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She also brought me coffee every morning, bless her heart.
“What happened?” I held my cup close to my lips, enjoying the warmth billowing off it but afraid to take a sip unless I needed to reply to something.
“Bit of a fight. Some of the boys are in police custody.”
She was downplaying it of course. Werewolves in jail was a disaster. Especially my werewolves. I was shocked Callum wasn’t already calling to scream at me over this.
Given the tenuous state of human-werewolf relations in America at the moment, the last thing we needed for the Southern pack was a breaking news story about our people being violent menaces. Sure, nothing had actually changed. This was just masculine aggression and boys being dumbasses. But because wolves were involved, suddenly it was a political disaster waiting to happen.
I was off the couch before she could continue, my coffee clutched in one hand while I pulled my robe off with the other. I was going to need a lot more caffeine, and also some pants.
And my day had started so well.
Chapter Two
Wilder was on our heels before Mags got the passenger door open.
He was busy tugging a threadbare white shirt over his head, giving me a great view of his taut abs and slightly too low cargo pants. A thin trail of dark hair ran between his bellybutton and his—
“Where are we going?” he asked.
With a mind this dirty? Straight to hell.
He grabbed a flannel button-down shirt off the hood of my car and slipped it on over his tee. I knew perfectly well there was no sense in telling him he couldn’t join us. He was already opening the back door and dropping himself into the backseat like it was completely normal. And in a way, it had become normal. Where Mags had become my de facto assistant, Wilder had become my self-appointed bodyguard.
If telling my uncle I didn’t want him to buy me a bigger house was hard, telling Wilder I didn’t need a bodyguard was impossible.
It didn’t help that during the time I’d known him I had been the target of an assassin and almost murdered by an anti-werewolf zealot. Good thing I hadn’t told him about the time I nearly died in a collapsing building in New York. Probably best he didn’t know danger had always been drawn to me like a moth to the flame, or I might have a werewolf sleeping on my couch every night.
I could think of a few other places for him to sleep.
Protecting me was the real reason he’d been out mowing my lawn. It was the reason he’d helped paint my house over the summer, and fixed my fence, and was constantly working on my car. He wasn’t wooing me with his manly skills. He was finding excuses to be near me so he could keep both eyes on me.
Wooing me was just a bonus.
I couldn’t complain too much. My house had never looked better, and my car no longer showed me a different warning light every week.
I could do without the hovering and concern over my life, however.
Nothing makes you feel less safe than other people worrying about your safety. Plus, it was kind of a horny-times buzzkill to realize Wilder was constantly thinking about guarding my body rather than getting all up in it.
I sighed to myself, starting the Dart as Mags climbed in. Guess I’d look more official this way, with my own little entourage. And all the good Alphas had bodyguards, didn’t they? It gave the outward impression I respected my life and its value to the pack.
There was so much about this system I had to learn still. The plan had always been for my twin brother, Ben, to take Callum’s place as king. But now here I was, Alpha of New Orleans, and Ben was back in St. Francisville with no title beyond that of prince. I knew it pissed him off, but there wasn’t much I could do to change our situations. Callum’s decisions were final, and too damn bad if anyone got hurt in the process.
I think Uncle Callum might have been out in the woods too long, among the wolves and away from people. It made him a wonderful leader for werewolves, but he seemed to have lost the ability to understand human emotions and motivation and that werewolves still had all those human foibles.
Ben, in his own way, was very similar. Perhaps that was why Callum had chosen me over my brother, especially now when being an alpha required so much time in the public eye.
There was a chance I might never understand my uncle’s motivations, however, and I was okay with that.
I guided us through the streets of New Orleans, with Magnolia offering navigation and Wilder staying stoic and quiet in the back. When we pulled up to an unremarkable street outside a dive bar in Treme where my pack mates were being held, I sat for a moment, staring at the old brick building that had weathered a thousand storms and was still standing.
You can do this.
And I would do this. I had to prove to Callum he hadn’t royally fucked up—no pun intended—by putting a twenty-one-year-old princess in charge of one of the most visible packs in the country.
Before getting out of the car, I gratefully noted an absence of press. We were off to a good start if the camera crews hadn’t arrived yet. Maybe there was still a chance I could keep this one close to my chest and handle things quietly before they blew up.
