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“Didn’t feel like it?” Asa parroted, sounding like a spoiled tween girl. “Do you want to guess how often I don’t ‘feel like’ doing something?”
“Not really, Dad, but you’ll tell me anyway.” Silvan stopped his eyes from rolling before he really sent Asa into a fury.
Asa slammed back in his chair with a confounded glare. “You’re going to be thealpha,Silvan. Your smart mouth won’t win any battles, but it will sure as shit start them.”
“When I’m alpha, there won’tbea council. Rincewind Pack will be done kowtowing to those hoity-toity bitches.”
“You think that,” Asa said, “like we all did. Every last alpha has big ideas about emancipation and going solo. But when you run with my paws, you’ll understand war isn’t so appetizing when you have the fate of the entire pack resting on your shoulders.”
Silvan never wanted to be alpha for the precise reason his father was now proselytizing. He could lead. No problem. But politics? Nope. No, thank you. Smiling and playing nice-nice with Cassia Delacroix? Double nope.
Romy will be the high priestess when you’re alpha.
Even worse, because then he’d never get her out of his head. Never get the sweet smell of her nectar out of his nostrils. The little whimper she made as she tried desperately to mask the moment she made herself come.
In public, no less.
Perhaps someone should send Mr. and Mrs. Delacroix an anonymous letter about what their daughter had been up to.
“Did you hear a goddamn word I said, Sil?”
“I’m tired. Sorry.” Silvan dragged both hands down his face. “Long night.”
“Don’t tell me about long nights when you were off on your own while the rest of the pack grieved together,” Asa groused, but his salty mood had thinned. He rapped his knuckles against the table’s edge. “I asked if any of those girls you’ve been bedding night after night have unearthed any sense of which one is your mate.”
“My mate?” Silvan scowled. “I’m in no hurry for that.”
“You’re older than I was when I mated to Ylfa.” Asa sniffed as though he could smell her. “The truth is, when I found out it was her, I almost ran away. Couldn’t stand your mother, not back then. But the mate bond is strong. It’s the most powerful form of magic running through Rincewood blood. You’ll know when the time comes. There won’t be any question about it.”
Silvan knew all that but was happy not to have felt the “twitch,” as some of the wolves called it. None of the women he’d bedded were mate material, which was the whole fucking point. He didn’twantto get close to the suitable ones because God forbid…
A devastating thought jumped into his mind. “Have there been pack members who felt the twitch with other preternaturals?”
“You mean, not wolves?”
Silvan nodded. A novel feeling crept across his chest, tightening.
“Well,” Asa said with an upturn of his nose, “thatis precisely why we don’t interact with other races. Because yes, it does happen. It has happened. And it can never, ever happen again.”
“Why?”
Asa blinked hard. “Why?”
“Yeah, why?” Silvan tried to sound casual, but an acrid taste crept across his gumline. “Does one of them spontaneously combust or something?”
“You’re trying to divert me and doing a piss-poor job. You need a mate, Sil, and if the twitch doesn’t happen soon… well, it may not happen at all. For some, it never does. Which means I’ll be choosing your mate.”
Unless I’ve accidentally mated with a witch? Oops?“Right.” Silvan tried to swallow but couldn’t getherout of his head. He’d never, ever looked twice at a witch before. Certainly never stalkedone, went to her home, and…
To be fair, he’d waited to drop a load in her stolen panties until he got home. He wasn’t acompletesavage.
Asa’s eyes drifted to the shelf under the windowsill. He shook his head with a sigh. Silvan saw what had snared him—a picture of Ylfa when she was Silvan’s age. “I've been unbalanced for a long time, Son. Something snapped inside me when your mother was killed, and I’ve suffered for it. The pack has suffered for it. I could choose another mate, but what would be the point? You’re the future of Rincewind, Silvan. Not me.”
“You should, you know? Find another mate. It’s what Mom would have wanted,” Silvan said. He couldn’t look away from his mother’s portrait, either. She’d been such a beautiful woman, her lycan form sleek and dangerous. Silvan resembled her more than his roughneck father, and he often wished it weren’t so. Every time he looked in a mirror, he saw her, and his head filled with stars of rage. A fucking vamp had killed her, just like a fucking vamp had killed Claude. And the pack hadn’t done anything about it either.
“It’s too late for me, Sil,” Asa replied, his voice much quieter than before. The way he said it left a sour feeling in Silvan’s belly as if they discussed two different things. “But your season is just beginning.”
Silvan’s sudden rage had no place in his father’s somber reflection. He willed himself to calm. “When does the council convene next?”
