A stocky blond alpha with a red-streaked beard rises from an armchair near the fire. He crosses the room in long strides. His bright blue eyes scrutinize Cal up and down, and his nostrils flare, as he picks up Cal’s neutral scent.
“Can I help you?”
“Just looking for a place to bunk down for the evening. Elyse at the Grand Hotel suggested I come here.”
The bearded alpha nods, not taking his eyes away from Cal. He smells like grass at the beginning of summer. That makes Cal relax a little. The worst alphas he’s met have always smelled bad.
“Sure thing,” the alpha says. “You spotted our tower on the outside. We’ll pop you in there. It’s pretty much empty this weekend so you’ll have it to yourself.” He crosses over to a table on the opposite side of the room and pulls a large ledger from a shelf above it. “I’m Gregor. I’m the one you answer to if you make trouble.”
Cal nods. He’d already pegged the blond man as the pack’s enforcer, even if Gregor doesn’t seem unnecessarily aggressive. He thinks of Elyse’s words at the Grand Hotel. They’re a decent lot.
Of course, that will change the second they learn the truth about Cal, but he has no intention of being here long enough for that to happen.
“Name?”
“What?” Cal replies, disconcerted.
“What’s your name?” Gregor says, nodding at the ledger.
For a second, Cal just stares at him. He doesn’t want to use the name he used in Cedar Falls, but he’d simply forgotten to think of another one.
“Paul,” he says finally, “Paul Rowland.”
Rowland was Cal’s grandmother’s name, and Paul was his dad. If he’d had time to think about it, he’d have come up something better, but it’s too late now.
The enforcer raises his eyebrows, but he nods and writes it in the book anyway. Cal relaxes a fraction, and then startles again as the door behind him opens with a sudden gust of cold, snowy air.
The most delicious scent follows, although Cal can’t put his finger on what it is. It’s the scent of coffee house afternoons with a new book, or lazy evenings by the fire paging through glossy magazines, a glass of wine at his side. It’s the feeling of coming out of the library with a stack of good books, all as interesting as the last. It’s the most relaxing scent Cal has ever come across.
He wants to roll his eyes back in his head, shift into his wolf and roll around in it, lapping at the air.
It’s also very definitely alpha.
The man that the scent belongs to steps into the room shaking snow off his broad shoulders. He’s stupidly tall, with a shaggy head of blond hair, and a cardigan way too nerdy for someone so attractive. He stops dead at the sight of Cal.
“Who’s this?” the man says in a gravelly voice.
Cal swallows, trying to ignore the scent. “Just passing through,” he says as nonchalantly as he can.
The tall man glances at the enforcer who shrugs. “That’s what he says. No reason to think otherwise.”
The tall man’s nostrils flare, and he frowns.
Cal does his best not to shrink back. Cal smells fine. He knows he does. He took the last blocker this morning, a world away before he’d gone to work at the diner. He smells of nothing. He smells like a beta.
Not for the first time, Cal is grateful that Reed never claimed him officially. His neck is smooth and clean of any alpha marks.
The alpha’s deep brown eyes stare at Cal, then take their time giving him a good up and down inspection.
Fortunately, Cal has had years of practice hiding his emotions. He forces his shoulders to relax and his eyes to look disinterested. It’s harder than he expects. Something about the man’s scent strips away his outer layers.
Finally, the tall man nods and turns away, stripping off his overcoat and stuffing a woolen hat into his pocket.
Gregor pulls a key from his pocket. “Let me show you your room.”
He leads the way past the watching wolf pack. Cal follows, all too aware of the tall alpha’s eyes on him as he goes.
LUKE
bright white snow and steep stairs
Something isn’t right about the new guy. Luke picks up on it the moment that he walks through the door.
The man just smells wrong, and that’s weird because he doesn’t smell like anything. He smells like any other beta. Outside of the usual residual scents of toothpaste and shampoo, there’s nothing but empty, neutral scent.
Luke watches Gregor lead the man out of the common room and tries not to worry.
With the pack summit coming up, Luke has been expecting a spy to turn up, but this isn’t quite what he’s been expecting.
He’d thought it would be some smaller less-threatening alpha or a quiet unassuming beta who’d pretend to be a hiker or other holiday maker.
This man is pretty enough to be an omega with his long lashes and tousled black hair, but no one would be dumb enough to send an omega as a spy.
Surely? Maybe he’s a pretty alpha on blockers. Or just the beta he appears to be.
The man also doesn’t appear to have brought any baggage at all, not even a backpack. Perhaps that means he is genuine. Surely, someone trying to fit in would have brought all the right props with them? Their lack feels oddly soothing.
If he is the spy they’ve been expecting, he’s an odd one.
Luke thinks he can take the man down if he needs to, especially with Gregor at his back, but some of the spy wolves can be sneaky and vicious. They often have a brutality to them that Luke simply doesn’t, and there’s no guarantee it would be a fair fight.
The Winterstokes have kept pack politics at bay for decades by a combination of careful alliances and not behaving like jerks.
There hasn’t been an outright pack war in the area since the sixties. That’s a good thing, but it also means that the Winterstoke wolves don’t have much fighting experience. Somehow, they’ve always had better things to do than get involved in every little alpha squabble.
It also means that the packhouse isn’t defended the way other packhouses are. It’s common ground for pack members, like everywhere else, but unlike other packs, their leader doesn’t insist everyone live there or that they need his permission to leave the premises.
On the whole, Adam treats them all like the adults they are, only bothering to nip them into line when someone behaves like an ass. That suits Luke just fine.
The head wolf himself is in his usual oversized armchair in the corner of the room, his feet tucked up under him, a big pile of paperwork at his side. Luke wonders if the new guy had even noticed Adam.
If the pretty wolf is who Luke thinks he might be, then he’ll have known who to look for. If he hadn’t, then Adam would have been just one more big alpha in a town full of them.
Luke crosses the room and takes the chair opposite. He leans forward so they have the illusion of privacy, although every ear in the room can hear them if they want to.
“We’re all set up for Friday,” he says. “The venue will be the Foresters Inn, and I’ve had confirmation from all the packs.”
Adam looks up from his book and nods. “Sounds good.”
“I see we’ve got the first spy turn up,” Luke says, nodding in the direction Gregor had gone.
Adam raises his eyebrows. “Have we?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, if he is, I’m sure the two of you can handle it.”
Luke feels a stir of annoyance. Yes, he loves his brother and he loves having an alpha who isn’t a complete jerk who’ll fly off the handle at the slightest perceived risk. He also knows it’s his job as second to handle these things, but Adam is so relaxed, he’s practically horizontal.
Luke pulls his chair closer to fire and stares into the flames, thinking, while he waits for Gregor to get back.
He’s pleased with the summit venue. It’s almost exactly halfway between their territory and the Fosters’: perfect neutral ground. The owner of the inn was a good friend of Old Man Foster too. They
’d be on friendly territory.
The summit would normally be a rubber stamp situation. Every time an old alpha falls — or dies of lung cancer in the case of Old Man Foster — the four Aylewood packs redraw and re-sign the old pack agreements.
But now the Fosters have done something that no one has done before, something so incredibly foolhardy that Luke’s worried it is going to ripple out and bite the ass of every pack in the area.
The Fosters have elected — elected — the old man’s omega son to be the new leader instead of it falling to the strongest alpha wolf.
It’s a weird combination of brave, modern, democratic, nepotistic, and above all stupid. Luke isn’t sure which is more stupid: the omega part or the electing bit.
It’s not that he objects to either in principle, but it makes the Fosters a target for every wannabe alpha-dictator out there. And that in turn makes the Winterstokes a target too.
The Winterstokes have been allied to the Fosters and the Warwicks for over a century. All those wannabe dictators are going to want to take a look at the strength of the Foster allies before they attempt a takeover.
Luke is worried sick, and now the first scout in an upcoming battle may be climbing the stairs above his head.
He’s so busy brooding that he doesn’t notice that Gregor is back and halfway across the room before Luke sees him.
Luke waves at him and trots over. “Where did you put the new guy?”
“Right at the top,” Gregor replies. “He seemed fine with it. Asked me if there was any work going hereabouts. I told him I’d ask around.”
“He smell okay to you?”
Gregor looks surprised. “Yes, fine. You think he’s on blockers?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Could be an alpha trying to come in under the radar.”
“Could be,” Gregor shrugs. “Guy calls himself Paul Rowland, but I wouldn’t bother looking it up. It’s almost definitely a fake, but that’s not unusual. Which pack do you think he’s from?”
“Not sure. I thought I knew all the players close enough to be an issue, but I don’t recognize him. Perhaps that’s why they chose him.”
“Or maybe he’s just passing through.”
Luke frowns. “To where? We’re at the end of the road. No one just passes through.”
“Maybe he just wants a change of scenery,” Gregor says, then holds up his hands at the look Luke gives him. “Just playing devil’s advocate. You’re right to be wary.”
“Look up the name anyway, will you? Maybe it’ll jog something out there.”
Neither Adam nor Gregor seem that bothered, but there is something off about the man, and it’s not that he’s so very pretty. Luke can’t quite put his finger on it.
“I’m going for a run. Maybe I just need to clear my head,” he says finally, and a lot more diplomatically than he feels.
His head is fine. He’s just annoyed that Gregor and Adam aren’t taking the Foster thing seriously. What he really needs is to wolf out and stop worrying about it for an hour.
The woods beyond the packhouse are officially part of the national park and unofficially Winterstoke pack territory, although most of the locals use them for runs.
The back of the packhouse is taken up by a large meadow and greenhouse which are strictly Gregor’s territory. There’s a kitchen garden around the building to the right. Luke tried to help by weeding once but pulled out the wrong plant. Gregor still hassles him about it. Since then, he’s kept his distance.
Luke heads for the small wooden hut that stands on the boundary between park and packhouse. He opens the door, pulls the light switch and undresses, shivering, then shoves his clothes into one of the cubbies.
His clothes aren’t the only ones there. Someone has left clothes folded with almost military precision in the uppermost cubby. Luke frowns.
There’s nothing wrong with anyone else using the hut. In fact, it’s encouraged but he doesn’t like the fact that he doesn’t know who it is.
It’s courtesy for tourists to pop in and say hi before they go for their runs, and the locals all do it out of habit.
Luke hadn’t noticed the new guy leaving the tower. That’s the point of it. The people there are meant to come and go via the single door at the bottom of the stairs so that the pack knows what they’re doing. If the new fellow left, he did it sneakily.
Luke stretches, then shifts, feeling his body change. It no longer hurts, not since puberty. Now it just feels like turning into another version of himself: this one a large gray wolf who sees the world in a much more black and white way and can’t be bothered with worrying about pack politics when there are interesting forest scents to sniff and rabbits to chase.
Luke trots over to the cubbies and lifts his front legs so he can get his nose in the clothes. It immediately confirms his suspicions. It’s the weird non-scent of the newcomer. An extra strike against Rowland for sneakiness.
It can’t hurt to try sniff him out and see what he’s up to, although he is slightly annoyed that it means he can’t run free the way he usually does without human worries nagging at him.
Luke isn’t the only wolf who enjoys cold night runs, but it’s not as common as he likes. One day when he has a mate, he hopes they’ll do this together.
He’s always loved to run, especially at night when everything smells fresh and there’s nothing to worry about in the world, but how fast his legs can take him between the trees.
Now, there’s an additional worry out there somewhere under the forest canopy.
Luke slips out of the hut into the dark of the forest. A thousand scents hit him from all directions, and as many sounds. Even in the freezing air, tiny mice and birds rustle above and below, while the scents of the forest overwhelm him.
He’d heard once that the Japanese called it forest bathing—the idea that spending time immersed in the air and scents of a living forest is enormously beneficial. It certainly feels like common sense to Luke.
He jumps over the wood fence that borders the park and lands softly on the other side, then puts his muzzle to the ground where he can just about detect Rowland’s peculiar non-scent. The strange wolf had shifted in the hut and then set off fast into the forest, racing as if someone were chasing him.
Luke sits on his hindquarters and tries to force his wolf brain to think logical thoughts. The wolf wants to chase after Rowland, grip his jaws around his throat and make him submit to the pack.
Fortunately, the human brain recognizes it as bad idea and overrules the wolf. Rowland hasn’t done anything wrong yet. But he will, and when he does, Luke will be right behind him, and then the wolf can take over.
CAL
shelves and blurbs
Cal hauls himself through the open window at the bottom of the tower. He’d snuck into the empty room, and then wedged the window open on his way out.
It had been a risk, and he isn’t sure if he’s managed to get away with it. He just hadn’t wanted to face more suspicious alpha faces on his way out. He also hadn’t expected anyone else to be crazy enough to go out running in the sub-zero temperatures.
Cal had been lying on a ledge up near the top of the peak, when the scent of the big suspicious alpha drifted in on the wind. Cal had immediately turned tail and run for it, taking care to keep his scent from blowing towards the big wolf.
The alpha’s name was Luke and he was the pack’s second, which Cal had learned by asking Gregor as casually as he could on their way up the steep stairs.
He was also Gregor’s brother, as well as Adam’s, the man who was leader of the pack.
Three Winterstoke brothers, Cal thinks and the two he’s met are huge as oaks. What the hell is the pack leader like? The man would have to be a giant.
The thought makes Cal uneasy. They might have a reputation as a decent pack, but in Cal’s experience, when it comes to alphas, people often have a low bar.
He feels like a mouse surrounded by lions. If he’s lucky, he’ll be able to slip away before they ea
t him in one mouthful.
Stupid, he thinks. Should never have gone out. He wonders if Luke Winterstoke followed him. The way the man had scrutinized him earlier... Cal shivers.
That one is going to be particularly dangerous. He smells like a good alpha should: like comforting things and security. That makes him twice as deadly. There are no good alphas. Dad had taught him that, and then Reed thumped the lesson home.
Going out running was definitely a misjudgment, but Cal’s always hated being cooped up, and after spending three hours stuck on bus, he’d needed to stretch his legs.
There’s no angry pack waiting for him in the empty guest room at the bottom of the tower, nor is there anyone waiting in his room with an admonishment when he reaches the top of the narrow winding stairs so maybe he’s gotten away with it.
Reed has stairs like this in his packhouse. They are purposely steep and narrow so that that only one person can go up and down at once. They’re almost impossible to do fast on four legs. They make it much harder for a visiting pack to coordinate a sneak attack. It makes Cal wonder about the guest room at the bottom.
If the Winterstokes are that concerned about security, they’d have left the door locked. Or wouldn’t have a window at all. Unless it’s done on purpose...
Cal shakes his head, trying to shake the paranoia away along with it. There is no reason for anyone to suspect him. None at all.
He reaches the top of the narrow stairs and pushes the door open to his room. It’s small, clean and completely practical: a single bed with worn but clean quilt, a scarred desk and small chair.
The only non-practical concession is a small bookshelf double-stacked with books. The titles range from trashy romance novels to classics to science fiction. Someone in the pack is clearly a reader.
Cal runs his fingers along the spines of the books. He’s always had a soft spot for second-hand books.
When he’d been growing up, there hadn’t been money for new ones, and they’d left town in a hurry enough times that he always felt bad about library books. He’s due to pay some serious overdue fines if he ever returns to some of those places.
Winterstoke Wolves Collection : An MM Mpreg Shifter Romance Bundle Page 2