ONE - NIKITA

As soon as I put the car in park, I let go of my white-knuckled grip on my fingers. I just sat there for a moment and let my heart rate slow down.

I may have learned to drive in this exact Range Rover from the mid-1970s, but that was when it was just a broken-down shell. Between the time I left home and the time he died, my grandfather turned it into a "project" and lovingly over-engineered it until it was a complete monster. In the meantime, I had hardly driven at all during that time.

It would be an understatement to say that the long trip down mountain back roads covered in snow and the change to the busy streets of downtown Boston were not fun. I'd spent most of it complaining to myself that I wouldn't have to make this drive at all if my grandfather hadn't spent so much time on the perfect metallic Ardennes green paint job and so little time on pack business. We would have all been better off with a proper succession plan than with a dashboard that was modified to hold so many high-tech gadgets that it lit up brighter than the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree whenever the car was put in gear.

As my nerves calmed down, I told myself, "You're lucky they let you have it at all."

Technically, the estates of both my grandfather and my parents were in probate. By law, I shouldn't be able to get any of what they left behind until the long, slow process of verifying their assets, paying off their debts, and filing their last tax returns is done. But as a well-known lawyer in the area who was in charge of all the details, Aiyssa was able to pull some strings. I couldn't get to or sell any of my other assets yet, but I could use the Range Rover for now. Even though I hate it, driving the Range Rover has saved me the money I would have spent on a different car. This is money I really need right now.

I took a deep breath and double-checked the pockets of my navy peacoat to make sure my phone and wallet were still there. I got ready and opened the door. A blast of bitterly cold air blew over me, sucking the heat out of the SUV and turning my cheeks bright red. I got out of the car, shut the door, checked to make sure it was locked with the key fob, and turned toward the exit while gritting my teeth and cursing my Caribbean-thin blood.

As I walked around with my hands in my pockets and my coat and scarf wrapped around me, I wondered how long it would be before my body remembered how to deal with the cold. I was born and raised in New England, and I used to sail through the coldest winters with ease. My body had to remember that at some point, didn't it? I had been back for a few weeks. When I was in my human form, there was no reason for the cold air to still freeze my lungs and make my skin feel numb every time I went outside.

As I left the Parcel #7 Garage, I let out a sigh. As I joined the flow of well-dressed pedestrians and walked the short distance down the block to the restaurant, my breath made a white cloud in front of my face. Time to play the part.

I built up my new Alpha persona around myself with each step. I stuck out my chin, straightened my back, and sped up. I tried to hide any emotion on my face except for calm confidence, and I tried to stop my heart from beating. It felt like putting on a costume, but that's how these things worked, right? "Fake it until you make it," as the saying goes.

I moved up quickly through the ranks of the cruise company by using the same method. Now that the stakes were much higher, I had to hope it would work again.

When I got to the elegant brick-and-glass front of the Union Oyster House, I steeled myself and pushed through the door into the warm, fragrant air of the famous restaurant.

When the hostess greeted me, I said, "I'm meeting Ms. Wellington."

"Oh, yes," she said right away, and her eyes grew a little wider when she heard the name. "Please walk this way."

As I followed her up a narrow set of worn wooden stairs to a private dining room, I took off my scarf and unbuttoned my coat.

"Just in here, ma'am," said the hostess, nodding me in. Then she was gone.

As I carefully put on my Alpha mask and walked into the room, my stomach tightened.

At the only set table in the room, a handsome man about my age was sitting, but it was clear right away that he was just the arm candy. He was totally focused on the only other person in the room, and for good reason.

Amanda Wellington was incredibly pretty. Her perfect silver hair fell in large, soft ringlets around her shoulders, and her long pencil skirt and cashmere top with a boat neck showed off her slim figure. High cheekbones and eyes the color of polished jade gave her a sharp, hawk-like look, which was different from what I would have expected from the Alpha of the most common panther pride in the area. Her thin lips curled into a polite smile.

"Nikita Palmer, I think," she said, drawing out the "ah" sounds in my name with her Brahmin accent.

"Yes," I said, swallowing the knot of fear in my throat and forcing the words out in my best "I've got this" voice. "I'm glad we got to meet."

She waved her hand and said, "Mmm.  Really, it's nothing. Miles and I came to town for the holidays, and we still haven't figured out how to get home.

I didn't do the math to figure out how much it must have cost to rent a penthouse in the middle of Boston for more than a month.

"Besides," she said as she picked up her glass of wine and drank from it, never taking her eyes off my face as I took off my coat and scarf and draped them over the back of the chair across from hers. "It's not every day that the pack next door gets a new Alpha, but it's happening more often than usual these days."

I felt like I had been hit in the face by the insult, but I didn't show it. It wasn't the first time I'd heard opinions like that, and it wouldn't be the last. Also, she was right, and that was all my fault.

I reached for the carafe of wine and poured myself a glass as I dug deep into my Alpha self.

"Mr. Morgan's plot to take over the government has been stopped." As I looked into the other Alpha's eyes, ice crept into my voice. "There won't be a second time."

“No?” Amanda raised one of her well-groomed eyebrows.

The room's door was opened. There were a lot of servers bringing in plates of food. They put the dishes in the middle of the table quickly and quietly, and many of them gave Amanda nervous looks as they did so.

Amanda pointed to the feast and said, "I took it upon myself to order for us."

"Help yourself, please. I hope the choice of salad is okay. I don't eat it myself, but I know that wolves are more naturally omnivorous."

"It was kind of you to think about that, thank you." It was awkward to serve myself first, but I reminded myself that I was her guest and that, as Alphas, we were both equals. Even subtly acting like I thought I was the less important person would not help me.

To make a good impression, I pushed down my feelings of not being good enough and tried most of the tasty things on offer. There were hot oysters on the half shell, cherrystone clams, and mussels in a garlic and white wine sauce that smelled like a consommé. I gritted my teeth and took a small amount of the Caesar salad as well. Since I couldn't eat lactose, I'd have to find a way to make it look like I was eating it without actually doing so. That would be annoying, but if I said I didn't like it, it would show I was weak, which I couldn't do in this situation. Also, now that she had brought up the salad, I couldn't ignore her obvious concern by not eating any.

"Now," Amanda said, taking another sip of her wine as Myles brought them both plates. I noticed that he didn't bother to put any kind of vegetable on either of their plates.

"Tell me what you are going to do, Nikita. May I call you Nikita?" She didn't stop to wait for an answer; she just moved on. "Because you have to see where I'm coming from. I have my own honor to protect."

Myles put his Alpha's carefully set-up plate in front of her with a look of devotion that was almost too much to handle. Amanda ran a fingertip down his chin, giving him a slight smile of approval, and then he turned back to me.

"Of course, it makes perfect sense that you'd want to reaffirm the agreements your grandpa and I made regarding limits with my pride, but given the status of your pack right now—" she faltered regrettably, sounding as if she really wanted to cluck their tongue but was too well-bred to make such an inane noise.

I had to force myself to try one of the mussels. It smelled and felt great, and everything about it was perfect, but I was too worried about not messing up the meeting to really enjoy it. I chewed my food quickly, swallowed, and pretended to be totally calm.

"I know what you are worried about. No one has benefited from the instability in my pack." I put down my silverware and wiped my lips with a napkin, even though I didn't need to. This gave me a few seconds to get ready to make my pitch. "Neither has the economy in our area been getting worse. I'm going to fix both of them."

I laid out my plan in a methodical way, with the same fake confidence and accuracy I'd used to make a lot of business proposals to cruise company executives in the past.

"A ski resort?" Amanda's eyebrows were so high that they were almost at the top of her head, but she had a clear look of greed in her eyes.

“Yes.” I argued for myself. "The Slopes" was the worst name ever for a ski resort, and it had bad management from the start. Even at its best, it was only a small part of what it could have been. If the property is planned and run well, it could compete with the best ski resorts in the country. That number of tourists would be more than enough to bring the whole area back to life.

She beat her red fingernails on the table and stopped pretending to eat. "You hope that the promise of money will bring your scattered group back together," she thought, looking at me with more interest.

"Among other things," I said, without being clear. I also wanted to give my pack mates a chance to live out the dreams we'd all talked about in secret, giggly whispers around campfires and hidden bottles of liquor when we were in high school, before the real world slammed a hard fist down on them. But she didn't care about that.

She then asked me a series of very pointed questions about where I thought I would get the money, how I thought the timeline would work, and if I had the skills and courage to see the project through.

I stood my ground and didn't back down. Even though I didn't know everything, I had done my work. I made sure she knew it too by giving her numbers and names and silently praying that she didn't know enough about the business to know if they were true or not.

"All I want from you," I said with a firm voice, "is to keep the rules that were in place when my grandfather was Alpha."

I thought, "Keep your pride off my land" as I took another sip of my wine and tried to keep my hand from shaking. Don't send your lawyers into my business. Let my pack safely pass through your territory, and I'll do the same for your pride. It's not a lot to ask.

Amanda thought about that, and the air changed in a way that made me feel like a predator. "Do you know how my pride and your pack first agreed to work together?" After a long pause, she asked. Her tone was too casual for me to feel safe.

"No," I told her, trying to sound as casual as she did. "It had been going on for at least a hundred years before my grandfather took over, but he never brought it up."

Even though I sounded like I didn't care, the words had a bitter taste to them. I loved my grandfather, and he was a very skilled man. But when it came to his job as Alpha, he hadn't done much more than the bare minimum, even in "easy" things like teaching the younger wolves about pack history.

"The daughter of the original Alpha wolf was given in marriage to the new Alpha of my pride." Amanda's elegant, long fingers played with the bottom of her wine glass. "She turned out to be sterile, so there were never any wolf cubs running around pride lands," she said, "but pride history says that they loved each other enough that the agreement held anyway."

I tried to picture who that bride had been that had been traded. She had to be in my family tree in some way. A great-great-aunt perhaps?

"Now," Amanda said with a sly look. "I guess I'm a bit of a romantic," she said, caressing the word as if it were a funny secret. "And a stickler for the past. I'm sure your plan is well-thought-out enough to work, but you'll have to forgive me for being skeptical."

That was fair, even though it made things hard for me. If I were her, I'd doubt, too.

"Okay, so here's how this will work." She turned her head to the side, and her eyes looked at me with a directness that made my skin itch. "I'll agree to extend our agreement, and I'll even put you in touch with some investors I know who I think will be interested in your small project. But if I want to keep my pride and my investment safe, I'll need someone who knows a lot about it." She took a pause for effect. "So, in keeping with the original plan, you'll marry my son."

For a moment, the words just wouldn't make sense. "Excuse me?" was all I could say when my brain finally figured out what was going on.

"Of course, he'll come to you." She smiled and waved. "He's not a virgin, as tradition would have it, but he's not in any bad relationships and is of the right age." She stopped once more. "Or do you like women better?"

“I—no.” I felt my cheeks start to burn from how silly and blunt the conversation was. "But I, that is, will even your son—"

Her face turned stone-like in an instant.

She told me in a voice as hard as diamonds, "Prides are matriarchies."

"Sebastian is not married, and I am his mother as well as his Alpha. That gives me direct control over him twice, so he'll do what I say and won't complain."

“I see.”

As things were, I kind of did. Even though the "romantic" and "traditionalist" reasons didn't make a bit of sense to me, it was clear that Amanda was asking for a favor in exchange for a favor. No matter what her reasons were, she wanted her son out of the way. The best thing to do was to dump him on me, since she had nothing to lose by agreeing to my terms and I couldn't say no, which we both knew.

I told myself, "It doesn't matter." There really wasn't anything to lose. I wasn't married and hadn't had a lover in years. Because of my and my family's sins, other women in my pack had been forced to sleep with men they didn't want. On some cosmic level, the fact that I now had to pay the same price felt like my karmic debts were coming due early.

If this was what it would cost to fix my pack, I wouldn't argue. I raised my chin and looked into her eyes. "I agree with what you say."

***

 

As I left the restaurant and walked toward Faneuil Hall, I could feel the bitter cold from a distance. Still, I didn't pay much attention to it. At least, I didn't until I opened the heavy door to the long indoor bazaar and a warm breeze filled my face. It smelled like bread, sugar, and chowder.

I moved down the central corridor toward my favorite bakery stall out of habit and because my muscles remembered how to move. Every time I took a step that I used to know well, I thought about a thousand happy times.

But neither the surface feelings nor the memories could break through the numbness that seemed to have settled into my bones.

I ordered a few breads and pastries on autopilot and then added an almond-milk latte at the last minute. After I paid for them, I took them to a chest-height counter that ran along a nearby shared eating area and sat down on a tall stool. My phone buzzed in my pocket as soon as I sat down, so I took it out.

The screen lit up with a message from Aiyssa. What happened?

Oh, okay, I thought I would answer. I just made a promise to a man I've never met to help the pack get rich like it's the Middle Ages.

However, that was not just. I had bought and sold myself, so there was no point in my complaining or wailing about the situation any more. Also, Aiyssa wouldn't put up with my self-martyrdom because I was a successful lawyer and one of the few pack members who had kept some semblance of normalcy while the pack fell apart.

I decided to respond to you via SMS instead. We are presently on our way home. Just made a quick pit break for some coffee and cookies. After the next day, I will fill you in on all of the details. Are we going to continue this?

Lunch. She affirmed it in a curt manner. Time and location as usual.

Since I got back from my trip, Aiyssa, Wynette, and I have made it a point to eat lunch together at least once every other week. If she had a court date, Aiyssa would make a reservation for a meeting room at the courthouse, and we would all meet up with her there during the breaks in the proceedings. We agreed to meet at her workplace on days when she did not have court. Aiyssa and Wynette's observance of the custom spanned a number of years at this point. Being welcomed back into the group after my absence was a wonderful feeling. It gave me the impression that I wasn't the only one fighting the war to save the pack when I thought about it.

I told myself that lunch will be around soon enough to tell her about it. She wouldn't be happy about it, but there was nothing that could be done to change the situation, and there was no reason for her to be concerned about it. I was more than capable of providing sufficient cause for concern for all of us.

I straightened my back, put my phone away in a pocket, grabbed my coffee and pastries, and started walking out of the market in the direction of the parking garage. The sun had already set during the winter, and driving back would be even less enjoyable than driving there in the first place. I briefly entertained the idea of reserving a room at a nearby hotel and making the drive home in the morning.

I was able to resist the temptation almost as swiftly as it had arisen. I was working with little cash up until I got an investor, and on top of that, I was already paying for the hotel room I was staying in while I was in town. I couldn't afford to waste what little money I did have by making two payments just because I was too lazy to remember the second one. Not until the estates of my family's deceased members have been resolved, the money has been secured, and the future of the pack is assured.

In addition to that, I thought as I reached the parking garage and made my way up the winding stairs, as I sipped my latte and savored the pleasant warmth it provided me. Tomorrow, you will need to get an early start on your day.

The very idea made me give an internal grunt. It was necessary for me to have an early start, particularly tomorrow. It was possible that I only had a few weeks before Amanda gave her son to me, but it was the best case scenario. I was sleeping in a single-room extended-stay hotel suite, which was good for just me, but if a panther was going to wind up sharing my space, I would need new accommodations. somewhere with more space, to be sure, as well as perhaps something a little more stunning and pleasant. A feline shifter would have some prerequisites to meet.

I started to think that maybe I should also do some shopping. If I had a friend with me, my usual, boring clothes would not do me any good. When I thought about buying something sexual on purpose, my stomach felt like it was full of butterfly wings. It wasn't something I was particularly good at by any means. Had I ever even owned decent lingerie?

My mind went right to a frilly pink negligee that Pierre had bought for me on a whim when I was a sophomore in college. He was ten years older than me and worked as a pastry chef in France. He was my first and only boyfriend. Our whirlwind romance lasted just long enough for me to decide I never wanted to get involved in another relationship and for macarons to become my worst addiction. Since then, I've filled my closet with underwear that is useful but not special, and I've made sure to keep up the appearance of having a boyfriend so I can politely turn down other guys' advances.

I said something in my head about how useless that method was.

As I got closer to the car, I fumbled for the key fob and clicked it to open the doors. I stepped inside. After putting my pastries in the secure compartment of the passenger seat and my coffee in the cup holder, I took out my phone and opened the app that let me record my voice. It would take a very long time to get there. It would be best for me to start making a list of all the things I needed to do right away to make sure I stuck to my part of the new deal my pack and Amanda's panther pride had made.

I felt in charge when I made lists, and I needed to eat, sleep, and live that feeling until Amanda's son came. He'd be looking for an Alpha, or a leader like his mother who did what she wanted and didn't listen to anyone else.

I gritted my teeth and gripped the steering wheel as I drove out of the parking garage and into Boston's terrible traffic.

I told myself, "You can do this," and began to say notes out loud for my phone to record.

You're the Alpha now, so act like it, since that's what you're supposed to do. Just show him what he wants to see, and everything will be fine.