Gabe's Bride

by Penny Alley

  Yes, he understood Norma’s anger, but he couldn’t afford to yield to it. He wasn’t Colton. He didn’t have Colton’s mind for politics, but what he did know was if he gave in to Norma now, then he’d be giving in all over Hollow Hills. They would make life impossible for Neoma and Scotty. He wasn’t sure if Neoma deserved that, but he did know Scotty didn’t.

  “Norma, enough!” Softening his touch if not his tone, Jotham caressed her arms. “It’s been thirteen years. Let it go.”

  She shook her head. “Never. I’ll never let it go, and she’ll never be one of us. No one will ever forget where she’s from. I’ll make sure of it. I will.”

  “You’re not from here, either.” Gabe almost hated himself for saying it, especially when her gaze snapped back to his, her eyes growing wide with both anger and hurt.

  “I have been here longer than you’ve been alive, Gabe Michaelson!”

  “Yes, but you’re not from here. Neither are you, Jotham. In fact, more than half the families who live in Hollow Hills have members who aren’t from here. Like the Alpha’s Bride. Like Mama Margo herself. Hell, she came from the Scruff and she was still made welcome when the old Alpha took her as his Bride.”

  “The Scruff isn’t Scullamy!” Norma cried. Her laughter tickled into hysteria, both looking and sounding more like tears. “Anyone but a Scullamy, Gabe! They’re nothing but trouble! You know it. Everybody knows it!”

  “And Riverside?” he countered, deliberately picking the one volka tribe Norma was sure to favor above Hollow Hills. “What about the trouble they make? That’s where you’re from, isn’t it? I can’t help but notice twice a year, every year, a big ol’ group of them come through, spending a lot of time here at the store and down by the lake. Last spring, they poached two bucks, shot the windows out of an RV up on the Ridge and scared the piss out of two chevolak campers for no reason other than because they were human.”

  “They didn’t mean any harm,” Norma protested, but already her anger was bleeding away, leaving behind only tearful hurt.

  “No, they didn’t,” Gabe agreed. “But they do something stupid like that every time they come, and we always smooth things over because we’ve got enough problems without tearing at one another’s throats.”

  Norma recoiled. “Don’t you dare ask this of me. Not for her. I can’t…I won’t!”

  Releasing Neoma, Gabe closed the distance between himself and Norma. “Yes, you will.” He lowered his voice, but the store was so quiet, he knew it still carried to every straining volka ear. “You’ll do it, because I am first lieutenant to the Alpha Lauren and Neoma is my Claimed Bride. If you ban her from this store, you’re banning me as well. And if you do it again, I’m going to take it as a direct challenge, and then you and I are going to have a serious problem.”

  He turned, fully intending his next edict be to Neoma to grab a cart and—here, in front of everyone—start shopping, except she was gone. The automatic door had just slid closed and the dark blur of her hunched shoulders and bowed head fled across the sale posters that blocked the storefront windows. He ducked, catching a brief glimpse of her, arms folded tight across her stomach as she cut across the parking lot, the wind blowing her hair back from her pale face. Just before she reached his car, he thought he saw her swipe her wrist across both eyes. Then she yanked the passenger door open and pulled Scotty out, clutching him close as if he were a toddler rather than a gangly boy half her size.

  “Shit.” The heat of Norma’s glaring hatred burning at his back, Gabe chased after her. He didn’t run. Too many people were watching and the last thing he wanted was for anyone to mistake his actions as that of a commander out of control. He walked quickly though, biting his tongue until he was out of the store and halfway to his car. “Neoma! Neoma, wait!”

  For the second time that morning, Neoma didn’t wait. She bolted for the road. By the time he reached the Mustang, she was half-running, half-stumbling along the soft shoulder, following the old highway out of town toward Grady.

  “Give me a break!” he snapped, then swore, and finally slammed the passenger door and quickly got in behind the wheel. He’d have arrested anyone who tore across the parking lot the way he did now, but Gabe didn’t dare lose sight of her. She was on the road now, but if she ducked into the woods…if she Shifted, dense as this old-growth forest was, there was no telling how long it might take him to find her…or who with a grudge against Scullamy might find her first.

  But she didn’t Shift, and although she could have hid herself in them easily, she didn’t enter the woods. As if afraid of getting lost, she followed the road, walking as fast as she could with Scotty’s legs wrapped around her waist and his arms around her neck. When Gabe pulled alongside them and rolled the window down, Scotty’s arms tightened. He looked at Gabe, his young face as somber as ever, a glint of protectiveness turning his pale eyes lupine yellow.

  Although he tried for Scotty’s sake, Gabe wasn’t very successful at keeping the irritation out of his voice. “Get in the car.”

  Neoma walked faster, stumbling a little in the loose gravel. The road was too winding, too narrow and too unpredictable with its traffic for anyone to travel without both hands on the wheel and both eyes on the curve ahead. Biting back a curse, Gabe pulled ahead of her and then swerved over onto the graveled shoulder. An immediate slope into the woods prevented him from getting all the way off the road.

  Knowing he could get hit by the next inattentive driver to come speeding by, Gabe stuck his head out the door. “Neoma, get in the—”

  She marched straight past him, yanking her arm away when he reached for her and breaking into a jog until she got well ahead of him.

  Swearing, he pulled the keys from the ignition and got out, running to catch up with her. “Neoma, stop!”

  She didn’t look back, but her hands told him everything he needed to know. This wasn’t a tantrum. She wasn’t having a snit, as his mother used to say, because he’d made her do something she didn’t want to do. This was real distress. Her fingers were white-knuckled everywhere she touched her son, gripping the back of his shirt as if afraid he might be snatched from her arms any second, stroking through his hair as if seeking rather than imparting comfort. And with each pass of her hand, Scotty’s glare flared hotter and brighter, his thin arms tightening fiercely protective around his mother’s neck. There was no welcome for Gabe anywhere within that little warrior’s gaze. There was no room for second chances, either. To be honest, Gabe wasn’t sure he wanted to waste any more time or energy on trying to fix the impossible.

  And that was what this was: absolutely impossible. Falling into silent step beside her, all Gabe could think was they were the worst-matched couple any Hunt had ever thrown together and that included the fable of Ironclaw and his Barely-Conquered Bride. The longer Gabe and Neoma stayed in one another’s company the more likely this whole arrangement was to end in tragedy, bloodshed and, as in that ill-fated legend, mutual misery until the end of both their days.

  He didn’t want her. She sure didn’t want him. So, what else was there for him to do?

  “I give up.” Gravel crunching under both their feet, Gabe put himself between her and the road. The low growl of a truck engine rumbled up the road behind him. Gabe caught her arm by reflex (though she promptly yanked free again) and looked back. The town had all but vanished, swallowed whole by the heavy forest growth around them. Only a single road remained—directly across from the grocery store, that pot-hole riddled single-lane that went straight past the Fish and Game office to dead-end in front of his cabin.

  A gradual curve hardly noticeable when they’d been walking it now hid everything but the corner of that turn and the truck he could hear slowed down to take it. It was Colton’s truck and that minute pause just before he left the highway to go to work let Gabe know he’d been seen…and would not be interfered with.

  Gabe stopped where he was, hands on his hips, his breathing a little heavy but nowhere near winded. He tried to th
ink, but all he could hear was the crunching gravel beneath Neoma’s fast-retreating feet. He’d never felt the bite of failure as keenly as he did right then. The pointlessness ravaged his pride. Bitter helplessness gnawed at his gut, reverberated up his spine, tore at the back of his throat like scraping fire, and he didn’t even realize he was bellowing until it came roaring out of him. “Stop, god damn it!”

  Neoma did. She was stiff, trembling, hugging onto her faintly-growling son. She refused to turn around even to glare at him, but she’d stopped. That was something, at least.

  Wasn’t it?

  Gabe shook his head, wishing she’d turn around so they could talk. “What more do you want from me?” he demanded. “You wanted a mate, you entered the Hunt. You wanted someone other than Wayman, you got me. You wanted out of Scullamy, here you are. Everything you’ve wanted, you’ve gotten. So what else is there? What more—”

  Neoma snapped around so fast, the volka blazing so hot in her eyes, that Gabe forgot he was looking at a mouse.

  “I want him to grow up!” she bellowed back. When her voice broke, he felt the vibrations of it shake through him. Tears spilled through her lashes and poured down both cheeks, but there was no weakness in them. Not that Gabe could see. Tears born of anger were anything but weak. Trembling born of raw impotence wasn’t weakness either, and he could feel that too. In his legs when he moved closer and in his hands because his first instinct was to reach for her, to brush aside that salty drop caught on the bow of her upper lip.

  “All right,” he said, sounding so much calmer than he felt. “Fine. Barring the unforeseen, I can help with that.”

  Her arms tightening around Scotty, she laughed at him. The eerie similarities to Norma’s laugh prickled across his shoulders and up the back of his neck. “He’ll never grow up here,” she quavered. “They won’t let either one of us live here.”

  “It’s not their choice. Hollow Hills is not run by committee. Who stays and who goes is up to Colton, and in this case, me.” Gabe tapped his chest. “Me, Neoma. My choice, which makes it your choice too, and right now, the way I see it we’ve got two options. We either stick out the year, wait until our obligation to the Hunt is over and then figure out whether you still want to stay or go, or we call it quits right now. People will talk, but who cares? They’re talking already. But I’ll tell you right here and now, I’m not rich, I’m not well-connected, I can’t afford to put you up in a fancy-ass hotel somewhere while you try and figure out how to start your life over with a five-year-old in tow. I can, maybe, call in a favor in one of the other packs. Maybe. But what I will not do, is stand here while you walk out of town, with no money—”

  “I have money!” she snapped.

  “How much?” he snapped back. “How far will it get you when you’re leaving with no car, no provisions, no nothing? The Scruff will eat you both alive! You don’t think he’ll grow to see his prime here; I guarantee he won’t see his adolescence out there! You don’t get to make that choice, Neoma. You can either stay here or we’ll find another pack willing to take you, but I will load your ass up and take you back to Scullamy myself before I let you disappear into the Scruff!”

  She looked at him with eyes as huge and as blue as a cloudless sky. The mountains tended to hold onto clouds here, so Gabe didn’t often see many of those, but damned if that color wasn’t pretty.

  Her eyes shone, filling up with tears again. She shook her head, but Gabe had found the end of his patience.

  “Don’t push me,” he warned, fully expecting the volka fire in her to die and the mouse to resume her place. What he didn’t expect was to see her mouth flatten, her eyes to flash gold fire, and the rest of her to turn tail and bolt into the trees. “Shit.”

  Gabe ran after her, but she dropped Scotty in a move that struck him more like practiced confusion than abandonment. It worked, too. When Scotty hit the ground, Gabe froze and they both leapt apart. The underbrush swallowed them in a matter of steps, leaving him with nothing but the crash and snap of dry leaves and twigs, a flash of a gray and white tail, and a trail of freshly shed clothing scattered in the dirt and leaves. Neoma had Shifted.

  Indecision swallowed him. He’d grown up in these woods. He knew every inch of them; Scotty didn’t. The possibility of losing a child out here was very real. But if he abandoned Neoma and chased after Scotty, he could all but guarantee the minute he caught the pup, he’d have a savage volka mother on his back, ready to add to his scar collection with her teeth and claws.

  He had to do something. Already the sounds of two bodies rushing through the ferns and ivy was growing fainter, and in two different directions.

  “Shit!” he spat again and then ran after Neoma, following her trail of castoff clothes deeper into the woods and away from the road. The wind picked up, whipping her scent in a direction that would make tracking her more difficult, but it wasn’t until he found the spot where their paths crisscrossed at the bottom of a rocky ravine that Gabe felt his first real twinge of alarm. He stumbled over Scotty’s discarded shoes, and then a few feet later, his denims kicked off half under a huckleberry bush. Gabe didn’t for a second believe Neoma would leave Scotty behind or undefended, which meant so long as the kid stayed on two legs, then he still had a chance—to catch up, talk some sense into one or both of them, calm the situation down. Once the pup was on four legs, however, everything changed. Gabe dropped Scotty’s clothes, his nose tipped into the wind, and the next thing he knew, his shoes were off, his belt unbuckled and he was ripping his shirt over his head.

  The Shift hit him in a wave of pure adrenaline. The tremors hit him like excitement, though he had no idea why. It was as if he were shedding more than just his form. All the pent up frustrations of the last few days, the inconsistencies about Neoma that refused to make sense—the wolf in him didn’t care about any of that. It didn’t care about pack politics, or Bride Hunts, or the importance of playing nice with others within the boundaries of Hollow Hills much less outside of it. This is what it understood: the run. The chase. The scent of a female filling up his nose and the gray-tipped glimpse he caught of her tail when he tore up the side of that steep ravine in time to see her and Scotty dashing together through the junipers. Hampered by a pup too small to keep up, she lost ground after that. Gabe didn’t need to run full out to catch her now, but the wolf in him never had done anything by halves.

  He tasted it, that acrid moment when desperation took over her scent, and she could see him now in every backwards glance she stole as she herded her pup through the trees and rocks, following the rocky hillside down into a washout carved an ice age ago and reinforced every spring with the melting of the winter snows. She tried to lose him in the thickets, in mad-dash scrambles over rotting, fungus-ridden logs and through thistle groves he refused to go around. Although possibly twice her age, he was still a male very much in his prime. He could have had her at any time, but Scotty complicated things. His legs weren’t long enough for the terrain, which meant Neoma was constantly urging him to go faster and then turning on Gabe to drive him back. He almost caught hold of her ruff, but then Scotty stumbled and she turned on Gabe, all maternal protectiveness and teeth.

  A sharp leap back saved him from getting bit and gave Neoma the extra space she needed to race her son into the massive dome of a blackberry bramble. They vanished among the berries and thorns, leaving Gabe to circle the exterior. His ears twitched, picking up every rustle of movement as thorny vines caught in flesh and fur. Tense, trying to anticipate on what side they might come out, he waited until desperation finally forced her back into the open again. By the time she broke through the blackberry brush, she was cut, bleeding, alone, and only feet away. She tried to run, to lead him away, but the thorns caught at her. And when he charged, she lost all inclination to run.

  Neoma was a low wolf and had been for so long that even when she attacked, she did it low—an Omega who showed her teeth, but dared not use them. Who bristled and snarled at him, a ridge of gray warning
rising the length of her back and spiking out her tail, and yet her belly was on the ground. Her head ducked, her ears laid back. Her snout lifted between snarls, offering placating flashes of white that simply did not match the aggression in her body language. Were she male, Gabe the wolf would have answered her mix of challenge and submission with brutal violence. But she wasn’t male and when his mouth locked on the back of her neck, it wasn’t the urge to fight that overwhelmed him.

  For the second time in as many days, he covered her. The Hunt was over; the ritual, disastrously ended, yet it didn’t feel like disaster when he caged her beneath his body. It felt like true Claiming, something the man in him rebelled against, but which the wolf accepted without second thought. The vibration in her lingering growls rumbled all down her back and into his chest. He answered each with a low growl of his own, gradually dissolving her aggression into nervous whimpers.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so aware of the heated pounding of his own blood. His body felt tight. Ready. Every shiver of her flanks sent microbursts of raw desire singing through his. Her high-pitched whine pulled and teased at him. When she tried to pull out from under him, he tightened his hold and she stilled, flattening even lower. That was his moment. That one fragile second when the wolf knew what it wanted and the man’s reluctance faltered. When origins—be they Scullamy or Hollow Hills—ceased to matter. When she became his in every nuance of the meaning and in every way that mattered except one. How easy it would be to make the Claiming complete. A quick nudge of his hind leg, a slight lift of her tail to get it out of his way, and he’d be inside her.