whipped my hair in front of my face.
“Kill me, why don’t you!” I shouted out the window. “Idiot.”
Probably drunk too. Country people didn’t take speed limits seriously. If he had run me off the road and knocked me unconscious, I would have been in bad shape. There wasn’t exactly an alpha around to coax me awake and force me to shift. I cranked up Engelbert Humperdinck to get my mind off of hurtling into a tree at sixty miles per hour.
“What the—”
Two wolves scurried across the road. I slowed down, careful not to accidentally hit one of them. While I’d grown up on the outskirts of Austin, my pack had always preferred shifting at night. It was safer, and our wolves knew better than to go near the main road—too many opportunities for humans to spot us, and someone might have half a mind to pull out their shotgun.
I neared Shikoba’s house, but unlike the previous day, the front yard was empty. I switched off the music since my windows were down.
“Here goes nothing.” I grabbed my purse and exited the vehicle.
The sun kissed my bare shoulders and promised a warm day. A wasp buzzed past me before disappearing into the woods. Nearing the house, I noticed how eerily silent it was. In a pack that large, noise was always going on somewhere.
“Hello?” I knocked on the front door, then turned to look at the property. Wolves running loose made me especially nervous.
When the door opened, a young boy around the age of twelve or thirteen greeted me.
“Hi, I’m here to speak with Shikoba.”
He glanced over his shoulder, a look of uncertainty on his face.
“It’s business,” I continued. “I was here yesterday. Do you think you could find him for me or get your mom?”
As soon as I mentioned his mother, he stood up a little taller and lifted his chin. I’d seen that look before. Boys that age didn’t like people seeing them as little kids who couldn’t make a simple decision. Without a word, he gestured for me to follow him.
The main room was empty, and I wondered if maybe they were all out hunting or fishing. He led me to a small room devoid of windows. After switching on a floor lamp, he shut the door and left me alone.
I turned in a circle, admiring the paintings of warriors on horseback and wolves on the hunt. Two wooden chairs faced each other in front of an unlit fireplace, but I chose to stand and look at the pottery on a handcrafted shelf against the right-hand wall. Some pieces were cracked and weathered, still holding on to their charm, while others were new, celebrating a proud young generation honoring the old ways. I flipped a switch on the wall, and lights illuminated each shelf, highlighting the hundreds if not thousands of years of the tribe’s history.
When my legs grew weary of standing, I took a seat in one of the chairs and daydreamed about Moonglow. I pushed aside all the worries and imagined a successful future—finally becoming a woman my family could be proud of. That wasn’t to say they weren’t proud of me already, but I had no accomplishments beneath my belt aside from a home-based business. Maybe having a famous father had lit a fire under me to do my own thing.
I worried my lip and thought about what Lakota had said about my pushing men away and not getting serious because it might interfere with my plans. He was right, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was wrong. Most young men wanted to find a mate and start a family, and none had ever given me reassurance that they would let their mate pursue all her passions first. It always had to be a choice, a competition of which was more important—dreams or family. If I couldn’t find a man who understood that they were one and the same, then I was better off alone.
After what seemed like an hour, I finally heard some commotion in the adjacent room. Curious, I cracked open the door and peered out.
“One is enough,” a man growled, a dagger in his grip. “How many brothers are you willing to lose before you take a stand?”
The tattooed man from the day before stepped forward. “And how many of your brothers are you willing to sacrifice to make a point? That’s not our way. We don’t have all the facts—”
“To hell with the facts! Why are you so eager to sit