Keeping Secret: Secret McQueen, Book 4 (13 page)

Thanks, Dad.

I was betting the women of the south appreciated Callum’s hard jaw and its thick, dark covering of stubble, which clung to his face not unlike moss clung to the oaks. His eyes were dark brown, and if they were the windows to the soul, his were shuttered. Callum’s expression was unreadable. He looked down at Lucas’s offered hand then turned his attention to me, where I remained on the ground level.

“Callum,” Lucas said, forcing his face into an approximation of a smile. “It’s a pleasure.”

If anyone else had addressed Callum so casually, it would have been seen as an incredible faux pas. But Lucas was a king too, and as much as neither of them liked it, they were equals.

After an achingly long pause, Callum took Lucas’s hand and shook it. “Welcome to my home, Lucas. It’s been awhile. Last time I saw you, you were just a pup.”

It wasn’t an outright insult, but I caught on to what Callum was doing. He was trying to remind Lucas who the older, wiser king was of the two of them. Well, older was right at least.

“We were all younger men, once,” Lucas replied politely.

Well played.

“Yes. And now you’re marrying my niece.” Once again the Southern king’s attention pivoted to me, and this time it lingered. “My long-departed niece.”

“Hello…Your Majesty.” I grimaced after the words came out. Even to me they sounded petulant and forced.

Callum pretended not to notice and offered me a smile and his hand. I climbed the steps hesitantly, expecting to fall into a booby trap any moment. I reached the top unscathed and placed my hand in his. His handshake was firm but not crushing. He didn’t need to force his strength on to people. His power was obvious without being showy. He was confident he would be respected in his domain.

“So this is our little Secret.” He took my other hand and held my arms out from my side, like a dressmaker who was checking for a good fit. “My goodness, all grown up.”

“
Grandmere
made sure I got my vitamins.”

“
Grandmere
.” He cocked his head to the side. “Hmm. Indeed. How is my mother?”

That was a rich question. She’d run away from him because she believed under his teenage leadership my life would be at risk. Now I was standing here in his clutches—literally—and he was asking after her health.

“She’s well.” I said nothing else.

“Good.” He nodded once. And again. “Good.” He dropped my arms. Neither of us commented on my ensemble, for which I was grateful. “Well, let’s not spend the whole night on the porch. The rest of the pack is at the bar. Magnolia will take you there, and I will meet you later.”

The bar? We drove two hours, and now he wanted us to leave again to make our introductions to a bunch of drunk wolves? Could this get more ridiculous?

“Come on,” Magnolia said, walking around the side of the verandah.

“Uh, don’t we need our cars?” I asked.

“Why? The bar is out back.”

Chapter Eighteen

The Southern wolf pack knew how to bring a party to their front door.

We followed a chip path through another stand of oaks in total darkness. After about five minutes of silence, I was about to ask what kind of horror movie Magnolia was taking us into, when a pair of tiki torches appeared ahead. The path opened into a huge clearing.

To our left was a stone building, shaped like a turret, which looked too small to be a house. To our right was a large wood-plank building with a rickety porch wrapping around it and newly replaced wooden steps that stood in bright blonde contrast to the stain of the rest of the building. Above the entrance was a neon orange sign blinking the words
The Den
.

More neon decorated the windows on either side of the door and also served to obscure my view through the glass.

“You guys have a
bar
?” I couldn’t wrap my head around the building in front of us.

More buildings were set off in the distance, most dark, one or two with dim lights shining from their windows. It seemed as if Callum, or more likely my Grandfather Elmore, had renovated the old slave quarters into residences for the pack. With Callum’s home being so far from a major metropolitan area, it must have been easier to have the pack stay close rather than wait to have them come to him.

“It’s pretty new. We found the bar in St. Francisville was, um…” Magnolia bit back a grin and tried to look somber, “…unable to meet our needs.”

Translation, drunk wolves kept starting shit and were putting a beating on the poor townie men.

“So, Callum thought it was best to keep you guys under a more watchful eye?”

Magnolia nodded. “Some of the pack have short fuses. Keeping them within range of their king helps to hold their tempers in line. This way they can still have their fun and no one gets hurt.”

“Can we have a bar?” I asked Lucas.

“What would Genevieve think?”

The queen of the were-ocelots, Genevieve Renard, had a bar in New York that was a popular shapeshifter hot spot. The Chameleon Lounge was a lot fancier than The Den, considering it also housed a 5-star quality restaurant. But the idea of our own little Manhattan pub was sort of appealing.

“Shall we go in?” Magnolia asked, apparently uneasy about the new, hungry look on my face. “I’d like to introduce you to the pack before His Majesty joins us.”

“Yes please, Magnolia. Lead the way.” Lucas nodded his head in her direction without bowing it. He couldn’t show weakness to her or be seen to bow before a lesser wolf.

Werewolf politics and customs took a lot of adjustment to get used to. Magnolia wasn’t subservient because she was a woman. Women in packs often held prominent power positions, like Morgan or myself. And just as often men would fall into positions lower than Magnolia’s in the pecking order. Where you stood depended on the power you projected. And your power was determined at birth. There was no way around it. With wolves you would never be able to rise above the position you were born to hold.

I wondered if that was one of the reasons Kellen had decided not to be Awakened. She was spunky and independent, but she wasn’t powerful. As a human she had control of her future. As a wolf she would have been subservient forever, living in the shadow of her brother the king.

Once we were inside the bar, I became aware of just how quiet it had been outdoors. Within the walls of The Den it sounded like three dozen people were talking all at once. Probably because there were. I was amazed by the number of bodies wedged into the room and how hot it made the air. The smell of wolf was overwhelming.

The conversations—all forty thousand of them, from the sound of it—came to an abrupt stop when we followed Magnolia into the room. My first instinct was to duck behind Lucas, wanting to shrink away from the scrutiny of so many lupine stares. I could handle a few werewolves, but this many in one place put the odds well out of my favor. I was good, but I wasn’t one-against-thirty-six good.

“Brothers and sisters,” Magnolia greeted, bowing her head to a few of the obviously higher-ranked pack members. “I would like to present His Majesty, Lucas Rain, King of the Eastern packs, and his consort, Secret McQueen, Princess of our own Southern pack.”

Every time Magnolia said
princess
I wanted to cringe. I’d barely wrapped my head around the idea of being werewolf royalty in the past year, and here she was expecting these strangers to treat me like I was special. Maybe I was, but I didn’t want a bunch of roughneck-looking shifters bowing in front of me as Mags had earlier. Thanks, but no thanks.

The wolves sat stock-still for a few moments, casting uncertain glances between themselves until a woman in her mid-forties with a silvering ashy bob came and stood before Lucas and me. She bowed in a way she had not the first time we’d met, but her eyes betrayed her real feelings.

“Hello again, Amelia,” I said, giving her a hard stare.

Maybe I had something against women who acted as the third power seat in the werewolf hierarchy. Amelia was Callum’s version of what Morgan was to Lucas. A strong wolf who probably wasn’t quite strong enough or trustworthy enough to make the final jump to the lieutenant position.

Amelia smiled at me in a cold, predatory way that would make Morgan proud if she had seen it. “Your
Royal
Highness,” she greeted. I didn’t like her tone. Or her face. Or her dress, for that matter.

Perhaps I was being a touch judgmental.

“Always a pleasure.” The words came out sweet, but in my head I was shouting
bitch, bitch, bitch.
Lucas couldn’t read my mind, but he knew me well enough he didn’t need to. He grimaced and cleared his throat to bring Amelia’s attention back his way.

“Amelia, nice to see you again. I trust time has treated you well.”

“It has, Your Majesty, thank you.” She bowed again, but not as low as Magnolia had.

For the next fifteen minutes we were at the head of a lengthy queue of wolves who were required to let their beers grow warm while they bowed in a variety of heights and told us how thrilled they were to have us in their territory and how lovely it was to have me home again.

Like this had ever been my home.

The last wolf in line was a squinty, leering sort who I would give a wide berth to in a back alley or at a regular bar. Not that I was physically intimidated by him. Rather, something in his manner set off my spidey sense. He was on the wiry side of lean, and a hunger in his eyes suggested a small nudge would be enough to push him into dangerous losses of control. He smelled like trouble and was probably the main reason they’d been forced to stop socializing with humans.

He gave Lucas a midlevel bow and an appropriate—if forced—royal address. When he turned his attention to me, though, propriety shifted into something different. Not lust—I knew what that looked and felt like. No, this wolf wanted something other than sex, I just didn’t know what it was. He leaned a little too close and sniffed the air around me, nostrils flaring wide as he breathed me deep.

I stood my ground and stared him in his steel-blue eyes.

“I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” I suggested, trying to give him an opportunity to fix the huge social mistake he was making. Lucas had gone rigid beside me, and it didn’t take our mate bond to know rage was simmering under that hard surface.

“Yes. How silly of me,” the wolf said, his voice raspy and holding the promise of something dirty and raw. “Your Royal Highness.” Those three words sounded filthy coming from his chapped lips. “What a great treat it is to have you home…mingling amongst us commoners.”

“Hank,” Amelia spoke up, “watch yourself.” But she wasn’t
really
scolding him. The way she said it was more like a parent chastising a child when they secretly found the bad behavior hilarious. The rest of the pack remained quiet and watched us.

“Apologies, Princess,” Hank said.

“Already forgiven.” I didn’t want to start trouble on our first night. And I didn’t want to jeopardize our tenuous peace here by kicking the shit out of a redneck werewolf in a wife beater and saggy Levi’s who couldn’t grow a proper beard.

“Real swell of you to take time from your life in the big city, spending time with all them…lesser sorts.”

At first I thought he meant the vampires and I tensed up, ready to make a break for the door. But when he licked his lips and grinned, I began to question the real meaning behind his words. My hesitation was rewarded when a short but well-muscled African-American werewolf next to the bar groaned and shook his head.

“I’m sorry, Hank, maybe I missed something. Must be the hair.” I laughed and twisted a blonde ringlet around my finger, doing my best impression of Brigit when she was trying to lure in a meal. “What do you mean by
lesser sorts
?”

“Hank…don’t.” This time Amelia’s warning was real, but still no one moved.

“Heard from some of the pack up there she spends an awful lot of time with some half-breed and his pretty blonde lady friend.”

By his abysmal description I was pretty sure he was talking about Nolan and Brigit. I also now knew exactly what he meant by
lesser sorts
.

I leaned in close, my lips almost against his ear. “Back away from this. Do it now and you won’t get hurt. But don’t mistake this for forgiveness.” When I stood back, I made sure the threat in my glare was clear. If Hank and I met alone in the dark, one of us wouldn’t come back. No one talked about my people like they were anything less than the best specimens living or undead. And
no one
talked shit about Nolan.

Hank licked his lips then raised his hands in mock surrender. “Sure thing, sweetheart.”

Lucas intervened, clamping a hand on Hank’s shoulder before my urge to punch the son of a bitch in the face could be realized. “Hank, is it? Maybe your king is okay with you insulting members of your own pack to their face, but I won’t stand for your behavior. Secret is your superior, both in my pack and yours, and if you don’t treat her appropriately, you and I are going to have a discussion about how to show a lady respect.”

The lesser wolf looked like he might protest, but he didn’t get a chance.

Callum came into the room at that moment, and Hank dropped to the floor faster than if someone had screamed
duck
in the front lines of a war zone.