by Lori Drake
“Sorry.” He pulled his head back out and shut the door, then knocked.
Joey rolled her eyes and leaned against her desk. “Come in.”
The door opened again, wider this time, and Lucas strolled in with a French press and a couple of mugs on a tray. “Coffee?”
Joey’s head snapped up, nostrils flaring. “Hazelnut?”
“Good nose.” He carried the tray over to the desk and set it down beside Joey.
“Thanks,” Joey said, her annoyance with him fading. He did bring her coffee, after all, and her favorite kind—however inadvertently.
Lucas poured the coffee and offered her the first cup. She curled her fingers around it and closed her eyes, letting the warmth seep into her icy fingers. She wasn’t sure why her fingers always got cold when she got angry. Wasn’t heat usually associated with temper?
“Penny for your thoughts?”
Joey opened her eyes to find Lucas studying her from the chair in front of her desk. She hadn’t even heard him move, a fact which surprised her somewhat. She shook her head. “Nothing important.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. I’m sure you’ve got a lot on your mind.”
Joey blew out a breath. “Tell me about it.” She sipped her coffee and looked off toward the window. The sky was gray again, as it often was here. Ben had told her it had to do with the mountains interfering with air flow or something.
“I’m no mind reader, sorry.” His lips quirked in a small smile he didn’t quite succeed in hiding behind his coffee cup. “But I’m a good listener, if you want to talk.”
“I wouldn’t want to bore you.”
“Please. It’s not like I have anything better to do. No offense, but it’s kind of boring out here.”
Joey made a face. “Boring and alive or entertained and dead, take your pick.”
“I’ll stick with alive for now, but ask me again in twenty-four hours.” He flashed a boyish grin.
She laughed. “We have a library full of books, pretty much every streaming service known to man, and at least six televisions around the house. Go nuts.”
“Never been a big reader, and I don’t feel like fighting over the remote. Oh hey, you have a TV in here…”
Joey leaned over and grabbed the remote from her desk, but her stomach twinged again as she did. One of these days, she was going to learn to stop doing that. Or it’d heal. Either would suffice. She tossed the remote to Lucas and rubbed her stomach idly. “Be my guest.”
Lucas looked between her and the remote. “I was mostly kidding, but thanks. You okay?” He nodded toward her midsection.
She moved her hand away automatically. “Yeah. Sorry you’re bored. If there’s anything you think would help with that, let me know. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Stripper in a cake?”
She couldn’t tell if he was joking, but laughed nonetheless. “I’m sure that’d go over really well with the grumpy old folks who don’t think I’m fit to be Alpha.” Saying the words out loud dampened her mood again. She consoled herself with another sip of coffee.
“Never know. Might be just what they need. As long as you’re not the one jumping out of the cake.” He paused, eyes flickering over her. “Not that you wouldn’t look good doing so.”
Joey nearly choked on her coffee. She pounded her chest and coughed lightly, eyeing him. “I’m not sure if I should be flattered or insulted by that.”
He smiled. “Let’s go with flattered. I think you’ve been insulted enough for one day.”
Sam and Chris may have had a bad feeling about Lucas, but right now, Joey was having trouble seeing him as anything but an ally. Especially considering the way he’d stood up to Elijah earlier. She wondered if that had shifted their perspective at all. She managed a weak smile in return. “Thanks for noticing.”
“You know what else I’ve noticed?”
She almost didn’t want to ask. “What?”
“You’re stressed, and you could use a friend.”
He wasn’t wrong. There’d been a hole in her life since Cheryl died, Emma went to prison, and Joey’d left everyone and everything she knew behind to move across the country and start over. She had Chris, and she’d never, ever take him for granted again. But one person couldn’t be expected to be all things to someone else. Lucy was probably the closest thing she had to a girlfriend in Seattle, but even that was… complicated. It was ridiculous to think that a distant cousin from out of town could step into the role of confidant, but having someone to talk to who could offer an outside perspective was more tempting than she ever would’ve expected.
“I barely know you,” she said, putting up at least a token resistance.
“But you’re not denying it. Come on, Joey. Talk to me. We have”—he checked his watch—“at least ten minutes, surely, before the next catastrophe.”
Joey half chuckled, half snorted. “Bite your tongue. I don’t want to tempt fate.”
“She’s a fickle bitch, isn’t she?”
“Yeah.” Joey toyed with her mug, staring into its contents. “You know, until a few months ago, I had never considered that I might be Alpha one day.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not sure, really. I think my brothers have known I’d be Mom’s successor for a while. I was the rebel, the one who chafed under Mom’s authority. I used to question why they’d jump when she said frog, never balking.” She laughed suddenly, remembering something. “You know, I even asked Sam once why he didn’t let me boss him around, and he said it was probably only a matter of time. I just got it. Man, the joke really was on me.”
“Let me guess, it started in puberty?”
“Yeah, pretty much. But it never leveled out once the hormones weren’t so rampant.”
“What changed?”
“Chris died.”
His brows rose. “Pardon?”
Joey winced and rubbed her temples. She shouldn’t have said that. “Um, long story short… he was stabbed by a magic dagger—you know magic is real, right?” She waited for him to nod before continuing. “Great. So, the magic dagger put his body in stasis, and we thought he was dead. Anyway, once all that was sorted out, Mom and I reached an understanding. Until then, she’d never treated me like the next in line. In fact, she kept me in the dark about a lot of things. I’m still playing catch-up, and now she’s gone and here I am.”
Lucas sat back in his chair and stroked his jaw, studying her thoughtfully.
Joey fought the urge to squirm under his scrutiny. Alphas did not squirm. “Guess it’s a good thing you’re on my side, because I kind of just admitted I’m exactly the young and inexperienced Alpha they’re afraid I am.”
“Kind of, yeah.” He smiled. “But like you said, you’ve got experienced alphas at your back. What’s it they say… admitting you have a problem is the first step toward recovery?”
She couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Oh man, is there an Alphas Anonymous chapter somewhere I can join?”
He laughed too, and though it really wasn’t that funny, Joey soon found herself laughing so hard that she was clutching her stomach, because belly laughs were decidedly uncomfortable.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” he asked when her guffaws finally faded to intermittent giggles.
“Sure, why not…”
He set his coffee aside and looked at her quite seriously. “Are you… expecting?”
Joey stared at him for a moment before she realized she had her hand on her stomach again. She felt her face heat as she removed it. “Shit, that really is a personal question. Go big or go home, eh?”
Lucas spread his hands in a helpless gesture and shrugged. “You don’t have to answer it.”
“No, I’m not pregnant. Can I ask you a personal question?”
“Sure. It seems only fair.”
“Have you ever been shot or stabbed by silver?”
He blinked. There really wasn’t any way he could’ve anticipated that question. “Yes, once. Is tha
t why you…?” His eyes flickered down to her stomach and back up.
Joey worried the inside of her lip between her teeth, then sighed. “I was stabbed with a silver blade, and I’ve still got stitches.”
His brows drew together. “That sucks.”
“Yeah, tell me about it. I can’t shift for a few more weeks yet, and I’ve already missed one full moon.”
“Can I ask what happened?”
Joey rubbed the back of her neck. “It’s a long story.”
“I don’t mind, but I could use a refill.”
Joey nearly told him to help himself, but her good breeding kicked in and she remembered he was a guest in her home. Instead of cracking wise, she grabbed the coffee pot and freshened his cup. “Well, I was attempting to negotiate a prisoner exchange with some cultists—”
“Wait, wait. Back up. Prisoner exchange?”
Joey tilted her head, considering where exactly to start this story. Her mother’s kidnapping? Chris’s Alpha challenge? No, she was going to have to go back even further for this all to make sense. “It all started with a runaway witch…”
In the end, eight guests decided to leave. Chris made good on his promise of driving them to the airport himself—two of them, anyway. Driving Jon’s Jaguar, Chris brought up the rear in the four-car caravan. Colt was riding shotgun and had barely said a word since they’d left the house. The two passengers in the back seat were just as quiet, staring out the windows at the verdant landscape slipping by. He hadn’t expected withdrawn, reserved Colt to be particularly chatty, but he’d hoped the relatives might have something in the way of conversation to offer. Maybe they were too accustomed to being chauffeured around in silence to bother.
Chris drummed his fingers against the steering wheel to the rhythm of the song stuck in his head. It was so quiet in the car, but he didn’t want to turn on the radio. There was no telling what kind of music the guests would prefer, and while the rule in their family had always been “whoever is driving picks the music,” he didn’t want to push his luck with the relatives. It was bad enough they were so traumatized that they were ending their trip early.
Chris glanced in the rearview mirror as the couple in the back shifted their focus back to the inside of the car. “Remind me where you’re from?” It was a fairly desperate and blatant attempt at small talk, but he couldn’t help himself. The quiet was driving him a little crazy. Then again, at this point, it could be argued that it was a short trip.
“Pennsylvania,” the woman answered. Chris couldn’t recall her name, despite having been told it less than half an hour ago. He wished he had Joey’s gift for names.
“Pittsburgh or Philly?”
She met his eyes briefly in the rearview mirror. “Pittsburgh, why?”
“Just curious. I haven’t been to Pittsburgh, but Joey and I went to Philly once for a—” The wheel jerked and the car swerved to the right. Chris tightened his grip on the wheel and corrected course, his heart in his throat until he realized what had happened.
“What was that? What’s going on?” The woman in the back’s voice had gone a bit shrill.
“Relax, Virginia. It’s only a flat.” The man in the back had figured it out too.
Virginia and Mason! That’s it.
Chris decelerated and steered for the shoulder. “Don’t worry, there’s a spare in the trunk. Colt, would you—”
“On it, boss.” Colt grabbed the walkie-talkie from the center console and reported the incident to the other cars.
Chris pulled the car as far off the road as he could, turned on the hazard lights, and popped the trunk.
“We aren’t going to miss our flight, are we?” Virginia asked.
Chris flashed the passengers in the back seat a reassuring smile. “I’ll have us back on the road in five. No worries. You can get out and stretch your legs if you want.”
“We’ll wait here, if it’s all the same to you,” Mason said, his deep voice gruff, more put out than fearful of the hitch in their travel plan.
“That’s fine. Just stay still. If you start rocking the car while it’s on the jack, it might fall, and then… Well, then I can’t promise you’ll make your flight.”
With that warning given, Chris checked behind them and waited for a car to pass before opening his door and slipping out of the car. He closed the door and looked around. They’d just come out of the mountains and were on a fairly quiet stretch of highway lined with forest on either side. The shoulder was narrow, but not too bad, and fortunately the flat was on the passenger side of the car, so Chris wouldn’t have to worry about traffic whizzing behind him while he changed the tire.
He quickly raided the trunk for the jack and the spare and went looking for something to block the tires with.
Colt rolled his window down and stuck his head out. “Sam wants to know if you want them to come back.”
Chris looked down the road, spotting the other cars pulled over in the distance. “Nah, tell them to sit tight. This won’t take long.”
Once Chris got the tires blocked, he had the jack positioned in no time and began cranking. A sense of satisfaction filled him. He hadn’t felt this useful since this whole mess started. Dead wolves, a hunter on the loose… He was definitely out of his element. On top of everything else that’d happened this year, it was all a bit much. But what else could he do? Abdicate? Where would that leave him? Where would that leave Joey?
Pushing away the thoughts, he focused on the work at hand. His eyes caught on the flat tire, and he stopped cranking the jack long enough to take a closer look. The tire was relatively intact, but there was a clear puncture in the sidewall. There was no way it’d been there before they left. The tire would’ve already been flat if the steel belts had been punctured at the house. If he’d driven over something in the road without realizing it, the puncture would have been between the treads, not on the sidewall. Chris ran his thumb over the hole, realization dawning a second before another bullet punched a hole in the wheel well right beside his head.
While Chris stared at the hole, the front passenger door flew open and Colt dove out, rolling across the ground to grab Chris and haul him around to the other side of the car.
“What the…” Chris began, but he was having a hard time processing what was going on.
Colt had no such trouble. “Ambush. Didn’t you hear the rifle shot?”
“No. Shit, we have to get them out of here.”
The rear passenger door opened, and Mason stuck his head out. “What’s going on?”
“I told you to get down!” Colt growled.
Chris put a hand on Colt’s back and met Mason’s eyes. “Close the door and stay down. We’ve got this.” He hoped he sounded more confident than he felt.
Mason frowned at him, but slammed the door shut with enough force that the car swayed. Chris winced, but fortunately, the car wasn’t jacked up enough for the situation to be too precarious—only enough that he couldn’t get in the front and drive the hell away.
“Where’s the radio?” Chris asked.
Colt winced. “I left it in the car.”
Only then did Chris become aware of the quiet but insistent chiming of the open-door bell. Once he noticed it, he couldn’t un-notice it, and it grated on his nerves immediately. As if he weren’t already suffering from a sudden abundance of adrenaline. He wiped his sweaty palms on his pant legs. “I’ll get it.”
Staying low, Chris scuttled to the driver’s door and opened it enough to carefully crawl in. The car’s frame shuddered as another round hit the passenger side of the car, and Chris was briefly grateful cars didn’t explode from punctured gas tanks the way they did in the movies.
“Colt? Chris? What’s going on?” Sam’s voice came from the walkie-talkie in the front seat, but it took a few moments for Chris to locate it on the floor. As he stretched for it, he felt something part the air over his head and heard a thud as a rifle round burrowed into the dashboard. When he risked a glance between the seats, he saw
a hole in the rear windshield, cracks splintering outward from it.
He grabbed the walkie-talkie while his heart tried to beat its way out of his chest. “Sniper.”
“Where?”
“Um…” He quickly visualized a map of the area. The highway ran roughly east-west. “East? Northeast? I don’t have eyes on him. All I’ve seen so far are bullets.”
“Anyone hit?”
A “no” was on the tip of Chris’s tongue, but he stopped to double-check. “Virginia? Mason? You okay?”
“Okay? We are not okay!” Virginia said, in between quiet sobs.
Chris winced. “Are you bleeding?”
“We’re fine,” Mason said. “Just get us out of here.”
Chris pressed the button on the walkie-talkie. “Not yet.”
There was a sinking feeling in his stomach that accompanied the thought that it might not be that way for long.
11
By the time Joey finished with the story of how she came to be stabbed in the gut by a wolf in thrall to a mind-controlling witch, Lucas appeared to have forgotten all about his coffee. He was sitting forward in his chair, cup in hand, but he’d barely touched it since she’d started.
“Wow, that’s quite a story.”
Joey smiled weakly and shrugged a shoulder. “If you say so. For me, it’s just… life, I guess. Seems to get crazier every day.”
Lucas leaned over farther and set his mug on the desk beside Joey. “I think you’re selling yourself short.”
Joey tilted her head. “How so?”
“Well, you’re presenting yourself as this inexperienced Alpha, but it sounds to me like you’ve had a bit of a trial by fire. You’ve dealt with rogue witches, dangerous magic, ghosts, a cult… That’s more than most wolves twice your age can say.”
He didn’t even know all of it. She’d left out the bit about Chris being an astral walker, since it wasn’t particularly relevant or any of his business.
“I guess that’s one way of looking at it,” she said.
Lucas stood and put his hands on her shoulders. Joey stiffened, not particularly wanting him in her personal space, but since there was still a cup of hot coffee between them, she wasn’t too worried about him encroaching further.