The Loup Garou Society by Julie Steimle (ereader with android txt) 📖

who I have not yet met.”

“And you will never meet her!” Monsieur Blanc bristled, his blue eyes clawing over Rick.

Stepping from his father’s arms, Rick rounded on the regal white-haired blue eyed man-wolf. “Do you realized that sex slavery is illegal in France?”

“Sex slavery?” His father asked. His amber eyes flickered to the elder wolves and back to his son, hackles raising.

Rick nodded earnestly.

His brothers stiffened, sharing looks. Unconsciously, they stepped back. The other wolves unpleasantly stood together.

“A lie,” the dark wolf elder said with bite.

Gazing on him who had to have been outside the pack at one point, Rick said, “Oh really? Then what Marie told me about how you wanted her to get pregnant as much as possible and give up her own children for the pack is not true?”

“Give up her own children?” His father stiffened. He growled deep in his throat, staring at the elders as his hairs stood on end. “Is this true? Are you doing this to my children?”

Henri and Remy snuck a glance together.

“They are lies, as Monsieur Mbulu said,” the Madame Freyna replied, her gaze nastily fixing on Rick. “Marie is just angry because she wants more than her fair share of her inheritance.”

Rick burst into a laugh. “More than her fair share? How about wanting some of it? Dad—she was living in a slum. I went to her house. I saw it.”

The elder wolves looked to Remy and Henri with savage accusation.

Drawing a breath of resolve, Remy stepped forward and said, “We did not have time to report in that he had gone to Marie’s home. My apologies.”

The pack’s eyes whipped to Rick again, then warily on Mr. Deacon, as Remy’s words were confirmation that Rick had told the truth. There were grumbles in French over the incompetence of their hunters. Some mutterings were over their lack of loyalty to the pack and to the goddess.

“It wasn’t a slum,” Madame Freyna protested without an ounce of penitence.

“It wasn’t as nice a neighborhood as that party loft,” Rick muttered, looking to the ceiling. “Unless I am mistaken, you could have afforded to put her in any one of your housing developments around Paris. But Margarete tells me that you place people around the city according to how much they are in your favor.”

The wolves bristled at him. But they glanced to Mr. Deacon who looked downright livid.

“How dare you?” Mr. Deacon snarled. “You keep my children from me. You make me pay an exorbitant membership fee meant to take care of my children, and then you have the audacity to put them in a slum?”

Henri stepped closer to Remy. He whispered into his ear. Remy stiffened, yet nodded.

“She was breaking the pack rules,” Madame Freyna said. “She was being punished.”

“My money which I donated for my children should have been given unconditionally to them!” Mr. Deacon snapped. “I would have expected no less!”

Henri perked his ears. He looked to Remy who nodded with raised eyebrows.

“This is our pack. We make the rules.”

“Not with my children!”

“You wish to risk their lives by identifying them?”

“It’s worse than that,” Rick cut in. “They are creating a problem with absentee fathering in the pack, using your children. They have done it for the sake of control.”

The wolves-as-men bristled at him.

He grinned angrily back as he said, “Sex slavery, Dad. They’ve been pimping out Henri and Lousia, besides what they have demanded of Marie.”

“Pimping out?” His father rounded on the elders. “What is the meaning of this! Pimping out?”

“Not true,” Monsieur Mbulu retorted, stone-faced.

“Totally true,” Rick replied, folding his arms. “Dad, the elders of the pack insist that your offspring do the same thing that you did when you were here and manipulated back when grandpa died. And regularly.”

His father paled. He looked over to Remy and Henri. Henri averted his eyes to the ground. Remy stared back, shaking his head at Rick. It wasn’t the best way to tell the truth. He had humiliated Henri. But Rick was resolved to get it all out as quickly as possible.

“They’re pimping them out, Dad,” Rick said.

Mr. Deacon immediately rounded on the Loup Garou elders. “I want them out now! I want my children freed.”

Henri’s head popped up.

The elders stiffened.

“You have no say, heretic.” Monsieur Blanc held his head higher than Mr. Deacon’s, looking a bit like a high elf peering down his nose at a savage man of Middle Earth. Though Rick felt his father had more nobility. “The goddess delivered them to us, as she had delivered you. You would risk their lives if you exposed them by claiming them as your own.”

“If they are willing to take that risk, I am more than willing to accept them as my own,” he growled back.

But the elders laughed at that. They gazed over to Remy and Henri who seemed to be waiting for the executioner’s axe to fall. Monsieur Blanc said with a magnanimous wave to them, “What say you? Do either of you wish to leave the pack and declare yourselves as Deacons?”

Rick looked over to them. He already knew they would say ‘no’—if Margarete was right. Remy was protecting his sisters, he believed, and would not leave until he was sure they were safe. Henri was living a comfortable life, protected by the pack. And he was sure fear of being hunted had been instilled in them.

So Rick said, “You don’t have to answer now, but I would be more than happy if you joined us.”

Remy stared at him. His eyes softened, but he shook his head, pained.

Henri stared more petulantly at him. Rick in his mind, was undoubtedly an insolent little pup still.

“So you see?” Monsieur Blanc said to Mr. Deacon, regaining control of the room. “Their place is here, obeying the will of the pack.”

Mr. Deacon’s hackles raised.

Rick rolled his eyes.

“And you are our guests.” The white wolf’s eyes rested on Rick. “And you will obey also.”

“I will do nothing of the sort.” Rick stepped back, angling away from him. “You don’t own me. And I don’t believe in your stupid goddess.”

“Blasphemer!” Monsieur Mbulu snapped.

Rick stuck his tongue out at him.

His father massaged his forehead. He peeked to the doors.

“You will not leave here until you comply,” Madame Freyna bit out.

Lifting his eyebrows at her, Rick stared. “That’s kidnapping, extortion, rape, and downright nasty.”

“Our people know we are here,” Mr. Deacon said calmly.

But the pack elders only looked amused.

“Oh really? A bunch of humans?” Monsieur Blanc said, chuckling.

But Mr. Deacon smiled dangerously wide at him. “Not just a bunch.”

Rick clued in and stared at his dad. “You didn’t contact them, did you?”

Ears perked at the way he said ‘them’. It had a pleasing effect of panic throughout the Loup Garou. After all, Mr. Deacon had enormous influence around the world besides being a multi-billionaire.

“Actually, I called your friend Andrew last night when you didn’t come back to the hotel."

Rick stared.

“I was worried,” Mr. Deacon said frankly.

“Abey?” Rick shook his head. “Why? Tom Brown would have been more useful for immediate help.”

“Useful, yes,” his father said, shaking his head. “But Andrew is the leader of this generation’s Holy Seven, and he knows a thing or two about wolves.”

“Yeah, so?” Rick tossed up his hands.

Their conversation was having the right effect on the pack of wolves. And for good reason.

“The Holy Seven?” Monsieur Mbulu murmured, looking a little green under his chocolate skin.

Mr. Deacon nodded, his amber eyes vengefully cold. “The newest generation. And I think more powerful than the last generation.”

“How would you know them?” Madame Freyna looked almost faint.

“Why would you even associate with them?” Monsieur Blanc gasped.

Shaking his head tiredly, Mr. Deacon replied, “My dear son Howie—”

“Rick!” aghast, Howard Richard Deacon III snapped.

“Fine, Rick—is best friends with their leader,” and Mr. Deacon was smiling. “…and with all the other members as well. Ho—Rick, why don’t you tell them about your friends?”

The entire pack’s eyes whipped onto him, wide in horror, as this truly was a wild and dangerous kind of wolf.

“I still think Tom is more impressive,” Rick murmured. “I mean, yeah, Abey and his friends are experienced in handling witches and for that matter werewolves. Semour has that silver sword of his for pity’s sake. The wolf slayer, he likes to call it.” He shuddered “It creeps me out. But Tom…”

“Tom is busy training for the CIA right now.” His father said, his eyes coolly resting on the elders of the Loup Garou whose foreheads were beginning to glisten with sweat. “I think he is busy.”

“Not that busy,” Rick muttered as though he were unaware that he was freaking out the pack of French wolves on purpose. “He’d love to stop and cause a bit of trouble. And he doesn’t even need to be here.”

Monsieur Blanc stepped toward him while recoiling from Rick at the same time. “How can you associate with such monsters? The Holy Seven? They are beasts!”

Rick turned his dry eyes onto them. “They are chosen warriors for God. And they don’t care about your goddess.”

“Why haven’t they harmed you?” Henri uttered before he could stop himself. He flustered, looking to the pack and backing away.

Nodding to him, Rick squared his shoulders and said, “It is actually a rather a funny story. But to be brief, before my best friend—Andrew Bartholomew Cartwright, AB for short—was chosen as leader of this Holy Seven, he and I used to play around at each other’s houses… long before I even knew I was a werewolf. You know, I didn’t change into a wolf until I was thirteen.”

The elders stared at his father who dryly gazed back to remind them that he had told them this already.

“Really?” Henri was intrigued. He looked to Remy who nodded, as Remy already knew.

“But for the record, the Holy Seven are good.” Rick stared the wolves down. “And Dad was friends with a few of them long before my good friends were chosen.”

The wolves stared at Mr. Deacon who said nothing.

“They kill wolves,” Monsieur Mbulu said.

Rick turned his head to stare at him. “They kill man-eaters.”

“You mean like Claude?” Madame Freyna said with bite.

Mr. Deacon whipped his eyes to Rick who had closed his in a cringe.

Rick nodded, teeth clenched. “Dad…”

“Your eldest, Claude, was a man-eater,” Madame Freyna said, chin stiff. “He broke the law of the pack, and the goddess could not protect him.”

“Hunters got to him about two years ago, according to Margarete,” Rick said, cringing.

The wolves peered down at Rick.

Mr. Deacon closed his eyes, nodding. “I see.”

“You betray your kind by making alliances with hunters,” Madame Freyna snapped.

Rick opened his eyes and shook his head. “No. Claude made a bad choice. He could have chosen a better path. Any wolf could become a man-eater.”

“A wolf must stick with the pack!” Monsieur Mbula growled.

Both Mr. Deacon and Rick stared dryly at him. It was clear to all that there was no pack to which they felt aligned.

“I stick to the truth,” Rick replied. Then he turned to his father and said, “And I will do what is right.”

His father smiled. He rubbed his son’s furry head.

The door burst open and a pair of Loup Garou ran in, breathless.

“Monsieur Blanc! Terrible news! We’ve been to their house. The front door was unlocked, and their cell phones were in the house. And the refrigerator was nearly emptied. They’re gone.”

“They?” The pack elders stood confused, still angry over the conversation, while also disturbed that their meeting was interrupted.

The intruding wolf shot one look at Rick, and then at Mr. Deacon. He shook his head and said, “Margarete and Genevieve.”

Rick covered a smile. He guessed that his sisters had taken him up on the chance to get out of France and had successfully escaped. If they hadn’t he was sure they would have been brought to the Loup Garou building for punishment.

“We had seen a car in front of their house, but the license plate was obscured—I don’t know how exactly—and they lost us in the city. It was like he was psychic.”

Mr. Deacon gazed subtly at his son,