Wolf and Prejudice (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 2) (30 page)
Read Wolf and Prejudice (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 2) Online
Authors: Theodora Taylor
Tags: #Romance
Now Alisha shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
Rafe stopped her in front of one of the hotel doors. “There’s a human writer staying with us right now. She writes contemporary romances in something the humans call the IR genre—.”
“Yes, I’ve heard of interracial romance novels… but what does that have to do with Chloe’s biography?”
“Professor Henley got me thinking. He’s right. Chloe’s story is romantic. Really romantic, maybe romantic enough to be a romance novel. So how about if we introduced it to the world that way? The Lupine Council probably wouldn’t even notice a human romance novel. And even if they did, it wouldn’t necessarily be in violation of the rules because it was presented as a work of fiction, not a biography.”
“You mean give a human my Chloe biography and ask her to write it up as a work of fiction?”
“As a work of
paranormal fiction
. This human doesn’t write those kinds of books, but maybe it’s time she branched out.”
He grinned at her before knocking on the door. And even if Alisha had wanted to protest his plan, it was too late. A short, dark-skinned woman answered the door. Her hair was pulled back into a fluffy afro puff and she wore bright red glasses and a yellow Pittsburgh Steelers t-shirt underneath a velvet jacket with jeans.
In the background, Alisha could see a thin man with short blond hair and his own set of glasses watching what looked like ESPN SportsCenter on the room’s flat screen. Her mate, Alisha guessed. Despite their vast color difference, they looked like they belonged together. They both had a tweedy quality about them, well-educated East Coast geeks on vacation.
And there was something else… Alisha sniffed the air to make sure she was smelling the human woman right.
“She’s pregnant,”
Rafe said inside her head.
“Yes, but it’s early days
,” Alisha answered.
“She might not even know yet.”
The woman looked up at them, her face confused. Perhaps because Alisha and Rafe had been so busy with their telepathic conversation, they hadn't said hello or introduced themselves. Or perhaps because she hadn't expected to open the door to a bride and groom already dressed for their wedding.
“Hi, can I help you?” She squinted at Rafe. “Hey, aren't you the owner of the resort? I saw your picture in the brochure!”
“Yes, I am. Name's Rafe Nightwolf. Nice to meet you,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Nice to meet you, too,” she said. “I'm Theodora. Theodora Taylor.”
“Yes, I know,” he said with a cordial smile.
To Alisha he said,
“It's your decision. If you don't want to do this, I can tell her she's won a complimentary dinner or something.”
Alisha made this decision like she made all her best decisions—mating with Rafe, tranqing the Deliverance hicks—in a split second with no time to talk herself out of it.
She held out her hand. “Hi, Theodora, I’m Alisha Ataneq, and I have a proposition for you…”
THOUGH RAFE AND ALISHA got to the hotel before anyone else in the wedding party, they ended up being over thirty minutes late to their own wedding. Convincing a human author to write a work of fiction based on the “fictional” travel journals Alisha had supposedly written on a lark wasn’t exactly straightforward. But after reading a few passages in the hotel’s empty restaurant bar—the same one that had to be closed for a week after Rafe “remodeled” the room upon finding out Alisha had gone through the Wyoming time portal—Theodora said she was intrigued. And though she’d made no promises before sending them away so she could finish reading the pages they’d given her, Alisha had a good feeling. The human would agree to write Chloe’s story as one of her novels, and the tale would go beyond a few measly grad students.
“I need you to come back out to the car with me,” Rafe said, pulling her toward the hotel lobby’s exit doors after they left Theodora reading in the restaurant.
“What? Why?” she asked as they stepped back outside into the cold Christmas wind.
“I have one more gift for you,” he said, letting go of her hand. He went over to his Range Rover, opening the door to the backseat.
“What? No way!” she said. “We’re already late for our own wedding and besides, you can’t top the gift you just gave me.”
“That was a wedding gift,” Rafe said. He brought a package, neatly wrapped in heavy dark green paper, out of the car’s side door compartment. “This is a Christmas gift.”
“Seriously, Rafe. We really should go. Your mom and especially my mom are probably losing their collective shit right now.”
Rafe handed her the present. “Then you should open this as fast as you can, because I’m not going back into that hotel until you do.”
With a huff, she took the gift from Rafe and tore away the green paper. But then her heart melted when she saw what was inside. “A journal,” she said.
Rafe smiled. “You’ve written Chloe’s story. Now it’s time you wrote yours.”
Alisha smiled back at him, her heart warm as an oven despite being outside in a metric-ton worth of wedding dress, without a coat, on Christmas Day. And even though they were already super-late, and even though she promised her mother she would do nothing to ruin her make-up, she reached out to her soon-to-be husband and pulled him down for a very, very long kiss.
It was true, she had been used as a pawn in the Game of Wolves. But as she kissed her mate, she knew for sure she had come out the winner.
If you liked this story, check out the other books in the 50 Loving State series:
WOLF AND PUNISHMENT (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 1)
Theodora Taylor reads, writes, and reviews in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When not reading, writing, or reviewing, she enjoys going to the movies, daydreaming, and attending dinner parties thrown by others with her wonderful husband. Feel free to contact her at
[email protected]
, and if you love IR romance as much as she does, check out her review blog at
irbookreviews.com
