Ryan watched his phone for some kind of sign from Dee. She’d texted when she got to the bar, and again when she saw Kate. And then nothing.

He had no right to care what Kate did at the bar. Adam was at the summit, still standing behind his brother while they finished the introductions. Ryan had kept his hands fisted while the old Quade alpha pointed out all his rodeo king grandsons. You’d think they were his horses, the way he talked about their breeding. It was kinda sick, actually.

He knew others families like that in the rodeo world—just as obsessed with the blood lines of their riders as they were with the lineage of their animals. It had always creeped him out.

When the last of the hand-bred cowboys had been introduced—along with their event accomplishments, all of which Ryan could beat with his eyes closed—Aaron VonBrandt stood at the head of the big, thick table, and spread out his hands.

“I want to officially welcome all of you to Somewhere. It’s been too long since we got together,” said the bearded alpha.

“Since your father’s time,” interjected the old, gray-haired Quade, who still hadn’t taken off his cowboy hat. What a douche.

“That’s true,” Bracken said, nodding next to Ryan. “It was in my first year training as alpha. My uncle Sam was heading the pack at the time.”

“We don’t get together often because this many wolves in one place can be a logistical disaster,” added the Texas alpha, “but I couldn’t deny that we needed to meet about the discovery of Elise Blanchard.”

Everyone around the table seemed to nod in agreement, except for a few people. One of them was Bracken, and Ryan wondered at that. He checked his phone again. Still no word from Dee.

“As Moonbound wolves, we share the same origin, and each of us owes our magick and our life to the power of Fate. We have a sacred duty to each other. We’ve always been bound to our packs, and our families have become our lives. Hundreds of years ago, when the first wolves came to America from Ireland, they spread out for a reason—”

Ryan picked up his phone when a little block of white appeared on the screen.

It’s official. I hate you, Dee had texted.

What’s wrong? Ryan texted back.

Aaron VonBrandt continued to speak, “We were never meant to congregate like this, As you all know, our way of ensuring accountability in the wolf world has traditionally been through the alpha bond. Until recently, none of us had ever even heard of an unbonded wolf.”

Dee’s text flipped up. Kate is a good person. She doesn’t deserve you playing around with her future like this.

A hard lump formed in Ryan’s throat. I’m going to take care of her problem. You don’t have to worry about her.

But Dee was right. He was playing around with her future. He needed to reassure his cousin that he wasn’t trying to hurt Kate—far from it. He just couldn’t have her working on his ranch.

Bracken nudged Ryan’s arm and his gaze flickered down to the phone. One brow winged up. Ryan shook his head. It wasn’t anything his alpha needed to worry about.

“We need to know more about Elise’s heritage, if we can learn anything,” Aaron continued, drawing both Ryan and Bracken’s attention to the head of the big table.

“Maybe we should ask Elise, instead of talking over her head,” said a heavily accented voice. The older alpha of the New Orleans pack sat on the opposite side of the table from Aaron, between two corset-clad, black-jeaned women who were undoubtedly his enforcers. “She’s here, isn’t she?”

The VonBrandt alpha pointed to a blond man who stood along the back wall. “Jared doesn’t want her in the room for now, since she’s not familiar with how our packs work yet. But he knows the whole story.”

Phillip Quade snorted. “The whole story?”

“There isn’t a lot of whole to the story,” said the blond man. He had the same square features as the alpha. The VonBrandts all looked so similar. “She told me everything she remembered. She doesn’t remember her mother. She never knew her father.”

“What I don’t understand is, how did she manage to change every month inside the city of New Orleans without any Dubois knowing anything about her?” Quade pounded on the table, and the sound echoed through the high-ceilinged room. “Dammit, Francis, y’all fell down on the job.”

Ryan uncovered the face of his phone and hit the button along the side that would wake up the screen. There were two more texts from Dee, and he moved the cell down into his lap so he could read them without openly showing what he was doing.

Fine, Ryan. You’d better take care of this girl.

There’s something going on back in her pack and she really doesn’t want to talk about it.

His throat went thick. He didn’t like thinking of Kate having issues back in El Paso, but it made sense. It squared with his observations and with how desperate she was to get the ranch manager job. He would find her another safe place to land.

A shuffle of movement caught Ryan’s attention and he caught the tail end of one of the Dubois enforcers trying to climb across her alpha to defend him from the old El Paso wolf. Ryan couldn’t help smiling. He liked her spitfire loyalty.

That Quade jackass really was the chief of douches.

“We don’t patrol the city,” the New Orleans alpha was saying as he pulled his enforcer back to his side. Across the room, one of the VonBrandt wolves was growling, low in his throat.

Shit. Tensions had escalated pretty quickly. It came as no surprise that Kate’s alpha was at the center of it. Phillip Quade was a perfect example of why the Trewitts ordered their alpha to stay single. When alphas got too wrapped up in family loyalty, they neglected the good of the pack.

Right?

“No one has ever heard of an unbonded wolf before,” said the girl in the corset. She’d settled back in her seat, but her eyes were still flashing, and that same VonBrandt wolf growled under his breath again. This time, Ryan was able to pick him out. He was wearing a police uniform, and his back was to the wall. “It wasn’t like we were on the lookout,” the enforcer continued.

Phillip Quade crossed his arms with a glance at one of his cowboy grandsons. “We woulda known.”

“We’re not here to point fingers, gentlemen. We need to get to the bottom of this. Find out how it could have happened.” The VonBrandt alpha got to his feet and glanced at the growling VonBrandt. “Allan?”

“What?” asked the big, broody man in the uniform.

“Did you run her prints and DNA?”

“Whose?”

The alpha’s face went dark, and they had some kind of silent conversation, because the officer perked up right quick.

“I haven’t yet,” he said, backing off on the growling. “But I can do that tonight. I have to go back to the station to fill out a report on the incident at Joe’s bar.”

Ryan perked up. Joe’s bar? Wasn’t that the place where Kate and her girlfriends had gone? He was pretty sure that was the business name he’d heard. He shot off a quick text to Dee.

Y’all at Joe’s bar?

The Quade alpha made some kind of comment under his breath that made the cowboy in uniform snap his shoulders back and growl. “I’m not a wolf in cop’s clothing. I’m the fucking sheriff, and I have a job to do.”

With a huff, he settled a big white cowboy hat on his head and strode out of the room.

A text came in from Dee while the VonBrandt alpha had a back-and-forth with his brother, who was apparently the sheriff. The VonBrandts had quite a setup here in Somewhere, Texas.

I’m at Joe’s, yes. And Kate’s here, of course, still dancing with a couple of cowboys. Waiting for “Adam” to get here.

Ryan shifted in his seat, noting Bracken’s interest in his actions. He pulled his phone around and slipped it into his pocket. He would have to make sure the real Adam VonBrandt didn’t make it to Joe’s bar.

“Do you want me to run her sheet or not?” asked the sheriff.

“My cousin Rain got his hands on all that information already,” the girl in the corset said dismissively. She picked up a couple of folders from in front of her alpha, tossing them into the center of the table. Ryan reached for one and Bracken grabbed the other.

It had a government stamp on it. Must be from the Rangers.

“Nothing,” said the corset girl. “Not even a speeding ticket. It won’t help.”

Ryan perused the contents of the folder. The girl’s picture looked like a candid, so she didn’t have a mugshot available. That was a good sign. She’d stayed under the radar.

“We need a new approach, gentlemen,” said the Dubois alpha. “The girl isn’t hiding her history. She’s answered all of our questions. There have to be other avenues of information open to us, at this point.”

Ryan put the folder back into the middle of the table and the El Paso alpha picked it up. The old man shook his head as he started reading the same benign information Ryan had just seen. He glanced over at Bracken. This El Paso guy was a true jackass.

The big sheriff pulled out his phone and read something that clearly upset or annoyed him. As the El Paso jackass started spouting off, theorizing how this Elise had managed to hide herself among a bunch of other wolves all her life, the sheriff left. The girl in the corset looked like she wanted to follow him, but she stayed by her alpha.

Ryan understood the push-pull feeling. He’d been wanting to leave the meeting since it had started. To get to Kate. He shouldn’t want that, but he did. Yet his loyalty to Bracken was keeping him in one place while Phillip Quade acted like a prize fool.

But no one could do anything to stop the guy.

His wolves had all pledged to him, just like Ryan’s pack would soon pledge to him. The power of the alpha came from the collective will of the pack, all of them focusing their loyalty toward one man. It was a centuries’ old tradition—one that would continue long after Ryan was gone.

He couldn’t mess with it.

The pack had spoken. They were ready to give him the reins. He had an opportunity to create a legacy in Oklahoma. Make his penance. Clean up after his father’s mess. Fix the pack.

And he needed Adam VonBrandt to do it.

No matter how much he continued to think about Kate, he just couldn’t pursue her. He would corner Adam and let the rest of the VonBrandts go to Joe’s Bar. Kate could try everything she wanted with Julian VonBrandt, but she’d never be able to get the horse out of him.

And then Ryan would find a way to get her out of her pack that didn’t involve messing up his plans for the future. He had a duty. He couldn’t indulge himself where Kate was concerned. Absolutely not.