I woke up the following morning in my own bed, in my apartment just around the corner from the Hokkai Pack Lodge and feeling… I wasn’t sure how to describe it.

Just because I enjoy my human males, doesn’t mean I haven’t also slept with werewolves and I enjoy that very much, too. In some ways, like I said, humans are just more convenient for casual sex because they don’t come with all the fucking baggage. Sex with werewolf males is almost like combat, it’s beautifully physical. The extra strength and stamina does make a difference, especially if a girl likes to get a proper working over – and I do. Humans are great in bed in different ways, they have a bit more control of themselves during the act, they can be more generous lovers - on average; there are still selfish humans and generous wolves out there. But I am a werewolf, and when I’m with a human, I’m always the stronger one physically, so a human male can never be a sexual match for me in the way that a werewolf male could be.

Or, at least, that was what I had always assumed. When I’d seen Jackson fight last night, I’d thought that I’d never seen a human with such speed and strength. After fucking him, I thought he had probably been holding back in the fight – he had so much more to give, and, boy, had he given it to me.

So when I woke up the following morning, I felt almost as if I had been with a werewolf the night before. My muscles felt like I’d spent the day in the gym, I had aches in all the right places, my ass was tender and my whole body suffused with that lovely feeling of well-earned exhaustion. It was like the feeling you get after running a marathon for charity – I imagine. And yet, there was more. A feeling I had never gotten from sex with werewolves and seldom with humans, a feeling of all-encompassing satisfaction. It was a feeling that filled my body from my toes and fingertips to the ends of my hair and deep inside me, every molecule of me was sexually sated. And this was not that heavy feeling of satisfaction that you get after being pounded to orgasm after orgasm – which is a good feeling in itself – there was a lightness. I felt like I might float away from the sheer blissful pleasure that still lingered in my limbs the morning after. It was like Jackson had fucked me full of helium. I felt a euphoria like I was high.

I felt happy.

Maybe it was that combination of human and werewolf, coming together with the best of both worlds. Maybe it was something else. But either way, I’d never had sex like it.

Which was going to make it a hell of a lot harder not to have sex like it again. I knew that Jackson was right there in the living room, one wall separating us, but I couldn’t go down that road. Sleeping with my bodyguard was dumb, sleeping with someone like Jackson, someone who made me feel… It didn’t matter what he made me feel, I had a little rule for life; don’t sleep with people who make you feel things. That’s how sex becomes relationshippy. And from relationship, it’s a short hop to a life of drudgery as someone’s mate. I had learned from the lesson of my mom. I wasn’t anyone’s mate. I wasn’t anyone’s anything. I was Hokkai Bailey, singular, unattached, just having fun.

“Morning.” Colt shot me a bright smile as I strolled into the living room after showering and dressing.

“Morning,” I replied.

Clarke gave his friend a look and the smile vanished from Colt’s face. Jackson didn’t meet my gaze, perhaps embarrassed after what had happened last night. It seemed that because I had skipped out on them, my bodyguards were determined to freeze me out. Some people might have been chastised by this, but I prefer to meet things head on.

“Seriously, I don’t get a good morning?”

“Do you know how long we were out looking for you last night?” asked Clarke.

“Few hours?”

“It wasn’t until after one that Jackson texted to say he’d found you.”

“Really?” I allowed myself a smug look at Jackson. “I thought he’d found me earlier than that. Must have been my imagination.”

Jackson continued not to look at me and, from his friends’ reactions, I guessed he had not shared with them how the night had ended between Jackson and me.

“Did you want breakfast?” asked Colt.

Clarke rolled his eyes. “Colt, for the love of…”

“What? She’s got to eat.”

“We’re her bodyguards, not her maids.”

Colt shrugged. “A proper breakfast is the first step to a healthy body. And a healthy body is a safe body.”

“I would love breakfast,” I said, deliberately smiling at Clarke as I replied to Colt. “Thank you, Colt.”

Colt nodded. “Coming up.”

Clarke threw up his hands. “I hope last night at least taught you a thing or two.”

I glanced over at Jackson again. “Maybe.”

This time Jackson looked back, sick of me winding him up. “I would hope that a second attempt on your life would have taught you to be a bit more careful, to keep your head down and to follow the instructions of your bodyguards.”

I shook my head as I helped myself to coffee. “There’s one person whose advice I take about my life; mine.”

“I’m amazed you’re still alive,” muttered Clarke.

I ignored him. “You think a second attempt on my life should make me more careful? You forget who my father is. When someone tries to kill me, I don’t hide from them, I try to track them down.”

“We definitely haven’t forgotten who your father is,” said Jackson. “You think he’d want you to be taking risks?”

“It’s not about what he wants. It’s about me.”

The way the guys looked at each other made me think that, for the first time, they actually might have respected me a little. They might not like me or what I was or how I lived my life, and they might think I was an idiot who was making their job more difficult, but they could not help respecting someone who stood up for herself. Which didn’t mean they were going to let me.

“Your father’s got plenty of people investigating who might be behind this. Leave it to the professionals.”

Jackson was right. But it wasn’t his life on the line and it wasn’t the so-called professionals’ lives on the line either. Maybe it wasn’t the smart thing to do, but the closer these bastards got to me, the more driven I was to find out who they were and take them down myself.

“How come The Brotherhood has increased in power so much lately?” I thought out loud.

“Are you listening to me at all?” asked Jackson.

“We’re having a conversation. Did my father say I couldn’t do that?”

“It’s easy for a group that claims to support traditional values to gain widespread support,” replied Colt. “Because people can justify it to themselves by saying, ‘I don’t want them to hurt anyone but they are talking a lot of sense’.”

“It helps if they can target their ire at a specific person,” added Clarke. “A public figure who everyone’s a bit iffy about anyway.”

“If you mean me, then say it,” I said acidly.

Clarke shrugged. “Actually, I’m on your side, here. When men go off the rails then it’s cool, but a woman who dares to party hard or sleep around gets crucified and called all sorts of names. It’s a double standard and it’s not right. None of which means that it’s a good idea for you to act that way in the first place,” he added.

“But The Brotherhood does seem to have been able to reach out further recently,” Jackson mused. He was more thoughtful than his comrades. “They’ve established a presence in all four territories in the city and they’re believed to have multiple chapter houses in all of them. That means they’ve got money enough to buy property. Real estate is at a premium in this city, there are some places in the MacKenzie territory worth a small fortune. How would an organization with no obvious source of income be able to afford that?”

“Rich benefactors?” suggested Colt.

“But why?” asked Clarke. “Let’s be honest, there aren’t a huge number of werewolves who are wealthy enough to throw that sort of money around. And even if they believed in The Brotherhood’s ideals, rich people don’t get rich by throwing away their money, they hang on to it. It’s not like they’re going to see any return.”

“My Uncle Farley – friend of my dad’s – suggested one of the packs might be involved.” I was well aware that I wasn’t one of the great strategists or plotters – I was a typical werewolf in that respect, better at thinking in straight lines. But humans are excellent plotters and I had here three whose brains I could pick. “That they might force their rivals onto the wrong side of a popular issue.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” nodded Jackson. “By targeting you, they force your father’s hand. Another Pack Leader might well be able to take advantage of that.”

“The Kenai are probably the most power-hungry,” I said. “Although, old King’s heirs are a good influence on him, especially now they’re all mated with a human.”

“But The Brotherhood don’t try to kill them,” Clarke noted. “Double standard.”

“Plus, Kenai King is a stone-cold killer,” added Colt. The Pack Leader of the Kenai was the most powerful werewolf in the city and had a reputation for cold-bloodedness that was well-deserved.

“Power hungry though he is,” Jackson mused, “and I agree with you, he’s a different man since his sons mated – I don’t think he’s got much to gain. The Brotherhood may not have tried to assassinate his sons, but they don’t like his sons mating with a human woman. I don’t think King would support a group that views his kids like that.”

“The Arctic have got ground to make up,” I suggested. The Arctic Pack had recently been involved in a scandal that had lost them a Pack Leader and placed them at the bottom of the werewolf pecking order.

“But they’re also being a bit careful,” said Clarke. “They’ve lost so much, they can’t afford to lose more. Pitting themselves against the other packs now would be suicide.”

“I’d still mark them down as a maybe,” said Jackson. “They have the most to gain and may think it’s worth the risk.”

“And the MacKenzie?” I asked. “They’ve always been the pack that prides itself on traditional values. They only wear clothes to go outdoors, they try to live like they’re back out in the wilderness.”

“And they’re very warlike,” nodded Jackson. “We get trained specifically to fight against the MacKenzie, because the village elders feel that’s where the next werewolf uprising will come from.”

“They’re the weakest of the four packs,” added Colt. “Numbers wise. The least respected. They’d dearly like to take over a territory like this one.”

“But what chance would they have?” asked Clarke, identifying a salient point. “The Hokkai would crush them. Do they really think they can turn enough wolves over to The Brotherhood to redress the odds?”

“Maybe,” said Colt. “Stuff like this gets people angry; how dare our Pack Leader’s daughter behave this way?”

“Hey!”

“That’s how people think. And then if MacKenzie Sean came in with the support of The Brotherhood… Maybe people wouldn’t support him but they might not fight back quite so hard.”

Jackson shook his head. “I don’t buy it. They’d be demolished in a war and they know it.”

Jackson might not have bought it, but I was definitely starting to. The world was crazy. When werewolves started to formulate strategies against each other rather than just fighting it out in a flurry of blood, teeth and fur, then it felt like the beginning of the end. Perhaps we had just managed to wear the clothing of civilization for the last century, and it was only a matter of time before we returned to bloodier habits.

“Thanks, guys,” I said, and turned to head back to my room with the breakfast Colt had made me.

“This is all just speculation,” said Jackson, sternly. “And pretty wild speculation, if you ask me.”

“Certainly doesn’t mean anything without proof,” admitted Colt.

“And your father has hired people who will find that proof if it exists,” said Clarke.

I nodded. “I know.”

I strolled back to my room, sipping my coffee. Although I had made up my own mind that nothing could or would happen between me and Jackson – at least, nothing else – I was kind of surprised, even offended, by how he had acted this morning. It wasn’t that he had been rude, and I guess I hadn’t expected him to be all lovey-dovey. But he had been… the same. He had acted as if nothing had happened, as if it hadn’t mattered at all. Which was good – of course, it was. It was just vaguely insulting. I guess I felt that it was alright for me to act like it meant nothing, but how could Jackson act like that? Sex with me was memorable. An event. How could he brush it off like it was sex with just anyone?

But these were thoughts for another time, I needed to focus on the here and now. Once again, my bodyguards were right, but once again, I was determined to follow my own path and keep my fate in my hands. Despite Jackson’s skepticism, I was now convinced that the MacKenzie Pack was the one most likely to be funding the activities of The Brotherhood of Pure Blood, and it was in MacKenzie territory that I would find proof of that. If I wanted to end these attacks on me, then it was to the MacKenzie territory that I would have to go.