Page 76 of The Wolfing Hour

As if the universe had taken his words as a hint, Ronan’s cell rang. It lay on the coffee table, face down, but we both knew who was calling, because Ronan had given his father a distinct ringtone. A sound effect.

Rattling chains.

He picked up the phone, put it on speaker.

“Yeah?”

Floyd’s gravelly voice filled the room like fast-acting poison. “Pack convocation. Usual day, time, place. Submit to me before the pack or she dies.”

Chapter

Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

“When’s the convocation?” Ida asked.

“Wednesday, just before midnight,” I said.

She ticked the days off on her fingers. “Counting today, that’s only six days away. Timeline like that can’t be good.”

My bestie was coming in strong with the understatements tonight. She, Fennel, Cecil, Autry, Gladys, Trini Alvarado, and I were on Gladys’s front porch drinking water, wine, and tea and commiserating. Cecil chilled on the arm of Gladys’s wicker chair, Autry snoozed on Trini’s lap, and Ida and I sat side by side on a small wicker loveseat. She’d left Mandrake Meredith at home. Guess she didn’t want to risk her screaming at me again.

Fennel lapped water from a stainless-steel bowl on the porch. He used to only accept water from a Limoges teacup in the garden room, but park tenants had started leaving bowls out forhim on their porches, some with crushed ice, and he was less finicky about the container these days.

“MEOW.”

“Well, I know,” Ida said, glaring at the cat. “I’m just filling the empty air with an observation. Don’t bite my head off.”

Like me, Ida had grown close enough to Fennel to understand some of his meows. It wasn’t a direct feline-to-English situation, but he was excellent at adding in contextual tail flicks and ear bends to get his idea across.

“It’s okay.” I slid my arm around her shoulders and hugged her. “I don’t know how to react, either. We’re all on the edge.”

“Do you really think he’d kill his own daughter just to thwart his son?” Trini’s slim fingers danced over Autry’s furry head.

Gladys, Ida, and I all replied, “Yes.”

“He’s what some call an ‘old school alpha.’ One of those macho man types that got away with a lot of bullshit because we tended to blame women for men’s bad behavior back in the day. Women even did it to each other. Internalized misogyny and all that garbage.” Gladys shook her head.

“Some women still do that,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, they’re called ‘pick-mes’ on the internet,” Ida said, once again way ahead of me on the social media front.

“Well, Alpha Pallás would do it because pack alphas like him don’t value women. They think our only uses are as currency and to make more wolves,” Gladys grumbled. “I was engaged to a wolf like that forty-two years ago. He threw a fit when I told him I wasn’t taking his name, but I wasn’t giving up my identity for anyone. We broke up when I wouldn’t change my mind, and he’s been making some other woman miserable for four decades now.”

“Bunch of BS, if you ask me,” Trini said. “And typical.”

I knew very little about Trini’s late husband, but Beau once told me the day they’d stuck his uncle’s corpse in the dirt was the first moment of peace she’d had in thirty-eight years.

“Not typical for Ronan,” I said.

“No,” Trini shook her head. “Not Ronan. Or my sobrino Beau.”

“There are lots of good ones out there,” Ida said, “but Floyd isn’t one of them.”

“Speaking of, whereisRonan? The pub?” Trini asked.

“No, he shut the business down for now. He’s called on every shifter he trusts to hunt for Rory,” I said. “He’s out there, too, trying to catch her scent.”