Page 7 of Wolf’s Fated Bride

I wave back just as Ash Fireborn looks at me and raises an eyebrow.

I’m not waving at you! I’m not sure if I’ll ever forgive myself for flirting with him.

“He’s handsome,” my mother says, offering me a glass of red wine.

I accept and drink, then put down the empty glass. “I suppose. Those red eyes are unnerving.”

“He can’t help it. There’s a fire burning inside him.”

“Do you think that’s true?”

“Mmhm,” she says between sips. “Should be put out, if you ask me.”

“Thankfully, nobody asked.” My mother has been against this marriage since she first heard of it. She’s sequestered herself in a tower and protested with starvation. It took my brother babysitting her for a month to convince her to eat. We thought we’d lose her.

The younger wolf overhears her and departs instantly.

Mother gives me the stink eye. “Did your father send you to chase away my suitors?”

“Father doesn’t care, remember?”

Mother huffs out a breath. “He should. I’m his wife.”

“We’ve gone over this, Mother. You’re making a fool of him, and when you do that, he ignores you.”

“You’re wrong. When I flirt with other men in public and in front of your father, it appears as if he sanctioned it, which in turn gives him more power, not less.”

“I’m sure he’d rather not have you do that.”

“Then maybe he can say that himself instead of ignoring me!”

“We’re at a gathering of werewolves with hyperdeveloped hearing,” I remind her.

She pours another glass of wine, drinks it, and chases it with beer. I’m in for it tonight.

An ice-cold breeze drifts across the room and raises my hackles. What in the world… Others must’ve felt it too, because conversations fade. It takes me a moment to conclude that the air elemental swept the room.

I don’t know him, but he’s here because we invited him. It’s unnerving, a casual reminder of the power that could take our breath away.

The hall falls completely silent.

My father stands and slams the mug on the table. Beer sloshes out. “Stormcrest werewolves!”

We answer in kind.

“We welcome the award-winning Peacebroker, Nestor Mondini, from the Human Alliance.” We clap for the tall, brown-haired man who stands and dips his head. He wears a green scarf over a white two-piece uniform. Peacebrokers are few and far between, and usually, they’ve got some werewolf ancestry.

“We also welcome the Alpha of the Skyrender pack, Blade Skyrender.”

Ah, there he is. The air elemental. We boo the clean-shaven, dark-haired man, whose jaw reshapes from man to wolf right in front of our eyes so that when he smiles, he shows us his werewolf teeth. Murmurs rise all around.

“Mom, have you seen such a thing before?”

“No,” she says.

“How can he do that?”

“Control over his shift. I’ll ask grandma.”