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Now they were terrified and couldn’t meet my gaze.
Funny how things change when you know you need your Alpha if you’re going to survive.
They sure respected my authority now.
I could have made this easier on them, could have told them things would be all right and I’d protect them. But I didn’t. I waited in silence, staring at them, watching as they sank lower and lower on their chairs, beads of sweat dampening their foreheads.
There were leaders who showed compassion and had a reputation for kindness. Desmond Alvarez, King of the Eastern pack, was well known for being an affable and friendly ruler.
I hadn’t been raised by that kind of king.
Callum was cool, calculating, and merciless. He did what needed to be done, and by God his people respected him for it. He’d never been challenged in the entire duration of his reign.
If I was going to be a leader, I needed to be respected. And I couldn’t be respected if my people thought I was a pushover.
No more Miss Nice Wolf.
This cold front, of course, was largely bullshit. Inside I was desperate to offer them words of comfort. Hell, Mason looked so uneasy I wanted to hug the poor bastard. And once I got this mess sorted, I swore to myself I would do something to show them I wasn’t a total monster. But for right now, and especially in front of Detective Perry, I needed to prove I had this under control. I had to be in charge of the situation. And I couldn’t do that while also mothering them.
“Do you mind if I make a call?” I asked Perry.
Since I’d been able to bring my purse into the bar, I still had my phone on me. I was actually kind of surprised they let me hang on to it, but I guess if lawyers could bring in briefcases, I was allowed to have my lip gloss.
Really, they were holding werewolves. There was nothing in my purse stronger than the natural abilities of the men across the table, and everyone here knew it.
Perry nodded but didn’t ask if I wanted privacy. Guess there was no way I’d be getting alone time with Emmett and Mason until after their lawyer arrived.
As I went to dial, I noticed a missed-call notification.
I hadn’t felt the phone buzz, but I had been a little preoccupied.
When I saw who had called me, my heart gave a nervous stutter, and a familiar knot of guilt tightened my stomach.
Cash.
Cash Naquin, my one-time boyfriend, and someone I had thought I might spend the rest of my life with. How had that only been a few months ago? That was before my role in the pack changed.
Before Wilder.
Funny how you can think you have your whole life sorted out and someone can show up and prove just how wrong you are.
I’d done my best to ignore the way Wilder made me feel, but as it turns out that’s not something you can shut down. Even now I was struggling with it because it didn’t feel right to leap directly into bed with Wilder after having such a long-term commitment to Cash.
It was important to me that Wilder mattered. I didn’t want him to be my rebound fling. I needed to know he was in it for the long haul before I got attached.
Hell, I needed to know I was in it for the long haul before things got too deep.
McQueen women weren’t exactly renowned for being content with one man.
Not that I was destined to be like my mother, who hadn’t even told me who my father was before she died. Well…before my sister killed her.
Our family dynamic was complicated to say the least.
But for Cash to be calling me was strange. We’d never been friends. We were a couple, and we were in love, and then we were nothing. Since the split I hadn’t heard from him and hadn’t expected to again.
So why was he calling around eight in the morning on a weekday?
My guts clenched once more, this time with worry over his family. He and I had been together long enough I’d met the whole Naquin clan and still thought of them fondly. The whole loud, opinionated lot of them. What if something had happened to his mother? His younger brother?
