“Uh, don’t we need our cars?” I asked.
“Why? The bar is out back.”
Chapter Eighteen
The Southern wolf pack knew how to bring a party to their front door.
We followed a chip path through another stand of oaks in total darkness. After about five minutes of silence, I was about to ask what kind of horror movie Magnolia was taking us into, when a pair of tiki torches appeared ahead. The path opened into a huge clearing.
To our left was a stone building, shaped like a turret, which looked too small to be a house. To our right was a large wood-plank building with a rickety porch wrapping around it and newly replaced wooden steps that stood in bright blonde contrast to the stain of the rest of the building. Above the entrance was a neon orange sign blinking the words The Den.
More neon decorated the windows on either side of the door and also served to obscure my view through the glass.
“You guys have a bar?” I couldn’t wrap my head around the building in front of us.
More buildings were set off in the distance, most dark, one or two with dim lights shining from their windows. It seemed as if Callum, or more likely my Grandfather Elmore, had renovated the old slave quarters into residences for the pack. With Callum’s home being so far from a major metropolitan area, it must have been easier to have the pack stay close rather than wait to have them come to him.
“It’s pretty new. We found the bar in St. Francisville was, um…” Magnolia bit back a grin and tried to look somber, “…unable to meet our needs.”
Translation, drunk wolves kept starting shit and were putting a beating on the poor townie men.
“So, Callum thought it was best to keep you guys under a more watchful eye?”
Magnolia nodded. “Some of the pack have short fuses. Keeping them within range of their king helps to hold their tempers in line. This way they can still have their fun and no one gets hurt.”
“Can we have a bar?” I asked Lucas.
“What would Genevieve think?”
The queen of the were-ocelots, Genevieve Renard, had a bar in New York that was a popular shapeshifter hot spot. The Chameleon Lounge was a lot fancier than The Den, considering it also housed a 5-star quality restaurant. But the idea of our own little Manhattan pub was sort of appealing.
“Shall we go in?” Magnolia asked, apparently uneasy about the new, hungry look on my face. “I’d like to introduce you to the pack before His Majesty joins us.”
“Yes please, Magnolia. Lead the way.” Lucas nodded his head in her direction without bowing it. He couldn’t show weakness to her or be seen to bow before a lesser wolf.
Werewolf politics and customs took a lot of adjustment to get used to. Magnolia wasn’t subservient because she was a woman. Women in packs often held prominent power positions, like Morgan or myself. And just as often men would fall into positions lower than Magnolia’s in the pecking order. Where you stood depended on the power you projected. And your power was determined at birth. There was no way around it. With wolves you would never be able to rise above the position you were born to hold.
I wondered if that was one of the reasons Kellen had decided not to be Awakened. She was spunky and independent, but she wasn’t powerful. As a human she had control of her future. As a wolf she would have been subservient forever, living in the shadow of her brother the king.
Once we were inside the bar, I became aware of just how quiet it had been outdoors. Within the walls of The Den it sounded like three dozen people were talking all at once. Probably because there were. I was amazed by the number of bodies wedged into the room and how hot it made the air. The smell of wolf was overwhelming.
The conversations—all forty thousand of them, from the sound of it—came to an abrupt stop when we followed Magnolia into the room. My first instinct was to duck behind Lucas, wanting to shrink away from the scrutiny of so many lupine stares. I could handle a few werewolves, but this many in one place put the odds well out of my favor. I was good, but I wasn’t one-against-thirty-six good.
“Brothers and sisters,” Magnolia greeted, bowing her head to a few of the obviously higher-ranked pack members. “I would like to present His Majesty, Lucas Rain, King of the Eastern packs, and his consort, Secret McQueen, Princess of our own Southern pack.”
Every time Magnolia said princess I wanted to cringe. I’d barely wrapped my head around the idea of being werewolf royalty in the past year, and here she was expecting these strangers to treat me like I was special. Maybe I was, but I didn’t want a bunch of roughneck-looking shifters bowing in front of me as Mags had earlier. Thanks, but no thanks.
The wolves sat stock-still for a few moments, casting uncertain glances between themselves until a woman in her mid-forties with a silvering ashy bob came and stood before Lucas and me. She bowed in a way she had not the first time we’d met, but her eyes betrayed her real feelings.
“Hello again, Amelia,” I said, giving her a hard stare.
Maybe I had something against women who acted as the third power seat in the werewolf hierarchy. Amelia was Callum’s version of what Morgan was to Lucas. A strong wolf who probably wasn’t quite strong enough or trustworthy enough to make the final jump to the lieutenant position.
Amelia smiled at me in a cold, predatory way that would make Morgan proud if she had seen it. “Your Royal Highness,” she greeted. I didn’t like her tone. Or her face. Or her dress, for that matter.
Perhaps I was being a touch judgmental.
“Always a pleasure.” The words came out sweet, but in my head I was shouting bitch, bitch, bitch. Lucas couldn’t read my mind, but he knew me well enough he didn’t need to. He grimaced and cleared his throat to bring Amelia’s attention back his way.