"Look at you," she hissed, quieting so only I could hear her. "You're practically feral. You can barely keep your eyes off the display case. This is what got Becca dead. This and the sheer loneliness you left her in when you decided to start that stupid dog food company."
Called out, I glared back at her. "She made her own decisions. We both did. They were bad ones, Lil. Besides, I don't remember you complaining when your fur was covered in sheep's blood and you had wool between your teeth."
"And the dog food? God save us all, you only do it so you can breathe the livestock before they're slaughtered, probably bathe in their blood when it's gathered off the abattoir floor-"
"Give me a break," I said, leaning against my cart. "I've got more control than that. Tommy, though. He loves it when we have pork blood night. You know. A little hail Satan, a good crimson bath. Wholesome."
The effect was immediate. It was like setting her hair on fire. The crimson built from her neck, beneath that awful pink sweater, and slowly climbed until her entire face had darkened. I worked not to smile at her. It was hard.
But she had plenty to say to me, anyway. "You're trash. Do you know that? I don't care how much money you have, how much power you have. That's all human garbage. It doesn't matter to people like us."
"Keep your voice down," I snarled, my hand tightening on the mesh of the cart.
There was an odd grinding sound and I looked down to see the mesh fold in on itself. I sighed, pulled my hand free, and tried to act as though I hadn't just given it a new access hole.
She walked up to me and jabbed me in the chest with her finger. It hurt. "One of these days, we aren't going to have to keep our voices down about intra-pack relations. And until then, it isn't their world that rules us. It's ours, Hudson. And I'm calling a Meet at the next Moon to figure out what to do with a reckless mutt like you. When it's all said and done? I'll have my nephew where he belongs."
I reached for her throat but she skipped away, glaring at me. "Soon."
Lillian snatched her cart and lifted her nose in the air, walking away from me and my broken buggy. I chewed the inside of my cheek, trying to think through the problems presented. One, Tommy would be in trouble if she actually called a Meet. The local supernatural community would be livid with me for letting my son wander off and turn a human being.
Two, if Lillian took my son from me, I'd have very little left. Sure, I'd have the company and my pack, but taking a boy from his father is one of the cruelest things you can do to either of them. But werewolf fathers were supposed to be responsible for the actions of their children, especially the boys. It was archaic and probably had its roots in some sexist, long-forgotten child-raising theory, but the supernatural world was slower to change than the human world.
There were more risks in changing, too. When you tried to convince creatures that went bump in the night that they should concentrate their efforts on finding more progressive activities to do with their time, they usually tried to rebuke you by taking ten pounds of flesh out of your ass.
Last, and perhaps the one that grated me in an even more frustrating way than potentially losing my son, was Sadie. She would be killed to keep our lives and our identities a secret. They would never trust a freshly turned werewolf with no prior allegiance to keeping our secrets well... secret. She could try to talk her way out of it, try to charm them, but at the end of the day? The Meet would send the dragons to do their wet work for them. And there wasn't anything that I could do about it.
That was, unless I could convince them that she'd known about us. Perhaps I'd been intending to turn her and my son had simply misunderstood and gotten there first. Yes, I'd be in trouble for sneaking past the decorum and the paperwork for it. There was that tried and true method for turning someone.
But my getting in trouble for something like that was less likely to end with Sadie dead and, maybe, Tommy, too.
As I checked myself out at the self-check, I worked through the problems with that resolution. The largest, perhaps, was that I may be banished from the area. Gabe, Leo, and Xavion would take care of Tommy until I could scout a new place, re-settle us, and they could move to be with me. Sadie? I didn't know. She had the rescue to deal with and moving would completely destroy her as a resource for her community.
"You've got a whole heap of trouble in your face, boss," drawled a voice behind me.
I looked back at the familiar man who adjusted his glasses at me. His forest green eyes were amused. I knew for a fact that he'd broken his face a few times before he'd joined my pack, but I turned to wrap my arms around him anyway. "Leo. Aren't you supposed to be in warehouse?"
"Got out early. Seems that the more I do this, the better we get at beating your expectations," he said, patting me on the back. "You want a hand with all this?"
Most of what I'd scanned was bagged, but I waved him on anyway. "I won't complain. Saw Lillian a minute ago."
"You two meet up to talk about something?"
I raised my brows at him. "Something."
Either he got the message or he was smart enough to know
