Dark Wolf Adrift

by Aimee Easterling

  As I imagined trying to field-dress the kid’s wounds while he did his level best to wriggle out of my grasp, I had to admit I did feel a trifle exasperated. But it wasn’t as if I was going to compel anyone to jump off a cliff, nor did I plan to get my hands dirty by snapping their necks directly.

  Speaking of necks, my steps had slowed sufficiently for a particularly speedy yellow-jacket to discover the patch of bare skin between my collar and hairline. I shifted the boy into the crook of one arm long enough to slap at the abrupt sting with my other hand.

  “Shit!” I erupted, then wondered whether I was scarring Junior Junior for life by swearing into his pint-sized ear.

  Once again, Blue-eyes was the one to save me. The young woman walked across the lawn tentatively, as if she half expected me to strike her the same way I’d squashed the insect that was still pumping poisons beneath my skin.

  Despite obvious trepidation, though, her chin was raised and her eyes were flashing as she closed the distance between us. “Come to Auntie Angie,” she cooed to the little boy, who slid out from beneath my shirt and flung himself into her waiting arms without waiting for a second invitation.

  I was both relieved and strangely saddened to have him gone.

  For her part, Angelica was finding Junior Junior nearly too much to handle. The kid was pretty heavy in the arms of someone unaccustomed to hauling hundred-pound rucksacks across rough terrain on a regular basis.

  The kid slipped a notch and I reached toward him across his aunt’s shoulder. I didn’t quite touch either of them, though, not wanting to spook them further. Still, I was equally unwilling to allow Junior Junior to crack his skull open on the hard ground should he fall.

  Who knew surviving your first year of life as a two-legger was so fraught with life-threatening perils?

  “I’ve got this,” Angelica said when I remained within her personal space. She sidled sideways and I felt rather than heard the crowd behind her heave a tremendous sigh of relief at the teenager’s ability to survive near contact with the terrifying Enforcer.

  “He was stung...” I began, not wanting Blue-eyes—or anyone else—to think I’d injured Stormwinder’s innocent grandson on purpose. I’d only been trying to help, not to make matters worse.

  Although, come to think of it, Junior Junior’s wailing and tears had halted abruptly as soon as he found himself within his aunt’s familiar grasp. And the last yellow-jacket had perished after its kamikaze attack. So I guessed there really was nothing for me to save him from after all...except perhaps myself.

  “I’ve got this,” the teenager repeated a little more loudly. I almost thought she was mad at me. But then Angelica’s gaze skittered to the side, suggesting the discomfort in her voice had begun as fear, not as anger.

  There was nothing else I could do. So I bowed slightly by way of farewell and headed directly toward the front door of the nearby residence.

  After all, there was no reason to slink around back when I’d already thoroughly stirred up the hornet’s nest.

  Chapter 18

  “I’m proud of you, son.”

  Stormwinder’s office door hung open, but he spoke with back turned so he could continue peering out the window at the shifters below. Taking his words as invitation, I padded over to join him.

  In stark contrast to the way the pack had kept their distance when I was present, Blue-eyes and Junior Junior were now at the center of a swirling eddy of concerned relatives. But Stormwinder didn’t mention recent events. Instead, he turned at last and rested a fatherly hand on my shoulder as he elaborated.

  “You brought peace to the Price and Gray clans without spilling a drop of blood. I’m impressed.”

  “You don’t think I went too far?”

  Stormwinder brushed off my concern without a word, leading me over to a pair of leather armchairs flanked by a wall of pretentious hardbacks. I half-expected him to offer a cigar or a snifter of brandy. But, instead, he slipped a thin tablet off the small table between us and turned the device around to face me.

  “Meeshi, this is Hunter. Hunter, this is Meeshi.”

  “Hello?” I hadn’t meant my word to be a question, but I was blind-sided by the third person being abruptly drawn into the conversation via video chat. She was middle-aged and overweight, with two or three folds of flesh below her original chin. But the sparkle in her eyes made me like her...despite not having a clue who in the hell she was.

  “Don’t sit there gaping like a fish. Someone might toss a worm in,” Meeshi admonished me tartly. Then she smirked when I shut my mouth with a snap.

  “Nice to meet you, ma’am,” I said at last. When in doubt, fall back on manners.

  “Meeshi is your new secretary,” Stormwinder explained at last. I had a feeling he’d enjoyed watching me attempt to guess the woman’s identity without scent or other shifter clues to fall back on. Apparently I’d passed if I was being given a staff member of my very own.

  “I’m the Tribunal’s secretary,” Meeshi corrected as primly as a school teacher. “And you have several items on your docket at the moment, Chief Stormwinder. Do you want to hear them now?”

  Stormwinder hummed his assent and Meeshi began rattling off a long list of problems that made only a moderate amount of sense to me, the outsider. A new alpha was requesting approval of his territorial rights—“He’ll have to wait until All-Pack,” my boss replied gruffly. A young male wanted to leave his clan—“That’s a decision for his alpha to make, not me.”

  But then the Tribunal secretary brought up an issue I felt qualified to consult upon and Stormwinder accepted my feedback with apparent pleasure. Before I knew what had happened, I was sprawled out in that uncomfortable chair like it was my bunk and Stormwinder had long since loosened his tie and rolled up his sleeves. The sounds of pack revelry had faded and the sky had darkened beyond the window panes, but we’d hashed through what appeared to be a week’s worth of business in a few short hours.

  To my surprise, I realized I’d enjoyed every minute of it.

  For the first time in over a week, I felt part of something bigger than myself. I was using my brain and stretching muscles I hadn’t even known I possessed.

  Better yet, I hadn’t been required to hide my lupine nature behind a pseudo-human smile in the process.

  So when Stormwinder asked me to stay over and travel with him the next day on Tribunal business, I put up only a token protest. “I don’t think your son appreciates me impinging upon his territory.”

  “Chad?” Stormwinder asked, as if it wasn’t obvious who’d gotten his knickers in a twist during my previous visit. “He’ll get over it. I don’t think you’ll have any more trouble out of the pack either, not after laying down the law up north.”

  I clenched my jaw, remembering what lack of trouble meant—males and females alike refusing to so much as meet my eye. But it had been a long day and I was bone tired.

  I can always bunk somewhere else tomorrow, I promised myself.

  So I accepted Stormwinder’s hospitality. And with it, I accepted the new role he was building for me within his shifter world.

  Chapter 19

  “What are you doing here?”

  I’d expected to find my boss behind the mirrored glass of the waiting limousine the next morning. But when I opened the door, I instead came face to face with Angelica’s teasing blue eyes.

  “Same as you,” she shot back. “Observing and learning from the best.” Then, over my shoulder: “Hi, Daddy.”

  “Angel,” Stormwinder replied, his words warmer than I’d ever heard them before. “At the risk of sounding repetitive—what exactly do you think you’re doing here?”

  In lieu of a repeat answer, Blue-eyes waved a neon pink notebook that had previously been resting on her barely clad lap. “I won’t get in the way,” she promised. “But don’t you think a mate who understands intra-pack politics would be an asset to my husband once I get married? How am I supposed to help him take over the world if I never get t
o see that wider world?”

  Her words were sweet, but I caught a hint of rebellion in the breeze. No, this teenager wasn’t as content with her lot in life as she wanted to appear.

  Glancing over my shoulder, though, I decided her father wasn’t aware of that fact. Angelica had the big, bad pack leader wrapped around her perfectly manicured little finger, so I wasn’t terribly surprised when Stormwinder ushered me into the car and slid onto the padded bench seat next to his daughter without another word of complaint.

  “So, where are we going today?” Angelica asked as the vehicle began rolling down the lane. The divider between passenger and driver compartments was up, so I had no idea who was behind the wheel or whether Stormwinder had brought along any additional muscle. Actually, I had no idea where we were headed either, so Blue-eyes’ question was much appreciated this time around.

  “It’s the first Monday of the month.”

  The older male’s reply didn’t sound like an answer to me, but Angelica nodded sagely. “Peacekeeping grounds to resolve disputes then,” the girl said, proving she knew more about Tribunal affairs than I did. “Still getting lots of looky-loos?”

  “Yes, which is exactly what I meant to talk to Hunter about.” Stormwinder’s gaze swung in my direction and his jovial demeanor sloughed off like a snake’s shed skin.

  I cocked my head, noticing for the first time how differently my boss held his back and shoulders while facing me. It wasn’t as if the pack leader was all business or particularly cold. In fact, the older male’s demeanor was just as attentive as it had been the evening before. But I realized now that there was quite a difference between being lauded for halting a raid without bloodshed and being welcomed into Stormwinder’s nuclear family.

  Something to aspire to. Assuming that really was the hill I intended to climb.

  Regardless of my ambivalence on the personal front, I was ready and willing to do my job. So I sat up a little straighter and prompted him to continue. “Sir?”

  “I’m hoping your presence will give the Tribunal a little extra weight, son,” Stormwinder explained. “Keep the general public from showing up next time with issues that can easily be resolved by their own alphas.”

  “Okay,” I answered. Then, when he seemed to want more of a response, I added: “Are you asking me to stand there and look scary?”

  Because that was something I could do with my eyes closed. Apparently just stepping into a room was now enough to send the weak-hearted scurrying in the opposite direction.

  “Not quite.” The older shifter rested his chin on one hand as he assessed me. “Do you remember when we first met?” he asked finally.

  “Of course.” A week wasn’t that long by anyone’s standards, and Stormwinder’s business card had kept the event at the forefront of my mind in the interim. “Are you saying you want me to stare down the audience?”

  To my surprise, Angelica laughed and intervened. “This is going to take all day if you try to talk him through it, Daddy.” Rather than elaborating, she unbuckled her safety belt and half-danced, half-fell across the intervening space, landing on my lap...directly atop a dick that had suddenly turned rock hard.

  What can I say? I strive to be a man of honor but nobody said I was a saint. And I’m pretty sure Blue-eyes knew exactly what she was doing when her breasts rubbed up against the side of my arm while her round butt cheeks wriggled around down below.

  Aroused pheromones immediately filled the air. Hers, mine, or ours? The answer was irrelevant because the chemical cue’s mere presence was enough to strip Stormwinder of his human facade in an eyeblink.

  Despite our initial stare-down, I’d recently taken to thinking of the pack leader as mostly human. After all, he had his wolf so firmly under wraps that I seldom saw any hint of wildness peeking out from behind his eyes.

  Not so at the moment. Now I could feel fur coating my tongue as the other male’s scent sharpened from respectable gentleman into irate alpha.

  Stormwinder’s gaze bored into me like a physical contact, his will alone attempting to rip away the hand I’d placed on Angelica’s bare thigh. My only intention with the touch had been to keep the trickster from winding me up further, but it was obvious Daddy wanted the strange male to back away from his little girl and he wanted me to do so now.

  Meanwhile, the scent on my tongue sharpened from fur to bitter almonds. Five more seconds, I realized, and the angry father would shift and leap for my throat. I wasn’t even sure he was rational enough to grasp the fact that his daughter was located directly in his flight path.

  I, on the other hand, was painfully aware that Angelica rather than I would be the first one to fall beneath the older male’s attack.

  In an effort to stave off that eventuality, I attempted to push the girl out of harm’s way. But she wrapped both arms around my neck and pulled me in closer so she could press pillowy lips against my stubbled jaw. In response, a growl so low it felt like we were crossing a rumble strip vibrated through my bones.

  If I’d been able to catch Stormwinder’s eye, I could have stared him into submission and halted the confrontation before it had time to escalate further. But Blue-eyes’ cloud of pale hair obscured my view.

  An audible command was the second line of defense. Still, I hesitated, not wanting to ruin our budding camaraderie by stealing my commanding officer’s free will.

  And then it was too late. I felt the electrical tingle against my skin as Stormwinder shifted to lupine form, and the car swayed as the enraged animal lunged toward Angelica’s unprotected back.

  There was no other solution. So for the first time since fighting the great white shark, I completely relaxed control over my inner beast and let the wolf assume command over my human body.

  This time around, the animal didn’t respond by shifting. Instead, we snarled out such a wave of alpha dominance that Angelica lost her hold on my neck and tumbled onto the seat beside me. With my field of view now clear, I could see that her father had fallen to the floor as well, cowering with muzzle touching carpet in an effort to appease the monster. (Yep, that monster would be me.)

  Meanwhile, the car swerved then screeched to a halt, my wordless compulsion having forced its way through the supposedly bullet-proof barrier between compartments to take down the only other shifter within reach. The driver barely managed to pull off the highway before the full effect of my power hit, and the angry screech of a horn brushing past inches away broke through the otherwise silent limousine.

  As the victim closest to the epicenter of the earthquake, I expected Angelica to be the hardest hit. But she either possessed an iron will or my intention to protect her had somehow come through in my actions, because the girl now leveraged herself away from the leather cushions without apparent effort.

  “That,” she told me with the hint of a self-satisfied smirk on her face, “is exactly the effect that Daddy was looking for.”

  Chapter 20

  I expected my boss to be pissed, but he was apparently used to Angelica’s wayward nature. Rather than being sent home—which wasn’t exactly feasible given our distance from clan headquarters—Blue-eyes was merely shunted to the front to ride alongside the driver.

  And even though Stormwinder didn’t speak to me for the remainder of the journey, his inner wolf didn’t appear to be particularly angry about the preceding events either. Instead, he’d drawn his civilized-gentleman facade back up around his shoulders by the time we pulled up in front of a seemingly empty field.

  “This is the peacekeeping grounds?” I couldn’t help asking. The landscape in front of us looked like an overgrown pasture in need of a bush hog. Surely it couldn’t be the werewolf equivalent of the Supreme Court?

  My companion’s smile reached his eyes for the first time in an hour as he preceded me out of the vehicle. “There’s power in the innocuous,” he replied...which might as well have been his own motto for life.

  But before I could say as much, three additional vehicles rolled up n
earby and Stormwinder busied himself slapping backs while at the same time doing his darnedest to dominate fellow Tribunal members. To my eye, all four of the regional leaders appeared roughly evenly matched in both power and shrewdness, so I ignored the entire episode and instead glanced back at the limousine we’d so recently exited.

  There, Angelica sat in the front seat, knees drawn up to her chin and such longing in her eyes that I felt that twinge in my gut once again. Poor kid. I wanted to give her whatever she was itching for...but I couldn’t quite figure out what a coddled pack princess might lack.

  For a second, the intensity of her gaze made me think Angelica harbored a girlish crush on the youngest Tribunal member. After all, Blade Donovan was both strong and polished, sporting a gentleman’s demeanor that reminded me of Blue-eyes’ father. He’d be an excellent catch for any well-bred female shifter.

  But then I realized I was falling into the trap of assuming females couldn’t have a single thought in their heads other than snagging a mate. No, Angelica didn’t want one of the Tribunal members. She wanted to be one of the Tribunal members.

  Unfortunately for her, the field before us was an all-boys club much like the establishment where I’d dined with Stormwinder the previous week. So Angelica was stuck in the front seat of her father’s fancy car, notebook in hand, as she observed our actions like an animal behaviorist.

  Always on the outside looking in.

  THE PEACEKEEPING SESSION itself was borderline yawn-worthy. I had fun at first testing out the uber-alpha skills Angelica had clued me in to, discovering that a growl so quiet my companions couldn’t actually hear the sound with their human ears was still sufficient to bathe the field in a blanket of mild to moderate terror. Next, I learned to modulate my intensity so I cowed the supplicants without bothering the more dominant Tribunal members in charge of passing judgment.