Scratch the Surface (Wolf Within)

by Amy Lee Burgess

  “There wasn’t any fancy footwork involved. They approached him, actually,” I said, resisting the urge to punctuate my words with a haughty toss of my head. I had the feeling I was not going to like this guy.

  “Oh, yeah?” Colin Hunter shrugged with a challenging sneer. “Imagine that one. Six impossible things before breakfast, I suppose.”

  Uneasily, I flashed back to the morning after Murphy and I had been bonded, when he revealed we didn’t have a pack. I’d thought it was because of me and my reputation and he’d even confirmed that. Tracing it back, the one who made it sound like Murphy’s former pack wanted him back and that’s why he was attending the Great Gathering in the first place had been Murphy himself. However, even when I’d met the Alpha of Mac Tire, Padraic O’Reilly, there’d been something weird going on.

  I’d supposed Allerton had persuaded O’Reilly not to take us back into Mac Tire just yet—so we could perform undercover work for him without pack affiliation. Right after we’d accomplished that, O’Reilly had contacted Murphy and offered us a place in Mac Tire. But maybe that was also due to Allerton’s persuasion.

  Colin Hunter read my confusion before I could school my features and a slow grin curled his lips.

  “He hasn’t told you a bloody thing about it, has he? Typical Liam Murphy, ignore the problem and it will just dry up and blow away.”

  “Colin,” said Devon Talbot, as she laid one long-fingered hand on his coat sleeve, “why can’t we let it go? It’s been over for years. Let it go.”

  He shrugged his arm out from under her touch and gave her an amused smile. “I’ve let it go, Devon, but there’s no harm in talking about things, is there?”

  “There are enough difficult things happening tonight. We don’t need any more of them,” declared Devon with a sad smile. She turned to me, her eyes filled with compassion. “Constance, I know this can’t be an easy night for you. I think you’re handling it with great dignity.” She gave me a slow, jolly smile. “Are we too late for cocktails and finger food? I’m starving.” She patted her ample hips, laughing. Charmed, I laughed too.

  “There’s plenty left,” I told her as she linked her arm with mine and let me lead them into the front room.

  During my absence upstairs with Nora, Allerton had moved to sit with Kathy Manning and Jonathan.

  Murphy and Peter sat with Callie and Vaughn. Everyone had a plate of canapes and when we walked in, voices hushed and eyes became watchful.

  Smiling, Allerton was first on his feet approaching Devon, hand extended.

  I took the opportunity to move to Murphy’s side. He was on his feet too; his face shuttered tight preventing any of his true emotions to show.

  Allerton brought Colin and Devon around the room to be introduced in turn.

  I braced myself for the confrontation but apart from a coldly uttered, “Liam,” and “Colin,” the two didn’t speak to each other.

  With the adroitness of an Alpha, Peter managed to corral Colin and Devon in the farthest corner of the room from Murphy and engage them in small talk. Kathy Manning joined them while Allerton resumed his place beside Jonathan.

  I sat next to Callie in Peter’s vacated seat. After eating a plateful of canapes, some of the color had returned to her wasted cheeks.

  “How’s Nora?” she asked me.

  “Sleeping on my bed,” I said and Callie’s and Vaughn’s shoulders seemed to sag with relief.

  “Thank you, Stanzie. She’s really not herself lately. She probably shouldn’t have come, but she wanted to see you.”

  Murphy wandered back to us with fresh drinks for me and Callie. He gave them to us and immediately went to mix more for himself and Vaughn. I thought maybe he was avoiding me but I wasn’t sure.

  “What’s it like being an Advisor?” Callie wondered with a wistful smile. She’d curled her strawberry blond hair before piling it on top of her head and it made her look like a princess in a fairy tale. Callie’s face had always conjured up the word ethereal for me. Not quite of this world. Now due to her recent miscarriage, she was all the more wispy and transparent, as if she were being slowly erased. I really didn’t think she could withstand another miscarriage.

  For the first time I thought about how I would feel if I found out she was dead. A lump rose in my throat and I struggled to contain my grief.

  “You ought to let Colin and Devon be Alpha,” I said. I always spoke before I thought—it was one of my curses.

  Vaughn’s face contorted. Callie’s pale cheeks suffused with crimson.

  “Who are you to tell me what I should do? Is that one of your Advisor duties? Telling people what they ought to do?” Her voice shook and tears made her blue eyes dark as indigo.

  “She’s just trying to help.” Vaughn put an arm around her shoulders, but she shrugged him off. The scent of her fury made me bite my lip.

  “I don’t need her help,” she spat.

  Vaughn took a deep breath and the look he gave me could have blown a hole through a vault in Fort Knox.

  “I’ll give up being Alpha when I am damned good and ready,” she snarled at me, her face glowing with her rage. I could smell how weak and unsteady she was and, for a moment, was sure she was going to pass out. It would be my fault because of my stupid, big mouth.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, horribly aware of the attention we were attracting. Peter was one second away from vaulting across the room to get to her. “I just I...I don’t want to lose you, Callie. No matter what happened between us, I still think of you as my friend, I always have, and you just look so awful tonight, I’m scared.”

  I was sure I was making it worse but I had to say it. I was scared and I didn’t want her to die, and everyone was tap dancing around her feelings and not actually doing anything constructive. If I’d been Vaughn or Peter, I’d have refused to have sex with her for one damn thing. I’d have refused to be Alpha anymore. She couldn’t be Alpha if they wouldn’t. Nobody wanted to crush her ego and, as a result, she was going to die right in front of them. Ego intact, body ruined. Bullshit.

  Abruptly, Callie’s rage died. Instead she laughed, almost condescendingly, but I understood she was simply denying everything.

  “Silly Stanzie, I’m not going to die. You talk like I’m dying or something. I just had a miscarriage, but I’ll be all right soon. I always am. Right, Vaughn?” She turned with a sweet smile that melted him like butter in a sauce pan.

  At that moment he had a choice—to agree with her or to grow some balls and tell her the truth. She’d always been the leader in their triad. He and Peter had always danced to her tune.

  “I...I’m really worried about you, Cal,” he said. “You can’t see what this shit is doing to you, but you don’t actually bounce back after losing these babies. Each time takes more and more of a bite out of you.”

  Her smile faltered, but she regained it. “I’m just depressed. But I promise I’ll snap out of it. I do feel sorry for myself, don’t I? And I drag all of you down with me. I’ll do better, you’ll see.” She patted his hand the same way she would a dog and turned back to me, missing the complete despair written all over Vaughn’s face.

  “Stanzie, that was awful of me. I’m sorry too, sweetie. Friends again?” She gave me one of her blinding smiles and, just like Vaughn, I melted. Everyone did when she smiled like that.

  “We were always friends, like I told you,” I said and she hugged me, burying her face in my neck, burrowing in for comfort I wasn’t sure I could provide. I wanted to wave a magic wand and fix it so the next time she got pregnant—because she would, she was determined—it would stick and nine months later she’d have a beautiful baby who would be perfect and healthy and Callie’s world would be complete. But it wasn’t up to me.

  “I’ve missed you,” she whispered when she raised her head. We were both crying a little, but they were good tears. Vaughn handed us cocktail napkins which we used to wipe our eyes, carefully because cocktails napkins are stiff and tend to scrape the skin if pressed
too hard.

  Kathy Manning chose that moment to herd us all to the table for dinner. I’m certain she wanted us to get substantial food in our stomachs to counteract the alcohol we’d sucked down in self defense to get through the awkward reunion.

  As we were a party of eleven and the Colonial dining room only seated six, the table in the small conference room had been covered with a fancy white tablecloth and pressed into service.

  All offers of help disdained, Kathy had us sit around the table while she bustled back and forth from the kitchen with the food.

  Allerton sat at the head of the table and she took the foot. The rest of us ranged out on either side of the table.

  I sat between Peter and Devon. Murphy was between Devon and Allerton, and Colin was across from Peter, the farthest he could get from Murphy.

  As predicted, the Brussels sprouts were delicious and so was the seafood casserole—a steaming hot combination of scallops, shrimp and flounder mixed with seasoned, buttered breadcrumbs. For appetizers we had lobster bisque and there were hot, homemade dinner rolls that seemed to be in endless supply no matter how heavy the demand.

  The wine, a slightly chilled Chardonnay, was excellent and everyone concentrated more on their plates than on conversation.

  Devon and I chatted amiably, but we were the exception to the rule. It was not one of the more convivial dinner parties I’d ever attended.

  The fireplace crackled behind my back, casting off warmth that at times made me wish I could take off my bolero jacket. Beads of sweat popped out on Devon’s face but she didn’t complain. We both had seconds of the Brussels sprouts.

  Nora’s empty chair was a silent accusation and everybody tried to ignore it but we couldn’t.

  Once we heard the water pipes gurgle—a toilet upstairs had been flushed and I remembered with a gut-wrenching stab of dismay that Grandfather Tobias was locked upstairs in the bedroom closest to Councilor Allerton’s master suite.

  The sound did not help the atmosphere of the dinner.

  A pall was upon us all and eventually even Devon and I gave up trying to liven things up.

  She wiped her sweaty brow with her linen dinner napkin and I poured a generous amount of Chardonnay in my glass. I’d been going slowly on the wine until then, but there came a point in time where I didn’t care anymore.

  “I suppose we should discuss Tobias,” declared Allerton, breaking the silence. He set his fork down in the middle of his Blue Willow patterned china plate and straightened even more in his chair.

  “Afterward we’ll have dessert and coffee,” murmured Kathy Manning, as she dabbed her lips with her linen napkin and folded it with precision before placing it in the center of her empty plate.

  The sound of cutlery against china was very loud as everyone stopped eating or pretending to eat.

  Most of us grabbed our wine glasses. I was the leader of the pack.

  Jonathan, who sat across the table from me, directed a spiteful look in my direction. “Does she have to be here? She’s not a member of this pack.”

  “I’d be happy to leave the room.” I threw down my napkin.

  “Jonathan.” Callie’s voice rose above the swirling anger. “Of course she should be here. How could you even think of sending her away? Grey and Elena were her bond mates. She was falsely accused.”

  “But she’s not a member of Riverglow. She has no vote, right?” Jonathan argued. “Let her sit here and listen, but she has no vote, am I right?”

  “She has no vote,” Callie agreed, making him smirk across at me. “However, she can say anything she likes.”

  “But we don’t have to listen,” muttered Jonathan.

  “Not if we don’t want to, no,” said Callie.

  Jonathan pushed back his chair, folded his arms across his chest in a classic gesture of defense and close mindedness, and feigned boredom with a yawn.

  Next to him, Vaughn crumbled a piece of dinner roll between his agitated fingers. Peter’s face was white and strained.

  Colin and Devon looked keenly interested but they had no emotion invested in the subject. That made them the most impartial voters at the table, a fact that seemed lost on Jonathan but was appreciated by Callie.

  “It is the Council’s opinion, both Great and Regional, that Tobias Green did not willfully sabotage the car belonging to Constance Newcastle, but did, in fact, inadvertently sever the brake line which he subsequently concealed. We do not pass a sentence of death, but we do recommend exile from his pack.” Allerton had prepared me for this verdict in advance but it was still a slap in the face.

  Murphy didn’t like it either by the swell of his jaw, but he said nothing. Neither did I.

  “He’s an old man, halfway senile,” objected Jonathan. Tobias was his blood relation and that, in combination with his dislike of me, made him the absolute least objective person at the table. “We exile him, we might as well slit his throat. He’ll be dead in six months. Old people need the support of their packs. His hands shake so much now he can’t work as a mechanic any longer and he has no means to support himself. He’ll end up homeless on the street. For a stupid mistake. Exile’s too harsh.”

  “It could be said that Constance made a stupid mistake and for that you did recommend exile,” pointed out Allerton in a neutral tone. Murphy glowered behind his wine glass. I couldn’t move. I wished I were closer to him.

  “It’s a conscious decision to get behind the wheel of a car after drinking like a fish,” argued Jonathan. He did have a point. “Shaking hands and getting senile, those aren’t things you do out of choice. It’s completely different. Besides Constance—” My full name was a sneer on his lips. “—was young and could start over. My grandfather won’t last long. If we’re going to kill the poor bastard, let’s do it now and not drag it out. And if we’re not going to kill him, let’s just let him have his home and bring him groceries once a week and check on him and have a little compassion for the elderly. Just a little.”

  For such an asshole, he was a persuasive speaker when he wanted to be, although I sincerely doubted he’d be the one who’d bring over groceries and check up on the old man—blood relative or not.

  “You volunteer for that? Making sure he’s got food and he keeps his house? Out of your own money?” Peter wondered. He sounded extremely doubtful Jonathan would follow through.

  “Yeah. Yeah, sure,” said Jonathan.

  Everyone at the table knew he was a goddamn lazy-ass liar. The duty would fall to Nora. It would be her money too, and she wasn’t even at the table to agree to it.

  “You can afford your house and his? And food?” Peter pressed.

  “Between Nora and me, we’ll figure it out,” assured Jonathan. “I still get my pack subsidization toward my rent, don’t I?”

  “Of course.” Peter looked like he wanted to roll his eyes, but he was good, he didn’t.

  “Then I can do it,” said Jonathan rashly.

  “It might be better if the old man moved in with you,” suggested Peter and the whole pack nearly burst into derisive laughter.

  “Yeah, right,” said Jonathan with a sneer. “I haven’t got room for him in my tiny little house. There’s hardly enough room for me and Nora as it is. Be real. I said I can do it. Either you believe me or you don’t.”

  “Do I understand correctly that the old man deliberately hid the fact that he accidentally severed the brake line?” Colin asked. “He knew he did it back then? He’s confessed to it, right?”

  “Yes,” agreed Allerton.

  “And he let Constance be blamed instead? Because he was too ashamed?” Incredulity spread across Colin’s face.

  Murphy’s expression was sour. It apparently rankled that Colin defended me.

  “Yes,” Allerton said. He had his fingers steepled in front of him on the table and looked very authoritarian.

  Colin did roll his eyes. “Well, then, what is the issue? Is he senile? Has that been established?”

  “No,” said Allerton.

/>   Jonathan said, “The old man is losing his marbles. Just because we don’t have some doctor’s note confirming it doesn’t mean you can’t see him losing it for yourself. You don’t know him, I do.” He gave Colin a condescending smile which Colin returned with interest.

  “Two years ago he was presumably more in control of his faculties than he is today,” Colin said, making people shift uncomfortably in their seats at the logic of his words. “He knew he did it, he covered it up. There’s no question what we should do. Just because he’s old doesn’t give him a pass to obliterate three people’s lives—two of them dead, one made to suffer and go without a pack for something she didn’t do. He needs to be put to death, and if the Council say we can’t do that, we have to do what we can, which is exile. If he’d been thirty or fifty or eighty years old, we wouldn’t even be arguing about this. The grandfather card cuts zero ice with me. I vote exile.”

  “Are we ready to put it to a vote?” Allerton addressed the table at large before Jonathan, his face red, could say something inflammatory. One by one everyone nodded.

  “Where will he go?” Devon asked, in clear distress.

  “You can abstain from voting, my dear,” said Allerton. “He’ll be taken from this state. That much we’ll arrange. We can make sure it’s a warm climate. Florida, perhaps? So if he does end up homeless, he won’t be likely to freeze to death.”

  “No, just starve,” sniped Jonathan.

  Devon sighed—an unhappy, anguished sound. She looked pleadingly at her bond mate and he gave her an encouraging nod as if to tell her she could do it—it wouldn’t be pleasant, but she could do it.

  I thought about a fatal glass of warm milk. No matter which way they voted, Grandfather Tobias was not going to leave this safe house alive.

  “Do we want to do this anonymously or out in the open?” Allerton looked at everyone around the table, skipping no one, not even me and Murphy.

  “In the open,” decided Callie for everyone. “There are too many secrets in this pack as it is.”

  Jonathan grimaced. “I know how you’re going to vote anyway. And where the hell is Nora? Doesn’t she get a vote or are we going cheat?”