Another mile flew past. They’d be in town soon.
“How do you know he does?” she asked him quietly. It unnerved her to talk to Dylan as an equal.
“Everyone knows, Al. He’s the Alpha—everyone can tell when he wants a female.”
“Oh my God,” she whispered to herself. She recalled Cade’s grin—and her own mortification—when he’d said all the wolves would smell him on her.
“It’s okay. Don’t be embarrassed, it’s not…it’s not dirty, you know? It’s not like he’s a human guy who just wants to get you into bed, it’s—”
“How’d you get all clued in to werewolf stuff?” she snapped, reddening. But she wasn’t angry. God help her, she was turned on, and scared, and, yes, a bit thrilled, and she couldn’t deal with any of those emotions in front of Dylan.
He shrugged. “I’ve listened to the guys at the ranch. I’ve been… I can’t really explain it. It’s not all words, you know? Some of it’s like, mental, or just instinct. That’s why I like being there. It feels natural.” He cocked his head at her, a disconcertingly shrewd expression on his handsome face, and then hit her with another one. “Ally, how come you never think a guy wants you?”
Balls were flying out of left field faster than she could hit them. “I don’t know,” she muttered, and he didn’t press.
She sighed. “Because…look. You don’t remember back before it all happened, do you? I know you remember that night, but you don’t remember much about me before that, right?”
She couldn’t believe they were having a Major Conversation like this in the car, with a sleeping child in the backseat and her trying to keep her eyes on the road while navigating the emotional landmines of the past and talking to her little boy about stuff she never wanted to talk to him about.
“I remember my parents,” he said slowly. “I remember always being scared except when you were around, but no—it’s weird, but I don’t remember much about you.”
“Okay. Well, see, I didn’t date much. Like, at all. So, after it happened…” She’d always planned to explain It to Dylan when he grew up, which meant…now? No, not right now. “I mean, when I came back, I still looked like me, but completely different. It felt like walking around in someone else’s body.”
She found it hard to explain to someone who’d been born beautiful how difficult it was to go from chubby and cute-ish to hard and hot. “Guys liked the body, but it didn’t feel like mine. Sometimes it still doesn’t, if that makes sense.”
“It does.”
“It’s still weird,” she continued, feeling reflective now. She propped an elbow on the window and leaned her head on one hand while she steered with the other one. “I still forget about the strength sometimes. I’m used to the eyesight and the hearing, and I’ve learned to ignore the smell.”
“Yeah. For wolves, it’s automatic to tune out certain sounds and smells when we’re on two feet, you know? Otherwise we’d have sensory overload all the time.”
Fremont came into view, and she welcomed the distraction. Soon they were on Main Street.
She loved small towns whose Main Streets were actually the main streets. She started looking for a parking place and hoped her assumption that she’d locate a salon nearby proved correct. Fremont was so small, she hadn’t bothered looking online for a map.
“But I’d never thought about how you handled it. I mean, holding back my strength is automatic for me. It isn’t for you?”
“Not always,” she replied absently. Downtown Fremont was busy on Saturday afternoon.
“Wolves just keep their strength in check by instinct. Same thing with speed, when we’re on two feet.” He turned to her as much as the seat belt would allow as she cruised slowly, still looking for a parking spot. “See, we passed for thousands of years, right? ’Cause when we’re on two feet, it’s just instinct not to move too fast or show too much strength. That must be evolution, like the way a female stops aging if she has a wolf, so she keeps pace with her mate.”
Ah. She spotted a parking spot up ahead, in front of a manicured grassy area with a small fountain and some benches. People were sitting around the fountain or throwing Frisbees with dogs.
“I never understood why evolution didn’t do that for women who birth daughters with wolves,” she muttered. “Evolution seems sexist sometimes.”
“Oh yeah, it can be. It’s totally unfair to females.” He cocked his head at her. “Hey, I just thought of something. That would make sex kind of weird, wouldn’t it?”
“What would?” she asked uncomfortably.
“The strength thing, when you’re having sex.”
She gaped at him, appalled. He wasn’t joking.
“If you’re really getting into it,” he continued blithely, “and you forget to concentrate on holding back, you could lose control and hurt a guy, couldn’t you? See, when I’m with a girl, it’s just natural for me not to use all my strength, I don’t have to think about it—”
“Sweetie.” She stomped on the brake halfway into the parking spot. The car behind her honked in annoyance. She unbuckled her seat belt and turned to face him. “I’m glad you want to talk to me, and maybe—maybe—I could talk to you about Cade. But I cannot talk to you about your sex life, or mine. I just. Can. Not.”
He raised an eyebrow—damn, he looked just like Cade doing that—and smiled at her affectionately. “Okay. I don’t want to embarrass you. It’s just kind of cool to talk like this, you know? You’re talking to me like I’m grown.”
“Don’t I normally?”
“Not really. But it’s okay, I don’t mind. Usually.”
“Yeah, you do.” She sighed. “Okay. I’ll work on it.”
“Thank you.” He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek—while not furry, sick, sleepy, hungry or prompted.
They pulled a limp Becca from her car seat. She wrapped her legs around Ally’s waist. Dylan went to put money in the parking meter.
Something tripped her instincts as she stood there rubbing Becca’s back and coaxing her awake. She gently pivoted from side to side, rocking Becca as she scanned the streets and sidewalks.
There. Tall, weird guy at two o’clock, staring straight at them from the doorway of a building five blocks ahead, down the nearest cross street. She had a clear view of him across the little park. Long white hair, almost silver. A relatively young face with a thin scar running diagonally almost the length of it, right temple to left cheek. He wore sunglasses, so she couldn’t see his eyes. Despite the summer heat, he wore slacks and a long-sleeved shirt open at the collar. She kept swaying back and forth, letting her eyes roam. He wouldn’t know she could see him from so far away, but she didn’t want to be obvious. When Dylan rejoined them, he stood with his back to the guy, obstructing her view.
“Hey.” She stood Becca on her feet between them. “There’s a strange guy directly behind you, down this side street about five blocks. He’s watching us.”
“Weird. Give me the keys.” He walked around to the back of the car and opened the trunk, as if looking for something. He did a fine job of scanning the area surreptitiously.
“Yep, he’s definitely scoping us. I get the feeling I’ve seen him before.”
“You’re kidding. Where?”
“I dunno. I mean, he’s interesting looking—I wouldn’t think I’d forget someone like that. But I can’t place him. He looks spooky. Maybe you and Becca shouldn’t run around by yourselves.”
“No, I can handle it. Let’s split up and see if he follows one of us.”
They planned to meet for lunch. Dylan went to explore the town a bit, Ally and Becca to look for a salon.
If attention were a tornado, Rebecca MacDougall would’ve been a mobile home. Ally found it slow going down the cobblestone streets, with passersby stopping to say hello to Becca as she strutted in her sunglasses and boa. They asked her name and age and exclaimed over her adorableness. A number of people recognized her as Cade’s daughter because the resemblance was so striking and he was so
well known, but they all acted like they hadn’t seen much of her.
For her part, Becca basked in the attention, bouncing along holding Ally’s hand and jabbering nonstop. Ally tried her best to keep up. They talked about Daddy, nannies and Sindri’s pancakes, how Becca sometimes turned into a cat but not on purpose, werewolves, Wiggles, why bees stung you but butterflies didn’t, horses, her imaginary friends, people passing them on the street, her Nana, and more.
For a minute, Ally forgot she wasn’t really the nanny. Maybe she’d tell Cade she was enrolling Becca in a preschool program. Right before he kicked her out for getting his daughter’s hair cut.
Downtown Fremont was charming—lots of funky shops, antique dealers and regular retail stores. A number of buildings had historical markers which Ally would’ve loved to stop and read if she didn’t have Becca dragging her along. She kept looking around, but she saw no sign of the weird white-haired guy. She no longer had the feeling of being followed.
They found Cute Kids’ Kutz two streets over from where they parked. After a wait of twenty minutes, an empty chair beckoned. Ally told the stylist—Heather—to tame the curls all over and take two inches off the bottom.
Heather was nineteen. Heather had lived in Fremont all her life. Heather wanted to move to Denver or some other big city because Fremont was absolutely dead. Heather talked more than Becca.
“She’s just beautiful. Sweetie, you are too cute! And you’re being so good. I bet your mommy’s very proud of you, isn’t she?” Heather beamed at Ally.
“Ally’s my nanny,” Becca said softly. Ally couldn’t tell if it was the mention of a mommy or the haircut that turned her little face so suddenly grave.
“Oh, well—that’s great too!” She looked at Ally appraisingly. “Wow. You’re young to be a nanny. Where do y’all live?”
“Outside of town,” Ally replied. “I’ve just been there a week—”
“Oh my God!” Heather squealed, and Becca jumped a foot. Ally’s sensitive ears nearly bled. Humans weren’t supposed to make noises like that. The young woman noted Ally’s grimace and lowered her voice, looking sheepish.
“Sorry. It’s just that I figured out where I’d seen Rebecca! She’s Cade MacDougall’s daughter, isn’t she?”
“You know him?”
“God no, I wish.” Heather snorted. “But my girlfriend Celine, see, she was Rebecca’s nanny for a while! Isn’t that wild? Hey, sweetie,” she said, putting her head next to Becca’s and looking at her in the mirror, “do you remember Celine?”
Becca concentrated. “No.”
“You were too little. Just as well,” she said to Ally. “Celine has a thing for fur, you know? Someone said she even went after—” She stopped, looking at Becca, then back at Ally. “You know. And he fired her. I can’t really blame her for trying. He is so hot, isn’t he?”
“Who’s hot?” asked Becca.
“No one you know, baby,” Ally said as she and Heather laughed. She got a silly warm glow from knowing Cade had fired a nanny who came on to him.
Every woman in the shop suddenly turned toward the door, so Ally did too. Sure enough, it was Dylan. As he made his way toward them, she caught a breeze from all the female heads whipping back around to watch him walk past.
Heather looked at her in amazement. “Is he with you?”
“Yes,” Ally smiled. “How’d you find us?” she asked Dylan.
“I asked someone on the street where you’d go to get a kid’s haircut.” He wasn’t looking at her. He was smiling at a mesmerized Heather.
“Dylan, pay attention.” She slapped his arm lightly. “Did you see the guy?”
“What? Oh yeah, I did. He followed me after I split off from y’all. He…” He stopped and looked at Heather, hanging on his every word. “Excuse us a sec,” he said smoothly. When had he learned to speak smoothly to women? He and Ally stepped aside for some privacy.
“He was really good at it,” Dylan continued. “If you hadn’t seen him, I don’t think I would’ve known he was following me. I walked around for a while, waiting for him to approach me, but he never did. Finally I got bored and just asked him what he wanted.”
“You what?” She didn’t mean to squeal.
He raised an eyebrow and grinned. “I asked him what he wanted. Why not? I didn’t see a gun or anything.”
“But— Oh, forget it. What did he do?”
“Well, I shocked the hell out of him. He looked around like he was gonna try to dodge me or something, but he didn’t. So I walked up and said, ‘Dude, why are you following me?’”
“And what did he say?”
“He seemed kinda scared—like, he didn’t know what to say, or he was embarrassed, I don’t know. He had a weird accent—kind of like Swedish or German, you know? He asked me who my mother was.”
At her appalled squeak, he held up a hand. “Let me finish. He looked surprised. He said ‘no, that can’t be, you look just like her’ and I said ‘well, sorry, my mom was Gracie Fontenot’, and he asked what I was doing here, and I said that was none of his business, because I’m not totally stupid, okay?”
He paused and then said, more quietly, “Then he asked me who Becca was.”
Ally’s head snapped up. “Who Becca…why would he want to know that?”
“I don’t know, but that’s when I got pissed off and I said, ‘Dude, stay the fuck away from us, it’s none of your business who we are and I don’t want to see you again’.”
She swallowed. “Okay. Good. That’s more like it. Don’t say fuck. So? What’d he do?”
“He looked straight at me and said, ‘You didn’t see me’.”
“What?” She laughed uneasily.
“Yeah. He said ‘you didn’t see me’, and I said, ‘Uh, dude, I’m standing here looking at you’. ’Cause now I’m thinking he’s tripping on something, right? And he gets this weird—like, even weirder—look, and he said, ‘but you are war gulf’.”
“War gulf? What does that even mean?”
“Who knows? He said, ‘but you are war gulf,’ and then he said, ‘you didn’t see me’, one more time and I was like ‘yeah, still seeing you, dude’, and then he disappeared. He ran away as fast as a wolf, and that’s when I decided he was some messed up high Fae who was out of his head on something.”
She sagged with relief. “Oh, thank God. You’re right—that must be it. He thought he recognized you, then tried to pull some mind whammy on you, but he was too stoned to do it.” She smiled in embarrassment and bumped her head gently against his chest. “Sorry, but that really freaked me out for a minute.”
There were few pureblooded high Fae—the ones known in earlier times as elves or fairies—in the U.S., and most of them were in a sorry state. High Fae didn’t handle certain aspects of modernity well. Many of them preferred to live on special homelands in Canada, Iceland and parts of Scandinavia. They were impervious to human diseases but unfortunately susceptible to human vices, particularly drugs. Drugs that suppressed the human nervous system gave the Fae a treacherously sweet high. It also suppressed their talents and wrecked them mentally and emotionally. The drugs wouldn’t kill them—full-blooded high Fae lived hundreds of years and were tough to kill—but long exposure could leave them in a state worse, in some ways, than death. It sounded like their weird guy was more to be pitied than feared.
Dylan declared Fremont boring and himself hungry. Ally went to pay. She realized Dylan wasn’t behind them and when she looked back, she saw him chatting up Heather. She almost—almost—went back to drag him out, but she remembered what he’d said about her treating him like a grownup. So she and Becca waited outside. Ten minutes later he joined them, looking pleased with himself.
They had a nice lunch with no further signs of Pitiful Fae Guy and headed back to the ranch.
Chapter Twelve
The sight of so many werewolves in the woodshop that evening had surprised her, because the gravel parking lot remained virtually empty. Michael had grinned and e
xplained the wolves had sneaked back onto the ranch on four feet. A few of them also came up every night for guard duty.
Now, two hours into the game, Ally sat behind the fattest pile of chips.
“Michael, my wolf—she’s good. She’s really good,” laughed one now—Roman, if she remembered correctly.
“Oh yeah, our Wendy is dangerous,” Dec drawled, sitting on an empty workbench and dangling a beer between his outstretched legs. “It’s that whole sweet and innocent thing.”
All the tools and work tables had been pushed up against the walls with the lumber. The large, custom-made poker table sat in the middle of the room. Wolves who weren’t playing drank beer and watched the game.
She’d been a little hesitant to play poker in a room full of alphas, but aside from the testosterone dripping down the walls, there’d been no trouble.
“I knew it was an act,” Michael said over his shoulder. “Nobody could be that sweet and innocent.”
Dec took a long drag on his beer. “Actually, the sweet and innocent is genuine. But it distracts poor saps such as yourselves from her fearsome poker skills.”
Everybody except Michael laughed.
Dec’s nonchalance in the presence of so many alphas was odd, and the alphas’ easy acceptance of him even more so.
Dec was odd, in fact. She’d never really noticed it ’til she’d been able to compare him to lots of other werewolves.
“Are we playing cards here or what?” Michael groused.
“Bet’s to me, right?”
“Yeah. Ally, if you can’t beat three of a kind, you don’t need—”
“I know how to play the game,” she said without looking up from her cards. “That’s why my stack’s so much bigger than yours.”
More than one wolf snickered. Michael looked around with a fearsome scowl and the room settled down.
“’S not that much bigger than mine,” he said under his breath.
“It’s about to be,” she cooed, and threw in two dollars. Everyone else stayed in. When the bet got around to Michael, he raised. Ally called him and tossed in two more dollars. Everyone else folded.
Yours, Mine and Howls: Werewolves in Love, Book 2 Page 11