by Mark Henwick
I swallowed.
Cameron had left the bulky coat in the car. She was now wearing a sort of chainmail crop-top that looked to be made of oiled gold. It gleamed and moved with her body. Her dark skin was alluringly covered, and yet not covered, beneath the top.
Hellfire!
Really all out to create an impression.
Score two for Cameron, for style.
Was it working on Felix? He was the only one that mattered here.
“Cameron,” I forced the formal words out, “may I introduce the matter you requested?”
Damn, I was supposed to use her full name and pack title.
I sucked at this formal diplomacy stuff.
She didn’t take any notice. She was staring past me at Felix, chest heaving with the effort of fighting off Felix’s dominance as he ramped it up again.
“Yes.” Sounded like she had the same mouthful of dirt he had.
Back to Felix. I was feeling dizzy now from the competing flows of dominance. There was a weight on my chest and it was an effort to keep standing up.
He hadn’t moved. His legs were locked and he was staring back at Cameron.
Wonderful. Stick a couple of alphas near each other and the only thing they’re interested in is testing their dominance out, regardless of what they came to do. I wanted to shout at them there’s more important stuff here, but even the demon in my throat was starved of air.
Heaven help me.
Everything hinged on this—Felix’s reaction to Cameron’s proposal. Everything. Skylur’s demands on me for Altau’s association with Were packs in New Mexico. A single Were group to oppose the Confederation. A group capable of serious representation in the Assembly.
Felix is never going to go for it.
Here goes nothing.
Deep breath. “On behalf of the alpha of Santa Fe, I’m asking you to consider—”
“What adjacent lands?” Felix cut across me, addressing Cameron directly. “You’re claiming territory in adjacent states?”
“I am,” Cameron replied. “Tucson, Mesa and Holbrook in Arizona. Amarillo and San Antonio in Texas.”
“By association?”
“No, those are full sub-packs,” she said. “You want associations? Phoenix, Austin and Dallas. Alliances? Sixteen more in Arizona and Texas.”
“Some empire you’re building there, Zerenegus. Will Phoenix become a sub-pack next? Austin? Will you start putting your own alphas in place?”
“We’re not the Confederation. We’re a league. I don’t ask alphas to submit to me. What about your empire, Larimer?”
“I have no—”
“Alphas are throwing themselves at you,” she said.
Felix snorted. It took effort. Sweat stood out on his brow and his head had lowered—not submissively, more like a bull ready to charge. “You mean packs are allying themselves with me for mutual interest.”
“Oh, yeah. And that’s what Stillman over in Cimarron will tell himself every day in the mirror. It’s just for his pack’s protection. You’re a good neighbor. Never that you’re more dominant than him. Oh, no, never that.”
“We’ve never contested—”
“Because deep down he knows,” Cameron said, voice raised. “He knew you were stronger before. Now that all the Wyoming and Utah and Kansas packs are cozying up to you, building up your dominance, you’re so far out of his league he may as well roll over.”
Shit. That last comment was one of those ambiguous, sort-of-sexual insults that got Were fighting.
I tried to haul back the conversation before it fell off a cliff. “I think what the Santa Fe alpha meant—”
“I heard what she said.” Felix cut me off. “What else would I expect from her? She has no idea about the concept of civil behavior between neighbors.”
“I get neighborliness just fine. I don’t have a nephew that speaks through his shotgun at anyone who shows up at Coykuti to talk.”
“No, you just kill anyone who shows up in your territory.” Felix started to pace on the invisible edge of the square.
His dominance took a harsher edge. Less for show. The real power was coming through now.
Not good.
“And you welcome them? We maintain the same territorial—” Cameron began.
“And it’s not as if you even run your own territory well,” Felix bulldozed on. “You encouraged rogues to form packs on our borders.”
“I didn’t set that border. My territory used to end at Taos. Gold Hill and Ute Mountain were your problem until you fixed it by deciding your territory ended at the state border,” Cameron shot back. “So, then we had to take them on. We had to fix it.”
“You fixed it?” Felix was incredulous.
“We were handling it. We got them to fight each other—”
“Which pushed Gold Hill into making an association with the Confederation!”
“The Confederation did that to come in behind you,” Cameron yelled, “not because of anything we—”
“And if you’re saying now that’s your territory, where the hell were you while we were fighting the Confederation there?” Felix matched her, decibel for decibel.
“Keeping the rest of them from kicking your badly prepared ass all the way back to Denver. The bulk of the Wind River pack never made it into the mountains, thanks to us. And where were you when it came to clean up? Guns, bodies and trucks all over Carson Park just left for humans to find!”
Cameron was not giving an inch. Her dominance stepped right up to counter Felix’s. There was no hint from either of them that they were near their limits. The tumult of dominance just built and built, smooth and relentless as gravity.
However much I thought I could stand up to one of them, on a good day, with Alex to support me, the power unleashed by the pair of them was battering me down. My knees were buckling. The four lieutenants weren’t doing any better; their heads were down almost on the dirt.
Last attempt. I sucked in air and shouted, “I think we ought to restart the conversation—”
“Enough!” Felix’s voice thundered. My world seemed to wobble and tilt. I found myself down on one knee, looking at the ground and trying to prop myself up with one arm.
“Go!”
The dominance fight switched off, swift and clean as a blade. Both sides.
Shit! Failed. Didn’t even get to speak my piece. Cameron’s proposal. Nothing.
I’d ruined my standing with Felix, by the look of it. And I’d failed to deliver for Cameron. Would she refuse to make a deal with Bian or Skylur now? Had I damaged the Denver pack’s association with Altau as well?
Shit again.
I staggered up. The best I could do was get Cameron and the others out of Felix’s sight before he blew all his gaskets.
Cameron was already cat-walking back to the truck, rolling her hips and giving the impression everything was fine.
Rita and Zane had changed back and looked as fragile as I felt. On the other hand, they were naked and I was at least dressed.
I was too dazed to notice how…impressive Zane was, naked. Far too dazed.
We collapsed into the Hill Bitch, Cameron and me in front, the others in the rear.
“Fifteen seconds,” said Zane, his voice hoarse with exertion, as if he’d run a marathon.
Huh?
I pushed it away. The whole world felt strange, somehow sideways, after being battered and sandblasted by dominance displays. Maybe Zane was having a reality disconnect himself.
Maybe we all were—Cameron’s lips stretched in a grin. Or a grimace. The sight shocked me.
What the hell?
I started the engine, and she put a hand on my arm.
“No. No. Do not leave yet,” she said.
More posturing? Proving we’re not running away?
Felix, Ursula and Ricky had gone inside the ranch. Rita and Zane were getting dressed in the back. The truck engine ticked over. I shook my head, trying to clear the fog.
“Thirty seconds
,” said Zane.
He was grinning. They were all grinning.
Are they really freaking insane?
More important, could I retrieve the situation with Cameron and still get her to agree to association with Bian?
“Ah. Sorry,” I croaked. “I screwed up. Diplomacy is not my strong suit.”
Rita handed me an open hip flask that she’d just swigged from. The sting of the Albuquerque pack’s homemade moonshine tickled my nose. I took a swallow, coughed, and tried to concentrate on breathing.
“Sorry? Really? For what?” Cameron was saying as I recovered.
I waved the flask at the yard where we’d stood, forced the words out of my abused throat. “That. That disaster. Should have spoken quicker. Messed up. Failed.”
She laughed.
“Amber, that old silver fur has near melted my g-string, and I’ve put enough wood in his pants to bust his zipper.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, come on. Didn't you see? He didn't respond to my aggression. He agreed to our borders. Little presents, big meaning.”
I blinked. I was not getting this. Maybe I was more dazed than I realized. “He argued with every single thing you put forward. You were shouting at each other!”
“Yeah. Mmmm. He is so fucking alpha. So confident, so...double coffee ice cream, banana and syrup waffle.” She wriggled in her seat.
“Forty-five seconds,” Zane said. “He’s never going to make sixty.”
“What? That's...” I said, completely confused.
“That was alpha courtship and seduction 101,” Rita said.
“God, did you see his eyes?” Cameron grabbed Rita’s flask from me and upended it.
“No. Not specifically,” I said. “He was looking at you.”
“’Zactly,” she gasped. Even she couldn’t speak clearly after drinking the moonshine. “Never batted an eyelid. Signed, sealed and delivered.”
Rita retrieved her flask and looked sadly into the empty depths.
I was trying to get my head around this. “So, even though I didn’t actually get to make your proposal of marriage to him, it worked?”
Cameron laughed again, too loud and bright, her eyes burning.
“Fuck, yeah. You didn’t need to say anything. He knew why we were there as soon as he saw me. You think I get painted up like this to go down the store?”
“He just looked out the window,” Zane said. “That was fifty-five seconds. Told you.”
“He couldn’t help himself,” Rita crowed. “Deal done.”
Cameron moved abruptly to open her door, but Rita had been watching. She launched herself over the back of the seat and grabbed her hands.
“Alpha, no,” she said.
Cameron was growling. Her eyes had gone completely wolf.
Rita didn’t back off. She rubbed her head against Cameron’s neck and chest, keeping her eyes down and her movements slow and gentle.
“Let’s go, Amber,” Zane said. “Quickly.”
I floored it.
Dirt spat out behind the Hill Bitch as I fishtailed her onto the road and drove away.
We were a mile down the road before Rita let go and sat back slowly, watchfully. A little distance seemed to have calmed Cameron, who was sitting still, staring into the distance and breathing deeply. Her eyes were still wolf. Her hand came up, and she clicked her fingers.
Rita immediately leaned forward over the seats again. Not to hold Cameron, but to offer her neck.
Cameron’s face flowed; black-furred wolf jaws stretched out and closed on Rita’s neck. The were-cougar didn’t move, didn’t blink.
Zane’s hand rested on my shoulder. Leave it alone.
I sort-of understood. Whatever the reason, Rita had laid hands on Cameron.
There needed to be some pack communication to make sure everyone knew where they stood.
Cameron’s jaws opened and her face flowed back, minus the gold paint.
I breathed again and slowed the truck.
Cameron patted Rita’s shoulder and stared out the front. Her eyes were still more wolf than woman.
“What the hell was she going to do back at the ranch?” I asked quietly.
Rita smiled as she sat back in her seat. “Oh, piss on the gateposts, probably. Mark her claim. Maybe strip off and invite him for a roll in the barn. Not a bad move, necessarily, but just for safety, they both need to get a little used to the idea before their wolves take over.”
I snorted. “Used to what idea? Can someone tell me what the hell just happened?”
For ten long seconds there was no sound but the engine churning and the road under the tires. Rita and Zane exchanged looks.
“We think Felix accepted the proposal, obviously,” Zane said finally. “But it’s much more. They’ve gone beyond the marriage-for-strategy. Way beyond. I think we’re about to see what a real super-pack looks like, with a pair of mated alphas stronger than anything else in the country. Full merger of packs.”
“Mated? That was it?” I said. Shit! Merged packs? “That was what it took? A screaming argument in the yard?”
“Not quite.” Cameron’s voice was back to its rich, chocolate best. She kept staring ahead as she spoke. “He’ll call me. Soon. And we’re big, bad alphas, so we’ll yell and snap and snarl at each other a few more times. Right up until the time we jump each other. But we already know. We have, as they say, the whole enchilada with added benefits. Great, searing lumps of hot, smoking benefits. Oh, yes.”
“Alex and I are alphas, and we never—”
“You had a long wait for sex?” Rita raised an eyebrow. “With that hunk in LA?”
“Well, no—”
“You batted eyelids at him? Agreed with everything he said? He came around in a suit and tie, and introduced himself politely to your mother?”
I shut up. Within a week of meeting Alex, he’d thrown me over his naked shoulder and taken me up to his bedroom. I’d squawked and complained and loved every throbbing second of it.
But we hadn’t argued. Not exactly.
“Alphas are like this when they mate,” Zane said. He’d leaned forward and he was speaking softly right into my ear. “The bigger and louder the conflict at the start, the more profound the initial refusals, the quicker and more passionate the progress.”
His breath stroked my neck.
The air in the truck was heavy with pheromones. Not purely Zane’s fault. He and Rita were responding to their alpha.
“Alphas know, deep down, almost right away,” he murmured. “The moment they come to trust their gut decision, the mating bond is complete. It’s quite…beautiful.”
I chuckled, partly to cover the shiver of desire that raced down me. I needed to get back to LA, or I needed Alex and Jen back in Denver.
But Alex had held himself back, early on, before the over-the-shoulder bit. Not because he lacked anything as an alpha wolf. Because he was Alex, my alpha mate, who sensed me perfectly. My mate, with all the craziness that meant.
Zane could keep up his seduction attempts—I was actually enjoying them—but he wasn’t going to get anywhere. Not with Alex waiting for me. Werewolves could mate with two partners, but I had that already—Jen not being Were was irrelevant to me.
Zane’s lips feather-kissed my neck.
Rita punched him and shoved him back in his seat.
“She’s driving, culero. Leave her alone.”
He snarled, and then laughed it off. He’d try again, I guaranteed it.
He had seemed to take her reprimand okay, but I was sure Rita would have to submit to him later, the same way she’d had to submit to Cameron for bucking authority.
I didn’t want her having to do that for me, but she didn’t seem concerned.
“So, is Larimer old-fashioned?” she said.
“I don’t know. Does it make a difference?”
She snorted. “He might want the mating ceremony to end four-legged in front of the whole pack. Some of the old ones are kinky like that.”
We came off the snaking road that ran down from Coykuti and onto the blacktop. I eased on more gas and the Hill Bitch surged forward.
“What does the man do for sex?” Zane asked bluntly.
“I don’t know. I don’t pry.”
“But you’ve got an idea.”
Was it a pack secret? I didn’t think so.
Was it an acceptable thing for his fiancé’s pack to know? Probably. What was right and wrong for Were was screwing with my head.
“I think that his lieutenant, Ursula, may have shared his bed,” I said cautiously.
Alphas varied. Some regarded the pack as their property, and the pack members weren’t allowed an option, not even if they were mated. Some, like Zane, didn’t assume the right, but would seduce anyone they could.
Beautiful mating bonds, my ass.
I suspected Felix worked on the basis that getting involved with any lower pack members would only cause problems. All the unranked females in the Denver pack were mated, many with two males, given the proportions in the pack. Messing with that was a sure way to cause trouble.
Ursula hadn’t been mated, ever. And the way Felix had spoken of her made me suspect they’d been intimate. Now I’d introduced Nick into the mix, and I still wasn’t sure where that relationship had ended up. Which was a hell of a thing to admit, given that Ursula and Nick were sort-of in my pack and I was sort-of their alpha.
Regardless of all that, I had to admit to myself that Felix might have been more open to a proposal than I’d thought earlier.
Hell, maybe he’d welcome it. Maybe I would end up in his good books again.
“He was mated before?” Rita interrupted my musing.
For a Were, mated was different from married—I needed to make that distinction.
“First wife, Candace. She was an alpha. Donna, his second wife, she didn’t make the change.”
The horror of that silenced them for a while—to lose a mate was bad enough, and then a second wife that way. No Were was unfamiliar with the death that came to those who couldn’t change. It was unimaginable, what Felix had gone through.
Had we ridden roughshod over those buried griefs, or had we offered him a new start?