Revenge isn’t a dish best served cold, dear Rudolph, but a medicine best taken ASAP.
I hadn’t heard from Rudolph in a week, and I neither cared nor expected him to contact me. Why would he have? Our exchanges, as exciting and annoying as they were, were nothing more than unnecessary distractions.
Plus, I would never meet the brute in real life.
Tiziano had informed me that the forbidden website would take some time for approval. Not that Rudolph could guess I was the perpetrator. Heaps of people must have hated him, considering the extreme quantities of rudeness and barbarity that he produced.
Besides, I was too busy feeling slightly sad and down in the dumps, like I was missing something important, to be concerned about him. My need for sweets grew proportionally, and the discomfort in my chest continued, sometimes as painful as a swarm of wasps stinging my heart. Since I was my own doctor, I decided that the reason was because I was so stressed by my massive daily workload, between studying, volunteering, and classes.
My solution was to take a day off and go on a date.
“Hey, Dad!” I greeted the big man, who had to bend almost forty-five degrees to kiss my cheek. It was like looking at a male version of myself, only three times larger, a little older, and with pack tattoos of his lineage—full constellations of the night sky from the day he was born—covering his arms and legs. Yet, too many people thought that Richard, Alpha of Comet, was just my older brother rather than my dad.
As he held me in his tattooed arms, squeezing some of my gloomy mood out, I felt at home.
While it was obvious he was overjoyed to spend a full day with me, proven by his lung-cutting hug, he kept scratching his arms and huffing. There was restlessness there.
I hid a smile.
“Where’s Mom?” I asked nonchalantly.
The deepening furrows in his forehead proved my theory correct: It was Mom.
“She and Andrew went back to Inverness,” he grunted, looking away.
“Oh? I didn’t know!” I rummaged through the back of my mind, trying to remember if Mom had told me.
“Yeah, Giulia’s third or fourth child.” He scratched his neck. “I forget the number, but it’s shifting, and obviously your mother has to be there.” He rolled his eyes as he spoke.
I laughed at that semi-childish expression. My father was a mighty Alpha, respected and feared, terribly intelligent and competitive. However, when it came to his mate, he was a teenager all over again. Often, in the past, I’d had to step in and pacify my fiery parents.
“How about Uncle Andrew? Why did he have to go too?”
Mother and her twin, my closest uncle, were physically inseparable, so much so that he moved to the United States to be with her. That was one of the several conditions Mother had demanded before leaving her pack in Scotland to move with my father.
“You know how those two are. He has to be with her all the fuck—” He glanced at me. “Allthe time.”
“Dad! You aren’t jealous of Uncle Andrew, are you?”
“Who,me?” Hetsked. “Of course not!”
“Don’ttskme! Why didn’t you go with them if you miss Mom so much?”
I knew how antsy he got being separated from his mate.
Unlike him, my mom could stand the separation. In fact, she did it mostly to bother him, aware he couldn’t spend a day without her. I shook my head at her evilness.
“The Highlan—I mean, your brother plays next week. I can’t miss one of his games.” He pursed his lips. I knew more would come. “And…your mom didn’t want me to go with her.”
I couldn’t contain my laughter at his pout, but I understood why Mom didn’t want him around in her native land. Dad would behave all ‘Alpha mate,’ ridiculously possessive and unnecessarily protective. Coming from a small town, Mom knew everyone, and everyone knew her—and as much as Mother loved Father deeply, the lady didn’t have enough time in Scotland to take care of a growling husband.
But Dad was a giant teddy bear. Patience wasn’t his strongest suit, but in my entire life, he’d only ever raised his voice at me once—when I was eight and decided to liberate fifty-four cows from the pack field. The pack’sgrazingfield. They rewarded my kindness by redecorating the territory in cow poop and blocking the nearby highway. Some were even stolen or killed. It was a disaster.
“Bloody hell, Yvaine!”he had yelled. Three words, one shocked silence, and then Dad had just sighed, took my tiny hand, and led me to the sheep pen to see the newborn lambs.
“Dad, how about going to Luigi’s for dinner? Just you and me?” I decided to change the subject. It was our all-time favorite restaurant, and the owner was both a friend of my dad’s and a former player of our wereball team.
“Of course, honeybee!” Dad always claimed that Mom and I were the precious jewels of his life. “How about going for a run first? I bet you missed it this week.”
