Out loud, I opted for, “I gave the bike back. And Jeff barely even minded.” I did, however, doubt that Jeff would be inviting me to homecoming anytime soon.
“Are you interested in this boy?” Callum asked, his brow furrowing. Despite the fact that he did a good impression of an overprotective big brother, I’d lived under his rule long enough to realize that his concern wasn’t just for me or my heart.
“I have no interest in provoking interspecies aggression,” I said, using the politically correct phrase for incidents involving young, stupid werewolves and young, stupid human males. “And, believe me, if I did, it wouldn’t be for a guy who wouldn’t let me drive.”
I spent enough time resisting testosterone-driven dominance maneuvers in my day-to-day life. The last thing I needed was a human boyfriend who wanted me to play the simpering miss.
Callum stiffened slightly at the idea of my dating anyone, even in the abstract. Werewolves tend to be very protective of their females, and even though I wasn’t anyone’s actual daughter or sister or—God forbid—mate, Callum had ceremonially dug his claws into me when I was four years old. While that had no effect whatsoever on my humanity, by Pack Law, it made me his. As a result, Callum’s wolves owed me their protection, and as far as they were concerned, that made me theirs, too. If werewolves had been into using “property of” stickers, I would have been mummified in them.
I just loved the idea of being owned.
“I don’t like the idea of you on a motorcycle, Bryn. You could get hurt.”
I didn’t dignify that particular concern with a response.
“I’m asking you not to do such a thing again, Bryn,” Callum said, choosing his words carefully, making it clear that this was not an order but a request. Lot of good that did me—Callum’s “requests” didn’t leave much room for noncompliance. If I refused to give him my word, there was a good chance that he would turn the request into an order, and as the leader of our pack and one of the highest-ranked dominant wolves on the continent, Callum’s orders were very close to law. Disobeying an official edict from the alpha meant incurring the wrath of the entire pack—some of whom refrained from sending me to my just rewards only because Callum had likewise forbidden them from killing me.
Framing my orders as requests let Callum keep the pack out of it, and that left him free to deal with me on his own terms, which was sometimes a good thing and sometimes not.
“Bryn?”
“Your request has been noted,” I said, my lips twisting inadvertently into an easy grin. “I don’t anticipate there being any motorcycles in my future.”
I was pushing him again, but I couldn’t help it. You didn’t get to be alpha of the largest pack in North America by winning popularity contests, and Callum was so dominant that the day I stopped pushing back would be the day that I was a member of his pack first and myself second.
To Callum’s credit and my relief, he didn’t push for a firmer promise—probably because there were still two major items left on his Bryn Agenda.
“Your algebra grade is lower than it could be. Education is important, and I’d not have you slacking off, sadistic teacher or no.” His voice took on that odd, old-fashioned lilt he sometimes adopted, a mere remnant of the accent he’d had before coming to this country.
“Right. Algebra.” With the spring semester a month under way, I was getting a solid B-plus, but it could have easily been an A, and Callum had all kinds of lofty ideas about the importance of my living up to my potential. It was impressively modern of him, considering that he predated Women’s Lib by a couple of centuries—at least.
“Did you tell Ali on me?” I asked. When the pack had adopted me, Callum had Marked a second human as well. Alison Clare had come to Ark Valley in search of her sister, who’d left their human family behind when she’d married into the pack. No one had counted on twenty-one-year-old Ali tracking her sister to Ark Valley and unraveling secrets best kept in the woods. Any other alpha would have killed Ali the moment she saw her brother-in-law Shift. Callum had given her a choice.
And then once she’d chosen, he’d given her me.
At present, Ali was thirty-two, 100 percent human, recently married to one of the pack’s males, and my foster mother. Adopted mother. Whatever. Putting a label on Ali’s role in my life was somewhat difficult. I used her last name and had lived in her house for almost as long as I could remember. Despite the fact that she’d been practically a kid herself when Callum had initiated her into our world, Ali was the one who’d hugged and scolded and raised me from a pup (figuratively speaking, of course). Callum was my guardian on paper, but it was Ali who fed and clothed me, Ali who’d set up this studio so that I could have a place that was purely mine, away from the constant pull of the pack, and Ali who would ground me quicker than Callum could say my full name if she thought for a single second that I deserved it.
“Ali has her own concerns at the moment,” Callum said, and I saw the faint ghost of worry on his otherwise unreadable face. Ali was eight months pregnant with her first child. Werewolf births were notoriously difficult, and many human women didn’t survive.
Ali’s sister hadn’t.
I was not willing to consider the possibility that the same thing might happen to Ali. Ali was strong. She’d make it, and the baby would, too, and then he’d outlive her by, oh, say a thousand years.
Darn werewolves and their ridiculously long life spans.
“Was that it?” I asked Callum, hoping he’d get the message loud and clear that I wasn’t going to spend a second worrying about Ali, who would be just fine-fine-fine.
“You on a schedule here, Bryn?”
I gave an exasperated huff. “No.” I hoped he’d smell the half-lie for what it was. Just before he’d interrupted me, I’d been working on a new piece, and I was anxious to get back to it. Found art was all about the process, and His Royal Highness, the Werewolf King (and Grand Poobah of Pains in the Butt) was seriously disrupting mine.
“You broke curfew last night,” Callum said sharply. The first two complaints had been mere warm-ups for this one. His features tightened, his brows drawing together in a V.
“If my curfew wasn’t at dusk, I wouldn’t have to break it.” I felt as strongly about this issue as Callum did. Nighttime came depressingly early in winter, and I had no intention of being home each day by five.
“There is unease in the pack, Bronwyn. I would have you safe from it.”
I was Bronwyn again, a surefire sign that he was dangerously close to issuing either an edict or a threat. Possibly both.
“If I cannot trust you to be home before nightfall, I will be forced to take further measures to ensure your safety.” Callum’s words were unquestionably set in stone, and the hardness of his tone told me that he meant business. In my experience, Callum’s definition of “further measures” was disturbingly broad and ranged from taking me over his knee (when I was eight) to posting a guard outside my bedroom window. Right now, I wasn’t at all worried about the former, which I’d long outgrown. The latter, however …
“Until I can be assured of your cooperation in this matter, I’ve assigned a team to keep an eye on you.”
I scowled at Callum. “You have got to be kidding me.” There was nothing in the world worse than werewolf bodyguards.
“Bryn, m’dear, you know I never kid.” Callum’s brown eyes sparkled with just a hint of lupine mischief, which told me that (a) he was, in fact, serious about the guards, and (b) my moral outrage amused him, because in his mind, I’d knowingly brought this on myself.
“You suck,” I grumbled.
He put two fingers under my chin and held my face so that my eyes met his. “And you are the most disobedient child I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting.” His words were laced with unspoken warmth, an affection that—in his human form, at least—he showed only to me. Still holding my chin, he rubbed his cheek once against mine and then tousled my hair, actions I both hated and loved since they simultaneously marked me as a child and as his.