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

eyes drew to the pale, hungry-looking man. All of their eyes were on him, actually.

Rick straightened up and said, “No. No. I… I just need to work better on my French.”

His father chuckled, lightly rubbing the bridge between his eyes.

“No,” the Frenchman said. His intense blue eyes were probing with mirth, reading him. “You are bored. And why should you not be. You are young. You want to be out and about with young people.”

Rick blinked in a stare at him. “Uh… no, actually. Though, I think I may be a little jet lagged. I’ll try to keep up.”

However, the white-haired Frenchman waved it away. He gestured to the driver. “Remy, you can guide him. Take him to a party. It is not necessary for you to be here either. Our business will be long.”

A party. Rick looked to his father, their gaze meeting.

Speaking up, Rick said, “That won’t be necessary. I’m not really into parties.”

“You must get to know young men and women your age,” the white wolf said. And though he was not in wolf form, Rick knew this one was perhaps the pack leader. Or at least, the face of the pack. He could tell from the looks of the two at his side as well as their voices in the conversation with his father that they all held a great deal of weight within the Loup Garou organization.

Shaking his head, Rick said, “I really—”

“I will brook no objection. You must go to the party. You are the guest of honor.”

Rick cringed. They could see it all over his face that he had no intention of going nicely to a party, even if it was in his honor.

And some of the French took offense to that. They stared as if he had spat on them. Which was why his father intervened, almost putting himself between them as he said, “He is jet lagged. Perhaps it is best to simply take him to our hotel.”

The dark wolf said as he eyed Rick over, “Monsieur Deacon, you must understand, your agreement with the Loup Garou still stands. He must go to the party and interact there.”

His father’s amber eyes fixed on the leadership of the pack, his head lifting to a human level, though Rick noticed his hackles seemed raised. “I will keep my part of the deal. But my son has not agreed. And I will not force him.”

“Who rules the den? You or your pup?” the butch French she-wolf said.

His father peeked back at his son. His eyes were worried, and yet he chuckled to himself, relaxing. He said in a calmer voice to the French, “You forget, we are lone wolves. I rule nothing. And he runs free.”

They stared at Rick, savagely eying him. Rick stared back, trying not to feel intimidated. But it was hard. They were, after all, outnumbered about five to two—and that wasn’t counting the servants in the room. 

“And my son is more of a wolf than anybody in this room,” his father added.

“I heard he was a late bloomer,” the whitehaired wolf said with a snide tone. “He didn’t transform until he was in puberty.”

His father shrugged.

Rick had no idea what they were saying, but somehow the conversation had diffused. Until the whitehaired Frenchman said, “Remy, take him somewhere where he can nap, then take him to the party.”

His father put a hand to his forehead, moaning.

But Rick stared the whitehaired wolf right into his eyes and said, “You are used to having your own way a lot, aren’t you?”

The whitehaired Frenchman looked back at Rick with a mocking, and hungry grin again. “Is it not the same for you?”

Rick shook his head. “No. I almost never get what I want.”

All the wolves seemed shocked, but his father smiled.

“But,” Rick added, “I don’t think you are going to get what you want today either.”

He then rose from his seat and walked over to the driver, Remy, who was staring at him with one hand covering his mouth as if he were hiding a smile. It looked like he was complying, but Rick was only leaving because he knew they would not let him stay there and he did not want to interfere in his father’s business.

The whitehaired Frenchman glanced to Mr. Deacon to extract an explanation. He squared his shoulders as he watched Rick exit the room with his escort. “Cheeky, isn’t he?”

Rick and the driver walked down the hall back towards the front entrance in silence. Remy was watching him, repressing a smirk as his amber eyes skimmed over Rick’s shape and posture. It was starting to annoy him.

Remy chuckled, shaking his head.

“What?” Rick gazed toward the driver. Rick was almost as tall as this young man. Maybe when he was older he would be taller. Remy looked like he was in his mid-twenties. College-aged. The only question was, how much English could he speak?

“You do not want to cross him,” Remy said. His voice was a warm baritone. His accent was light.

Rick huffed. “Says you.”

Remy laughed openly, shaking his head more. He opened the front door, letting Rick go out of the building first. Guessing, Remy was most likely an on-call chauffeur for the Society rather than for just one wolf within it. He seemed intelligent enough. In fact, as they walked down to the car, Rick decided that Remy seemed overqualified for just a chauffeur. He was probably a personal assistant. They probably entrusted Remy with important tasks, like managing wayward wolves whom they wanted to manipulate.

Which was the problem….

Rick mulled over the situation in his head. His father wanted him not to get entangled with the Loup Garou like he had. Clearly the Loup Garou was holding his father’s past indiscretions over his head as blackmail. And admittedly, if it got out into the mainstream media that Howard Richard Deacon II had participated in a ‘Parisian orgy’ when he was young and he had a number of illegitimate children in Paris that he had not claimed, he’d lose support from his shareholders. However, as Rick climbed into the backseat of the car, he knew that his father owned most of the shares of his businesses, so that wasn’t much of a threat. Maybe he feared boycott from buyers, Rick wondered as the driver climbed into his seat and pulled on his safety belts.

Remy glanced over his seat at Rick who was now lying down on his back, feet resting against the ceiling, thinking hard. The Frenchman huffed, turning to speak.

“No,” Rick said, not even looking at him. “I won’t sit up. If you are not taking me to my hotel, I am napping in the car.”

Remy stared, eyebrows lifting.

“And I don’t need your criticism either. You drove us from the airport, so you overheard my dad’s and my conversation coming here.” Rick folded his arms. “I’m not playing along with it.”

Remy sighed. “And why not? You’d have fun.”

Rick sat up and stared at him. “Do you French have no moral standards at all? I am not that kind of guy. And the fact that you people convinced my dad to commit such a—”

“He had a good time.” Remy’s voice was stiff. “That’s what life’s about.”

“Bull crap.” Rick growled. “Life is about taking care of your family. Life is about sacrifice.”

Remy stared. His expression was hard to read.

“Convincing my father to do that, then making him abandon his family….” Rick shook his head. “That’s the worst.”

Remy’s stare turned dry. He leaned away from Rick. “You do not give him credit for his own passions?”

With a wolfish cringe, Rick shook his head. “A lone wolf cannot let his passions take over.”

Remy’s brows met in the center. He turned and started the car. It rolled forward. He was going to take Rick to the party anyway.

“You are a pessimist,” Remy said.

Rick stared. Him. A pessimist? Maybe. He had been hunted since he was thirteen. He lived in a witch town. It was hard to see everything as roses and daisies when he went to Science class with witches who liked to throw wolfsbane at him and attempt to curse his friends, all just because. And all the cast off and forlorn children of Gulinger High, haunted and unwanted, had taught him that life was anything but fair.

“You haven’t seen what I have seen,” Rick murmured.

Remy looked back through the rearview mirror. Then he pulled to the side of the road. Unbuckling his seat belt, he turned around. His eyes had gone dark. “You, rich boy, think you’ve had it harder than me? You have everything. You have barely lived.”

But Rick only stared back at him, not answering. People always foolishly assumed that money solved everything. He had been accused of having an easy life for years, including by Tom Brown who had better case than most to hold against him. But arguing back never did any good. People believed what they wanted to believe, regardless of what was true. Simply because he had money, in their eyes he had to be an insensitive villain, never mind that his family worked their tails off for it to keep themselves safe from hunters.

The driver pulled back into the road and took him to their destination.

It was a row of apartments, which for some reason reminded Rick of a place in those Jane Austen movies his mother used to like watching. He felt like stepping out of the car and talking about Bath… with a British accent of course. Jessica would have found it funny. Abey would have rolled his eyes. Peter and Daniel might have played along, while their other friends would have called them stupid.

However, he didn’t do any of that. He climbed out of the car with a sigh. After thinking about his friends, he had gotten more than a little homesick. He wondered what they were doing at the moment, kind of wishing they were with him in France… mostly to deal with those wolves. They knew a thing to two about werewolves after all.

 On task, Remy directed him up a walkway toward the apartment entrance, urging him to go in. In that one moment, Rick was tempted to just run for it. With a quick look at Remy, he figured he could outrun the guy easily. Remy had a paper-pusher kind of physique, and Rick felt that he was in top shape after playing Varsity basketball and track that year. If Tom was there, he would have. However, Rick decided against it. Escape had to be done quietly. If he just bolted, who knows what kind of commotion that would cause? How many Loup Garou were in the police? It was best to play agreeable for now.

Remy took him up a towering spiral of stairs to an apartment on the top floor. Pressing the bell, someone let them in.  

Those inside greeted Remy in French then warmly welcomed Rick, pulling him into the apartment. Rick held off a cringe, feeling tired and wishing he could just flee now. A top floor was not an easy place to escape. And looking around himself, he felt like he was on the set of some kind of party scene in a Hollywood teen movie. He had never really partied in this sense. The witches did. They had plenty of parties. But as a werewolf, he could never let his guard down, especially with such abandon. He realized that with pack association, these wolves could relax around one another, especially if they knew everybody at the party was a wolf.

“What is wrong with him?” the woman asked Remy. She wasn’t exactly dressed like she was going to hold a party at her place, but the space behind him was being cleared for dancing and other things. Food and drinks were being brought out, including beer and wine, along with harder drinks.

Remy answered, “Vanity. But he says he is jet lagged.”

She chuckled. Her amusement came out in her voice as she said to Remy, “I understand. Rich, spoiled boy.” But then she said