Problem

I wasn’t worried about Malcolm driving me to a dark alley and breaking my neck. Not that I could outfight him; I couldn’t—not yet. But I’d lived with him long enough to understand how he operated.

If Malcolm wanted me dead, he’d have ended my life that night outside Los Angeles. Training me for a few years, lowering my defenses and then killing me might seem like a clever plan, but Malcolm could never pull it off. He was a creature of impulse, of brawn and might, not without the cunning to conceive of a long-term plan, but lacking the patience to see it to the end.

Malcolm drove to a town on the other side of the Sorrentinos’ country estate, and pulled into a parking lot.

“Here?” I said.

He shrugged. “Near here. A little place I go when things get crowded at Dominic’s. Come on.”

He led me to an unmarked door wedged between a dry cleaner and a convenience store. I stepped inside and found myself nose to chest with a massive bald man. When he saw Malcolm, he backed out of my face.

“Hey, Mal. Been a long time.” He looked down at me. “Who’s the kid?”

Malcolm put a hand on my shoulder. “This is Clayton. My boy.”

“You got a son? You never told me you got a son.”

“You never asked. Mind if I take him inside? Don’t worry, he’ll stick to root beer.”

“Yeah, sure, take him in. Buy him a real beer if he wants it. No one’s gonna care.”

Malcolm led me into a small, dark bar, where the only music came from the clink of glasses and the occasional laugh. He steered me to a table at the back.

“You want a beer?” he asked as I sat down. “Smells like you’ve had one already, might as well make it two.”

I shook my head.

“Soda?”

I shrugged.

He went to the bar and returned with two mugs, one cola and the other beer. A red-haired woman in a faded tank top and frayed miniskirt slid over from another table.

“Malcolm,” she said, and kissed his cheek. “You didn’t call me.”

“Do I ever?”

Her lips curved in a pout, then she saw me in the shadows.

“My son,” Malcolm said. “Clayton.”

“Oooh,” she squealed, the sound grating down my spine. “What a cutie. He must take after his momma.”

“Ha-ha,” Malcolm said. “I don’t mean to be rude, Deedee—well, yes I do. Clear out. I’m spending time with my boy. He’s had a rough day.”

“I could make it better for him.” Her gaze slid over me. “End it with a bang.”

I tugged my jacket tighter around me.

Malcolm shook his head. “Another time, Deedee. Clear out. Now.”

She pouted and flounced away.

Malcolm sipped his beer. “So, what’d it feel like, killing your first mutt?”

I shrugged.

He leaned forward and his eyes glittered. “Don’t give me that. It felt good, didn’t it? Taking a life. Made you feel powerful.”

I looked at him, and tried to figure out what he meant.

“Not comfortable with it yet?” he said. “I understand that. Can’t be easy when he tells you it’s wrong. But it isn’t wrong. You feel that, don’t you? Taking a life isn’t a crime, it’s an act of power.”

I needed information from him, so it seemed best to play along. I nodded and hoped that was enough.

He clapped me on the shoulder. “See? I do understand.”

“About the mutts,” I said. “Something’s happening, isn’t it? That’s why there’s more of them coming around.”

“You don’t know why? You’re a bright boy, Clayton. If you think about it, I’m sure you’ll realize you already know the answer. Why are more mutts coming to Stonehaven?”

Stonehaven. Of course. With my own problems, I’d overlooked the obvious clue to solving this one. The mutts were coming only to Stonehaven. No one else in the Pack had reported an increase.

“You’re sending them,” I said. “You’re testing me.”

Malcolm’s laugh startled the patrons at the next table. “Not bad, not bad at all. Wrong, but a good guess. I wouldn’t do that to you, Clay. You’re still too green to be facing mutts without backup. If I wanted to test you, I’d take you to the mutts, not send them to you. They’re coming on their own. Think about it. Who lives at Stonehaven?”

I frowned. “We do. So? We’ve always lived—”

“Wait. Who lives there? You, Jeremy and me. Now most mutts don’t know about you, so they’re obviously coming to see Jeremy or me. Nothing new there but, as you said, something has changed. Something that makes them want to challenge us in particular.”

I hesitated, then looked up sharply. “You’re both potential Alphas. The mutts know that, don’t they? That you want to be Alpha and Dominic seems to be backing Jeremy.”

Malcolm nodded. “Good boy. Now why would they—?”

“Why would they want to challenge a potential Alpha?” I cut in, my brain racing ahead to fill in the blanks. “Because it’s as close to an Alpha as they can get. They can’t challenge Dominic. Even if they won, the Pack would hunt them down. But they could challenge an Alpha candidate. That’d be the next best thing, wouldn’t it?”

“And an opportunity that doesn’t come around more than once or twice in a mutt’s life. If this stretches on much longer, we’ll have every mutt on the continent getting up the nerve to try his luck.”

I slumped into my seat. With Dominic showing no signs of giving up his position, this waiting game could continue for years. Years of having mutts on our doorstep, trespassing on our territory, threatening Jeremy.

“There is a way to stop it,” Malcolm said. “If Jeremy tells Dominic he doesn’t want to be Alpha, he’d be out of the race. The mutts would hear about that, and they’d stop coming after him. Now, they’d still want to take a shot at me, but most of them know I don’t spend much time at home. So Stonehaven would be safe again. Jeremy would be safe again.”

Malcolm really needed to work on his finesse. Play on my fears for Jeremy, and hope I could use my influence with Jeremy to persuade him to drop out of the Alpha race? Like I had any influence with Jeremy. He wasn’t even going to let me influence where I went to college.

I said none of this to Malcolm. Instead, I nodded and he settled into his chair, smiling, pleased with his success. In a way, he had succeeded. I now realized that Jeremy was in danger, and would continue to be in danger as long as he was an Alpha candidate.

So how would I deal with that? By removing the source of the danger.

To do that, I didn’t need to persuade him not to challenge Malcolm for Alpha. As angry as I was at Jeremy, I still knew he’d make a good Alpha. What I had to do was stop the mutts from coming. But how?

I told Malcolm I wanted to meet up with Nick so I didn’t return to the house with him and worry Jeremy. The truth was, I wanted to get out of his company as quickly as possible, and I wanted time by myself to work on this problem.

Malcolm dropped me off where he’d picked me up. I started heading back toward the party. Once he’d driven out of sight, I resumed my aimless wandering. I’d figure out how to get to the estate later. For now, I needed to think.

How could I get mutts to stop coming to Stonehaven?

As I walked, I remembered Jeremy’s “riddle” to Antonio, his explanation for why he was letting Malcolm train me. If I was a good enough fighter, I wouldn’t need to fight. Not a riddle, but a logical fact, one that only now made sense. When you reached the top of your game, fewer and fewer people cared to take you on. Yes, mutts came to Stonehaven looking for a fight with Malcolm, the Pack’s top fighter. Yet mutts did the same to other Pack wolves, picking the one they thought was in their league.

On average, fewer mutts came to Malcolm than to Antonio or Wally Santos, who were the next best fighters in the Pack. Most mutts aren’t suicidal—they challenge the best Pack wolf whom they think they have a shot at beating, and Malcolm was more than most cared to handle.

When a less experienced Pack wolf, like Stephen Santos, traveled, he always had to be careful. Technically mutts weren’t supposed to hold territory, but Dominic didn’t like to bother with mutts any more than necessary, so many settled in cities and defended them against all comers. If Stephen passed through a city that a mutt considered his territory, Stephen was in for a fight. When Malcolm came to town, though, all but the stupidest mutts decided it was time for a vacation.

What I had to do was make sure mutts knew that to challenge Jeremy, they had to get through me first. If I was a formidable enough fighter, few would care to bother.

Great plan. Only one problem. Such a reputation took years, maybe decades, to build. I didn’t have that much time. I needed to stop these mutts before the campaign for Alpha gained momentum. To do that, I had to cheat my way to a reputation.

Instead of fighting dozens of battles, I needed to do something that would fly through the rumor mill and make every mutt in the country decide he didn’t want to tangle with me. How? I had no idea.

I heard someone shout, but was too engrossed in my thoughts to look. When footsteps sounded behind me, I wheeled.

“Whoa!” Nick said, backpedaling. “I thought you heard me call you.”

I shook my head and continued walking. He jogged beside me.

“Okay, you’re mad,” he said. “I don’t blame you. I was a total jerk.”

It took a moment for me to remember what he was talking about. When I did, I brushed it off with a muttered “it’s okay” and returned to my thoughts.

“I had too much to drink, and then Becky’s boyfriend showed up and she took off with him, and then I walked out to the backyard, saw you standing over Mike, and I lost it. I know you hate parties. I didn’t mean to be there that long and I’m sorry.”

Another mumbled “it’s okay.”

“I’ve been driving around for hours looking for you. It’s too late to catch a show, but we could get pizza. Do you want pizza?”

I shook my head, still walking.

Nick exhaled loudly. “Shit, you really are mad. Okay, okay, well, at least come back to the car with me. Please?”

I stopped and blinked, returning to reality.

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Let’s go.”

I started for the car.

“You sure you don’t want pizza?” Nick said, hurrying up beside me. “There’s this great—”

“Pizza’s fine. I’m just trying to work out a problem.”

“Oh, well, okay, then. Maybe I can help.”

I shook my head. “Not your kind of problem.” I paused. “But thanks…for offering.”

“So we’re square?”

“No. You owe me pizza, a movie and your first Change. Then we’ll be square.”

He grinned. “The first tonight, the second tomorrow and the third soon. Real soon, I hope.”

I didn’t come up with a plan that night. Or that weekend. Or that month. This was a problem that required serious deliberation, and that would take time.