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“Why don’t they just leave the poor guy alone? If he doesn’t want to have sex…”
“If you see the guy, you’ll understand.” Nadia took a bite of her sandwich. “Hot as fuck is an understatement.” She spoke around her food before she swallowed. “Anyway, Jameson has all kinds of rules and curfews set up for the shifters to keep us in check. It’s like he’s hopped up on control now, making sure he has us all where he can keep us safe or something.”
I frowned. “How can he keep a whole pack safe?”
“It’s pretty crazy. I’ll send you the rules.”
“What kind of curfews?”
“Oh, hunting times and locations that will keep us safe and separate from the humans. Nothing about staying out late or anything, but I don’t think it’s just about the humans. I think it’s about whatever happened to his sister. Carletta helps the shifters train, and she’s a total bitch.”
“It sounds like they’re all tough characters.”
“Yeah, I guess it’s all since they lost Delaney. You know, with their dad gone, and then Delaney rocking up, I think it was something to focus on, someone to put all their effort into and do therightthing. They were this twisted little family of three. They’re so serious about keeping us all in check now, it’s like parents who lost a kid and now the others live in a prison.”
It all sounded bizarre. I hadn’t known about any of this. I’d thought I was gaining my freedom by coming here, but it didn’t sound like it.
“It sounds horrible,” I said and peeled open the wrapping around my own sandwich.
Nadia shrugged. “It’s all we know now, I guess. It’s been almost four years since she died, so the restrictions seem normal at this point. As long as we stick to the rules, it’s fine, but if someone breaks the rules, Jameson punishes them.”
“How?”
“I don’t know that, either,” Nadia said. “All I know is that when someone does break the rules, and he finds out… we don’t hear from those shifters again.”
“Oh, shit,” I said.
A shiver ran down my spine. I knew my dad and Jameson hated each other, but I’d never found out exactly why. I just knew that he was all the way in Montana, so that he hid away from the alpha of LA. I hadn’t known that Jameson was such a cold person. I suppose I expected him to be the opposite of my father.
Maybe, if I’d known that, I would have thought twice about working for him. I’d been hellbent on protecting myself from my dad. I hadn’t thought I had to protect myself from Jameson.
“He’s always fair, though,” Nadia said. “I don’t think he’ll ever do anything unfair or unjust. He’s just damn serious about sticking to the rules and keeping everyone in line. He’s got this weird thing about power, too.”
“What weird thing?” I asked.
Nadia bit off another piece of her sandwich and frowned while she chewed.
“He’s got the powerful shifters at the top, and the weaker ones at the bottom, and it has to be a fight to the death to prove that you’re better to rise up in stature. Carletta oversees the fights.”
“That’s normal, though,” I said. “Don’t all packs have that?”
“Yeah, by choice,” Nadia said. “Jameson picks the people he wants to put up against each other, and they don’t have a choice. They have to fight, or they’ll be killed by default.”
“What?!” I squeaked “That can’t be right.”
“Hey, I just heard the rumors,” Nadia said. “I didn’t actually see it, but why would anyone lie about that kind of life-or-death thing?”
The shivers down my spine had turned into chills, and my stomach was hollow. All of that sounded really messed up. How could the alpha of the city be like that, forcing people to fight to the death?
Then again, the alpha of the city could do whatever he wanted. Some of them ruled with a just and fair approach. Others were downright awful and ruled in fear.
No one could stop that, either. This wasn’t a democracy. In the shifter world, the alpha ruled because he was the strongest. End of story. It didn’t have anything to do with earning the right to be up there in a diplomatic way.
In the shifter world, protecting their alphahood was about kill or be killed.
“Being forced to fight to the death doesn’t seem just or fair. That sounds like some crazy post-apocalyptic shit. It sounds terrible to live here,” I said. “I don’t remember it being this bad when I lived here with my mom.”
“We were just kids then,” Nadia said grimly. “What did we know?”
