Bite Me Tender

by Kate Lowell

  Levi grabbed a plastic tub from under the end of the bar and looked for tables to clear. If he moved fast enough, maybe they couldn’t catch him. Any of them, including the pack. Goddamned full moon. Double goddamned McCourt.

  Like a wolf chasing its tail, his thoughts came back around to Glyn’s surprising suggestion tonight.

  He’s afraid. Levi paused, hands full of empty beer glasses, and thought about that. Glyn was afraid the council would talk him around. Could they? They could. He’d seen McCourt in action—they’d skirmished when McCourt first moved into the area, and it was only luck that it hadn’t finished with more dead. There was a lot he would do to keep that level of violence out of his pack. Out of him. And Glyn always seemed to know more than he let on, his erratic witchsight giving him an edge when it came to predicting what other people would do. Levi stilled the tremor in his hands and piled a few more dirty plates into his tub. If the council called a vote, which side would he come down on—his own or the pack’s?

  Better to work the situation so he didn’t have to make that choice, because just thinking about it made his skin crawl with nerves.

  Levi forced himself to keep working, to walk around the bar and smile and collect empties from the customers. All the while, his mind was busy coming up with arguments he could use with the pack. Or with Glyn. It kept him from noticing the too-close atmosphere of the bar and the revelers who bumped irritatingly against him as they danced and drank and flirted without a worry in the world. As distracted as he was, though, he still smelled Bryan coming before the man got to him.

  Bryan stayed a careful slightly-more-than-arm’s-length distance away from him. Smart guy. But he always had been smarter than Levi.

  “We’ve called a meeting, Levi. We know you’re trying to do the right thing, but we all agree that you’re too close to see the situation clearly.” Bryan stepped back, motioning toward the doorway leading into the Employees Only section of the bar. “We’ll expect you in the storage room in ten minutes.”

  Levi turned his back on Bryan and finished clearing the empties off the table in front of him. He smelled the rest of the pack as they discreetly made their way through the door to the back rooms. Screw it all. He let his shoulders slump, suddenly tired. I don’t want to do this. He wished it were Wednesday and that this whole clusterfuck was behind him.

  With a sigh, he cleared another table, stacking glasses and bowls in the tub until they threatened to topple. He balanced them against his chest, taking his time carrying them back behind the bar. Truthfully, he was dragging his feet, hoping some inspiration would hit before he had to go face the pack. If he could just convince the council to give him this one last moon…

  Levi nodded to Shelley as he slid his tub of dirty dishes through the window into the kitchen. She nodded back, filling glasses and sliding them smoothly over the wooden bar to the drinkers. Unlike most of their staff, she knew what they were and probably had some idea about the tension floating around the pack these last few weeks. She kept her nose out, though, which made her invaluable to Levi and Bryan. One of these days, Levi expected one of the single guys would take her on and turn her, making another pack member.

  This was no good. He needed to go deal with the council.

  Levi walked through the door into the back hallway. His feet almost carried him into the office, where Glyn was hopefully still basking in the afterglow but more likely brooding over Levi’s parting words. Instead he turned right and dragged his reluctant self down the hall to the storage room door. Outside, he paused to lean on the wall and prayed briefly, to whomever might be listening, for a miracle.

  Nothing happened—no sudden burst of inspiration, no bright beam of light and a voice leading him toward victory. Not that he’d really expected it, but living with a witch taught you to accept the strangest things. He scrubbed a hand over his face, stared at the door a moment, then yanked it open and walked into the storage room.

  They were all there. Bryan. Holly Langille, a local doctor. Norris Clayton, local contractor and Levi’s boss back in the early days of his change. Aishe Corrigan, who claimed she had gypsy blood and ran a number of extremely successful small businesses. The other nineteen members of the pack, the ones who didn’t deal with the day-to-day running of it, were scattered around the edge of the room, trying not to be noticed.

  There was one human too, hidden among them. Levi tried to pick it—him—out, but he couldn’t look at his wolves cowering by the wall. They sensed the tension even better than Shelley had and were obviously waiting for all his good intentions to go down the drain in the face of what the council was asking of him. Too many memories of things he had done before Glyn had helped him knock some sense into the wolf.

  Dammit, he couldn’t let them drive Glyn away.

  “All right, you’ve got me. Have your say. And just to make my stand on this clear: fuck you all, and how about you guys chip in and help out if we have a numbers problem?” Levi closed the door and put his back to it in case he decided he needed to leave fast. Things were going to get heated; he could feel it in his gut. His wolf prowled out of its cave, sensing the coming dispute.

  “Levi,” Holly said from her seat on a five-gallon bucket of fryer oil. “You make it sound like we’re trying to take him from you forever. It’s a couple of months, and it’s not like he would have to move out.”

  “You really expect Glyn to sit there while I move another man into the house? You’ve all been through the change. You know what it’s like. Would any of you stay through that?”

  “If he wants to be pack, he has to understand that the pack sometimes has to come first. You keep telling us that he loves you, but he can’t step aside to protect you.”

  Levi growled. “I don’t need him to protect me.”

  Norris spoke up. “McCourt came nosing around Aishe’s businesses again, hinting and threatening. Two weeks ago, he trashed Holly’s clinic. That’s not just us getting hurt—that’s people in this community who can’t afford their own medical care. Why hasn’t the pack done anything about it? Because we know that if we start something, he has the numbers to take us down. All because you’re hung up on blondie and some idea that you can run a wolf pack like a democracy.”

  Levi crossed his arms over his chest. “Glyn says things feel different this month. I’m inclined to give it another chance.”

  “And in the meantime?” Aishe stepped forward, shaking her mane of dark, curly hair. “What do I do about McCourt? He says he wants to move in from the country, start making ‘the big bucks.’ We all donate to the emergency fund when we have extra cash, but he’ll have us tithing so he can live high on the hog. He’s not going to give us time to sort out your love life. Do you want to see us die?”

  “No!” Levi paced the room. His wolf ambled forward, sniffing at the emotions running high. It yipped inside his head, tongue lolling as it grinned in anticipation. Fuck off. It did, but threw him a look before leaving that made him uneasy. Like it was just waiting for the last of Glyn’s influence to slip away so it could take over again. Shit, even the wolf thinks Glyn is on the way out. Levi stopped and held his hands out in placation. “Look, why don’t I go talk to McCourt, see if I can back him down? Once Glyn is changed, he’ll understand. Maybe he’ll even help. I just need this one month.” Even as Levi spoke, he knew he was going to lose this fight. If he could see the holes in his argument, there was a pretty good chance everyone else could too.

  Bryan shook his head, and Levi could see the sympathy on his face. “Levi, McCourt’s been king out there since he arrived. He’s not going to risk losing face in front of his wolves. And he’s strong, not just in pack numbers, but on his own too. I told you we should have done for him when you first came back.”

  “And I told you I wasn’t going back to that! I took out our old alpha not because it needed to be done, but because he pissed me off telling me what to do! Look at them!” he shouted, waving his hand at the lesser wolves crowded as far from him as the
y could get. “They remember. What he was like. What I was like.” He was breathing hard, his wolf back, prowling just below the surface and waiting for a moment of weakness. Early changes hurt, he reminded himself, using the memory of that pain to shove the wolf back. It growled and snapped at him, pushing images of just how fun those early changes could be, then slunk sulkily back into its cave. He felt a moment of guilt; it had been a long time since his wolf had been free to hunt and stalk and play, except at the full moon.

  Holly held out a conciliatory hand. “The wolf always takes you like that at the beginning. It’s tough to handle—that’s why we have packs. We all understand pack life, and you weren’t any worse than Zachary. These four years have been wonderful, but we all knew that they could end at any time. McCourt won’t be like that. He doesn’t have your sense of honor. I’m scared, Levi. He…” Her voice broke off.

  But she was wrong when she said he wasn’t so different from Zachary. He had been different—worse. Otherwise a young wolf like him would never have thought of attacking the pack leader over something as trivial as where he got to sit on full-moon night. The weak ones remembered, even if the strong ones had begun to forget.

  Levi opened his mouth to try again, but Holly interrupted.

  “At least meet him, and if you can come up with a reason why he wouldn’t make a good wolf, we’ll look for someone else, and you’ll get your month because there’s no way we’ll find another person willing to be hunted by a werewolf that fast. But if you can’t, you either have to agree, or you have to let us vote on this and go along with the vote. This is your system, Levi. You’re the one who pulled the pack’s teeth. If you’re not going to fulfill the role of an alpha, and you won’t let anyone else be one, then this is how it has to be.”

  Levi stared back at her, grief and anger at war within him. They were right about everything. Running hadn’t done anything the last time but bring him back to a different set of problems. So he could follow his rules and lose his lover. Or he could take power back into his own hands and lose himself.

  He hated them all.

  “Fine,” he barked, sounding more and more like his wolf.

  Norris stepped to one side and beckoned a tall young man forward.

  And what a man. Black hair in a shining cap, blue eyes like moonlight through sapphires. A lean body with plenty of muscle. Legs that went all the way down. Levi felt his cock stiffen despite the guilt that swept over him at his reaction. He could easily imagine two, three months locked in the erotic obsession of the change with someone who looked like that. His wolf came roaring to the fore, howling its approval of the candidate, and Levi fought it, bowed over, gasping for air as he pushed the beast away. He was in charge; he had to be if he wanted to keep Glyn.

  The man came closer. “Levi,” Bryan said, “this is Connor.”

  Connor. His smell filled the air, rich and strong. No scent of illness. A good, healthy candidate to strengthen the pack. Levi backed away, trying to shake the scent out of his nose. No, he’d promised Glyn another chance. Asked him to trust Levi. This month was different. He had to find a reason to refuse.

  Bryan’s hand on his shoulder brought him back to the present. He shook it off, growling.

  “He’s gay too,” Bryan said. Pièce de résistance. Levi’s mouth watered. He closed his eyes, images rampaging through his mind of burying his head in Connor’s neck, those legs wrapped around his waist while he slid himself in and out of the man’s hidden heat.

  “Levi?” the man asked. The voice went with the body, low and smooth, with a rich timbre like someone who sang or gave speeches for a living. He stepped forward, holding out a friendly hand.

  “No.” Levi shook his head and backed toward the door as if he expected the young man to chase him. “I’m not doing this, Bryan. I’m not. Take him away.” Glyn was just down the hall. He needed to remember that.

  Bryan drew the beautiful young man closer. “Smell him, Levi. Young, healthy, strong. You turn him, and we can have him turn others, and you can keep Glyn to yourself. Just one, that’s all we’re asking.”

  Just one. He could have just this one, and damn, but the guy was pretty. And then go back to Glyn—assuming the man would take him back. There was the pinch, because he didn’t think Glyn would. They were so entwined, but still—

  And then Connor was right in front of him, smelling of man and arousal, blue eyes locked on his. “I swear, I won’t be any trouble.” The hem of his jacket grazed the front of Levi’s jeans. He raised a hand and brushed his fingertips over Levi’s lips. It was all Levi could do not to open his mouth and suck those fingers in, rolling them over his tongue like candy.

  He stepped back. “I can’t. I’m sorry. Maybe someone else will do it, but it won’t be me.”

  Connor stepped forward again. “They told me you would need a bit of persuading.” He kissed Levi, warm and openmouthed, the bitter juniper taste of gin in his mouth leaching out to coat Levi’s tongue. Levi froze, caught between wanting to move away and wanting to move forward into the kiss. Connor’s tongue skipped agilely about his mouth, teasing him into a response. He felt hands sliding up underneath his T-shirt, fingernails scraping delicately over the sensitive skin of his waist. He groaned and grabbed for them.

  The sound of a slamming door brought them both gasping out of the kiss.

  “What’s this?” Glyn asked, looking around the group. A look of comprehension grew on his face when his gaze fell on Connor. “Ah. I know what you are.”

  “Glyn…” Levi began, though he didn’t know if he was warning or pleading.

  His lover slowly turned his head toward Levi. Glyn’s eyes looked strange—wide and unfocused. “What is it you Christians always say? Like hell!” And he launched himself at the other candidate.

  Connor backed up in surprise. Glyn was on him before any of the wolves realized what was happening. Levi leaped into the fight, taking a kick to the thigh and a surprisingly painful elbow to the jaw before he could get his arms wrapped around Glyn and pull him off the other man. Glyn kept fighting, fists and feet and elbows flying even when he couldn’t reach Connor anymore. Both Bryan and Norris, moving in to help contain the violence, were bruised and bloody before Levi could take Glyn down. He forced the man to his knees, wrists locked in one hand, using his body weight to hold Glyn curled up in a ball on the floor. On the other side of the room, a stack of boxes toppled for no apparent reason, the sharp crack of glass breaking echoing off the walls.

  “Settle down, Glyn! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Glyn’s voice, raspy and agitated, overrode the commotion he had caused. “Fuck that. And fuck you too if that’s what you want. You want him—I could see it in your face!”

  Glyn threw his body backward, and Levi was hard-pressed, even with the wolf and forty extra pounds, to keep him contained. A patch of skin erupted in a painful burn on Levi’s shoulder as magic seeped out through Glyn’s normally iron grip. The wolf was nervous, but Levi was too busy holding the smaller man down to spend any energy on figuring out why.

  “Dammit, calm down! Talk to me!”

  Glyn shook his head, his ribs rising and falling like a bellows beneath Levi’s arms. “I don’t want to talk to you! I thought you were going to wait, to try again.” He twisted against Levi’s grip, and one of Levi’s arms went inexplicably numb. Glyn jumped up and backed away. When he had some distance between them, he turned around and stared down at Levi, tears streaking his cheeks and his mouth twisted in an angry snarl. “You promised me! And then I come in here and find you with your lips glued to this tart! You didn’t even try!” Glyn swiped a rough hand across his eyes. “You and your bloody pack!” He spun on his heel and left.

  Levi stayed where he sat on the floor, at a loss to know what to do. Glyn hadn’t even slammed the door, just closed it as if he were leaving for the office for the day. It was ruined, all of it. He’d waffled, trying to keep everyone happy, and ended up pleasing no one.

  His
wolf whined within him, confused by the tumult of emotions. It still wanted Connor, but Glyn was comfortable and familiar, and it was coming to realize there was maybe a little more love in their love-hate relationship than it had thought. Now that Glyn was gone, it decided it wanted Glyn too. More than Connor. Levi wrapped his arms around his knees and hid his face. It’s okay, he told it. I’ll fix this. We’ll get him back.

  The wolf whined again and slunk back to its cave.

  Witchy Woman

  Levi glared up at Bryan and the rest of the council. “Happy now? Seems to have worked out pretty well for you.”

  They had the grace to look ashamed. Norris said, “What can we say? If you don’t want violence, we need numbers. And you’ve got the best conversion rate of anyone. Even Joanne doesn’t turn them as easy as you.”

  Levi snarled at them, and they backed off a step. He didn’t care. McCourt could have the whole lot of them at the moment.

  The door opened again, and the whole group spun defensively, even Connor.

  A woman, tall, blonde, with lush curves and a heart-shaped face, stood in the doorway. She wore high-end dress pants and a soft green sweater that matched her eyes. A heavy-looking leather bag rested over one shoulder. Levi guessed her age at about thirty-five until he looked into those eyes. Then he recognized her. Strange how he never knew her until he looked into her eyes.

  “Gram.” He climbed to his feet.

  She looked at him, and his wolf whimpered in its cave. Thanks, buddy.

  “Good evening, Levi. What have you done to my grandson?”

  Ah shit.

  “It’s all right. Nothing’s changed. He just walked in on something that he shouldn’t have seen.”

  Her nostrils flared, but other than that, she could have been a statue.

  Norris stepped closer. “Who is this, Levi?”

  Levi answered without taking his eyes off the greater threat in front of him. “Glyn’s grandmother.”