by Holley Trent
“Get dressed,” he said. “We’re leaving.”
“Ha. Sure. And who the heck are you, anyway? Werewolf CPS?”
Being snarky when she was standing there naked and probably with a few twigs in her hair probably wasn’t having the effect she’d initially hoped for, but she had no other defenses. She’d use what she had, and she’d always had quite the mouth.
Crossing her arms over her torso, she cleared her throat and shifted her weight. “Not letting you take her anywhere. Not to an orphanage, or wherever you people from the state take kids nowadays, and certainly not back to Wolverton.”
“Wolverton,” he said in that low rumble and raised his other eyebrow.
“Uh-huh. You know. Wolverton, Wyoming. Population 133 werewolves, give or take a few persistent ghosts. You should visit one day on your next trip through the middle of nowhere.”
“I’ve been to a lot of places like that, and will be driving through plenty more, I imagine.” Still, he made no movement to hand the baby over.
Leo considered kicking his shins, or slapping him or something, but she didn’t think she’d experience the success from that endeavor that she required. He probably had her by a foot in height, and she’d always considered herself to be perfectly average in that department. While he wasn’t the broadest jerk she’d ever met, his presence still managed to be imposing and forbidding.
Or maybe what halted her aggressiveness was the way his eyes looked, or his expressionless face. He had perfect features. She couldn’t help but to look because she was apparently having a staring contest with him.
She couldn’t hold it.
Dang it.
She’d always sucked at staring contests. She couldn’t even win one against Kinzy.
“Get dressed,” he repeated.
“Where are you taking us?”
“Not to Wolverton.”
“Oh. Where to, then? Where do agents of the state dump their runaways?”
“I’m not an agent of the state, though I can’t help but to question if you need one. What the hell were you thinking, living a baby unattended?”
She scoffed and, reflexively because she was that stinking angry, gave the guy a hard poke to his shoulder.
He didn’t budge an inch.
Of course. Of freakin’ course.
She threw up her hands, but then quickly covered her chest again, because her boobs were like missiles, totally fueled and ready to launch.
Yeesh.
“Ugh. Come on, guy.” She stomped. “What choice did I have? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s no babysitters’ club out here in the middle of the forest. I did what I had to. Was the idea the best one? No. But I didn’t have a heap of options. You do what you have to do when you’re alone in the world, but I bet you wouldn’t understand that.”
His pretty jaw grated side to side for a few beats.
She gave her head a shake and tapped her foot impatiently. “I mean, look at you. You don’t look like you’ve ever missed a meal, or lost a fight, either. You’ve been living it up, haven’t you? And now you make your living harassing single moms who are just scraping by.”
“Scraping by is one thing. Any rational person would tell you that what you’re doing is reckless.”
“So what do you suggest I do, Mrs. Doubtfire? Hole up in a motel and call a babysitting service before I find some little patch of woods to run howling into?”
“If you knew the moon was coming, why did you leave Wolverton?”
Leo had never once lifted a middle finger to a person because her mother had taught her that the gesture was unforgivably vulgar, but she’d never been more tempted in her life to let one rip.
Two, actually. She had two middle fingers.
But to show them, she’d have to peel her arms away from her chest, and that was becoming less of a good idea by the moment. Kinzy needed to be fed, and Leo was leaking.
Leo didn’t doubt for a moment that the man had seen his fair share of naked tits and then some, but she wasn’t in the mood to be ogled. She’d gotten enough of that crap from her “husband.” “Stand right there so I can look at you, Leonora.”
Dirty bastard.
She rolled her eyes.
“The longer we stand here quibbling over nothing,” the guy said, “the more time will pass before Kinzy gets fed.”
“Nuh-uh. You don’t get to say my baby’s name.” She wagged a finger angrily at him, and then realized how silly and pedantic she must have looked, so she dropped her hand. She wasn’t a schoolteacher, after all. She was a broodmare with ambitions.
Unfortunately, those ambitions weren’t thought out very well before she’d grabbed her baby and fled into the backcountry, but she didn’t think anyone could really fault her for that. She was doing the best she could.
“Where’d you learn her name?” she asked, chin jutted aggressively. “Did my ex or one of his flunkies feed it to you? I wouldn’t trust a thing any of them say. They all have a habit of talking out of both sides of their mouths.”
The stoic giant narrowed his almond-shaped eyes slightly.
Apparently, she’d said too many words for him. If he was confused, she couldn’t really fault him. She had a habit of talking too much, but she couldn’t help it. She’d grown up in a house with six kids, and she’d been right in the middle. She’d had to learn to get the words out the moment she had a chance to speak them.
“Her birth certificate is in her diaper bag,” he said after too darn long.
Leo blinked. “Oh. Duh.”
“Get dressed, so we can go.”
“I’m not doing anything until you tell me where you think I’m going with you.”
“Somewhere safe.”
“Safe for who?”
“All of us.”
She nodded slowly. “Okay. You’ve got to excuse me for being skeptical, but I suspect your idea of safe may differ somewhat from my own. Give me some more words, smiley.”
He closed his eyes and forced an exhalation through his nose. “New Mexico,” he said. “There’s a pack in New Mexico that will take you in.”
“Yeah, nope. That’s not the way things work with wolves. That’s why I’m out here seeing the beauty of America on my own two feet with a baby strapped to my knockers.”
At the utterance of the words, Leo’s left breast gave a sharp pain of, Gonna blow soon. Better get ready! The left one always leaked. Leo had recently come to resort to stuffing baby socks in her bra along with nursing pads to wick the moisture.
“Give me my baby so I can feed her,” she said on a whine.
“No,” he said. “Get dressed first. We need to get on the road. Got a lot of driving to do before tonight, unless you want to find yourself shapeshifting in the backseat of a pickup truck.”
“What?” She furrowed her brow at him. He still wasn’t doing a very good job of explaining anything.
“And I’m well aware of the way wolfpacks operate. In spite of what you may assume about me—and your assumptions are extremely cute, I must say—I’ve spent the last ten years of my life scraping by. More often than not, the roof I had over my head was that of a vehicle, and not even a trailer sort of vehicle.”
“A trailer sounds real nice right about now,” Leo muttered.
He blinked at her again.
“Oh, for goodness’s sake.” She stomped around him, found her underwear and bra and put those on first thing, whimpering a bit at her bra’s punishing compression. Then she put on her jeans, found a shirt in her backpack that wasn’t held together by baby spit, and tugged on a pair of socks.
“Say I go with you,” she said, zipping up her bag. “Not that I am, but say I do. What makes you think this place will take me in?”
“Because that’s what they do.”
“Uh-huh. Well, I’ve never heard of there being any packs in New Mexico.” She stuffed her tender feet into the hiking boots she’d stolen from her sister, and risked a glance up at her newest male annoyanc
e.
He was stroking the back of Kinzy’s fuzzy little head, perfectly calm, and the baby didn’t seem to mind so much, either.
“Baby probably has bad eyes and a bum nose,” she muttered as she gathered her bags. “Can’t tell that’s a dude holding her. She should be wailing.”
“I’m parked about a mile from here,” he said. “I’ll take the bags. You take the baby. Feed her while you walk. Do you have a carrier of some sort?”
Duh. She gave him a long blink. She figured turnabout was fair play.
“Either you carry her, or I will,” he said flatly. “She needs to be fed. If you’re not up to the task, we can get her some formula when we get on the road.”
“You’re not giving my kid formula. I don’t care what the government says. Formula has mind-control agents inside.”
She was joking…sort of. Still, Kinzy hadn’t had a single swallow of formula since birth, and Leo didn’t plan on starting a new habit just yet.
“I believe I suggested you feed her,” he said. “You’re nursing, are you not?”
“What gave it away? The porn star ta-tas? Not that I’ve watched much porn in my life. Didn’t get good cable where I grew up. I assume that’s the way most porn stars are built, though.”
“They come in all shapes and sizes.”
Her jaw dropped.
He stared.
“Did you just confess to watching porn?”
“I didn’t confess to anything. Sex workers are people, and people are all different. Ergo…” He ground his teeth and scooped up the diaper bag. “And your scent would have told me you were nursing, even if your appearance didn’t. Let’s walk. I’ve got water and some granola bars in the truck. We’ll have to wait to get something more substantial.”
“You’re really taking us to New Mexico?”
“Of all the things I am, a liar isn’t one of them.”
“Why?”
“Why aren’t I a liar? That’s a strange question.”
“No, why’d you come looking for me if my ex didn’t send you?”
“Because I had to.”
“Oh, for goodness sakes.” Leo tugged her shirt’s hem down and started winding the stretchy fabric of the baby wrap around her torso. “I bet next you’re going to tell me you can’t explain any further, except to say that you’re here on the will of the Fates or some such nonsense.”
The guy clutching her kid leaned against the rock and kept his lips zipped as she secured the wrap around her. He kept his mouth shut tighter than Leo’s ex kept his wallet closed until she was done, at which point he asked, “You don’t believe that the Fates pull strings?”
“Sure I do.” She held out her arms for Kinzy.
He made no immediate movements to hand her over.
“Come on, dude. You said you wanted to get moving, so give me the baby so we can move.”
“I asked you a question.”
“And you’re not gonna give me Kinzy until I answer to your satisfaction, huh?”
“I’m not concerned with my satisfaction. I’m not used to the luxury of it. I’m simply trying to discern where your head is at so I can make appropriate decisions.”
“And you think I’m gonna help you make those decisions?” She plopped her hands onto her hips and gave her head a hard shake. “Well, you’ve got another think coming, bub. In case you’ve forgotten already, I don’t know you. I don’t plan on getting to know you, and I don’t want to know you.”
That last part might have been a lie, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. When Leo got into certain moods, there was no changing her mind about things, and standing there in the forest staring at Mr. Tall, Dark, and Hotness, she was in a mood, all right.
A very confusing one.
She wasn’t sure if she should jump him or hump him.
And he blinked at her again.
She let out an exasperated breath and held out her arms. “Gimme. Come on. A child needs her mama.”
“And in my experience, sometimes a child gets on just fine without her mother, because she has no choice.”
“Are you threatening me, you smug jerk-face?”
“Simply stating an observation. You should know how wolves get on. Children being separated from their mothers before they’re ready isn’t an unusual occurrence, especially for the boys.”
Oh. Leo thunked her forehead again. Duh.
He’d been talking about himself, and she’d been so eager to put him in his place that she wasn’t thinking straight.
She held her arms out again.
He didn’t blink at her, at least. He reached for her big backpack and slung it up to his shoulder singlehandedly.
“Get the diaper bag,” he said. “I don’t trust you not to run. I’ll hang onto Kinzy. You can have her back when we get to the truck.”
“Nuh-uh! Where I come from, that’s called a bait-and-switch.”
“You can call it that if you want.” He started walking, and not at a leisurely, come-on-catch-up kind of pace, either. He had to be walking a good fourteen-minute mile, in spite of the foliage and uneven terrain, and all Leo could do was follow him helplessly.
“Damn it. One of these days, someone’ll listen to me,” she muttered.
“Don’t assume that just because you’re not getting your way that the people around you aren’t listening. Trust me.” He squeezed between two tight trees without even skimming the bark. “I’m listening.”
CHAPTER THREE
Every time Arnold peeked at his borrowed truck’s rearview mirror, he caught Leonora giving him narrow-eyed looks that might have been ball-withering if her face hadn’t been so sweet. Heart-shaped, with pouty lips and a few freckles across her nose.
If she hadn’t been a lactating werewolf with that “vicious” snarly mama thing going on, he might have described her as happy-go-lucky. Wolf women with young children had a shit-ton of hostility triggers. He couldn’t blame her for being pissed, but hoped she’d feel much better when they arrived at Norseton. She was smart to think he was trying to play her in some way—most wolves encountered in the wild weren’t trustworthy—but he had to be careful, too. She was an unknown entity and, though he’d pieced together a few facts about her, he needed to exercise caution. She’d rely on instincts to keep her baby safe. She’d certainly run with the slightest provocation.
Arnold was doing his damnedest to not give her an opportunity to run—a show of restraint that had the side effect of creating a fun problem for his bladder. They were approaching the Colorado-New Mexico border, and Arnold needed to take a leak. His liquid composition was likely far more coffee than blood plasma, and that wasn’t sustainable in the slightest bit. He had a lot more driving to do before nightfall, but he wanted to arrive in Norseton with his bladder intact and having had no embarrassing accidents.
“We’ll stop for lunch just up ahead,” he said, risking a glance into the mirror.
She wasn’t looking at him, for once. She was fiddling with her shirt in a way that indicated she was about to nurse, so he quickly put his gaze back on the road.
“Go on and eat,” she said. “Take your time. We’ll stay in the truck. Nice truck, by the way. Is it new? Looks new.”
Arnold was pretty sure the truck was new. The vehicle belonged to one of the wolves at Norseton. He hadn’t had time to explain why he’d needed to borrow the vehicle, only that he’d needed to leave immediately. Colt had passed the keys over without a word.
Arnold ignored her second question, and said, “We’re all getting out. We’re going into the rest stop. You go freshen up. Change Kinzy’s diaper. Do what you have to do. Then we’ll grab something to eat and bring the food back to the truck.”
“I bet you’re going to stand outside the stall to make sure I don’t abscond, right? Like I’m some kind of violent offender who needs constant supervision.”
“Well, I don’t know how violent you are, but you certainly need supervision. Leaving your baby unsupervised for eight hours?
For God’s sake, woman.”
“I already told you, I—”
He scoffed, effectively silencing her protest, and slung the truck into the lot, pulling up beside a gas pump.
She reached for her door handle with one hand, holding Kinzy awkwardly with her other arm. She hadn’t even fixed her shirt.
“Nope.” He hopped down from the truck and peered into the window she’d let down an inch. “You wait here until after I’ve gotten gas.”
She narrowed her eyes again, which she couldn’t seem to do without crinkling her nose.
So freaking cute.
He pinched the bridge of his own nose and groaned.
“What if I need to go?” she asked.
“If you really needed to go, I think you would have said something long before I approached this lot. You haven’t kept your mouth shut about any other thing, after all.”
“You’re not a nice person. You know that?”
He scoffed again and twisted off the gas cap. “Lady, you have no idea how nice I am.”
“Nice is a relative thing when we’re talking about werewolves.”
Arnold glanced behind him and beyond the truck, scanning to area to ensure that there were no mundanes within earshot. As far as human beings were concerned, werewolves were fables depicted in horror flicks or teen television romances, and wolves generally liked to keep mundanes in the dark about their existence. People hated what they didn’t understand.
He shoved the nozzle into the tank hole and shifted his weight while the gauge counted gallons. The sound of sloshing liquid made him think of his bladder and its precarious state.
Leonora scooted over to the window and leaned her forearm onto the sill. “So, tell me about this place you’re taking me to. Are there phones there? Running water? Police?”
He grunted.
The Norseton Wolves were the police in Norseton, in a manner of speaking. They had a few actual cops in town to handle minor municipal stuff, but for the most part, the Vikings who owned the place tended to self-regulate pretty well. The wolves had been hired as security for the higher-ups, and as the pack expanded, so did the community’s built-in law enforcement staff.