Telling himself that it was good, she’d up and left, he huffed out a sullen breath. Chase had sworn off wolven and psychic females a long time ago. He made himself scarce when the females showed any signs of heat and stayed away for a couple of weeks. Sniffing along the forest floor, he caught the faintest whiff of her scent. Chase growled, realizing that he was now lying on top of the place she’d been sitting. Now he was more irritated than before. Not only had he had a rotten dream, now he was horny on top of it all. He might as well wake up and take his turn driving the damned car.
Chapter Three
India jerked awake, disoriented by the dream. No, not a dream. She hadn’t allowed any of them to Change since the killing the Hunter. Obviously, she was having trouble separating realities. That in itself said that she’d been wolf too long. She was in danger of going feral and leaving all traces of humanity behind. A sneaky voice she suppressed whispered wild thoughts through her tumbled feelings. Would that be such a bad thing? To run free without the restrictions of humanity?
She shook her head hard enough to make her ears flop. Digging her paws in the dirt in front of her, she stretched. The movement did nothing to quell the feeling of restlessness that was a live thing inside her. Nature wanted her to run and find a mate. She was in heat. The drive thrummed inside her veins. The smell of it put her and her pack more on edge. Thankfully, her sense of survival was stronger. That need told her to run far away. To find a place the Hunter would never think to look for her little pack. Between the two instincts, she was surprised her feet didn’t take off on their own to run straight off the nearest cliff.
India needed distance between them and the new Hunter that had picked up their trail couple of weeks ago. Sometimes their scent paths crossed, telling her how close her enemy trailed her. He was wary and unhurried, close at her heels. This one was too smart to make the same mistakes as the other one. Or, he had a set of abilities far beyond the dead Hunter. She kept moving, keeping her pack just ahead of him, giving Reggie too little rest to recover and too little red meat for them to maintain their wolven strength.
As she nosed her little pack awake, the call of a normal wolf distracted her. His lonely call for a mate touched a chord inside her. Like the mundane wolf, her kind thrived on a sense of security and stability. Wolven were a bunch of homebodies who claimed a territory and rarely left its borders. There were exceptions. Bitten wolven tended to roam until they regained their sense of self. Packs did not tolerate strays and werewolf in their territory. Strangers were encouraged to move on.
India’s lack of hearth and home was a painful wound. Memories of being part of a larger whole teased her. What if she answered the wolf’s call? It wasn’t unheard of to run with the lesser wild wolves. She turned the idea over in her head until Reggie’s nose bumped into her hindquarters. An accident for sure, but he was too close to where he had no business. Irritated, India growled, baring her teeth as she turned on the lesser wolf. Her weight barreled him over. Sharp teeth pinned his neck to the ground. Reggie whined and went limp in submission. He twisted, showing his vulnerable underbelly. Appeased, she wouldn’t hurt him for the indiscretion. This time.
Reggie could never be a suitable mate for her. He was too far down the pecking order. He needed protecting. India needed a protector. Like the male in her dream. Healthy, strong. His intense gaze had unsettled her, waking her from her dream. Tag, she dubbed him, like the game he wanted to play. A lesser wolf would not do.
Letting go of Reggie, India raked her gaze over the other two wolves in her care. Darrell was neither young nor strong. Gail was too young. Barely in her twenties, Gail shared a similar temperament as Reggie. She stayed glued to her Uncle Darrell’s side. Her gaze sought his approval on every step and set India’s teeth on edge with the urge forcibly prove her right to lead.
No, India decided as she met Darrell’s hazel wolf eyes. The tenuous threads of the packbond revealed the older wolf’s doubt in her ability to lead. Darrell’s eyes dropped, the certainty that India could not keep them safe tangled between them. He wanted a real Alpha, a male to hold the pack together and strengthen the fading packbond. The wild wolf’s call danced through the air again. Lonely. Longing. Needing others of his kind.
Her mind made up, India lifted her nose to the sky and poured her soul into the Call. If the Hunter found them, she’d kill him too. India needed a mate to Alpha her pack. He didn’t have to be able to Change. Her little pack joined into the Call. She didn’t know if they realized that she was throwing away their humanity. For the moment, they were a good little pack, following their leader. The song ended. The forest fell silent, a tribute to the predators in their midst. Finally, the lone wolf answered. The song changed tone. No longer lonesome, it welcomed. He demanded her presence.
India focused on the direction and set off at a trot to meet her suitor. She was in heat. Unless mated, the wild wolf wouldn’t turn her down, or the chance to Alpha a pack. Instinct was predictable that way. Unless, he turned out too easily dominated, she'd take him. Her hope was that with the pack under the leadership of the normal mundane wolf, the Hunter might become confused at their shift in patterns. Maybe he’d go away. She had no other choice anymore.
In the back of her mind, India envisioned that she answered the big wolven male from her dreams. Her fantasy wolven male wanted to play tag. The thought brought a sad smile to her heart for all she was about to give up. No, the Hunters took that away when they killed Gin and the rest of her pack. The safety of her pack was her priority. When she mated with the animal wolf, it would be a real mate-bond to ensure that his instincts focused on hers and her pack’s survival. She wasn’t taking any chances.
Knowing the Hunter would hear, she wuffed and urged her group into a run. She only hoped the lone wolf was wily enough to outwit the new Hunter on their trail.
* * * *
Carter Hunter jerked awake at the howl. His tracker’s senses hummed as he threw his consciousness out like a big spider web. He was the big nasty spider waiting in the middle. When a supernatural stumbled into his threads, then, bam, he knew which way to go. He could only use the ability sparingly, like glancing at a compass, or he’d drain his energy. The big gifts were like that. If he touched the ability too often, a migraine could knock him on his ass. Carter would be useless to attack or defend if the monsters came knocking at his door. Carter did not intend to share his colleague, Pete’s, fate half eaten in the desert.
Scratching at the three-day beard that itched at his cheeks, Carter ignored the throb in his temples as he mulled over what his psychic net told him. His quarry had veered from its Western path to a Southern heading. Until now, Carter thought he was going to run her to the California coastline.
He checked the time on his watch, grimacing when the instrument confirmed the god-awful hour of ten a.m. Around four hours ago, he’d pulled into a rest stop in the hopes of catching some shuteye while his quarry slept. With a curse, he slammed out of the vehicle to use the neglected roadside utilities before scrounging up another protein bar and bottled water meal.
The bitch was running by day and night now. No rest for the weary, he told himself, but the joke held little amusement. He needed to focus. Mistakes like that are what had gotten Pete Hunter and too many other Hunters killed. Messing around and not paying attention to the whys of the quarry’s movement patterns got you dead in a hurry. What had Pete been thinking to take on an established werewolf pack? Carter shook his head at the stupidity.
His colleague’s actions had taken balls the size of boulders. The idiot had gone against every rule, stirring up supernatural and psychic communities all along the Eastern coastal states and into the South. It was like the cold war all over again, with once quiet, unobtrusive psychic communities like the one in Georgia trying to play goddamned James Bond games. Fairies were pissed enough to make sure campers stayed home with reports of high pollen counts, killer bee scares, and a few missing tourists. Rumor had it that a dragon, normally agoraphob
ic creatures that avoided all contact with the outside, was gunning for both groups, fairy and psychic.
Carter had his hands full on the monster end. Pacifying the deacons out for supernatural blood taxed his mother’s diplomatic skills to the limit. Through the ages, psychic communities’ leaders’ reactions had nothing in common with generosity or tolerance. As the daughter, mother, and widow of Hunters, his mother, Victoria was a dangerous power in her own right. She’d do her part.
Carter cranked the Hummer. And he’d do his. Once he neutralized Pete’s mess, there would be four less werewolves to terrorize the innocent.
Chapter Four
Days later, Chase bumped into the Packhome kitchen, clean and mostly Were-scent free, thanks to Tank’s decontamination, a shower with industrial deodorizer, and a change to clean clothes in the pool house. His absolutions might be overkill, but he was getting phobic about bringing the disease home. Chase even went so far as to make use of the thermometer hidden in the bathroom to make sure his temp stayed at its usual range.
Chase jumped at the solid ahh-choo that echoed through the house. The pathetic hacking of Sheeva Stephens kits sounded in his subconscious.
“Mo-om! Sammy sprayed me with baby powder!”
“Did not!”
“Did too!”
“Enough.” Karen’s exasperated mothering as she tended to her little ones went a long ways in easing the tightness in his chest. Man-o-man, he was dog-tired.
Since the werecheetah household, Tank had been out every few days driving as far as Waco to check on sick supernaturals. The driving had blurred so that Chase couldn’t remember the towns or counties they visited. Mostly the poor and out of the way Weres had fallen ill. No wolven. Yet. Not anything normally life threatening, he supposed. Just the flu. Humans caught and survived the virus every day. The normals suffered for a couple of weeks, then bounced back to normal.
Still, Chase was uneasy. Tank was being more close-mouthed than usual. The doc had upped the dosage of the vitamin concoction he insisted everyone take. He checked the pups’ vitals every time they came within reach. The rest of the pack may think Tank was being his usual pain-in-the-ass self, but Chase knew better. They hadn’t heard the Stephens kits weak raspy coughs or seen their great-grandmother’s premature grief.
Just the flu. Influenza. They were supposed to be immune to both the bug and the medications prescribed. Which was weird, because as supernaturals, they just didn’t get sick. Their immune systems were hyper-efficient.
A shapeshifter lived twice to three times as long as a human. And this flu bug was killing them. Weres, dead from something as mundane as the flu. The thought chilled him. Thank God, the pack kept the Weres at a distance, outside of Anderson County. The quarantine of sorts might keep his pack safe.
“Hey, you okay?” made Chase jump and whirl, ready to attack the voice. His thoughts scattered as he focused on the Latino young man staring across a table full of papers. A laptop, open and in use, sat at Rick Weis’s elbow.
“Yeah. I’m fine. What’s up with the paper trail? Writing a term paper or something?”
Rick laughed and grimaced. The sound was strained. “No, grading papers. This time of year I always wonder why I wanted to teach English Lit.”
Chase grabbed a water bottle out of the fridge and ambled over to look at the mess. He shook his head. “I don’t know what possessed you to become a teacher. We had enough trouble getting you to graduate and escape school. And you went back? Voluntarily?” He gave a mock shudder, then opened the bottle to take a swig.
Rick shrugged, shuffling papers. “I like teaching. I like the kids.” His scent was a little nervy, but that could be explained by having to decipher and grade some kid’s scribble. An envelope addressed to Ricardo Reys slid out from the pile. The Lufkin return address listed the law firm of Raymond Reys.
Chase slapped a hand on the envelope as the kid froze. In his eyes, Rick and the others would always be kids. He’d watched them grow up, loved, and nurtured by their adoptive parents. As the pack had grown, the boys had learned what being a part of a family unit meant. Chase learned the meaning of madhouse. With that many kids going through different stages of puberty at the same time, he had been cured of any desire he might have had to propagate.
Their eyes met. Rick broke away first, his fingers pressed against edge of the envelope. “That belongs to me.”
“Yeah? Seems it’s addressed to someone else, not Rick Weis.” The boy, no man, raised his chin and met Chase’s eyes again. For the first time, the warden really noticed how much Rick had grown up. Gone was the scared pup with the punk ass attitude, ratty clothes, and affected accent. Here was a man in his twenties, an educator, a molder of young minds. Rick Weis sat straight in his chair, one finger on the corner of the envelope and met the challenge. Chase nodded. Let his hand up. He gave himself a mental pat on the back for not smirking at the kid’s scent of sheer relief. “You want to talk about it?”
Rick picked up the letter and stared at it. “No. They’re nothing to me.” He shook his head. Dark reddish brown hair, the same color as his wolf fur, fell over his forehead. “No. You’re right. There is no Ricardo Reys. I became Rick Weis when Mom and Dad adopted me.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
Rick stood up and walked to the sink, envelope in hand. Lifting the lever for water, he reached and flipped on the disposal switch.
Chase waited, unsure if he should stop him. But then, this was Rick’s problem, not his. Chase had already butted in too far already. The disposal’s grinding deepened as it chewed the letter into bits, the water washing away the evidence. Silence descended.
Rick turned and met his eyes before calmly sitting back down to his papers. He picked up his pen, bending over the papers with determined effort. The house phone rang. Rick scowled at the paper in front of him. He snatched up a red pen and began marking, ignoring the insistent ring.
Being tired, Chase was tempted to let someone else tend to the phone. After the tenth ring and Rick’s growl of irritation, Chase gave in and walked to the wall unit. In Packhome there were very few cordless phones. The things had a habit of disappearing if they weren’t on a leash. Out of habit, he glanced at the digital Caller ID before answering.
Rick looked up. “Who is it?”
Chase’s finger hovered a moment over the answer button, then pushed it with his thumb. Before the caller could say anything, he hung up. Nothing could be done about the call list without erasing every listing. Chase replaced the handset. “Telemarketer.” Chase lied, avoiding Rick’s eyes as he slipped out of the kitchen. He paused just outside the door, just long enough to hear the younger man get up and the click of the handset as Rick checked the call listing. If he’d kept walking, he would have missed the beep of the call back or the low murmur.
“No, this is Rick Weis, Mr. Reys. I don’t want to talk.” Rick said with quiet vehemence. “I’m a wolf.” Chase held his breath as the phone hit the receiver with a solid thwack of plastic on plastic. Rick’s half whine, half growl almost made him turn back to offer comfort. “I am a wolf.” Instead, Chase waited with clenched fists, feeling impotent as the young male swept papers off the kitchen table in a fit of fury. The warden’s last glimpse was of Rick slumping down in his vacated chair. His hands tunneled into his hair, tugging in the same habit he’d picked up from his adopted father. “A wolf,” Rick whispered.
Sometimes, you had to push kids to make a decision. Then you had to let go and allow them to find their own way. Damn but the second part hurt a hell of a lot more than the first.
* * * *
Flopping down on his bed, Chase sighed. Finally. At last, he was alone in his own space. The need to stretch, to show his car-cramped body freedom overwhelmed him. Arching off the bed, it felt like every vertebra in his back, and then some, cracked and popped. Ah, sweet relief.
Nestling deeper into the blankets on his oh-so-comfy Sleep Number bed he surveyed his side of the room throu
gh drowsy eyes. Everything but the bed itself was once more neat and tidy, everything in the appointed place. Tank’s OCD reigned supreme. His bud had an instinctive dislike of disorder. He constantly picked up anything around Chase’s pride and joy.
Chase’s Sleep Number bed was as much hands-off as the simple but elegant desk that one of the boys had made for the pack doc years ago. He didn’t remember which kid. Those early days had been full of chaos and high emotions. Every day had been an exercise in frustration, trying to win the trust of five damaged teens. The adults had their work cut out, showing the kids by deed that they wouldn’t let werewolves like Garrick Moser abuse them anymore.
After all that, Chase still wouldn’t have laid money on Brandon’s return. As the pack’s Omega, the kid had suffered the brunt of Moser’s depraved attentions. It had taken leaving and maturing in the human world to give Brandon enough confidence to return to the pack and take Karen as his mate. At least that was Tank’s opinion. His bud also mentioned a bunch of forgiveness shrink mumbo-jumbo too. Chase figured that being more than able and willing to kick his packmates collective asses helped a lot too. With Diana’s daughter, Karen, as his adoring mate, the kid was doing okay now. Still kinda crazy, buy hey, alls well that ends well. It reminded Chase of one of those ditzy romance novels Tamara was always reading.
Chase’s desk consisted of a laptop stowed in its bag and stored in one of the drawers built into the bottom of his bed frame. Also one of the boys’ yesteryear projects while the Alphas and their human Beta rode herd on them to graduate high school and stay out of trouble.
Well, they'd survived the first round of pups. Some now had pups of their own to show for it. He stopped the thought cold and flopped an arm over his eyes before the old memories could surface. But the persistent bastards did anyway.
Creature Comforts Page 3