by Aidy Award
The pack. Duh. That explained everything else. The Troikas weren't mafia, they were a pack. Packs had alphas. Gal bet Selena fulfilled that roll. "Wait, is your mom a wolf too?"
Of course. Where do you think my brothers and I came from?
Aha. Kosta and Niko were wolf-shifters too. That explained so much. But not how they had all come to be... she couldn't call them monsters, they weren't. How they had all become supernatural beings. "A werewolf bit you?"
Some of the legends of werewolves do come from our past, but that's not exactly how it works. There is a mate's bite, but it's not...
Mates. Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. The creepy home intruders had called her and the sisters little mates. Apparently that wasn't Australian. What was he going to say about mate's and biting. Oh man, had those men wanted to bite her and the sisters, make them be their wolf mates? "Not what?"
We need to go. There are other wolves in the Reserve. Follow me and try to move as quietly as you can.
Gal expected him to turn back into a human and then realized his clothes were in a heap under a bush. They weren't wearable. Which meant if he shifted, he'd be naked.
Naked.
Gal fanned herself and then hurried to catch up to Max. He took her off the regular walking path and into the forest. She laughed at herself for thinking of the scene in Little Red Riding Hood where the wolf leads the little girl away with all the pretty flowers. Except, Gal kind of hoped that Max would eat her up.
She followed the wolf through the woods, then through a couple of neighborhoods until they all the way down by the beach. If she was going to be dating a wolf shifter, maybe she should start working out. This was way more exercise than she was used to getting and her muscles and feet were screaming at her. She didn't let Max know. If he was taking her to wherever he thought Zara was being held, she would suffer through the pain. Thus far it wasn't anything a good long hot bath couldn't fix.
She'd bear any pain if it meant rescuing her friend.
Max led her all the way to the edge of town where Rogue intersected with Bay City. The Bay County Sheriff's department wasn't far. "Why are you taking me back to the sheriff? Those dickheads didn't do anything when I came crying to them earlier."
We need to see if Zara is here. Max sniffed the air.I haven't caught her scent, but they could be masking it.
Hold up. "You think the sheriff is working with your rival pack? Why would they do that? I though wolves weren't supposed to reveal themselves to humans. Wait, is it blackmail of some kind? Do they have dirt on the sheriff? I never trusted that guy."
Love, I don't think they are working with anyone. The sheriff's department is mostly staffed with wolves from the Grimm pack, including the sheriff. Who is dead. Until recently, they were our allies. Now they are... not.
Wow. The Troikas might not be mafia, but this whole wolf pack thing was not far from it. The Cosa Moonstra. "Crap. Then we have to go in there, like right now. I made a huge stink about telling the whole world that they wouldn't help me and they'd be hearing from my lawyers etcetera. They're going to know I went to you. I just know they are. What if they hurt her? I promised Heli I would find her."
Don't freak out yet. My wolves have been making their way here for the last hour and we have the place surrounded. The Grimms inside are cut off from their alpha and they won't make a move without his say so. But with you, we have the element of surprise. Trust me, no one is going to think that I revealed the pack to you.
"Me? I don't know what you think I'm going to do. Read them a story with finger puppets? Catalog all their records in the Dewey Decimal system? Shush them?" Max being a wolf was badass. Her being a librarian wasn't useful at all. She didn't really even understand why he'd brought her along or even let her in on his big bad wolf secret.
Sure, she liked him a lot, and she was really happy he trusted her enough that he could show her this part of himself. But she couldn't exactly do anything about it. Gal shook her head. "I've already put Zara in deeper trouble by opening my mouth. She wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for me. I don't think I can help."
Max had been standing next to her, but he shoved her with his nose so that she had to back up to a wall. Geez, he and his nose were strong. That's not true. This is not your fault. It's my family's and we will get you girls out of this.
His eyes glowed a brilliant blue around the edges and his fur seemed to sparkle. His wolf form was absolutely stunning and it had her heart skipping a beat. He pressed up against her and gave her a big slobbery lick to the face.
"Ugh. Max. Gross." That was not how she liked getting kisses from him.
It pulled you out of that freak-out spiral, didn't it? If not, I will happily lick you again. Somewhere else.
"Don't be gross. But you're right. That helped. I'm gonna keep freaking out a little bit. But I'll do whatever I can to help Zara."
Good. Let's -- Max turned his head and his ear pricked up. Another wolf, a big black one came right into their hiding spot. While Max's eyes were a brilliant blue, this wolf's were similar but with a definite purple undertone to them. Max snorted at him and they looked at each other, heads tilting and bobbing, and their tails swished.
Interesting. Wolf body language. She realized they must be talking to each other in their minds. "Hey, you two want to let me in on the conversation? Also, who are you?"
The black wolf barked at her and then its body contorted and grew until a six-foot two, butt-naked, Kosta stood in front of her. "You shouldn't be here, Galyna."
"Whoa, buddy. I do not want to see your junk." Gal slapped one hand over her eyes and the other she held out covering Kosta's ample babymaker. Okay, so yeah. She'd caught a peek. If Max was even half so endowed she wouldn't be disappointed. "Geez. I am so putting together in case of emergency shifting kits so that every time you guys turn back into humans I don't have to see anyone's, uh, manhoods."
"RUSSIAN." Max's human voice had her jumping about a foot.
She hadn't expected him to shift too and now all she wanted was to yank her hand from her eyes and see what he had below the belt. She was so going to hell for thinking about sex at a time like this. "Can we please find Zara and go."
"Max told me your theory, but she's not here. The enforcers have the building surrounded and there is no sign of her."
Gal opened her fingers enough to see Max and Kosta's faces. "You're a thousand percent sure Zara isn't here? What if they're, you know, masking her scent, or have her locked up in a sub basement or something."
"Not a chance. This nose would know. Is Heli alright?" Kosta folded his arms and stroked his beard with one hand. He was worried. Maybe his relationship with Heli was more than the fling she thought it was.
"Yeah, she went over to her parent's house to see if they'd heard from Zara. She's going to stay the rest of the night there just in case. She's pretty panicked." If Zara wasn't being kept by the bad guy wolves at the sheriff's department where else could she be? Max was going to have to a lot more explaining about this pack war thing. If there was one thing Gal knew how to do it was pull lots of moving pieces of a project together and find the answers. That masters degree had to come in useful for something more than her $28,000 a year job.
Although, she hadn't figured it out with the whole Max is a werewolf thing. No, she couldn't think that way. It was a lot to ask someone to suspend their beliefs to come to a conclusion like that. If Max and Kosta and whoever else knew anything would give her all the pieces of he puzzle she knew she could work out how to find Zara. She just needed more information.
Kosta nodded and pointed at Max. "You owe me a beer and a burger and a long discussion about what the hell you were thinking, big brother. Tomorrow, or at least sometime before dad gets back and he and mom kill you."
Eek. She coughed, trying to get breath back. "Kill you?"
Max had mentioned that revealing this secret to her had consequences. But the death penalty? That seemed harsh. Especially if she never told anyone.
Which she wouldn't. That certainly put a damper on him telling her anything else. Without a lot more information she wouldn't be able to help Zara. Crapolla. She would have to find a way to prove to Kosta and probably the rest of the pack that she could be trusted.
"We'll see about that." Max clasped Kosta shoulder, and Kosta returned the embrace. "Go. Check on Heli, see if you can find anything else out about Zara's disappearance. I'll take care of the rest of the enforcers."
Kosta shifted back into the black wolf and took off back toward Rogue's residential area. Gal shivered. That sound their bones and whatever else inside their bodies made when they changed from human to wolf sounded painful and horrible. She wasn't sure how she was going to get used to that.
They watched Kosta run off and Max waited until his brother was out of site before he said anything more. "If Zara isn't here, that changes my plans. Give me a minute to give the enforcers new assignments and then I'll take you home. Stay hidden. Okay?"
Gal nodded and slunk against the wall, her hand still mostly covering her eyes. She would never admit it to Max, but she peeked. She couldn't help it. Max had already turned away and all she caught was a glimpse of his butt. What a butt it was.
If she hadn't been thinking about Max's derriere she might have seen the pair of glowing eyes, looking right at her from behind a tree. She tried to swallow and call for Max but fear had stuck a giant boulder in her throat and nothing but a teeny croak came out. That croak turned into a squeak when a second and third and fourth set of eyes blinked on like Christmas lights all in a row.
The first set of eyes moved closer and Gal pressed herself tighter against the wall. Think. Think. She had a brain, she needed to use it. She'd had encounters with several wolves now, and the bad guys had all had a glow around their irises in shades of red and orange. Max and Kosta's had been shades of blue. What color were the eyes coming toward her now? She squinted, praying for blue.
Yes, they were. Phew. Hopefully that meant these wolves were on Team Troika. Only one way to find out. "Hello, I'm Galyna. I'm here with Max. Please don't bite me."
The wolf in the lead did that snuffling sound she'd associated with a laugh when Max had done it. He trotted up close and wasn't growling, so she might have a chance at not dying.
"What's going on, guys? Max just went to--" Uh-oh. He'd gone to talk to these guys. If they were here and not over by the sheriff's office, either Max was in trouble, or she was.
The wolf in the front of the small group did the weird contortionist thing and shifted. One by one, the wolves behind him did the same until a wall of muscle and peen was standing in front of her in a semi-circle. So many penises.
None the one she wanted.
Covering her eyes hadn't done a bit of good last time, so Gal simply kept her eyes up. "What can I do for you, penises, I mean gentleman?"
The men glanced around at each other and gave the guy who'd led them all over here some kind of go ahead. "You're the woman Maxsim Troika is in love with."
VISCERAL
Love? "I don't know about in love with, but, we're umm, exploring a relationship. We trust each other if that's what you're asking."
The wolf chuckled. "Not asking. We all know it, even if you do not yet. It's hard to hide base feelings from another wolf. We can smell fear, desire, hate, love, and so much more."
Murmurs of ascent went through the group. This wasn't awkward at all. Half the pack knew Max was in love with her but she didn't. If they could smell desire it meant Max had known exactly how turned on she was by him all the time.
That didn't mean they were in love. Sure, she liked him a lot, and she definitely wanted to see him naked instead of all of his friends. But love?No. This was more like lust. Wasn't it? "Okay, so you're what, the Valentine's Day committee? If there's going to be singing and a candy-gram, I'm going to have to insist you put some clothes on."
Another guy stepped forward. This one she recognized. He was one of the bartenders at Sleepy Folk. Harley. That was his name. "No singing. We want you to give a message to Maxsim."
"Me? Why can't you tell him. You work with him and you're in his pack. Right?" She hadn't actually cleared that up. This whole conversation could be a ruse to distract her, get her to let her guard down so they could kidnap her too. She tried to move away, but her back was already up against the wall of the building. Her heart thumped hard against her chest and she looked around for an escape route. Where the hell was Max?
"Yes, we are." Harley said. "We're loyal to the Troika pack and we will always protect those our alpha's heir hold dear. You don't have any reason to fear us, malish. What we didn't know for sure until tonight was whether Max was one of us. Now that he has revealed our truth to you, we know he is on our side."
"You're side? What side is that? Your pack politics are new and still confusing to me." If packs had coalitions within she was going to need to make a chart to keep them all straight.
"It's very simple. We are all in love with human women too. We want to take them as our mates, but it is forbidden for wolves to mate with humans."
Oh. Ohhhhh. "Is mating like marriage?"
"Only in that the pair promises themselves to the other, but the mating alliance is much more than that. Humans pretend their vows are for life, but when a wolf mates, it truly is until death. The bond is unbreakable."
VISCERAL "Okay. What can I do about it. Do you need wolf divorces? I'm not a lawyer, I'm a librarian."
"We want Max to lift the ban on telling humans who and what we are and allow us to mate who we want."
"Is he in a position to do that?"
"He is the alpha's heir. If he mates you, the rest of us can have that freedom too."
Max
Max asked a few of the enforcers to keep an eye on Gal while he bolted back to the Reserve and grabbed his car. She'd been hyped up on adrenaline, fear, and excitement when he came across her in the woods, but they'd burned through most of that as he pushed her to hike to hell and gone.
One would think out of any person in the entire world he would realize she was human. The human with limitations. A human he could never have, and the one he wasn't sure he could live without. A human who was not a wolf.
Revealing his true self to her created a bond that he couldn't allow to ever be broken. One that could destroy both of them. Because he had no idea how to keep her a secret. But he did know one person who knew how to work the system better than anyone else in the world.
His mother.
She was either going to kill him softly, like with poisoned cookies and a song, or help him. She did make really good murder cookies. He'd never see it coming. He crossed his fingers she would understand and the situation wouldn't come to that.
He rolled into the parking lot of the strip mall in Bay City that was adjacent to the sheriff's department. He didn't want to tip them off so blatantly that he was nearby and watching them. His old Impala wasn't the quietest of get away cars. He parked, trotted over to where he'd left Gal hiding. She still had that faint sparkle to her skin, but he found her looking even more exhausted than when he'd left.
Shit. She was his responsibility and he'd done a crappy-ass job of protecting her so far. "Come on, lapochka. Let me take you home."
She rubbed her arms and a little vee formed between her eyebrows. "What about Zara?"
"I've got the pack sitting on this place. Any move they make, we'll know about it. We aren't going to do her any good sitting out here falling asleep. We'll go home, get some rest, and start fresh again in the morning."
She shifted from foot to foot and glanced back at the brick building the enforcers had surrounded. She opened her mouth like she was going to say something and then shut it again.
"What is it?"
"Nothing. Let's go."
Max waited one more moment before he moved to lead her across to the car. There was definitely something she wanted to say to him, but was either afraid or didn't know how.
Which stank. Not literally.
He didn't scent real fear on her, only reticence.
He'd showed her his deepest darkest secret and she was worried about talking to him. Did she not trust him? That didn't feel right. She did trust him. She trusted him enough that she'd followed a wolf through the forest and straight to human law enforcement. She could have freaking called animal control on him. She could have run from him the second he shifted.
She hadn't done either of those things. She'd clapped and whispered the quietest cheer of happiness.
His heart had soared with, he'd felt a huge weight lifted. He'd never felt to light in his life.
So what had happened in the seven minutes he'd been gone? He caught the scent of other wolves around her, but only ones that were supposed to be here. His pack, his men. No way they had scared her into silence. He made sure to ask the enforcers he knew had human women in their lives to take point. They all had an unsaid understanding. That couldn't be the problem.
Maybe she was changing her mind about him. Moon above he was being a dumbass, analyzing the shit out of one simple action. Whatever was on her mind, she would tell him eventually. Or she wouldn't and he'd get it out of her with his own brand of torture. Which involved kisses and tickling. "Come on, I grabbed my car. I'll drive you home."
Gal blinked, surprised. "You did? Well, good. I'm not going to say no to a ride. My feet are killing me."
He grabbed her hand and led her to the car. "Maybe I'll give you a foot rub later."
"Something else I wouldn't say no to. Make it a full on massage and I might just give you my undying love." Gal laughed already more relaxed and got into the car.
Max froze, staring at the black shiny rooftop. It had been a joke. She hadn't meant it.
Her undying love.
Every fiber of his being from wolf to man wanted that more than anything in the world. More than making his parent proud by being alpha, more than fighting off the threat from the Grimms, more than he wanted his next breath. He wanted Gal to love him.
Because he loved her.