Blair took after her mother in appearance.

Not identical, but if I didn’t know better, I could have mistaken her for Blair’s older sister since she didn’t look a day over thirty-five.

Her mother was a hair taller than Blair, with hair so blond it was almost white and eyes a paler shade of blue.

And her face looked…Crueler. That may have been bias on my part since my first impression was her screaming at my friend, but that was the impression I got.

Sharp features, with high cheekbones, and her eyes…Blair often had a cold expression, but after spending the better part of a week around her, I knew that cold wasn’t actually her default.

Her mother, though. Her eyes held all the warmth of the Arctic in December.

She was glaring at Blair, her own hands clenched at her sides.

“You went without permission. You didn’t even bother to call me before leaving!” She had rained in the volume, but her voice still crackled with cold anger.

“You sent an email before putting yourself in danger like an impatient child! Leaving your Pack alone in an unfamiliar area.” Blair opened her mouth to respond, but her mother bulled over her.

“And you say it was a calculated risk? I can sense that your Bond has grown. Something there was dangerous enough to push you that far, and you say calculated?”

Blair cut in, her voice just as cold. “Calculated like sending us to this manor was?”

Her mother stopped, then a bit of red started to bleed into her eyes. When she spoke, her voice was lower, darker. “Watch your tone, girl. You’re twenty-three. When I was your age, I did not speak back to my Alpha or my mother.”

Blair tried to speak again, but something had clearly changed between them. Blair had shifted her stance and looked like she was struggling to keep her balance, and while her mouth moved, no words came out.

“Your lucky you didn’t die, stabbed in the back by some human, away from your Pack! Clearly, you are not as ready for leadership as I thought.”

Blair’s mouth was still working, but her words refused to come.

Her mother sighed and rubbed her face. “Blathering fools and arrogant children will be the death of me, especially since it seems my daughter is both!“

Laurel was trembling slightly. She was clearly furious, but she wasn’t saying anything as the woman ripped into Blair.

Margret didn’t look angry but was clearly uncomfortable.

But she’s not doing anything.

There was almost certainly a smart, peaceful option I could have taken to diffuse this.

Could have tried to view the situation from everyone’s point of view the best I could and work from there.

I probably could have worked something out. Even giving it just a little thought, I understood what was going through the Alpha Northwoods head. She had been terrified that her child was in danger but was handling that fear like shit.

I had seen it plenty of times. I’ve been that parent, unable to handle my emotions in a healthy way.

A memory tried to surface, filling my mouth with the taste of Tobacco and jasmine.

I shoved the memory down, my mounting anger making it easier.

Laurel and Margret seemed content to stand by and watch her mother hurl abuse while Blair seemingly couldn’t talk.

I wasn’t.

“You want to speak of calculated risks? Letting you lead was one, one your proving to me was a mistake! You couldn’t control yourself, and you didn’t have the patience to take a safer route, you idiotic child!”

“You bitch.”

Everyone in the room froze.

The elder Northwoods slowly turned to face me. Her face utterly blank.

“What?”

“You’re a werewolf. You heard me.”

I’ve dealt with a lot of fast in my time. Werewolves, vampires, ghosts. And I’ve seen some of them really move. In the ghosts' case, I often had to rely on my aura to keep track of them.

That woman redefined what I thought was fast.

One second she was standing ten feet away from me. The next, she was less than a foot away, looming over me like an angry god.

I literally hadn’t seen her move—no blur of motion, no flickers, nothing. As far as my eyes were concerned, she had just teleported.

Holy shit! Shouldn’t there be a sonic boom or something? That had to have been faster than the sound barrier.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“Who. Are. You?” She said, enunciating every word.

I met her cold eyes, my gaze just as frosty. “Alder. I’d say it’s nice to meet you, but your not making a great first impression.”

Laurel and Margret stared at me in horror, and Blair just looked shocked.

“Do you know who I am?”

“The co-Alpha of the Northwoods Pack, Blair’s mother, and from what I’ve seen just now, a raging bitch.”

The pale blue of her eyes flushed red—the color rippling from her iris outward.

Her eyes narrowed, and a sudden weight slammed over the room.

Margret and Laurel collapsed to their hands and knees as if struck by a falling boulder. Even Blair dropped, though she managed to catch herself partway through, only dropping to one knee.

It felt as if something in the ballpark of the Straits had just taken a swing at me. My mind reeled, my vision swam, and dropping to the ground seemed like a really good idea.

But the sight of Blair on the ground and the memory of her mother's words changed that.

Fueled almost entirely by a cocktail of spite and anger, I shoved back against the sudden weight without looking away from the Alpha Northwoods.

It was hard. Really, really hard. That weight held knowledge, the information pressing against my mind as surely as the weight itself.

The woman in front of me was old. Old and closer to something like Grumpy than she was to me. She was power and danger wrapped up in a fleshy shell, and I should submit.

Whatever the hell she was doing, it pushed against my mind and my instincts. My body screamed at me to lower my eyes and drop, that any other course of action was suicide.

My instincts could go to hell.

The force pressing down on me reminded me of the Straits and Grumpy, but it wasn’t at their level. It might be in the same ballpark, but they were at opposite ends of the field. When fighting against the Straits, I felt like my head would explode, just trying to stop it from pushing me back.

This was heavy and held the promise of greater dangers, but it wasn’t pushing me back.

I shoved back, pressing against the force with my will. It was hard with my aura veiled, but I immediately made progress.

The woman’s eyes widened. She pushed back, but while the weight was immense, I didn’t slow.

I kept pushing.

The air began to feel heavy, and the house creaked and groaned around us.

What the hell was happening?

The lights above fluctuated, darkening and brightening at random.

The smell around us intensified until everything seemed to jump out at my nose. The wooden floorboards beneath us, the paintings lining the walls, even the specks of mud I had tracked in.

Something broke, and the weight parted around me.

It hadn’t vanished. The others were still on the ground. If anything, they looked worse off than before. But the weight wasn’t touching me anymore.

I had no idea why. I didn’t even know how a werewolf could put out a field like that.

She stared at me, her blank expression replaced with shock. “A draw? How…” she sniffed, her nostrils flaring. “You can’t be older than 22. You shouldn’t be able to Clash with me.”

I rolled my shoulders. My body was aching from that struggle. Most of the weight had been mental, but some of it had felt like a physical load on my shoulders.

“I have no idea what that means. Let the others up.”

She took a step closer to me, well inside my personal space.

“You walk in here, insult me, then make a demand?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

She clenched a fist. “Bold. You understand I could kill you before you blinked?”

I gave her a toothy smile. “You could. And you’d kill your chance at vouchers with me.”

She paused. “You’re.”

“Yeah, I’m the one who gets to make the call. No ghost in this town will back you if you lay so much as a finger on me. And since that jackass George has been going around threatening the locals, there’s no way you get anyone else to vouch for you.”

Icy fury danced in her eyes, but she didn’t strike me dead on the spot. “What do you want?”

“Just don’t pull this bullshit in front of me.”

A low growl bubbled up from her throat, the sound strong enough to shake the walls. “Child, I was old before this country was founded. When your grandfather's grandfather was a babe, I had already ended nations. I will not have my actions directed by an infant, especially not when regarding my daughter.”

The anger stopped the shaking walls from fazing me.

“I walked in here to find you hurling abuse at Blair for doing her job. Then when she responded, you pulled whatever bullshit you just tried to hit me with and stopped her from speaking.”

I took a step forward, getting up in her face.

“And ‘not when regarding your daughter?’ God I hate that old world bullshit. Just because you gave birth to her doesn't mean you own her. I’m not going to stand by and ignore it just because she's your kid!”

She bared her slightly too sharp teeth. “You overstep.”

“Maybe if I had burst into a back room and butted in, this would be overstepping. But you're doing this in the open, in front of everyone. I don’t think asking you not to scream at my friend is so unreasonable.”

I narrowed my eyes further. “Blair is the only reason you have vouchers. Because I trust her. I didn’t know you, and now I certainly don’t trust you. If she hadn’t given her word on how you would use your vote, I would have already pulled them.”

The ancient werewolf's look told me I had just made another enemy, but she slowly nodded her head. “Avoid conflict with my daughter in front of you. And vote with the towns people's best interests in mind.”

“And let them up,” I said with a nod to the others.

She didn’t move, but the others all sagged in relief as the invisible weight dropped.

They climbed shakily to their feet.

The woman’s cold laugh took me off guard. She showed me another, just as feral, smile and inclined her head ever so slightly.

“A human Clashing with me and having the spine to make demands.” She sighed. “It’s been decades since someone’s been that stupid. Thank you for the nostalgia.”

I took a step back and gave her a tight smile. “Well, I think I’ll be going. Not really in a celebrating mood.”

I met Blair’s eyes and nodded. “I'm sorry if I overstepped.”

My gaze made it very clear I was apologizing to her and not her mother.

The elder Northwoods gaze dug into my back as I turned on my heel and stalked out, tense silence hanging in my wake.