"I need you," he grumbled, pulling her closer. The hand at her waist began to roam. "Last night I thought I couldn't survive it, the crushing weight of it. That's what happens to an alpha who's not strong enough to carry it, you know, and I wasn't meant to carry it. My father knew that."
Kat relaxed back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. They suffered from the same thing, she and Charles. She'd spent her whole life wondering why she wasn't good enough for her father's love. Why couldn't he stop drinking for Kat as he had for her mother? She remembered their quiet conversations. It was part of the code she hadn't been able to break as a child.
"You can do this, John. One day at a time," her mother would whisper when her father was in one of his sad and miserable moods. "Do this for me. One day at a time. I believe in you, darling."
John Bennett would cling to his wife like a drowning man. "I'd be lost without you, sweetheart," he'd say to her. "You are the Master of my fate, the Captain of my soul. You keep my sails to the wind. You light my way. You keep me from floundering in the shoals."
Her father always was one for flowery speech. Kat didn't understand what the words meant until she was much older and once she did, she worked hard had to create the life she thought her parents had, believing that someday, maybe, her father would come home.
Charles had spent his life afraid of not living up to his father's expectations. He was incapable of being the Alpha his father wanted him to be.
Who were these men who continued to rule their lives; one from the bottom of a bottle, one from the bottom of a grave? She was tired of it and it was time to put an end to it.
"Your father was a goddamned ass. Welcome to the club," she whispered fiercely.
Charles chuckled softly at her ferocity. "He wasn't, you know. He was a great Alpha. My brother Marshall…"
"Is nothing like him either," she snapped though her voice never rose above a whisper. She rolled in his arms until they were nose to nose and placed her hand on his cheek. "Your father stuck to the old ways. He couldn't change and his pack suffered for it. He's probably rolling over in his grave at what Marshall has done to his precious domain. You told me that yourself. Marshall wanted to keep the old and found ways to take it in a new direction. You want new and modern, but need to blend in the old ways necessary for your pack's survival. Two different roads leading to the same destination; what's best for the pack, your pack, not your father's. Wes Goodman wanted to create a mini-me. Well tough shit, he didn't get one. What Wolf's Head got is something a whole helluva lot better. They got you, Charles Goodman, and you're going to be the best damn Alpha the Wolver world has ever seen." Kat punched his shoulder for emphasis.
"Hey! Shhh, don't cry." Charles ran his thumb over her cheek.
"I'm not crying," she protested even as he kissed the tears from the corners of her eyes.
"Good," he said between kisses, "Because I'd like to finish what I started to say about last night." He rolled her over him and into the middle of the bed where he straddled her hips to keep her in place and rested his weight on his elbows to either side of her head. He toyed with her short, unruly curls while he spoke.
"I was being crushed under the weight of it all and then you touched me. You held me and I felt your touch run through me. Not like this," he said, chuckling as one of his hands left her curls to roam over her breasts and down the center of her body to her mound, leaving behind its trail of magic. The chuckle turned into a laugh when, without thinking, Kat inched her body up until his hand was firmly between her legs.
"This is good," he told her as his fingers danced and played in a new nest of curls, "But what I felt last night through your touch was different. For the first time since I was a pup, I felt like I wasn't alone. I didn't have to pretend to be someone I wasn't or to guess what a real Alpha would do. I felt your belief in me. It was your touch that gave me the strength to bear the mantle. I am the Alpha of Wolf's Head Pack."
"I never doubted it, but" Kat whispered against his lips as she moved against his fingers down below, "For now, can you just be my Big Bad Wolf?"
Charles cocked his head to the side for a moment, listening, frowned in concentration and then brought his attention back to her and smiled.
"With pleasure," he said right before his lips covered hers with a kiss that was filled with the Alpha's magic.
* * *
As it turned out, there wasn't that much to do to get ready for the children's arrival. Mrs. Martin, housekeeper extraordinaire, had everything under control and Kat was beginning to suspect there was something magical about her, too. She never seemed to hurry, but never seemed to fall behind. She was grateful for any help she received but didn't seem to need it. When Kat entered the kitchen, the woman was ironing pillow cases, something Kat found extraordinary in itself. Did anyone still iron pillowcases?
"Good morning. Everyone else still in bed?" Kat asked as she poured a cup of coffee, ready with her pad and pencil to make her list of things to do.
"Hmph. Them that's still here," Tilda grumbled. "Mr. High and Mighty took half of them off last night back to the city."
"Alex?" A plate of cinnamon rolls sat on the counter, still warm from the oven. Kat debated for half a second before taking one. Nature walks would be good for the children and for the calories she was sure were settling about her hips.
"None other." Tilda neatly folded the finished case and snapped another straight before placing it on the board. "Said they had a business to run and playtime was over as if what happened last night was a game." If the pillowcase had been alive, she would have killed it the way she was slamming the iron along the board.
"What did happen last night?" Kat never did get the whole of it.
"I thought the Alpha would have told you." Tilda looked at her suspiciously.
"We were… ah… both pretty tired."
"Hmph." Tilda finished the case and set it with the others. "Likely wasn't something he cared to talk about."
"Why?"
"They got their butts whupped, that's why. Guess you already know there was wolvers out there. With humans. I never saw the like, never heard of it before. They knew the pack was coming, waited until the Alpha brought them home so they could act as men and that's when they attacked, both man and wolver. The pack wasn't ready and Ryker tried to hold them together while the Alpha flashed them back, but they panicked and they were lucky no one got killed." She slammed another case onto the board. "And all Mr. Alex Prissy Pants said was what do you expect? You can't put a group of civilized men up against rogues."
Kat suddenly remembered the line of wolves walking along the edge of the trees on her first night here. Charles had said she was mistaken because he'd known none of his pack had arrived. He hadn't known about the others.
Rogues, Kat knew, were single, mostly male wolvers who had left their packs for various reasons, either by choice or because they had been shunned and called Outcast for some serious offense against the pack. Like many of the outcasts from human society, they formed a criminal element in the wolver world.
While they might band together in smaller groups, they could not form a true pack. They had no Alpha. They could not mate and so their small band couldn't grow except by the addition of more rogues.
Kat wondered, but didn't ask, if anyone had noticed the similarities between a band of rogues and the original Wolf's Head pack.
"Does the Alpha know?"
"I suppose he does." Tilda looked at her meaningfully. "Now."
"You know?" Kat asked.
The slow blink of her eyes and slight nod of her head said she did. "They all know."
Of course. They would. They could feel their Alpha just as he could feel them. They'd all known all along that he wasn't a true Alpha. No wonder he didn't hold their respect. Kat thought again about their resemblance to the rogues. Some of them might not be too happy to learn that the mantle had fallen on Charles' shoulders. Alex, perhaps, most of all.
"Well," Kat said and place
d both hands on the table, "they know he's their Alpha now."
"That they do." This time Tilda's nod was decisive. "Rawley and Tanner are upstairs with Buddy moving beds from one room to the other. I've put the three boys in one room and the girls in another. Seeing as how they've been living, I figured they'd want to be close, but there's no call to pack them all in one room. By the time they're finished, I'll have the sheets ready to make up the beds."
"Rawley and Tanner didn't go back to the city?"
"Nope. Them and some of the others refused to go."
"So the lines are drawn then." Kat wondered how many had stayed.
"Maybe, maybe not. Some of them might not understand who's giving the orders now. Seems to me that Alex feller has been given a mite more power than he ought to have. For some, the Alpha's going to have to lay down the law."
Kat thought of yesterday's scuffle. "I'd say he's ready to do that."
"I'd say it's past time he did."
"Past time he did what?" Charles asked coming into the kitchen followed by Ryker and a yawning Jo.
"Lay down the law as the Alpha should," Mrs. Martin stated bluntly and without trying to hide the fact that she was talking about him.
Instead of taking offense, Charles laughed as he poured a mug of coffee and passed it to Ryker who passed it to Jo. "I think you should have been born a male, Mrs. Martin. You would have made one helluva Alpha."
Tilda's firm nod showed her agreement. She unplugged her iron and set it aside and moved the ironing board out of the way. "I've got pork chops and biscuits in the oven. All I've got to do is scramble your eggs."
"Good, because I'm famished." Jo slid onto a stool and rested her head in the hand propped up by the elbow on the island. She still looked tired, but was no longer pale.
"Then why don't you cook the eggs," Ryker suggested.
"Careful, Ryker, you'd be taking your life in your hands," Hyatt said from the door. Of them all, he looked the most rested. He was wearing a red plaid flannel shirt and a pair of jeans that both looked like they'd been taken from their packages that morning. "My sister has never cooked a decent meal in her life. It was Mother's one failing as a teacher of domesticity and it broke her heart."
"I can cook," Jo defended herself and laughed. "If it comes in a package with the microwave directions on the back. With a good variety of restaurants, who needs to cook?"
"Have you seen anything that even looks close to an eating establishment around these parts?" her brother asked.
"No, but there will be some. I've seen the plans." Jo stuck her tongue out at Hyatt. "In the meantime, we have the marvelous Mrs. Martin, who's a better cook then dear old Mom ever hoped to be."
The marvelous Mrs. Martin rolled her eyes at the flattery.
Chapter 24
Charles went to his office immediately after breakfast and from the dull roar emanating through the door, it was clear to everyone what he thought of half his Council being sent back to the city without his blessings. He then left with Hyatt to meet with the wolver architect whose design they were using for the new community.
Ryker took the remainder of the men and put them 'through their paces'.
"They are taking them back out tonight," Jo told her as they were making the beds in the children's rooms. She was great with the fitted bottom sheets, but had to be shown how to square the corners of the top ones. "You know, you can actually pay someone to do this for you."
"Take them back out where?" Kat asked as she folded the top of the sheet over the blanket. They looked like they'd been ironed, too.
"To the same place they went last night."
"How? Half the men are gone." If, as Tilda claimed, they were beaten the night before, what could they do with only half the manpower?
"Ryker says he can do more with a few good men, than with an army of halfwits. He says that after getting their asses chewed last night they'll be paying more attention to what he has to say today. Besides, tonight they'll have their Alpha to hold them together."
"Was it really that bad?" Kat straightened the last coverlet, a pretty yellow with a ruffled edge, one of a pair that Mrs. Martin produced from the huge linen closet on the third floor. They were bright and cheery and perfect for the girls.
"According to Ryker, it was a near disaster. They were lucky someone didn't get killed." Jo lowered her voice to a whisper. "We've got a traitor. Someone tipped them off. Charles says this time no one is to know until it's time to go."
"Do they know who it is?"
"No, but they have their suspicions. They knew about those guys months ago when we first started bringing things down here and getting this place ready. Alex, Stephanie, and a few others met with them and Alex paid them off. They never said anything about rogues. There are a lot of illegal businesses down here in these mountains. The Rabbit Creek pack over on the other side has had trouble before, but this side of the mountain is our land now and Alex said there was a more civilized way to take care of the problem."
"Looks like his way didn't work."
Jo lifted her eyebrows and shrugged. "Looks that way doesn't it?" She stood back and admired their handiwork. "Now that we're done with your work, come on downstairs take a look at mine. I'll show you what Wolf's Head Bluff is going to look like in a few years."
Jo led Kat to a small room next to the one Charles used as an office. It had been set up like a makeshift conference room with two long white folding tables pushed together to make one large one and folding chairs all around. From the closet in the corner, Jo withdrew a large tube of rolled paper and several heavier office items to weigh down the corners after the paper was unrolled. Once the paper was spread she stepped back and opened her arms.
"This is Wolf's Head Bluff, a modern community for the modern wolver."
"Holy shit!"
"Yeah," Jo nodded with a satisfied smile. "This is my baby. We needed an architectural team to pull it all together into a detailed plan, but the basic concept is mine. It can't be done overnight. The whole thing will take years to complete, but what the hell. We'll be around a long time."
It was, as Jo said, a community. Not just a sub-division, but a whole village, with a square surrounded by small businesses and winding lanes dotted with mixed housing that included a small development of condominiums, and both smaller and larger single family homes. Except for the condos, each dwelling came with a good portion of land with plenty of green space in between.
It wasn't, as Jo said, an architectural plan, but an artist's rendition of what that plan could look like. It was an amazing piece of work that covered thousands of acres of land. Kat was speechless for long minutes as she traced her finger along the roads and read the small print under each tiny drawing. Some of the homes already existed.
After giving Kat some time to absorb it all, Jo started pointing out special features.
"There's Hell Hall right there and the school and the clinic. A lot of packs have to make do with a vet for their medical needs. We're not exactly built like our human cousins and visiting a doctor can be risky. Charles is hoping his brother, Mike, might come back to run the clinic. He's a doctor, you know. More and more of our people are getting higher educations and we should be making a place for them within the packs instead of forcing them to work in the human world."
"How many of you are there?" Kat had been thinking in terms of a half dozen packs of fifty to a few hundred members.
"Compared to the human population? Not many, but we're in the thousands and growing. There are packs all over the world. Some we don't even know about. Look at Rawley. His ancestors sure as hell didn't hail from the Scottish Highlands," she laughed. "We come in all shapes and colors and sizes. You ever hear about the rediscovery of red wolves in Mexico?" Jo raised her eyebrows. "I don't know for sure, but it makes me wonder…"
"How have you been able to keep the secret?" This was amazing, mind boggling.
"In the past, we settled in isolated areas, but the world's a smaller place now
and the wilderness is disappearing. Times are changing faster than we have. We have to adapt. We were almost wiped out of this country and not so very long ago. If you kill us in wolf form, that's the way we stay. We have to make sure it doesn't happen again. And someday when our numbers are high enough…"
"You'll have to come out of the woods."
Jo laughed. "I like that. If you'd said out of the closet, I was going to have to rip you up. We're not ashamed of who we are, but we know what can happen. We've seen it before, silver bullets and all."
"Is that true? The legends?"
"Nah. Any old bullet will do." Jo cocked her head. "Your cute little puppies have arrived. Got your rolled up newspaper ready?"
* * *
A half hour later, Kat wasn't sure if a rolled up newspaper would do the job. The phrase 'raised by wolves' came to mind, but wolves would have done it better.
First contact was at the dark blue panel truck used to transport the children and Kat was offended on their behalf. Damnit! These were children, not cargo. She was horrified until she saw the condition of the driver, Marcus, who leapt from the driver's seat with surprising agility for a man shaped roughly like a barrel of muscle.
Marcus looked a little beat up and torn. He also looked like he was using the last of his restraint not to kill someone. Ryker, who'd come running with the rest of the men when the van pulled up, sealed his lips, pulled on his earlobe and turned his back, but his shaking shoulders gave his mirth away.
"Next time, you pick the little bastards up," Marcus growled, "See who's laughing then." He used a key to open the side door. "Had to break off the lock heads and handles on the inside, so they couldn't escape. Again. They busted the windows out of the passenger van we had them in."
The Alpha's Choice Page 18