Wolver's Gold (The Wolvers)

by Rhoades, Jacqueline

  “But I’m a wolver, not a wolf, and you are not prey. That’s the difference between me and those other guys. I can’t use you. I can’t treat you like prey. I can’t run you down and then walk away once I’ve had my fill, because I’d never have my fill of you. But I will walk away. I have to.”

  “I know,” Rachel told him, feeling no better now that she knew her feelings were returned. “I already figured that out and I understand.”

  He kissed her then, not passionately as he’d done in the hall, but softly, gently, as if the taste of her was something to be cherished and treasured. And she knew what he was trying to say without words. This was his goodbye to what might have grown between them.

  Chapter 19

  Rachel’s wolf was practically leaping from her chest at the prospect of going over the moon.

  “Run, run, run!”

  Rachel was excited, too. Her experience the other night, though short and traumatic, had emboldened her to bring it up at Book Club. Jane Eyre had provided the perfect opportunity. During the discussion, when John asked for opinions, Rachel had spoken her thoughts.

  “Jane is like us,” she said.

  “You think she’s a wolver?” Cassie asked and laughed. The others laughed with her and so did Rachel.

  “No, like us, not one of us. Like us, Jane has two beings inside of her. One is the person society expects her to be, the one she was taught to be. Even as a child, she knew it was wrong, but she trained herself to do what was expected of her.”

  “Because she was punished when she didn’t,” someone else chimed in and significant looks were passed among several others.

  “It’s like she can’t win,” said another. “Rochester loves her the way she is, but if she stays with him as his mistress, she won’t be able to do the things she should because society won’t let her.

  “Then why not choose Rivers?” John asked. “He gives her the opportunity to use her money as she sees fit and to use her talents.”

  “As long as she doesn’t show her wolf.”

  “It’s all about finding the balance, isn’t it?”

  “In order to be happy, she has to be both woman and wolf.”

  “I don’t feel like I have a wolf anymore. It’s been so long since I’ve felt her.”

  Rachel wasn’t sure who said it. There were at least two dozen women there, but when John excused himself for a moment, the woman’s comment spurred others to admit what Rachel had discovered in herself.

  Torn between what was expected of them as women and the demands of their wolf, they’d suppressed the wolf and none of them were any happier for it.

  “Stan and I,” one young woman hesitantly admitted with a furious blush, “Well… we used to have fun… well, you know.”

  And while no one added to the young woman’s comment, the wistful sighs told Rachel they understood what she meant.

  “Do you remember what it felt like the first time you went over the moon?”

  “I haven’t run in years and I’d almost forgotten.”

  “I have forgotten and I think my wolf is dead.”

  “Oh, no, it’s not! I thought mine was, too, and I thought part of me died with her,” Rachel confessed, “but she was only sleeping. She’s awake now and she wants to run. I want to run. Like Jane Eyre, I don’t want to choose between one or the other. I want to be whole.”

  “We all should run. Together.”

  Among the women of the book club, there was only one hesitant holdout.

  “I-I don’t know if my mate will let me.”

  It was Liddy, no longer meek and mild, who answered her. “It isn’t for him to say yea or nay. It’s our moon, the Hunter’s Moon, and whether or not we go over it, is our choice. You tell that mate of yours, if he tries to stop you, he’ll be one sorry wolver, because the rest of us will eat him alive.”

  John Washington returned to a crowd of women cheering Jane Eyre’s name.

  “I had no idea Jane Eyre would be so well received,” he laughed and looked to Rachel. “What shall we read when we finish it?”

  The woman behind him answered.

  “How To Start a Revolution.”

  All talking stopped, as the women stared at the Alpha’s Mate. All except John, that is, who kept talking as if the Mate’s presence was nothing out of the ordinary.

  “You said it would happen, but I’m surprised it happened so soon.”

  “I also said it would only take one to start it.” The Mate beamed at Rachel and then took her place by John’s desk at the front of the room.

  “After you go home and have some time to think about what happened here, some of you will question when it all began. What happened to us? When did we begin to forget who we are? When did we begin to lose control of our lives? Some of you will remember the way things were, the way they were supposed to be. Some of you are too young to know that things were once different.

  “Gold Gulch was supposed to be a place where we could be ourselves while pretending to be something we weren't. Somewhere along the way we stopped pretending and denied what we really are. We traded freedom for security and we allowed the few to dictate what the many should be.

  "I don’t know when it began, but I do know I made it much worse. I was too young. I didn’t understand the power I was given as Mate. I didn’t think for myself, but let others think for me. I listened to them and not my wolf. I didn’t stand for you and it wasn’t until I needed you most that I realized I couldn’t ask you to stand for me.”

  “We would have.”

  “We loved you.”

  “You made us happy.”

  “I betrayed you.” Lenora looked around the room. “In the outside world, the human world, there are drugs made to ease pain, much as I, as Mate, can ease pain. These drugs can help people through the bad patches, but some people use them to keep away the pain and sadness and heartache that’s a natural part of life. They even refer to them as happy pills and they become addicted, and tell themselves that happiness is simply the lack of pain.

  “This is what I did to you. With the encouragement of some of the leaders of this pack, I used my power to cover your discomfort. I thought I was helping, but I wasn’t.” She reached into the schoolmaster’s desk and held up a tack. She held it up for all to see. “What happens if I put this on Mr. Washington’s chair and he sits on it?”

  “You’ll feel the sting of a ruler for sure,” someone laughed.

  “Yes, but who’ll be stung first and what will he do?”

  “Jump up!”

  “Yes! But if he never feels the pain of it, he’ll never move away from the thing that’s causing him harm. He would never remove the tack and worse, he would never question how it got there, or be angry with the person who put it there. That’s what I did to you. I never let you feel the pain of what was causing you harm. It wasn’t until Edmund died and there was no one to question it, that I saw what I’d done to you.”

  “You’re not asking us to leave our mates, are you?”

  “No! I only wanted you to feel the reality of your lives, so you can question and make choices for yourselves.”

  “There aren’t many choices we’re allowed to make,” another woman called out.

  “Then let’s start with making the ones we can,” Rachel told them, “Beginning with the Hunter’s Moon.”

  The touch of the Alpha’s Mate washed over them, not the smothering cover of illusion, but an uplifting sensation of their Mate’s love and pride. On their way out, Lenora Hoffman slipped her arm through Rachel’s.

  “Edmund brought me much joy. Beyond the pain of his death, I remembered that happiness and learned something from it. You must grab joy while you can and hold it tight for as long as you can, because you’ll cherish the memory of it and call on those memories when times are hard. I had our Edmund for so short a time, and I wouldn’t offer a minute of the joy he brought me to trade away my pain.”

  Rachel remembered those words as she walked along Schoolhou
se Lane toward the Hotel’s rear yard and she wondered if Lenora recognized that joy when it was in her hand or only once it was taken away.

  Like a magnet to iron, her wolf caught sight of the figure sauntering across the street along Main. Rachel couldn’t help herself. There were more addictions than drugs and Challenger McCall was hers. Her heart raced as she scurried past the hotel’s gate, wishing to get a glimpse of the man she loved and couldn’t have. And then she wished she hadn’t.

  Sheriff McCall, with a bounce in his stride, took the long row of steps two at a time, right up to the front door of the big yellow Victorian house. He would be spending his evening among the flowers of Daisy’s Bouquet. The joy of him would never be hers. She would have no memories to cherish.

  Rachel turned away when the door to the bordello opened. She retraced her steps back to the hotel and went immediately to her pretty new room where she curled into a ball on her beautiful grownup bed and cried herself to exhaustion.

  According to Eustace and Bertie, there would be more than the women of the book club going over the moon. Word had spread and the little schoolhouse would be overflowing with wolver women willing to take a chance on changing their lives. For modesty’s sake, they agreed to meet there to strip down to their cotton undergarments before the moon rose. Even some of the older women said they would come and trot around the schoolyard, if only for an hour, in memory of their younger days.

  Gold Gulch was closed to tourists only four days a year, so the day of the Hunter’s Moon was like any other, but with the excitement of the coming run, time flew by. There was a lightness among the women, as if a heavy burden had been lifted, and the customer’s noticed. Eustace was full of news.

  “Got a crowd down to the Emporium. Those two sisters are picking up their skirts over the tops of their shoes, dancing and singing Sweet Betsy From Pike, enjoying it, too, by the looks of it. Achilles Marbank ain’t likin’ it much, though,” the omega cackled. “The crowd’s blocking the window. It’s tough not being able to stand all google eyed and droolin’, watchin’ that pretty girl at the counter.”

  “Cassie and Achilles?” Rachel asked without even realizing she’d used first names. “Cassie told me she’d decided not to mate.”

  “That don’t keep a man from dreamin’. Know what he’s doing instead? Hammering out a rose, petal by petal, at the forge.” Eustace shook his head. “Hurt me like the dickens when they gave him my livery, not because he got it, mind. It was the way they done it, turning him against me. I’d been asking to bring him in as partner for a long time. The man knows his way around a forge. I only used it to fit horseshoes and make a repair here and there. That Achilles is an artist.”

  “Quit your yammering and wash up. Last couple of days you been doing twice the talking and half the work,” Bertie grumbled. “Those dishes need to be set out for Tea and the napkins need folding. We got a lot of work to do around here if we expect to close on time and since I expect your attentions will be elsewhere, you can do your part now. By the time you’re done, the pot pies will be, too. You can take one down to Maudie. No sense in her worrying about supper, too. She’s got enough on her plate atwixt her fines and you watchin’ those cubs while she runs. What you and those cubs’ll get up to while she’s gone is enough to make her hair curl.”

  “Crotchety old hen,” Eustace muttered. “Don’t know how poor Victor puts up with you.”

  “Cubs?”

  Since her revelation of the washerwoman’s circumstances, Bertie had been more open about and more generous with the food she sent from Rachel’s kitchen and accounted for the slight rise in food costs, but Rachel couldn’t find it in her heart to tell the cook to stop.

  Bertie gave her a toothy grin. “He’s got an eye for the widow and her litter, ever since you found her sitting in the mud. Eustace can’t go over the moon because of his legs and Maudie didn’t want to leave her cubs. Sometimes those older ones need more watchin’ than the young. He convinced her to run while he keeps an eye on things. I ain’t telling him, but she could do worse than Eustace Lode even if it means sinking down to omega right along with him.”

  *****

  It felt odd, at first, to be standing in her chemise and drawers in front of dozens of other women just as scantily clad, but the feeling passed as the call of the moon took over. In the name of modesty, the windows had been covered to keep the women from view. With the constant peeking to watch the night sky, most of the sheets had fallen from their moorings and no one bothered to replace them. Rachel wasn’t watching for moonrise. She was watching the spot where the men had gathered. She was looking for Challenger McCall.

  Subjecting herself to this self-inflicted pain was useless and bordered on idiocy, but it was necessary. Seeing him, knowing he was near, was the only way she could keep her wolf from taking over and seeking him out to lay herself, like Arthur, at his feet. Poor, pitiful, Arthur.

  Daisy, clad in soft silk and luxurious lace, stood at her shoulder, looking out into the night. She and her girls were the only women in town who went over the moon regularly with the men. No one ever asked why, but one woman had rudely asked why they were here in the schoolhouse tonight and Daisy had rudely answered.

  “Because we’re women first and whores second. Any more questions?”

  There were no more questions and once they were all down to the barest minimum of clothing, the women began to forget who was high and who was low and who was a whore. Without the trappings of clothing, they were pack and they were all waiting for the same moon to call them over.

  “He’s in the house, not behind it,” Daisy told Rachel, keeping her voice low and private in the crowded room. “He’s having a drink with the mayor and his crew before the run.”

  “Oh! I wasn’t… I was…”

  “Oh, honey, you can’t hide it. You’ve got the same look on your face you had in my kitchen. He looks for you the same way. Why, when he’s up at the bordello, pretending to be interested in the Mayor and his cronies, he spends half his time looking out the window at the Hotel. It burns Barnabas Holt up, the Sheriff doing that, but there’s nothing the Second can do about it. Looking isn’t the same as touching, now is it? The sheriff’s a fine looking wolver and a couple of my girls are always hanging around, trying to entice him upstairs.”

  Daisy chuckle was almost as deep as a man’s when Rachel’s head snapped around to glare at her with blazing eyes.

  “It’s a business, honey, and I’m a business woman, so business comes first. I can’t afford to turn away a paying customer, but if it’ll ease your mind, he never takes them up on the offer. He pays for liquor and food, but never for the entertainment. Plays checkers with them, though, and gets a kick out of it when they beat him. What I can’t figure is with him looking like he does, and you looking like you do, why he hasn’t moved on you.”

  Rachel couldn’t tell her why. It was a secret that had to be kept. Daisy was a business woman and her business partner was Barnabas Holt.

  “It’s me. I don’t want him,” she lied and immediately knew she wouldn’t be believed. “I mean I want him, but… after the New Year, I’ll be announcing my coming mating.”

  “To who?”

  “Um, Mr. Coogan?”

  Daisy laughed again. “But you haven’t said yes. There’s no official understanding between you two yet. Otherwise you wouldn’t be saying his name like a question. I told you before, a woman has to do what needs to be done to look after herself, but that doesn’t mean she can’t enjoy herself between times.”

  Unexpectedly, Daisy pulled Rachel’s face away from the window where she was staring out again, and looked into her eyes.”

  “Do you know what goes on between a man and a woman?” the Madam asked bluntly.

  “What? Yes. I suppose. Of course!”

  “Not. That’s what I thought. You may know which part goes where, but you know nothing about men. Well let me tell you a thing or two.”

  A thing or two was all they had time
for, before they felt the pull of the rising moon and someone shouted excitedly, “It’s here! It’s here!”

  Flashes of light like Fourth of July firecrackers without the sound, popped all over the room. There were a few squeals and grunts as women, unused to the feeling, changed from woman to wolf. Someone had the presence of mind to open the doors beforehand.

  Rachel was only vaguely aware of what was happening around her. Her wolf was too eager to run.

  Chapter 20

  She felt the call of the Hunter’s Moon touch her as it did every year, but unlike those other years, this time she opened herself up to it and let it flow through her soul as she’d been taught to do when she was young. The change happened so quickly, yet she felt every shift in every muscle and bone, felt her muzzle elongate, her ears grow, felt the wood of the floor through the pads of her paws. Her eyesight became sharper and the scents, oh, the scents.

  With each step she took across the floor, the glands between the toes of every female left the hint of her scent and each scent was as unique to the she-wolf’s nose as a human fingerprint. She sniffed, identifying, categorizing, and filing everything away in a memory as old as time. She sneezed when she snuffed too hard at a bit of chalk dust in the corner where she’d trailed the scent of mouse.

  Yipping and laughing at her own foolishness, Rachelwolf ran out the door to find others who were cavorting with the same lighthearted feeling as she. Another female approached her. Head held down and slightly cocked, the female advanced one step at a time, cautiously asking if Rachelwolf wanted to play. Mimicking the other wolf’s stance, she approached with the same measured step until their heads were side by side and eye to eye.

  The other wolf blinked and then they were off! Chasing, bumping, nipping at each other and tumbling like clumsy pups.

  “Careful!” Rachel admonished her wolf. “That’s Mrs. Benjamin Washburn, so straight-backed and proper, they say she has no need of a corset!”

  Silly human talk. This was what came from never letting wolves out to meet and play. “No Mrs. Benjamin Blah-blah. Elizawolf! Fun to play with.”