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he heard the rumble of engines as cars left the parking lot.  A familiar voice drifted up through the open window, and he crept to the window so he could listen without being seen.  He didn’t make a habit of eavesdropping, but something about the hushed conversation stirred his curiosity.  Especially once he heard Eveny’s name.
     
    * * * * *
     
    Acksel sat in the center of the corner booth at Poke’s and waited while his top-ranked men filed into the bar, moved tables and chairs around, and prepared for the meeting.  Once a week he got together with the highest-ranked males and discussed pack business.  He watched with a snarl on his lips as the human that his sister was friends with exited the bar.  Luke was dangerous.  Dangerous to their pack’s way of life.  Dangerous to Eveny.
    The seventeen males settled quickly and Teddy, the bar owner, dropped off pitchers of draft beer and enough mugs for everyone, then scuttled away into the back office after making sure that the bar was empty of humans and the front door was locked.
    Acksel had only been alpha for a few years, but he kept a tight leash on his people.  If anyone got out of line, he knocked them on their ass.  He’d clawed his way to the top leaving a trail of broken bones, concussions, and blood in his wake, and he would do anything to keep his seat of power.
    Even if it meant taking away his sister’s choices from her.
    His wolf growled in protest in his mind but he muzzled the beast and ignored the ache in his heart.  Eveny couldn’t see the forest for the trees.  She thought she could bide her time and wait out the heat this cycle, but she didn’t see how restless the males were becoming in the pack.  If his father hadn’t intervened, he would have forced her to take a male this heat.
    His thoughts drifted to the human, Luke, again, and his fangs elongated in rage.  Eveny might think she was being secretive, but Acksel could read her like a book.  She’d been in love with that fucking human since she was a kid and her protests of “I’m not ready to take a mate” were just her trying to plan a way to take the human as her mate.  Which Acksel could not allow.  He’d been worried that she might try to ask him to come along with her to the cabin, so he’d spoken to Teddy and asked him to keep Luke busy at the bar.  And then he’d gone to Eveny’s boss, Jerry, and had him saddle her with lots of busywork and extra hours.  Adding in Acksel’s let’s hang out breakfasts all week, he knew that she hadn’t had time to have a real conversation with Luke.  But that wouldn’t last forever.
    As his only sister, she held a place of reverence in the pack.  Her mate would be his brother in the pack and brother-in-law in the human world.  If she chose a human as her mate, then she was turning her back not only on the pack but on him and his father.  Her taking a human as a mate would be seen as a weakness on Acksel’s part to ensure that his family line remained pure.  His alpha status could be called into question.  He’d have to answer challenges and fight to prove his worth as alpha.  He’d do it, but he didn’t want to have to.  He wanted Eveny to toe the line and do what was expected of her.  Namely, to take a worthy male as a mate, not some pathetic human.
    If she did manage to take the human for her mate, Acksel would be forced to mark her as a rogue, slashing his claws across her arm as a warning to other packs that she couldn’t be trusted.  He and his dad would lose her.  It would be as if she were dead, but she would be very much alive.  He couldn’t do that to his dad, and he couldn’t do it to himself.
    In spite of promising his father that he would let her go through the heat on her own, he had his own plans.  He was sure that she was already in the throes of the heat and she would thank him later for sending a male to relieve her.  He just had to choose the right male.
    He rapped his knuckles on the