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Her forwardness shouldn’t have stunned me, but it momentarily did.
I liked this one. She was feisty. “If you’re offering…” I winked as I pulled myself together.
She practically snarled.
With a shrug, I continued anyway, “That’s one way, sure, but it’s common knowledge that achieving orgasm will flood you with endorphins and obliterate a headache. Isaid secret weapon, one that’s not common knowledge.” Now that I’d got her attention, I let my wolf attitude slip through. While I couldn’t give her a flash of fang, I could give her a full hit of my primal urges, complete with pheromones and everything. Her nostrils twitched. She shifted her gaze from my mouth up my face, her expression going from unveiled disgust to…something else. I gave her my most dazzling sex eyes. Whatever she saw seemed to startle her, because her cheeks bloomed pink, she blinked a few times, then she looked away like I’d burned her retinas. Her chest rose and fell so rapidly that I had to wonder if she saw something that scared her. I hardly thought a woman like Charlotte Larsen would scare easily from a little werewolf lust signal.
Hmmm.
Unless what Levi had told us was true—that she had been beckoning us into her subconscious mind for some hot and heavy hanky-panky. I had no recollection of nighttime visits with Charlie and neither did Kane, but Levi said they were happening, so they must be. As I mentioned, he was the wisest and just knew…things. If she were that powerful of a wolf, strong enough to beckon three unmated males into her dreams, then yes, we needed her on our side.
That, and as the prophecy went, one female alpha was destined to rise up above the rest and anyone not on her side would suffer unspeakable wrath.
So, yeah, if it were Charlie, I wanted to be on the winning team.
I let a few beats of silence stretch out until her heart stopped thundering enough for her cheeks to cool. As much as I liked the flush on her face, I needed her calm for what I was about to say next.
“Headaches aside, I do have an ulterior motive for hitching a ride with you.”
She nodded like she already knew. As an unmated werewolf, I was sure she got a lot of male attention—unwanted, relentless attention. The beasts of my brethren tended to get quite feral when they smelled an unmarked female, especially one as beautiful as Charlie was. Sure, I’d seen her over the years in the various portraits that decorated her family’s compound, but nothing compared to the very alive and breathing version of this unicorn of a shifter.
“I’m looking to hire a den mother.”
She snorted a laugh that was full of venom. “Not interested.”
“The pay would be generous, of course,” I continued as if she hadn’t just shut me down. I was giving her a choice, one that I hoped she accepted. It would solve a lot of problems that were yet to come. “You would be under the protection of the Duke clan. No one would harass you. No expectations.” She looked at me with a little less disdain, and I knew she understood what I was saying. She would not be forced to mate with me or anyone else. And I meant that wholeheartedly. No consent, no biting. “You’d be free to train the pack as you saw fit—total autonomy in leadership, zero commitment beyond one year.” That was all we’d need, if my calculations were correct. Even if she didn’t turn out to be the one, she definitely was a powerhouse, and training our pack would put us ahead in the werewolf cold war that continued to rage.
She raised her eyebrow slightly at that, but she returned her gaze to the window.
“I’ve heard about your work with your uncle’s pack and—”
“I said ‘no’.” She stabbed me with a glare.
I raised my hands in surrender.
As she turned away again, she mumbled, “I’m not den mother material.”
I’d heard those rumors, too. She was volatile, unwilling to mold to the demands of an alpha, reckless, ruthless, bucking tradition and expectation and refusing to take orders. Years ago, she’d trained a subpack of her uncle’s clan, an arrangement that had meant something different for each party involved. Her father had thought it would be a way to prove her worth to the family—to show her powerhouse skills. Her uncle had had other plans.
Charlie had taken that group of ferals who were turned rather than born werewolves and had made them into monsters, just as she’d been asked to do—killing machines and kickass warriors. Then she’d rejected her uncle’s forceful advances with a pack of loyal ferals by her side, bonded to her in some unknown way that made them want to protect her to the death. Her uncle hadn’t taken that very well. The werewolves had all been destroyed, brutally cut down by her uncle’s elite guards. Charlie had narrowly escaped with her life.
She obviously held herself responsible for the deaths of those wolves, though. Guilt was a bitch at the best of times.
I could work with that. Or at least, I was cocky enough to think I could.
Quiet settled into the car. I watched the buildings crawl by, afternoon congestion making our progress to the Larsen offices slow. I watched the crowds of humans milling about, oblivious to the dangers all around—predators from their darkest dreams residing alongside them. Clueless. We played nice with them because it was to our advantage to do so. They made good minions, and we thrived in the world they helped to build.
“Your brother is very old school,” I said, an attempt to steer the conversation back to where I needed it to be. “Not what I would call progressive.”
“You just never shut up, do you?” She groaned as she massaged the bridge of her nose then surprised me when she continued, “Yes, Sal’s got the brain of an ancient. He’s fully entrenched in the way things should be.” Her words dripped with sarcasm.
“He’s an asshole.”
She sputtered a laugh then finally looked at me again, for once dropping the sneer. “If you think that, why are you coming to pay respects?”
“Who said I was doing that?” I grinned and, much to my delight, she returned one. It was small, but I’d take it. “Nah, I’m here to stir things up a little. My brother—”
“Kane.”
