Wolf and Soul (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 3) (18 page)

Grady gripped and ungripped the wheel. Then he gripped it again before asking, “
Do
we have something planned?”

“Of course,” answered Tu, still typing. “That’s one of King Tikaani’s top three rules. Whatever you do for other pack towns, you’ve got to do for your kingdom town ten times over.” She tossed a grin at him and said in an overly earnest and lyrical tone that Grady realized was an impression of her father’s Eskimo accent, “Your state pack is your body, but your kingdom town is its beating heart.”

It was obvious Tu had found her calling in all this wheeling and dealing. And Grady liked her newly returned confidence. It was a hell of a lot better than the goth chick who’d been moping around the Colorado kingdom house when he arrived on Thanksgiving.

But…

“Tu, I’m going to need you to give it to me straight. Can we deliver on even half of the promises you made?” he asked. “These people. They have issues and, yeah, a lot of them are on meth, but most of them are good, hardworking people. I don’t want to let them down.”

She regarded him seriously.

“I’m my father’s daughter. I get what moves people—it’s not just money, but the feeling that they’ve won something, that they’re finally getting a reward for all the hard work they’ve put into their lives. I get that and I know how to manipulate it to my advantage, how to sell people, get them to go with me, do what I want. I’ve always been able to look people in the eye and get them to believe exactly what I want them to believe. Even if it’s complete bullshit. You should have seen me back in the day, spraying on perfume and complaining about headaches that were really hangovers and everybody, even my mom, going along with me because I was so good at the sell.”

She shook her head at him then. “They’re going to be surprised when they find out,” she said, her voice somber inside his head.

“Find out what?” he asked, his heart filling up with dread. Was Tu about to pull the rug out from under his feet? Confess she’d been misleading everyone all this time?

“What a good king you are,” she answered. “You’re going to be the best king this state has ever had because you’ll never let humans put a factory on your land just to make a rental profit. You’ll never let someone like me come in and bamboozle everyone with a bunch of promises they can’t keep. But when it comes to the promises I’ve made and plan to make, you don’t have to worry.”

She laid her hand on top of his. “You were right about me being a little crazy,” she admitted with a wry smile. “But I’m still all in when it comes to keeping my promises. And I promise you, by this time next year, nobody’s going to be calling Oklahoma a mange state anymore.”

He believed her. He still had no idea how she planned to pull off all this magic with just $300,000, but he believed her. About her keeping the promises she’d made to his people and about her truly believing he’d be a good king, despite the fact that he was defective in so many ways. He believed all of it.

She startled him out of his newfound belief with a big cheer.

“Now
that’s
what I’m talkin’ about! Yeah, Wolf Haven for the win!”

He looked out the front window and saw what was making her crow. A banner strewn across the kingdom town’s main road from lamp post to lamp post. It read, “A BIG WOLF HAVEN WELCOME TO OUR KING AND NEW QUEEN!”

Tu bounced in her seat, pumping her arms in the air like they’d just won the lotto.

“Yes! Yes! Yes! We’ve already got their hearts and minds!” She then smiled happily at Grady. “Oh, Wolf, this is going to be soooo good!”

19

T
u had to give it to Wolf Haven. She’d expected a big welcome back. Her parents still talked about the party they’d found waiting for them when they returned from their wedding tour, complete with a bunch of singing and dancing by the town’s children as King Tikaani rowed himself and his wife into the harbor.

And though there were no charming Eskimo children to sing and dance for them as their truck pulled to a stop outside town hall, they did find what appeared to be the town’s residents standing on either side of the street. They erupted into a great cheer as soon as she and Grady got out of the truck, like the best float in the Macy’s Day parade had just arrived on their town’s doorstep… a great cheer she happily transmitted to Grady as she waited for him to come around to her side and let her out as he still insisted on doing whenever they arrived in a pack town.

“What the hell?” Grady said inside her head, as he opened the passenger-side door.

“Word spreads fast when it comes to good business,” Tu replied as she took his hand. “Here’s where we wave,” she said. “Now!”

They both raised their hands in the air, Tu with well-practiced enthusiasm and Grady with almost comical hesitancy, like he was afraid this was all an illusion that would disappear as soon as he started playing along.

But the crowd cheered even louder.

“I never…” he said. “I never imagined they would accept me like this. Cheer for me like this. So many folks were disappointed when I took the crown. My brother was the popular one. Everybody liked him, but they barely tolerated me.”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t like your brother was looking out for their best interest. You are,” she said as they walked up to the raised dais, which had been set up in the town’s main square next to what smelled like a freshly painted gazebo, probably one leftover from an era before drugs had spread like a disease across the state, infecting everybody, including Grady’s own father, the state’s last official king.

But you wouldn’t guess that now. The crowd of wolves appeared clean and pulled together, not an addict among them that she could smell or see, and they were cheering her and Grady onto the stage like they couldn’t be happier to have a black she-wolf as their new queen.

Grady looked like he didn’t quite know how to handle any of this, and she almost felt sorry for him. All this acceptance had to be a little overwhelming for a beta king who’d been kept in a tornado cellar from the age of ten. She smiled a secret smile. If there was one thing she wanted to do other than assure his future monetary situation, it was to make sure his kingdom town loved him as much as she—

She stopped mid-thought, reminding herself not to go down that road. Tu wanted Grady to be loved by Wolf Haven as much as her father was loved by Wolf Lake. And that was it.

“Are you sure you want me to keep the walkie-talkie on?” she asked when they came to a stop in front in the middle of the stage. “Because it’s going to get loud. Louder than anything you’ve ever heard before.”

For a split second, Grady actually seemed a little nervous as he looked around with a frown.

“Where do all these stages keep coming from? I didn’t even know Wolf Haven owned one.”

Tu waved the question off. “If you do a good enough job, stages magically appear. I don’t know how, but it’s a fact of royal life.” She squeezed his hand. “All right, brace yourself, Wolf.”

She could feel him doing just that beside her, his arm tightening, his mind going completely quiet as if it were suspended in space and time, waiting to see what she would say next.

“All right! All right! All right!” Tu yelled out to the crowd. “That is some welcome. But where’s the marching band?”

That got a little laughter and someone in the crowd yelled, “We don’t have one!”

“You don’t have a marching band?!” she hollered. “Well, that’s no good. The only reason I married into the lower forty-eight was because I hear you mainlanders know from marching bands. I guess we’re going to have set one up at our kingdom school, so we can have some good music the next time we get up on this stage.”

Big cheers came from some of the kingdom school kids and a lot of parents.

“But seriously, I’m so honored you have welcomed me back with open arms,” Tu said when the crowd quieted down. “I don’t even know what to say. It’s just so overwhelming. And maybe it’s the pregnancy hormones, but…” She turned to Grady and said aloud, “Honey, I know you were going to save this for Christmas, but can I tell them now? Please?”
“Tell them what?” Grady asked her inside her head.

Tu turned back to the crowd with a huge smile. “He said ‘Go right on ahead, sweetheart.’”

The crowd leaned forward as one with baited breath.

“How best to say this…” she said, really drawing out the drama before announcing, “Everyone who’s already renting property or who rents a property in the kingdom town this month will receive a one hundred year lease. This lease will entitle you to live rent-free and do with your house as you wish. You can sell it, you can rent it out yourself—anything you want for as long as the current king’s line is in power.”

The crowd went crazy. And to Grady’s credit, he played along, smiling benevolently down at his subjects like he knew all about this.

“Smart,” he said inside her head. “As long as I’m in power they get to live rent free.”

“Yep, but somebody kills you in a challenge fight, they have to start paying rent again. My dad always says half of staying in power is making sure people want you to stay in power. We just got rid of most of your in-kingdom challenges and we’re not even done yet.”

She flapped her hands gently in a “settle down” gesture to the crowd. “Wait, our king’s saying that’s crazy. He says he can’t just give you all houses.”

A disappointed grumble started up in the crowd.

“He says a house is no good if you don’t have a truck in the driveway. That means…” she started pointing like a maniac, as she did her best Oprah, “You get a truck and you get a truck and you get a truck. Every hundred year lease will come with a truck!”

This was Oklahoma, home of the land rush and lover of country songs. Land was one thing. But land
and
a truck?

The crowd lost their collective minds. The screaming got so loud Tu stopped transmitting it for fear it would blow out Grady’s inner ear. A few people even fainted.

The crowd slowly hushed when Tu waved her hands above her head and yelled, “Hold up. Hold up! We’re still not done.” She turned the transmitter back on so Grady could hear this next part, too.

“In January, we’ll start hearing business pitches and we’ll be awarding grants of up to fifty thousand dollars to the first fifty people who pitch us solid business ideas for our kingdom town. So start dreaming now, because next year, all your dreams could come true!”

20

F
ive Thanksgivings ago, if someone had told Tu one day she’d find herself out in the Oklahoma kingdom town’s square shaking her ass in a red sweater dress with a reindeer imprinted on the front of it to a Colin Fairgood song called “Alabama Girls Bring the Party,” she would have called that person a liar and assumed he/she was crazy.

But here she was shimmying and bouncing to a genre of music she’d never particularly cared for. That was one of the few things she and Luke had held in common.

“Just because I’m from Oklahoma don’t make me county,” he’d told her with a lazy smile that evening long ago when she’d asked if he could tear himself away from the southern rock tracks he was probably planning on playing long enough to throw on a Michael Jackson song or two.

And during the barn party when he was in charge of his own play list, he’d only played songs with digital undertones. Tracks with heavy drums and bass and singers with big, electronic voices repeating the same things over and over again.

But here she was, dancing to yet another country song out of Alabama (maybe that’s the only kind of music they had in Alabama?) and this track—it was real good. She happily bounced to it inside the large gazebo and it made her feel like she was drunk and young again, even though she hadn’t had a drop to drink in five years.

The only person who liked the music better than her was Grady, who’d turned out to be an intuitive dancer, swinging her around and matching her move for move with an ease she never would have expected someone of his size and background to possess.

“It’s the football,” he’d explained when she’d first expressed surprise that he could dance so well. “Teaches you how to stay in control of your body, make it do exactly what you want it to do under any circumstance.”

Which explained a lot of things, including his prowess in bed.

But five songs in, he pulled her in close for a slow dance, not seeming to care that this was a fast song.

“Why didn’t you tell me about country music all those days we were on the road?” he demanded inside her head. “I mean all that Michael Jackson you played and you didn’t think I’d want to hear this?”

She giggled into his shoulder. “No, I knew you’d like it more than anything else. Just like my Eskimo DNA makes me a sucker for pop songs with any kind of chant. That’s why I didn’t play it for you, because I didn’t want to be stuck listening to country music for the whole trip.”

“How can you not like it? This guy is awesome! Never heard anything like him. What’s that he’s playing?”

“A fiddle. If I’m remembering right, Colin Fairgood’s actually a classically trained violinist but he stopped doing that and started doing country because—you know—money.”

“I want to hear the whole album.”

“Okay.”

“Seriously, that’s what I want for Christmas.”

“Okay,” she answered.

“You
promise
.”

“I
promise
.”

“All right, I’m going to hold you to that.”

He grinned down at her, and despite being the kind of girl who’d been princess-trained to keep her cool no matter where she was or who she was talking to, she felt her heart skip a beat. Like she was twenty again and had just spotted a super-hottie across the Colorado ballroom, wearing a tux.

He hadn’t smiled much back then but when he did… oh, man, it was a killer. And now that he was well on his way to becoming a wolf of worth, one who’d cured his state’s case of mange… well, any she-wolf would be lucky to have him.