by Penny Alley
She was tempted. Oh God, she was tempted. She could all but smell that dry, hot air, all but feel the hardpan and sand under her feet. She looked at him and could see herself on the red rock of some canyon wall overlooking a distant town with Scotty’s hand in hers and a man’s arm around her shoulders, and her heart ached with such hope that it was very nearly grief.
But even as that image filled her mind, she knew it wasn’t Wayman that she saw standing in that desert with her, looking out at those luring lights. It was Gabe. Gabe’s arm around her waist, drawing her into his side. Gabe’s hand playing in her hair, the way Wayman was doing while he waited for her to give in.
“And then what?” she countered, feeling at once so tired that she couldn’t even push his hand away. “Should Scotty and I just hop onto the back of your motorcycle so you can ride away with us into the sunset?” She caught herself, her short gasp choking in the back of her throat. Later, she wouldn’t be sure exactly what it was she’d seen in Wayman’s face—a slight tightening in his mouth or a narrowing of his eyes—but suddenly, she knew where she was mistaken. “You want me to leave my son behind to…to run off with you!”
“He’ll be fine,” Wayman insisted. “Hell, he’s the only one of us who has a chance of being accepted into this fucking place. He’ll be just fine! And look at this!” He waved toward the wall of photographs, where every possible sports’ season of victory or loss had been faithfully recorded for at least a decade. “Your man loves pups! Probably even the chevolak ones! Your boy will have a good place here. A good life. What more could you want for him than that?”
It was shocking how fast her unease turned to anger. “Get out!” Neoma snapped.
“Oh come on! It’s not like you’ll never have another pup! Hell, you might have mine growing in you now!”
“Stop saying that!” she said shrilly, fumbling at the door knob. “I’m not going anywhere with you!”
“Okay, okay, how about this?” Again, Wayman raked a hand through his hair, his eyes shining amber in the dim cabin light as he thought. “We go today, just the two of us, and I promise I’ll come back for the pup once we get settled in somewhere?” He spread his arms, silently demanding to know what was so unreasonable about that.
And into her outraged, gape-mouthed silence, came the sound of a heavy engine and tires on gravel, right up to the porch, where the engine shut off.
Gabe. Her stomach dropped so low, Neoma could feel it in her toes. Gabe was here. He was home.
And she was standing in his living room with another man.
Fear took her, familiar and weirdly calming. She looked at Wayman and was almost comforted by the shock and wariness she found there as a similar realization crawled across his features. When their eyes met, her brows furrowed in silent accusation; his twitched up in rueful apology.
The click-and-thump of two car doors opened and shut, followed by two sets of feet crunching up to the porch.
“Should we knock?” a woman asked.
Not Gabe after all, but the relief was short-lived. Neoma knew that voice. The Alpha’s chevolak Bride. Wayman recognized it too, although the alarm that flashed across his face surely had less to do with what even Neoma had to admit was a negligible threat to be found in this particular human, and everything instead to do with the threat of her husband, who was likely close by.
They listened as the Alpha’s chevolak Bride set something on the porch outside. A cardboard box from the sound of it. Heavy too, judging by the rough slide as it was shifted a few inches across the weathered floorboards so it didn’t block the door.
“Maybe we should just leave it,” Karly hedged.
“She can smell you and she can hear you,” another woman gruffly said. “No point in hiding when she already knows.”
Who was that? Not the Alpha, obviously, but familiar all the same, if only faintly. Neoma turned her head and drew a breath through the crack between the door and jamb, sifting through scents. The human’s, yes, and the car and the pines and the old logs of the cabin…and Gabe himself, hours old, but weathered in, laying over every sense, distracting her with heartsick thoughts she could not explore right now, if ever…and there! She knew that scent, although she had only met the woman to whom it belonged once before. She had taken pains to know it, because it was the scent of one of the matron mamas, watching over the pups, over Scotty, at the Hunt.
“You knock,” Karly begged in a whisper. “You’re a volka. She’ll like you.”
The other woman snorted. “Let her wear rags.”
“Mama Margo!”
Neoma squeezed her eyes shut, her heart pounding at this confirmation of the strange scent’s identity. Aunt Elda’s ears and nose were as good as Deacon’s own in Scullamy; so it would be here. If the matron mama outside this thin door had the first suspicion of Wayman’s presence here, Alpha Lauren would know it and soon, and then so would Gabe.
“Don’t you ‘Mama Margo’ me, you flat-toothed, salad-munching monkey-cousin. You asked for help; I bullied people for donations. You asked me to come with you; I’m here.” The heavy whump of another cardboard box hit the front porch. “You want a welcome committee?” Mama Margo barked a hard laugh. “Ha, get another friend. I like you, girl, but I don’t like anybody that much!”
The chevolak puffed out a frustrated sigh and stomped back across the lawn toward the car. Neoma’s brief hope that they might leave now crashed when she heard Karly mutter, “At least help me carry the bed.”
“Ask me to help you shove it up her—”
“Mama Margo!”
“See?” Wayman muttered once they had retreated far enough not to hear it. “Aren’t they just the friendliest bunch?”
That tiny spark of hopelessness sprouting up under her breast turned thorny and hot.
“Leave,” she hissed, glaring up at him. “Just get out. Now. Through the back kitchen window, if you can squeeze through it. I’ll…I’ll talk to them. Distract them.”
He glared back at her. “I ought to walk straight out that door and between them. We’re not doing anything wrong, but look at you! You’re fucking terrified! All we’re doing is talking, for shit’s sake! It’s not like I pissed on the fucking rug! Or the bed,” he snarled, closing his hands into fists. “Anyone else in this whole fucking town could be in this room and you wouldn’t think twice about letting that rabbit and Lauren’s watchbitch know it, but when it’s me, then we’re what? Conspiring? Scheming? Fucking? How could you be so—”
Wayman broke off there, teeth bared, his amber-lit eyes cutting to the door.
“God, this is heavy,” Karly grunted, the crunch of her footsteps in the pine needles heralding her return to the porch and giving Neoma an excuse not to answer, even if she could have thought of one.
“Salad-munching monkey cousin, huh?” Karly said between pants. A heavy clatter reverberating through the wall at Neoma’s back as they set something metallic and heavy on the porch by the boxes.
“You may have nimble fingers,” Mama Margo confirmed, “but God didn’t give you the upper body strength of a lemur.”
“Volka believe in God?”
“Why wouldn’t we believe?” The testiness in the volka woman’s tone was offset by her audible amusement. “He’s a little furrier than you envision Him, but I’m sure He looks after monkeys too.”
Their footsteps retreated again, and as soon as they were away Neoma lashed out, her hands slapping into Wayman’s chest and shoving him back. He wasn’t expecting it and, although it was a glancing blow at best, his knees hit the arm of the couch and toppled him onto it, right onto Gabe’s bed, blanket and pillow.
“Well,” he said, propping himself up on his elbows and grinning. “Now my scent’s on his bed. Good job. Have fun explaining that.”
She stared, shaking, as he got up.
“I guess I don’t mind being a lemur,” Karly panted as footsteps struggled their way back to the porch. “Could be worse. I could be descended from bitches.”
The old woman cackled and the two of them added another clattering armload to the pile collecting on the porch. “I’ll have you know I come from a long line of proud bitches! So. Is that it?”
“Almost. Just the slats and the sides left in the car. Hey,” Karly said suddenly, her tone reflecting only weariness and reluctance. “Let’s just unload it real quick and go.”
“Now you’re not going to knock either?”
“If she’s home, there’s no way she could not have heard us, so she hasn’t come out because she doesn’t want to talk to me,” Karly reasoned. “And if she’s not home, there’s even less point in knocking. She’ll see all this when she gets home. I just…I don’t want to push.”
“Fine with me,” Mama Margo sniffed. “I didn’t want to come here in the first place.”
“Oh come on. She’s new in town. She’s shy, she’s scared—”
“She’s Scullamy.”
In the silence, Wayman gave Neoma a pointed stare.
“Well,” said Karly, more subdued. “Thank you for doing it anyway.”
“Monkey,” the old woman said with gruff fondness.
“Bitch.” Their footsteps retreated once more.
“Come with me,” Wayman coaxed one last time. His eyes were locked on hers; his growl was tight in his throat. “You’ll never be one of them, and you know it. Just like you know you’ll never be more than a whisper and a smirk away from getting dropped on your ass at the side of the road. Come with me.”
Neoma shook her head, but she couldn’t look at him.
He waited, but as the sound of footsteps returned, he abruptly gave up. “Fine. Have it your way. Find out what it’s like to be Scullamy and Scruff, both you and your boy.” His boots like gunshots on the cabin floor, he pushed past her and banged the door open. “Ladies,” he said grimly, nodding as he passed them, frozen like statues at the bottom of the stairs, and walked on without a backwards glance.
Slowly, almost in perfect sync, the Alpha’s Bride and the matron mama of Hollow Hills turned and looked at Neoma.
The confusion in Karly’s face rippled at once into something that seemed so much like genuine concern. “Are…are you all right?”
“I…” Everything inside Neoma ached to retreat from her, the matron mama, this whole awful situation. She fumbled with the door, the memory of Gabe’s voice like a tolling bell in her heart: the next time your Alpha’s Bride decides to pay you a visit, you will be polite, you will open the door, and you will invite her in. “I… I…”
The old woman tipped her head, her eyes narrowing with accusation. “Lover’s squabble?”
A rush of heat flooded up the back of Neoma’s throat, burning at her face and filling her eyes with the sting of equally useless tears. She tried to blink them back, but she knew they were going to fall anyway. It only grew worse when the old woman turned to Karly and said, “Call Colton. He’s going to want to know about this.”
“Mama Margo!” Karly’s voice held all the outrage and confusion Neoma could not summon in her own defense, and then she was coming up onto the porch, right to the welcome mat. When she reached out her hand to touch Neoma’s shoulder, all Neoma could see was the chevolak who was more welcome in this town than she ever would be. “Are you all right?” Karly asked again, with such compassion that it cut like claws on Neoma’s heart.
“Please,” Neoma whispered through a blur of tears. “Please… come in.” And then, with a high cry, she planted a shaking hand flat on the door and slammed it shut.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“And this right here,” Marcus said, his legs sticking out from underneath Gabe’s jacked up car, “is why you should never let a woman drive.”
Putting the last drive shaft back on the passenger’s side, Gabe grunted. “You’ve heard of it then?”
“Yes.” Changing the bolt size on his socket wrench, Marcus grunted back, “Heard of it. Saw it firsthand. Nothing that comes out of Scullamy surprises me.”
Taking the bolts and wrench Marcus handed him, they adjured to opposite sides of the car to put the tires back on. “Why do they let him get away with it?”
“Why did Hitler get away with half the shit he did?” Marcus countered. “People are people. He’s got the largest pack of any alpha I’ve ever heard of, and the loyalty of an army willing to kill for the bonuses he hands out like Skittles on Halloween.”
“Nobody eats Skittles anymore,” Gabe muttered, tightening the last bolt with vindictive force.
“M&Ms then.” When Gabe rolled out from under the car, Marcus did too. “Carrot cake M&Ms,” Marcus added, tightening the lug nuts down. “Have you tried them? Those things are fucking addictive.”
Not being much of a candy person, Gabe didn’t comment. He finished his side first. Rounding the front of the car, he pushed the hoist up against the building, out of the way, and then manned the jack, waiting until Marcus was done with his last lug nut. He couldn’t stop thinking. “What do you think he would have done with the boy?”
“What boy?” Marcus asked, checking each nut one last time to make sure all were tight.
“Scotty. Neoma’s boy. The one I pulled off the bus.”
Setting the tire iron aside, Marcus didn’t look at him. “You don’t want to know the answer to that. Trust me, you really don’t.”
Picking up a hand towel, Gabe tried to scrub the oil and grease off his hands. “I’m getting real tired of questions without answers.”
Standing, Marcus moved away from the tire to reposition himself at the jack stands. “Maybe instead of wondering about the boy, you should start wondering about Neoma.”
He hadn’t stopped wondering about her since the Hunt. Gabe scowled at the hood of his car, fighting to keep his uncooperative body from remembering just how good it had felt to be down in the cool forest shadows with her, volka to volka, fur to fur and then skin to skin, before the now of wolf-thought receded and all her scars came into stark focus. A curious crawling moved down his back, marking him in all the places she had been marred. No, Neoma had been in his thoughts—his only thought, it seemed—for days.
“Think,” Marcus coaxed. “Six Scullamy bitches ran in the Hunt. Four went to different packs and he didn’t care about any of those. Except one. And that one he cared so much about that, in front of everyone there and all their alphas, he exposed the darkest side of his rule by attempting to separate a pup from his mother.”
The expanse of that classic Mustang seemed as if it stretched far more than its two-door compact size should have.
“Who is Scotty’s father?” Gabe asked, the pounding of his own increasing pulse like a battering ram in his ears.
Marcus breathed a soundless laugh. “Close, but wrong question. Forget about the boy, my friend. What you should be asking is: Who is Neoma’s father?”
The two men stared at one another. Loud as his pulse was a second before, Gabe was barely aware of it now. “You’re humping my leg, I know you are.”
“Am I?” This time Marcus’s laugh came out on a breath of bitterness. “Before my old Alpha appropriated my mother and sister to be part of his aggressive enlistment benefits package, we lived two buildings down from Karime Stovey.” A corner of his mouth twisted. “All these years, isn’t it funny how I can still remember her name? You could ask anyone from Scullamy, I’ll bet even after all this time, they’d all tell you something about that woman and none of it would be nice. Nobody liked her. It’s hard to like someone who has everything simply…handed to them. Not that everything wasn’t handed to us too, because that’s how life works in Scullamy. But when you live where I did, in those shit-heap apartments where Deacon liked to keep the most menial of his cogs, the ones powerful people don’t want to admit they need and yet which do make everyday life so much easier for everybody else, it’s amazing how fast you take notice when someone else gets better than you—food, clothes…first flowers, then gifts…and then that fancy ass car, complete with driver, that showed up every few day
s to whisk her off to her visits. Everybody knew where she was going, just like everybody knew whose pup birthed from her belly.”
“Neoma is Deacon’s daughter.” Gabe reeled. “Have you told Colton?”
“Colton hasn’t asked. Besides—” He smirked again. “—none of this is fact. It’s all just a rumor. Just like her parentage is a rumor, because Deacon never claimed ownership. He already had an established line, you see: two sons and a daughter. And a wealthy wife with an even wealthier father to keep happy, not to mention a lumber contract preparing to slip through his fingers if he couldn’t beg, steal or borrow enough to win it. Which he did, I understand and yet he lost it all anyway. And then the chevolak moved in and, like cockroaches in a dirty kitchen, suddenly they were everywhere. Tell me, what would you do if that happened to Hollow Hills?”
“I’d learn to get along with humans.” Gabe worked to keep his temper under tight control. “What I wouldn’t do is systematically invade my neighbors, trying to find the weakest one to take over.”
“Neither would I. But then, we’re sensible people.” Dropping to his haunches, Marcus indicated the jack. “You going to teach your woman simulation style, or are we going to put this sweet little puppy back on the ground?”
Bending, Gabe grabbed the jack. Two more pumps raised the car up off the stands, but Marcus had time to remove only one of them before the office door behind them opened.