Free Shiftless by Aimee Easterling

to my father, and his next question elucidated what he thought of said alpha.  "How is Crazy Wilder doing?"
    "What are you doing in my house?" I growled back, my words low enough that Keith might not even hear if his wolf had drifted back to sleep after I moved away.  I knew I wouldn't be lucky enough to get out of this situation without doing some major explaining for the kid, but right now I was more concerned about keeping a bloodling alpha away from my young nephew.
    Before either Wolfie or I could throw down the gauntlet, though, a new voice drifted in from outside.  "Hey, guys!"  Chase was out of breath in his rush to perform crowd control, but I was still able to recognize the more stable wolf without taking my eyes away from the threat in front of me.   Although Chase was clearly Wolfie's second in command and probably would obey the alpha's orders regardless of their sadism, I instantly relaxed when I realized the beta was present.  Chase seemed to have a similar effect on Wolfie since I could see the wolf retreating out of the alpha's eyes at the same time Keith stepped up beside me, a smile on his young face.
    "Hey, Chase," the kid said.  "We're ready to go."
     
    ***
     
    If I hadn't been so tense, the battle of wills as we piled into Chase's car would have been hilarious.
    "Aunt Terra calls shotgun!" my useless nephew noted as Chase got into the driver's side of the car.  The teenager shot me a knowing glance, and it dawned on me that Keith probably thought the tension earlier was purely sexual.  He'd apparently parsed Dale's description of Chase as my "old friend" to mean that we'd dated, and was bound and determined to throw us back together.  But despite the kid's cuteness, there was no way I was letting my pre-change nephew ride in the backseat with a bloodling.  Yes, it seemed unlikely that the alpha would attack Keith in plain view, but bloodlings cared a lot less about human social standards than the rest of us did.  I wasn't going to risk it.
    "No, really, I'd rather ride in the backseat," I demurred, stepping toward the back of the car.  Unfortunately, Keith wasn't easy to override.
    "You get carsick in the back.  Remember, Aunt Terra?" he said pointedly, jerking his head toward Chase.  If I actually had harbored a crush on the beta, my nephew's gestures would have been mortifying.  As it was, they were just annoying, especially since Wolfie seemed to have picked up on my real purpose in dragging my feet.  The alpha smirked at me and began to open the back passenger-side door, and I knew I had to squash this farce right here.  Even if Keith was safely ensconced in the front seat, I still wanted Wolfie as far away from my nephew as possible, which meant the alpha needed to get into the other side of the car.
    "Thank you," I said to Wolfie, pretending he'd been holding the door open for me, and I quickly slid past him into the car.  "I'll really be fine in the back," I tossed out to Keith.  "Your long legs would be cramped back here."
    Keith shrugged, and I could have sworn Wolfie's smirk grew even wider as the alpha strutted around the back of the car to get in beside me.  I should have felt victorious, but somehow ended up thinking I'd been played.
     
    ***
     
    "How are you feeling?" Chase asked Keith a few minutes later as we turned onto another winding country road.  It was clear that Chase and my nephew knew each other well and were on good terms, presumably because of the volunteer work the beta performed with my brother-in-law.  I gathered that this clinic project had been in the works for years and was just now coming to fruition, so I shouldn't have been surprised to discover that Chase treated my nephew as an honorary little brother.
    As Keith chattered away about how his father was pretending he had mono and keeping him home all week, I turned my attention to Wolfie.  Despite the fact that the alpha was in human form, I could tell the wolf predominated since he'd rolled