“But…” Kiesha began.
A very firm, “No.”
“Shay, if you’re pregnant…”
A surge of supernatural power suddenly swelled in the room, making his skin crawl. It was coming from Shayla. “I said…I don’t want to discuss it.” Her voice came out in a guttural growl, and her eyes flashed to gold and then back to brown. He doubted Shayla was aware of what she was doing.
Shannon obviously felt it too, for she took a cautious step back and pulled Kiesha with her. Alex’s wolf came to attention. New shifters, especially those as unaware of their power as Shay seemed to be, were aggressive, unpredictable, and potentially dangerous.
Kiesha’s mouth opened. Alex cut her off. “Kiesha, leave it alone. She doesn’t want to talk. Stop forcing the issue.”
If his mate continued to push, Shayla’s wolf might see it as a challenge and attack, either to establish or determine its dominance over Kiesha. The vibes he felt coming off Shay indicated that already her wolf was a force to be reckoned with, and Kiesha was still mostly human.
Kiesha turned on him. “I’m not forcing anything. She’s my cousin. We don’t keep secrets from each other.”
“And I’m sure she’ll talk when she’s ready. Right now I don’t think she is.” Alex nodded toward Shay, silently urging Kiesha to note her expression.
The phone rang in the background. Kiesha hesitated, obviously torn. Her gaze bounced from him to Shay to the office, and back to Shay again. Finally she gave in to its urgent prompting and took off for the office den.
“I know about you and Rory,” Shannon said quietly.
“That’s my cue to leave. I’ll go see if Kiesha needs help.” Alex turned down the stove and left the room. Shannon was also an alpha and her mate a vampire. Between the two of them, she was more than capable of handling Shay if her wolf got out of hand.
“What did he tell you?” Shayla didn’t want to discuss this but sensed that unlike Kiesha, Shannon wasn’t going to let it go until she’d said her piece.
Shannon shook her head and took a cautious step forward. “Rory didn’t say anything. I figured it out on my own.”
Shayla felt a little twinge in the region of her heart. Surely that was relief she was feeling and not…disappointment?
“You’re his mate,” Shannon continued.
“No, I’m not. We don’t even like each other,” Shay disputed.
“Rory claimed you,” Shannon insisted.
Shayla’s eyes lost focus as she thought back to that time. “That was just the effect of the blue moon madness. You’re the one who told me how it affected shifters. He’d never have touched me otherwise.”
Shannon disagreed. “It was more than that. You’re his one, his true mate. I know it, but more importantly, Rory knows it.”
“Even if I believed in all this true mate, true love crap you guys keep spouting, it doesn’t apply to me. The whole thing is just a fluke of nature, chemistry. Rory doesn’t want me, not really. I’m too…” She shook her head. “He just wouldn’t,” she finished sadly.
Shannon’s eyes softened, and she gave Shayla a look of understanding. “Shay, I know exactly how you feel. I…” She glanced around furtively. “Let’s go to your room. There’s a few things you need to know, and I don’t want to chance us being interrupted.” Or overheard was left unsaid.
Shayla turned and led the way to the guest bedroom, situated off the living room. Once they were both inside, she shut the door. Then, as an afterthought, locked it. “You were saying?”
Shannon leaned against the dresser, watching her carefully. “I know what it’s like to be different.”
Shayla snorted. “Of course you do. You’re a shape-shifter.”
Shannon shook her head violently. “No. That’s not what I mean. Even among my own kind, I’m an anomaly.”
Interested, Shayla crossed to the bed and sat, drawing up her leg to prop her chin on her knee. “In what way?”
“In wolf packs, strength and cunning are everything. Strength determines your ranking in the pack and cunning your ability to maintain it. So being strong is a good thing, unless you’re a female.”
“They want the females to be weak?” Shayla asked, startled. This contradicted everything she knew of wolves.
“No, that’s not what I mean. They admire strength in females too—within reason. A strong female means strong cubs. What they don’t like are females that are abnormally strong, like me. I’m as strong as Rory, which meant not only was I the alpha-fem—the strongest female—but I was also stronger than every other male in our pack.”
Shay bit her bottom lip before stating, “I don’t see what the problem is. You just said strong is good.”
The side of Shannon’s mouth quirked up in a wry grin. “How do you feel about weak men? You know, men you can run all over.”
Shayla winced. “I see what you mean. If a man is weaker than me, I can’t respect him. I’ll walk all over him, do whatever I want to do and dare him to take exception to it.”
“Exactly,” Shannon said, grinning hugely. “With shifters, it’s even more important that the male be stronger than the female, or at least equal to her in power.”
“Why is that?”
Shannon shrugged. “If the wolf can’t respect its mate, it has a nasty habit of killing them.”
“Well, hell! That’s mighty efficient of it,” Shayla said drily.
“What it is, is a huge pain in the ass,” Shannon corrected. “Until Nikolai, I didn’t think I’d ever find a man that could handle my wolf, and I didn’t want some male’s death on my conscience.”
Shayla sighed and rubbed her weary eyes. Man was she tired. “As happy as I am for you and Nik, what does this have to do with me and your brother?”
“I know you, Shay. The hair, clothes, and abrasive manner? That’s just camouflage to hide what I’m guessing is an extremely high IQ. Don’t you see? The very thing that makes you stick out like a sore thumb among humans is highly prized among wolves. Your intelligence and strength are what Rory needs. He’s alpha. That means not only is he strong, but he’s smart as well. He has to be to lead the pack. You’re perfect for him, his equal. He couldn’t have found a better match if he’d gone looking for one,” Shannon said earnestly.
Shayla was shaking her head by the time Shannon finished her little speech. “Perfect? I don’t think so. Maybe that vampire of yours has addled your brains. Don’t you remember all the fighting we did? Rory and I couldn’t even be in the same room with each other without going for each other’s throats.”
Shannon laughed softly. “That’s because you’re too much alike, which only proves my point.”
When she continued shaking her head, Shannon came and sat beside her. “Look, I’m going to tell you some things that Rory and I rarely discuss with others. At one time my mother might have been strong, but loving my father made her weak. My father, Magnus, only mated her because she was the first female to conceive from his seed, but she wasn’t his mate and she knew it. They both did, and we all suffered for it. My mother, because she loved the bastard dearly, even knowing he despised her. Rory, because my father was determined to beat any hint of supposed weakness out of him. I was basically ignored, because I was a female and therefore beneath his notice.”
“Your father was abusive?” Shayla tried to keep the distaste from her voice. Her parents were both so loving she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around the horror Rory and his family must have lived with on a daily basis.
“Verbally and emotionally, but not physically or sexually, thank God—with me at least. It didn’t help that he was also the pack’s alpha, so there was no interference from the others. Dad called it ‘toughening us up.’ Ma was too busy trying to please him to stand up to him and was no protection for us at all. Rory protected us as best he could, mostly by taking the brunt of his ire whenever possible.”