The guests and the band were gone. The lodge was quiet except for the sounds of the wait staff and cleaning staff that the Blackwoods had hired putting the living room back as it was and moving about, picking things up and carting things off to be cleaned, and the hubbub from the kitchen as they worked.
The members of the pack had mostly retired or gone into Reynolds Hollow or over to the city for late-night activities. Trace, Glen, and their fathers effectively had the lodge to themselves for the rest of the night. With bow ties loosened and shirts unbuttoned, they retired to the library, which had a soft leather furniture, brightly polished wooden tables, a fireplace, and a well-stocked bar, to unwind.
Trace sat at the fireplace, poking idly at the fire he’d started, lost in his morose and rueful thoughts of the way his evening had ended before the ball was actually over. He had not seen Crystal since she left the terrace. For the rest of the evening, he had been cordial to his guests and every bit the gentleman to the females who had come up to meet him with an eye on being potential brides.
He had not engaged them in any more dances, but he had sat with them and talked and raised a glass with them. He had studiously avoided getting drunk, as getting drunk might have lowered his inhibitions enough to make him say or do something he would regret later.
Once he had even excused himself to the bathroom, not so much to use it as to morph himself partly—and uncomfortably in that damned tuxedo—into wolf form. It was a trick that werewolves had been doing for centuries, an advantage that they had over humans. The energy of morphing purged any alcohol from the body, keeping them sober and keeping their wits about them. Trace wanted his wits about him tonight of all nights.
However, staying sober kept his regrets clear in his mind. Regret was an emotion to which Trace Blackwood was thoroughly unaccustomed. He was firmly of the opinion that the greatest “sins” in life—as much as he believed in the idea of “sin”—were those of omission rather than commission. Or to put it another way, generally speaking, one’s greatest regrets were for the things one did not do. To Trace, it was a better thing to do things and live with them than not do them and later wish one had. Rather than making him a reprobate and a scoundrel, Trace had found that it had made him a basically happy person. The exception was the thing he’d done tonight.
Trace was not sorry for showing himself to Crystal Shaw that day at the stream. He was a werewolf in line to be an Alpha. He enjoyed his own carnality and the pleasure that it had always brought him. Showing himself to a female was an act of pride. He was only sorry that he had spoken of it to the obviously inexperienced girl.
He hadn’t reckoned with her inexperience and the full import of it. And for the rest of the evening, the sight of her reacting to his admission, the sound of her voice when she called him out about it, and the moment when she turned and left the terrace had become an endless loop in his mind. He had kept himself sober not only to keep his wits, but because he did not care to be drunk or even mildly buzzed while remembering that. If he’d been under the influence with all that going on between his ears, who was to say what he might have done or what greater regrets he’d be wrestling with now?
So, Trace sat by the fireplace, poking at the fire while his father, cousin, and uncles poured drinks and wished his feelings would burn away as readily as the wood of the logs crackling before him. If his regrets could burn away, he realized, they would burn down to one clear and inevitable fact.
He liked Crystal Shaw. He liked her. It was true that he’d liked all of the many females, his own kind and humans, with whom he’d been to bed. But somehow, he liked Crystal as something more than just someone beautiful with whom he wanted to lie naked and hump. And of all the unexpected things in his life right now, nothing was more unexpected than the fact that he could feel this way about an eighteen-year old girl who had yet to have a male inside her.
The sound of tinkling ice cubes pulled him out of his memories. He glanced over and saw a glass of rum and Coke, and looked up the arm holding it into the face of Glen.
“Here you go,” said Glen, handing Trace a glass and tinkling an identical drink of his own in the other hand.
“Thanks, Glen.” Trace took the drink from Glen, put the poker in the holder with the other fire irons, and pulled shut the damper of the fireplace. Together, he and Glen settled into chairs by the hearth.
Glen raised his glass. “To a successful evening,” he said and took a swallow.
Trace said only, “Right,” and raised his glass and took a swallow of his own.
“‘Successful evening’ indeed,” came Roman’s voice from the bar where he sat with Harmon and drinks of their own. “It will be successful if Trace has started to narrow down his choices. You’ll have to inform the lucky female of your intentions now.”
“And send nice cards to all the ones not picked,” added Glen. “‘Thanks for coming out and presenting yourselves, but sorry, you’re not the one.’ Let them down easy and be civil about it, then go to…”
“…the one who gets the final honor,” Trace finished in a manner more solemn than anyone else in the room expected. And he took another big swallow of his drink.
“Trace,” said Harmon, “you don’t seem at all like someone who’s about to take his mate and the reins of an empire and secure the future of his pack. What kind of mood is this?”
“It’s the mood I’ve got,” Trace half-absently replied.
“Everyone is anxious to know which one of them you’ve got your eye on,” Harmon said. “And I might add we’re especially anxious about it right here in this room.”
“That’s natural,” said Trace, his mood unchanged.
“I think maybe Trace has got his mind full of choices right now,” Glen offered, trying to lighten the overall tone of the conversation. “You’ve got to admit, he’s got a lot of really nice choices.”
“Yes, very nice,” said Roman, gazing intently at his very preoccupied son. “Any idea which one you like best, Trace?”
“They were all really nice,” Trace replied. “Beautiful, smart, gentle, refined. They’d all make good mothers for my pups. And you know I’ve been with some of ‘em already. I already know how some of them are in bed.”
“Then all the better to help you choose,” said Harmon.
“Yeah,” said Trace. “Some of the ones I’ve had before got to come back for another crack at me, this time to make it official. They’ve already had a sample of what they’d get as my mate, and I’ve already had a taste of them. That ought to make it easier, shouldn’t it?”
“Trace, what are you on about?” asked Roman. “Tonight was for your benefit.”
Looking from his glass to his father, Trace said, “Yeah. My benefit. All for me, isn’t that grand? Well, since everyone’s so interested, there is one who kind of stands out.”
Leaning forward a bit on the bar, Roman asked intently, “Which one?”
Trace fixed his eyes squarely on his father and uncle. “Guess,” he replied.
“Don’t make a game of it, Trace,” Roman pressed him.
“Why not?” Trace asked. “The whole thing’s been kind of a game, hasn’t it? Making a contest out of choosing a mate and deciding what two people do with the rest of their lives? It’s been like a sport, with spectators and everything. It’s been one big game, and I’m the prize for the lucky winner.”
Growing stern, Roman said, “Trace, don’t do this. Just tell us which one you’re most interested in.”
Trace turned up the corner of his mouth in a sarcastic grin. “Oh, there is one, Dad. There is one who ‘most interests me.’ And when I tell you, I can predict what comes next.”
“What comes next,” said Harmon, “is you make your intentions clear to her, you bring her into the pack, we pass the rank of Alpha to you and her, and the future of the pack goes on.”
“Yeah, that is what ought to come next,” said Trace, with one last gulp of his drink. “Except it probably won’t.”
“There were plenty of appropriate choices at the ball,” Harmon said.
“Yeah, Uncle Harmon, plenty of ‘appropriate’ choices,” Trace replied. “Depending on how you define ‘appropriate’.”
“Meaning what?” Harmon said edgily.
“What is ‘appropriate’?” Trace asked. “How do you define that? What makes an ‘appropriate’ choice for an Alpha female?”
“You know that as well as we do,” said Roman. “An appropriate choice would be a female from a good family and a good background, someone who’ll be responsible with our home and our money and our business and social interests, who’s prepared to help you raise pups and hopefully give you an heir. A female who’s educated and experienced and knows something about the world and life outside the pack, our world and the human world. A female who’s prepared to stand at your side, to live with you and lead with you. A proper Alpha female. And there were a number of them here tonight. I could name a couple who’d make you a very fine mate, Trace.”
“I could name one,” said Trace, stiffening in his seat. “And I’ll bet the name I’m thinking isn’t the same as the ones you are.”
Up to this point, Glen had simply been listening to this back-and-forth between his cousin and the two older lycans. Now he could not help but cut in. “Trace,” he said, “I heard some people talking about seeing you up on the terrace with one of them and getting into what looked like a bit of an intense discussion. I wouldn’t mind knowing what that was about.”
“Oh, that,” said Trace. “That was about something that happened when we first came up for the season, that’s all.”
“Is that all?” Glen wondered aloud. “Because a lot of people noticed that one of the females you danced with…left the ball with her family early. The same one you were having that conversation with.”
“I know,” said Trace, his regrets showing now. “I didn’t get a chance to say good night to her like I did the others. I wish she hadn’t left so soon.”
There was a beat of very uncomfortable silence, filled only with the sound of the burning wood popping in the fireplace.
It was Roman who ended the silence: “Trace, no…”
Trace looked his father directly and firmly in the eye. The tension in the room turned up as if someone had dialed it like the dimmers on the chandelier. Calmly and surely, Trace said to Roman, “Yeah, Dad. Her.”
Roman almost slammed his glass on the bar. “Trace, we talked about this before!”
“Yeah, Dad, we did,” said Trace. “As a matter of fact, we were up on the terrace when we talked about it. Up on the terrace where I told Crystal Shaw where we saw each other before, and how we saw each other. And that was what made her leave early, because she couldn’t handle it. I wish she’d stayed and we could have talked it out some more, because I'm seeing now that it’s her. And you know what? It wasn’t going to be her, not at first. All I had in mind for Crystal was one last fling before being matched up with my mate. It wasn’t supposed to be like this at all. I was going to do my duty like an Alpha and offer my hand to an ‘appropriate’ mate. But now I know the one I want.”
Glen looked ready to fall out of his seat, and he was not even drunk. “Crystal?” he blurted. “Really?”
“Yeah—really,” Trace answered. “Crystal.”
“No!” Roman thumped his hand on the bar. “Not Crystal. She is not the female we were just discussing. She is not the one to join you in leading this pack.”
“Absolutely not!” Harmon added. “If you must have a last fling before you’re paired and mated, then yes, go to Crystal Shaw and take her to bed. Sleep with her with our blessing, and may she enjoy it as much as you. But do not bring an inexperienced girl, a girl just finishing high school, to us as your mate. Do not expect to make her your partner as leader of this pack.”
“It’s absurd,” Roman pressed further. “The difference in your ages alone…”
Trace cut him off. “What about the difference in our ages? I’m twenty-nine; she’s eighteen. If I were thirty-nine and she were twenty-eight…”
“If you were thirty-nine and she were twenty-eight,” argued Roman, “the age difference would matter much less, because she would be more mature and better prepared for the responsibilities of an Alpha female. But the eleven years between you at your actual ages is unacceptable. She does not have that maturity and that makes all the difference. You cannot take her as your mate, son! It is out of the question!”
“‘Out of the question’?” Trace balked. “You’re not even getting what the real question is, Dad! The real question is, what the hell are we even doing here?” In the space of stunned silence created by his father and uncle’s shocked reactions, Trace pressed on and pressed hard. “What is it we’re doing? Looking for a mate, someone you’re supposed to spend your life with, someone you’re supposed to have pups with—that’s supposed to be a natural thing! A natural thing! What are we turning it into? Something staged and set up and…and choreographed, for the forest’s sake! It’s like a damn pageant! It’s like a competition!”
“Nature is a competition,” Roman rebutted impatiently.
Trace was adamant. “Not like this, Dad. Not like this. This thing we’re doing, it’s not about meeting someone and having a feeling come naturally, and getting close and wanting to be together naturally, because it’s in you to want to feel that way. This is harnessing the damn thing. This is like putting a harness and a collar and a leash on somebody’s insides! Putting a leash on somebody’s heart! How is that right?”
Roman had never seen or heard such utter, outright defiance in his son. Harmon and Glen could practically feel him quivering with disbelief and restrained anger. “It’s right because it’s what the pack needs, Trace. It’s right because since I was your age, I have done everything for this pack.
I’ve guided us through decades of human turmoil and what humans do with their economy, which affects us whether we want it or not. I’ve kept us strong and I’ve kept our empire going, because I wanted to pass it on to my heir, and his heirs. It is our lifeblood and our future. I’ve done everything for you. This pack has given you everything. It’s all been for you.”
Unmoved, Trace shot back, “The pack is everything, I get that. And yeah, everything I have, I owe to the pack. But what is the pack? What are we? Do we call ourselves what humans call themselves? To them, we’re a family. But to ourselves, we’re a pack. We’re wolves, Dad! Wolves!
Or we’re supposed to be. But what are we now? Humans took wolves and turned them into dogs. They bred them to be whatever humans wanted, ‘til all that was left of their wolf selves was fur and tails and four legs and paws, and somewhere left in their soul, just some little piece of what they were meant to be.
That’s what’s happening to us now, Dad. Every time a lycan pack does something like this, we’re a little less the wolves we were meant to be. We’re not wolves any more. We’re just dogs. Everything you’ve done for me, was that meant to raise a dog? Because that’s how I feel now, all dressed up for a show and paired up with some prize bitch to breed. This is the first time in my life I don’t feel like a wolf.”
Glen looked on with slack jaws, made almost dizzy by the way Trace bared his soul to his father, expressing feelings he had never heard from any other werewolf in all his days; feelings he never guessed that Trace or any other werewolf could have. He felt them all on the precipice of something from which there could be no turning back. He studied his own father, standing there stoically and taking this all in. How would Harmon react? What would he say? And most importantly, what would Roman say next—and what would Trace do?
Leashing his own emotions as Trace had accused him of doing to his son, Roman said, stifling a growl, “We are wolves, Trace. And as wolves we serve the needs of the pack. This is what the needs of the pack demand.”
“It’s no good being wolves if we don’t act like we are,” said Trace. “I’m not a dog, Dad. I don’t want to live like a dog, performing in a show and then hooked up to breed. That’s not a wolf’s way. I’m a wolf. A wolf.”
Trace had nothing more to say. He had talked himself out, and he was spent and done. He walked over to the bar and put his empty glass there. Meeting his father’s eyes one last time and looking past his mute and stoic Uncle Harmon, he walked away and out of the library without looking back.
Roman, Harmon, and Glen watched Trace go. Even the crackling of the fire in the fireplace was quieter in his wake.