Page 14 of Ice Wolf
“They’re just jealous,” Pops said. He’d been my biggest supporter over the years. He’d also been the man who never took no for an answer. Like any father, he wanted his children to succeed, but he’d always taken it one step further.
“Michael thinks he can have this mess under control fairly quickly,” my father said as he turned away from the bar with two drinks in his hands. “All you need to do is keep doing what you’ve been doing. Winning. The fifteen minutes of video garbage will go away, the tarnished star player returning in all his glory.”
“And just how is Michael going to do that?” I asked as I took a drink from his hand.
He sat down in the chair opposite me, doing so in a way that had always made me smile. Like a king taking his throne.
“Everyone has a few dirty little secrets, Saint. You know that better than anyone.”
His words made me cringe all over again. “I don’t care what happens to the asshole who accosted the woman, but the barowner and the man who shot the video shouldn’t have their world dragged through the mud.”
“One day you’ll learn you need to fight fire with fire. Playing dirty is a way of business.”
And my father should know. He was perhaps the most ruthless businessman I knew. Extreme wealth allowed him complete privacy from prying eyes. Meanwhile, both my brother and I had chosen the limelight. Stardom in the world of hockey.
“Just keep your nose clean and you won’t need to do anything else. This will all be over in a matter of days. If the situation continues, Michael will be ready with lawsuits.”
Now we were going to sue people for telling the truth.
“What if it isn’t?” I took a sip of my drink, hoping the liquor would cool the anger. Even being on the ice for several hours had done little more than keep the rage festering.
“What’s that supposed to mean, son?”
“I came close to shifting earlier today, Dad. A second time in days. That hasn’t happened since I was twelve and finally realized girls were cool.” I laughed at the memory. I’d been raging hormones and little else, challenging every other young pack member to every contest there was.
I thought my father’s reaction would be completely different. When he sat back, swirling the drink in his glass while he stared at me, I had a bad feeling that what he was about to tell me would rock my world even more than before.
I’d been right.
“That’s because you need a mate, Saint.”
“A mate? Now? Just out of the blue?”
“That’s the way it happens. There’s no rhyme or reason to the timing, at least not that I’ve seen over the past few generations. There simply comes a point that every male needs to find a mate.”
I almost spit out my drink. “Marriage. Kids. Settling down?”
“In a manner of speaking. The carnal act is first, not merely falling in love. You’ll know the right person. Or at least you should.”
“At least I should?” Shifters had been around for centuries, various species living in plain sight among humans. I’d learned that in wolf elementary school, but depending on who you asked, there were varying opinions on needing an actual mate.
“Things have changed in the last hundred years, Saint. Our mating needs are entirely different. It used to be that when a wolf turned eighteen, a light switch went off and they couldn’t go about their daily lives without finding the single person they were meant to be with. We’re almost at the point where the mating rituals are a thing of the past.”
“Why?”
“Evolution. We’ve evolved because of how we live, the people we choose to be around. We have freedom of choices our ancestors didn’t have.”
I realized I was gawking at my father. “Then why am I so special that I need a mate?”
He took his time answering. “Because you have a pure bloodline unsullied by human blood.”
My cough was exaggerated. “Is that why we were never taught mating skills as kids?”
His laugh was boisterous. “I don’t think you need a lesson in the birds and bees, son. From what I can tell, you do just fine in handling that by yourself. Mating is a result of natural attraction.”
“Another freaking shifter.”
The gleam in his eyes made me frown. “Not necessarily. It’s a simple fact that humans and shifters can be mates.”
