Only...she and I both thought wrong. When I looked up, I saw that I’d misread the chair scrape. Rather than preparing to leave, Butch had worked his way through the quiche while I was speaking. He hadn’t touched his latte after that first sip, but he now consumed the entire cupcake—rosettes and all—in two voracious bites.
When my pause lengthened into a third second, his mouth quirked. There was the tiniest dot of yellow frosting on his upper lip and I had the oddest inclination to reach out and touch it. “May I speak?” he murmured, gaze lowered.
I closed my eyes for half a second, disappointed. Butch’s wolf must be very weak to so easily accede when I insisted upon laying out the ground rules. I hadn’t put a hint of alpha compulsion behind the demand. He shouldn’t have obeyed.
Which made our interview easier, but also meant Butch was an instant reject. A weak father would mean a weak child. Even with my familial ace in the hole, the secret boost that promised Whelan Alphas were always able to bark down anyone within their territory, neither Heir nor Alpha could afford to start out weak.
I set down my phone and picked up my fork, preparing to stop wasting our time. But before I could cross the silverware, my wolf rose up through me. She’s smelled something. Or seen something. Whatever the reason, she was there, glaring through my eyes at someone I thought was weak but she thought was a threat to us.
And Butch’s wolf responded. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it. Smell it. The energy, the wildness of fur seeping out of his human body....
His wolf wasn’t cowering the way I’d assumed it would in the face of my dominance. Nor did Butch’s beast fight then submit the way Willa’s had.
Instead, the intensity of his inner animal set chills running through my entire body. I was the one struggling, chiding my wolf when she would have retreated. I was the one who gritted my jaw and ignored the sweat beading at my hairline.
Never since my father died had I met a wolf so powerful. In six months, no one had given my wolf any reason to stretch her muscles, let alone cave before them.
And yet, here I was unwillingly lowering my eyes.
Chapter 3
Guardian, I begged, wriggling my toes in shoes that sat atop a concrete floor and had no way of contacting the soil. Was that why the unthinkable had happened? Our pack’s secret weapon couldn’t reach me through the veneer of human civilization?
Whatever the reason, Butch’s dominance was so great that my fingers refused to cross silverware over my untouched plate of quiche and cupcake. Couldn’t change their trajectory and reach for one of the half dozen razor-sharp knives I had secreted about my person either.
I could, however, speak.
“If you’re refusing my offer, you may go,” I ground out. “You don’t have to prove your point by overpowering me.”
“Your offer,” Butch countered, “although intriguing, is not why I’m here.”
I shouldn’t have felt disappointed. After all, the role of Consort was a business transaction. One of the less appealing ones involved in the transition of power...or it had been unappealing until I’d set eyes on this unexpected specimen of a wolf.
“Then why did you let me make a fool of myself by telling you all the details?” My cheeks were hot again, which made me furious. Almost furious enough to break Butch’s hold over me...but not quite.
His dominance really was greater than mine. Also his patience. He waited until my wolf stopped struggling then shrugged. “You asked me to let you speak. I let you speak.”
And now he’d challenge me. Why else would another dominant werewolf jump through such extreme hoops to get me alone? Within my clan, politeness dictated that challenges wait until moonrise. But there was no politeness when dealing with dangers from outside the pack.
I tried again to beat back Butch’s hold over me. As before, there wasn’t even a ripple of strain on his features. Instead, he spoke as easily as I had when laying down the Consort ground rules.
“Your pack refuses admittance to outsiders,” he continued, telling me what I already knew. “There is no publicly available contact information for any of you besides this one application.”
There was one other available contact number, but to argue that point would be hairsplitting. Butch was right—the Consort application was the primary chink in our armor.
One I should have paid more attention to. After all, while few outside the Whelan clan understood our centuries-old bargain with the fae, those who did could have read the signs and known we were presently at our weakest moment in a generation. I hadn’t allowed any of our wolves to attend mate-seeking Solstice gatherings last December. Had put out the call for a Consort even before that.
I might as well have ordered a billboard stating that we were unprotected by our hereditary fae Guardian until I had the Heir issue sorted. It had been naive of me to think I could drag my heels until the last possible minute just because I found the task distasteful.
Well, I was Alpha. I would fix this.
“The honorable way to challenge is to meet away from humans. Away from coffee shops,” I growled.
Or, well, I tried to growl. To my disgust, the words came out closer to a whine.
No wonder. My inner wolf had given up, rolling over and showing her belly to the stronger shifter. I clenched my eyes shut, hoping Butch hadn’t noticed the transition from threat to submission in my pupils. But the warmth of his proximity heightened. He’d leaned in closer until his breath slid across my skin.
This wasn’t even going to be a challenge. He’d leave me frozen while he vanquished me. Killed me perhaps.
I couldn’t allow that. My pack needed me alive. Even if I was no
