by MJ Compton
His left hand throbbed. He used his right hand to grasp her shoulder and turned her to face him. Her fingers were twisted together. She seemed oblivious to the self-imposed pain, yet it snared his fingers and ached in his arm. “Stop,” he growled, pulling her hands apart. “You’re hurting yourself.”
Her fingers curled into fists, sending fresh bolts of pain up his arm.
He’d heard of psychic connections between mates, but had never paid much attention. The weird thing was that Delilah believed in it, swore she knew when Tokarz was in danger.
“Why are you getting all alpha on me?”
“Alpha?” He couldn’t believe she’d accused him of something so far out of his reach. He wasn’t alpha, had never aspired to be alpha, and resented the accusation. If they weren’t in public, he’d . . .
He’d lick the tears from her cheeks. He’d kiss away her sadness. He inhaled deeply, trying to rein in his catapulting emotions. She’s human, he reminded himself. She’d made spectacular adjustments over the past few days. Her world was probably as awry as his.
“I’m not alpha. If I were, neither of us would be involved in Operation Jericho. I wouldn’t be out of the band, and you wouldn’t be sitting in Wal-Mart’s parking lot crying.”
If he were alpha, he’d be smarter. Would know how to handle an emotional female. Maybe her hormones were as fluctuating as his beast. He sniffed, hoping to catch the scent of fertility, but once again he was disappointed.
“Okay, maybe alpha was a poor choice of words. Maybe I should have said bully. Sometimes I think you could give lessons to Restin. You could give lessons to Mount Rushmore when it comes to being stubborn.”
“Me?” Why was she turning on him when all he wanted to do was take care of her? “Lucy, you’re not alone anymore. Isn’t that what you said? Let me—”
“I’m not helpless. There’s a difference between being supportive and forcing dependency, like Randy does.”
She went too far with her insults.
He opened his mouth, intending to tell her just that, but the words that came out surprised even him. “I’m scared to death I’m going to lose you. Maybe it’s paranoid of me to want you to not use your credit card, but we can’t take any chances that Butler will discover you’re alive. Even coming here was a risk, but I don’t want Luke buying your underwear, and I’m not going to leave your side. I wish you understood that you’re everything I cherish.”
Did he detect a lessening of the tension in her shoulders?
“A little while ago, you told me you were happy that you could depend on me. That someone else could be strong for you. So let me be strong.” He paused, gulping in air, and bared the rest of his soul. “Let me be lemonade.”
She turned. Not to look at him, but enough that he could see her profile.
“I don’t know how human marriages work, but lycanthrope males are responsible for their mates. It’s my pleasure to take care of you, provide for you. Mating isn’t just a sex thing. It’s a deep, everlasting commitment, Lucy. Never a burden, never a responsibility, but a joy. A pleasure.”
She sniffled, but no tears trickled down her cheeks. “I have financial resources.”
“So you told me, but one of the privileges of being mated is responsibility. Would you deny me my rights, my happiness?”
“It’s not about you,” she said. “It’s about me.”
“Of course it is. I take care of you. I make sure you’re happy, that you’re satisfied.”
He reached for her injured hand and lifted it to his mouth. “You’re my important stuff, along with our children and music. The way the morning sun dances on leaves. A spider web strung with dew. Daffodils bobbing in a warm breeze. Kissing you.”
He cupped her hand against his cheek. “Honoring a treaty that keeps us all safe. Obeying those above you in pack hierarchy.”
“Where does that leave me?”
“With me.”
“Where’s that?” She withdrew her hand.
“A good place, where we don’t have to worry about decisions that affect the whole pack. We simply have to obey.”
“Sounds like New Sinai,” she muttered.
“Well, yes,” he admitted. “I mentioned that to Restin. The difference, though, is honor.”
“But you make decisions.”
“Only with regard to you. I’m not a thinker. That’s why I was so proud of you when Restin listened to your advice.”
“You’re more than capable of making decisions,” she persisted, twisting in the seat until she faced him. “Who led the pack on last night’s raid?”
“That was about you.” He didn’t want to think about everything that had happened last night.
“And going back to New Sinai this morning?”
“You again.”
She shook her head. “I was safe. Going back this morning was for the pack. To help Operation Jericho. To help Restin.”
He hadn’t considered his action in that light. He simply hadn’t wanted to raise Butler’s suspicions about Lucy by not returning as he’d threatened.
“Every single thing I do is to protect you.”
Even giving up the band. He squashed the thought.
“I don’t want your sacrifice,” she said.
His gaze caught hers. “Mating with you isn’t a sacrifice.”
“It is if you have to leave the band.”
The psychic connection thing was spooky. “The band being here to cut our CD is the cover for the task force. I’m off the task force. No sacrifice there. I hate being on the road.”
“But you love playing. You named music among your important things.”
The woman of his soul knew him too well. “You’re more important.”
“I can’t let you give up your music just for me.”
He slumped in his seat. She still didn’t get it.
“No matter what choices I have–and mating isn’t a choice–I will always choose you. You are as elemental to me as my heartbeat, my breath. I have no choice, and no regrets.”
Only since meeting Michelle had some of Hank’s spark returned. Stoker never wanted to be that pathetic.
“Music won’t give me children, wouldn’t cuddle with me on cold winter nights. It can’t even make me smile, not the way you can. Listening to you babble is better than any chord progression. Losing my music won’t end my life, but losing you will kill me.”
“Not me,” Lucy said.
“Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?” he asked.
“Haven’t you listened to yourself?” she countered. “You’re talking about some mythical female mate. Some ideal, a fantasy, but you’re not talking about me.”
Chapter 13
Michelle Callahan Butler tried to work the kinks out of her spine by standing straight, but the burden in her belly weighed down her front and put too much stress on her lower back. Sometimes she felt as if the ache had taken up permanent residence. And when the baby rolled over, she had to bite her lips to keep from screaming.
She sank to a hard wooden bench in the Tabernacle and buried her face in her hands.
Lord, she was tired. The baby was like a parasite, stealing her energy to nurture itself. Consultations with some of the New Sinai mothers reassured her that her physical symptoms were normal. She didn’t dare ask about the emotional ramifications.
Of course, no one could fault her for being upset over her sister’s gruesome disappearance. In fact, the other women seemed more tentative than usual around her. She’d never been close to any of them, probably because she was the General’s woman, and they didn’t quite trust her.
She didn’t blame them. If she were in their places, she wouldn’t trust her either, mostly because she wasn’t very trustworthy. Look at what she’d done t
o her own sister.
Every time she thought about Lucy’s fate, she struggled between vomiting, passing out, or both. It was bad enough that Randy had locked Lucy in the root cellar. What had happened afterward was unimaginable.
Michelle swallowed her gorge and begged God for generic forgiveness. If she knelt and listed each of her transgressions, she’d be on her knees at least until the baby was born. And because Randy preferred her on her knees these days, she wouldn’t insult God by assuming that position.
“Michelle?”
The whisper startled her. She thought she’d been careful not to let anyone see her enter the Tabernacle. She turned and peered through the gloom.
It was Mattie from the cookhouse. Her tall, gaunt figure was nearly as recognizable as Michelle’s own pregnant profile.
Two children clung to her long skirt.
Michelle suppressed her urge to snicker at the memory of the boy telling the General he smelled like poop.
Mattie shuffled closer, her pace hampered by the children attached to her legs.
Like leeches, Michelle thought.
“I’m sorry about your sister,” Mattie said, her harsh whisper magnified by the acoustics in the Tabernacle.
Randy loved those acoustics. They enabled him to hear the scratching of every restless itch during his sermons. He prolonged services accordingly, ending worship only when he felt the appropriate level of reverence had been reached.
Why hadn’t she recognized his tyranny sooner?
As long as Lucy had lived in Boulder, Michelle had an escape route, but when Randy had run through her trust fund, he’d turned his greedy beady eyes in Lucy’s direction, neutralizing Michelle’s safety net.
She’d tried to warn Lucy not to come to New Sinai, but she must have used the code word wrong. She’d always thought ‘Eleanor’ meant run and hide. Now she was without family, penniless, friendless, and stuck with Randy until one of them–probably her–died.
Michelle turned away from Mattie. “We don’t know that Lucy’s dead.”
“Even so,” Mattie said, “wolves . . .” She didn’t need to finish voicing her fear.
The silence between them echoed. Even the children were unnaturally quiet.
“Do you think we’re safe?” Mattie asked, startling Michelle again. “If wolves got in once . . .”
No! Michelle wanted to scream, but she couldn’t. She had a role to play, a position Randy had made extremely clear. “The General is taking steps to ensure such a breach of security doesn’t happen again.”
Mattie should know Randy’s plan better than anyone, because it limited access to the dwindling food supply, and God only knew what he’d done with the coolers of food Lucy had brought.
He’d locked the errant guards in the root cellar with the last of the winter vegetables . . . and Bill Danby’s rotting corpse. No one wanted to risk the same punishment, so vigilance at guard duty was at an all-time high.
“Won’t Bill . . .?” Mattie hesitated. “Won’t the smell lure the wolves back?”
“Wolves don’t feed on other animals’ leavings,” Michelle said, quoting Randy, but she didn’t name her source. Mattie probably wasn’t in the mood to know the theory was one of the General’s idiotic proclamations.
“I’m scared,” Mattie said. “I don’t know what to do. Reuel wants to stay, and he turned over all of our assets to the General when we moved to New Sinai, so I don’t have any place to go, but my kids . . . I don’t know what to do.”
Michelle turned to the front of the Tabernacle, to the altar and the rough podium from which Randy delivered his rants. “All we can do is pray,” she advised. “And trust the General.”
From the Tabernacle, Michelle went to the General’s headquarters. Sneaking around was tough when one lumbered like an elephant. Although Randy’s soldiers usually kept a respectful distance, they watched her more closely since she’d publicly chastised him for putting Lucy in the root cellar. Only her pregnancy saved her from being imprisoned with the others who had annoyed him.
The General himself was napping. After the failed mission to ‘rescue’ Lucy, he’d told his troops that he needed to pray for his sister-in-law’s immortal soul. Then he’d gone directly to bed, while they resumed their normal duties.
Michelle had no use for a God that heeded a maniac’s snores, but as long as Randy was in his rapture, she could poke around without fear of discovery.
Years of rifling through her parents and sister’s things made Michelle an expert snoop. She knew most of the tricks, especially how to look for traps such as hairs or fuzz balls. Randy adored using those sorts of things. They made him feel smart.
His office was stuffy. Although the April day was brisk, the window magnified the warmth of the sun. Randy had closed the blinds, probably to prevent government satellites from photographing his battle plans or something. He didn’t realize that no one cared about his paranoia.
Michelle scanned the battered wooden desk for makeshift alarms. Randy must have been in a hurry when he stopped in before coming home. Nary an eyelash or fleck of lint in sight.
She saw the key protruding from the middle drawer. A real hurry. Using her skirt like a potholder, she twisted the bit of metal. Nothing happened.
Leaning her hip against the drawer to better align the locking mechanism, she tried again. The key turned easily, but the runners needed something to make them pull smoother. Not that she was about to suggest to Randy that he soap his drawers.
The drawer contained Randy’s usual rat’s nest of papers, some with scraps of sermons scrawled on them, others the colored tissue-like duplicate invoices for his beloved firepower.
She pawed through the mess, knowing there was no logic or system in place. Randy was so anal about some things, but not paperwork. If she were in charge, all the invoices would be ashes. Why leave evidence of stockpiling weapons–some of them illegal–for anyone to find?
Maybe Randy needed proof–even a hint–that he was a man.
Finding nothing new or of interest, Michelle tried to close the drawer, but the runners caught on something. She smoothed the papers with her palm and tried again. The drawer still refused to close.
She ran her fingers along the sides and found the obstruction. It felt like . . . lumpy duct tape. Tracing the raised shape, she grew suspicious. She yanked the drawer out of the desk, ignoring the paper drifting around her.
Something adhered to the side of the drawer. She ripped the tape off the wood then stared at the object in her palm.
She’d really only caught glimpses of the ring when the stone had flashed on Lucy’s finger, but there was no mistaking the marquis cut or the glitter of that diamond.
Why did Randy have Lucy’s ring?
He must have stolen it when he’d locked Lucy in the root cellar, or he’d found it while looking for her remains.
A wolf would have swallowed something that small, Michelle decided, and knowing Randy’s aversion to wolf droppings, she didn’t think he’d excavated piles of dung on the off chance he’d find evidence of Lucy’s demise . . . which meant he’d stolen it from Lucy in the root cellar.
Michelle closed her fingers over the ring. Randy, she vowed, wasn’t going to win this round.
She twisted a scrap of paper into a circle with a bulge on one side then taped it where the ring had been. Unless he lifted the tape, Randy would think the ring was safe.
Michelle gathered the scattered papers and shoved them back into the drawer.
Now she had to find a new, more secure hiding place for Lucy’s ring.
Lucy yawned, her jaw cracking. She was exhausted, the bed was warm and comforting, but this early morning wake-up call had been her idea. Kind of. She wanted to shower before she pulled on her brand-new, oh-so-clean lingerie, but Stoker hurried her,
claiming there wasn’t time for even simple hygiene.
Stoker had made love to her all night. Desperately, as if he were trying to convince them both that she was wrong; that she–she being specifically Lucy Callahan Smith, not some generic mate-creature–was the woman he adored.
The words ‘mate’ and ‘wife’ never once crossed his lips. He’d used her name more often in those short hours than he had in all the days he’d known her.