by Mark Henwick
I laughed, glad to release the tension for a moment. “Okay, not this time.” And I’d draw a discreet veil over Bian’s leopard-stalking of me as well.
“I guess, until we work out what it means for us, we don’t say anything about binding.” Alex hunched a little.
I felt uncomfortable too. “I don’t want to start like that with the pack—lying.”
He dipped his head briefly. “Don’t lie. If Felix asks us, we tell him. In fact, I think it’d be dangerous for any of us to try and lie to each other.”
“Alpha thing?”
“Dominance thing. It’s very difficult to lie to a more dominant wolf and impossible to your alpha.”
But maybe not impossible for the alpha to lie to me. And what about while I wasn’t in the pack? Could I lie to him now? Or not tell the whole truth? I grimaced. Alex was right, I’d need to be very careful.
“Okay, we can’t lie,” I said, trying to form a plan as I spoke. “We can’t help provoking him—we’re a provocation just by existing. We mustn’t back him into a corner. We’ve got to get him into a position where the obvious way forward is a good outcome all around.”
Yeah, I thought. Maneuver a werewolf alpha who’s probably seen this kind of political manipulation for a hundred years before we came along. But I didn’t say it.
“We should be able to get him to agree you’re part of the pack through me,” Alex said. “You realize that means you’ll lose some leeway to act on your own. You can’t defy the alpha. It would make him look weak. We’re not Athanate, we’re werewolves, we need a strong leader to be a strong, healthy pack.”
“Enough,” I muttered.
Again, I had the idea there were things unsaid. I kept quiet while he took another tight turn, but he didn’t continue where he’d left off.
Instead, he glanced at his watch. “We’ll be at Coykuti in five.”
“The ranch is called Coykuti? Something to do with coyotes?”
He shook his head. “It’s from Arapaho. It means to set free. When Felix first set up, this was where the pack used to run.”
“Now they go to Bitter Hooks. Why the change?”
“Coykuti’s not big enough, even with the whole mountain behind it. People have got places all along the edges now, they’ve cut back on the trees. That’s why it was so easy for Tucker to persuade us to scare off the builders at Bitter Hooks. Kingslund’s Silver Hills resort would have sat bang in the middle of our range.”
“Jen, not Kingslund,” I insisted quietly. I didn’t add, and Jen’s land, not the pack’s. Must have been that tact thing I kept hearing about.
We turned again, onto the last snaky road that led to Larimer’s ranch.
“Jen,” Alex muttered eventually.
“She never intended to build it, you know.”
“So you said. And now?”
“Why would she change her mind now?”
He didn’t answer.
I tried to clear my head and calm myself. I needed so much from this meeting. Diana had warned me, but what had she actually said? That if I joined a pack and left, I could go rogue. And if I didn’t have the influence of an alpha while I was in transition, I could go rogue. She’d avoided directly telling me, but the implication was there—for my sanity I should join Alex’s pack.
I didn’t want an alpha. My House was enough pack for me. But the way my wolf and Athanate fed on each other, it felt like I was like juggling flares at a fuel dump. Echoes of the sick fascination of feeding on Julie’s fear still oozed out of dark corners of my mind. Lurking inside me was a weakness that might pull me to the Basilikos side, or drive my wolf rogue.
If Felix refused to allow me to join the pack, would I survive? What if he made a condition; pack or House? Surely he wouldn’t do that.
The trouble was, I didn’t know how Felix would act. I didn’t understand the Were enough. I simply hadn’t had the time to find out. And I was in the same position as I was with the Athanate and the Adepts; a little information was probably more dangerous than none.
Once I understood all the fractured parts, if I could get to that situation, I had a hope of fusing it all together.
I’m an optimist like that.
We pulled in through the Coykuti gates and parked by the ranch house, next to a long, black Volvo and a Dodge Ram colored like a fire truck.
I got out and looked up, over the house’s maroon roof, to the slopes behind. The dark wave of pines seemed to be reaching down the mountain and stopped no more than fifty yards from the back door of the house. A narrow dirt track wound upwards through the woods and disappeared. I could feel the coolness from the shadows beneath the trees, and an eerie silence hung over everything. I shivered. This whole place had the same sense of watchful waiting as Bitter Hooks.
The ranch itself was old-style; timber and stone, long and low, with signs that bits had been added or changed as the need had arisen. The roof tiles were fired clay. I suspected they’d been made here, from the earth beneath our feet. I had to say it looked good, it looked like it was part of the mountain.
Where we’d stopped, in front of the house, the screen of cottonwood and maple all but obscured the road we’d come in on. And beyond the work yard to our left, the rickety, ancient barn where I’d last met with the pack stood in the meadow.
“Not the barn, this time?” I asked.
“Only for big pack meets,” Alex said. “This is more of a closed session by the sound of it.”
“Like a trial,” I muttered, as we stepped up on the wraparound porch, the boards creaking loudly under our feet.
Chapter 8
I’d half expected Larimer to have a special room for an audience, like Skylur in his underground lair, but we met casually in his living room. We were ushered in by a woman who didn’t speak and left immediately. I sensed more of the pack in and around the house, but they stayed out of sight.
The living room was a huge, sprawling space, with enormous leather sofas and chairs scattered around a set of coffee tables, all handmade from railroad ties. A working loom and spinning wheel sat in one corner, half obscured by a rank of spikey-leaved Madagascan dragon trees in pots. An old saloon mirror dominated one wall, across from an eight foot long painting of plains buffalo which stretched over the fireplace. There were water jugs and glasses on the tables. Bowls of fruit and nuts. Almost a welcome.
We sat opposite Felix. To our right sat Ricky, the big blond Viking I remembered from my visit to the barn, though he was wearing clothes today. He was big enough, he made the oversized chair look normal.
To our left was a small man, very neat and formally dressed in a suit and tie, with a goatee and dark brown hair brushed straight back. He sat with his legs crossed, looking lost in his chair compared to Ricky and Felix. I recognized him as one of Alex’s friends from the charity ball. He smiled briefly back at me and returned to jotting on a pad in his lap.
“Finally,” said Felix, by way of starting. “We don’t have much time.”
Alex glared at him and the small guy stirred on his seat. Felix relented and introduced me, pointing at the others. “You’ve met Ricky. And this is Dr. Noble.”
“We almost met,” I said to Noble. “You helped me escape the charity ball.”
“I tripped the doorman,” he replied, pursing his lips. “That’s hardly help. But I’m pleased to meet you at last.”
I laughed.
Felix got up and started to pace like an animal in a cage.
That felt uncomfortable, but not as much as seeing the effect it was having on the others. Ricky and Alex tracked his movement as if mesmerized. Even Noble’s scribbling in his notebook went on hold for a minute.
Felix stopped abruptly and turned to face me.
“We had an agreement, didn’t we?” he said.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Tell me what it was.”
I’d kinda expected this. It was the standard disciplinary setup, getting me to admit I knew exactly what I was meant t
o be doing first and then going through where I’d failed. Like screwing Alex in his office and not making any progress on tracking the rogue down.
“There’s a temporary arrangement in place, which I guess means I’m a sort of honorary werewolf and honorary member of the pack. While that’s the case, I’m on call for you. I’m supposed to leave Alex alone and work on tracking down the rogue.”
“Succinctly put. What about my instructions for Alexander himself?”
“No contact. And that he wasn’t supposed to get involved in fighting between Athanate.”
Failed again. Both counts. I’d visited him at his office and Alex had helped storm the factory at Longmont where Jen had been held.
I could explain each step and give reasons for it but I didn’t want to go down that route. That felt like admitting this was like a trial, and besides, I wasn’t sure Felix would listen anyway. I kept quiet and waited.
Felix was looking at me. To see if I was going to justify our actions?
I thought I’d made the right decision to shut up for the moment.
“I’ve set a precedent for your status and given clear requirements for your behavior which you have not followed. You visited him at his work.”
I throttled my demon. I had a lot I could have said. Alex hadn’t been working when I’d visited him in his office; he hadn’t been able to work. Felix had had him running as a wolf during the nights, trying to strengthen the pack bond and weaken his bond to me. Too much time as a wolf had been pushing him to the edge. He’d been so close to wolf, Olivia had to keep people away from him. And I’d brought him back.
Felix wasn’t finished. “Then you persuade him to join you in attacking the Basilikos Athanate at Longmont.”
I hadn’t. He’d insisted.
Alex stirred, but neither of us interrupted Felix. Alex seemed to be able to take the spin Felix was putting on this much easier than I was finding it, or he was better at hiding it.
“Remember, you came to me to petition to be part of the pack. Your immediate actions so far show that you can’t be. The pack can’t operate in anarchy. Not only do you disobey my instructions, but you also persuade Alexander to do the same. He has a senior and responsible role.”
He started pacing again.
“This is not how a pack works.”
Why wasn’t Alex arguing back? Should I take his silence as a message to me to keep quiet?
It was a fine balance between letting Felix blow off steam at me and letting him get up momentum toward a decision to throw me out. I didn’t want that. It would put Alex in an impossible situation. And I needed the support that the pack offered, for my own sanity, while my wolf and Athanate worked out a compromise.
I gave up trying to guess what I should be doing and tried what I thought was a perfectly valid counter. “Well, half the problem is that I don’t know how a pack works.”
Felix stopped and stood in front of the fireplace, leaning back against the mantle with his arms spread out.
“A pack works by every member of the pack contributing positively,” he said. “It’s not something we set down in rulebooks. It’s something you have to feel. To experience. It puts roots down into your soul. You gain. The pack gains. My problem is, you just don’t seem to feel it.”
I was feeling more and more worried by the angle he was taking. It was as if he was saying I should just instinctively know everything I needed, and by not knowing it, I’d proved I couldn’t be a pack member.
Was this some kind of test? Was he deliberately provoking me to see how much I’d take?
“How can I if I’m not a member of the pack?” However much I needed the pack, I couldn’t let him go off in that direction. “And why can’t I just be affiliated? It’s not as if I’m a threat by being in your territory.”
“You aren’t qualified to judge that.” His voice lashed out. “Maybe that’s the way things work for the Athanate, but it’s not how we do things in the pack. We don’t share territory. Every werewolf that gets infused within the bounds is accepted into the pack, but the pack and the member need to be willing and the member needs to accept their role and responsibilities. That means you need to accept me as alpha and do what I tell you to. If the pack’s not willing, or the member’s not willing, then they have to leave. Or die.”
He’d crossed a boundary there and I felt rather than heard a subliminal growl from Alex and an immediate, instinctive response from Ricky.
Shit. Exactly what we were trying to avoid. Had Felix deliberately manipulated us to this point? Why?
Noble cleared his throat.
Felix glanced at him and nodded.
“I want to check that we’re clear about the basic constraints of pack dynamics, and then I think it’s in everybody’s interests to state clearly what they want.”
Yeah. Leave the possible consequences out of it for now.
Thank you Doc.
Felix returned to his seat and took a sip of water while the emotional edge simmered down.
Nobel tapped his pen on his pad a couple of times. “It’s not an issue of any one person laying down pack law about territory or hierarchy, not even Felix. The pack doesn’t want to share territory. The pack doesn’t want members disobeying the alpha. Your point about not understanding the pack is valid. With Felix’s permission, I’ll try and help there.”
Felix nodded again. “Fine. Alexander?” he said.
“Amber in the pack,” Alex said simply.
Felix’s face remained blank and he turned to me.
“I need whatever it is that a pack and alpha provide to help me through the transition, and I want to be with Alex,” I said. That sounded selfish, but to say I wanted to be part of the pack with this sort of thing hanging over me wouldn’t have been truthful. Even so, I had to add a qualifier that was going to piss Felix off. “Without conflicting the other parts of me.”
“That’s the problem,” Ricky said.
“It sounds like you want the benefits of the pack without submitting to me,” Felix said. “What kind of a signal do you think this sends to the rest of the pack? You see my problem?”
I’d give him that he hadn’t got as heated as he had been before. I’d even give him that he’d selected this small group of trusted advisors rather than a pack meeting so that he could, in his eyes, go easy on me.
“So, here we are. First choice, you’re Were, you’re accepted into the pack and all that goes with it. You are subject to pack laws and you obey me. Second choice, you’re Athanate. You don’t have a pack. You stay in Denver. You have no rights to call on the pack and you owe me no obedience.”
There were other choices, like leaving Denver or being killed, but we were keeping quiet about those.
“But I’m a hybrid,” I said, trying to feel some flexibility.
“For the pack, it comes down to Were on one side and everything else on the other.”
“What about Alex?” I could feel the tension soar again. Felix didn’t want to explore this. Alex and Ricky were friends and senior pack members. If Alex came down on my side, Ricky would be pack-bound to oppose him. It dawned on me that Felix had to be thinking that however this turned out, it weakened the pack. “Hold on,” I said, before he could respond. “First things first. We were supposed to say what we wanted. What is it you want, Felix?”
He stirred in his seat. “Of course, no alpha wants any member of the pack to leave, and that goes double for someone like Alexander, at a time like this.”
“His marque’s changed and it doesn’t seem like it’s going back.”
I could see I was displaying a real talent for picking the topics Felix didn’t want to talk about.
“That’s the reason for my orders to stay apart. Whether or not you’re conscious of doing it, you’re having an effect on Alexander. His marque and his mental state.”
“But if we’re mated…” Alex said.
“Then you’re both pack,” Ricky replied before Felix could say anything.
But that could just mean we’re a pack together, without necessarily being part of the Denver pack.
“Alex is kin,” I said, “does that count?”
“If it counts, then you’re still subject to pack law,” Felix said. “Alexander can’t mate outside the pack. Splitting a pack is an attack on the whole pack and I would treat it as such. Exerting Athanate control over Alexander would come under that as well. Another reason for you to stay apart until I’m sure that’s not the case.”
Athanate and kin can’t split like that. I might be a very young Athanate, but I knew that already. And I felt it too; it’d be like ripping my arm off.
As for the exerting control, I’d freaking bound him. Yeah, that would probably be classed as influencing him. And however right it felt to me, if Felix realized it, did that mean I’d signed my own death sentence?
I shook my head. We were at a dead end here. Figuratively, I hoped.
But underlying all the arguments was the sick sensation deep down inside that this just didn’t feel right. I’d called him alpha in the barn when I’d first met him, but Felix as the alpha of my pack didn’t sit well with me at all. I had no idea what my relationship with my alpha should be, but I was damn sure it shouldn’t feel like this. Something very fundamental was going on inside me, and it didn’t want Felix. It felt like he had no right to give me orders, and my wolf was driving me to disobey him in a game of dominance.
My surface attitude; that I could change. I’d spent a long time in the army where sometimes I’d just saluted the uniform and carried out the orders.
Couldn’t I manage that here? If my life depended on it?
But underneath. Had this sudden surge against him been triggered by his behavior toward me, or did it just mean he should be my alpha and this feeling showed I was already on the road to turning rogue?
“Are you claiming to be part Athanate, Alex?” Noble asked, breaking my chain of thought. “Your change of marque has all of us concerned.”
“No. I have no feeling of affiliation with Altau,” Alex said, and a little of the tension reduced when Felix nodded satisfaction. That was a huge point for them. I could understand that. The thought of a senior, trusted member of the pack actually loyal to Altau rather than the pack would have had my paranoia fired up too.