Chapter Three

TRISTAN

I was always a stubborn kid. You couldn't tell me no. I would just quietly work my way around you to get what I felt was mine by right. I was a sneaky little shit. But my parents, the Alpha and Luna of our pack, adored me, their only child.

Everything I ever wanted was in reach, as long as what I wanted was good for me, or at least value neutral.

I don't want to give the impression that Conner and Moira O'Donnell raised a spoiled brat. They raised me to be a moral, ethical, reasonable Alpha werewolf. They also showered me with love and permissiveness, partly because they trusted me and partly because they knew they raised me not to do anything stupid or immoral.

So although I grew up to be a decent kid, sharing my bounty with all my friends–friends who always had a home in Luna Moira's house–I also had a certain benign sense of entitlement.

Things would come to me, or I would figure out a way to get them. That was just the way of the world.

I met my match at the age of 15 when a very young palm reader at a Midsummer Fair told me I couldn't always get what I wanted.

She told me where–a place between two worlds–and when–the cusp of adulthood–I would meet my fated mate–”a new human girl straddling both worlds”--the love of my life granted to me by the moon goddess. The girl I would claim as my own.

Then she told me my mate would be in danger, and I wouldn't be able to do a damn thing about it.

Bullshit, I said. There's always something you can do if you're smart enough. I can protect her.

You can try, she said. But this girl will be forced to stand on her own two feet and face the danger alone.

She didn't tell me anything beyond that, other than that I would fuck it up at first. I think she was trying to get to me with that one. She was a little smart ass.

I've been looking for my fated mate ever since. I don't plan on letting her face everything alone. We'll have a lot of work to do to get her ready for whatever is coming.

First, I have to make sure she's safe.

“I want everything on that girl. Every. Fucking. Thing. Hear me?”

I turn to my fellow gang members. Spader has slunk off to heal his broken wrist.

Whatever my motivations, I saved him from expulsion and he knows it.

Shifters, werewolves, do not fuck with humans in Meridian. Not if we want to keep attending Crescent University. Some of us might act like they're servants who are beneath us, but we do not hurt them.

And nearly every single student at C. U. is a werewolf. It’s a delicate balance with the townies, and the wolf gangs help reinforce it. We’re meant to keep the strong urges of young wolves in check, so we don’t overrun the humans.

Among the adults, it’s cordial. With the students, things can get out of hand.

That’s where we step in.

Gangs like ours, The Underground.

And like Spader’s, Lunacy. Except I no longer think Lunacy is a stabilizing force in the relationship between werewolf and human, student and townie.

Just the opposite.

“Boss—” Dominic.

“I don’t give a shit what you have to say about this. Any of you. The girl is mine. Get me everything.”

I don’t care what she has to say about it, either. I mean I do, but I don’t. The wolf deep inside me growls like a rabid thing. It's been snarling since Spader’s fingers touched her throat.

She was mine the second our eyes met.

Those beautiful brown eyes of hers, shining like bronze in the candlelight, wide open and seeing everything. Her clear olive skin, glowing with a sheen of sweat I could almost taste, glistening in the light. That chaotic mass of black hair, hanging half down and framing her face until she shook it out like a fucking supermodel. That obscene shirt pulling away from her shorts just enough to show a cute little navel ring, hopefully not silver, but I can take it. And her voice, raspy like a jazz singer from the 1930s recorded on a phonograph, her voice was unadulterated temptation to sin.

Most of all, her smell. She smells like peaches so ripe they turn to water in your mouth, combined with musky spice and girl flesh.

I wanted to put her on the nearest table and mount her with her neck in my jaws.

Billie. Billie Billie Billie. I wonder if it’s short for something, or maybe fake.

No. Nothing about that gorgeous girl is fake.

I’ll show her where she belongs. She’ll be a good student, I can tell. A feisty one, too. She’ll put up a fight, but she won’t win.

She needs our protection. We’ll make her see that.

First, get the girl. Then, tear off Spader’s hands for touching her. Maybe have her watch.

It seems like the type of thing she’d enjoy.

By tomorrow, if she’s enrolled, every one of her classes will have one of us in it.

If she’s not…we’ll work something out.

We don’t have time for me to be patient with her, to explain all the reasons why she belongs with me. We have to protect her. She can become our little human Omega. Our pet.

It would only be temporary, for her protection. Spader will be coming for her. He can’t stand to be laughed at, especially by humans. We need to get to her first.

I'm protecting her with all I have.

She. Is. Mine.

Later, we’re at the Rock House, the Underground’s on-campus headquarters and dormitory. Four attached towers in a square, covered in polished stones, with a courtyard in the middle, and a rose garden. It’s outright medieval. The Underground only takes members of either highly creative or highly intellectual abilities and pursuits. Artists of all mediums, drama majors like Fleming and I, musicians like the Phantom, dancers, singers, writers, poets, a few philosophy majors, and cultural critics like Dominic. We have 28 members, and the first six—us—have our own full suites in a specific tower.

I’m currently supervising the shifting of Raven to the attic so we can fit Billie in the tower when it’s time, when Dominic comes up to me. “Think we got it all, big man.” He hands me a flash drive.

“Billie?” I ask.

“Billie Marie Black. Born nineteen years ago in Wilson, Massachusetts. From the scuzzier human suburbs of Boston. The ghost towns.”

“What’s she doing in Rhode Island?”

“Her mom’s sick, some kind of early dementia, a neurological condition. Dad was a cop who died in the line of duty when she was four. They lived with the grandparents until they died too, COVID, leaving just enough to cover debts and the funeral. Billie found her mom an assisted living nursing home that treats her condition and moved them here. She’s paying the co-insurance on mom’s treatment through a payment plan, and the rent on a five-fifty a month trailer. You can imagine the state of it.”

“On a paycheck from the Gaelic Wolf,” I say.

“Those tips are nothing to sneeze at. If she works enough hours—and last pay period, she worked 125–she can just make it.”

“No school, then.”

“No, that’s the remarkable part. A week ago, she had an audition for a modern dance scholarship. They film them. You wouldn’t believe how good she is.”

“She’ll kill herself like that. She’s only a human. She’s insane. FLEMING!”

My lieutenant pokes his head around the corner, a box of Raven’s art supplies in his arms. “Boss?”

“I need you to pay this woman’s hospital bills and set it up to look like a grant. Pay someone off. Dominic has the information. Take my credit card. Dom, I need you to get back in there and approve her scholarship. She’ll need an equipment fund and a housing and food stipend. I want that dependent on her living here.”

“Tris, don’t you think she’ll resent it if you cheat on her scholarship?”

“All I’m doing is getting her foot in the door. She can prove herself to her professors, or lose the scholarship. She’ll accept it once she realizes that, IF she ever finds out.”

I look around at all of them. “I want her here, and safe, by the weekend. This is priority. Billie Black is under our protection. And someone clear out the basement so she can have a practice studio.”