Wolf and Prejudice

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single alpha in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife,” Alisha whispered to her friend, Chloe.

They were watching Alisha’s parents shamelessly shove her older sister, Janelle, at Maguyuk Lonewolf, the new Alpha King of Wyoming. Janelle was in the middle of the dance floor, while they stood on the ballroom’s far wall. But even from that far away, Alisha could sense her sister’s abject discomfort.

“Stop,” Chloe hissed, widening her eyes and shaking her head frantically. “Stop it right now! You know I can’t be seen laughing at one of Rafe’s best friends.”

This was probably true. Chloe was engaged to the event’s host, Rafe Nightwolf, Alpha Prince of Colorado. And tonight’s party was being held in honor of his friend and ally, Mag. So making fun of said honoree probably wasn’t a great idea. In fact, Alisha’s own father, Tikaani, Alpha King of Alaska, definitely wouldn’t approve. Mag Lonewolf was an Alaska Native like Tikaani and had fought the former King of Wyoming’s son to the death for the Wyoming kingdom.

And as it turned out, Alisha’s sister, Janelle, had been engaged to the loser of that deathmatch, so she was now in need of a new fiancé. Alisha supposed in her father’s head, pairing her sister up with the wolf who killed her fiancé made perfect sense. Unlike human kings who’d actually evolved in their thinking over time, wolf kings were still of the opinion that the primary purpose of a wolf princess was to help kings form alliances with other powerful states through marriage.

So what if Mag had grown up in Inu-Amaruq, literally “Bad Wolf,” a nomadic pack made up of wolves who didn’t recognize King Tikaani’s state sovereignty? So what if he’d recently had two dark lines tattooed from the corners of his mouth to his earlobes to denote his killing of two fellow wolves? So what if he looked at Janelle like he was planning to eat her rather than offer her his pledge of mateship?

So what? King Tikaani wanted to be allied with Wyoming so why not throw his oldest and most beautiful daughter at its new king?

Alisha could practically see the empire building going on behind her father’s almond-shaped eyes. And though it wasn’t very mannerly to make the future Queen of Colorado laugh at the expense of her fiancé’s best friend, Alisha simply couldn’t help herself.

“On tonight’s episode of Game of Wolves, the Alaska king offers up his eldest daughter to the “bad wolf” King of Wyoming in the hopes of forming another important alliance within the lower forty-eight and of course, gaining a second who will keep him in power until further notice.”

Chloe snorted and covered her mouth to hide her smile. “Please stop. You’re going to make me laugh, and I’m already in enough trouble with Rafe as it is.” She took a deep, calming breath. “One: I talked to you about life in post-colonial Alaska instead of mingling during the aperitifs. Two: I spoke out of turn to your mom during dinner. And three: I’m wearing the wrong dress for this kind of event.”

Alisha rolled her eyes. As much of a catch as Rafe was considered, especially for someone like Chloe who hadn’t been born with a title, he was forever and a day picking on his fiancée. Yes, Chloe had only talked to Alisha during aperitifs. That was because there were only a handful of African-Americans at this event and neither Alisha nor Chloe hailed from kingdoms that held a ton of black people. Most wolf states were pretty progressive in terms of race, but Alaska’s human population was only three percent black, and its black werewolf population even less than that. Alisha loved her Alaskan Native and white pack members just like any good princess should. But it had been lonely for her, as one of the very few half-black wolves in her state pack, and one of three in Wolf Lake, their kingdom town.

To top it all off, Chloe was intelligent, curious, and interested in Alisha’s field of historical expertise: post-colonial Alaska. So clearly they were going to talk. But Rafe acted like they were committing some crime against humanity whenever they spent what he deemed as too much time in each other’s company.

And as for Chloe’s dress, Alisha loved it. True, it wasn’t exactly appropriate for a formal dinner honoring a new alpha king. But Chloe ran a popular DIY website called “Black Mountain Woman,” so the dress, like all Chloe’s clothes, was handmade by Chloe herself. Not only was her frock reflective of the gorgeous future queen’s inner values, it looked great with the over-the-shoulder braid she always wore. In Alisha’s opinion, Chloe’s prairie dress had a hell of a lot more character than the low-cut, blue evening gown her own mother had forced her to wear.

Alisha tugged up the sweetheart neckline of her gown. It was a similar design to the one her sister, Janelle, was wearing. Except Janelle’s was red and its neckline was even more dangerously low. Overall, the style definitely suited Janelle.

The dress’s mermaid bottom accentuated her sister’s long and slender body, and looked great with the waterfall of glossy black hair she’d inherited from their father’s Inuit ancestors. However, Alisha’s hair was neither kinky and cute like their African-American mother’s, or long and straight like their father’s. Her curls were wild and messy. As a result, she’d had her hair cut in an easy to maintain style—short on the sides and back, longer on the top—years ago rather than deal with the hassle of a back-length’s worth of unruly curls. And though she and her sister were roughly the same height, Alisha carried an extra forty pounds on her frame. So while Janelle looked like a beautiful, bi-racial mermaid in her gown, Alisha felt like a plump sea witch stuffed into fancy evening attire.

Not that she minded not being the brightest diamond in the room tonight. Alisha dreaded the day when the King and Queen of Alaska mated Janelle off and turned their unwelcome matchmaking attention to her. Back when Janelle had been engaged to the original Wyoming prince, the only thing that kept them from going full-throttle on Alisha was that she’d been attending grad school in Juneau, a multi-hour journey from their remote kingdom town, Wolf Lake. But she doubted even the distance would keep her parents from trying to manipulate her into an arranged marriage for much longer.

“I’m just saying my parents could be a little less obvious.” Alisha watched her mother, who was at that moment actually making Janelle spin in a circle in front of the Wyoming king. Alisha would have cussed both her parents out in front of witnesses if they’d pulled that mess on her, but of course Janelle, being perennially good-natured, merely turned with a self-conscious smile nailed to her face.

“Poor Janelle,” Alisha said, shaking her head.

“Whatever. The new king is so hot, I don’t feel sorry for Janelle at all.” Alisha’s younger sister, Tu, appeared at their side.

At five-foot-six, the twenty-year-old hadn’t inherited their mother’s height like her two older sisters, but Tu had been lucky enough to get her mother’s kinky hair and was wearing her dramatically large afro pulled back into a stately puff. It looked terrific on her, and highlighted her strong shoulders and athletic body. She wore an equally dramatic turquoise necklace and a yellow version of the “family” mermaid dress. In a word, Tu looked stunning. But her sophisticated veneer was ruined when she snatched the half-empty flute of champagne from Alisha’s hand and downed it before Alisha could stop her.

Tu clunked the empty glass down on a passing tray as she said, “We just better hope Mag wants to hit that enough to mate with Janelle. Or we’re going to be regular wolves as soon as someone gets bold enough to challenge Daddy next year.”

Tu was right, King Tikaani would be turning forty-five next year. That meant his kingship would be up for challenge unless he named a male heir to his throne or found a second--a younger, stronger state king who was willing to fight in his place should another male wolf challenge Tikaani for the Alaska throne. As of now, the King of Alaska had exactly zero male heirs in his direct line, and though he was well-liked by the state pack, it was only a matter of time before someone like the ambitious Alpha King of Wyoming came along and challenged him. As much as Alisha resented her father sometimes, she still loved him. A shiver of dread went down her spine at the thought of a younger, stronger wolf fighting him to the death for his title.

Alisha grabbed another full glass of champagne from a passing waiter and held it well out of her younger sister’s reach.

“Maybe it would be wiser if Daddy ceded the throne and let the would-be kings fight it out amongst themselves. Historically, that’s been the most peaceful way to crown a new king.”

Tu gave her sister a skeptical look. “You know Daddy doesn’t care about history, only about grandcubs to carry on his line. At least the Wyoming king is a hottie with a body. Who knows who he’ll try to throw Janelle at next if she doesn’t open his nose?”

Tu shot Chloe an envious look. “You’re so lucky. You’ve already got yourself a future king and you don’t even need one! Daddy would have thrown Janelle at Rafe so hard if you hadn’t come along.” Then after dropping that bomb, she said, “Ooh, there goes that cute wolf Rafe got to deejay the party! Time to talk to somebody not boring. Later.”

She shot across the ballroom to catch up with the young Brad Pitt lookalike, leaving her apparently boring conversation partners behind, including a rather distressed Chloe.

“Don’t listen to Tu,” Alisha told her friend, passing her the full flute of champagne. “Here, drink this. It’s the only thing that makes these parties remotely bearable.”

Chloe took the flute, but a shadow crossed over her face as she sipped from it. “I know your dad’s upset about my engagement to Rafe. So is the King of Colorado, especially now that it’s gone on so long.”

Most female wolves went into heat within a year of getting engaged, shortly after which they could formally get married. Rafe and Chloe had been engaged for nearly six years with no sign of it ending any time soon.

But Alisha refused to let her friend feel bad about this. “The truth is, my father and the King of Colorado would love nothing more than to use us all as pawns in their Game of Wolves. But you and Rafe managed to subvert them by agreeing to marry for love, so good job!”

She grabbed a flute of champagne for herself and clinked her glass against Chloe’s to make her point, but the shadow still hung over Chloe’s face.

“I do love Rafe,” she said. “I know I haven’t gone into heat yet, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love him, because I really, really do.”

“I know you do,” Alisha assured her, even though it sounded a little bit like Chloe was also trying to convince herself more than Alisha. “But look at Janelle! She’s the same age as you and she still hasn’t gone into heat, even though she was engaged to the last King of Wyoming for three years. Plenty of female wolves get to your age without going into heat.”

“Even female wolves engaged to a prince as cute as Rafe?”

Now Alisha had to laugh. It was true, Rafe was definitely one of the most handsome princes in the lower Forty-Eight, thanks in part to his mixed Chicano and Native American heritage, which made for one pretty and chiseled face.

“Contrary to what my sister says, it’s not all about looks and status.” Alisha leaned in and whispered, “Don’t tell my mom, but if I ever go into heat, I plan to mate with someone way below my quote-unquote station, probably a fellow academic. I’m much more concerned with being able to talk to my possible future mate than how he looks or whether he’s titled.”

A wolf princess claiming she would mate for companionship as opposed to status was a scandalous statement indeed, one Alisha wouldn’t dare utter within earshot of her parents or even her sisters, but all Chloe seemed to hear was, “You don’t think you’ll go into heat? Ever?”

Alisha shrugged. “A lot of academics don’t. Up until a couple of decades ago, many female wolves weren’t even allowed to teach beyond the high school level, because there was a theory that teaching college rendered females sterile.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?” Chloe asked, now looking even more distressed than she had a few moments ago, but this time for Alisha. “Even though it means you’d never have cubs?”

Alisha's eyes went to Janelle, who had been left alone with the new king for the first dance of the evening, a waltz. Though Janelle was smiling up at Mag, Alisha could tell her older sister was extremely uncomfortable. Her body was as stiff as a marionette's, and the couple's waltz looked painfully awkward.

With her model-esque looks and delicate features, Janelle was the prettiest of the Alaska princesses, but that didn’t mean she was comfortable being trotted out under the lascivious gaze of any king with enough money and strength to satisfy their father’s lust for continued power.

“No, it doesn’t bother me at all,” Alisha answered. “In fact, the thought of my progeny being used as pawns makes me sick to my stomach.”

“Then it’s a lucky thing your dad’s not staking his throne on you,” a voice said beside her.

Alisha looked up to see Rafe, Chloe’s longtime fiancé, looming over them.

Her breath caught in her throat, just as it did every time she saw him, and shame pinged around Alisha’s chest. Her human understood Rafe was Chloe’s fiancé, and even if he wasn’t, she had no interest in a titled wolf since marrying one would guarantee being caught up in the Game of Wolves for the rest of her life. But all her wolf saw when she looked at Rafe was the teenage boy she’d secretly crushed on as a sixteen-year-old college student visiting his family for the summer.

And though Alisha had put that school girl crush far behind her, her wolf still thought he was beautiful, the most beautiful man she’d ever seen, with his lightly toasted brown skin and hazel eyes. Hazel eyes that never landed on her, even after handing her a not-so-indirect insult. No, his eyes stayed on Chloe as if Alisha wasn’t even there, like she didn’t even matter.

“Hi, Rafe!” Chloe said, in that simpering way she had with the alpha prince. Like she was just oh-so-grateful someone like him would deign to align himself with someone like her. It drove Alisha crazy.

Chloe might be an orphaned nobody as far as wolf society was concerned, but she was smart and kind and talented, whereas Rafe was simply the pampered prince of a thriving state pack, one who’d had everything handed to him his entire life. In Alisha’s opinion, Rafe was lucky to have someone as lovely and decent as Chloe accept his proposal.

But from the way his eyes scanned over Chloe’s dress, Alisha could tell he didn’t see it that way. “Is there a reason I’m out there mingling all by myself?”

“Well, you weren’t happy about my dress, so I thought I’d—”

“Stand in the corner, gossiping with Princess Alisha,” he finished for her. “And this is after you spent all of the aperitifs hour with her and talked back to the Queen of Alaska at dinner.”

“I’m sorry,” Chloe said, bowing her head. “If you want I can go apologize to the queen, too.”

But Alisha couldn’t bear to see her friend cowed this way. “Don’t be a jerk, Rafe. I’m visiting royalty and she was keeping me company. That’s what good hostesses are supposed to do. I mean, believe me, there are always places I’d rather be when your family come up to visit us in Alaska, but I do my duty, and not nearly so well as Chloe.”

She turned to Chloe. “And don’t you dare apologize to my mother. She was out of line for teasing me about not having an intended and unlike some people who are fine letting me be insulted at the party they are supposed to be hosting…” she threw a pointed glance at Rafe, though of course he couldn’t see it because his eyes were glued to his beautiful fiancée as they always were, “…you were kind enough not to just sit there and let her do it. And furthermore—”

The opening strains of “Wanna Be Starting Something” interrupted her impassioned defense of Chloe, making it impossible to keep going since Michael Jackson songs were pretty much kryptonite to anything she might be doing, including arguing.

“This is my jam!” she said going from angry to delighted in zero seconds flat.

Tu appeared again. “Oh my God! I asked the deejay to play Michael Jackson after the waltz and he did!” she screamed over the loud music, aglow with the power of being young, pretty, and bold. “C’mon! We’ve got to dance. C’mon!”

Tu grabbed Alisha’s arm and started dragging her toward the dance floor and Alisha yelled to Chloe. “Come with us!”

Chloe started to take a happy step forward, but then Rafe shook his head at her.

“Don’t,” she heard him command quietly.

Chloe looked between Alisha and Rafe, obviously torn between her friend and her fiancé. But in the end, she stepped back and tucked her hand into Rafe’s arm.

“I’m sorry,” she mouthed as Tu dragged Alisha away.

Alisha was disappointed but at least Janelle came easily when they snatched her away from her awkward dance with the Wyoming king. Thanks to their Detroit-born mother, the three sisters had loved Michael Jackson songs from the time they were born, and it showed in the way they danced to the upbeat song together. The young women laughed with reckless abandon, not caring that they were princesses, and ignoring the fuming looks their parents were giving them for so rudely pulling Janelle away from the new King of Wyoming.

In fact, Tu had the nerve to yell across the dance floor, “C’mon, Mama! You know you want to get in on this.”

Wilma Ataneq, the tall and regal former Princess of Detroit and well-respected Queen of Alaska, dropped her scowl. She did want to dance with her daughters. After all, it had been she who had taught them how to do so in the first place. Also, she had a soft spot for her youngest daughter, who looked almost exactly like her except a few shades lighter and a half a foot shorter.

The Alaska princesses cheered as their mother danced toward them, wagging her head and bumping her hips in perfect time to the music.

But as she pulled her mother into their dancing circle, Alisha felt a pair of eyes on her. She looked toward where she’d left Chloe standing against the wall with Rafe. Chloe was whispering something in his ear, but Rafe…

Rafe was staring straight at her, his eyes smoldering and hard.

The well-loved coda from the end of the Michael Jackson song sounded then, and Janelle, Tu, and their mother started jumping up and down to the music. But Alisha just stood, watching Rafe watch her. Their gazes stayed locked for moments on end, neither seeming to be able to tear their eyes away.

But then Rafe blinked, obviously remembering himself: who he was and the pretty woman he was engaged to. He immediately shifted his attention back to Chloe and said something to her before grabbing her hand and leading her away from his own party. Chloe seemed confused by his sudden desire to leave the festivities. But like a good friend, she looked over her shoulder and when she saw Alisha watching them go, she waved goodbye with an apologetic smile. Meanwhile, Michael Jackson continued to sing the catchy coda through the speakers.

It was an image that would come to haunt Alisha in the year that followed. If she’d known then that this would be the last time she would have a chance to dance to a Michael Jackson song with Chloe, she might have ignored Rafe, and pulled her friend on to the dance floor anyway. But she didn’t, and it would be a regret she’d live with for some time.

A knock sounded on Alisha’s office door a few weeks after she last saw Chloe.

“Come in,” Alisha called out without looking up from the essays she was grading.

“After seven on a Friday night, and you’re still in your office grading papers.”

She looked up from her work to smile ruefully at Matt Kreuk, the shaggy haired Canadian post-doc who occupied the office right next to hers in the Liberal Arts building.

“Well, last Friday I was stuck turning into a wolf inside a dog cage in my apartment, so I think that’s enough excitement for this month.”

Matt dropped into one of her guest chairs with a chuckle. “I don’t know what’s sadder: that I knew you’d be in here grading papers or the fact that I just finished grading a batch of Wolf Civ papers myself.”

She regarded him with warm eyes as she answered, “Great minds…”

“And by ‘great minds’ you mean, fellow beleaguered post-docs who have to do a bunch of extra work on top of what we already have to do for the human students.”

“That too,” Alisha said, even though she didn't completely agree.

Having to do twice the work for two different student populations, a human one and a werewolf one, was a common complaint among the faculty of werewolves secretly embedded at the University of Alaska-Juneau. However, unlike the mostly male wolf faculty, she'd had to fight her royal family and the Lupine Council Academic Board fang and claw to become one of two wolf history post-docs at UAJ. She considered the double work of teaching wolf and human history classes a privilege.

But she didn’t want to risk losing Matt’s newfound attention by telling him this. The thin, brown-haired wolf was cute, intelligent, and easy to talk to. And, she suspected he was into her. He’d been friendly before, but ever since the last full moon, he’d been visiting her office at least once, sometimes twice, a day. They’d eaten lunch together every day that week, and even discussed her possibly coming to Canada with him during the summer break to teach wolf summer college at his undergraduate alma mater.

“How’s it going?” she asked, picturing the ground-breaking work they could do together, with her specialization in post-colonial history and his in Arab history. The dream wasn’t too far-fetched. While it was true over forty percent of the wolf faculty had passed into their forties (the age bracket at which most wolves were no longer considered fertile) without mating up, there were a few cases of husband and wife academics scattered across the Northern American Wolf Territories—a case she hoped to emulate.

“Same old, same old,” he answered. “Almost got my book on Egyptian coyote shifters drafted out. Maybe it’ll get picked up for the national wolf history syllabus next year.”

“Oh, I’m so jealous,” she said with a good-natured groan. “I still haven’t found any Alaska she-wolves whose feats extended beyond ‘healing spells that were long talked about.’ Even the non-native ones were all about the cooking and cleaning.”

Matt laughed. “You might need to expand your search into Canada. Bigger Inuit population. Might find somebody worthy of a book. Have you heard back from the summer college yet?”

“No, not yet.”

“I’ll call the program director. See why they haven’t sent the best American candidate they’ve ever had an acceptance email yet.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Alisha said, secretly thrilled someone was actually working to help advance her career as opposed to actively trying to derail it, like her parents, who’d not only refused to pay one penny toward her education, but also campaigned against it to the point that she now only went home to their kingdom town in Interior Alaska for major holidays.

“No, I want to,” he insisted. “And on a selfish note, I’d really love to hang out with you this summer.”

He didn’t exactly meet her eyes when he said this, and she wondered if this was his shy way of telling her he’d like to take their relationship further.

“I’d love to hang out with you, too,” she said, hoping her answer let him know she was open to friendship and more with him.

Another knock sounded on the door and Alisha frowned. Who, other than Matt, would be swinging by her office on a Friday night?

It was Tu, reeking of perfume, and dressed in a shredded t-shirt and green miniskirt ensemble, despite the fact it was only twenty-five degrees outside. Alisha inwardly shook her head, thinking that even with wolf DNA, Tu couldn’t possibly be warm enough in that outfit.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “And where’s your coat?”

“Vince said he was flying over here for a party, so I came with him.” She eyed the coat on the back of Alisha’s chair. “And I was hoping maybe I could borrow one from you.” She then shifted her gaze to Matt, giving him a full wattage smile. “Hi, Wolf. I’m Tuuluuwag. But everyone calls me Tu.”

“I’m Matt, and I should probably get going,” he said, standing up. He pointed at the papers under Alisha’s red pen, “Finish grading those. Then maybe we can catch a movie tomorrow night.”

Alisha was very aware of Tu’s curious eyes on her as she answered, “Yeah, maybe. Give me a call.”

“Who’s the Canadian?” Tu asked as soon as he was out of wolf earshot.

Tu had what was referred to in the wolf community as a “super-nose,” and could often tell where a wolf hailed from with just a sniff.

“Another post doc,” Alisha answered without going into further detail. The last thing she needed was for Tu to report a possible love interest back to their parents, neither of whom was above using their juice to get an unsuitable wolf transferred if that meant keeping him away from their daughter.

And speaking of their parents: “Mom was okay with you coming down here for a party?” She handed Tu her coat. “And without your coat?”

“Well…” Tu said, pushing her arms through Alisha’s quilted Patagonia parka, the hemline of which fell below that of her skirt. “Technically I’m here to convince you to come home with me for the weekend. Mom thought me needing a coat would be a good excuse to come by here.”

“So she sent you all the way to Juneau without a coat. Wow.” When it came to matchmaking schemes, their mother made Mrs. Bennett from Pride & Prejudice look like a rank amateur. And now that Janelle was pledged to the King of Wyoming, Alisha couldn’t say she was shocked Wilma had recruited Tu for her “get Alisha married off to a suitable alpha” project.

However she was surprised that her youngest sister didn’t seem all that put out by the situation. “Whatever. As long as Vince and I can go to this yacht party as soon as you say no. I don’t care either way.”

“Seriously, she agreed to let you go to a yacht party? You’re only twenty.” And yacht parties were known for the copious amounts of drugs and alcohol that flowed through them. “You and Vince aren’t humans. Messing around with that stuff could send him into an accidental shift and you into an early heat.”

“We’re just going to dance, and I’ll be twenty-one in a few months!”

“Yeah, still not a great idea, which is why I’m finding it hard to believe Mom is cool with her precious youngest flower going to a yacht party.”

“Well, she might not know about the party part,” Tu admitted with a shrug. “In my version of the story, I stayed in Juneau until the wee hours of the morning, trying to convince you to come back with me.”

Alisha didn’t know who to be more annoyed with, her mother for coming up with this scheme or Tu for exploiting it to her own purposes. “All right, all right. Might as well get this over with. Who is Mom trying to set me up with now? The first-born son of a Texas oil tycoon? The alpha prince of a state that’s poor but has several fracking opportunities?”

“Actually, it’s Rafe Nightwolf.”

Both Alisha’s heart and her red grading pen dropped. “What!?”

Tu leaned in, cupping a hand around her mouth like an old-fashioned busybody. “He showed up on our doorstep a few days ago. Get this, he and Chloe broke up, but he won’t say why.”

“What?” Alisha said again. Then, “But I don’t understand, why would he come to Alaska?”

Tu sucked her teeth. “Dad said something about Rafe consulting on a resort project. He wants to develop that old hot spring up the road from us into a resort like the Nightwolfs have in Wolf Springs. And I’m like, ‘Okay, but why would an Alaska oil baron be interested in something as small change as building a resort?’ And they’re all like, ‘No, it’s a great opportunity, blah, blah, blah, people can come there to see the Northern Lights, blah, blah, blah’… then I got bored, so I just let it go. Though you know Dad’s got to be super pissed he pushed Janelle at King Mag so hard now that Rafe’s back on the market. Anyway, Rafe’s been here maybe five days, and Mom’s all like, ‘Go get Alisha. Make sure she comes home for the weekend!’ like it’s Defcon 1. So here I am attempting to fetch you.”

Tu finished her explanation with the bored shrug that only a hip, young person could manage after telling such a soap opera of a story.

Alisha, on the other hand, was shocked to the core by this news. Shocked and vaguely guilty. She fumbled to pick up her phone and text Chloe. “WHAT HAPPENED??? Do you need to talk? I’m here if you need to talk.”

“So what do you want me to tell Mom?”

Alisha stared at the text screen. No answer, not even a little gray box with ellipses inside to let her know Chloe was typing. And that made her feel even worse about the break up, even though Alisha couldn’t exactly explain why. It wasn’t like she was still a teen crushing on the alpha prince who only had eyes for Chloe. In fact, she was so beyond that stupid infatuation, she was offended her mother would even consider matching her up with Rafe just because Janelle was no longer available.

“Tell Mom it’s the middle of the semester, and I’m knee-deep in my ‘She-Wolves in Post-Colonial Alaska’ research,” Alisha answered her sister.

“Do you think she cares?” Tu asked, her voice as frank as their Detroit-raised mother’s got whenever she dropped her queenly airs.

“I know she doesn’t,” Alisha answered. “But there’s no way I’m getting caught up in the Game of Wolves.”

“Why not?” Tu asked with what looked like genuine confusion. “Rafe is so freaking hot. I mean hotter than Mag and he’s got that bad boy tribal thing going for him.”

“First of all, I’m appalled you just reduced something as steeped in history as the Inuit practice of face tattooing down to a ‘tribal thing.’” Alisha ignored her sister’s huge eye roll and continued on, “Second of all, there’s more to compatibility than being hot.”

“Really freaking hot,” Tu corrected, fanning herself with her hand.

Alisha pressed on, “And last but not least, I’m a history professor. That means I like to keep all the drama in the past.”

“Alright, well, I tried,” Tu said, giving up on her mission with almost comedic speed. She headed for the door. “See ya at Easter.”

“Not coming home for Easter either,” Alisha informed her sister. “Not coming home until Mom stops trying to mate me off.”

Tu laughed. “In that case, see you next lifetime!”

Not surprisingly, Alisha’s mother didn’t take her “no” or Alisha’s many follow-up “Sorry mom, so busy” texts well. After receiving increasingly blatant threats about what would happen if she didn’t come home as soon as possible, Alisha had to turn off her phone and put it away in a locked drawer. She also had to change her office number, and put her mother’s email address on her account’s blacklist.

It seriously felt like she was being stalked. By her own mother. And she was more than happy when the semester ended and she was able to travel to Canada with Matt to teach summer college at a university thousands of miles away from Alaska.

However, her summer escape plan proved to be too short term.

“What do you mean he’s back here?” she asked when Tu called her right as she was pulling up in front of the modest, twenty-unit brick apartment building she called home.

“I mean, I’m watching him play basketball with Dad on the back deck right now. That’s how back here he is.”

“I thought you said he left right after I went to Canada,” Alisha heaved her heavy suitcase from the trunk of her car. It must be a weak moon tonight. With her wolf strength usually she wouldn’t have had any trouble picking up her suitcase, even if it had been filled with bricks as opposed to a bunch of books she’d brought back from Canada. However the daytime hour combined with a weak moon meant she actually had to put in some effort.

“He did leave. But now he’s back, and Mom’s throwing this dinner party for him tonight, because you know how she is, and even Mag came up from Wyoming for it. But don’t worry, she didn’t ask me to invite you, so maybe she’s finally given up on trying to make Rafe and you happen.”

“Maybe. But if she’s given up, why is Rafe back?” Alisha asked, setting her suitcase on ground.

“I don’t know,” Tu answered. “I mean Janelle just moved back in with us, so maybe he’s waiting for her to go into heat… although that doesn’t make any sense since Mag is like his best friend.” Tu cut herself off with a gasp. “Wait, do you think he’s waiting for me to go into heat?”

Tu sounded excited by the possibility, even though, in Alisha’s opinion, she was still too young to go into heat. However, Alisha knew it had happened to girls even younger than Tu and it was a distasteful possibility that Rafe might claim her sister as a mate despite her only being twenty—she could actually see her mom going for this.

Wilma had only been eighteen when she went into heat while their father, the newly-dubbed Alpha King of Alaska, had been visiting their home for a formal business meeting with her father, the Alpha of Detroit (technically Michigan--but the royal alphas had taken the city name as their title ever when her grandfather won the state from his white predecessor in a challenge fight back in the sixties). It was supposed to be a diplomatic trip--the newly appointed twenty-year-old Tikaani had been interested in taking on Wilma's second oldest brother, Wilford, a college linebacker, as his beta. But one look had passed between the new king and the princess, and the Michigan alpha had ended up clearing out of his own home for several days while her parents rutted in a heat frenzy until Janelle was conceived.

Her mother had often recounted this as a sort of wolves-meet-cute tale, but the story had always unsettled Alisha. And now, she couldn’t imagine Tu having her whole life overturned because of what basically amounted to supernatural body chemistry established a long time ago when wolves tended to mate much younger. In her opinion, Tu was still way too young and ditzy to get saddled with a cub and an alpha husband.

“Maybe you should come stay with me for a while,” Alisha said to her sister as she walked toward her first floor apartment with her suitcase. “It’s never too late to go to college. And since you’re such a fan of underage drinking, you could do it here. Plus, we have one of the best wolf programs in the country.”

“It’s also never too late to shoot myself in the head and I am old enough to buy a gun in Alaska and do just that if I come out there and let you bore the hell out of me,” Tu said.

“Nice, Tu. Seriously, I’m worried about you. Mom and Dad will pledge you off as soon as you turn twenty-one, just like they did with Janelle, just like they’re trying to do with me now. I’m just saying maybe you should try to do something substantial with the little time you have until you’re pulled into your own special episode of the Game of Wolves. There’s more to life than partying, and you might regret wasting the few single years you’ve been granted.”

Tu’s answer to her impassioned speech was a snort of derision. “And I’m just saying maybe you should come home and give the Colorado prince a chance to send you into heat.”

“Eww, Tu, gross! He used to be engaged to one of my best friends and I haven’t even started my post-colonial she-wolves book. Going into heat now would be a disaster!”

“That’s not going to keep Mom from coming after you like the Terminator. She wants all her daughters married off, you know she doesn’t give a damn about your book.”

Alisha laughed and pulled out the key to unlock her apartment door. “Poor Mom, it’s probably driving her crazy that I managed to avoid coming home all this time when there’s an eligible wolf on the premises—”

Big strong arms grabbed her from behind. And despite the heavy cologne her attacker was wearing, she immediately recognized him as a fellow werewolf due to the iron-like nature of the hold. A normal human she could have fought off easily, but a male werewolf was almost impossible to beat in a fight without a tranquilizer gun or a silver bullet. And both of her guns were currently locked in a drawer inside her apartment.

“Alisha? Alisha? Are you still there?” she heard her sister asking through the phone.

The wolf snatched the phone from her hand, ending the call and pocketing it before she had a chance to respond.

Before Alisha could even think to scream, duct tape was placed over her mouth and plastic cuffs around her wrists. The next thing she knew, she was being thrown into the back seat of an old Cutlass sedan.

It all happened so fast, she didn’t see the wolf’s face until he climbed into the driver’s seat.

Vince!! She tried to yell (but it came out as a muffled squeal beneath the duct tape) when her younger, but still much stronger than her, African-American cousin turned around to grin at her over the seat. She would have immediately recognized his scent if he hadn’t gone out of his way to mask it with cologne—so she’d never smell him coming. What the hell?!

“Sorry, Cuz,” Vince said, putting on his seatbelt. “But…” He cleared his throat and said in his most formal tone, “Aunt Wilma requests your presence at her dinner party for the Alpha Prince of Colorado tonight.”