7
I have a bad feeling about this.
Oh, now you're quoting movies?
Whatever it takes to stop you.
You can't. And you don't want to. So just... be cool.
My wolf whimpered softly as I walked between two racks of dresses, letting my fingertips brush their muted sleeves as if I were genuinely searching for something to wear to Calista’s mateship ceremony. The boutique’s door—the third one we’d visited that morning—stood wide open at the end of the aisle, allowing a gentle April breeze to fill the shop with the soft rustling of fabrics and the enticing aromas drifting in from the soul food shop down the block.
I paused at a pale pink dress that seemed like something I might actually wear. No beads, no bows, no lace. I had nothing against those embellishments on other women, but they didn’t seem suited to someone as fidgety as me. Calista, on the other hand, had been standing statuesque for what felt like an eternity, trying on one gown after another that was pinned into place on her athletic frame, only to dismiss each one with a disdainful glance as soon as the seamstress stepped back with an approving smile.
My sister hadn’t always been such a bitch, but it was getting harder and harder to remember what she’d been like before our thirteenth birthday. That’s when Father decided we were old enough to know what really happened to our mother. Up until then, we had simply been told she died during a great struggle, and together, we had conjured a Hollywood-worthy story about her heroic last battle to protect the East Village Throne from the dastardly villains from the other four boroughs.
Father couldn’t bear to tell us the story himself, so the burden had fallen on Zephyr. Mates were not allowed in the Whelping Den, and so Zephyr had been sitting vigil in the waiting room with Father to keep him calm. Betas were forbidden from using their coercive mental gifts on their own pack members unless it would enable someone to maintain mental clarity under duress. And being separated from your fated mate, even if only by a single locked door, always qualified as duress.
Calista made her entrance like a true alpha—swiftly and with great determination. She wanted to be born, and so she was. Zephyr said he would never forget the sound of her first cry, like a bugle demanding attention. In keeping with what felt like a very insulting tradition to the person who had done all the work, the midwolf presented Calista to Father first. Only after he formally acknowledged her as his heir would she have been placed on Mother’s breast to bond.
But she never made it there. Mother screamed; the nurse yelped for help; the midwolf rushed back into the Den with Father hot on her heels; and Zephyr found himself holding a squalling newborn Alpha. No one had known I was coming until I tried to arrive feet first.
Maybe I’ve always been meant to run.
Please. I don’t want to be alone.
And I don’t want to mate with Lucian.
I chuckled under my breath, earning a sharp glance from the older woman behind the register. My frazzled nerves tempted me to retort with a snarky comment about not realizing this was a library, but since Calista already thought I'd been hitting the books, I forced an apologetic smile and murmured, "Allergies."
"Should I close the door?" the cashier asked, moving towards it.
"No!" I hurriedly interjected, stepping forward and raising a hand. "I was just—They're indoor allergies. To, um, lace, actually. So, I'm just going to—" I gestured awkwardly towards the door with both index fingers. "Be right back."
My wolf clenched her claws in the depths of my spirit as I took a cautious sideways step towards freedom. This wasn’t exactly the silent exit I'd envisioned since arriving, but I might not get another opportunity. There was a subway station at the end of this block. All I had to do was catch the next train, push away thoughts of being confined in a metal tube under the Harlem River for who knew how long, and then remember which stop was closest to my friends' apartment. I would tell them the truth, or something close to it, and they would help me escape the city.
And then what?
Well, first, I would head to Pennsylvania to hide out with the Amish like John Book in Witness, perhaps even falling in love with a gentle farmer for a while before ultimately breaking his heart and moving on when enough time had passed for my pack to stop looking for me. Then, I would head out west, all the way to Santa Monica where I would ride a horse on the beach and have my photo taken to show my—
“Aveline!” Calista’s voice stopped me in my tracks, two steps out onto the sidewalk. “Where do you think you’re going? Get back in here! I need your opinion!”
Slowly, I turned around, one finger pointed skeptically at my own chest. Calista glowered at me from the boutique’s back room, one finger pointed adamantly at the floor in front of her. Her current dress featured delicate little shoulder straps and a sheath-style skirt that gave her the triangular silhouette of an Oscar statue.
“Looks great,” I said, flashing a big cheesy grin and two thumbs up.
“Get over here,” she snarled. “And tell me the truth.”
My wolf breathed a sigh of relief as I trudged back into the boutique. The cashier gave my own outfit—a casual gray cardigan over a plain black tee with plain black slacks—yet another disapproving look. As if I should’ve come to my sister’s dress fitting in full-on mating regalia myself. The tailor didn’t look any happier to see me, but that might have just been all the pins jutting from her thin lips.
“Leave us,” Calista ordered with a dismissive wave.
The tailor hesitated, only for a moment, but long enough for my twin’s face to flame red. She growled low in her throat and pointed into the other room. The tailor lifted her hands in surrender and swept past me, dragging her yellow measuring tape like a very long tail.
“Close the door,” Calista demanded. “We need to speak freely.”
I grasped the edge of the wooden sliding door tucked into the wall and pulled it shut. The sounds of freedom ringing from the street faded to a distant muffle. When I turned to face my twin, she had turned to face her reflection in the mirror, which was always surreal for me to witness, knowing she was seeing how my face would look with that much makeup.
Movie star hot, to be totally honest, but I didn’t have the attention span for being that beautiful. If I couldn’t make it happen in less than seven minutes, it didn’t get done. More than once I’d shown up for movie night with one eye untouched, having thought of something else I ought to be doing halfway through the process. I often thought of something else I ought to be doing, but I’d yet to figure out what that was.
“I look like a male,” Calista whined, plucking at the flimsy straps stretched over her muscular shoulders. The subtle movement revealed the light brown birthmark situated at the far end of her right clavicle, identical to the marking I bore on my left.
“You look powerful,” I said. “Isn’t that what you want?”
“I want to look like a powerful female.” Calista’s hands dropped to her slender hips. “Like I can accomplish all of my duties as the East Village’s first female Alpha. Any sign of weakness might be used as an excuse for Finnian to preemptively usurp me.”
Calista’s gaze caught mine in the mirror, and perhaps it was just me projecting my own emotions onto her image, but I could have sworn I caught a flicker of real fear in those ice-cold eyes. Shame pricked my heart. I was not the person who should be accompanying Calista on this mission, but I had taken that person from her, and so I had no right to remove myself from her life when she had for so long resisted her right to take mine.
I crossed the room to stand at her side. “There isn’t a weak bone in your body, Calista. This dress was simply made to flatter a different figure. We just need to find a more balanced design to highlight… all you have to offer. Something with a fuller skirt—”
“Oh, what does it matter?” Calista slumped, pressing one hand to her forehead. “The night will end with the dress on the floor and… and… Finnian will see only someone who could snap his neck in a split second.”
I shook my head and grasped my sister’s elbow, just below her admittedly very intense bicep. She had been put through the exact same training a male Alpha Heir would have received and fed the exact same highly restrictive diet. The dividends of this regimen were clear in the sparring room, but completely at odds with the messages we’d received as females about what males were looking for in a mate.
“First of all,” I said gently, channeling as best I could the way Charles spoke to me when I was blue about something, “the dress is for the benefit of the entire Upper East Side pack. It will be their first glimpse of you, so yes, it does matter. But as for what happens when the dress comes off…”
“I barely even know what that is,” Calista whispered hoarsely.
“Wait, what?” I stared at the side of her real face, but she kept her gaze straight ahead.
She sighed. “I understand the mechanics. I just don’t have the slightest idea how to be enticing. Or if he will even be someone I want to entice. And if he’s not, then how will I ever figure out how not to be—”
“Horrified?” I withdrew my hand from her arm. “Disgusted?”
Calista turned, blue eyes flashing. “You know Lucian. You know he was a loyal mate to Sylvia. You know he is a good father to his pups. You know that however awkward it might be at first, he would never dare nor even wish to harm you.” She gripped my upper arms, which were quite fit by human standards, but soft limp noodles compared to hers. “Of course I understand your preference for a younger male, Aveline, but you do not know them as I do. I have trained alongside them for seven years, and I can assure you there is not a one of them worthy of our bloodline.” Calista swallowed. “Or of my best friend.”
I looked down; my heart no longer pricked with shame but stabbed with guilt. Tomorrow evening, Calista would be expected to do far more than simply stand before our packs and declare the vows of mateship with the Alpha Heir of Upper East Side. She would be expected to physically mate with a total stranger, and if the Upper East Side males I’d had the misfortune of meeting were any indication, her mate could be a great deal worse than even Cal Hockley.
And if our own young males were cut from the same cloth, then perhaps she was right. Perhaps I should count myself lucky to have secured a mate as steadfast as Lucian.
Even if he is going gray in the muzzle?
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “It was just a shock.”
“I know,” Calista murmured. “I wanted it to be.”
She wouldn’t apologize, and she didn’t need to explain. Being the Alpha Heir had given Calista a peculiar understanding of our biology. Rather than believing we were two distinct people who just happened to have started out as a single zygote, Calista believed that she was our parents’ original daughter, and I was some sort of aberrant clone. Thus, it was only natural in her eyes that we experience every emotion at the same time.
Every negative emotion, I should say. To whatever extent Calista felt positive emotions, she kept them to herself. Which made it necessary for me to do the same. For instance, I could never tell her that I’d met a male I might actually want to mate with last night, or that I was almost certainly going to see him again tomorrow, or that in my haste to run away, I had failed to properly fantasize about him asking me for a dance at her reception…
“I see now that you were only looking out for me,” I said, grasping her wrists. “But I am worried about this happening way too quickly for his pups to process. I know it isn’t fair after what’s happened to you, but since the fate of the pack doesn’t depend on me, can’t Lucian and I have a normal courtship?”
Calista smirked. “So now you want him to get even older?”
I grimaced. “No. I really, really do not. But the pups…”
My twin narrowed her eyes and chewed on the corner of her lip. The fact that she was even considering a reprieve made it difficult to bite back a smile.
Why? What are you doing?
"Trust me," Upper East Side’s Beta Heir wasn’t my destined mate—I would have sensed that instantly—but he was definitely interested in me. On paper, we held the same rank, even though I lacked the ability to serve as Calista’s Beta. Father might prefer I mate within the East Village, but could he really refuse if the Beta Heir made a claim? If our packs were to be joined, the Beta Heir would inevitably become East Village Beta upon Zephyr's passing. It would be a snub for Father to deny him the highest-ranking female after Calista. If only I could delay this...
“You’re mistaken,” Calista gripped my arms. “Our pack’s fate might hinge on you soon.”
I scoffed. “What do you mean?”
Calista pushed me back, making me sit on a cushioned bench next to a faux potted plant. She moved to sit beside me, so I instinctively grabbed the tailor’s cell phone left on the bench. Calista winced in pain, removing a pin from her waist and tossing it on the floor. She folded her arms and remained standing.
“What’s happening?” I asked, nervously turning over the phone in my hands.
“Father is sick,” Calista stated plainly. “He’s been keeping it from you because you’re so sensitive, but it’s time you knew.”
“Sick?” I looked up at her, recalling his coughing fit earlier. While serious illness was rare among shifters due to our natural healing, it wasn’t unheard of. “How sick?”
“Nothing terminal,” she replied vaguely, “but it will affect his ability to lead, and to fend off challengers.”
I shook my head. “But you’re the Heir. Anyone challenging him would have to go through you, and no one’s foolish enough to try.”
“If I’m not physically present in the East Village—”
“But you will be,” I interrupted, swallowing hard. “You and Finnian will live in the East Village. If Father steps down, you become Alpha, uncontested.”
“That was the plan,” Calista said, glancing suspiciously towards Upper East Side. “But plans seem to have shifted abruptly. I’m concerned Finnian might be reconsidering his role as Alpha Consort now that his father has secured our bloodline for Upper East Side.”
I licked my dry lips. “But you said this morning you wouldn’t mate with him unless he returned to the East Village with you. Surely that’s persuasive enough.”
“That was bravado, Aveline.” Calista’s eyes squeezed shut momentarily. “Finnian and I may be both Alpha Heirs, but we’re not equals. If he chooses to stay in Upper East Side, so will we. If his father reneges on the merger after securing our bloodline for Upper East Side, there’s little I can do, short of contemplating the unthinkable—eliminating both him and Finnian.” She took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “Even then, I’d have to think long and hard about ending my own pup’s father.”
“I don’t understand. If you think we’re on the verge of being double-crossed, then you have to call the whole thing off. They can’t just… kidnap you.”
“Of course you don’t understand.” Calista raked her fingers through her hair. “You weren’t trained to think like an alpha. I can’t call it off without any proof of their intention to double-cross. At this point, it might be taken as an act of war! I have no choice but to see it through and do my best to… entice Finnian into submission. If I fail—”
“You won’t fail.”
“But if I do…” Calista leaned over as much as the dress would allow and took my face in her hands. “You must be prepared to protect what has always been ours, Aveline, and you will be better equipped to do so with Lucian at your side.”
My mouth fell open. “You want me to claim the East Village Throne?!”
“Well, of course I don’t want that,” Calista snapped. “It’s mine. But if I’m unable to defend it, then you must do so in my stead. You could never defeat a challenger by yourself, but if you’re mated to Lucian, and I mean that in the fullest sense of the word, then he would be allowed to fight in your stead. You would become the Alpha, your pup would become the Alpha Heir, and control of the East Village would remain in our family where it belongs.”