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“Yeah, he’s ten years older, and he’s always been bothered by power, so I guess he got it.”
“What does that mean for you?” I asked.
Nadia shrugged. “I don’t know. It means Danny doesn’t really speak much to his all-important brother.” She smiled. “You know how Jameson’s people can be.”
I shook my head. “Mom kept to herself when she was still alive, so we were never really involved with the pack when we lived here.”
“Right, right,” Nadia said. “You didn’t ever meet Jameson, then, did you?”
“Do you know anything about Jameson?” Nadia asked, pulling me back into the conversation and away from thoughts of my dad.
“I know he owns Sapphire,” I said with a shrug. “I know he’s the kind of alpha that the shifters respect but also fear a little… That’s pretty much it.”
Nadia flattened one hand on the table and finished her coffee. “I’m getting another one of these before we start in on the facts. You need to know the basics, at least. Can I get you one, too?”
“Yeah, sure.” Nadia stood, walking inside to order two more coffees. I leaned back in my chair, closed my eyes, and drank in the feeling of being home again.
When Nadia returned, she had two sandwiches with her, too.
“In case all the facts make us hungry,” she grinned.
“You’re a saint,” I said. I hadn’t eaten all day. Until I made my first paycheck at the club, I had very little cash to work with, and I had to be careful with how much I spent and on what. Nadia knew it’d been rough the past couple of years, and when I offered to pay for my sandwich, she waved her hand in dismissal.
I was so thankful for a friend like her.
“So, you know Jameson’s dad passed away about fifty years ago, right? I think Jameson was about two-hundred and fifty at the time,” Nadia said.
“I didn’t realize it was that new.” He’d always been alpha since I’d been alive, I hadn’t known much about his father before him. I’d figured it meant he hadn’t been in the picture for a long time—it was the alphas of old who were eventually forgotten.
“Yeah, my mom says he was a total dick,” Nadia said. “Everyone was scared of him, and he wasn’t a just alpha.”
“I hate it when alphas abuse their power,” I sighed. My dad hadn’t ever been the alpha of anything, but he’d done the same thing, abusing his power, being unfair, and ruling through fear. I hated it. Resentment for my dad swirled and burned inside me like an ulcer.
“Just after the alpha died—and this is just rumor—a woman he’d fucked around with came to Jameson and told him he had a half-sister.”
“Oh, wow,” I said.
Nadia nodded. “I don’t know how much of that is true, but the story goes that the woman asked Jameson and Carletta—”
“Carletta?” I asked. I felt like I was walking into a whole world I knew nothing about, and I had some studying to do.
“His older sister,” Nadia said.
“Oh, I didn’t know he had an older sister.”
“She’s a lot older, like almost four hundred.”
“That’s almost a hundred years older than Jameson.”
Nadia shrugged her shoulders. “It’s always weird with shifter ages.”
Shifters lived a lot longer than humans did if all went well. Some could live up to six or seven hundred years, but the norm was roughly half a century. A lot could happen in that time. A lot of wars could be fought, territory could be won, children could be had.
“Yeah, they’re super close, those two. Shared trauma does that. Anyway, the half-sister’s name was Delaney. And Delaney’s mom asked the both of them to look after her, to help her, because she wasn’t like the rest of us.”
“Why not?” I frowned.
“She was an anomaly. You know, one of those who can’t shift.” She lowered her voice when she said it. Being a shifter but not being able to shift was the worst thing that could happen to us. It was like a disease, and we usually shunned shifters who couldn’t shift. It was very rare, but when it happened, there wasn’t anything that could be done. “Her mom wanted Jameson and Carletta to help her out, since they had nothing after the late alpha was gone, and someone had to look out for her.”
