died.
“Forget what I say before. I stay here. No quit.”

With that, Grady returned to his trailer, his shoulders sagging, his bluff totally called. And though they had no psychic connection, Rafe could feel his beta’s disappointment as if it were his own. Which left him feeling like a shitty friend as he made his way to Alisha’s house.

But then he thought about her in that tight little number her mother had forced on her, and that made him feel a little better. He wondered what she’d be wearing today.

However, when he arrived at the house, he found the boys in a state of panic. They were inside but apparently they’d let themselves in, because they were rushing from room to room, yelling, “Mama! Mama! Where are you, Mama? Mama, answer us!”

When they saw Rafe, they swarmed around him, crying in triplicate, “She’s gone! Mama’s gone!”

A cold terror fell over Rafe. “What do you mean gone?” he asked. “You mean she’s not in the house?”