Alpha's Captive 04 - Haven Read Free Page B

wind and whipped across her face into her mouth. She it spat out and turned back to the road. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why don’t you have a say in anything?”
    “Got to be the head of a household to be on the council,” he said. “If you’re not an alpha, you don’t get a vote.”
    “Alpha?” She openly grinned at the word. “Sounds like a code name.”
    “It sounds stupid,” he returned . “Long time ago, they were just called the primes—before that, the princips. But I guess we’ve been watching too many wildlife shows, so now it’s alphas, more often than not.”
    “By head of the household, do they mean men?” Harper asked, wrinkling her nose.
    Levi chuckled. “Come on, Harper. We’re xenophobic bigots, not sexist bigots. They mean werewolf shifters. If both partners are werewolves, then they each get half a vote. But if they’re another kind of shifter or a human, they’re not allowed on the council.”
    “ So why aren’t you on it now, Mr. Werewolf Shifter?”
    “Family household,” he clarified. “No family, no household, at least as far as they’re concerned. Got to have kids and your own house on a hunk of land to get a vote.”
    She raised her eyebrows at the idea—and at the hint of outrage in Levi’s voice. “No wonder you have so many cousins. No one listens to you until you do.”
    Levi lifted one shoulder. “Not even a little bit.”
    “And they get to make the rules.”
    It was bad enough when her family all got together. Sure, they loved each other, but there was plenty of infighting between relatives. There were a couple of aunts who hadn’t talked in decades, and Harper wasn’t sure if anyone except for them remembered why anymore. She would rather not imagine what it would be like if they could make decisions for everybody else.
    He ran a hand through his tousled hair. “The big rules, yeah. And if you don’t follow along, you get kicked out. Declared an outlaw.”
    “ So are you…?”
    He barked a laugh. “Not yet. See, my approach was to fly under everybody’s radar—the clan’s, the bloodsuckers’, everybody. Worked until now. In another week? If this SD card doesn’t pan out, yeah, I’ll be an outlaw for sure, but it won’t much matter because I’ll also be dead.”
    “That’s a healthy way of looking at it.”
    “A regular Pollyanna, I am,” he said.
    Harper blinked at him. “Who?”
    “Never mind.”
    “Anyway, that sounds really harsh,” she said, redirecting the conversation. “I mean, families are supposed to help each other.”
    He nodded at her phone, which dangled from the charger. “So why aren’t you calling anyone up for help? Aside from the whole tracking thing.”
    Harper shook her head. “I’m not dragging my family into this. Even my country cousins don’t have the firepower to face down these guys, and they don’t deserve the trouble it’d bring.”
    “Exactly,” he said. “I can’t blame the clan for shooting my idea down. I’m not happy with it, and I’m going to prove them wrong, but I can’t blame them. They have a lot of people to take care of, and they don’t like risk.”
    “Well, that’s big of you.”
    He flashed a toothy smile. “Not really. When this works, I’m going to rub it in their furry faces.”
    Harper snorted a laugh. “Now, that’s the Levi I know.”
    “If we’re going to make it, though, we need to find a place to hole up while Mortensen is busy chasing down the semi and the police are looking for a Mini Cooper,” he said. “We’re pretty conspicuous in this car.”
    “Just say the word,” she said. “But no more barns, okay? I’m kind of over places with only one entrance.”
    “All it takes is one little grenade, and you’re all jumpy.” He shook his head in mock disgust. “Picky, picky.”
    Harper slid her eyes over to him. He somehow managed to sprawl even in the small passenger seat, all casual loose-limbed indolence, with his rough-hewn features and the contours of his