Mated to My Step-brother and His Best Friend novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Moon Supper
At her mother's Moon Supper, Dovie's new stepbrother names her as the thief who robbed him, so she confesses to being a silver-handler and puts the pack's own stamped bullets on the table, and two men claim her as their mate.
The last time I saw my stepbrother, he was bleeding silver onto my kitchen floor.
I didn't know he was my stepbrother then.
I didn't even know his name.
I only knew his voice, growling "finish it" while his hand crushed my wrist.
Now he was walking into his father's Moon Supper, and I was sitting in the chair across from his.
Forty wolves sat at the long table in the Lovett meeting hall.
Candles. Venison. Silver-free forks, because this was a pack house.
My mother had pressed my hand under the tablecloth when the doors opened.
"That's Deacon," she whispered. "He's always late. Be nice, Dovie."
I hadn't seen her in five years.
I hadn't come for her.
I'd come because the Alpha meant to ride on my town at the Hunter's Moon, and she'd called and said family might change his mind.
Five minutes earlier I'd been trying.
"Graylick has two hundred people in it," I'd said down the table. "Half of them are human. Most of them are old."
The Alpha's brother had smiled at me over his wine.
Arlis Lovett. Grey moustache, hunting vest, a smell of gun oil and mint.
"Graylick is thieves, addicts and liars," he'd said. "It's a rogue den with a post office."
A few wolves had laughed.
My mother had looked at her plate.
Then the doors opened, and I stopped talking.
He was taller than I remembered.
Eight months ago he'd been on my floor, half-shifted, grey eyes rolled back, buckshot in his ribs.
Tonight he wore a dark suit, his hair cut short, carrying himself with cold, unbroken authority.
The man behind him had white hair pushed back off his face.
I knew that hair too.
I'd held it out of his eyes while I pulled eleven pellets out of his shoulder.
He'd been the funny one.
Even dying, he'd been the funny one.
My hands went cold.
I could stand up and walk out.
I could be in my truck before the soup.
I stayed where I was.
Deacon sat down across from me without looking at me.
The white-haired man dropped into a chair halfway down the table and reached for the bread.
"Son," the Alpha said. "Meet your stepsister. Sherry's girl, Dovie. Down from Graylick."
Deacon lifted his eyes.
Nothing happened in his face.
He didn't know me.
Wolves know you by scent, and that night he'd been too full of silver to smell his own blood.
"Graylick," he said.
"That's right," I said.
His fork stopped.
I watched it happen.
The voice did what the face couldn't.
He set the fork down very carefully.
"Say something else," he said.
"Pass the salt."
He stood up.
His chair scraped back across the boards, and every wolf at the table went quiet.
"This is her," he said.
"Deacon," his father said.
"Eight months ago, in that town, this woman robbed me." He didn't raise his voice. He didn't have to. "She took the Alpha's ring off my hand while I was unconscious."
My mother made a small sound.
Arlis set down his glass.
"There it is," he said softly. "Graylick."
Halfway down the table, the white-haired man had stopped chewing.
He looked at me.
Then he looked at the ceiling.
"Oh, hell," he said. "Diner girl."
Every head turned to him.
"Bowie?" the Alpha said.
"She's the one who patched us up," Bowie said. "I told you somebody patched us up."
"You told me a rogue doctor," Deacon said.
"I was full of buckshot. I was being generous."
Nobody laughed.
I stood up.
My knees were shaking, so I put my fists on the table.
"I took five thousand dollars out of your wallet," I said to Deacon. "You had nine. Count it."
"Dovie," my mother whispered.
"That was my fee. He agreed to it." I pointed at Bowie. "You agreed to it."
"I did," Bowie said. "I really did."
"I never touched your ring."
Deacon's jaw worked.
"A fee for what?" he said. "What does a girl in a diner charge five thousand dollars for?"
There it was.
I knew what the Silver Law said.
Every rogue in Graylick knew it.
A wolf who can pull silver out can push it in, so a handler doesn't get a trial.
If I lied, the ring stayed stolen, and the pack rode on my town for it.
If I told the truth, they could take me out back.
I looked at my mother.
She was shaking her head, very small, over and over.
"I pulled the silver out of you," I said. "Out of both of you. With my hands."
The silence went all the way down the table.
Somebody's knife hit a plate.
"A handler," Arlis said. "At my brother's table."
"Twenty-three pellets," I said. "Every single one."
I reached into my bag.
Deacon moved, fast, like he thought I had a weapon.
I set a canning jar on the white tablecloth instead.
Black pellets, crusted with old blood, rattled against the glass.
"I kept them," I said. "As my wages. I figured nobody would pay me twice."
I unscrewed the lid and tipped the jar.
Pellets rolled across the cloth, between the candles, toward the Alpha's plate.
He picked one up.
He turned it to the light.
I saw him read the tiny letters punched into the base. I'd read them a hundred times.
LO.
"That's your outfitters' stamp, isn't it?" I said. "Lovett Outfitters."
The Alpha didn't answer.
He was looking at his brother.
"Your son didn't get hit by Graylick," I said. "Somebody at this table loaded those shells."
Arlis smiled, but the mint smell came off him sharp.
"She's a handler, Abner. She can stamp anything she likes." He lifted a hand. "Take her out."
Two big wolves rose from the wall.
Deacon got to me first.
He came around the table in a rush and caught my arm above the elbow to haul me out himself.
His skin touched mine.
Heat went through me.
My knees went.
His hand locked tight, and I felt him feel it too.
He stared down at me.
His grey eyes had gone gold all the way through.
I was twenty-four years old and I had never shifted, and something inside me sat up for the first time in my life.
Down the table, a chair crashed over backwards.
Bowie was on his feet.
His eyes were gold too.
He was looking at me.
My mother had both hands over her mouth.
The Alpha had half risen from his chair.
And the two men I'd pulled out of the dark, my thirty-one-year-old stepbrother and his best friend, said the same word at the same time.
"Mine."
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