Glittering eyes flickered in my periphery. Go time. Lips curved in a canine grin, I charged the duka. I leapt and twisted midjump, kicking him in the chest with my rear paws. The duka’s thick arms cinched over empty air. A second later Haden pounced him from behind and sank his teeth into the fae’s nape, shaking his head until black ichor soaked the duka’s shirt. The fae stood his ground, reaching behind him to grip Haden’s ruff. He yanked until Haden yelped and released him, and then he flung the wolf aside.
The fae made as if to finish the job, and I cut in line for another turn. I went for his jugular while another pack member helped Haden crawl to safety. I snapped my teeth inches from the duka’s double chins, jaws aching to latch around his throat, but he fisted my scruff and sent me flying. Two other wargs danced on the edge of my vision. It was their turn, and I was hogging the fun. Too bad. I shook out my fur and lunged again. This time I caught flab between my teeth and worked my jaw until licorice-flavored blood filled my mouth. The duka slapped me down so hard I saw stars, planets and a couple of moons.
Moore and Abram darted past me, tag teaming the duka while the ringing in my ears faded. The fae hurled them like Frisbees, too, but they were ready for it and landed mostly on their paws. Zed and Nathalie made their run next, one in front and one in back. Zed was plucked off the fae’s chest, but he was wiry and stronger than he looked. He wriggled and squirmed and made it difficult for the duka to clamp down on him long enough to toss him. Nathalie, on the other hand, was sawing her way through the fae’s spine with the single-minded determination of a woman unafraid to floss marrow out of her teeth before bed. The duka shrieked and punted Zed in a frantic spasm before ripping Nathalie off his back, bringing her around to yell bloody murder in her face, and then hurled her as far as his quivering muscles allowed.
“Is that…it?” His arms flung wide in an open challenge no one rushed to accept. Purple sweat dotted his brow as he tossed his head back and laughed to the moon. “Is that…all you’ve got?”
Neck exposed, he offered me prime real estate at a fraction of the cost of our earlier encounters. Once more I sprang at him, clamping my jaws around his throat and flinging my head until hunks of meat came away in my mouth. His cackling turned to screams, and he sank his sweaty hands into my fur. Yanking on me ripped him open, but it also threatened to dislocate my jaw.
“Let…go,” he gurgled wetly.
I let the rumble in my chest answer for me while I made his esophagus my chew toy.
Impact sent the duka staggering forward. The tips of Moore’s ears peeked over the fae’s shoulders. Backup had arrived. Moore and I might have our issues, but he was as solid as they came where it counted. Hissing profanities, the duka made a blind grab behind his head and ripped Moore off before he got a good grip. The fae, shaking with adrenaline, jabbed a thick finger in the side of my mouth, between my jaws, and pressed back until I gagged and released him.
“Bitch,” he snarled, clamping his hand over my muzzle. “You’ll die for that.”
He hammered one globular fist down on the crown of my head, and my skull rang. It was still echoing when he dumped me on the ground at his feet, clutched my tail and swung me into a nearby tree. Crack. My spine absorbed the impact, and my hind legs tingled with oncoming numbness.
A whipcord-thin wolf, ribs exposed beneath his mangy pelt, darted between the duka and me. My distraction had bought the others time to catch their breath. Howls ringing through the crisp night air, the wolves piled on the fae while Zed stood sentry over me.
Cheek mashed into a clump of molding leaves, I sucked in harsh breaths peppered with rot while my body did its thing. Ten years later, the prickling in my limbs receded, and I pushed onto all fours. I wobbled, but I didn’t fall down. I’d take it. I managed one tipsy step toward the dog pile.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Zed asked in the bored tone he reserved for morons.
My ears flattened against my skull. “The pack needs me.”
“You tangle with that fae again, and you’ll get yourself killed.” He met my gaze for the briefest of seconds before glancing aside. “I’m not assisting in your suicide.”
“That’s not—” I spluttered. “I’m not—”
Rewinding the night’s events, I replayed my actions from his perspective, and the world tilted under my paws.
No, no, no. I was not this weak or this stupid. Great googly moogly. What had I almost done?
I was not my momma. I wasn’t. Except what had tonight been if not a stellar impersonation of Blanche Preston? Packs still whispered about her in hushed tones, and courtesy of me being her only child, they gossiped about my antics like I was the second coming.
“Prove it.” Avoiding eye contact, Zed watched the fight winding down. “Go home. Heal. Sleep for more than four hours strung together.”
Sleep extended an open invitation for dreams, and all I had was the one that played on repeat.
Cold metal siding dented under my back. A warm body smelling of soldering irons and circuit boards spread my legs, wrapped them around his hips under the light of the moon. The RV rocked from the force of his thrusts. My name ripped from his lips. Stupid girl. I mistook it for a promise.
No thanks. I preferred the honesty of waking up alone to dreaming there was someone beside me.
“You saved me from myself once,” Zed intoned with quiet ferocity. “Let me return the favor.”
How could I not? He and I were broken the same way, our hearts split down the same fault lines, our jagged edges meshing. Our friendship went bone-deep, and I was the last person who ought to put those shadows in his eyes. Zed had lost the woman who meant the world to him. What kind of crap friend was I to make him wonder if one day he might lose me too?
“Zed, I…”
“Don’t make any promises you can’t keep.”
For Zed to stage an intervention in the middle of a hunt meant he knew. And if he knew, then the others must suspect. Crap on a cracker, it sucked having a cautionary tale as a mother. All the eyes watching me, waiting for me to trip up, and here I was putting on a free show. Humiliation accomplished what pride failed to achieve. I tucked my tail and left Zed to oversee the duka’s death throes.
Home didn’t feel sweet these days, so I didn’t return to the RV park where the pack lived. Instead I followed a creek up the mountain and limped deeper into the forest until I spotted my refuge. Every beta ought to have one when the stress of leading a pack got too overwhelming. Then again, most packs didn’t have absentee alphas depending on their second-in-command to hold down the fort for weeks at a time.
The small cave had once belonged to a bear. Black fur filled the crevices, and dried scat mounded in the back corner, but the wolf didn’t mind since the scents were old. I had stumbled across the hidey-hole while in search of a stray troll and claimed it as my own. I would have to crawl on my hands and knees to clear the low entrance if I was human, but the wolf managed just fine. The space was maybe ten feet deep and perhaps five feet tall at the farthest point. Not spacious, but plenty big enough for one. The best part was it stayed bone dry. Despite the afternoon showers that arrived like clockwork this time of year, my den was immune to Mother Nature’s tears thanks to the cavity facing a downward slope.
Zings of agony blasted up my spine until each footstep caused fresh pain to radiate through my abused limbs. Tonight had been close. Too close. And for what?
I growled at the mound of red-and-black flannel crumpled in the centermost space. On days when I felt super pathetic, I left my soft bed in my comfy RV and came up here to sleep curled on top of that damn shirt, just so the burnt-metal scent of its previous owner enfolded me one last time. These days the fabric smelled more wolf than man, and the part of me willing to crawl back to him on my belly after being kicked wanted to howl at the loss.
God I was pathetic. No wonder I kept my shrine to broken dreams a secret. The wolf was screwing with my head. That was all. This wasn’t me. It couldn’t be. She had
chosen her mate, and he had left us, and she didn’t know what to do after picking someone who hadn’t picked us back. For starters, we could do some redecorating.
Allowing myself to bury my nose in the fabric one last time, I brought his scent deep into my lungs. Then I pinched the material between my teeth, stepped outside and trotted up the path leading to the bluff. The sheer drop made my stomach twist when I got close to the edge and gazed out at the beautiful Smoky Mountain range. The shirt fluttered in the air currents, stirring more of that burnt-metal smell, as I hung my head over the edge.
And then I let go.
Chapter 2
The first time I met Marshal Thierry Thackeray, our conclave liaison, I almost bucked into an involuntary shift. Despite appearing human, she reeked of fur and magic and death, things that set my wolf’s teeth on edge. These days my tolerance for her was higher, but she still gave me the heebie-jeebies. Especially when I stepped out of the RV the next morning and found her sitting in my plastic lawn chair with a leather-bound book in her hands, engrossed in its contents like she’d been waiting a while.
My dreams of doing nothing on my first day off went up in a puff of smoke.
Emerald runes speckled the skin of her left arm from fingertips to shoulder, and the creepy tattoos—or whatever they were—glimmered as if lit from within. She was the half-blood daughter of some legendary fae, but his name escaped me. I had a book about him on my nightstand along with all the other heavy reading I was doing on fae these days. It paid to know your enemy, and I wanted encyclopedic knowledge of what we were up against.
“Thierry,” I managed with as much enthusiasm as an arachnophobe trapped in a porta-potty with a spider perched on the tissue roll. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Surprise inspection.” Her vivid green eyes flicked up to mine, catching my flinch, and she chuckled until she dropped her bookmark. “Kidding, Dell. I’m kidding.”
“Oh.” I huffed out a thin laugh as authentic as the local Mexican restaurant.
Stepping back, I gave her room to stand without bumping into me. She and I were of a height. I pegged her at five-ten to my five-eleven. Our builds were similar, too, both of us athletic verging on lean. There the similarities quit. Her sleek black hair reminded me of a starless night sky while mine was the strawberry blonde all kids resented inheriting with the fire of a thousand suns. Curly too, of course, because that made brushing leaves out of my hair the morning after a run so much easier. My eyes were faded denim to her cloverleaf. I was also freckled in places not polite to mention in mixed company due to the amount of time I spent naked as a jaybird.
“Nice place.” She patted the side of my RV. “This is new, right?”
“It was delivered last week from the dealer over in Elizabethton.” I resisted the urge to dust her fingerprints off the polished siding. “I’ve never owned something new that no one but me has ever used.”
My RV was more of a pop-up camper if I’m honest. The compact recreational vehicle collapsed for easy hauling, not that I had a truck or could afford to buy one after this splurge, and folded up to form a hard-side tent. It had all the amenities—bed, toilet, shower, sink, cooktop, micro table and seating area—in an area ten feet long by seven feet wide. It was cozy, and I paid cash for it. That was the most important thing. I didn’t like debt. I hated when creditors slithered over the ground like reaching vines to swipe at your legs in the hopes they could knock you off your feet.
“Sounds like it was money well spent.” One more pat, and she lowered her arm. “I brought you four new recruits for the program.” Dark circles beneath her eyes told me she was sleeping about as well as me. Dollars to donuts, our nightmares weren’t the same though. “The decision about who stays, of course, is yours. You have a better feel for pack dynamics than I do.”
Giving me the final word was a small mercy. Our pack had teetered on the razor’s edge, a group of busted-up wolves searching for a target to vent all that pent-up rage, before the conclave decided to pass out licenses to kill for predators armed to the teeth with, well, teeth.
Our alphas had cobbled the Lorimar pack together from the outcasts in our old pack. Each wolf sworn to Cord Graeson and Camille Ellis was broken, and most were downright mean when the mood struck. Balancing the old pack with Thierry’s steady stream of new recruits was a lesson in patience, and that was a commodity running in short supply.
“Doing some light reading, huh?” Her knuckles made a dull thump against the hide-bound tome. “I haven’t seen a copy of A Field Guide to Fae Folk since I was in marshal academy.”
The one sad cup of instant coffee I had gulped down while dressing wasn’t enough for this. Lack of caffeine had prevented me from realizing the book she had been reading was mine. “Cam checked it out of some conclave library.” I accepted it when she offered and inspected the cover. “I must have left it out here last night.” After I trudged home from the mountain and curled up on my mattress. “I’m glad it didn’t rain.”
“The cover is spelled,” she assured me. “It’s waterproof and flame retardant.”
“Good to know.” Getting us back on track, I tossed the book onto my bed then shut the door and started heading toward the building that used to act as a rental office at the entrance of the Stone’s Throw RV Park. “So four new guys, huh?” Our core pack was small. Less than a dozen wolves. But word traveled fast about the pack who hunted fae without fear of conclave retribution, and wargs had been showing up on our doorstep for weeks. Most planned on returning to their packs, eventually. Others had voiced interest in making our temporary alliance more permanent. That, thank the Lord, was not my headache. “That brings the pledge total up to fourteen.”
“Yes.” She walked beside me, matching my stride, and opened her hand. Four delicate eggs sat on her palm. “I came prepared in case you gave this batch two thumbs down.”
Crack one of those bad boys over someone’s head, and they lost six hours of memory. Poof. Talk about getting your brain scrambled.
“I appreciate the backup.” Thanking the fae got you locked in towers, spinning straw into gold or just plain dead. Even a half-fae like Thierry could collect on that debt. Appreciating their efforts skirted the line without implying I owed her for helping. That was the first lesson Cam had drummed into my thick skull. “Some of these lunkheads don’t want to go peacefully. They don’t take rejection well.”
“Which is why it’s better for us if they don’t remember it.” She pocketed the eggs, and we kept going. “How are you liking the RV lifestyle?”
“A house on wheels is a step up from exile, if that’s what you’re asking,” I joked. Mostly.
Dot Cahill, Cam’s aunt, bought the Stone’s Throw RV Park when it became obvious the Lorimar pack would be staying in Butler, Tennessee for the foreseeable future. Real estate was her hobby. She bought, sold and traded property as though life were one giant game of Monopoly. Maybe for a fae with deep pockets and a case of incurable wanderlust it was.
A cabin-like structure came into view, a rustic castle encircled by a moat of dazzling white gravel. The wooden sign that read Welcome to Stone’s Throw RV Park hung over a heavy oak door with actual rivets dotting the thick iron bands crisscrossing its length. That detail alone made the office seem downright medieval.
Either the previous owners had lived life like it was a renaissance faire, or they had been preppers ready to greet the zombie apocalypse from the safety of their mini fortress. I was just thankful they had dreamed big and given us so much space to use.
Given the size of our pack and our propensity for nudity, we had closed the park to outsiders. Since we weren’t taking on new tenants, Cord had claimed the former manager’s office as his own and handled pack business there. And because the alphas were out of the building—and the state—that meant I got to preside there.
Goodie.
Four men built for brawling cluttered the narrow walkway ahead. Haden barred the doorway, keeping an eye on our guests.
A timer dinged behind me, and I poured myself a cup—downed it—and then topped off my mug before facing the room. Thierry left her post beside the door, crossed the room and helped herself to steaming hot joe before resuming her position. Haden stood opposite her, both guarding the only exit.
The men swiveled in their seats to watch Haden, of course, but he just grinned like a kid in a candy store at the dressing-down that was coming.
“I’m Adele Preston, beta of the Lorimar pack.” I addressed the backs of four heads that whipped toward the sound of my voice faster than a striking rattler. “You can call me Dell.”
“You’re the beta?” One man stood so quickly, he knocked over his chair. “You’re a woman.”
“Thanks for noticing.” You’d think the boobs would have given it away sooner, the things were huge, but I digress. “Now are you sitting down or are you leaving?”
He looked to the other men for support. They didn’t blink. Excellent. There was hope for them yet.
“Where is the alpha? Where is Cord Graeson?” His fists clenched at his sides. “I demand to speak to him.”
“Sorry, Cord can’t come to the phone right now.” I didn’t expect the alpha couple’s return for another forty-eight hours. “You deal with me, or you hit the road. Your call.”
A rumble grated low in his throat. “I’m out of here.”
“Safe travels.” I wiggled my fingers at him as he left. “Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out.”
Thierry followed him, hand in her pocket. She popped in five minutes later with a wet paper towel she used to clean her fingers. With her in position, I proceeded. “Anyone else here have trouble taking orders from a woman?”
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