Page 11

Mason

“Look at all of them,”I whispered to Jennifer as I peered through the binoculars from our vantage spot out in the forest. “All of this for some kid’s birthday? The way everyone is dressed, you’d think the kid was the king of Wolfheart. Richbastards.”

“Imean,heispretty much royalty,” my sister whispered back. “The whole being a Luna and part of the Crescent Moon Clan thing andall.”

“I’ll never get usedto seeing how these people live,” I muttered. “I could never understand them. As far as I’m concerned they’re all scum.” I passed the binoculars to Jennifer. “Things look good. We go around the west side as originally planned. Most of the activity seems to be concentrated in the ballroom area and the outerterrace.”

The words came out bitterly.Just the fact that they had ballrooms and terraces and shit like that pissed me off. Here we were, barely scraping by in our tiny apartment that could probably fit a hundred times or more in just one corner of that damnmansion.

Yeah,I didn’t give a flying flea bite about stealing from these people. None of them were redeemable as far as I wasconcerned.

“Lookslike they’re doing a birthday toast now, or something,” Jennifer said. “They’re bringing out a birthday cake. Hounds of Hell, that’s the fanciest cake I’ve everseen.”

“Let me see,”I said, and she passed the binocularsover.

Ipeeredinto the broad windows looking into the Luna mansion ballroom, where everyone was gathered. Two men wearing white chef’s hats were wheeling out a multi-layered cake that was as tall as they were. Standing in the center of the room, the attention focused on them, were two men and a little boy. The birthday boy and his parents, I guessed. I slowly scanned through the rest of the crowd, and paused. A door leading to the outer balcony opened up, and a figure slipped outside, a glass in his hand. It was dark, and I couldn’t see him clearly. Apparently, he wasn’t interested in participating in the birthday toast. He was alone, and he came up to the stone balcony rail and leaned againstit.

As he did,warm light from the ballroom windows highlighted him, revealing his face. He looked a few years older than me, tall with a well-built but not overly muscular body. His hair was a deep brown, and perfectly styled. He stared out into the distance with the large, red eyes of an alpha, a look of longing on his gorgeousface.

My heart did a flip.I felt a lump form in my throat, and I swallowed to try and get rid of it. It wasn’t like I’d never seen a hot alpha male before, but I was immediately drawn in by him. There was just something abouthim.

Noneof these rich assholes were redeemable. And yet, suddenly, here was the most attractive man I’d ever laid my eyes on. Almostpainfullyattractive. And what was handsome here thinking about to look so damn melancholic? Hot little rich alpha, sad about his money and mansion and fancyparty?

“Hey. Hello?”

“Huh? What?”

Ilowered the binoculars.Jennifer was frowning at me. “What do you mean, ‘huh’?” she said. “What’s going on down there? You’ve been staring for like fiveminutes.”

“No I wasn’t.”

“Yeah,you were. Your mouth was all hanging open, like this.” She dropped her jaw,exaggerating.

“Shut up,”I said, and tossed the binoculars to her. “I was only scoping out the party. C’mon, let’s getgoing.”

Jennifer peered through the binoculars.I thought she was going to spot the guy I was staring at and tease me about it, but she only shrugged and slipped the binoculars into her bag and followed afterme.

Just who was he,anyway?

I’d never find out.Better that way. Besides, even though he was hot as hell, I would bet money that he was uptight, spoiled, bratty, and probably terrible in bedtoo.

Itoldmyself all this and tried to push him out of my mind, but his face was burned into mythoughts.

How couldsomeone who I’d only seen through a pair of binoculars have this kind of effect onme?

Don’t worry about it,I thought to myself.You’ll forget about him soon. You’re just nervous and excited because of what you’re about to do, that’sall.

Jenniferand I made our way down the tree line and then shifted into our wolf forms. Her dark brown fur easily camouflaged her into the foliage, but my white fur stood out like a beacon and so I had to move carefully, making sure to stay under dense cover at all times. I’d studied books on ancient pack hunting techniques that described how to move silently through terrain and to disguise movements, and Jennifer and I had gotten really good at keepingstealth.

As we came closerto the mansion, the sounds of the party grew louder, and my shifted ears were able to pick up on individual conversations. I filtered through the nonsense they were gabbing about, keeping alert only for signs of detection, though I doubted anyone would notice us. They were all too preoccupied with trying to impress each other, flaunting their wealth and their dog shit successes. It all made mesick.

The main floorof the house was raised about fifteen feet above the ground, so we quickly crossed out of the trees and sprinted up to the side of the building. We paused there for a few seconds, waiting to make sure that things were clear. I nodded to my sister and we moved on, sticking close to the wall. There were windows right above us, and shadows of the people inside played across the ground. We moved towards the balcony, where I knew we would find a ventilation access panel. Clinging to the shadows, the two of us were practicallyinvisible.

Washe still standing up there? From our position down below, I could only see one small portion of the balcony railing. It was ridiculous, but part of me wanted to see him, just for amoment.

The railing was empty.

Iwas annoyedat myself for feeling disappointed. I shouldn’t have been getting distracted, especially by something sodumb.