Desandra ended up coming with us to Atlanta. She was smart, cunning, and ruthless. When we returned, Jennifer was still pregnant and couldn’t be challenged. Desandra also had two weeks of maternity leave left, but she didn’t use it. She made her first kill within forty-eight hours of swearing loyalty to the Pack and began climbing up the food chain. Now she held the beta spot in Clan Wolf and Jennifer was sleeping with her eyes open.

“Did Jennifer and Desandra strike a deal or something?” I asked.

“Not that I know of,” Jim said. “Jennifer hates her even more than she hates you. If Desandra were on fire, Jennifer wouldn’t piss on her to put her out.”

“Then what’s the holdup?”

Jim shrugged. I glanced at Barabas. Barabas shrugged, too. Neither of them had heard anything. That was rare.

“She would make a better alpha,” Jim said. “She’s stronger.”

Despite Jennifer’s impression, I never had a problem with her. She’d start a fight and I’d hit back hard, but I never went after her. Still, I had to admit Desandra would be a hell of an alpha. That didn’t mean I was eager to deal with her.

“Looking forward to sitting next to Desandra at the Pack Council?” I asked.

Jim gave me a look of pure hate.

Barabas laughed.

Jim permitted himself a small half-smile without showing his teeth. He very rarely smiled—it conflicted with his badass image. In all the years I’d known him, I only saw him bare his teeth to three people, and two of them were dead. The third would be dead, except for the technicality of him being a Friend of the Pack.

“They need to sort this mess out and soon,” Jim said. “There are six hundred wolves and they’re all holding their breath. Rumor says Desandra went to Orhan and Fatima to ask for their blessing.”

Orhan and Fatima had run Clan Wolf before Daniel had taken over. They had trained him as their successor, stepped down, and retired from Pack politics. They lived on an orchard not far from the Keep and stayed strictly neutral. So far, I had seen them exactly twice, at a Thanksgiving dinner and at a wedding, and they both struck me as the kind of people I didn’t want to screw with.

“What do you mean, she went to ask their blessing?” I asked.