About Face (Wolf Within)

by Amy Lee Burgess

  “Are either of you going to tell me anything about how we’re supposed to save your sorry ass, or I am just here to scramble eggs and be emotionally manipulated?” I dumped the eggs into the heated frying pan, and they hissed against the bubbling butter.

  “Is that how you feel? Manipulated?” Paddy’s expression was sympathetic, and half of me wanted to fling myself into his arms and sob into his chest while he murmured horrible things about Murphy into my ear and told me it would be all right. The other half of me snorted in derision and continued to stir the eggs.

  “You know what that bastard said to me?” I shook the spatula I used to stir the eggs at Paddy, and he flinched but held his ground. “He told me he had no idea I loved him and that if he had, he’d never have left me behind. Can you believe the fucking gall? As if it wasn’t apparent I trailed after him like a lovelorn idiot? You saw it, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” he agreed warily. “I wouldn’t call you a lovelorn idiot, Stanz, but the way you felt about him was clear. Every time someone would bring him up at the tribunal, your face got all funny and wistful and hurt and we all knew. He’s the idiot. Never seeing what’s right before his eyes.

  “I know it’s my fault what happened between you and I’m sorry. I’m not sure what to do to make it better, or even if I can, but if you want me to take his sorry ass out back and thrash him, I’m your man, okay?”

  “Why is it that your first answer to any problem is a fight?” I rolled my eyes, but there was a secret part of me that felt absurdly cheered at the idea Paddy would kick Murphy’s ass for me.

  “Because it’s a damn good fix to most things that are broken.” Paddy crunched a piece of bacon between his white teeth. “And because I love a good fight, of course. The smell of blood is better than coffee, to my mind.”

  “Barbarian.” I turned back to the eggs and rescued them before they could burn.

  I set the pan on a cold burner and moved to the refrigerator so I could get milk for the coffee. The carton was on the door beside a glass bottle of unopened ketchup. I froze, and a huge lump rose in my throat.

  “You don’t know me at all if you thought I’d come after him.” I turned around with ketchup in one hand, milk in the other. Paddy saw my expression and stopped laughing.

  “Why’d you tell him I’d come after him? You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “You’re here, aren’t you?” He reached to shut the refrigerator door behind me.

  “Because Allerton sent me.”

  “Bollocks.” Paddy followed me to the table with the plate of bacon. “You wanted him back. You still do. And he wants you. So why not go for it? Stop fighting. Stop playing the blame game, and just move on.”

  “Easy for you to say. You weren’t the one left behind. You don’t have to live in the shadow of—”

  “If you say ‘a dead woman’ or ‘Sorcha,’ I’m out of here.” Murphy stood in the bedroom doorway. His dark eyes sparked with anger. “The only one who gives a shit about that woman anymore is you, and I swear you use her as a shield half the time, a bludgeon the other. I’m through trying to convince you she doesn’t matter to me anymore. You do. You don’t want to hear it, maybe because you’re guilty about loving somebody after Grey and Elena, or maybe because you think you’re not good enough because of all the things that have happened to you.

  “I could fucking kill Jonathan Archer and all of Riverglow for casting you out of your pack. You let them take every last shred of self-worth you had and flush it down the toilet. You know why you can’t take a frigging compliment? Because you don’t think you’re worthy. And everything you do, you’re screaming for people to listen to you, to look at you, and when they do, you push them away.

  “You have to figure yourself out…before we really do give up on you. Nobody likes to beat their brains out against a brick wall forever.”

  A dreadful silence descended over the room. I stood there with the bottle of ketchup in my hand, Paddy with the plate of bacon. Murphy took a deep breath before he grabbed his leather jacket and slammed out the front door.

  Chapter 11

  “Classical music’s for practicing your technique, woman, not for a night in an Irish pub.” Declan Byrne managed to roar his criticism so loud everyone in the pub broke off what they were doing—and many of them had been listening to me play Mozart on the harp—to stare.

  From his perch on a bar stool, Paddy made a rude gesture behind Declan’s back, but I didn’t grin as he’d no doubt intended. The Mozart had been an attempt to cheer myself after a brooding day in Murphy’s apartment watching movies with Paddy and Fee.

  We’d fled to An Puca in search of food, and the lure of the harp had proved too much for me again. Maybe I could play out my melancholy and confusion, but no, Declan Byrne had showed up and decided to be an asshole. Or perhaps, as I was beginning to suspect, that was his default setting.

  “I exhausted my repertoire of sprightly Irish pub tunes the first night I played. Not much call for them at WASP-y New England weddings and upscale business receptions. Go figure. You’re so bored, Declan, you take over.” I smothered my regret with irritation and stepped off the platform onto the sticky pub floor. If I ran this place, somebody’d be out with a mop more than once a week or whatever Paddy’s cleaning system might have been. The way he kept his desk organized, I wondered if the pub even owned a mop.

  “Boo, Declan, you bastard. Some of us were enjoying the Mozart,” yelled a pretty brunette with warm, sherry-colored eyes. “Hey, Stanzie, you ever hear the one where Mozart was Pack?”

  I grinned, cheered despite my irritation with Declan and my humiliation at Murphy’s hands.

  “If all the ones I’ve heard about famous people being Pack were true, there’d be no Others left.”

  “Just the stupid ones. No, wait, that’s all of them,” deadpanned the brunette’s companion, a gorgeous young man in a dark shirt that molded to his muscular arms and chest. God, why did Irish men have to be so sexy?

  A raucous roar of laughter went up around the pub, and I tried not to let it bother me as I picked my sticky way to the empty stool beside Paddy at the end of the bar.

  “You’re frowning.” He slid his Guinness in my direction. I tried to catch Alannah’s eye to get my own, but she developed an urgent need to wipe the other end of the bar clean with her dirty bar rag.

  “This whole pack makes fun of Others?” I gave in with a sigh and took a sip of Paddy’s Guinness. Of course, the minute I did, Alannah flew down to our end and drew Paddy a new one. Me, she ignored. Probably a good thing because who knew what she might have accidentally deposited in my glass. Flinging myself on her bond mate’s back like a silent assassin had probably not been the best method of kick-starting a friendship with her.

  Paddy chuckled as he took a healthy swig.

  “In our whole lives she’s never treated me this good.” He gestured toward Alannah who sent me a glowering look through lowered red eyebrows before she turned to take someone’s drink order. “She’s two years older than me, right? And that’s made her act all superior until, of course, I sweep Alpha out from underneath her. Suddenly, nothing in the world’s too good for her little half brother.”

  “Well, maybe if she and Declan were making deals with the devil in back alleys like you, they’d be Alpha now.”

  Paddy winced, all the good cheer erased from his expression. I wished I’d bitten my tongue. I thought again of Faith’s dream and the man with different-colored eyes who needed my help. Some help I was.

  “You really believe we should be kept to minimum-wage jobs and only the Alphas of our packs ever having their hands on real money?” I was honestly curious.

  Paddy took a deep breath as he considered his reply. “Anyone in Mac Tire who needs money has it. We all contribute from our minimum-wage jobs. Not all of them are minimum-wage either.”

  “I’ll bet that Andrew Brody went to med school but doesn’t practice medicine except within the pack. He might even have
a low-paying job somewhere to make ends meet, since I’m sure no one in the pack pays him for services rendered.”

  “You’ll not be advocating Pack pay for medical benefits like the frigging Others?” Paddy’s eyes snapped with outrage.

  “Of course not. He spends his life paying back his med school expenses by donating services to the pack,” I replied. “Doctors are just one example. Mac Tire must have at least one lawyer to deal with your real estate operations. I mean, that is how you invest most of your money, right? In land?”

  “Liam took you to our compound,” Paddy said. “You’ll know that’s not cheap to upkeep. The castle’s a safe house, so all the packs in the UK and Ireland contribute, and the Councils, but most of the land is ours. With a dearth of forests in Ireland, we need all the land to run in we can find. A place for our wolves to howl and not scare the damn natives. There hasn’t been a wolf in Ireland for centuries, and that’s because Others wiped them out trying to eradicate us.

  “What’ll you have us do, Stanzie? Go right back to that? Just when we’ve built ourselves up to a decent world population, you want us to step forward and announce our existence to the very people who nearly exterminated us?” Mouth twisted with bitterness, Paddy took a swig of beer.

  “We’re not in Dark Ages anymore,” I said. “Others are not the superstitious, witch and werewolf-hunting peasants they used to be.”

  “Don’t you believe it,” lectured Paddy. “Others haven’t changed in anything but fashion, architecture and technology. Beneath the skin, they’re still the same terrified, torch-waving mob waiting to rip apart anything that’s different.”

  And we’re different, that’s true, Paddy.

  “You really want us to take over the world? You think Pack First is a grand idea, do you?” Paddy stared at me as if he didn’t know me.

  “No,” I denied. “I just want us to be able to get decent jobs without being murdered for them. All Elena was trying to do was design fun games for people’s computers. She wasn’t trying to take over the fucking world. And neither was Grey or any of the other men and women who have been killed the last few years.”

  “You buy into one part, you buy into it all.” Paddy’s gaze bored into my face—penetrating and uncompromising. “Which is why there’s no excuse for what I’ve gotten myself into. I know that. I’m trying to fix that. But just because I’m fighting, doesn’t mean I’ve shifted allegiance to the other side. Have you?” He pointed a long, accusing finger at me.

  “What do you want with a high-paying job you need a college education to get? You play the most beautiful music I’ve heard in a long time. You don’t need college for that. You don’t need a high-powered executive position to play. You don’t even need to play for Others for money. You give back to the pack, Stanzie. Tonight I’m appointing you Mac Tire’s bard. Declan Byrne be damned. He can play when you give him leave. You own that harp and that stage. And you can do a damned sight more for this pack by playing your tunes than you can being a fucking Advisor.”

  “Not true,” I argued. “I’ve done a lot of good as an Advisor.”

  “Have you now?” He shook his head, mouth tight. “And what have you got for it? Hauled up in front of a frigging tribunal for protecting that poor girl in the only way you had left to you. Nightmares from seeing your former Alpha’s brains splatter all over the ceiling when she shot herself in the head because of you and your Advisor job. Putting an old man to death as the Hand of the Council. An old man who loved you. Not saying he didn’t deserve his death, Stanzie, but you didn’t need to be the one to serve it to him in a cup of hot chocolate.

  “Jason Allerton is no hero in my book. If you truly belonged to me the way I want you to, you’d be bard for Mac Tire and first in line for Alpha come the elections and you’d leave your Advisor days behind you for good.”

  “You can’t make me give up being an Advisor.” I gripped the edge of the bar so tightly my fingers went bone white. I’d fought too hard to get where I was to give it up, even for my Alpha.

  “No, I can’t,” he agreed. “And I wouldn’t even if I could. Everyone gets to choose what they want to do in my pack. But I can tell you what I’d wish for you, can’t I?”

  “Sure.” I forced my fingers to relax their death grip and flexed them to restore circulation. He was being reasonable thankfully.

  “Ah, this fucking conversation’s too deep for a light night out at the pub. Forget it, Stanzie. Just think about what I’ve said, okay? I’m not asking you to give up a damn thing, just think a little about my perspective. Fair enough?”

  His face under the dim pub lights was shadowed and mysterious. I had no idea whether he had a point or was full of shit, and the last thing I wanted to do was think about it.

  But his words ate at my conscience like corrosive acid. Damn him anyway.

  Chapter 12

  Blankets and a pillow were piled on the end of one of the sofas when I walked into Murphy’s apartment. He sat at the other end, a cup of coffee cradled between his palms.

  “I’ll sleep out here tonight,” he informed me as he stared into his coffee. He lifted his gaze to find mine. “I changed the sheets.”

  A flush burned my cheeks. I locked the door and shrugged off my leather jacket. I tossed it and my purse onto the other sofa and took a deep breath.

  “Why do you fight the conspiracy?” I worried my lower lip between my teeth, and he watched me but didn’t say anything. “You know why I do?”

  He shrugged, but I could tell by the tautness of his shoulders that he listened.

  “I fight it so that bond mates won’t run out of time like we did with ours. So that nobody has to feel the way we felt when they died.”

  “Yeah,” he said as he clutched his coffee cup.

  “Ever since Jason recruited us I’ve felt righteous about it. Terrified and reluctant sometimes, too, but above it all I’ve thought I’ve been doing the right thing.”

  “You have been, Stanzie.”

  “No. No, I don’t think so. I don’t want any part of revealing the Pack to the Others. I don’t want to take over the world. I just want to live in my part of it without having somebody kill the people who mean the most to me. Paddy said if you support one part of something, you support it all, and he’s right. We can’t just pick and choose which part of the movement we’re for.

  “I’m so naive, I never even suspected there was something like Pack First. I never thought the conspiracy—the Guardians—came second, as a response to something else. Because that’s how it happened, isn’t it? People didn’t just wake up one morning and think, Oh, hell, we’ve got way too many young Pack members with college educations and decent jobs these days, better start murdering some of them.

  “Pack have been encouraged to go to college and get good jobs. They didn’t just decide to do that on their own either. This has been going on for years, and we only know the tip of the iceberg.

  “And we’re going to let it tear us apart, aren’t we? Because I can’t come to grips with the enormity of the whole thing, I’m going to concentrate on my fucking bruised ego and let it kill what we have, aren’t I?”

  “You just need time to think, Stanzie. To sort yourself.” Murphy’s voice was low.

  “What if we don’t have time? What if we run out before I figure things out?” Tears trembled on the edges of my lashes, and I blinked them away. “I’m scared, Murphy. Scared of being alone, scared of being with you because you might leave me again. I don’t know what to do.”

  He was off the sofa in a heartbeat, and in the next I was in his arms. I ran my fingers across his face and traced the bristly outlines of his goatee.

  “Everything’s so different. You’re different.”

  He closed his fingers around mine. “You don’t like the goatee?”

  “It makes you look dangerous. Like a stranger.”

  “I’m not a stranger.” He kissed my palm and then my lips. He had such a wicked mouth. When I opened mine to allow h
is tongue access, he groaned deep in his throat.

  The kiss was slow, and his lips burned against mine as he murmured my name. I brushed my fingers over the planes and angles of his face. I rarely touched his face, afraid he’d flinch away from the intimacy, but tonight I didn’t care. There was too much at stake to let anything come between us anymore.

  We pressed tightly together, his erection hard against my lower belly, and I slid one hand down between his legs and made him groan again. His eyes were dark with desire, and when I walked toward the bedroom, he followed.

  I peeled my clothes off as I went, and so did he. By the time we fell onto the bed together, we were gloriously naked.

  His skin was hot, and I raked my nails down the broad expanse of his back as his muscles contracted in reaction to my touch.

  He nipped my earlobe and then darted his tongue in and out of my ear with a teasing rapidity. He knew just what drove me wild.

  I closed my fingers around his cock and positioned him so that the tip nudged against my warm wetness.

  “I want to go slow,” he protested as he tried to move my hand, but I wrapped my legs around his waist and guided him into me so I could feel his hotness inside me.

  He groaned again, but didn’t resist when I thrust myself up against him and forced him to join my rhythm. When he whispered something in Irish, I grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled to get his attention.

  “Say it to me in English!” Another yank of his hair. His body tensed with pain and passion, and he grinned against my ear before he bit it. Hard.

  “I love you. I love being inside you. I love feeling your legs around my waist and the way you say my name deep in your throat. I love you so much, Stanzie. I’m yours. I—oh, God, I love you!” He rolled me over so I was on top and cupped my face with his hands.

  My hair brushed his shoulders, and he shivered, his expression full of delight and wonder. There comes a time during every sexual encounter between a Pack woman and a Pack man when our eyes change and our wolves awaken.