by M. L. Briers
He too liked to hear from all sides before he offered his two cents worth.
“Renters or not, they are still on the mountain, and are still likely to cause mischief and mayhem if left to their own devices.” Scott growled a little at the thought of it.
His pack was peaceful for once. Sure, there was still bickering among the females, and what was a pack without a few fists flying from all sides, but that was it, and you could expect no less. But there was no discord, no real trouble, and he’d kind of like to keep it that way…
“Maybe I should pay old man Cooper a visit and see how long they’re here for…” Dane lifted his hand and worried the stubble on his chin as he thought about a way to sweeten the old man up, perhaps taking some of Mabel’s cookies, he liked those…
“Maybe you should just go right back to the source and asked the witches,” Luke offered with a tone that sounded like gravel, but held a little amusement within it too.
“Dane’s already had one confrontation with them. Do we really think he should walk right up there for another?” Scott scowled at the thought.
The beta was edgy … Too edgy for his liking.
“Oh, I think Dane will be going up there soon enough of his own accord,” Luke chuckled to himself, looking at the beta from beneath his weathered brow.
“Why the heck would I want to be near those She-Demons?” Dane grumbled.
His beast was already edgy, and he didn’t like the thought of those women on the mountain much either … there was something about them that rattled his wolf.
Luke didn’t say a word. He just eyed the beta as the man paced back and forth like a caged beast.
“Think about it, Son … I’m sure it will come to you,” Richard, one of the elders of the pack said, as he sat gently rocking back and forth at the opening to the outside world … His backside was nestled nicely on one of the finished products that the pack had put out only that morning.
He called what he did, rocking out in a chair, quality control, and was adamant that he was making sure that someone’s backside was good and comfortable on the seat. Truth was that he liked to be where the action was, and men working tended to loosen lips and spill secrets, and he liked secrets.
The old man’s snowy white mane of hair hung around his shoulders and blew in the chill winter winds as he eyed the beta with closeted amusement. Now he knew another secret…
“What’s going on?” Paul, another brother and second beta to the alpha, strolled into the workshop and noted that they all seem to be on a coffee break, just without the coffee.
“Dane’s thinking,” Richard chuckled.
“That could take a while,” Paul shot his older brother a grin and the beta growled back in annoyance. “I can see why he’d need the help though.”
“We’ve got witches,” Dane growled back, as if that answered all of his brother’s questions in one go.
“At least they don’t multiply as fast as rats,” Paul shrugged a shoulder.
He didn’t have as much of a problem with the Fae as some around the pack seem to have. But then he also believed that it was always a good idea to keep an eye on them when they were around.
“Dane says they’re renting the big house,” Scott informed his brother to the sound of Dane grumbling another low growl.
“What’s your problem?” Paul shot a questioning look at Dane.
“Well …” He scowled, unsure. “They’re witches…” Dane growled back.
“And?” Paul still didn’t get it.
His brother seemed unusually tense about something that didn’t really pose much of a problem for the pack … yet. No sure, if they were battering down the door, chanting in tongues…
“I don’t know!” Dane said with almost total frustration. “Isn’t the fact that they’re witches bad enough?” He growled.
“Looks that way, right?” Paul bit down on a grin.
“Right,” Dane tossed up an absent hand and Luke chuckled into his own.
“What say I take Dane up to the big house and we can have a word with those wicked witches?” Luke offered, knowing that nothing was going to get settled about anything while Dane was acting so irrationally and Paul was gearing up to pull his strings.
That could only lead to a whole heap of trouble, and when those two went at it, they could go on for days.
CHAPTER THREE
~
“Him?” Paul pointed a finger towards Dane and snorted a chuckle. “Sure … that’s gonna go real well.”
“Well, maybe you should go with them?” Scott folded his arms across his chest and eyed his younger brother.
Paul groaned inwardly…
“Him!” Richard explained from the rocker. “Pah! Why not just send the damn tooth fairy … thirty seconds in his company and we’ll have a war on our hands.” He grumbled.
“Why don’t you go then, Yoda? You’re about as diplomatic as a sledgehammer.” Paul shot back.
“I can be diplomatic when it calls for it,” Richard scowled at the young beta.
“Like when you told the elder Amelia that her cookies tasted like a rat had died in the batter?” Paul shot back, shaking his head at the memory of all hell breaking loose on that day.
“Well, that didn’t call for diplomacy, it called for the truth,” the old man grumbled back. “And that’s exactly how they did taste, and still do. So much so that the woman has been chasing after Patsy for her secret recipe.” He felt vindicated on that one.
“This is a little more than cookies,” Scott berated Paul.
He didn’t know what the man was thinking, or if he was even thinking … Sending the old man to see the witches was an act of pure lunacy.
“You’re right,” Paul said. “Which is why you should be the one to lead the charge … What better than an alpha at the helm?”
“You just don’t wanna go,” Scott growled back.
“True,” Paul nodded.
“Fine,” Scott sighed. “Luke, you and Dane go talk to the witches…”
“I did talk to them, and boy are they rude … Not just anyhow rude, but damn rude.” Dane bit back.
“I’ll hold your hand and make sure they play nice,” Luke chuckled, but Dane growled like a man on a mission, and right then his fist itched to be planted in Luke’s face.
“Just find out how long they’re planning on staying…” Scott growled and Dane tossed up his hands.
“They’re staying?” Dane growled.
“While they’re not causing the pack any trouble they are,” Scott grumbled back.
He didn’t know what it was exactly that had rubbed his brother up the wrong way, but the man needed to stow it. They could play nice with the witches for now, anything else would be forcing their hand, and he didn’t need to get into a peeing contest with five irate witches.
“Fine,” Dane growled back.
“Fine,” Scott grumbled, tossing him a look of disbelief. “What the hell is your problem anyhow?”
“I… Don’t… know.” Dane bit out slowly and carefully, and it was the truth, he didn’t have a damn clue. “Can everyone stop damn well asking me that and let me be?”
Dane stalked off and Scott shot a look at Luke as the enforcer followed after him.
“Keep him out of trouble,” Scott grumbled.
“Isn’t that like asking a wolf to catch every ant in an anthill?” Luke tossed back, and Paul rolled his eyes to the ceiling and considered that image. Then he grinned to himself…
“What the hell are you smiling at?” Scott growled at the beta. He had to wonder if both of his brothers were going a little loopy.
“I was just imagining Dane’s wolf on that anthill…” He chuckled.
~
~
~
“Why does Gran get the master bedroom?” Jessica grumbled.
She’d lugged the woman’s suitcase from the car and now she was lugging it through the house, huffing and puffing at the sheer weight of it.
“Sh
e needs that size room for the ego,” Sarah whispered.
“And what does she have in this case … A dead body?” Jessica huffed.
“That’s where grandpa went,” Rory said with a dramatic role of her eyes, and Jessica immediately dropped the case to the floor and eyed it with distaste.
“Yuck!” She backed away from it.
“That’s not grandpa,” Rory chuckled. “She keeps grandpa in the attic and that’s why none of us are allowed up there.” She whispered, and Sarah sniggered, but they all fell silent when their mother breezed by.
“Grandpa is actually in the potting shed,” Abi whispered back over her shoulder, and all three siblings sniggered.
“I can hear you all, you know?” Celine bellowed from inside the master bedroom. “Don’t mistake age for all things broken. I have perfect hearing.”
“Just going a little senile,” Rory hissed out on a whisper so low that there was no way that their grandmother could have heard it.
“I heard that to, madam,” Celine lied.
“She did not or you would have got zapped for that one.” Sarah chuckled.
The sound of wood clattering onto the kitchen tiles made their ears prick up. But it was their mother who confirmed what they already knew.
“Broom fell, company’s coming,” Abi called.
Sarah headed for the picture window at the front of the house and scooped back the net curtain with her hand. A picture perfect view of rolling jagged top mountains and the lushness of an evergreen landscape greeted her … and was totally ruined by the sight of a pickup truck…
“Oh, poop!” Sarah bit out, scowling at the vehicle before it even got onto their stretch of the road.
“You are a little old for that, but I’m sure we can find some adult nappies online,” Jessica bit back as she dragged, rather than lifted, her grandmother’s suitcase towards the bedroom.
“It’s the wooluf! … That’s who it is! … It’s the wooluf!” She yelled doing her best Lambsy impersonation and as loudly as she thought she could get away with.
Jessica almost collapsed onto the suitcase with laughter. There was no way that she was going to be dragging that thing anywhere, and she very much doubted that she could even stand up as the laughter made her legs weak and her chest protest…
“I always wanted to do that!” Sarah announced with a chuckle and a look of pure glee.
“Feel better?” Rory chuckled back and Sarah nodded as her eyes flashed with mischief. “Good, because I think your sister just peed her panties, and you get to clear it up.”
Just as Abi rushed into the living room, so Jessica fell to her knees beside the suitcase, tears of laughter streaming down her face, and she started slapping her hand against the rock hard case like Thumper the rabbit.
“Oh, Jessica, you are making the place look untidy,” Celine offered as she swanned out of the master bedroom and frowned down at her granddaughter, collapsed over her case, and hardly able to drag in a breath…
“I think she’s having a moment,” Rory offered, as she folded her arms and regarded her sister with amusement.
“Well, it would have been more thoughtful to have it after she’d taken the case into my room,” Celine offered back, which set Sarah off chuckling again.
Good old Gran, always thinking about herself first!
The sound of the truck coming to a stop outside sobered most of them right up, but Jessica was now hiccupping laughter, and wiping the tears away from her cheeks with the backs of her hands.…
“I don’t … “ Hic! “Believe you …” Hic! “Sometimes…” Hic! Jessica bit out at her sister, and Sarah grinned, pleased that she could have lightened even one moment of the holiday for any of them.
“I can do it again, if you like?” Sarah’s eyes were full of mischief.
“That won’t be necessary,” Celine berated her. “I think we all heard you the first time.”
“Ah, come on, Gran, it’s a holiday. Let the good times roll,” Rory teased, and a heartbeat later the deep thud of a fist pounding on the front door started Sarah off again...
“It’s the wooluf…!” She shouted, and Jessica collapsed into fits of laughter again as a growl rumbled through the closed door.
Sarah screeched out and cut off her words when Celine berated her with a quick zap of her magic.
“Okay, Lambsy, open the door,” Luke’s tone was deep and gravelly, and without any effort at all it managed to rattle the pane of glass in the window quite nicely.
CHAPTER FOUR
~
All four witches turned to look at each other, while Celine rolled her eyes and gave a dramatic sigh.
“He heard you,” Celine announced the obvious, berating Sarah once more, just without the magic this time.
“Of course he heard her grandma … He has those big ears of his going on…” Rory said spluttering chuckles as the other three did the same.
It was only Celine who stood there groaning…
“Children,” she berated them, shaking her head and giving a pointed look towards Abi. “And at your age, encouraging them.”
“Hey, they need no encouragement,” Abi chuckled, and spluttered more laughter at the sound of another deep growl from outside.
“I’ll get that then,” Celine announced as she started for the door.
“Nah, just let him huff and puff and…” Rory couldn’t keep going. It was the groan from her grandmother and the growl from outside, along with fits of giggles from the others that made her start chuckling again.
Celine wrenched open the front door and came face-to-face with two big shifters. She didn’t even blink.
Luke looked down at the little old witch. He considered himself to be a good judge of character and the fact that she was getting older meant nothing, because in her eyes; he could see just how formidable the old woman was.
They eyed each other for a long moment.
“I assume you speak and not just growl,” Celine offered to more giggles from inside.
Luke took a long breath in and his broad chest got a whole lot broader. Then he let that breath back out again on the long sigh.
It didn’t matter if it was an elder of the pack or an elderly witch… They were all damn cantankerous in his book.
“I think I managed to learn a word or two over the years,” Luke offered back on an even keeled drawl, and Celine raised just the one eyebrow back at him, unimpressed.
“Oh, do get on with it, I’m ageing rapidly.” She moaned.
“We want you off the mountain,” Dane growled, and Luke looked as taken back as the rest of them.
“No we don’t…” Luke offered with the role of his eyes.
“I do,” Dane bit back.
“Well, it’s a damn shame you’re not the alpha then,” Luke growled back.
He had the urge to slap the man upside the head … but he had to forgive him his madness.
“Could you to come to a general consensus so that I can choose to ignore it, before I die?” Celine bit out.
“Off,” Dane bit out.
“The alpha says you can stay,” Luke offered, offering the beta a dark glare.
“Oh, hallelujah,” Celine exclaimed as she slammed the door shut in their faces, and Luke grumbled another long growl.
“As long as you don’t start any mischief,” he called through the door.
“Well, there goes the plan of dressing in robes, carrying lit torches, and hunting wolves,” Celine bit out dryly from inside.
“I told you they were trouble,” Dane growled.
“Please tell me that he’s not actually that stupid,” Celine grumbled.
“Almost,” Luke shot back, with a glare at the beta. He lifted his fist again and went to bang on the door when it was wrenched open.
“Yes?” Celine demanded, and Luke held in place. His eyes narrowed on the woman…
“Well that’s just creepy,” he offered.
“My speciality,” Celine bit back with a smug smile.
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“Told you, it’s the freaking Addams family,” Dane said and Rory couldn’t help but snigger at that one.
“He has no idea,” Abi said as she rolled her eyes and brought Luke’s attention towards her.
Something twisted inside of him when she brought her brown eyes back down from the ceiling and inadvertently met his. His muscles tightened a little, and his back snapped to attention, and then his length twitched to life within his jeans.
She was one mighty good-looking woman in his book…
“Should I beg?” Celine asked and dragged his attention back away from Abi.
“Excuse me?” He frowned.
He’d lost his chain of thought the moment that he’d made that connection with the witch, and now he felt dumber than an ox.
“Well the suspense is killing me. You have delivered your message and yet … you’re still standing there. Should I beg for the rest of it or are you done?” She demanded, and Luke frowned at her words.
He didn’t much feel like he was done. Although, she was right, he’d delivered the alpha’s message. His eyes snapped back towards Abi…
“Yeah, we’re done,” Dane grumbled another growl, and Luke snapped to attention…
“No, we’re not,” he offered and Celine rolled her eyes.
“Oh dear, are you ever going to stop procrastinating?” She demanded.
“Lady, I don’t know what that means.” Luke growled. “You,” Luke turned towards Dane.
“Me what?” Dane asked.
“You … sniff,” Luke demanded, and the beta screwed his face up in disgust…
“I’m not scenting now … They’re witches…” He grumbled.
“Excuse me?” Celine’s back went straight. Probably the straightest that it had been for years. “At least we don’t go around sniffing our own backsides.” She bit out, and then slammed the door closed once more.
“Idiot!” Luke growled as he turned towards the beta.
“Why am I the idiot? It’s grandma that’s got the wolf problem,” he grumbled.
“And you’ve got a witch problem,” Luke bit back.