He took a step toward her and this time she bristled, drawing the small pistol she kept holstered under her shirt. “I know you’re a Prime, but you will bleed like anyone else. And if you dare reach for me, it will be the last thing you do. I’m one of the best shots in the pack. At this distance, no way will I miss.”
Apparently realizing she was serious, he stopped, although he didn’t retreat. “Why do you have to be a bitch about this? What does he have that I don’t?”
She sadly shook her head. “Turn and walk away, right now, and no one will ever hear about this incident. Or I can go call my father, and by nightfall you’ll have trouble finding a shadowy corner of this country remote enough to keep you hidden from him. And from my mate. Our pack took you in and welcomed you as one of us. You don’t repay that kindness by being an asshole. Had you grown up in a pack, someone would have scruffed you as a pup and taught you to respect your place as well as to respect claimed mates.”
“I am a Prime! I deserve respect by default! I should be Head Enforcer by now and not stuck grading dirt roads and chopping up fallen branches and emptying garbage cans!”
“You are an asshole, which is why they refuse to make you an Enforcer. You want an example of a Prime? Look to Badger, to Charlie, to my father, and others. A Prime Alpha deserving of that status doesn’t throw their weight around. They earn respect by working for it, not by being a jackass. They work their way up to prove they’re worthy of that respect. If you don’t like the way things are run in the Targhee Pack, then by all means leave and go start your own. No one’s stopping you. My father would probably help you out financially if you did.”
She motioned with the gun, not taking her focus off him. “There are plenty of eligible women in this pack, and there will be even more at the Muster as people travel in from all over the country. Start dating. You’ve had a creepy fixation on me for a couple of years, and don’t think I don’t know that. It’s well past time for you to move on. Charlie Bleacke will be the next Pack Alpha, once my father decides to retire. And if you want to stay in this pack, you’d damned well better remember your place.”
He finally wheeled around and stalked off. Only once he was far enough away that she knew he couldn’t sneak up on her again did she holster the pistol. Fortunately, no one had seen that, and her tote bag had concealed her actions.
Now the shakes hit. She walked over to a nearby bench to sit.
She had no doubts that if he’d gotten his hands on her, he would have tried to take her with his Prime powers. Not that it would have accomplished anything good, and would have earned him a death sentence had she not clawed his throat out first.
But this…
This was beyond the pale.
And the longer she thought about it…
Yeah. He needs to go.
She was through trying to be nice. She shouldn’t have to go out of her way to avoid him just because he had a problem taking no for an answer. As a daughter of the Pack Alpha, she and her sisters had been raised to be gracious to their fellow packmates and not be bitches to them. To set a good example. To foster unity and a feeling of extended family, even if someone wasn’t related by blood.
But a guy like Endquist made that nearly impossible.
After the Muster, if he hadn’t pinged on a mate of his own, she’d ask her father to send him away. And that would be the perfect excuse—that he needed to go find a mate elsewhere because he obviously wasn’t locating one among their eligible packmates. She didn’t want to cause trouble for him so he couldn’t integrate into another pack, but if he was still single after the Muster, he needed to leave.
Immediately.
And thank the Goddess her father and Badger had never appointed the guy to the Enforcer team!
Finally, once her shakes were under control, she stood and resumed her trek, making sure to pay better attention. She even took a roundabout way back to her dorm in case he was watching her, but she didn’t sense him.
Hopefully that’s the end of that.
Chapter Four
Aisling - Present
Two Years Earlier
This isn’t my best day.
Aisling Walsh lay stretched across the cold metal bench in the holding cell with her jacket wadded up under her head as a pillow. It wasn’t comfortable by any stretch of the imagination.
She’d experienced worse.
When in the Army, for starters.
But that wasn’t anything she wanted to think about now.
Elsewhere in the station, she heard noises as other prisoners moved around, farted, screamed, puked, pissed, and snored. She now had this cell to herself. There’d been a prostitute occupying it when Aisling had been unceremoniously tossed in here six hours earlier, but that woman bailed out about an hour or so past.
Aisling had called her little brother, Sean, an hour after she’d been pinched, and he said he’d come bail her out. He was the only one of her brothers over here in Britain.
