Reagan considers herself to be a fair and just daughter of Emma Austen, so when she's showed the dirty underside of werewolf communities, it's difficult to wrap her mind around it. Stray alpha wolves start to cause havoc around her father's town in...
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Dad introduced me to all the geezers at Brickley and I shook so many wrinkly hands I felt like I was being slowly consumed by sacks of flesh. I'd seen them all go in and out of the conference room once before, but now I was actually face-to-face with their judgmental appearances. Most turned their noses up to me and didn't say anything beyond, "Nice to meet you, Ms. Barretto." That wasn't even my last name, but it wasn't like I was going to correct them.
I sat beside Dad at the head of the table while they discussed this matter and that—apparently it was a weekly thing, but given the current state of the "rogues", a lot of the geezers were overly panicked and out of their minds. There had to be no more than three other blokes who weren't over the age of fifty, and that included Dad's beta Nichols.
Nichols was his last name—Henry Nichols—but he was apparently bitter about his first name, so Dad reminded me every time to call him Nichols. The man was a heavy-built tower topped with greying black hair and the facial structure of a greek statue. Straight nose, square jaw, and full lips and cheeks.
He sat on Dad's other side, but passed me notes from his sketchpad that ranged from legitimate explanations of what was going on, and caricatures of the elders. Evidently, he'd been set on a career in animation in hopes of transitioning out of the pack, but after Dad's "plans" of marrying Mom fell through, he was happy to take up position as Beta. I felt kind of bad for him—he was an excellent artist.
"The fjord national parks nearly took out one of the rogues—the sighting caused the troopers to go into a panic. They have watches now on the trails and all of the tour guides are required to carry firearms after the rogue took down a full-sized grizzly," someone said from down the table, lowering a sheet of paper and looking up past the watchful eyes of the blokes around.
"A full-sized grizzly. The cubs were slaughtered as well—they'd been tracking the bear cubs since they were born and when they turned up dead along with the mother... It's been gathering too much attention and people are starting to become more aware of our own people out on their night runs. Just last night there was a reported sighting in the north—"
"Those goddamn Sasquatch skeptics will be up our asses before ya know it," another fella said, and it took everything in me not to burst out in giggles.
Dad just shook his head, lips pursed. "We aren't Sasquatches, Ron."
"Well they don't know that!" The fella threw his arms up in exasperation, those massive eyes thrown wide. He was the sort of elderly man who quivered whether or not he was agitated. "That journalist a few years back—we had to shut down runs for an entire two weeks while that guy was here. The only reason he left was because he came down with the sickness—be lucky it was a man, Graham! As soon as a female journalist starts digging her nose around our business, she won't ever leave and our men will get anxious, not being able to run for a goddamn second."
