Moon Glamour by Aimee Easterling (books to read to be successful TXT) 📕

was a gut punch, but it would be worth the loss now that I could afford to pay for the rest of her high-school career and part of college. Our relationship would survive the hiatus. I could always call my sister and bug her with endless emails and texts.

Swallowing down bitter regret, I held out the card representing an in-person relationship with my sister. “You want this back.”

Rowan didn’t snatch it out of my hands the way I’d expected him to. Instead, he stepped in closer. The musk of alpha werewolf made me choke on my own inhale.

“That’s not enough, Ace’s daughter. You fucked up. You really fucked up this time.”

“Did I?” I straightened despite the fact my ankle was trying to tell me how much it missed the couch and pillow. “If you already know about my mistake, then you’ve had plenty of time to cover up any leaks. Admit it. You have the police in your pocket. The story won’t even show up on social media let alone in the evening news.”

Rowan’s head shook slowly. “No.” His eyes glinted in the darkness. “You stole from a museum. They filed a report with a national alert network at the same time they contacted the police.”

Goosebumps rose on my arms. I’d sent Tank away so he wouldn’t do something stupid while I accepted the knocks I had coming. But...this was bad. Rowan wasn’t taking my card and tossing me out of his territory the way he’d threatened to. The story of my furriness had escaped his control.

I swallowed. “What do you want then?”

Rather than answering, Rowan peered down over the railing into the darkness beneath us. When the apartment complex had been built, I suspect there’d been a rather nice view from each balcony. Since then, more buildings had sprung up cheek to jowl. By the time I moved in, the only view was of a dirty alley, now barely lit by a couple of lights above back doors.

Still, I could make out two lupine forms down there, moving toward the center from each end of the alley. Of course Rowan hadn’t come alone. He was the alpha. He travelled with lackeys for appearances’ sake. Plus, he wouldn’t want to be the one huffing and puffing after me if I thought running was a good idea.

I shifted my weight, well aware that I had no ability to run tonight.

“Alpha?” I prodded when the silence stretched longer than I’d expected it to. But Rowan didn’t answer. Just kept peering downward, brow wrinkled as if he wasn’t just staring off into space.

Of course. Pack-bond communication from alpha to underling was common among werewolves. But the effort didn’t usually last this long or cause so much facial contortion.

I sidled away from Rowan’s overwhelming presence to give myself a little breathing space then leaned over the railing, pulling on a little wolfishness of my own. Vision enhanced, I finally saw what Rowan was reacting to.

There was a cat down there—Mr. Fletcher’s tabby, I was guessing—being stalked by Rowan’s lupine underlings. They had the feline cornered in an indented stairwell and seemed an inch away from progressing from tease to torture.

They were going to tear the poor thing apart. Or would have if their alpha hadn’t stopped them.

Rowan’s frustration was bitter on my tongue. His words, when he gave up on the pack bond and went audible, came out as a bark.

“Leave the damn cat alone and get up here!”

The wolves ignored him. One slammed his paw down on the cat’s back. The other widened his jaws as if to swallow the hissing feline whole. And....

“Now!”

The cold blast of alpha compulsion froze both me and the shifters in the alley. As the effects faded, I stumbled back onto the cheap plastic folding chair that had come with the apartment. What happened to the wolves in the alley I could no longer tell.

I could, however, see Rowan turning away from the railing. He had no interest in the cat’s survival. He’d only snapped at his crew because a wolf-mauled pet threatened shifters’ ability to slide beneath the radar.

After all, Rowan was alpha. His priorities revolved around the future of his pack.

Which was bad news for me. My theft in wolf form was ten times as dangerous in that regard as tearing apart a house cat would have been.

WHEN I OPENED MY EYES, Rowan stood above me. Barely restrained fury pinned me in place the way it had a decade ago when I tracked him down in his office to beg for help.

“You’re not my father,” I’d said then, bamboozled by the fact that the name on my child-support checks had materialized into someone only a few years older than me.

“You figure?” Rowan leaned forward, sniffing as if he was in wolf rather than human form. Just like today, I’d backpedalled until I fell onto my butt.

I had no weapon other than words, so I used them. “I want to speak with my father.”

“About what, exactly?”

“My mother’s dead.”

Rowan nodded and strode to his desk, giving me a second to pull myself together. By the time I scrambled to my feet, he’d drawn a checkbook out of a drawer, uncapped a fancy fountain pen, and raised one eyebrow. “How much extra do you need?”

“My little sister....”

Both eyebrows pulled down into a V over his nose. “Harper stinks of humans. She’s not my problem.”

Rowan had been close enough to smell my sister? “I don’t want your money!” I exploded, the four feet between us enough to unleash my teenage temper. “And I don’t want you close to my sister either!”

If I’d taken the time to think about it, I would have expected to be slapped down. After all, Mom had warned me so many times about male werewolves, alphas especially. She might have only spent one night with my father, but she’d made other connections—and later severed them—when I turned old enough to shift.

But Rowan didn’t live up to her warnings. Instead, he merely cocked his head.