by Holley Trent
“Nice to meet ya,” Sheldon said. He sidled around his desk and gestured toward The Blonde.
Leo expected him to introduce her as “Gretel” or “Freya,” or something like that.
“That’s Mary.”
“Mary?” Leo slapped a hand over her mouth. She hadn’t meant to sound so accusatory. The name just didn’t fit.
Mary laughed quietly and pulled a chair over to Sheldon’s desk. “Long story, and not even an interesting one. Let’s just say that my parents disagreed on what I should be named, and I have a very long string of middle names as a result.”
Sheldon slid his glasses up his nose and pushed away some of the papers piled on his desk in front of him. “Mary’s been with us for about six weeks. She grew up in our sister group in Nevada, and had been working in Vegas for the past five years. She wanted the opportunity to work for Tess, and here she is.”
“Yep, here I am,” she said sunnily. “Trying to get my family out here, too, but they may never leave Fallon.”
“No wonder I hadn’t seen her,” Leo muttered. There was no way in hell she would have missed a lady like that, strutting around town like a Viking supermodel.
At least she’s wearing clothes.
Leo crossed her arms over her chest to hide the screen-printed kitten on her T-shirt. The ladies in the pack had agreed the shirt was cute, and they’d actually let her walk out of the store with the thing. She wasn’t feeling so cute all of a sudden, not with the way Arnold kept peeking up at Mary, and Mary kept pulling her red lips into a smile at him.
Leo sucked her teeth again, and naturally, everyone in the room turned to look at her.
She chuckled nervously and made a go-on gesture. “So, I guess you know about my case?”
Sheldon grunted. “Sounds like a pretty interesting situation. I don’t see any reason why I wouldn’t want to take it on. Before we get started, though, are you comfortable enough having him here?” He indicated Arnold. “Is he a friend, or…”
Arnold scoffed and muttered something under his breath that not even Leo could catch with her wolf’s sense of hearing.
“Speak up a little, why dontcha?” Leo said through clenched teeth.
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You don’t want that.”
“Are you a couple?” Mary asked. “That would either complicate some things, or simplify them.”
“Yes,” Leo said.
The word came out at the exact same time that Arnold said, “No.”
Leo’s inner wolf wanted to claw her way out of Leo’s skin and swipe the guy right across his pretty jaw.
“Ohhh-kay. Which?” Sheldon asked.
Arnold let out a breath. “This isn’t what you want to hear, probably, but it’s complicated.”
Sheldon sputtered his lips and leaned back in his chair. “Explain the situation to me in a way that a guy who’s missed lunch would understand.”
“He’s my mate,” Leo said.
“Oh, I am now?” Arnold asked.
“You bit me. Remember? Have the rules changed in the past couple of months? I know I’ve been busy, but I figure someone might have passed along the news so I could behave accordingly.”
“Rules haven’t changed. Only your concession of them.”
“Oh, boy,” Sheldon said. “I said, ‘explain in a way a guy who’s missed lunch would understand.’ Remember?”
Arnold rolled his eyes and fixed his gaze on the ceiling, lips tightly clamped.
Apparently, he was leaving all the explaining up to Leo.
Ass.
She sighed, and turned her knees back toward the desk. “A lady wolf generally becomes the mate of the guy who bites her. His bite overrode my hu—” The word “husband” caught in her throat and made the taste in her mouth go sour.
Bleh.
She swallowed hard and searched her brain for an alternative. “Uh. Samuel. Arnold’s bite overrode Samuel’s, so I carry Arnold’s scent, I guess. I can’t exactly smell myself to make sure, but that’s what all the ladies who aren’t Petra say. He bit me when we were both in our wolf forms, so while our wolves may recognize each other as a couple, the people halves of us—are…”
She glanced over at Arnold, and he was giving her that wicked side-eyed look again.
Help me out here, guy.
He kept his lips zipped.
Thanks a lot.
She sighed and batted a hand through her ponytail. “Still working some things out.”
“Ugh.” Sheldon winced. “Give me something I can actually put on record. Not that this would sound any better, but are you cohabiting?”
“Nope,” she and Arnold said in unison.
“Are you in a committed, stable relationship, at least?”
Neither answered.
Leo didn’t think there was a good answer.
“Come on, kids. Give me something,” Sheldon said.
After a few seconds’ pause, Arnold opened his mouth and said, “True mates almost always mate for life.”
True mates…
She turned toward him, gripping the armrest as if for dear life. It wasn’t like she was going to fall out of her chair, but her head and belly didn’t seem to know the difference. She would have thought she was falling, given how off-tilt she felt. “Is that what you think we are?”
He tipped the hand that had been on Kinzy’s back in a gesture Leo read as, That’s my opinion.
“Huh,” Sheldon said. “Well, I can’t write that down anywhere, either.”
“We’ll have to play with the language a bit,” Mary said, “but the gist is that Arnold is likely to be a continual influence in Kinzy’s life.”
“I’d say that’s accurate,” Arnold said.
Leo was glad he’d said it, because she didn’t have any words at all, about anything. She suspected that whatever came out of her mouth would be indistinguishable from gibberish.
Most of the ladies in the pack had gotten used to Leo’s particular brand of gibberish and knew how to translate it for the most part, but she needed to try harder for the people in that office. They didn’t know her. Arnold didn’t know her.
She ran her tongue across her dry lips and straightened up a bit in her seat. “Um. Yes. Kinzy adores him, for whatever reason.”
“For whatever reason, Leo? Really? You don’t think that, maybe, she recognizes my scent as a comforting one? Or the sound of my voice? I’m not a stranger to her, even if you insist on making me one to you.”
“So this is all my fault?”
Mary pointed her pen at Arnold, obviously unaffected by Leo’s tart tone. “You’d adopt her?”
Arnold shrugged. “Sure. I don’t see why not.”
Mary jotted down notes.
Leo tapped her foot impatiently and glowered at Arnold. Fortunately for him, he wasn’t looking. He was making little waves in Kinzy’s hair with his breath.
“You could certainly stave off some problems if you actually did get married,” Sheldon said. “I mean, legally. Your illustrious ex may contest the legitimacy of the union, but unless he’s gonna cough up some valid paperwork showing he got there first, he can’t really publicly state that you’ve stepped out on him.”
Leo cut Arnold a sideways look to see what he thought about Sheldon’s proposal.
Leo had no particular drive to be married. But then again, she wasn’t really avoiding the institution, either. Her and Samuel’s union hadn’t been a typical one. They hadn’t lived together most of the time. She ran her little household on her own, and spent most of her days alone until Kinzy was born.
She had different responsibilities in Norseton, though. She had a job that people gave her money to do, and she liked watching the balance tick higher and higher in Kinzy’s little college fund. She had friends who forced her out of the house to do things—fun things—and she didn’t need to get anyone’s permission before she went. There was no one giving her flack about how she’d styled her hair immodestly, or how she was drawing too much atten
tion to herself.
Life was good.
Life was also really hard in a lot of ways. Finding personal balance had never been her forte, and she’d never had a good shot at practicing it before.
She fiddled with the strap of her purse and looked from Sheldon, to Mary—who was raising a querying eyebrow at her—to Arnold.
I could marry him.
She’d marry him just to get him off the market before some pretty young wolf moved to Norseton and snapped him up. Or even a pretty young Viking who smiled too easily.
Leo didn’t care if that was petty of her. Just because she didn’t necessarily want to be under some man’s thumb didn’t mean she didn’t want to have a say in who got him.
She cleared her throat and straightened up a bit. “I’m sure wolves have gotten married for far less noble reasons.”
Arnold didn’t say anything, but Leo didn’t particularly want to look and see what he was doing with his face. He wore his opinions too openly in his expressions.
“Clerk’s office is open until five,” Sheldon said. “You can get a license today if you’ve got all the right records, and then see if your alpha will do the honors for you. He’s licensed to marry people. He’s done it for some non-wolves, too. Can’t beat his rates. Last ceremony he did, he only charged the groom a tank of gas.”
“That sounds like Alpha,” Arnold said.
Leo finally looked at him. His expression was perfectly neutral. Perfectly perfect. Everything on his face was exactly where it should have been, except for his nose, which Kinzy was idly squeezing as she nodded off.
“Well, give that some thought.” Sheldon patted the papers atop his desk into a pile and tapped their bottom edges against his desktop. “Me and Mary’ll look into the custody issue and see if we can call off the news hounds. They’d probably get bored on their own soon enough, but let’s see what we can do to nip the sensationalism in the bud now.”
“I’ll call you when I have more information,” Mary said. “I won’t keep you waiting long. I understand the situation is urgent, and that you’d like to resolve it as soon as possible.”
“I do.” Leo pushed her chair back a bit, stood, and held out her arms for Kinzy.
Arnold’s sideways look might have warned a less entitled woman off, but Kinzy was Leo’s, and Leo needed her. She needed her baby in her arms to squeeze and fuss over so she didn’t have to think, and so she didn’t have to have any important conversations with Arnold just yet. She was afraid to hear what he had to say.
He handed Kinzy up to her and stood, too.
Then he shook Sheldon’s hand and reached for Mary’s.
Leo left before she could see him touch her.
The wolf inside her was all worked up, and she had much stronger feelings about Arnold’s proximity to the Amazon than Leo-the-Lady was letting on.
The wolf thought Arnold deserved a bite to the rear end, but Leo-the-Lady thought—hoped—he was just a friendly man with decent public manners.
She kept telling herself that as she passed through the outer office and stepped outside onto the sidewalk.
Never in her life had she been so unsettled and agitated.
Over a man?
She scoffed and started a brisk trot down to the bakery. She needed a bear claw pastry or an éclair, and soon, or she wouldn’t be able to control what came out of her mouth next.
What the heck is wrong with me?
CHAPTER NINE
Arnold’s job tended to be pretty quiet, given his nighttime shift. Surprisingly, most Vikings liked to turn in long before eleven. Norseton was quiet in the evenings, save for the occasional hare darting across his path, or planes passing overhead.
He walked a slow square around the executive mansion’s grounds, checking to make sure all the secondary doors were locked and that nothing seemed out of place. His routine was to repeat that once every hour, and then spend the rest of his time at the security desk watching the live camera feeds for trespassers and other threats. He was responsible for half the cameras, and whoever was at the gatehouse was watching the other half.
“Should probably see who’s there tonight,” he mused quietly.
Back at the security desk, he picked up the phone receiver and punched the extension for the gatehouse.
“Everything all right?” Jim answered on the first ring.
Arnold didn’t know Jim very well. He spent most of his time away from the compound, assessing outside threats to the Afótama, but he seemed to be a friendly enough guy from what little Arnold had seen of him.
“Yeah, everything’s all right,” Arnold said. “I was just seeing who was working on the other end tonight.”
“I haven’t been on gatehouse duty in forever. Lonely as fuck up here in the dark. I know better than to wish for a little action, but after a while, you start hearing things.”
Arnold chuckled and checked the time. They were barely an hour into their respective shifts. Jim was going to be hearing things for a long while to come.
“Well, if you start seeing things, too,” Arnold said, “give me a call, and I’ll give you a reality check.”
“Since you’re here, maybe you can give me one right now.”
“About what?” Arnold glanced at each little video image on his two monitors, paying especially close attention to the feeds from areas that abutted Jim’s.
“I heard a rumor that you have visions.”
Arnold snorted and leaned back in his rolling chair. “Yeah? Who’d you hear that from?”
“Pretty reliable source, in my opinion. Your own sister.”
“You shouldn’t trust anything that comes out of her mouth when she’s smiling. Was she smiling?”
“No. She was eating a cheeseburger at the time.”
“Where did you get to see my sister eating a cheeseburger?”
“At the diner earlier. You know how it goes. I was stalking a certain lady wolf and she happened to be sitting with your sister.”
“Leticia, you mean.”
“You know the one, then.”
“What’s the holdup with that, anyway? She’s over eighteen. If you wait much longer to make a move, Colt’s gonna start up another one of his betting pools and let folks guess when you’ll finally get your shit together.”
“He probably already has. I’m not waiting on any particular thing.”
“So…”
Jim didn’t respond, and Arnold wasn’t going to goad the guy. Arnold wasn’t exactly an expert on werewolf relationships, as evidenced by his own difficulties securing a particular one.
He’d never heard of a wolf who had a mate but whom he wasn’t with. Apparently, though, that was what Leo was used to. Arnold didn’t like it.
“You were asking about my visions,” Arnold said.
“Yeah. How do they work? Do you get to pick what you see?”
“Nah. I suppose I see whatever the wolf goddess thinks is important at any given time. Mrs. Carbone says I’m an oracle, whatever that means. There was no word for what I can do back in my old pack. My mother got visions, too, and so did my grandfather. They were outsiders, kinda. Folks more or less left them alone.”
“We didn’t have anything like that in my old pack, either,” Jim said. “But there wasn’t a lot of magic flowing around there in general—not like here.”
“Why’d you get kicked out?”
“Same reasons as every other guy here, I guess. I was a threat to the alpha. Only difference from most is that the alpha was my father.”
“Oh, shit, man.”
“Yeah, well. Can’t change the past. He actually tried to send me away sooner, but my mother wouldn’t let him. She could only intercede for so long.”
Arnold whistled low. “I guess everything turned out okay in the end though, right?”
“We’ll see.” On that inscrutable note, Jim clucked his tongue and then grunted. “Back to work I go. There’s a truck coming. Looks like the nightly grocery delivery. I’ll hit the pat
rol buzzer if it’s not.”
“Understood.” Arnold disconnected. He checked all his feeds again, and then allotted himself exactly one minute of thumb-twiddling before he started fixating on shit.
Mate shit, mostly.
Fifteen seconds into idly circling his thumbs, he growled and picked up his cell phone.
11:46.
He called her, anyway.
“Hello?” Leo answered sleepily.
“What time do you work tomorrow?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“What time do you work?”
“Arnold?”
“You don’t recognize my voice? I would have thought the wolves here would have been easier to tell apart, but I guess I can’t fault you for your inexperience.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Only that you haven’t spent much time on the phone with men, right?”
“I haven’t.”
Digging a hole here.
He wasn’t even sure why he’d called, only that he’d had to. His inner wolf was getting impatient, and Arnold didn’t want to risk the beast running the show when he was still in his human form. His animal half had a knack for making enemies when he didn’t get his way. That might have been all well and good back when Arnold and Petra had been unaffiliated, but they’d gained a pack and he wanted to fit in.
Arnold took a breath to clear his head and tore a fresh, innocent sticky note into rough strips. “Let me try this again. Sorry for calling you so late, but I can’t stand being so unsettled all the time.”
“Me neither.”
“Oh?”
“I mean, maybe I don’t show that I’m off-center. I’m a mess even on the best of days, but more so now in particular. The girls tell me it’s normal.”
“What is?”
“That if you spend too much time away from your mate, you get…cranky.”
“Cranky?” The word seemed too mild a term for what Arnold was actually feeling. He felt vicious, and the only reason he wasn’t acting out his aggression was because he was drawing heavily on his human half. He doubted he’d have the same control if he’d been a full-blooded wolf. Apparently, there were a few advantages to mixed genetics.