“Yes. Of course. That’s what I meant. Yes. Yes. We need them, obviously. The Pack wouldn’t survive without them. If it was all alphas—”

“You’d be fighting.”

“Yeah.”

“All the time.”

“Well, yes.”

“You’d be fighting about when to fuck, or fighting about who to fuck, or fighting about where to fuck who and when, and in the meantime the rest of the Pack would have starved to death. It’d be just, aarrggh, we’re so hungry, please stop fighting for just a little while so we can take five minutes to hunt for—gaakkk!”

“Yes.” Michael choked back a laugh. “That’s just right.”

“So, what? You’ve got an alpha. You’ve got something else. At least you and Sean can be in the same room without wanting to set each other on fire after twenty seconds.”

“That was an accident,” he corrected her, “and it had nothing to do with the Miniskirt Battle of 2020. And the firemen were able to save most of the wing.”

“I’m gonna indulge my inner Trekkie for a minute—”

“Please don’t.”

“—and remind you of the IDIC. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination. Translation: you’re a fortunate man in all things, if everyone was the same, it’d be a nightmare of boredom, so shut your jackhole and kiss me.”

“It sounded different when Spock explained it,” he’d replied with a sigh, and then they weren’t talking anymore, and Lara went back outside without her mom’s Clint Eastwood towel, so they wouldn’t know she’d heard.

No, she didn’t understand Sean’s way of seeing the world, but she appreciated it. He was a blast of freezer air in August—different and refreshing and weird. He tolerated things she couldn’t: bullies and bullshit. And knew things she didn’t—how to go along to get along. Not for nothing did he graduate Best Storyteller and Best Shoulder To Lean On. He put up with a lot, and she didn’t understand it but did respect it.

(Also, she’d tracked down every cowardly stinking shit-mouth bully who ever dared touch her brother and kicked their asses, from Dennis Linderman in preschool to Jeff Pedermahn in middle school to Maureen Chowton at high school graduation.)

Tonight, she knew Sean would rather be in Boston with their folks but had never so much as hinted at the possibility of making the trip with them, or meeting them later. She appreciated that, too.

So Lara meeted and greeted and her parents were not at the mansion, were deliberately not at the mansion. They’d spent the afternoon and evening in Boston, doing their own meeting and greeting with Dr. Bimm and l’il Dr. Bimm. Knowing how much Sean enjoyed l’il Dr. Bimm’s company, she made a mental note to invite Fred’s pack to swim and sun and eat with them before summer disappeared completely. Once things settled. Because they would settle. They’d better.

Dr. Bimm had to kill her own father to not take the Pack. So things could be a lot worse. She still wasn’t quite sure what had brought such calamitous events about, had never gotten the whole story. Dr. Bimm would never talk about it, and l’il Dr. Bimm hadn’t even been whelped when it had happened. If her parents knew any of the deliciously gory-sounding details, they’d never shared.

She gave herself a mental shake to get back to the present. Anyway. Her parents weren’t there, but not because they doubted her. They’d gotten themselves gone because they didn’t want to be cornered for endless rounds of, “Say, you’re alive! So you could still be running things. We’re glad you’re not dead and no offense, Michael, but what the fuck were you thinking?” Not that they could avoid it completely. But not being available for consultation on Lara’s first day sent a powerful message.

(“Lara’s agreed, I’ve agreed, my mate has agreed. The decision has been made,” her father said. He didn’t add, And that’s it, because this wasn’t the movies, it was the Pack. And that’s it was understood, and thus unnecessary to verbalize.

In other words, that’s how it is, and if you don’t like it, howl at the moon somewhere else.

“The other Wyndham family motto,” Sean decided.)

She’d expected to spend the day without her parents but with several Pack members, many she’d never met. She had not expected to miss three: Derik, Sara, and Jack.

Okay, the truth: she’d missed one.

Where is he? she’d wondered, shaking sweaty hand after sweaty hand. (She was almost positive the sweat wasn’t hers.) This is kind of Pack history in the making and they haven’t visited in two years. I know they’re here now; they’d never miss this. Why wouldn’t they come over on my first day?

She didn’t know. And suddenly being the leader wasn’t such fun after all. Not that she’d expected fun. She hadn’t. But she’d expected something.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Lara stared down at the dead fish on the kitchen stoop and thought, This does not bode well.

She went back inside, stubbed her toe on the doorway leading to the kitchen, and while absently rubbing her sore toe had a quiet word with Lenny, who promised to have a quiet word with Kara, the head of the kitchen staff. Then she scored the last cup of hot chocolate and sat back down at the breakfast table. That will teach me to wander down for a bite, think, Hmm, what smells like a dead fish? and then go find a dead fish.

Question: How did a kitchen full of Packers not smell a dead fish?

Answer: the Atlantic Ocean is about sixty meters from the kitchen door.

Funny how this was one of her favorite rooms, even when her folks were out of town. The room was big and bright, with lots of windows and light blond wood on the walls and the floor. The table was small, but the sideboard was almost as big, and groaning with food. Even though her folks weren’t here, Sean was, and the kitchen staff planned accordingly.

She hadn’t slept well, again, and was sure it showed: sweat pants, battered T-shirt, hair that had yet to meet a brush that morning. Her eyes felt like sand traps. Who cared? If Jack hadn’t bothered to come around, what was the point?

Argh. That is not what I meant. I meant, a leader shouldn’t spend enormous amounts of time wondering if she’s pretty enough to receive. She just receives. Or not. Sweat pants or a Gucci gown, it’s all about the girl wearing the clothes, not the clothes wearing the girl.

She pulled her iPad out of her robe and unfolded it until it was about 210 mm by 230 mm: the size of a standard piece of printer paper. Not that anybody used printers anymore. Some people liked to show off by not unfolding it any larger than a pack of cards, but Lara had never been a fan of eye strain.

Data immediately began to stream across it, but she had no interest in current events. She was stuck in the past, and wasn’t sure why. Pack members weren’t prone to introspection.

She was surprised she could be lonely in a household full of at least twenty people, day or night.

Is my father lonely, even with my mother?

He must be. And before now she had never wondered. She had never even thought of it. What else haven’t I thought of?

Lara wasn’t surprised she’d had another stress dream last night. She’d been having them on and off since her father had proposed his terrifying, unprecedented idea. Werewolf (oh, that silly name, but it saved time because everyone knew what it meant) dreams and stress dreams had two things in common: the dreamer wasn’t aware they were dreaming until they awoke, and they were stressful. There was, of course, good stress and bad stress.

Guess which one I keep getting?

No, the surprise wasn’t that she’d had a nightmare. The surprise was that Jack Gardner was in it, was always in those dreams.

She had dreamt of him from earliest childhood; strange! She still didn’t know him well. She didn’t know him and . . .

. . . she was afraid of him. And again, had been from earliest childhood.

You’re thinking about this to avoid thinking about your new role, about the dead fish, about the dead bat Dad didn’t tell you about. It’s chickenshit. She knew it. She wouldn’t hide from it. Because it was also a matter of fear, and hiding from that? Also chickenshit.

She dreamed of him, but told no one—not even Daddy, who she could tell anything. He might not love her as much if he knew she was a stupid scared cub.

She wasn’t alone in that, either, which should have made her feel better but didn’t. Some of the other cubs, they’d expressed fear through anger and she wasn’t sure they knew it.

When the adults were out of sight and smell, the other cubs would pick on Jack and bully him, and he’d either hold his own—he had their strength, if not their other gifts—or retreat. Then he’d be gone again, no one knew for how long, and it was funny how that just made the other cubs more afraid.

Their parents had a name for Jack Gardner, a name said with such distrust it sounded like a swear word: incomer.

She’d never heard the word before. And they’d almost . . . they’d almost spat it. Like it was a swear, a really bad one.

So she borrowed her mother’s old iPad, a clunker that didn’t even fold, and looked it up. The definition didn’t seem terrible. An incomer was someone who moved to a place he wasn’t born. Heck, her mom was an incomer. So was Jack’s mom. And Jack’s dad, her dad’s best friend. Derik had to take off and live entire months—sometimes years—in places her dad wasn’t. Or they’d kill each other. Not in the silly play-fights humans were so fond of (“I can’t stand that guy, I’m gonna kill him, he took the last donut!”). In an I’m-afraid-I’ve-killed-your-husband-but-I’ll-make-sure-you-and-the-cubs-are-taken-care-of way.

That wasn’t especially scary; that’s how things were. Alphas were rare, and they didn’t live together for long. Couldn’t. So Jack being an incomer, that was okay. It wasn’t scary or weird. Lara was so, so thankful her brother had zero interest in running the Pack, that she was the only alpha of her generation.