Whatever is outside takes another step and stumbles.
The Alpha stares at the spoon in her bowl, seemingly unable to take another bite.
My body tenses, preparing for whatever thing is coming that has the power to silence the entire Pack.
A huge wolf emerges from under the table and whimpers, burrowing its head into the Alpha’s arm. She scratches it behind the ears.
The door begins to open, first a sliver, then a narrow gap, then a space just wide enough to admit Arthur, the man who should by all rights be dead. No one else seems to notice him. Instead, they all continue to look bleakly at their plates while he struggles toward the front table, his fists tight at his sides, his shoulders back, his chest hunched in an awkward S-shaped contortion of pride and pain. His eyes are dark and deep in his bloodless skin. His breathing is shallow.
The only person who looks at him is Tiberius’s wife, the silver-haired werewolf who ripped him open. Then she lowers her chin slightly and he responds in kind.
At the main table, Arthur grabs the edge for support. When he does, his elbow hits a heavy bowl with a narrow base that wobbles against the thick wood, emitting a hollow, careening sound that makes the silence so much louder.
The plate in his hand shakes, so he sets it down on the table while he begins to serve himself. Dark lines of blood seep through his T-shirt.
A chair hits the floor with a metallic bang and Julia walks toward him, oblivious of everything else: of the fallen chair, of the sudden surge of noise, of Cassius’s shouts.
I barely know Cassius and never liked what little I knew. He insisted that being Julia’s fiancé made him part of the inner circle and, with Tiberius gone, August’s heir. He said little about Julia herself except to say that “she could’ve been a model.” That he said so often and so inevitably that it has colored the way I’d seen her. There she is. Julia CouldaBeenAModel.
As she pushes her way through the werewolves, her diffident expression, constrained demeanor, and cramped posture melt away like ice cream on summer asphalt, and for the first time, I see something beyond Otho’s daughter and August’s niece and Cassius’s CouldaBeenAModel.
I see a woman who no one else here knows. A woman with the shoulders, jaw, furious gray eyes, and deadly determination of August’s estranged wife. Otho’s homicidal sister. Julia’s aunt.
Drusilla.
The Alpha doesn’t bang her knife again. Instead, she looks pointedly at the man with the little blond ponytail sitting at the head of Julia’s table. As soon as he catches her eye, he rushes forward like an actor who had gotten so swept up in watching a play that he forgot he had a part in it.
Wiping his mouth on a faded dish towel, he points Julia back to the table. She ignores him. He takes both her shoulders and turns her around, once again directing her to sit down. Then Julia hurls herself at him.
She is not a fighter, that much is clear, but raw, desperate fury in a strong body should never be discounted and Ponytail is caught off guard. He stumbles backward and Julia moves next to Arthur, holding out her hand for his plate.
The man turns toward her, flinching as his shoulders shift. Shaking his head with a sad look on his face, he whispers something to her, and just like that, the Bitch of Vancouver is replaced by the woman with the apologetic expression who lets herself be led back to her seat by the man with the blond ponytail. She looks worriedly toward Cassius, who glares at her.
Someone claps hands and barks out a forceful “Eyes here,” and every werewolf looks toward the single table off to the side that was not set with mismatched Corelle and industrial ceramics but with white linen and candles and porcelain. A woman—Leonora—outfitted in a bedazzled red dress, her shoulders bulging broad and strong from under the tiny rhinestone straps, looms over a small group of teenaged werewolves, all tugging on uncomfortable formal wear.
“Gently,” she says.
“They’re not going to make it,” Ziggy whispers to the woman next to him.
“There’s always a first time,” she says.
It takes me a moment to realize that the teenagers are lifting champagne flutes in a kind of slow-motion toast, while Leonora keeps up a steady patter.
“Slowly…slowly. Now, you’re not banging them together, not clinking, not tapping. Just the