“You’re lucky to be alive!”

“But I am alive,” I answered back.

My father took a deep breath, trying to control his temper, something that did not come naturally to him. It did not help that he was very unused to people answering back to him. Usually, people who answered back to my dad found themselves extremely deep in the sort of shit that you don’t climb out of quickly. This was because my father was Hokkai Jack, known as One-Eyed Jack by the handful of people he could count as friends, Pack Leader of the Hokkai, one of the four werewolf packs that shared the city.

I say ‘shared’, but each pack had its own territory and the wolves that swore allegiance to those packs did not cross the territorial boundaries. At least, not if they enjoyed the sensations of breathing and their organs being on the inside. I didn’t go into Arctic territory and Arctic werewolves didn’t come into Hokkai – that was the way our world worked.

My father finished his deep breath and leveled his single green eye at me. “Bailey,” he said, his voice almost trembling with suppressed anger, “you are my youngest, and I suppose that I have shown you more license than perhaps I should, because I am one of those parents who dotes on their youngest child. I’ve turned a blind eye to a lot of your behavior.”

He grinned at his own joke as he tapped the eye patch that covered his right eye, clawed out by a rival some years ago.

“I’ve ignored the people who say you’re not behaving as a female should, and certainly not as a Hokkai should. I’ve indulged you. And perhaps that indulgence is what has led to us being in this position. I’m sorry. But when someone is trying to kill you,” his voice rose and he fought to bring it back down again, “then I feel the limits of my indulgence have been reached. You will do as you are told for your own safety. Let me be clear; if you don’t start doing what you are told then, if they don’t kill you, I will.”

I nodded. “Okay, Daddy.”

My father raised an eyebrow. “Bailey, do you think I don’t know when you are screwing with me?”

“No, Daddy.”

“Quit it, you devious little bitch.” ‘Bitch’ isn’t such an insult to female wolves as it might be to human women. “I don’t mind you being friends with human men – I have human friends myself; your Uncle Farley. I don’t mind you,” he delivered the next words through gritted teeth, with as much comfort as any father dealing with his daughter’s rampant sexuality, “sleeping with human men. I’d prefer it if you were looking for something more serious – you’re twenty now, your mother had borne me three children by the time she was your age – but I understand the drive to,” the tension returned to his voice, “have a bit of fun, before you settle down. But other werewolves don’t. This isn’t safe anymore, Bailey. You’re not safe.”

I wanted to make a joke about birth control to lighten the mood and wind him up a bit more, but the truth was, that he was right. I was wise-cracking and acting like I didn’t give a shit because that was the only way I knew how to deal with something like this. Underneath, I was terrified.

Sexually, werewolves are very open – at least when compared to humans. A male can have as many mates as he likes; a female can have as many mates as she likes. Gay, straight, bi – none of it meant anything to us; just be happy with the one you’re with. The only area where wolves remained a little behind the times was the word ‘mate’. ‘Mate’ doesn’t translate well into the human world, because mating with someone means sex, but a mate also kind of means a spouse. If you sleep with someone, then technically that someone is your mate. Back in the day, casual sex was not a big part of wolf life, but nowadays times are changing – the consequence of living amicably alongside humans – and werewolf boys and girls are a bit more promiscuous, but the ‘mate’ problem remains unresolved. Many male werewolves have solved this problem by sleeping with human females, who have no hang-ups about being someone’s mate, then going back to their own kind when they want someone to settle down with. Nice for them. But for females, it’s different. The last great sexual taboo for werewolves is female wolves hooking up with human males. There are many older werewolves who think it’s about on a par with necrophilia, and look down on any who indulge.

Some go further than that. A few years ago, The Brotherhood of Pure Blood was a fringe group with a handful of members who stood outside Pack Lodges waving placards denouncing ‘man-bitches’, the name they gave to female wolves who took a walk on the less wild side. Now, they suddenly seemed to be gaining in influence, picking up followers amongst those who yearned for a simpler time when we all lived in caves, killed humans, and females knew their place in the pack. And they had started to do more than just wave placards, they were taking more direct action against females who contravened their own personal vision of wolf morality.

“Just last week,” my father went on, “in Kenai territory, a female on her way home was seized and had her head shaved. It’s the fifth time it’s happened this month.”

“I know.”

“And that isn’t the worst of it,” he added, darkly.

“I know.”

“Stop saying ‘I know’.”

“But I do know. I just…” I tried to put what I was feeling into words. “I don’t want to give in to these people. They’re scum, and if I change my way of life to please them then it’s like I’m letting them win, and I just can’t do that.”

My father sighed. “I guess you’ve me to thank for that. You get your stubbornness from me. I could never back down from a fight. Now, I have zero depth perception.” He tapped the eye patch again. “Standing up for what you believe is an admirable trait, Bailey, and I’m proud to see it in you, but I’d hate it to get you into trouble. Besides,” he went on, with unmistakable hope in his voice, “you’re getting older now and you probably don’t want to be so… free with your affections…”

“You mean screwing around?”

My father pulled a face. “When you have kids of your own, I really hope they put you through this. But, yes. I know you don’t want to change your life because of these bastards, but you could change your life just because it’s time – that wouldn’t be letting them win. Don’t not change your life just to make a point.”

I could tell how much Dad needed this to be the case, but the problem was, I just didn’t feel I was there yet. Actually, I didn’t think I’d ever be there. I couldn’t imagine myself settling down with one male, or even with several. I really enjoyed my life. I liked screwing with human males. I liked sex, I liked variety, and maybe I liked the frisson of taboo I got from being with humans. Maybe it was, as my father said, because I had been indulged as a child. Maybe I just had a high sex drive. Maybe there was more to it.

“I’ll try to be more careful,” I said. And I meant it – I didn’t want to die.

Dad shook his head. “At times like this I wish you had a bit more of your mother in you. She was more… docile. Compliant.”

He said it as a good thing, and to werewolves of my father’s generation, those were compliments to female wolves. They were still meant to be hunters, fighters and killers, but they were also supposed to be subservient to their mate. I had watched how my father treated my mother, the youngest of his five mates, and had sworn that I would never be in a relationship like that. It was not that he mistreated her, indeed he ‘doted’ on her as much as he did me, but she was always his mate – not a person in her own right, not someone whose opinion really mattered. He loved her and she loved him, but it wasn’t the kind of love I imagined, on the rare occasions I imagined such things. I think it was that relationship between my mother and father that had led to my lack of interest in a long-term partner – a ‘mate’ in the traditional werewolf sense. If that was what mating was about then I’d stick with ‘no-strings’ humans.

It may also have been seeing the superior-inferior relationship of my parents that drew me to human males, because with them, I was always superior. Don’t get me wrong, I like a strong male – a man who is a man – as much as the next girl, but being with a man who knows that I can tear his arms off if he hurts me does have its advantages. I wouldn’t say it necessarily makes the sex better, but it does mean I get what I want. I was used to being the strong one, and I wasn’t ready to change.

Perhaps if I had been any other woman then none of this would have mattered – I’d have been at risk of head-shaving or even assault, but things would not have reached the point they had. But I was not any girl, I was Hokkai Bailey, the daughter of a Pack Leader. All my older siblings and half-siblings had either found suitable mates or were at least dating suitable wolves. I was the black sheep, the party girl, the fuck-up. More importantly; I was proud of it. I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong and was determined to keep doing whatever and whoever I liked. And so I had, inadvertently, become the poster girl for a generation of werewolf females who wanted to liberate themselves from the constraints of the past. They didn’t all want to sleep with humans, but they believed they should have the right to if they chose. They wanted equal rights for all werewolf girls to sleep with whoever they wanted. It’s worth noting that The Brotherhood of Pure Blood was not happy with werewolf males sleeping with human females – the recent mating of three Kenai heirs to one human female had attracted some protest – but it was werewolf girls who went with human males for whom they reserved their most undiluted hatred.

That made me their public enemy number one. Just by living my life.

At first, it had amused me that these dickless wonders should be protesting just because I was doing the walk of shame out of a few human homes. Even when the threatening letters started coming, I was still pretty sanguine. Then, when I had been out at a bar two nights ago, something more serious had happened. I had been chatting to a guy – human – who I was pretty sure I was going home with. I headed for the bathroom and suddenly a bag was over my head and I was being dragged out through the fire exit. Automatically, I changed, my muscles swelling, hair springing up all over me, claws sprouting, fangs lengthening. I lashed out at my attackers and heard a bark of rage as my claws strafed across wolf hide. Next instant, I was spitting blood as I got a backhand across the face for my trouble.

“Down on the ground, man-bitch!” snarled a voice.

Had I been in human form, I’d have told him to go fuck himself, but I growled the wolf equivalent and this time was kicked in the stomach, doubling me over.

“Get her arms and hold out her head.”

Looking back on the incident, I think they were going to cut my head off, which was an old method of execution favored by werewolves because it didn’t involve silver. At the time, I wasn’t able to think clearly about such things, I was angry and frightened, the fear just making me angrier and I struggled ferociously against my attackers.

Suddenly, I heard cries and the sound of running feet. Next minute, I was flat on my face on the ground and my assailants were gone. The bag was pulled off my head and I found myself staring into the faces of three human cops.

“You alright, Miss?”

I shifted back into human form. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess.”

“Aren’t you the Pack Leader’s daughter?”

If one of them hadn’t recognized me, then I probably would never have told my dad, but these guys weren’t about to keep an incident like this from the Pack Leader. Even humans understood enough to know that would have been dumb. They gave me an escort home and reported to my father, who listened grimly before asking.

“Bailey, where was your bodyguard?”

My father and I have had the protection argument many times – he says it’s necessary, I say it cramps my style. We compromised in that I only had one bodyguard and they had to keep a reasonable distance when I was working it and stay outside when I hooked up. Even then, I had often skipped out on my protection because the first question any guy asks is ‘who are you? Why do you need a bodyguard?’. Then they have to perform knowing they’re banging the daughter of a man with a reputation for extreme violence with a hulking werewolf bodyguard standing outside the door. Inadvertently, my father has become one of the top ten reasons for erectile disfunction in males between the ages of eighteen and thirty in the city.

But that night, my bodyguard, Kendrick, had been right there.

“I don’t know.”

A search of the area revealed nothing. A search of Kendrick’s home revealed that he had skipped town. Was that because he had failed in his duty and feared the wrath of One-Eyed Jack? Or was it because he was sympathetic to the Brotherhood and had set me up?

Of course, we didn’t know for sure it was the Brotherhood who tried to kill me, but all the signs pointed that way, and we were now dealing with the horrid realization that this made all wolves potential traitors. The ideals of the Brotherhood were not just popular with older werewolves, in fact, they had gained most traction with the young, because the older remembered the good old days and could vouch for how fucking awful they were. The growth of The Brotherhood of Pure Blood, aided by their sudden and unexplained wealth, had enabled their reach to extend. No one was above suspicion. And if you happened to have become the inadvertent poster girl for liberated werewolf feminism, then you were well and truly fucked from every direction.

And not in the good way.