Free Circle of Lies (Red Ridge Pack) by Sara Dailey, Staci Weber

backfires.
    Regardless of my concerns, before we made it home Alli made me promise to ask Teagan out. Just as we pulled onto the estate I assured Alli I’d talk to her as soon as I had the opportunity.
    “Well, you better be quick about it,” my sister said, “or I might take matters into my own hands.”
    Strangely, Cade didn’t weigh in. Normally he would have been super chatty and opinionated, but he didn’t make a sound. I wanted to ask him if that was because Teagan was human and his father was outspokenly against human-werewolf relations, but before I could, the vehicle sitting in our driveway stole my attention. Speak of the devil.
    To say that seeing Marcus’s car at our house put a damper on my good mood was an understatement. It seemed to have an effect on all of us. I knew that Cade and Marcus were still on bad terms, and I didn’t blame Cade for being angry with his father; knowing what Marcus originally said about my family and my little sister made him an ass in my book as well. I wondered what he would think of me wanting to date a human. For a moment I was nervous, but then I decided it didn’t matter. Sooner or later I’d have to have a real conversation with my sperm donor, but I’d deal with that day when it came. In the meantime, Mom had been doing a good job running interference. She’d been telling Marcus that I was always sleeping.
    He was on the porch before Alli even turned off the car. “Hey, kids, how was school?”
    We all just kind of looked at each other. Who was going to speak first?
    “It was good,” Cade said, grabbing Alli’s hand. It was hard to tell if he was doing it just to rub his relationship in his dad’s face or because he and my sister could rarely keep their hands off each other these days. That “true mates” thing supposedly made you all crazy for one another, but still…when it’s your sister, it’s just gross.
    Alli and Cade walked straight past Marcus and into our house, leaving me alone to face him. It’s not that I was afraid of Marcus; I just wasn’t sure what to say or how to act around him. There wasn’t a rulebook lying around to inform me how someone is supposed to behave when he finds out his dad for the past seventeen years is not his real father—or how to behave around the new biological father. And was I really supposed to think of Marcus as my father now?
    We stood there in silence for a moment as Alli and Cade made their escape. When the front door shut, Marcus finally spoke. “How are you healing, son?”
    My first instinct was to tell him, “I’m not your son,” and go inside, but considering I am his son and he is the pack’s alpha, I figured that might be a bad idea.
    “I’m feeling a little better, sir,” I said, trying to keep it formal.
    I could tell by his deflated expression that he’d been hoping for something a little less uptight. Instead of correcting me he said, “Come on, Aiden. Take a walk with me.”
    “Now?”
    “Unless you’d rather go inside and have your mother lie to me again about you being asleep.”
    “Oh. Yeah. Sorry about that,” I said.
    So, I guess he knew I’d been avoiding him. That probably made me the biggest coward alive.
    “Come on, just a short walk,” he said, and he turned down our path to the sidewalk.
    I put my backpack on the porch and zipped up my coat. The only thing I hated more than the cold weather here was having to walk through it. I really missed warm Houston winters.
    “I know you haven’t had much time to think about things like this, but have you considered the fact that you are my eldest son?” Marcus asked after we’d walked a short distance. I must have looked puzzled, because he continued without awaiting my reply. “You are my heir, which makes you the next alpha of this pack.”
    WTF! And I went from Huh? to No fucking way! in about two seconds.
    “You’re kidding, right?” I said with a laugh.
    It apparently wasn’t the reaction he was looking for,