by Holley Trent
“I didn’t want a mate,” Leo said.
Arnold clamped his teeth and pressed his lips tightly together. Nothing he could have said at the moment would have moved the conversation forward in a positive way.
“And I think that’s the wedge between us right now. I never wanted one, but then I got one I didn’t want, and then another who doesn’t even remember biting me.”
Again, he kept his mouth shut. He wasn’t going to tell her that he wished he hadn’t bitten her, even if that was what she wanted to hear. He’d never been a liar.
“I always dreamed I’d spend my life on my own, with no one interfering with my…ugh.” She yawned. “With my day-to-day routines, or having a say in what my plans were. I imagined that I’d wake up every morning energized and ready to do my own thing. I was gonna challenge myself to do something new every day, just because I could.”
Arnold zoomed in on the camera image of Second Street and watched a refrigerated truck reverse into the grocery store’s back lot. He knew the truck was safe—Jim had already checked the compartments at the gate. Arnold was just fascinated by how anyone could back a vehicle of that size so precisely into a spot. “And?”
“And then I grew up, I guess. Or was made to. I became some guy’s wife and then had a baby. I wouldn’t give up the baby now, but I could have done without the man. Hard not to look at Kinzy and think about him. I think about him less every day, though.”
“I hope that you’ll get to a point where you don’t think about him at all,” he said, and scrolled to an image of Main Street. There was always someone at the park, either making out in the gazebo or stargazing. Norseton was a perfect place for stargazing. There was so little light pollution.
“You’re not gonna recant that, huh?” she asked.
“No, Leo, I don’t see the point. Like any wolf, I have more than my fair share of pride. I’d rather think that my mate is pondering a future with me than regretting what she did with the man who came before me.”
“I guess that’s reasonable.” She yawned again, and Arnold wanted to kick himself for calling her. She probably didn’t get much sleep. Kinzy was so young that she probably still woke a lot, and he’d gone and stirred Leo from what might have been actual REM sleep.
“I’ll make it up to you,” he said softly.
“Make what up to me?”
“I woke you up. I’ll watch Kinzy when I’m off so you can get some sleep.”
When she didn’t respond, he thought she had fallen asleep. He was going to disconnect the call, but then her tired voice came through clear as day. “Okay. Maybe tomorrow? I’m still thinking about what Mary and Sheldon said. Maybe we could talk about things tomorrow before I go to bed.”
He didn’t know which part of the discussion she was referring to, but he wasn’t going to press her. His intuition said to let her sleep. They could talk later. They’d made a little progress, in his opinion, and any progress was better than none.
“Okay,” he said. “Tomorrow.”
CHAPTER TEN
The best Leo could do when the doorbell chimed and she was up to her elbows in baby funk was shout toward the door. “It’s open!”
She cringed, and then added, “I think.”
Very rarely could she change a diaper without some small disaster occurring. The phone would ring while she was reaching for a wipe, or she’d hear a pot bubbling on the stove. She was still working on mastering the multitasking-mommy thing.
The doorknob jiggled, and heavy footsteps sounded through the foyer soon after. “Keep your doors locked, Leonora,” Arnold called to the back of the house.
“Yeah, yeah.” She sighed and grabbed another flannel wipe out of the bin the very industrious wolf Christina had given her. Christina made the softest wipes out of the men’s old shirts. Apparently, she didn’t ask the men for their cast-offs. She just took their holiest ones off the clotheslines with their wives’ permission and cut them up before the men could tell her no.
“I’m used to keeping it open,” Leo said over her shoulder the moment she sensed the wolf’s energy in the nursery doorway. She didn’t dare take a longer look at him. She had firm intentions of getting truly restful sleep, and there was no way in heck that would be possible if a certain pretty male was lounging across her imagination like a werewolf Fabio on a chaise.
“You let folks access your house in Wolverton as they saw fit?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s not like there were ever that many people visiting. Mostly just my mother and sisters, and a few friends who weren’t afraid to be seen with me.”
“Why would anyone be afraid to be seen with you?”
Leo slipped a diaper under Kinzy’s bottom, and shrugged. “Oh, you can guess. ‘Leo runs her mouth too much,’ and, ‘Leo’s gonna get you in trouble if you’re not careful.’ The usual crap. Makes you wonder why anyone would have condoned me being paired off with any guy in the first place.”
She got Kinzy’s onesie snapped closed, scooped up the baby, and then held her out to Arnold—still managing not to look at him by crossing her eyes slightly. “Hold her while I wash my hands, will ya?”
“Sure.”
She probably needn’t have asked, but old habits were hard to break. Most men didn’t like having needy babies thrust at them.
She gathered up the dirty diaper and wipes and carried them to the bathroom with her. “Make yourself at home, if you like,” she called down the hall. “My sofa’s pretty comfortable. If Kinzy tries to nod off, give her a little tickle. I need to feed her. Maybe the spoiled little thing will actually sleep for more than three hours. She used to sleep so much better before I moved her to the crib.”
“So, you’re doing it for real now? How long ago did you decide?”
Leo washed and dried her hands, then squinted at her reflection in the mirror. “Bleh.” To Arnold, she called out, “I decided a few days ago, but have been trying to do it in unenthusiastic fits and starts. I figured I should just buck up and do what needed to be done. Christina said it’d take a while for Kinzy to get used to the new routine, but I’m not feeling so confident right now.”
Leo tried to pinch a bit of color into her cheeks, but all that did was make her look ill and spotty. “Ugh. I used to be cute,” she muttered.
She fluffed up her hair a bit in the front and tried the best she could to disguise where it was falling out in clumps. She’d expected there to be some shedding—something about postpartum hormones tapering off. The rest of the clumps coming out were most definitely attributable to stress. Contributing to her flat-lining self-esteem was the knowledge that her mother never looked anything but immaculate.
The obvious immediate solution to Leo’s distress was to turn off the bathroom light, which she did. She also pondered covering all the mirrors in the house, but that sounded even to her like overkill.
Arnold had his feet up on the coffee table, his legs crossed at the ankles, and Kinzy sitting forward on his lap attempting to gnaw on one of the feet of her onesie.
She wished she’d remembered her vow not to look at him, because apparently, he’d decided to go and mutilate himself. “Um, Arnold?” She pointed accusingly at him. “Where’s your hair?”
“My hair?” Brow furrowed, he raked a hand through what was left. He’d kept a little length on the top, but the sides were nearly bald. “Oh, yeah. I forgot you hadn’t seen me since I got a cut. I was overdue for one.”
She stood still, lamely silent for probably a minute with her lower lip quivering and tears building up at the corners of her eyes. “You cut your hair.”
He shrugged. “It always grows back.”
“Your beautiful hair. Why would you do that? You should have come to me first. I would have talked you out of it. And you went to that barber who only knows the one cut? Too many of the local Vikings have that cut, and I don’t like it on them, either.”
He had the temerity to laugh at her, and she growled. Her inner wolf had opinions about that hair, too
. She’d wanted to play in it and he hadn’t given her a chance.
“It’s gone,” she whispered, pouting again.
“Leo, are you all right?”
“Uh-huh. Sure,” Leo said as she fumed her way into the kitchen. She yanked open the refrigerator door and fixed her gaze on the shelves within. She ground her teeth.
I wish I still had chocolate frosting left over so I could properly grieve.
She sighed.
He’s still pretty, though.
She drummed her fingers on the top of the fridge door, took a deep breath, and imagined that she was blowing away her hormonal silliness on an exhalation.
That seemed to help clear her head. Thank goodness. “Hey, do you want anything?”
“What’s good?” he asked.
“Nothing, really. Frosting’s gone.” She sputtered her lips. “My routine is still pretty scattered. I’d like to get to a point where I can adapt to my schedule changes a little better, but I haven’t had a chance to cook anything this week. I can make you a sandwich or something, though, if you want one.”
“Nah. That’d be too ironic.”
“What do you mean?”
“You making me a sandwich.”
“I don’t know what you’re referring to.”
“I guess you were more or less out of the pop culture loop in Wolverton, huh?”
She got out meat and cheese and condiments, anyway. Maybe he didn’t want a sandwich, but she did, and that deli meat wasn’t going to good for much longer, regardless. “I must have missed that particular reference,” she said.
“I guess it’s become something of a running gag on the Internet and on television. If a person—usually a male person—wants to demean another, he’ll tell them to go make him a sandwich. It implies that the other person’s place is in the kitchen and not out where big, important people are talking.”
“Ugh.” Leo slathered some mayo onto whole wheat bread. Some Viking lady in the community had made the bread. She maintained a little bakery on Main, and also owned a larger factory that made bread for distribution throughout the Southwest. Leo loved knowing where her food came from—probably a holdover from having grown up on a farm. “Turkey okay?” she asked him. “Whenever I go into the grocery store, I get so overwhelmed by the options since I’m just feeding me. I always feel stupid buying a quarter-pound of this and a quarter-pound of that.”
“I doubt the folks behind the counter care.”
She shrugged and tore some lettuce leaves off the head. “They don’t seem like they do, but I’m used to folks acting one way, yet thinking another.”
“From what I’ve witnessed about the Afótama, they’re generally lacking in the pretense department.”
“That’s what everyone says.” She dropped what was left of the meat onto Arnold’s sandwich and tossed the empty wrap into the trash. “Hard getting used to that, too.”
“But you want to get used to it, right? You want to stay?”
“I like this place. Kinzy would have a happy childhood here, and I want to see what the town looks like as it grows.” She chuckled and rooted a long knife out of the utensil drawer to cut the sandwiches. “I want to see how this little wolf utopia expands in the coming years, too. I know I’ve just barely gotten here myself, but I’m eager to see who’ll come next and what they’ll be like.”
She stacked the sandwiches on one plate, grabbed a bag of chips from the pantry, and bottles of water from the fridge.
“I’ve heard rumbles,” Arnold said.
Kinzy had progressed to gnawing on her other foot, and seemed to be getting a youthful introduction to feminine multitasking, too, because she was also staring intently at Arnold’s face.
Better her than me.
Leo set the plate on the table and handed a water bottle to Arnold. “What kind of rumbles?”
“I heard Alpha and his missus chatting with their niece—Esther—and Queen Tess this morning.”
“Where?” She settled onto the sofa cushion beside him and set the plate between the two of them. “And why Queen Tess? She’s super busy.”
“She is busy, but she’s a creative thinker, and she happens to like when the wolf ladies call her for stuff. I think she’s used to Afótama folks thinking she’s unapproachable.”
“But because the wolves aren’t looped unto their weird psychic network, we don’t read her the same way her own clan does.”
“Exactly.”
“What were they talking about?” She handed him a sandwich half, and somehow managed to suppress a yelp when his fingertips skimmed hers. The man had seen her nude and had bitten her, and yet the tiniest little touch made her come apart at her seams.
He chuckled and turned the sandwich around to point a corner toward his mouth. “I wasn’t technically supposed to be listening.”
“But you were.”
“Well, they were right there.”
“Where?”
“Coffee shop. Central meeting spot, and all. Seems there’s always at least one wolf there nowadays.” He took a bite. Chewed.
She drummed her foot impatiently, waiting for more info. She hated being left in suspense. Maybe Arnold had visited to give her a chance to rest, but she wanted to talk. She wanted to gossip and know everything she’d been missing out on when she’d been fretting about her not-husband and massaging the blisters out of her poor feet after work every day.
He was about to take another bite, and she growled at him and gave his shoulder a poke. “Stop that!”
He threw up a hand. “Stop what? You gave me a sandwich, and now you expect me not to eat it?”
“Multitask. Talk with food in your mouth. I won’t mind.”
“You’re that curious?”
“Duh. Tell me stuff.”
He chuckled and took another sandwich bite, somehow navigating the morsel around Kinzy’s questing fingers. She didn’t have teeth, but that didn’t stop her from trying to get her hands on “real” food.
Crap. Still gotta nurse her.
Leo shoved more food into her mouth and waved Arnold on. “Come on. Tell me,” she said through all that meat and bread.
He nodded, and then swallowed. “Okay, you know how Esther and Anton sneaked their family and the rest of their kind of wolf out of their Jersey pack?”
“Uh-huh?” Leo had been pretty busy, but she’d caught the gist. Alpha and his family were descended from a different subspecies of werewolf than most of the folks in the pack. The few remaining families of that species were scattered across the country, not fully integrated in their packs. Other wolves were wary of them because they didn’t have to shift for the full moon like everyone else.
“Well, Arnold said, “they’re looking to find whoever’s left and bring them here. After centuries in this country, they would all be in one pack again.”
“Where are they gonna put them all?”
Arnold chuckled and wrapped an index finger around one of Kinzy’s. She was still trying to get at his sandwich.
Too soon for you to be setting your sights on solid foods, baby girl. Stay little a while longer.
“The more pressing concern right now is finding them all,” Arnold said. “Except for the packs we’re already aware of—like where Darius and Colt came from, and of course the Carbones and Denises—the rest are scattered. Esther thinks she knows where a few might be. Queen Tess has promised that if we get them here, they won’t be homeless for long. They’re already parceling off tracts for more housing out here.”
“That’d make for an interesting pack, that’s for sure.”
Arnold grunted and popped the remnants of his sandwich half into his mouth.
Leo wouldn’t have bet money on it, but she thought she heard Kinzy heaving her very first sigh.
Well, the kid is a wolf.
Leo set down her sandwich and held out her arms. “Hand her over. I think I’ve just about mastered the art of feeding her and myself at the same time.”
“You su
re?”
“Sure that I can do it, or sure that I want to take her?”
His smile could have melted the heart of even the sourest old crone. His was a sexy, teasing smile that always made Leo wonder if he knew all the secrets of the world, and was keeping them all to himself for leverage. Like one of those gods Leo had read about on the back of the kids’ menu at the diner—Loki. The trickster.
She narrowed her eyes at Arnold. “You’re not trying to play tricks on me, are you?”
“No. No tricks. No trick questions, either. I’m just asking if you want to finish your sandwich before you take her.”
“Oh.” Leo pulled her gaze away from his intense one and slid an arm under Kinzy’s back. “Um. I’ll manage. She’s used to having crumbs fall on her. Sometimes, she’ll even ignore them.”
As Leo got Kinzy latched on, Arnold gave Leo a sideways look while toying with the remaining half of his sandwich.
“What?” she asked.
Leo’s chest was more or less covered, but given Kinzy’s propensity to play with her food, Leo didn’t think that would last long. Wolves didn’t tend to have hang-ups over naked bodies in general because of their shapeshifting imperatives, but Leo’s pack apparently hadn’t been like most others. The pack had segregated runs on full moon nights. Ladies went one way. Gents went another. Most of the wolves in the Norseton pack had probably become desensitized to flesh, but being looked at was a new thing for Leo.
As was looking back at someone.
Granted, Arnold was completely covered up, aside from the gap at his neck and chest where he’d left his shirt partially unbuttoned. Those two little unfastened buttons may as well have been a neon sign inviting a night of debauchery, given the way her cheeks blazed.
“What are you doing tomorrow?” he asked softly.
She tried twice to untangle her tongue and get some words out, but it stuck to the roof her mouth, dry and cottony, even if the wolf inside her was panting. “I, uh—” She forced down another unproductive swallow and nibbled at a bit of lettuce from her sandwich.
Tomorrow, I’m…
She couldn’t remember.