Read Online Wild Card by Mark Henwick, Lauren Sweet - Free Book Online

Kingslund?”
    “No!” I rubbed my face. “I don’t know.”
    Had I? Had I made Jen fall for me, so I could have her as kin?
    “Jeez, you’re getting all messed up in the head, Amber.”
    A tentative smile tugged the corners of his mouth.
    “I’m serious,” I said. “Neither of us really knows what’s happening. Am I doing something to you? Even, y’know, sex, for example. As an Athanate, I can make you want it, and then I can make you like it. And if I do that, I might as well be Basilikos.”
    “That isn’t anything like Basilikos and you didn’t compel me. Werewolves haven’t got powers like the Athanate, but I could tell if you were trying to make me do something. And, sure as hell, I could tell if you tried juicing me with that enviric stuff you Athanate have.”
    “Really? You’ve come across it before?”
    Alex shrugged and kept his eyes firmly on the road.
    Hmmm.
    “Bian?”
    He flushed and his knuckles went pale on the steering wheel.
    “Oh.”
    We drove on a while. Deep down, I’d known it really. She used to be the Were liaison for Altau, so she’d presumably spent some time with the pack. And Alex.
    “Am I allowed to be jealous?” I said.
    “No!” The corners of his mouth turned back up. “It’s history anyway.”
    I laughed, glad to release the tension for a moment. “Okay, not this time.” And I’d draw a discreet veil over Bian’s leopard-stalking of me as well.
    “I guess, until we work out what it means for us, we don’t say anything about binding.” Alex hunched a little.
    I felt uncomfortable too. “I don’t want to start like that with the pack—lying.”
    He dipped his head briefly. “Don’t lie. If Felix asks us, we tell him. In fact, I think it’d be dangerous for any of us to try and lie to each other.”
    “Alpha thing?”
    “Dominance thing. It’s very difficult to lie to a more dominant wolf and impossible to your alpha.”
    But maybe not impossible for the alpha to lie to me. And what about while I wasn’t in the pack? Could I lie to him now? Or not tell the whole truth? I grimaced. Alex was right, I’d need to be very careful.
    “Okay, we can’t lie,” I said, trying to form a plan as I spoke. “We can’t help provoking him—we’re a provocation just by existing. We mustn’t back him into a corner. We’ve got to get him into a position where the obvious way forward is a good outcome all around.”
    Yeah, I thought. Maneuver a werewolf alpha who’s probably seen this kind of political manipulation for a hundred years before we came along. But I didn’t say it.
    “We should be able to get him to agree you’re part of the pack through me,” Alex said. “You realize that means you’ll lose some leeway to act on your own. You can’t defy the alpha. It would make him look weak. We’re not Athanate, we’re werewolves, we need a strong leader to be a strong, healthy pack.”
    “Enough,” I muttered.
    Again, I had the idea there were things unsaid. I kept quiet while he took another tight turn, but he didn’t continue where he’d left off.
     Instead, he glanced at his watch. “We’ll be at Coykuti in five.”
    “The ranch is called Coykuti? Something to do with coyotes?”
    He shook his head. “It’s from Arapaho. It means to set free. When Felix first set up, this was where the pack used to run.”
    “Now they go to Bitter Hooks. Why the change?”
    “Coykuti’s not big enough, even with the whole mountain behind it. People have got places all along the edges now, they’ve cut back on the trees. That’s why it was so easy for Tucker to persuade us to scare off the builders at Bitter Hooks. Kingslund’s Silver Hills resort would have sat bang in the middle of our range.”
    “Jen, not Kingslund,” I insisted quietly. I didn’t add, and Jen’s land, not the pack’s . Must have been that tact thing I kept hearing about.
    We turned again, onto the last snaky road that led to Larimer’s ranch.
    “Jen,” Alex muttered