by Holley Trent
“Well, the way you’re going about this looks a lot like mate abandonment to me.”
“That’s not my fault.”
“I’d say it is. I thought you didn’t want to be like Dad.”
“Don’t go there. Don’t even go there. Actually, you know what? This conversation isn’t going anywhere, anyway, so leave. Enjoy your lunch.”
“No.” Petra collapsed onto the blanket next to him. “Come on. I’ve never known you to be the type who’d give up.”
“Think, P. I wasn’t all that invested in the first place, right? I get some stupid vision telling me to go snatch a lady and her kid from the woods. So I go get her and bring her back to this place where I’d barely been living in for a week myself. Come to find out she’s some nut job polygamist’s seventh wife or something, and has been on such a short leash all her life that she won’t even entertain the idea of letting a man get close, much less the wolf who bit her.”
Petra plucked at a bit of desert weed growing beside the blanket’s edge and stared at him.
“Don’t give me that stare. You know damn well I’m right.”
“No. You’re not.”
“Okay, fine.” He shrugged. “Whatever.”
“You want to know what I think?”
“Not particularly.”
“Well, I’m gonna tell you anyway,” she said. “Just like when you gave me unsolicited opinions about my medical condition, I’m going to give you one about your relationship.”
“That’s hardly the same thing, and you know it.”
“Doesn’t matter. This is what Ma brought us up to do, right? Be so annoyingly enmeshed in each other’s personal business that we’re not sure if we love each other or if we each want to dig a grave to roll the other into.”
“Me worrying about you having blackout seizures is a reasonable sort of nosiness. You insisting that I should harass a lady who’s just not that into me is unreasonable. Do you see the difference?”
Petra reached over and plucked the side of his forehead.
“Ow!”
“You’re stupid, Arnold. I told you that you didn’t need to concern yourself with my health because Paul is monitoring me.”
“So I should give up any and all responsibility for you now, right?”
“You were never responsible for me. In case you forgot, I left our old pack voluntarily. I didn’t need you to be my protector. I left because we were better off together than separate. But we’re not in a place anymore where nobody cares about us. And you think I don’t know what you’re doing, but I’m on to you. Don’t try to change the subject and distract me. This conversation is about you and what you’re not doing to get your mate.”
“I thought that discussion ended when I informed you that she wasn’t into me.”
Petra closed her eyes, forced out a sharp exhalation through her nose, and clenched her hands into fists at her sides. “You know,” she said quietly. “I started taking up meditation a couple of weeks ago. Helps me sort through the overflowing psychic crap that bleeds over from Paul.” She opened one dark eye and fixed it on him. “The practice was his mother’s idea. She doesn’t really understand wolves at all, but she comes up with ideas, anyway.” Petra opened her other eye so both orbs were focused on her brother. “Sometimes, her ideas aren’t so bad, and that’s why I don’t dismiss them out of hand. She’s just trying to help as an outsider to the relationship who can maybe propose different things because she’s not as caught up in all the noise as Paul and I are.”
“What are you telling me, Petra?”
“I’m saying this not as your sister, but as an outsider looking in. Most of the wolves here didn’t know what functional relationships looked like until they had a chance to form some with people they actually liked. You and me, we’re no different from them. Our parents didn’t stick it out, and so we think, why would anyone? But the thing is, we’re biologically coded to be faithful, and to stick around when we’ve found the right person. I’ve never been surer of that.” She gestured toward the houses around the wolf courtyard. “They’re not just playing around. This isn’t an experiment for them. You had an inside edge, Arnold. You were sent to fetch the person you’re supposed to be with, and yet you’re sitting here screwing around with a gun instead of trying to ingratiate yourself with her a little bit. Two freakin’ months you’ve avoided her, Arnold? Really?”
“She was clear that she wanted to be left alone.”
Petra rolled her eyes, muttered something incoherent under her breath, and then stood. “Let’s go. Now.”
“Where are we going?”
“Lunch. Put your crap away and let’s go. This pack only has room for one loner wolf, and Darius already has that title.”
She jutted her hand down toward him. The stubborn crease between her eyes suggested that she wasn’t going to give him any room for negotiation.
Fortunately for her, he was too tired to argue. He hoped that if he did what she said, he could finally get some sleep.
___
Arnold twisted the corner of his paper napkin into a crude shape and ground his teeth, giving his sister the same evil glower across the diner table that she was giving him.
“That was dirty as hell, and you know it,” he said.
Paul, seated beside Petra and opposite Arnold in the booth, scoffed and dumped sugar into his black coffee. “Of course she knows. You’ve known her for twenty-five years. You should be aware by now that she doesn’t play by the rules.”
“And yet you married her.”
Paul shrugged and sipped. “There’s someone for everyone.”
“You didn’t tell me Leo works here.”
Petra picked up her menu, thereby blocking his view of her face and the eye-roll she was probably performing. “You didn’t ask.”
Leo walked over, smiling and wearing her hair pulled high in a bouncy ponytail, and a sweatshirt that looked straight out of the eighties. Strawberry Shortcake and all her delicious friends danced across the front.
“How are you liking the job?” Paul asked before Arnold could think up a suitably benign thing to say to his mate besides “Hi.”
“I like it a lot, actually. I get to meet everyone in the community, the restaurant is an easy walk from my house, and the tips aren’t bad.” She beamed.
Arnold just bet the oh-so-generous males in the Viking clientele were more than willing to open their wallets to make a pretty waitress’s day.
“Where’s Kinzy?” he asked flatly.
Petra gave his shin a hard kick under the table.
He glowered at her. Perhaps his delivery had come across sounding a bit hostile, but that wasn’t his fault. The wolf living in his head was in a shitty mood, and some of its impulsivity was leaching over to the man part of Arnold.
Leo tucked a loose swath of hair behind her ear and wriggled her order pad out of her apron pocket. “Babysitting co-op. A bunch of the young moms in the community take part. That way, we get to keep more of our take-home pay. We trade off watching each other’s kids.”
“I would have watched her. I work nights.”
“I—” Leo shifted her weight and pulled her bottom lip between her teeth.
Say something.
“Leo!” one of the other waitresses called from behind the counter. “You’re up again.”
Arnold thought the lady had just been reminding Leo to get an order out to a table, but Leo had turned and was staring up at the television mounted in the corner at the end of the counter. The words written at the bottom of the screen read: MISSING INFANT. The picture behind them was of Kinzy, not long after birth. She still had on her hospital bracelet.
The next image was of Leo, and the words overlaid on her picture were: LAST SEEN WITH HER MOTHER.
Some dipshit was offering a reward. The news program had even interviewed Leo’s mother, who very tersely explained that she didn’t know anything, but that she just wanted her daughter and granddaughter back. She looked uncomforta
ble on the screen, but Arnold imagined she had to be, if a certain man had put her up to speaking.
“Damn,” Petra whispered. “National coverage for a couple of missing people from a small town in Wyoming? That doesn’t make sense.”
Leo turned, sighed, and wrested a pen out of her pocket. “Samuel’s got a lot of money. He’s probably throwing it at whoever he can. He looks at this like he’s losing out on an investment. Costs a lot of money keep a wife, you know. Not that I ever saw any of it. What are you having?”
Seriously?
Arnold pushed his menu aside and put his back against the window. “Who could eat? Also, why doesn’t him putting out an APB on you bother you more?”
“Because that same segment has been running for three days, and everyone here knows the score. No one’s gonna rat me out for that pittance he’s offering as a reward.”
“No one here,” Paul said, “but what if you ever need to leave the community?”
“I haven’t had to in two months. Besides, in a little while, this’ll all blow over and folks will forget about me. Kinzy’s picture is already outdated, and, as far as I go, one blonde looks pretty much like another, right?”
Is she fucking serious?
She blinked at him. “What?”
“You don’t get how this scenario could be dangerous for you?”
“Of course I do. I’m the one who ran away from him, remember?”
“You can’t just sweep this under the rug and hope nothing happens. You’ve got to be proactive.”
She nodded slowly. “Okay. So, what do you propose I do? Hitch a ride up to Wolverton and wait for Samuel to show up? Explain to him that I’m all right, and apologize for the inconvenience?”
“Call the news. Tell them you’re fine and that you left on purpose, and that you don’t want your location known.”
“That’d be all well and good if this mess were only about me, but Kinzy is all caught up in the chaos, too. Samuel may not be able to get on television and publicly state that I’m his wife —”
“You’re not,” Arnold muttered.
Leo drummed the end of her pen against her order pad and gave him a quelling stare.
He put up his hands. “Fine. I’ll shut up.”
“As I was saying, he can’t go on television and say I’m his wife, but he can still raise a stink about Kinzy. As her father, he’s got rights.”
“Utter bullshit,” Paul said. “I really suggest you consult a lawyer.”
“To what end?”
“You need someone to work on your behalf who can keep your whereabouts discreet,” Petra said. “Someone who can present your case to a judge without revealing that they’re dealing with a scenario involving folks who aren’t quite human. If folks knew what women in most packs endured, they’d never expect you to take Kinzy back to Samuel.”
“But we can’t tell people that we exist,” Leo said.
“No, but you can still make a case. There are plenty of other reasons for you to not want to go back there.”
“You might be able to get him to back off with the mere threat of you filing the paperwork,” Paul said. “If he’s smart, he’s not going to risk anyone going up there to investigate. If polygamy is rampant in the pack up there—”
“Packs,” Leo corrected. “Wolverton doesn’t have one unified pack. There are loose collections of large families located around Wolverton. The alpha is the mayor, and for the most part, senior male wolves maintain order in their own family groups. My father wasn’t interested in taking more than one wife, but he didn’t have a problem with giving me and my sisters up to those losers.”
“Okay,” Arnold said. “So, we’ll be careful.”
“You’re going to help me?”
“Why do you sound so surprised? I told you I’d give you a chance to choose. As far as I’m concerned, this is just an extension of that promise. If you want to live life however you see fit, then you shouldn’t have to do it confined to this small community. You should be able to come and go as you please, not just for your sake, but Kinzy’s, too. She deserves to get out into the world. The world is much larger than most wolves ever get to know.”
Probably, no one would have been as surprised as Arnold that he actually believed what he was saying. For ten years, he and Petra had banded together against the dog-eat-dog world and had, maybe, more than a little derision toward “normal” people. He was becoming one of those normal-enough people, and he didn’t want any other wolf to ever have to suffer the alternative.
“I want that for Kinzy,” Leo said after a minute. She pinned her gaze on the television once more, then with a final shake of her head, poised her pen over her notepad and looked to Paul. “How do I find a lawyer?”
“I know one in Norseton who’d probably be interested in the case. I’ll get you his number after lunch.”
“Make the appointment,” Arnold said to her. “I’ll go with you.”
She nodded slowly, not meeting his gaze, but that was all right with him. At least they were on speaking terms.
“’Kay. What do you want to eat?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Four days later, Kinzy clutched to Arnold’s shirt as if he were a long-lost friend she’d been deprived of, and made cooing noises at him.
Leo sighed, crossed her legs at the knees in front of the absent lawyer’s desk, and shook her head at Arnold.
“What?”
“You’d think she gets neglected all day for how clingy she is. I happen to know the ladies in the co-op hold her pretty much nonstop.”
“Maybe that’s all it is. One warm body means pretty much the same to her.”
“I doubt that,” Leo muttered.
Kinzy put her head back and blew a raspberry at the ceiling.
“She’s getting heavy.” Arnold bounced her on her little perch on his forearm.
Kinzy opened her mouth and showed him all her gums in a smile.
“’Lil pork chop. Always wants to nurse. Keeps me up half the night. I think she’s hitting another one of those growth spurts, but who the heck can tell with wolves? The baby books say infants are supposed to have them at certain times, but Christina and Ashley both said to ignore those charts. They’re either earlier or later, depending on what’s developing.”
“Lot of up and down at night, huh? Getting up to feed her?”
“Nah. She still sleeps in my bed, mostly, so she pretty much just rolls over and latches on.”
At Arnold’s raised eyebrow, Leo pointed a finger at him in warning. “Don’t even say it.”
“Say what?”
“Don’t tell me how dangerous co-sleeping is and that I’m gonna roll over on my baby in my sleep and suffocate her. I read enough of that fearmongering on the Internet. I’ve been trying to transition her to the crib.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything. I think most of the women in my birthpack co-slept. They didn’t really have a choice, though. Limited space, and no money for fancy gadgets you attach to the bedside. My mother would never confirm it, but I think one of the reasons my father left was because he didn’t have enough room on the bed.”
Leo snorted, imagining what that picture must have looked like. A no-nonsense lady werewolf, two babies, and a very tired, frustrated, non-wolf father in a cramped bedroom.
She reached over and patted down a wild flap of Kinzy’s hair. “I miss her whenever I try to get her to sleep in her crib, and I think the vibes from my pitiful guilt are what keeps waking her up. She can feel them from way down the hallway.”
Arnold didn’t say anything, but his silences were generally eloquent enough. That moment was no exception. He kept bouncing Kinzy on his arm and cut Leo a sideways look.
Before she could ask him what she’d done to deserve this stink-face, the secretary pushed the door in and smiled warmly at her. “He’s coming now. He got hung up on some business for the queen that turned out to be more urgent than expected.”
“Oh, well, for goodness sake,
tell him not to rush.”
“He’s done. I promise. He can wait a little while to follow up with her now that the task is done. Do you mind if his paralegal sits in? She’d be the one slinging most of the paperwork around, but if you’re not comfortable—”
“No, that’s fine. She’s Afótama, right? She knows we’re not random humans from outside of Norseton?”
The secretary made a waffling gesture with her hand. “Not Afótama, but close enough. Suffice it to say, she’s had years of experience keeping her mouth shut about things that require discretion.” She pushed away from the doorway, and said, “Here they are now.”
The lawyer stepped in first looking very un-lawyerly with his untucked button-up shirt, wrinkled slacks, and untied dress shoes.
The woman who stepped in with him, though—there was nothing unkempt about her.
For the first time since Leo had arrived in Norseton, her brain automatically associated the woman with what she would have been called a thousand years ago: Viking.
She had the fearsome blonde thing down pat. Leo may have been a victim of fair coloring that the Norseton sun didn’t smile kindly upon, but the lady took blonde up a notch. Her hair was so fair that it was nearly white, her eyes the palest blue Leo had ever seen, she had to be nearly as tall as Arnold, and on top of all that, she looked to have a Marilyn Monroe figure beneath her two-piece suit. Further, she had a perfect bronze tan that set off a pair of killer dimples.
Leo might have noticed the lawyer sticking his hand out to shake if she hadn’t been glowering at the smiling bombshell beside the desk.
“You okay, Leo?” Arnold asked.
She turned her head slowly toward her companion and suppressed the unusual compulsion to suck her teeth. That wasn’t one of Leo’s tics—it was one of Leticia’s. Whenever Leticia was minutely pissed at something or someone, she sucked her teeth. Leo’s inner wolf must have picked up the useless habit.
He furrowed his brow, and then canted his head toward the attorney. “He was introducing himself. That’s Sheldon Dent.”
Leo closed her eyes and gave her head a slight shake before opening her eyes again. “Sorry. Had a rough night last night, and my brain’s about as useful as a pitchfork with one tine. I’m Leonora Banks.” She shook his hand.