Page 37

R owan

“You’ve got to be joking.” My voice drops into an annoyed growl.

Cal, my cousin and second-in-command, gives me a wry smile. “Afraid not.”

“The Whiteroses? Are you sure? When have we ever had an issue with them?”

My father, sitting in the Alpha’s seat at the head of the table, heaves a tired sigh. “Not since 1973. Henry’s great-uncle was Alpha back then, and he liked to cause trouble when he was bored. Not a very popular guy.”

I consider my father’s input for a moment, wanting to be respectful, and then turn back to Cal. “So, what exactly happened?”

“Sounds like it’s just a territorial dispute,” he explains. “You know Lara and Jamie Macleod?”

I nod impatiently. They’re two elder Greenbriars who live way up in the northwest corner of our territory. They have a small farm that curves along the border we share with the Whiterose Pack.

“Well, I guess they were in bed one night when their chickens started freaking out, so they assumed another fox got in the coop. But then, when they came outside to investigate, they scented two wolves. Jamie didn’t pause to think too hard about it, unfortunately, and shifted to go after them.

” Cal shrugs again, ever the casual bearer of bad news.

“There was a tussle. Some scrapes and bruises. Nothing too bad.”

“But it is the first time a Greenbriar has spilled Whiterose blood in decades,” adds my father.

“Yes, Alpha,” answers Cal. “I suppose that’s the tricky part.”

“It’s not tricky at all.” My father turns to clap a firm hand on my shoulder. “You’ll go smooth things over with Henry. No problem.”

That’s my role as the Alpha prince, after all. I’m the young diplomat, the one who needs to be showing my true leadership skills before I officially inherit the role as the Greenbriar Alpha.

It would be better, of course, if I had a princess—a future queen—at my side.

A Luna to stand beside me. I might have had a chance at that once, but things beyond my control ripped my Mate away from me.

I’ve tried to tell myself that it’s for the best, and that I was the one who rejected her, but there’s still a dull pain in my chest whenever I think about what could have been.

But now isn’t the time to think about Alina. Even allowing that name to dance on the periphery of my thoughts is recklessly distracting.

I turn my attention back to the conversation.

The Whiterose Pack are good people, or so I’ve heard. They take in a lot of wandering loners and shifters in need. I can’t imagine that overcoming this little dispute will be that difficult.

“Sure,” I answer. “I’ll take care of it. How ‘tricky’ can it be?”

West Pond, North Carolina, is like every other small town in the Appalachians.

What once used to be a quaint little village is now a run-down point on a map, just a couple of miles off the highway, going nowhere.

It’s not really the sort of place that you go to with any sense of purpose, but rather the type of town that you end up in accidentally.

Except for me, of course. Today, I’m here on official pack business.

I roll down Main Street in my pickup truck, elbow resting on the edge of the open window, and try to look as unthreatening as possible. It’s not easy when you’re six-foot-four and reek of Alpha energy.

A few curious faces turn toward me as I drive by, and several people pause on the cracked sidewalks to watch me with shrewd expressions.

I don’t take it personally. It’s the sort of thing you’d expect in any southern small town, not just in shifter territory.

Strangers driving unfamiliar vehicles tend to be guilty until proven innocent.

But these are the Whiteroses, and there’s nothing to be worried about. Like my father said, they’re good people.

I park in front of the diner where Henry Whiterose himself agreed to meet with me. With a quiet huff of laughter, I realize the place is literally called The Diner. A glance across the street tells me that the general store on the corner is also called The Store.

“Quirky folks,” I mutter to myself as I hop out of the cab.

The minute I step inside The Diner, time slows down a little bit. I expected it, so I take it in stride. I know that my scent is obvious. Bitter pine, mountain air, and rain-dampened earth. It’s the scent that all Greenbriars share, but mine is sharpened by the Alpha power running in my veins.

A couple dozen faces snap up to stare at me.

An older couple perched on stools at the bar openly gape in my direction with their mouths hanging open, which is oddly flattering.

I’m not that scary. There’s a young woman with wild curls leaning against the bar.

She whips her head around toward me, but her blonde friend working behind the bar is turned in the other direction, heading toward a table at the back of the space.

I breathe in deeply. I pick up on the trademark Whiterose scent. Crawling vines. Cloying, summer-sweet petals in full bloom. Warm honey.

They smell exactly as pacifistic as they are. Allegedly.

The Alpha scent, sweeter and more obvious than the rest of the smells in the room, nudges my attention toward a well-positioned table in the corner by the windows. Henry Whiterose smiles the second we lock eyes and heaves his large, aging body out of his chair to greet me.

I lope toward him and clasp his outstretched arm. We grasp each other at the wrist, a traditional gesture of goodwill.

“I heard Ryland Greenbriar’s boy was a big, handsome kid. It’s good to meet you, son.”

I nod in thanks. “I appreciate the invitation, sir.”

Henry sort of collapses back into his chair. I politely ignore the clumsiness and take a seat across from him.

A second later, a girl who can’t be much older than eighteen comes scurrying over. She’s wide-eyed and trembling, barely keeping a hold on the notepad clutched in her hands.

“Wha—what can I get y-you?”

Henry offers her a patient smile. “Can you give me and Rowan a few minutes to chat first? Thanks, Caitlyn.”

The girl’s eyes get caught on me, snagging like a loose thread. She lets out an odd squeak, and I try my best to give her a friendly nod, but she turns tail and runs off instead of saying anything else.

“Don’t take it personally,” Henry informs me, nodding in the direction of her rapid retreat. “Poor thing’s been anxious as hell since she was a baby.”

I turn back to him to offer a generically polite response, but then I catch something strange lingering in the air.

A Greenbriar scent.

It’s weak, almost diluted, but unmistakable.

Frowning, I glance around the restaurant, but there aren’t any familiar faces in here. Our pack is two hundred strong, but I know every member by heart. None of them is here.

Still, I guess there’s a possibility that some distant cousin of the bloodline came through here recently. Or maybe Cal sent a scout ahead of my arrival, since he likes to be an overprotective busybody to his future Alpha.

Turning my attention back to Henry, I notice his gaze flick toward the back corner of The Diner, but before I can question it, he leans back in his seat and lets out a long sigh.

“Let’s talk about it, son,” he begins. “I’ll tell you what happened on our end of things. You tell me what happened on yours. We shake hands and call it a day. How does that sound?”

Easy-peasy. “Sounds good to me.”

“Well, here’s how it went. I talked to Carol and her boy Dan—those are my wolves who breached the border. It seems to me like we’ve had some issues on the western edges of our territory—they got spooked, and ran a little too far for safety.”

I nod slowly. This is the version of the events that I already know. Dan, a young shifter who only just turned fifteen, is the one that Jamie Macleod accidentally roughed up. His mother, Carol, is the one who helped Lara Macleod break up the fight before things could escalate.

That’s not the detail I’m latching on to, though.

“Your western border?” I ask. “You mean Blackburn territory?”

Henry’s face hardens. “Indeed.”

“They’re messing with the territory lines?”

“It’s a new problem. Samson’s been quiet for the past few years, you know. But now I guess he’s back to being a thorn in our side.”

I can’t keep the frown off my face. The Blackburns are the Greenbriar Pack’s primary adversary. We don’t share a border with them thanks to the natural lay of the land, but they’re close enough that the Whiterose Pack has the misfortune of being the buffer between us.

Samson Blackburn, the Alpha, has been a warmonger since he took power a couple of decades ago.

They’re a nasty bunch of shifters, and leadership is determined by anyone who has the guts to challenge the current Alpha to a death match.

In the span of one night, Samson murdered his own father, and then started expanding the pack’s territory with reckless aggression.

We lost quite a few Greenbriars in the conflicts that ensued from that mess, including two elders. The Sinclairs.

I fight the urge to flinch. I really try not to think about that surname nowadays.

“If the Blackburns are rising again, we need to beat them back down before they can inflict too much damage,” I say.

Henry taps his fingers on the table thoughtfully. “I agree, but I’d also like to tread lightly. Your pack has the advantage of not having a shared border with them. Mine often has to strike a balance between diplomacy and strength that can be fairly delicate.”

“With all due respect, I don’t—”

“Furthermore,” Henry interrupts my protest firmly, “I don’t think it’s a secret that my pack is not quite as robust as yours.

We are older, and severely lacking in younglings.

We’re not in the same position as the Greenbriar Pack, which is to say that we can’t afford to strike first and ask questions later. ”

What he’s saying is that, for now, he intends to do nothing. This man, who is at least thirty years my senior and has therefore fought Samson Blackburn firsthand, would rather sit back and wait to see what will happen instead of taking action.

In any other situation, I’d call him a fool. But I’m in his territory, here to smooth over a misunderstanding during which one of my pack injured one of his rare younglings.

I have no choice but to nod diplomatically and say, “I understand.”

“We would, however, greatly appreciate the Greenbriar Pack’s allegiance and support if it becomes essential in the near future.”

Again, if it wouldn’t be the wrong move, I’d roll my eyes.

Henry Whiterose is saying that he wants us Greenbriars to stay out of it up until the moment when they’re desperate for our warriors to sweep in and save the day for them.

If I was the official Greenbriar Alpha, I’d have a few things to say about that sentiment, but my father is still in charge, and I’m here as a princely diplomat.

“Of course,” I tell Henry, doing my best to keep the annoyance out of my voice. “The Greenbriars and the Whiteroses are longtime friends.”

Henry isn’t even looking at me, though. He’s once again shooting a furtive glance toward the back corner of The Diner. His wrinkled brow is knit in confusion, and when he looks back at me, something sparks in his gaze that I can’t figure out.

Suspicion creeps down my spine. As subtly as I can manage, I sweep my eyes over the room once again. I don’t see anything odd, but I do smell that faint Greenbriar aroma mingling at the very fringes of the Whiterose scent that hangs heavy in the air.

Except, the longer I focus on it, the more I’m able to determine that it’s two separate Greenbriar scents. One is tinged with youth and the other is…

The other one is impossibly familiar. It has something special about it—just a hint of springtime lilacs and a touch of spiced cloves.

I would know that scent anywhere, even if it’s been a decade since the last time I was close to it.

But, again, it’s impossible. My Mate is long gone.

There’s no way in hell she’s been here in Whiterose territory this whole time.