4: Seth
Seth frowned at the pink slip of paper that Jack had handed him. It was a sheet from the “While You were Out” message pad kept by the main landline telephone of the Wolf King’s castle. His name was written in the “To” section of the form. The “Date” and “Time” had been left blank. The caller’s name was given only as “your wife.” A phone number, starting with the area code 858, had been written on the line reserved for company name. “Telephoned,” “Please Call,” and “Urgent” were all checked. There was no indication who took the phone call or when or why his wife had called or even what her name was.
That was a problem because, at the moment, he was blanking on her name. He couldn’t remember anything about her except her bloodline.
He hadn’t seen her since their wedding when they were both thirteen. The ceremony was held three days after Seth’s family was massacred. Seth had inherited the Boston’s alpha seconds after his father died. It hit Seth with the force of a tsunami, washing out everything that was Seth. It nearly made him feral. Only the Wolf King’s constant presence protected him from losing his humanity. The alpha amnesia lasted for weeks.
Seth only had random snapshots of memories from that time period. He remembered staring at his hands and feet, wondering why they looked so odd to him. He remembered Jack crying at the memorial for their family and not understanding why. He couldn’t keep the names or faces of the Thanes locked down; each encounter had been like he was meeting them for the first time. He recognized only Jack, but everyone knew Seth’s name. He alternated between being mystified and frustrated as to why. Everything else was lost in darkness, washed away by the power of the Boston alpha flooding through him.
Seth didn’t have a single memory of his wife. Jack told him about the wedding later, after Seth recovered. The Wolf King chose Seth’s bride within minutes of Seth becoming the Prince of Boston. His bride’s father was the Marquis of San Diego but her mother, both of her grandmothers, and all four of her great-grandmothers were daughters of princes. Alexander had been breeding her bloodline for generations. She was born to be the mate of someone like Seth.
Seth’s in-laws were ordered to fly to New York City on a red-eye commercial flight. They arrived at the Castle eight hours after the Wolf King informed them of his decision. Everyone was focused on saving Boston, cremating the remains of Seth’s family, and making sure Seth didn’t kill anyone while lost in the haze of alpha amnesia.
Jack told him it was a simple affair, officiated by the Wolf King, witnessed by her family and the king’s Thanes. Werewolves didn’t wear rings; their hands changed too much during transformation. His bride had brought her white first communion dress to wear as a wedding gown. Jack dressed Seth in one of his suits; Seth looked like a little boy, lost in his father’s clothes. No one thought to hire a photographer. The only photograph of the ceremony that Seth had ever seen was taken by Jack on his cell phone.
The photo suggested that his bride wasn’t completely happy with the arrangements. While Seth stared vacantly at the camera, lost in the haze of the Boston alpha, she glared as if she wanted to kill everyone, starting with Jack as he snapped the picture. Her dress was torn. She was missing a shoe. Her nose was bleeding. It looked as if she’d been dragged kicking and screaming to the altar.
They exchanged vows. Jack said that she had growled throughout the ceremony. At the end, the Wolf King joined them together using the Boston alpha. It shifted his bride from her father’s pack into Seth’s. She stormed out afterward to break every piece of furniture in her guest room and put holes in the walls. Her family left abruptly the next day, probably embarrassed by the damage she had done.
“What’s her name?” Seth asked Jack.
“Bethy?” Jack misunderstood because a moment before they’d been talking about Joshua’s foster sister. Christmas was coming and Seth hadn’t been sure if he needed to buy Bethy a present. They were only connected through Joshua. It would be awkward if she showed up at Decker’s and Seth had nothing for her. “Probably Elizabeth since she wants to be called Liz now.”
“No.” Seth held out the pink paper. “My wife. What was her name?”
“Kate. Katrina María Marrón, but she went by Kate.”
Seth read over the form again. “Why do you think she called? Do you think she fell in love with someone? That she wants an annulment?”
“What? No. I don’t think so.” Jack considered a moment longer. “Maybe. She did seem extremely angry about something at the wedding.”
“I better call her.” Seth took out his phone. “See what she wants.”
“Yeah, but not right now,” Jack said.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s six in the morning here. She’s West Coast. It would be…” Jack made a noise as he tried to remember if San Diego was three or four hours behind New York City.
“Three a.m.,” Seth said.
Jack yawned deeply. He was still recovering from being shot multiple times with silver bullets. “Yeah. I don’t know when she called but it wasn’t last night.”
Seth growled. He’d have to wait until at least noon. “I’ll call her later. I need to grab something to eat and then get to school.”
He’d skip breakfast altogether, but a hungry wolf was a dangerous wolf.
He currently attended the fifth best private high school in New York City as he’d been kicked out of the first through the fourth best. It took only one slip in his control and everyone within a dozen feet of him realized—subconsciously—that they were in extreme danger. No amount of money or power could keep him enrolled at a high school where he’d let his temper flare.
He needed to keep his wolf under control, which meant eating a full breakfast. He also needed to be at his school when the homeroom bell rang, which meant he needed to get out the door within the next half hour to catch his train.
He locked the door to his bedroom suite, trying not to be annoyed—again—that he and Jack were the only people in the entire building who needed to do so.
It was another point of contention with the Wolf King’s son, Isaiah. The king had housed Seth in one of the suites meant for a visiting prince. It was a recently remodeled spacious room with big windows and a large private bath. Isaiah was down three floors with the other members of the New York pack. The Thanes had small dormitory-style bedrooms that shared a large communal bathroom. Wolves liked to be in close physical contact with their pack. The Castle provided plenty of space for the Thanes to gather together in large social groups. There were also many small private areas if for some odd reason one of them wanted to be alone.
Isaiah hated that Seth had a large bedroom suite one floor down from the king while he was given one of the dorm rooms, no different from the other Thanes. He wanted to be elevated and set apart, awarded the status that he thought should go to the future Prince of New York. What he ignored was that he hadn’t gone a day without being at the heart of his pack with all the constant emotional ramifications that it implied.
Seth had learned by experience that Isaiah, and his followers, would use “the door wasn’t locked” as an excuse to steal his personal items. Since the floor was otherwise empty between visits of werewolf nobility, the elder Thanes couldn’t keep an eye on Seth’s quarters while he was in school. It was Isaiah’s way to use the room’s location against Seth.
Seth needed to stay calm to remain enrolled in school. He’d missed all eighteen days that the state of New York allowed and had already triggered an “educational neglect” flag from the Board of Education. The only thing saving him from having to repeat the entire year was the fact that he was an honor roll student, had a perfect attendance since he was thirteen, and had a myriad of excuses—from a real death in his family to a made-up illness. He could still graduate from high school this year but only if he kept his head down and his wolf under control.
Graduating would get him one step closer to moving back to Boston. He’d hoped that he could go to college at Harvard, but the Wolf King had already stated that Seth would attend a New York City college.
“I sent you an email,” Seth said as he and Jack trotted down the steps together. There was an elevator, but he avoided the ancient device when he could. The Wolf Castle had been built with the belief that stairs were things to be well used. All nine floors of the staircase were wide, well lit, and carpeted to reduce echoes. “I want to proceed with moving back to Boston.”
“The king isn’t going to allow that,” Jack said.
“I realize that.” Seth wished everything wasn’t colluding against him keeping his temper. “But there’s a lot of groundwork that needs to be put in place. I realized that while babysitting the new Marquis of Albany. The paperwork alone was insane…”
“We can’t do the paperwork until you’re eighteen and a legal adult,” Jack pointed out.
Patience. “Yes. I know. That wasn’t where I was going. Albany needs to shuffle around everyone that had been living with the old marquis—two of Ewan’s aunts and four female cousins—and deep-clean the alpha quarters before Ewan can move in. Ewan is living in the Court of Albany’s bachelor house until they can finish cleaning. It made me realize that we don’t have a place for adult wolves. We need someplace other than Decker’s to stay when we’re in Boston. I’m sure Decker doesn’t mind now. If we’re going to recruit wolves to fill out our pack, then we’ll need someplace for them. I don’t want them camping on top of Joshua without me to oversee dominance issues. We need a bachelor house, like what Albany has. I don’t know why we didn’t have one.”
“Ah! Yeah,” Jack said. “We had one—we just weren’t using it as a bachelor house. We didn’t need the space after the mauling.”
One of the pack’s newborn wolves had accidently bitten his younger sister, who was still wholly human. Without an alpha overseeing her transformation, she’d became a feral wolf. The pack lost an entire generation as she mowed through all the other children except Seth’s grandfather.
“Our place was the old bachelor house.” Jack meant the town house that he grew up in. The Cabots’ home, though, had shared walls with the rest of the Court. None of the buildings were still standing.
“I want to start on whatever we need to do to get the Court rebuilt,” Seth said. “Hire an architect. Draw up plans. Find out what the city requires. That area is a historic district, so there’s going to be a lot of red tape involved. Yadayadayada. It could take years before we’re allowed by the city to start rebuilding. We should start the process now.”
“Should I be taking notes?” Jack asked as they hit the second-floor landing and exited out of the stairwell just beside the grand foyer staircase down to the first floor.
“It’s all in my email but I wanted to talk to you before I headed out to school. There’s stuff I might have missed. I should have been thinking about this for years, but I’ve focused only on getting myself back to Boston.”
“Your schooling is important,” Jack said. “You’re going to be making all the business decisions for the pack.”
Seth waved that aside. Yes, his father and grandfather had been very hands on, and he hoped to follow their lead, but he’d seen how the king ran his worldwide organization. Alexander let his brightest wolves handle the day-to-day operations. The king limited himself to the big picture decisions. Of course, there was the problem that the Boston pack only had three members. Four, if Seth’s wife hadn’t bailed on him. Unless Kate skipped years like Seth had, she was a junior in high school or maybe even a sophomore, if her birthday was in the fall. She might have even failed out a year, considering the trauma of getting married at thirteen could have put her through.
“What I want to do—as soon as possible—is establish a bachelor house,” Seth said. “Elise has a condo in Cambridge. If the Grigori can use normal apartment buildings, so can we.”
“Rent a place?” Jack said slowly as he rolled the thought around in his head. “I guess it is just tradition to own the places we live in. I guess it would be faster to find someplace to rent. We will need a place to stay while we’re overseeing Court being rebuilt.”
“Rent or buy something,” Seth said. “I looked at some real estate websites for Boston. Most rental places seem to have just one bedroom.”
They were all disappointingly tiny, far too small for their needs. Wolves needed private bedrooms because of dominance issues and a large communal space to strengthen social ties. The Castle had multiple rooms where all thirty-six Thanes could gather.
Seth listed out points he’d picked up while staying with the Albany pack. “We would need three bedrooms at minimum, a full kitchen with a dishwasher, a real dining room, a large living room, and private laundry facilities. I would love a big house like what the Albany pack has.”
Decker’s place ticked all the boxes, but they couldn’t turn Decker’s place into Wolf Central and still keep the vampire’s location a secret. Seth had to consider a hundred years or more with any decision that might impact Decker.
“We could buy a house,” Jack said.
“I’m not sure that’s an option until I turn eighteen and have access to my inheritance.” Seth had thought that a pack’s property and businesses was an estate that the entire pack shared. His experience with Albany taught him otherwise. When people said that Boston was Seth’s, they literally meant everything that the pack owned.
“Rent a house?” Jack said. “I can sign a lease and pay the rent with my allowance.”
“A house locks us into a set amount of space. We need three bedrooms just for you, me, and my wife. Even if we find one house with three bedrooms, we might not be able to find another on the same block to accommodate a fourth or fifth person. I’m hoping we can quickly recruit young wolves from other packs. If we rented an apartment in a large complex, we could rent additional units as needed.”
Jack growled softly at the idea of living with humans so close by. “I suppose it’s just until we can get Court built. I don’t know anything about renting condos. I could ask Elise how her people found her place.”
Seth wasn’t sure what to feel about Jack’s relationship with the beautiful Virtue. The woman had saved Jack’s life more than once and was a useful ally. The Boston pack, though, needed Jack to marry and have children. Like Seth, he was a black wolf, one of only three left in the world.
Seth focused back on the problem he could easily solve. “We won’t know what we can get until we start looking. Certainly, we can be flexible. The most important thing is location. We want to be near Harvard and Court. I want to be able to walk to both points.” It would also put them close to Decker, but Seth expected Jack to repeat the information to the king. Alexander wouldn’t be swayed by anything that included the vampire.
“So ideally Cambridge,” Jack said. “Or Back Bay.”
Seth nodded. Harvard was in Cambridge. Back Bay was across the Charles River, near Court’s construction site. “I watched some videos on renting apartments in Boston. They were aimed at college students. Most of the details like getting roommates lined up don’t apply to us, but it did indicate that we’re probably going to need to get some kind of agency to show us the apartments. If you want to get into a nice building, there’s also some kind of application and interview process, like getting a job. I included a link to the videos in my email. I’m passing you the ball.”
“I’ll get on it,” Jack promised as they walked into the dining room. “I think you’re right. The king won’t let you move back to Boston, but he understands the need for logistics. We need a safe base of operations. A hotel doesn’t cut it, not with anyone who is on staff being able to get into our rooms.”
Breakfast at the Wolf Castle was served buffet-style in the dining room. It allowed the Thanes to keep flexible schedules. It also kept the king’s wolves out of the kitchen and under Cook’s feet.
Despite living in America most of his adult life, Cook kept to his cuisine of his birth with a few nods toward the Wolf King’s ancient past. It meant that the buffet was Danish in favor. Seth had grown accustomed to the thin porridge called Øllebrød, which was really just rye bread soup topped with whipped cream. Despite their odd names of franskbrød, boller, birkes, rundstykker, and håndværkere, the various types of bread weren’t very exotic in nature. Seth didn’t like the pickled herring, liver pâté, or cooked tongue, and was iffy on the smoked eel. (He would eat them—his wolf liked everything even if he didn’t—but he avoided them when he could.)
He loaded up on bread, soft cheese, and three soft-boiled eggs. He had a moment of homesickness, remembering his chaotic family breakfast with English sausages and baked beans for his father and his mother’s huevos rancheros with tomatillo sauce or chiles rellenos. English Breakfast tea with milk and sugar for his father and grandparents. Café Bustelo coffee for his mother.
He must have been broadcasting his unease. Half a dozen of the Thanes had been sitting and eating. As he turned away from the buffet, the room was empty except for Jack.
“I need to watch that.” Seth sat down beside Jack.
Jack shrugged. “It was Hoffman, and Silva, and Russo. They would have left anyhow.”
They were supporters of Isaiah. They had let Jack lie dying in New York.
“I’m more than happy to do the legwork for finding a bachelor house,” Jack said. “You’re going to have to get permission, though, for us to act on what I find.”
“I know,” Seth said unhappily. “I’ll talk to the king after school.”
“And call your wife.”