Pack Law Made Him My Brother, So I Made Him My Mate novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Barn
In a hay barn at the summer fiesta, Lola has her hand down a stranger's jeans when the dinner bell rings, then learns at the toast that he is her stepbrother, and gets into his truck anyway.
I had my hand down the front of a stranger's jeans when the dinner bell started to ring.
He had me against the wall of the hay barn, one palm flat above my head and his mouth open on my throat.
His other hand was under my shirt, and his thumb moved across my nipple through my bra.
I did not take my hand out.
He did not take his away either.
"That was the first bell," I said.
"I know." His voice was rough against my skin. "Let them wait."
I had been in the valley for two hours.
I had stepped off the noon bus with one duffel.
My mother had hugged me in front of a hundred strangers and gone to find her new husband.
I had walked out behind the dance floor to find some shade.
The barn door was open, and he was inside filling a water trough.
He had turned and looked at me, and that was all it took.
My wolf had been asleep since Las Vegas.
She woke up and stared at him.
He crossed the floor, and I did not step back.
Now he stopped.
He lifted his mouth from my throat, and he breathed in slowly at the hollow under my ear.
"No," he said, very quietly.
He did not let go of me.
"No what?" I said.
"Nothing." He pressed his forehead to mine, and I felt him shaking. "What's your name?"
"Lola."
He shut his eyes.
"Of course it is," he said.
I did not know what that meant, and I did not care, because his thumb had started moving again.
I pulled him in by the belt and kissed him.
He made a low sound into my mouth that went straight down through my stomach.
The second bell rang, longer, and a man's voice called across the yard for the family.
He pulled back.
"Go first," he said. "Please. I need a minute."
"You're hard," I said.
"I noticed."
I laughed, fixed my shirt, and walked out into the late sun with my mouth swollen and my legs not quite my own.
The long tables stood under the cottonwoods, set for a hundred and fifty, with red chile and posole and trays of bizcochitos.
My mother was in the blue dress she had bought for her courthouse wedding in March, the one I had never seen on her.
"Mija!" She pulled me to the head table and pressed my hand. "Come meet everyone. This is Amador."
He was a tall man with silver in his mustache and a white hat that he took off to shake my hand.
"Lola," he said. "We have been waiting for you since March."
His eyes were dark brown with a gold ring around the pupil.
I knew those eyes.
I did not let my face move.
Amador raised a glass, and the whole yard went quiet.
"My wife Rocio's daughter came home to us today," he said.
"Welcome, Lola. Now I have a daughter, and a son who is late, as usual."
The barn door opened behind the dance floor.
The stranger walked out buttoning his shirt, with hay on his sleeve.
He had a white scar through his lower lip, and ten minutes ago I had had my tongue on it.
He crossed the yard with every eye in the valley on him, and he did not look at me once.
"Cruz," Amador said. "Come meet your sister."
Cruz took his place at his father's right hand and shook my hand across the table.
His palm was dry, and it did not tremble at all.
"Welcome," he said to the tablecloth.
Amador's glass went higher.
"Two children, one fire," he said. "God bless this house."
Everyone drank.
At the far end, a very old woman in black struck the ground once with her cane, and the noise stopped.
She had one clouded eye, and she looked at me with the other.
"De una lumbre no se tocan," she said. "Those of one fire do not touch."
The whole pack nodded, solemn.
Nobody laughed.
Somebody at the next table said a word I did not know, "corrida," and an old man spat into the dirt.
"What does that mean?" I whispered to my mother.
"An old family rule, mija." She patted my hand and smiled too brightly. "They like their rules."
I looked down the table at my brother.
He was looking at his plate, and a muscle was jumping in his jaw.
I have walked toward a wall of fire for four seasons because a crew boss told me to.
I could eat a bowl of posole.
I ate all of it, and I was not hungry for any of it.
He got up before dessert and crossed the lot to a white pickup with a dog crate in the bed.
I gave it a few minutes.
Then I told my mother I was going to walk off the food, and I walked across the gravel in the dusk.
He was sitting behind the wheel with both hands on it and the engine off.
He did not look at me.
I opened the passenger door, got in, and shut it behind me.
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