Page 28 of A Pack of Lies and a Big Bad Wolf

I mutter something about how I don’t think there’s anything on his body that’s a virgin. He grins. Then the grin fades. “But why is she always eating?”

“She stress-eats, Kieran."

He frowns, cocking his head and giving me a puzzled look. "She does?"

"Hasn’t she always done that? She told me she did. I just assumed it was her thing."

"Huh." He chews his lower lip. "What would she be stressed about?"

"I don't know. Maybe she has a brother who drives her crazy." I give him a pointed look.

He almost smiles. Then his phone buzzes in his pocket and he glances at it and holds it out to me.

"It's yours. Your old number forwarded."

I take the phone. The screen says UNKNOWN CALLER, which in my experience means one of two things: a car warranty scam or someone I actively don't want to hear from. I answer it anyway, because apparently I haven't learned.

"Olivia."

The voice makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I haven't heard it in four years, and my body remembers it before my brain catches up – the tension roiling in my gut. The defensiveness, the fear for my brother.

"Hello, father.”

Kieran’s eyes go bright and feral. His lip curls back. He knows how badly my parents treated Stephen and me.

"I heard your brother's found his wolf, and they think he’ll be able to shift soon. About damn time," my father growls. No preamble, no how-are-you, no acknowledgment that the last time we spoke he told me I was an idiot to throw my life away for a genetic failure.

“And? Are you planning on sending him a cake?”

“Watch how you talk to me!” he barks, and Kieran lets out a snarl and his fangs descend. “One of my people told me Stephen's been seen training at Shadowpine, which means somebody over there has confirmed it. If the boy has a wolf, he belongs with his pack. His real pack. He was born into our territory, and if he's able to shift, he comes home and fulfills his obligations."

"His obligations?”

"He's my son. He was born under my authority. If he has an active wolf, pack law says he returns to his pack of origin and serves. That's not a request, Olivia. I'll file the formal claim with the inter-pack council if I have to."

A chill rushes through my veins. "You drove him to the side of a highway when he was fourteen and left him next to a gas station. You don't get to call that fatherhood, and you don't get to claim him back because he might finally be useful to you."

"The law is the law. You have a week."

The line goes dead.

I stand in the library holding the phone, and the herbal is drying on the table and the bone folder is resting where I left it, and the sun is still coming through the window, and everything looks exactly the same as it did two minutes ago.

But my brother…we have no legal defense against this. My goofy, silly, brother who is finally coming out of his shell, finally walking without his shoulders hunched…forced to cower again under my angry father’s harshness. Because Stephen will never be strong enough, mean enough, Alpha enough, for my father.

Kieran crosses the room, his eyes blazing.

"He can't take Stephen," Kieran says. "The pack-of-origin claim doesn't apply."

I gulp a panicked breath of air. “You heard what he said. Born under his authority, pack law—”

"Olivia." He says my name level and certain. "Your father has no claim, because he's not Stephen's biological father."

The room goes very quiet. I can hear the panicked thundering of my own heart.

“Excuse you?”

"Stephen's biological father was human," he says. "That's why the wolf is faint. It only came through your mother's line, diluted by half. Your father's pack-of-origin claim requires a blood connection, and he doesn't have one. He has no standing."