by Michele Hauf
“I don’t know who he is,” Lexi offered. “But he just may be the most honorable wolf I’ve ever met.”
“Is that so?”
She sensed her sister’s eligible bachelor radar go up. Lana might be engaged to Sven Skarson, but that didn’t keep her from flirting with every wolf who risked his life by returning the heartless flirtation. She was beautiful, spoiled, and could have any man at whom she batted an eyelash. It was a game, Lexi sensed, a defense mechanism of sorts. Because she knew she was safe, Lana played with social and pack boundaries. Lexi was her sister’s opposite—she put up a cold front, knowing she was safe from any of the pack’s amorous attention.
Lana was the pretty one; Lexi was the smart one. She’d grown to accept the distinction between them, and for some reason, Lexi had never cared about Lana’s random flirtations.
Until now.
“He’s not your type,” Lexi said quickly. “He’s a hard worker, and is more concerned with helping others than himself.”
Leaving that verbal slap hanging, Lexi marched off toward the south wing to look in on her father.
“I almost forgot!” a man shouted down the hallway as she neared him.
Trystan Hawkes had a way of putting himself near to her, not touching yet just a little too close, challenging her own personal boundaries. He huffed from running and carried a titanium suitcase that she had remembered seeing when he’d first come into Wulfsiege.
“I came here for a reason, and I think what I have with me may be timely. I’m supposed to hand this directly to the principal. Your father?”
“Principal Connor is my father. But I can take that for you.”
“No, I, uh…can’t.”
“Monsieur Hawkes, with the events that have occurred, protocol has changed—”
“Sorry. I have specific orders to put it in only your father’s hands. Instructions stipulated by your father to mine according to the contract he signed with Hawkes Associates when assigning us as security advisors for his stored items. Please, can you take me there quickly? I need to get back outside.”
It wasn’t a breach of protocol, but it could be dangerous for her ailing father to have visitors. Still, if her father had requested whatever was inside that case—something he had chosen to store at Hawkes Associates and not here at Wulfsiege, so it must be valuable—then she would not question.
As well, she didn’t mind spending a few more minutes with Hawkes. She wanted to observe him, figure out what made the handsome wolf tick.
“Come with me.”
The principal’s private quarters were set in the south tower of the castle, as far from the damage as one could get. Lexi thanked the nature gods for that small blessing.
Though the principal’s room was located in the tower, the space was massive, but Tryst couldn’t move his thoughts from the urgency of the rescue to do more than flash a look around the room, not really taking in details. There were still wolves outside. It had been over eight hours since the avalanche hit. They were likely dead, but if the slightest chance existed any could be alive, he had to find them.
Alexis, still dressed in white leather and still sporting the sunglasses inside—though the conference room she led him into was lit with low light—gestured he approach the man seated in a leather chair at the end of a long table. It was an easy chair, and the leg rest was up. A plaid blanket covered him to the chest.
Tryst laid the titanium case on the table and said, “Sorry to be in such a hurry, Principal Connor. My father sends the elixir inside this case with his blessings and wishes you a speedy recovery.”
The elder wolf stared at him with mouth agape. Salt-and-pepper hair curled about a narrow face with loose skin that indicated he must have lost weight and perhaps was normally much more fit. His heavy-lidded eyes made him appear old and weak, yet they stared at Tryst, stunned.
It was then Tryst realized his lack of protocol. He should bow or kneel, or—something—before a pack leader. His father’s instructions rang loudly in his thoughts. He should have waited to first be spoken to.
No time.
“Forgive me. I apologize for the protocol I am stepping on and of which I probably made a huge mess. But I have to leave. The avalanche. There are still many from your pack missing.”
Principal Connor didn’t say a word, merely lowered his tired eyes to the titanium case.
With that, Tryst did bow and backed from the room. He looked to Alexis, who also gaped at him with her soft pink mouth parted, and then knowing he hadn’t the time or the fortitude to make political amends, he turned and raced down the spiraling tower stairs.
* * *
“What the hell was that disaster?” Edmonton Connor rasped at his daughter.
Lexi should have explained protocol to the man on the way up to the tower, but she had blindly expected him to behave. Or to have a rudimentary grasp on pack procedures. He’d shown such courage and leadership so far. Was he not a member of a pack? Had he never approached a principal before?
“He’s heading the rescue team, Father. Please accept my apologies for his rudeness. If I had known…” She sighed. She’d been running on full throttle since the disaster, hadn’t eaten, and right now was feeling as tired as her father looked. “Trystan Hawkes has helped our men bring up six who were buried under the snow. And he seems determined to find the remaining six.”
“I see.” Her father looked aside and smoothed his palm caressingly over the titanium case. “I suppose I can overlook it this time. Knowing his father, Rhys Hawkes, I should have expected the insubordinate behavior. He didn’t bring up his son in a pack.”
“He’s an omega?”
The principal nodded. “Where is Vincent?”
Lexi sucked in a breath. This was the part of chatelaine duties she did not enjoy. Reporting to her father was easy. She’d been doing it all her life, ever since her dreams of growing up like Lana had been smashed at puberty. But she never liked delivering bad news to her father, which had to be done on occasion, and most especially now, when he was not well. Stressful news could make him weaker, but neither would she dream to hide the truth from her father.
“Vincent Rapel didn’t make it. Natalie and Reese looked him over and suspect all his bones were crushed. She also concluded he died instantly as a rib bone appeared to have pierced his heart.”
“The witch doctor?” He named Natalie that because she was a real witch who had been taken in by the pack decades earlier. She’d been nurse to Lexi and Lana when they were little, and Lexi had great respect for her, though she knew her father often conflicted with the woman’s “spiritual” ways. “She suspects? She concluded? We need a real medical doctor here, Alexis. Immediately. If there are wounded, they’ll need more than herb-craft and moon voodoo.”
“Father, don’t worry yourself, please. Reese is working alongside Natalie, and you know he has medical training.”
“Veterinary training.” He grunted and slammed his shoulders into the easy chair. “We are not dogs. Why I allowed Natalie to recruit him is beyond my ken. Call Paris. There’s a few practicing werewolves in the city. Check with Rhys Hawkes, he’ll have their contact information.”
“I will. You should be in bed resting. How are you feeling?”
“The same. Weak. Like my blood is sinking to my feet. I’m so light-headed. But this.” He slapped the case. “I’ve had this for ages. This may be my last hope.”
She had no idea what was inside the case but would learn soon enough. “Do you want me to call Natalie here to help you with it?”
He sighed, his drawn face saggy. “Yes, she is my only option at the moment. And Alexis?”
“Yes, Father?”
“I’ll have to elect a new scion since I’m not doing so well.”
“Don’t talk like that. Whatever Monsieur Hawkes sent along in that case will help you recover, I’m sure of it.”
“You don’t even know what it is. Nor do you have any idea who Rhys Hawkes and his son Trystan are
.”
That statement took her back for a moment. What did it matter if the man had helped only since arriving?
“Trystan seems trustworthy and a man to have around when the chips are down. He’s focused. He impresses me.”
“Yes, well.” Edmonton sighed and gestured she help him to stand. “Be wary, Lexi. He is not from this pack.”
“I will.”
Lexi walked her father into the attached bedroom suite and helped him onto a bed topped with a plush goose-down coverlet.
Her father was a young wolf, only a century old, and had been the picture of health two weeks ago. But he’d begun to decline, slowly yet steadily, and three days ago he’d taken to his bed. The witch doctor hadn’t a clue, but Natalie kept divining her father’s blood, with no results.
Edmonton wouldn’t let her cast a healing spell upon him, because he didn’t believe in witchcraft.
Another reason Edmonton’s mistrust of Natalie ran deep was due to the affair he’d had with her twenty years earlier, after Lexi and Lana’s mother had died. Edmonton Connor was a rogue of the first water, and never apologized for it. Lexi understood he needed connection, love and, yes, to answer the physical cravings all werewolves felt. But the past few years, as far as she knew, he’d not taken any woman under arm or even to his bed. Instead, wanderlust had brightened Edmonton Connor’s eyes, but he tamped down the urge to travel because he had a pack to look after.
Now he’d been reduced to a feeble man who looked as old as he should be were he mortal. And for no apparent reason. Werewolves did not suffer mortal ailments. He’d not been physically injured. How to understand his failing health?
“I’ll contact Monsieur Hawkes and ask for a recommendation on someone who practices on our breed,” she said, and kissed her father’s cheek. “I’ll have him flown here as quickly as possible to look over the casualties in the keep and then I’m going to assign him to your bedside. I love you, Father.”
She took the case and left, blowing him a kiss as she closed the door behind her. She’d bring this to Natalie. She trusted the witch any day.
Chapter 3
The day had been long, and Lexi startled awake from her sitting position by the arched door opening into the keep. Her room had not been damaged, yet she hadn’t made it back there after overseeing the disaster and establishing triage in the keep. Now she stretched her legs out before her and arched her back. She hadn’t removed her long coat and she was warm. Too warm, almost stifling here in the windowless room that may have, in centuries past, often housed the entire castle inhabitants as they waited out the enemy.
Rubbing her eyes beneath the sunglasses—she never took them off—felt great. Checking her watch revealed it was three in the morning. Most of the keep was quiet, save a few who sat near the cots with wet towels and worried looks as they tended the wounded.
She stood, stretched again, and decided she could manage a few hours of sleep in her own bed, and a shower. Her kingdom for a shower.
She did have a small kingdom, actually. Well, Lana was the one who insisted on exploiting the princess title. Lexi thought it was ostentatious. Daughters of werewolf principals were referred to as princess—their sons were princes—but that didn’t make them royalty or heirs to a nonexistent castle and crown. But they did live in a castle and, despite the lacking crown, Lana certainly liked to play up the privileged princess routine. It worked well for her. Entitlement had always been her mien.
Lexi would rather choke on a watermelon than play soft, pink and delicate. If she didn’t have a hand and nose to the action, she wouldn’t know how to function. It was a natural compulsion to show her father how much she was willing to help. It was hard enough to get his attention, what with Lana’s pandering. Her sister could win a new Porsche with a bat of her lashes, and she had two in the shed to prove the power of that expert move. Lexi owned a battered old Range Rover. It got her where she needed to go, and that included flooded roads, muddy ditches and icy drives.
Wandering through the darkened halls of the castle, Lexi tugged off her coat and pushed the sunglasses up onto her head. It always took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust and color her surroundings a little brighter than when wearing the glasses, even despite the darkness inside the castle. Her breed had excellent night vision.
Her exhaustion felt as if she were dragging lead pipes for legs, and her shoulders ached. A cup of chamomile tea after her shower would relax her into a restful slumber.
Suddenly she stumbled and, before falling, caught herself with a balance of her hands. Turning swiftly, she saw she’d tripped over a man’s legs. He sat sprawled on the floor across from the lobby doors that had been blocked off with wood boards. Bitter cold air whisked through the hallway about her shoulders and she shuffled her coat back on and tapped down her glasses before kneeling to shake the man’s shoulders.
“Monsieur Hawkes?”
He mumbled something but didn’t open his eyes. His coat lay over his legs, and melted snow from his heavy pack boots puddled around his feet and legs.
“What are you doing here?”
“No place to sleep. Tired. Still missing…one man.”
It had been a good eighteen hours since the avalanche had struck. And this wolf had been working steadily to rescue the missing men. Only one left? He must have fallen asleep standing or, apparently, sat down and nodded off. Even wolves eventually got exhausted and couldn’t go without sleep.
She tugged his arm, provoking him to a grudging stand. “Come with me. We’ve a few open rooms.”
He twisted toward the boarded doors, which swung her around ungracefully as he looped an arm over her shoulder and stumbled a few steps as if a drunken man. “Have to find last one.”
Walking and talking in his sleep, this guy. “You can resume the search after you’ve rested. Is there a backup team out now?”
“Yes, three men volunteered. They’ve had rest. But I should help. Can’t let them down.” With a shake of his head, as if to chase off the exhaustion, he suddenly set back his shoulders and assumed a modicum of alertness. The move stretched him a head taller than she. He blinked a few times in the cool darkness. “Princess Connor. Sorry, I didn’t know it was you.”
“It’s Lexi,” she said, and tugged him toward the south wing. “And you’re not going anywhere but to bed.”
“Best offer I’ve had in a long time.”
She rolled her eyes. She had walked right into that one. For lack of practice in defense of horny males, surely. She couldn’t remember when a man had last flirted with her.
“We’ve a guest room that you can use. Shower, have something to eat, and sleep. I’ll make sure the night shift doesn’t stop until you rise to replace them. I want to thank you for your hard work. You certainly went above and beyond the call of duty for our pack.”
“It’s nothing anyone else wouldn’t have done.”
Actually, she believed it was a lot, and anyone else would have thought twice before jumping into the fray such as Hawkes had.
“Sorry about how rudely I treated your dad. I wasn’t thinking. My dad grilled me on the correct protocol before I traveled here, but my mind was elsewhere. I haven’t had experience with a pack before.”
“Don’t let it bother you. Father is already over it, I’m sure.”
“Did the elixir help?”
“Not sure. Our doctor administered a dose not long after you saw him. If you pray, Monsieur Hawkes, please pray for my father.”
“I do pray to the universe, and I will put in a good word for your father.”
She unlocked the guest room door with a slash of her control card, which worked on all doors in the castle, and strode inside the dark bedroom lit by a ray of pale moonshine. Nearing fullness. Perhaps three more days? She’d lost track of the monthly cycle since her father had become ill. While normally instinctual about the moon phases, she was too discombobulated by the day’s events to summon clear thought.
Hawkes trudged inside, his bo
ots forming small lakes in his wake. He pulled off his sweater and tossed it aside without care. The wolf slapped a palm to his bare abdomen and rubbed it, looking about the room with a long yawn.
He had a fine form. Not so bulky as the wolves in the pack, but certainly one of the biggest. Trystan was long, lean and hard with muscle that ridged his chest and stomach. Was it solid to the touch? Would her cool fingers warm against his pale skin?
Lexi stopped the divergent thoughts when she realized her tongue traced her upper lip. She forced herself to look away from the appealing sight. The wolf was still sleepwalking. He didn’t realize he was posing and flexing with every stretch he made. Couldn’t.
“Why are you wearing sunglasses?” he asked.
“I always wear them. The light hurts my eyes,” she said, offering the classic lie.
“It’s dark in here.” He sat on the end of the bed, dressed with the thick goose-down coverlets Lexi loved to snuggle into, and lay back, stretching out his arms above the spray of wild, red hair that he wore as if a defiant flag.
She strolled into the bathroom and turned on the light. “The shower stream is fierce. For reasons beyond my knowledge we have excellent water pressure here in the boondocks. You’ll love it. There should be fresh towels and linens in the closet. I’ll see about finding you some clean clothes and have the maid drop them off.”
The werewolf didn’t answer so Lexi peeked inside the bathroom closet to be sure there was soap and towels. Everything looked presentable. She liked to run a tight ship, and was pleased the maid kept up the extra rooms. It was the least they could offer to the man who had selflessly aided their pack today.
Crossing the room, soft snores lured her to the bedside. Arms stretched above his head and feet still on the floor, the fascinating wolf had fallen asleep.
She leaned over him, inspecting his rising and falling chest. Her fingers played in the air but inches from his skin, unwilling and—wisely—not touching. He was a fine piece of work. A few freckles spotted his shoulders and along the side of his muscle-strapped torso. She started mapping them out, tapping the air with a finger and wondering if she could form the constellation Orion....