“In what way?” I asked innocently. Because, sure, Hunter’s former mentor was a pain in my ass—particularly at the present moment when he seemed bound and determined to bring my mate back into the enforcer fold regardless of Hunter’s feelings in the matter. But I didn’t know enough about the region’s inter-pack politics to guess why Franklin might have taken offense at the absent string-puller.
“It doesn’t matter why,” Franklin responded, brushing aside my question as if it was irrelevant. But the older male’s scent suggested that Stormwinder did indeed matter very much to the alphas who had gone to such lengths to track me down. Even Little Bill had leaned in slightly at the change of topic. “What matters is that Stormwinder is our representative at the Tribunal, which gives him far more power than he should have over the other packs in our region.”
Now it was my turn to wince as Franklin spilled shifter information that I hadn’t previously seen fit to divulge to the human sitting by my side. Robert was silently tucking into his burger, his appetite in no way affected by the huge quantity of chocolate-chip cookies he’d consumed only a short time earlier. But I knew my partner well enough to understand that he was also soaking up every word to be jotted down in his field journal later. I’d just have to hope that my instincts had been correct and that it was safe to entrust critical shifter data to an FBI agent who had no official connection to my pack.
Later, I promised myself. I could only deal with one set of problems at a time, and the pack leaders in front of me were the obvious issue to be contended with first.
“Let me guess,” I said aloud, trying not to let my discomfort at speaking so plainly in front of my partner show. “You want me to help vote Stormwinder out of office in exchange for you voting Wolf Landing in. Quid pro quo.”
“You got your quo before your quid,” Little Bill said, deigning to talk business at last as a sparkle entered his dark eyes. “But, yes—if you can rustle up the final vote needed to remove Stormwinder from office, then we’ll make sure the tide turns in your favor when your own territorial rights come up for debate.”
Chapter 13
“Don’t be mad,” Hunter greeted me half an hour after the ambushing alphas had taken their leave. I hadn’t expected my backup to arrive quite so quickly—he must have left Wolf Landing as soon as he accepted my call and heard nothing but fearful breathing and damp drips of water. Speed limits had certainly been broken and traffic laws violated.
Now, though, my mate appeared relaxed and confident as he clapped Robert on the shoulder without bothering to take his eyes off my face. “I’ll take it from here,” he dismissed the other male tersely.
And despite Hunter’s less-than-stellar manners, Robert allowed himself to be sent away with good grace this time around. “Call me,” he offered by way of farewell, slanting a glance in my direction that proved I’d have difficult questions to field at a later date.
But I didn’t have to deal with the inquisition right then. Instead, I focused on Hunter, intrigued despite myself by what he thought I had to be angry about. “Is there something you want to tell me?” I asked.
Rather than answering, my companion pulled me in tight against his chest, our wolves communing without words. He had been scared, I now realized. In fact, his heart rate was still mildly elevated despite the follow-up call I’d made to let him know I was safe and sound. Only once we were touching skin to skin did the tinge of frigid spring water swirling through the air relax into my mate’s more jovial resting aroma of sassafras.
I knew exactly how he felt. Bending my forehead down to rest over Hunter’s heart, the pounding of his blood soothed my aching skull. The contact washed away the previous night’s blackout along with the current day’s crime-scene awfulness and alpha standoff. And, slowly but surely, the tension that seemed to have rooted into my life like concrete footers eased as I relaxed into Hunter’s embrace.
I couldn’t entirely let down my guard, though, because my own question reverberated in my mind. Whether or not there was something Hunter wanted to tell me, there was very much something I needed to tell him. I just hadn’t figured out how to broach the subject of my ornery wolf and recent blackouts with an uber-alpha who made being a pack leader appear as easy as tying his own shoe laces.
Or perhaps, I thought with a smile, glancing down at my mate’s stubbornly bare feet, being a pack leader is significantly easier for Hunter than tying his own shoe laces.
“I have a surprise for you,” my mate rumbled into my hair after a moment, relaxing his hold slightly so I could tip my chin upward and peer into his eyes. “I think you’ll like it...once you have time to digest the truth of the matter. So, please...don’t get mad.”
Well, that sounded ominous. Still, Hunter rarely asked for anything and he always seemed to have my best interests at heart. So I pushed up onto my tiptoes and kissed the worry off his lips. “I promise not to be mad,” I whispered into his mouth.
Then I allowed myself to be side-tracked for several long moments as my fingers explored hard ridges I hadn’t stroked nearly enough recently. Perhaps it was a good thing, after all, that I’d pulled Hunter away from the pack to ride to my rescue.
***
“So, you don’t want me to be mad...for being taken to Denny’s?”
We’d driven for over an hour without speaking. In the interim, the sun had set and the world had narrowed down to the slender field of light emitted by the car’s twin headlamps.
Unlike other bloodlings I’d known, though, Hunter drove like a pro. So I didn’t get twitchy when he took one hand off the steering wheel to clasp my fingers between his. A thumb traced tender circles in my palm as oldies crooned out of the radio, and I didn’t want to be anywhere other than exactly where I was.
Which, apparently, was being spirited away on an unexpected date to a borderline fast-food joint. Hunter was a romantic in dozens of sweet and satisfying ways, but I narrowed my eyes consideringly as I peered out across the nearly empty parking lot. His admonition combined with our location definitely made me suspicious. Was it coincidence that we’d ended up well outside the territory Wolf Landing had claimed...and beyond any other alpha’s marked land as well?
Nope, not coincidence at all. My searching gaze picked out a very familiar vehicle in short order and I turned to face my mate with the anger he’d asked me to eschew blazing out of my eyes.
“Did Glen call him?” I demanded. I’d meant to check in with my emotionally wounded pack mate this morning, really I had. But between a bloodling blowup over breakfast and Robert’s request for my assistance, I’d let the issue slide.
Okay, so maybe I’d just hoped the hurt in Glen’s eyes would fade over time and he’d allow me to lick my inner wounds in peace. Instead, my friend appeared to have called in the big dogs to deal with what amounted to nothing more than a handful of headaches.
Not just headaches, my wolf disagreed. She was right, but I shushed her anyway as I waited for my mate’s explanation.
“Glen?” For once, Hunter sounded puzzled, and it dawned on me that my current companion was the one who’d begged me not to be mad. Hunter was the one who’d spirited me away, who had likely already been in his car driving to pick me up when my terrified call came in.
Which led to the obvious conclusion—Hunter was also the one who’d roped in my former alpha behind my back.
The former alpha, who my lupine senses informed me, was now literally standing behind my back.
“Wolfie,” I greeted the bloodling in question, knowing his keen ears would pick up on the words without me bothering to turn and roll down the window. I loved the male like a brother, but I was ashamed to face him now. Was this the way our relationship was always going to go? I’d screw up, then Wolfie would come along to pick up the pieces?
Still, despite my disappointment in myself, I was also so glad to see my friend that I had to bite down on my lip to hold back tears. So when the car door opened and I was disentangled from my seat belt without per
mission, I snuggled into the bloodling’s arms as if I was still a child who’d been abandoned by her parents and craved a rock to cling to.
Wolfie had been my rock twelve years earlier. I guessed I wasn’t too proud to let him be that rock again now.
Hunter, though, was less keen on seeing me in another male’s embrace. His deep growl rumbled through the air as the car door slammed behind him, and I half expected to be forcibly ripped away from Wolfie as two bloodlings fell into a literal dogfight right in front of my very eyes.
To prevent incipient bloodshed, I pulled back from the arms that encircled me and raised one eyebrow at my mate. You’re the one who brought him here.
You needed him, my mate replied evenly. But he continued to growl, his instincts too strong to let rational thought get in the way of an old-fashioned alpha stare-down.
Luckily, Wolfie found Hunter’s behavior amusing rather than incendiary. “You can go inside and hang out with my brother-in-law if you want,” my former alpha offered, jerking his chin at the plate-glass window, through which we could see Dale cradling a cup of coffee. “Or you can hover over Fen like a jealous lover. Either way, she and I have things to discuss.” Then, dismissing the bristling uber-alpha as irrelevant, his entire attention turned in my direction. “Tell me.”
So I did. I was glad Hunter managed to tone down his jealousy and stick around because it felt like chewing on rust-specked nails to get the explanation out the first time—I wasn’t so sure I could have repeated the feat for my mate’s benefit later.
In the end, though, I managed to lay it all out. The strange words from my wolf, the lost time, my concerns that I might have been the one to eat Silas Lerner’s ram.
And as I talked, Wolfie walked. Back and forth he paced in front of me, mirroring the restless motion of my own wolf beneath our currently human skin.
Hunter, in contrast, remained planted in one spot, still as the grave. I expected his menacing growl to return when I mentioned that Lupe had been the sole recipient of my confidences. But, when I glanced in his direction, my mate only shrugged. “She’s a good kid,” he offered.
“I thought you thought she was a pain in the butt,” I countered.
“Definitely,” Hunter agreed. “But she’s also a good kid.”
Two pairs of bloodling eyes met over my head, and this time around there was understanding exchanged rather than aggression. “You’ll do,” Wolfie murmured almost too quietly for me to hear. And, in response, Hunter’s lips quirked upwards into the barest hint of a smile.
Slowly, gently, a knot I hadn’t even realized was present beneath my sternum eased at last. Wolfie had taken the place of my dead biological father ages ago, becoming the single person whose approval I truly craved. And while Celia and I were slowly dancing our way toward friendship, I still didn’t think of my own mother as a parental figure.
Unfortunately, while the older bloodling had seemed content to give me the positive reinforcement I craved for years on end, his support had come to an abrupt halt when I fled from Haven to make my own way in the world. Since then, my former father figure had been so hands off about my leadership of Wolf Landing that I’d secretly suspected he disapproved of my current life.
Now, though, Wolfie’s willingness to accept Hunter as my mate drove away that last minuscule reservation I’d been harboring about accepting the uber-alpha entirely into my heart. And the fatherly support beaming out of the older alpha’s eyes also strengthened my resolve and straightened my spine.
Still, Wolfie didn’t give me long to bask in the glow of his endorsement. Instead, he stepped forward and took my chin in his hands, turning my face from side to side as if assessing how much I’d changed over the last few months. “You’re nearly there,” he said cryptically.
“Nearly where?” I asked, hoping Hunter wouldn’t take offense at the renewed physical contact. Something in the air had shifted, though. Because my mate settled down onto the curb at last, content to act as an uninvolved audience to the further proceedings.
“I owe you an apology,” Wolfie continued, ignoring both my question and Hunter’s altered stance. He released my chin, but didn’t step back, staying instead within what a human would have considered her personal space. Rather than chafing at the intrusion, though, I basked in the warmth of his wolf’s powerful proximity.
“I let you go because I had to,” the male who I’d honored for my entire lifetime continued. “But I could have stepped in and helped you out a dozen times, Tribunal rules be damned. I’d hacked into your emails, of course...”
“...of course,” I muttered beneath my breath, rolling my eyes. Wolfie always had everyone’s best interests at heart, but his grasp of human ethics was often a little dubious.
“I realize you think you’ve been making mistakes,” he continued, ignoring my interjection and rubbing one hand across his jaw as he attempted to put lupine ideas into human words. His eyes flitted to one side momentarily, and I followed his gaze to catch the flutter of a falling leaf. Despite my companion’s predatory interest in his surroundings, though, I knew that Wolfie’s greater attention was focused firmly on myself.
“I have been making mistakes,” I told him, returning us both to the point at hand. My father figure was trying to let me off the hook, but there was no point in being coy about my weaknesses. Plus, for the first time, I realized I was distinctly pissed at Wolfie for not coming through for me sooner. “I’ve made bucketloads of them. I know you want to believe that every one of your strays is capable of reaching this amazing potential you envision for them....”
“Strays?” Wolfie cocked his head to one side and stemmed my flow of words effortlessly. “Is that really what you think you are? What you think any of us are?”
I nodded slowly. Wasn’t it obvious? Wolfie was notorious for opening up his pack to werewolves no one else would have allowed inside. There was me—a halfie. Quetzalli and Galena—a pair of lesbian shifters. Plus Wolfie’s mate, a pack princess who had been unable to access her animal half when she was first drawn into the fold.
I could have gone on for hours, but I abruptly found myself too tongue-tied to speak. How could Wolfie say that his past and current pack mates consisted of anything but strays?
Taking a deep breath, I mustered further speech at last. “I know you were thrown out into the snow right when you were born, Wolfie,” I explained. “I’ve heard Tia tell the story often enough and I can see how you might think that the rest of us strays are just like you too. I mean, you went on to create all of this awesomeness out of nothing. But we can’t all live up to your standards! Sometimes, the impossible is simply impossible!”
Within my skin, my wolf whined, unhappy to have lost our companion’s gentle touch and equally unhappy at the discontent I was spewing forth, aimed toward someone we both cared for deeply. Meanwhile, Hunter’s growl emerged from the darkness, his protective streak having once again been aroused by my elevated voice and tone.
But Wolfie seemed unaffected by my angst. Instead, he shook his head at me gently. “Tia,” he said simply.
“Tia?” I repeated.
“You’re proving my point,” Wolfie chastened, making mental leaps that left me scurrying behind as I strove to catch up. “Tia told you that story because she and Chase took me in from the cold nearly as soon as I was cast out. I wasn’t a stray then because I had a family. And you’re not a stray now either.
“In fact,” my once-alpha continued, his wolf becoming so visible behind his eyes that I half expected to feel the electricity of an impending shift, “I left you alone because you didn’t need my help. And despite what your mate thinks, you don’t need my help now either.
“Still,” Wolfie concluded, “I’m here and you’re here. So, let’s go in and order food before Dale gets bored and runs off to volunteer as an EMT.”
Chapter 14
Warm fingers pressed beneath my chin and I tilted my head upwards to let the doctor—Wolfie’s brother-in-law—do his work. “
Hmm,” Dale murmured absently before pulling out a lighted something-or-other and peering inside my left ear.
I was pretty sure there was nothing wrong with my brain that a visual inspection could sort out. Still, it was hard to grumble when the pair had driven several hours to give me access to the only certified medical doctor able and willing to work on werewolf-kind.
“Well, you look like you’re still alive,” Dale said at last, tucking away the tools of his trade as he completed the physical portion of his assessment. “And even though the DSM-5 doesn’t cover shifters, I’d say your intangible symptoms line up nicely with a diagnosis of recurrent dissociative episodes linked to adolescence.”
“English please?” I prodded, a quiver running down my spine. That definitely didn’t sound good.
“Growing pains,” Dale translated gently, patting my head as if I was a child. And since he’d watched my early childhood from the other side of his very own mountain, I probably was still a knobby-kneed, filthy-faced ten-year-old in the doctor’s eyes. “From what other shifters have told me, your blackouts seem entirely normal,” he added, attempting to ease my fears.
Normal, maybe, but the symptoms couldn’t have popped up at a worse time. All-Pack was just around the corner and now I risked keeling over while trying to win the support of the unknown-to-me alphas. Werewolf turf battles were all about appearances, so fainting fits definitely wouldn’t do me any favors.
Plus, there was also the problem of our personal stool pigeon to contend with. Sure, Grey had helped prevent a catastrophe yesterday during doggy obedience school, but he was camping out at Wolf Landing for one reason and one reason alone—to ensure our pack failed at its territorial bid. Proving that half of our clan’s current leadership was subject to random blackouts definitely wouldn’t help our cause.
“Is there anything I can do to expedite the process?” I asked, looking up into Dale’s kind eyes.
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