Anyway, we were a family and we were a pack, and we had nobody but each other. All three of us would have done anything for each other.
When I was fifteen, Mom got sick. At first she was just a little tired and under the weather, but it didn’t go away. It didn’t seem serious, so it was a while before she got around to seeing a doctor. Actually, Dad dragged her to one. They ran some tests, then asked her to come back in person to get the results. I was so young, I didn’t realize what that meant. But when they came back home, I knew just from seeing their faces, even before they sat me down and told me she’d been given four months to live.
I couldn’t believe it. I said there had to be some way to save her.
It turned out that there was. Mom and Dad went from doctor to doctor, until they found one who knew about a treatment that maybe could cure her. It wasn’t guaranteed, but at least it would give her a chance. But it was experimental and ridiculously fucking expensive, and insurance wouldn’t cover it. There was no way we could even begin to pay for it.
But the CEO of the steel mill was a billionaire. He could’ve saved Mom out of his pocket change. So Dad swallowed his pride, went to that asshole’s office, and asked him if he’d give him a loan as an advance on future wages.
That fucker listened to his whole story, asking questions and pretending like he cared, and then he said, “Seems like you’re going to be missing a lot of work, with a sick wife and a young son to care for. I’m not a charity, and I didn’t get to be where I am by keeping on dead weight.”
And then he fired Dad.
You think I have a temper — Dad had one too. He told me later it was all he could do to stop himself from turning into a wolf and ripping out that fucking rich asshole’s throat, right there in the office. The only thing that stopped him was that he’d have gone to jail, and that would’ve left Mom and me alone.
So unless Dad could raise the money for her treatment himself, Mom was going to die. By then she was way too sick to do anything herself, and her friends didn’t have any more money than we did. Dad had been exiled from his pack, and they sure as hell weren’t going to help him save the woman who was the reason they’d thrown him out.
But there were other packs. There was one right in Santa Martina, but Dad had always kept away from it because it was a gang, and he was an honest working man. But he was desperate. So he went to the alpha and asked for help in the name of shifters’ honor.
The alpha was a guy named Price. He was a mean bastard and he told Dad to fuck off.
That was Price’s mistake. Like I said, I got my temper from my father.
Packs have laws about who gets to be alpha, but different packs have different ones. In Dad’s old pack, they thought the person with the most life experience would make the best leader. So the alpha was the oldest wolf who was still strong. When that alpha died or got too frail, the next-oldest wolf who qualified took their place. There wasn’t any fighting.
But Price’s pack was a bunch of gangsters, with the strongest wolf as alpha. Their law was that anyone could challenge the alpha. Then the alpha had a choice. They could accept the challenge and fight, but it had to be to the death. Or they could step down without a duel and give up their position to the challenger.
Dad challenged Price. And then, so Price could see exactly what he’d be fighting, Dad shifted in front of him.
Price was a vicious fighter, but what he was best at was pickpocketing. He could steal the bullets out of your gun, then reload it and shoot you with it before you even realized he was there. A bit like a cut-rate Shane, though Shane takes not being noticed to a whole new level.
Dad’s wolf was fucking huge. Strong, too. He’d never been in a real fight before, but he was furious and he scared Price — scared him so much that he stepped down instead of risking Dad tearing out his throat.
Next thing Dad knew, he was the alpha of a pack of gangster wolves. Price included. Dad could’ve kicked him out, but he didn’t seem all that much worse than the rest of that crowd, and Dad knew what it felt like to be exiled from your pack. So Price stayed.
And that was Dad’s mistake.
Dad sat down with the gang and worked out a plan to rob the CEO. It was pretty complicated and took a while to plan, then set up, then carry out. But they did it. Got away clean with a nice chunk of his money. Dad gave half of it to the pack and the other half to Mom’s doctors. He’d gotten what he wanted, so he was planning on staying alpha just long enough to make sure he could pay for Mom’s treatments. Once that was over, he meant to step down.
But it was too late. While Dad was going to the CEO, then to Price, then planning a heist, Mom was getting sicker and sicker. She got the treatment. But about a month into it, she died.
Her doctor said if they’d started earlier, like if that fucking CEO had given Dad that loan when he’d asked, maybe she would have made it.
The day after Mom died, the CEO was found in an alley. The news said he’d been mauled to death by an animal, maybe a runaway pit bull.
I asked Dad flat out if he’d done it. I told him I hoped he had and I was only sorry he hadn’t told me, so I could’ve helped.
I’ll never forget his expression. It was how he’d looked when we got the news about Mom. Like his whole world had collapsed under his feet. I wished I hadn’t said a word, but I couldn’t take it back.
Dad said, “It didn’t bring your mother back. Don’t ever kill anyone, Nick. You control your wolf. Your wolf shouldn’t control you.”
I didn’t understand what he meant about my wolf, and I still thought he’d done the right thing. But he looked so sad that I told him I got it.
So Dad was left with no mate, no job, a gang he’d never wanted, and me. Like I said, wolves need a pack. Two is too small, and Mom was gone. The gangsters were all we had. Looking back, I think he kind of snapped after Mom died. I think we both did. We were halfway out of our minds with grief. So Dad stayed on as alpha, and I dropped out of school and joined the pack.
The pack got a lot less violent with Dad in charge. But it was still a gang. It just switched from mugging anyone they caught alone and beating them up if they didn’t cooperate to stealing from rich people without hurting them physically.
Dad tried to keep me out of trouble and not let me help out with any crimes, but I wasn’t that easy to control, I was around all the time, and I wanted to be in on the action. I liked hanging out with the other wolves and learning what they knew, like how to fight and hotwire cars and break into buildings. Eventually Dad started letting me do little things like carry messages, and from then on, it was a slippery slope. By the time I was seventeen, I was a full member of the gang.