I hold in my snort. From what I know, Harper would gladly have Ollie off her back, but stuff like that doesn’t mean anything to the males in the pack.
It’s shifter nature. You’ll understand when you have your own wolf, is what people always say when objections to this kind of behavior come up, but it reeks of bullshit to me. Yeah, I get that there’s an animal’s drive to contend with, but why are the males circling someone without their wolf spirit yet? Wolves seek out wolves for mates, but some of the hierarchy tries to push a claim before the females are even full wolves. It’s what Burke has been trying to do to me, and what my mother put a stop to while she was here, but not all pack members have the chance to shut it down.
“I don’t care who claims me, I just hope it’s good,” Lana announces, a foxy gleam in her dark brown eyes, her new platinum bob bouncing around her face as she giggles impishly. All the other females laugh and encourage her.
Becca throws a towel at her teasingly. “Yeah, right. You and your wolf are going to be chasing after Alpha just like you’ve been since he first took over our pack.” Her eyes meet mine in the mirror, and her face falls a little as though she forgot I was here.
It gets even more awkward when the girls all turn to look at me, as though I’ll have something to say about Lana pursuing him. I return their stares and offer a shrug. “Take him. I have no issue or interest,” I offer genuinely.
Instead of making Lana happy, her eyes narrow angrily on me. “Oh, please, Seneca. I’m so tired of you thinking you’re such hot shit.” The entire salon goes quiet. You could hear a worm fart from a mile away, that’s how quickly her words vacuumed up all the noise.
“Lana,” Trinity admonishes after a beat, shooting me an apologetic glance.
“What?” Lana clips in return. “You know you’re all thinking it. She walks around the pack like she’s God’s gift with her long legs and pretty face, convinced that she’s too good for our own alpha. Our alpha!” she repeats, as though that fact needs to be emphasized. “I’m not just going to kiss her ass because her mom died and she deigned to step down from her imagined throne to slum it with us common wolves. She acts like Burke is a monster and we’re all her enemy.”
I bark out a hollow laugh at her words. The other females look as though they’re watching a riveting tennis match and it’s my turn to hit the ball. Their eyes search my face, expecting to see anger and outrage, but they won’t find it. I don’t care what Lana thinks about me or how I live my life. I know what she’s saying is pure crap, and that’s all that really matters.
“Yeaaahhh, I’m gonna go.” I stand, taking this as the perfect opportunity to get away, no questions asked. Thank you, Lana.
“See?” Lana whines as though my lack of response is all the proof she needs. “Like mother like daughter,” she lobs at me venomously as I bend to grab my bag.
I freeze, her words slicing into me despite my efforts to ignore them. “Excuse me?” I ask evenly. There’s no sign of the anger now flowing through my veins in either my tone or my face, but it’s there, simmering to a boil.
She looks at me with a flash of vindication. “You heard me. Your mother was a pretentious bitch. She never gave our alpha the proper amount of respect. She was barely even civil with our betas.”
I look at her like she’s lost her goddamn mind, because clearly, she has. “I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say the nail polish fumes you’ve been inhaling for the last hour have fucked with your good sense,” I warn her. “I’m also going to give you a pass because I’m sure the stress of the Flux is making you say stupid shit. But I suggest you shut the fuck up now.”
“You’re not even worthy of Burke,” she spits at me as though it’s some kind of insult.
I laugh. “You know what? You’re right. I do think I’m too good for him. Even you, the nasty bitch that you are, are too good for him. At best, the asshole is unstable, and at worst, a cancer to our kind.”
There’s a collective intake of breath in the room. Even the Lycans look nervous. But now that I’ve started, I can’t stop.
“My mother wasn’t a pretentious bitch, she just wasn’t about to roll over to a bunch of thugs who killed her husband and violated pack law. Or are you forgetting what happened that night, Lana?”
She glares at me like she wants to rip me apart, and I really wish a bitch would try.
“Let me remind you,” I coo, tone saccharine but infuriated. “Burke challenged Alpha Wolcott and then didn’t fight fair. Tell me, Lana, how does a male die from stab wounds when the fight is supposed to be wolf to wolf?”
She doesn’t say anything, and I take the chance to look around the room at the shocked females, faces blanched and eyes filled with denial.
“And before any of you say that was just a rumor, I saw the wounds with my very own eyes. But anyone who challenged the result was killed, so the rest of the pack stayed quiet because they didn’t want to die. We can all pretend the shit that happens in our pack these days is okay, but each of you knows deep down inside that it’s not. Our alpha...” I mock, “isn’t even worthy of the title, so he’s sure as fuck not worthy of me, my body, or my wolf, and if you were smart, you’d stay the fuck away from that psycho.”
“That’s enough,” a deep voice suddenly booms through the room, making me flinch.
I look over to find Seamus standing in the doorway, glaring at me, a phone clutched in his palm. He gives me a long, heavy look, and I swallow, palms going sweaty. Silence stretches between us as the tension peaks, so thick in the air that I have a hard time breathing through it.
None of the other females moves. I’m not sure if anyone even dares to blink with the angry beta glaring at me. Lana probably has a pleased smirk on her face, but I won’t turn to look.
I wonder exactly how much he heard from my rant, but judging from the enraged look in his eyes, I’d guess he heard plenty. I have no doubt that Burke’s right-hand thug will be reporting all of this back to him, but the question that makes my stomach roil is...what will Burke do? Will he order his men to rip me apart like he did my father? Will he excuse my rant because he wants to get into my pants?
I’m not sure which option is worse, and doesn’t that just say everything about what I’m up against?
Finally, Seamus moves his gaze away from me to cut across the room. “Time to leave. We’ve been called back to the pack. The Spirit Weaver has arrived.”
The other females gasp in surprise and excitement, but my breath hitches with dread.
How am I going to get away now?
I thread one arm through the strap of my bag and hang it from my shoulder. Without waiting, I stomp past the other females and squeeze past Seamus, heading upstairs and back outside for the van. No one says a thing to me as I go, but I can feel every set of eyes following me.
My plans for escape burn to nothing right before my very eyes. Like a flame to a piece of paper, one minute it’s there, and the next it’s charred ash floating on the wind. There’s no way I’m going anywhere right now. Seamus would be on me in a second. Which means I’ll have to try and run again before the ceremony. That doesn’t give me a lot of time and decimates the head start I was hoping to have, but it’s doable.