Scion (Norseton Wolves Book 4) (3 page)

Ashley would likely look back and remember the most amusing part of her wedding being her new mother-in-law scolding Vic about his inability to dress himself properly for the event. Leather and denim did
not
make much of a suit, but damned if he didn’t look fine in it. He was tall and broad, and just oozed sex appeal, even with his seemingly permanent scowl.

Gods forbid that he smile.

The second most memorable thing would likely end up being Vic going off to confer in hushed tones with his father while new brides Ashley, Lisa, and Stephanie huddled in the Town Square gazebo ogling each other’s rings. Ashley’s rings were nice enough. Better than she had expected, actually, given her and Vic’s coolness toward each other, but they weren’t distracting enough to keep her from wondering what Vic and Alpha were discussing, and whether it concerned her specifically.

The redhead, Stephanie, gave Ashley’s shoulder a little squeeze. When Ashley turned her attention to her, the other woman pointed across the square to Main Street. “We’re going to explore. Let the guys entertain themselves for a while. We need to get our bearings in this place.”

“Right. Sure.” Ashley cut her gaze back to the Carbone men, who were now casting inscrutable looks toward her.

She’d never been the paranoid sort, but old dogs learned new tricks all the time.

Mrs. Carbone swooped into the gazebo, snapped her camera’s lens cap on, and looked at each woman in turn. “I’m gonna go see what happened to Christina and Anton. You got my number if you need anything?”

The three new brides all pulled cell phones from their purses and waited for Mrs. Carbone to relay the number.

As Ashley, Lisa, and Stephanie started for the business district, Ashley took a look back. The Carbone men had dispersed, along with the other two wolf men, and were nowhere to be found—just that quickly.

“Efficient,” she muttered.

“That’s not a bad thing,” Lisa said. “Trust me. It’s better that they get moving than to stand around shooting the shit all day, whether it’s their day off or not.”

“What do they even do for a living? Mrs. Carbone wouldn’t say.”

“I have no idea,” Stephanie said. “Darius isn’t much of a talker.”

“I think they provide security to the people who run this place,” Lisa said.

The women waited at the corner for the light to change and watched a few higher-end vehicles pass in front of them.

Ashley grunted in appreciation. Norseton wasn’t very big, but the residents seemed to be well heeled, at least. The best she could tell, the oldest buildings in the community were around a hundred years old, and the newer structures were built in concentric rings around them like most smartly planned cities. It expanded outward, rather than new buildings popping up here and there and sprawl happening unfettered.

The wolf housing was situated about an eight-minute walk from the center of downtown, but that seemed practical. Packs needed room to run, and while Ashley’s pack had been pretty urban, they had access to undeveloped areas whenever they had to shift for the full moon.

Norseton seemed to be an ideal place for a pack that had some wolves who
had
to shift, and some who shifted by choice. Mrs. Carbone said the wolves and Norseton fell into the latter group, and that had floored Ashley. She’d known such wolves existed, but couldn’t remember ever having encountered any personally. Her father had always spoken of them with suspicion, and now she was in their lair—married to one.

They crossed the street, and Ashley pointed to the coffee shop. “Can we start there? I need caffeine to be able to make sense of my lot in life. I didn’t have time this morning.”

Lisa snorted. “Your lot in life seems pretty simple to me. You’re a full-fledged werewolf married to the pack alpha’s son.”

“Put that way, it sounds like a fairytale.”
If only it were.

The three women stepped into the shop and got into a line that was nearly out the door. It wasn’t quite nine o’clock, so half the community was probably still waiting to get its caffeine fix.

“From where I’m standing, you’re pretty lucky.” Stephanie bent and peered into the glass case containing bagels and pastries. Ashley had to admit they looked pretty good. The Afótama clan may have lived in the middle of nowhere, but they obviously took their breakfast carbs seriously.

“How so?”

“Well, you not only get a mate, but also in-laws. The rest of us are completely lacking in the family department here.”

“Some of us might say that’s a good thing,” Stephanie muttered and pointed out a lemon Danish to the clerk.

Ashley twirled some of her hair around her fingers and let her gaze flit between the crullers and the cinnamon rolls. “I happen to like the family I had back at home.”

“Me, too,” Lisa said. “My parents are the sweetest wolves you’ll ever meet.”

“Sweet?” Stephanie scoffed and turned to the clerk again. “Can I get a really big black coffee? Thanks.”

They all moved a bit closer to the register.

“They’re not typical wolves, that’s for sure,” Lisa said. “But neither are pure. That probably has something to do with it. They’re probably a lot less inbred than some others in the pack.”

Ashley cringed, and put in her order for a dry cappuccino. She’d heard the whispers and jokes about her pack and how insular it was. She’d always thought there wasn’t much they could do about that. If they wanted wolf children, they had to take wolf mates.

“There you are.” At the sound of the newcomer’s voice, they all turned to find Mrs. Carbone in the shop’s doorway with mate number four, Christina, under her wing. She gave the timid, smaller woman a squeeze around her shoulders. “I figured you’d start here and make your way around, but I caught your scents. That verified it for me. I’m going to show you all what’s what around here. Need clothes? Groceries? Voter registration? I’ll show you everything.”

“I wish I’d had someone like you on my first day of college,” Lisa said.

Stephanie chuckled and scooped her dish up from the counter. “Seriously. I was hopeless.”

They went to college?

Lisa let out a dry chuckle and bobbed her eyebrows at them as they departed for a table.

Higher education hadn’t been on Ashley’s radar during much of her childhood. Her parents hadn’t explicitly dissuaded her from aspiring to it, but they hadn’t exactly been cheerleaders for it, either. Maybe they’d suspected she wouldn’t be able to get into a good school.
And whose fault is that?

Ashley ground her back teeth and slid a ten-dollar bill to the clerk. “Keep the change, okay?”

As she navigated through the tight tables, she wondered how things might have been different if she’d grown up outside a wolf community and gone to school with people who weren’t wolves.
What would I have learned? Maybe nothing different. I’m just being paranoid
.
I would have learned the exact same things, probably.

Unconvinced, she gnawed at her bottom lip as she sank into the seat Lisa pushed out for her.

“What’s wrong?” Stephanie asked. “You look confused.”

Ashley straightened her spine and put on a smile for her fellow mate. “Nah, I’m okay. Just thinking about pack stuff.”

“This pack?”

“Well, no. Other packs, like my old one.”

“What kind of stuff?” Lisa asked through a mouthful of bagel.

“It’s nothing, really, just…” Letting the words trail off, Ashley stirred her spoon through the foamy top of her drink and watched the tiny bubbles pop. “What was it like for you? Did you go to a pack school?” She looked up to see both Stephanie and Lisa shaking their heads.

“Up until I was sixteen, I grew up with my human mom away from my dad’s pack,” Stephanie said. “When he made me move in with him and enrolled me at the school most of the pack kids attended, I ended up placing out of it. It’s not that I’m a genius at all, but most of the kids in the pack school were way behind.”

“In my case, the pack just wasn’t organized enough to pull all the kids into one school,” Lisa said. “I’m sure they would have, if they could’ve, just to carry the brainwashing over into yet another institution.”

“
Brainwashing
?” Ashley said it in a whisper, as if the concept wasn’t meant to be discussed in polite company. “What do you mean?”

Stephanie scoffed. “It was like night and day, my educational experiences. So much in the wolf school was bare minimum—about knowing our places in the pack.”

“Society, you mean?”

“No, the pack, because that’s supposed to be the only society a wolf knows.”

Ashley found that hard to believe.
Wolves can’t be productive citizens of the world if…

She brought her coffee to her lips and sipped. The realization burned her heart more than the scalding hot beverage did her tongue.

She
wasn’t
a productive citizen of the world. Up until she’d responded to the mate call, she was barely even a productive member of her own household. Whatever her parents didn’t handle for her, the household staff they’d hired for her when she’d moved into her apartment did. She’d thought she’d had agency and freedom, but really—and it pained her to realize it—she’d never had room to make even simple choices on her own. She’d gone from her parents’ house to the care of people being paid by her parents, then straight to her new husband’s house. She didn’t know what it meant to be independent. She may have been nearly thirty, but out in the real world, she was practically a baby.

At the sharp rap against the plate glass window nearby, she jumped—her sense of hearing amplified since receiving her bite. Everything was louder and smelled more pungent, too. She clutched at her rapidly beating heart as she turned to the window, only to find her mate standing on the other side.

Now, her heart seemed to stop, and her stomach dropped. That face he was making was unquestionable. He found her abhorrent, and she was so confused that she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be returning the sentiment.

He crooked two fingers at her in a
come here
gesture, and she swallowed hard.

That feeling she always got when she was certain she was about to be grounded for doing some stupid thing came rushing at her like a freight train.

She was so still—frozen there in her seat—that he knocked again and waved her out, his eyes narrowed and brow furrowed.

“You’d better go see what he wants.” Lisa tipped her head, indicating the citizens in the room behind them. “The locals are watching.”

Ashley risked a glance over her shoulder to confirm that they indeed were. They didn’t seem hostile, just curious.
Too
curious, in her opinion. She was used to doing things behind closed doors.

She pushed back from the table and hitched her purse up to her shoulder. “He probably forgot to tell me something. Like where he was going, or whatever.”

“Probably so.”

Ashley mustered a grin and walked with artificial confidence to the door. “I’ll be right back, but if I’m not for whatever reason, call my cell phone.”

Or check the dumpster in the back of this place.

With that murderous glare of his, she thought he looked like he wanted to toss her into it.

He took her by the elbow and started her at an aggressive pace down the block.

“Um—”

“Don’t start.”

“Ex
cuse
me?”

He didn’t respond, beyond pressing his hand to the small of her back and moving her even faster. They crossed the street, and he helped her up into the passenger seat of a big, black pickup truck.

“Are we going somewhere? I didn’t finish my cof—”

He slammed the door on her words, and in seconds, had raced around the front of the truck and heaved himself up into the driver’s seat. He speared the key into the ignition and peeled out of the parking space before she could even get her seatbelt buckled.

“Are we going some—”

“Don’t talk.”

Her jaw flapped wordlessly for a few beats, but she couldn’t come up with any words to say that would do any good. She could ask questions, but chances were slim he’d deign to respond.

She crossed her arms over her chest and stared out the windshield as he drove out of the Norseton business district, past the wolf houses—which she’d assumed he’d stop at—and steered the truck off-road.

He shifted into a low gear, motored to what seemed like miles beyond civilization, and brought the truck to an abrupt stop near a deep gulch.

He yanked the parking brake up and snatched her purse off the floor.

“What are you doing?” She tried to grab it back, but his reflexes were faster, his grip stronger.

He found her phone in the bag, powered it off, and got out of the truck.

“What are you doing?” she repeated, following him. Dread was heavy in her gut.

He went to the edge of the gulch, wound his arm back like a major league pitcher, and tossed the phone what had to be a hundred yards toward the center.

She stood petrified, unable to move or even think after hearing the soft
thunk
of her cell hitting the rocky bottom.

Her phone. Her
lifeline
.

He grabbed her by the harness back and pulled her away from the edge. Near the truck, he fisted her skirt and started working it up.

Her brain finally rebooted, and she swatted at his hands. “Stop it!”

“Take it off, or I’ll take it off for you.”

“
No
. What the fuck is wrong with you? Stop touching me, asshole.”

He gave his head a slow shake. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with me, and
everything
wrong with you. Take off your clothes, or I’ll force you to shift and you won’t have a choice.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Don’t think so? I’m the son of an alpha, and an alpha in my own right. Get me angry enough, and I can pour off enough energy to make your wolf come out by force, and she’ll be too scared to shift back after the full moon. You’ll be running around on four legs for days, and will probably find yourself a nice, deep, death trap like this one to fall into because you’re not careful. Take off your fucking clothes so I can search you, or I’ll take matters into my own hands.”