ChapterTwenty
Out in the hallway, I was surrounded by wolves. It was a strange sensation. Declan employed a lot of us. There was no arguing with the fact that wolves were stronger, faster, and generally more loyal than humans.
In his crew, we operated by pack dynamics. Because I was Declan’s right hand and because I was an alpha, I was at the top. Everyone else fell into line.
No matter what Jesaiah had said, I could see the similarities here. Tyson stood a few feet away, his arms crossed. Five wolves stood behind him, mimicking his pose. None of them quite had his size or the feel of his aggression, but he clearly had his own allies.
Jesaiah was nowhere in sight, and the rest of the wolves stood around, glancing between me and Tyson, as though trying to determine who was going to come out on top.
“So you took on the old man?” Tyson smirked.
“He tookmeon.” I bared my teeth. “He learned his lesson.”
Tyson snorted. “Yeah. Hisownertaught him his lesson. I heard you didn’t even shift.”
Tension radiated through the room, whispers building into a crescendo of noise.
“You want to see what kind of wolf I am when I shift?” I crossed my arms, leaning back on my heels. “Because we can take this outside. I was taught never to shift inside a house. Ms. Manners frowns on it.”
“Sure. Let’s take it outside,” Tyson growled.
He leaned in. But before he even touched me, Nia stepped between us. She held up two hands, one toward Tyson, one toward me.
To my surprise, Tyson rolled his eyes, backing off. He waved her away. “He’s not worth it. If he wants to suck on Bartlett’s popsicle and think that makes him an alpha, good for him.”
He mimed giving a blow job before laughing. He and his friends turned, heading down the hallway toward the kitchens.
With the potential fight gone, most of the other wolves trailed away. Nia turned to me, eyes narrowed.
I held up both hands. “Hey, he started it.”
“That’s not going to fly with her,” Jay said quietly.
He had stayed behind, a couple of other wolves behind him.
“Coral and Theo,” he introduced, indicating a broad-shouldered woman, her long blonde hair hanging down her back in two braids. The man—Theo—sat in a wheelchair without handles on the back.
Both of them nodded at me, cautious expressions that spoke more to curiosity than friendship.
“Hi.” I offered over my hand. Coral shook with a quick squeeze, and Theo’s callused hands spoke to how long he had been in the chair. “Listen, I promise I’m not usually this much of an alpha stereotype. Usually, I only get in fights every other day. Twice a day is a lot for me.”
“Don’t worry. Tyson gets to everybody. I’m surprised we have a lawn, given how many pissing contests he causes.” Coral laughed at her own joke, and I joined in.
“So you grew up in the church?” Theo asked.
I immediately saw the question for the trap it was.
“Kind of.” I looked away, closing my eyes and sighing. “Cade knows, but I spent most of my childhood on the streets. After the church kicked me out.”
“Yeah, we figured,” Coral said. “The church doesn’t like alphas.”
She and Theo exchanged a glance, and I immediately knew I had been right. Both of them had grown up in the church. Coral had a cross tattooed just under her collarbone, exposed by her low-hanging tank top.
Church wolves were a different sort than any other I’d met. The church squeezed normal socialization out of them. No dominance games, no shifting, nothing that you’d see in a normal werewolf childhood. I’d seen enough wolves who came out of the church system so stressed and unsocialized that they thought a normal back slap was worth getting into a fight about, or they didn’t recognize when to back off a dominant wolf.
Some of them adjusted to life outside the system, but others never did, ending up challenged for the rest of their lives.
“With all those people listening, I didn’t exactly want to say that I spent most of my teenage years homeless.” I looked at them. “Are you going to rat me out?”
