Page 1 of Broken Arranged Mate (Badlands Wolves #4)

“You seem uncomfortable.”

I shift in my seat and resist the urge to scowl at the journalist sitting across from me.

On the other side of the room, Landon—my new assistant—stands with his back against the wall, tablet clutched to his chest. The kid is young, but he insisted on working with me, and he had a pretty strong referral.

“I’m ready to get started,” I say, trying to sound cheerier than I feel. I’ve been told I don’t come across as ‘friendly,’ and apparently, it’s a struggle for the members of my pack to trust a leader who never smiles.

They should know better. My father smiled all the time.

“Alright,” the journalist says, voice peppy, and I try to remember her name—maybe it was Grace—as she says, “then let’s begin. First off, I want to thank you for sitting down with me today. Your office is beautiful.”

I never smile, but right now, I have to suppress a grimace. This office was my father’s office. Even the sight of the chair, pushed away from the desk casually, made me want to be sick when I first saw it.

It’s a huge, luxurious room, built to match the rest of the place, with towering bookshelves full of tomes my father never read. The desk is long and wide, made of shining mahogany, and a fireplace crackles in the corner, the light playing off the oiled leather chairs to the left.

“Thank you,” I finally manage, resisting the urge to glance at the clock. This interview is important. I agreed to it, even. But I’ve never been much of a talker, and I’m not looking forward to confronting my family drama—and the current disarray of the pack—with a stranger.

But I can’t sit down with every member of my pack and talk to them individually, get them to trust me. So this is the next best bet.

“First, I was sorry to hear about the death of your father, our previous alpha leader.”

“I’m not,” the words come out quickly, and when Landon’s eyes widen, I realize maybe it wasn’t the right move. Oh, well. It was the truth.

“You’re not,” she says, somewhat breathless, a flash moving through her expression—the excitement of a journalist? She can’t be much younger than me, but I feel I’ve aged decades in the last year alone, and her mannerisms strike me as being youthful, out of reach. “Would you mind telling me why?”

I suck in a breath, thinking about the ledger I just finished reviewing, the exorbitant amounts of money pilfered away by my father during his time as the alpha leader.

The abuse this pack faced under his thumb.

Leaning forward, I think about what I’ve learned about leadership, how I want to present myself to this pack.

“In any pack, wolves will disagree,” I begin, watching Grace’s eyes flicker with brief confusion, but pushing on.

This isn’t about my father, not really—and I’d rather take a different tack to keep from airing out my dirty laundry.

“The purpose of the alpha is to filter through those conflicts, the opinions, the will of his kin, and condense it down to the decisions that best serve everybody. Jerrod Blacklock was not that kind of leader. His leadership was selfish, authoritarian, a leech on the body of the pack. And so, his passing ultimately benefits the Grayhides.”

Grace’s eyes widen, her pen flying over her notebook. “So, would you say that he deserved…what happened to him?”

Her words are vague, either because she’s not sure what happened or has enough tact not to mention it in front of the man’s son.

Few people saw what happened to my father that day in the ballroom, the fleshy, discolored mess that he had become. I bite my tongue and swallow down the bile that rises in my throat, pushing the memory away like I always do.

“No wolf on the planet deserves what happened to him.”

“Can you clarify what, exactly, happened that day?”

I’d rather not.

“Nobody is precisely sure what happened. I can give you my best guess based on evidence recovered after the fact. Through a copious amount of drugs and use of powerful magic, Mhairi Argent of the Ambersky pack subdued my father, using him as a figurehead while she made decisions in the background, playing at being alpha leader.”

In fact, she was doing a much better job at it than he had done, already starting to fix some of the problems he’d created. The only issue? She was a raging fucking sociopath.

I don’t touch on the other things I’ve heard about Mhairi—the fact that she, apparently, tried to kidnap her own daughter, or that she stole Amanzite from the Ambersky, leaving them practically defenseless until it was recovered.

Betraying her own pack for a taste of power.

If I told this journalist about those things, it might make me look a bit better, but I won’t betray my allyship with the Ambersky pack for it.

Ambersky’s luna is Mhairi’s only surviving daughter, and though I’m sure she’s not happy about her mother’s choices, that doesn’t mean she wants to see them in print for the whole world to see.

Grace is still writing like her life depends on it, and when she comes up for air, she says, breathlessly, “That’s…sorry, I’m struggling to wrap my head around it.”

I say nothing, giving her time to work on it, and she clears her throat, says, “I covered the succession ceremony, but I imagine readers may like an inside view of the situation. What was it like, receiving a blessing from the only remaining shifter in the original Grayhide line?”

It was fine. Aidan is a good man—if a little excited—but not cut out for leadership.

After killing Mhairi Argent, I had yielded leadership to him. It was a charged moment, and I hadn’t thought it through. But Aidan ended up not wanting that role, not wanting to lead a pack.

Especially not this pack. I’ll spend the rest of my life working on it, and I’ll likely die without fully repairing the damage my father has done.

“Grayhide is a friend of mine,” I say. “Given the history between our families, I hope his blessing has helped us start to heal many of the rifts between shifters in this pack.”

Nearly nine months ago, in that ballroom, Aidan Grayhide killed my father, but he had already been renounced of his alpha leadership. Then, I killed Mhairi Argent.

The line of succession was unclear, and when I mistakenly announced that I was yielding it to Aidan, it caused chaos. It’s taken months—and the formal ceremony—to soothe the most outspoken of shifters, though I suspect there’s still an undercurrent of discomfort with the situation.

Just another thing on my list of problems to fix.

The interview goes on. She asks me about my plans for the future, how I’m enjoying the position—enjoying is definitely not the right word—then begins to touch on our allies.

“Am I correct to believe that we are maintaining an allyship with the Ambersky pack?”

“That’s right.” I don’t even think before answering.

“Dorian Fields, alpha leader of the Ambersky pack, took me in when it became clear to me that Jerrod Blacklock would murder me in my sleep to keep me from challenging him. The Ambersky pack has been nothing but gracious to us, and I believe partnering with them is best for our long-term ability to thrive.”

“Can we expect to see a rise in the Amanzite supply from this alliance?” Grace asks, and I try to hide the way that question makes me stiffen.

The casters at Ambersky have learned how to create Amanzite—a precious gem essential for shifting through magic. But it was that synthetic Amanzite that allowed Mhairi Argent to incapacitate those in the ballroom during the party.

There are weaknesses to it. And though they’re working on fixing them, I can’t ignore the feeling in my gut that insists natural Amanzite is the only safe route for this pack.

“To clarify,” Grace says, clearing her throat again. “Many shifters are feeling the weight of the current rationing and wondering if the complications in leadership have anything to do with the shortage.”

“There is no shortage,” I lie, hoping she doesn’t see right through me. The last thing I need right now is for shifters to start panicking.

I raise my left hand absently, twisting my own Amanzite ring around my finger. My mother’s gift to me, a ring that was once her grandfather’s. There’s something comforting about it coming from her side of the family, not my father’s.

It’s Amanzite that allows me to shift without pain, communicate with other wolves, and seamlessly transition back into a human with clothes still intact.

It’s not only essential for protection; it’s a signal of the pack’s prosperity, a cultural element as important as the food we eat and the festivals we celebrate.

“I see,” Grace says, and while it seems she wants to press, she doesn’t. “Can you give me any information about when the rationing may lift?”

“Soon,” I say, then wish I hadn’t. I have no way to make that happen.

Rather than continue talking about the Amanzite, I change course, returning to the topic of the Ambersky.

“Our allyship may not affect our supply of Amanzite, but it will improve trade on other goods, and eventually allow us to open the borders between the two packs.”

Though right now, the borders are a dangerous place to be, with rogue shifters disobeying alpha orders and engaging with one another. At the end of each, it’s always impossible to determine where the fight actually started, though I suspect it typically comes from the Grayhide side.

“Are you planning to meet with them again soon?” Grace asks, drawing me out of my thoughts. I glance down at her notebook, wondering how the tone of this interview is going to position me.

“Yes. At the end of the week.”

As always, without meaning to, the thought of going to the Ambersky pack immediately brings one person to mind— one shifter, one wolf, one set of deep blue eyes, staring back at me with an intensity that cuts straight to the soul.

“I’d love to hear more about how that meeting goes.” She pauses, looks up from her notes. “If you’re open to meeting again.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Landon says from the doorway. “But your next meeting is coming up soon, sir.”

I grind my teeth—how many times have I told him not to call me sir ?

“Thank you,” I say to him, then to Grace, “Anything else?”

“Yes,” she says, pen poised over the paper, “just one closing question. Many of the shifters in this pack are struggling. If you could look them in the eyes and tell them just one thing, what would it be?”

My heart stutters for the first time during this interview. I detest anxiety—a useless emotion that disrupts ability—so I shove it away and look her in the eye, just like she’s suggested I do for the people of this pack.

“I would say that while I will give everything I have to improving conditions in this pack, our strength doesn’t only lie in our leader. It lies in ourselves, our community, and our ability to get along and take care of one another. You all look out for one another, and I will look out for you.”