by R. J. Blain
Desmond narrowed his eyes at me, and I turned away, using our mate as a shield. She cooperated, murmuring soothingly.
“Get in the air, Frank. Alex is on his way from Rome, but I don’t know if he’ll make it in time.”
“It’ll take us about eight hours, maybe a bit longer. The Cessna’s winterized, but Jack can get it going; it’ll just take him an hour or two. I’ll call the airport and see if they can get the bird ready a bit faster.” Frank hesitated. “How bad is he, really?”
Sanders ran his hands through his hair, bowing his head. “I don’t know your wolves very well, Frank, but I’d drag your weakest wolves out of bed and get them onto the plane with you. Does your pack have any puppies at the moment?”
“Sure, we have a young bitch with her puppy coat. She’s twelve. Richard will skin us all for rugs if we bring her out of our territory, Desmond. He’ll kill us, especially if we let her near courting wolves. Her parents have her up at his place for the winter. I’m pretty sure he’s already decided who he wants for her mate in a few years, too.”
Desmond drummed his fingers on the box. “Better an annoyed Richard who wants our blood than no Richard at all. Get her on the plane, Frank. Sanders, call around and find one of your older unmated wolves—one who can keep his teeth to himself. I’ll give him the keys to my Mercedes for a week if he can deal with rutting without mating with Richard’s puppy.”
I bristled, twisting around to glare at Desmond. While I thought our Sasha would become a fine bitch, my human had been adamant. She was still ours, and we weren’t sharing our puppy with anyone. She was too young, too uncertain, and needed help with her wolf. Until they were better melded, we wouldn’t allow her to mate. I wiggled in my mate’s grip, snarling and snapping my teeth at the other Alpha for daring to countermand my human’s wishes for our youngest bitch.
“Richard!” our mate squealed, struggling to keep a hold on me as I clawed at the box in order to reach Desmond.
“She’ll be on the plane. I’ll bring her father as well. Richard likes him.”
“Is he submissive?” Desmond asked.
“He’s about as submissive as a nuclear bomb, Desmond.”
“Well, this is going to be fun,” Sanders predicted.
I snarled at him, too.
I exhausted myself in my effort to prevent the other Fenerec from overstepping their bounds and going against my human’s wishes. Panting, I flopped on the big wooden box, dully staring at our mate in the hopes she would do something to help my cause.
She didn’t. She stifled a yawn, glaring at Sanders, who was sprawled across the box, drooling all over it as he slept.
“Are you just going to let him do that?” our mate demanded, pointing at the slumbering Alpha.
“Yes,” Desmond replied. “Lisa and your mom went to sleep hours ago. Go to bed, Nicolina. Take Richard with you. If he gives you trouble, kick him until he stops.”
“I’m not going to kick him,” our mate snapped. “He can barely walk.”
“Running out in front of cars will do that,” her father pointed out. “Now you know why you should look both ways before crossing the street.”
“That’s terrible.”
“You have my permission to humiliate him in any fashion you desire, especially if it knocks sense back into him. Just be careful with his legs, and don’t hurt him any more than he already is.”
I was too tired to do anything more than voice a low growl.
“Can I feed Lisa’s devil kitten to him?” Nicolina grumbled, pulling me towards her. I whined when she touched my aching legs.
“No, you may not.” Desmond got up, circled the box, and kissed his daughter’s forehead. “I’ll come for Richard when his pack arrives.”
“Okay.” Our mate picked me up, draping me over her shoulder to carry me upstairs.
Her den smelled of her, but the lingering traces of our scent marked when our mate had permitted us within her space. She set me on her nest, crossed her arms over her chest, and glared at me.
“I liked you better when you were annoying. At least you were interesting—annoying, obnoxious, egotistical, and stubborn, but that was better than this. Now look at you.”
Our mate was unhappy, and because she was unhappy, I was unhappy. I whined, lowering my head. She sighed, sat on the ground beside her nest, and poked my nose. “I didn’t even thank you for helping Mom and Dad. Lisa told me what you did. And then you came to the hospital when they couldn’t. I hate hospitals.”
My mate rubbed her eyes, and alarmed, I wiggled to the edge of her nest to rub my muzzle against her face. In my effort to ease the distress in her scent, I licked her chin.
Lifting her head, she stared down her nose at me, her reddened eyes blazing. “Father told me to humiliate you.”
I turned my ears back. Our mate was clever and dangerous; she had shown us that already. My human was wary when she hunted us, although I enjoyed it. Without my human to offer his insights, I worried her tricks would prove more than I could defuse.
I needed my human to give our mate a proper challenge, and he wasn’t responding to her.
When she grabbed her brush, I perked my ears forward. I liked the brush more than my human did, though he enjoyed any attention our mate offered us. As she stroked it down my back, I writhed at the way my skin tingled.
“You’re shameless,” she scolded, though she didn’t stop, not until she had finished situating my fur to her liking. “If you don’t snap out of this and behave, I’m taking a baseball bat to the Porsche.”
I was certain my human wouldn’t be happy about our mate doing something to his box, not that I understood what she meant by ‘taking a baseball bat’ to it. Bats were interesting prey, elusive but crunchy. Did my human’s box need to eat bats? My human remained as he had for hours, hiding with the despondency of a sickened wolf who stayed away for the sake of the pack.
“You like pink too much for that to work, so I’ll just have to figure something else out.” Rising to her feet, she prowled to one of the boxes in her room, searching for something. “No, that won’t do…”
She lifted something up, and I recognized it as something my human had inflicted on us. Neither of us liked silver, but I remembered my human scheming with our mate’s father for gifts. Desmond couldn’t touch the metal even when new, not without it being obvious to the Normals something was wrong. My human could, barely. We were better than Desmond and his wolf, who avoided silver whenever possible.
We embraced it, letting it color our fur, staining us for the pride of our pack. It hurt, but it was a tolerable pain. My human had thought our mate’s enjoyment of the metal amusing. It had been his idea to buy the collar in black and silver, something to keep her safe from the other males while matching our colors.
I didn’t understand the flowers, but my human had been intrigued, playing along with Desmond’s human, manipulating the other’s wolf into buying gifts for our mate. It let us fulfill our duties without stirring Desmond’s suspicions.
My human was clever when he wanted to be.
The charms had been my human’s idea as well, and all it had taken was a subtle word from him to stoke Desmond’s instincts to provide for his puppy. We had allowed our mate’s father to think himself the one behind the gifts, but I knew better. My human was as wise as he was clever, when he wasn’t being stubborn.
Our mate lifted the collar and spun it in her fingers, narrowing her eyes at me. “If talking won’t work, perhaps you need a little pain to wake you up.”
I backed away, tucking my tail, locking my gaze on the collar with its silver chain. Without my human, I didn’t know how it would affect me—how it would affect us.
“Richard, come,” she demanded, and because she was our mate, because she called us by name, I obeyed. I slinked forward, lowering my head and whining. “Paw.”
Whimpering, I lifted my paw for her.
She draped her collar over my foreleg. The silver, gifted from us to her, seare
d through my fur, tarnishing it to black. I yowled, scrambling back. In my effort to get as far away from the metal as possible, I fell off her nest and thumped to the floor.
Silver wasn’t supposed to hurt us so easily.
Something in me caved and snapped, and my human hurt as much as I did. Our mate snatched her collar, dangling it in front of her as she chased after us.
With a dismayed howl, I retreated to the door of her den. She had left it cracked open, and I wiggled through the opening. The pain in my front leg shadowed the discomfort in my hindquarters. With her close on my heels, I darted away.
Our mate ruthlessly pursued, and I could smell her excitement as she stalked after us. “Come here, Richard,” she called.
It wasn’t strong, but my human’s unease writhed beneath my fur.
I wanted our mate, but a wise wolf knew when to flee to fight another day, and I didn’t want to know what she would do to me if she caught me while she held her collar. Pain was an excellent teacher, and I didn’t need my human to remind me our mate was willing to inflict it on us.
My mate was enjoying herself way too much.
I tumbled my way down the steps from the floor with her den all the way down to where the humans liked gathering. As I thumped and rolled to a halt, I felt the gaze of several Fenerec fall on me. Desmond’s was the worst, and I felt his wolf’s presence prodding at me.
I staggered to my paws, and hearing the patter of my mate’s feet behind us, I scrambled for safety. I didn’t fit under the cushioned box. I abandoned my efforts, running into the clear barrier hoping I could break through it. I bounced off, crumpling beside it. Shaking my head, I ran for Sanders, crashing into his legs and clawing at his feet in my desperation to escape my mate.
“Nicolina, what are you doing?” Desmond demanded.
I heard the silver chains jingle as she waved them in her father’s direction. “He really, really doesn’t like it.”
“So you’re chasing him around the house at four in the morning while your sister and mother are trying to sleep.”
“Don’t worry, Father. Once he stops running, I’ll collar him and take him outside so he can watch me redecorate his Porsche with your baseball bat.”
Sanders reached down, grabbed me by the scruff of my neck, and pulled me out from beneath the box he was sitting on. “Richard, you better run. For the sake of your Porsche, if nothing else.”
“You burned him,” Desmond growled.
“He’ll live,” my mate replied with chilling certainty. “He may not like it, but he’ll live.”
“She’s a chip off the old block,” Sanders said, pressing me to his face. “Before you torture him, let me enjoy his fur, Nicolina.”
“Father said I could torture him all I wanted,” my mate snapped, waving the collar at the Fenerec.
Laughing, Sanders gave me another brisk rub with his cheek before setting me down. “Have fun.”
“I didn’t say you could torture him, daughter. I said you could humiliate him.”
“Isn’t it the same thing?”
I took advantage of my mate’s bickering with her father to make a run for it, my claws sliding and slipping on the smooth floor before I managed to reach the rougher carpeting of the communal den. Launching myself at the couch, I climbed over the back of it and jumped in the direction of the door.
“No, Richard, you can’t go outside,” Sanders called out. “You’re an indoor dog until further notice.”
I howled at the insult.
“Quiet, Richard,” Desmond chided. “Sleeping mate and child are upstairs.”
Defying him at the top of my lungs, I ran for the steps leading up into other parts of the den, skidding to a halt as Nicolina darted at me, reaching out with her collar. Twisting around, I ran in the other direction, ending up in a room with a big box. Desmond’s scent was all over, marking it as part of his den.
I dove under his box. A web of lines entangled me, and I smacked to the carpet, struggling to free myself. Something crashed to the floor beside me. I yipped, recoiling.
Humans liked their boxes too much.
“Richard!” Desmond bellowed.
I grabbed hold of the offending web in my teeth and shook my head as hard as I could. Another crash was accompanied by our mate’s startled squeak. Breaking free, I kicked my hind paws in disdain, took advantage of our mate’s distraction, and darted by her. Desmond made a grab at me, but I ran between his legs.
“Come back here, you mangy, flea-bitten mutt!”
“Father, he does not have fleas,” our mate protested.
“You’re okay with mange but not with fleas?” Sanders asked, stepping out of my path as I barreled back the way I came. “Look at him. How can you accuse such a beauty of mange? If you don’t knock him to his senses, you could take him to a dog show and make a fortune in competition with that fur.”
“When he’s back to normal, I’m telling him you called him beautiful,” Desmond replied. The Alpha growled, crossing his arms over his chest. I paused near the box situated on the slick floors, panting as I caught my breath.
Our mate stalked towards us, one hand behind her back. My human wasn’t all that coherent, but he warned me she still had the offensive collar on her somewhere, even though I couldn’t see it. I lowered my head and bared my teeth, uttering a single growl at her.
“Get him from behind,” she hissed.
I snarled when Desmond joined in our mate’s hunt while Sanders watched and laughed. He had a small box in his hand, and it made snapping and clicking noises with the occasional flash.
“Frank’s going to piss himself when he sees this,” Sanders promised.
I lunged for Sanders, snapping my teeth at his heels. He yelped as I scored a hit on him, hard enough he kicked at me in reaction. Sliding beneath his feet, I escaped from my mate to circle around her father.
“What are you attacking me for, Richard? I’m on your side, I swear. Look, I don’t have any silver, and I’m not trying to stop you from doing whatever you want. That’s them. Don’t bite me.”
Desmond dove at me from around a corner of his den, clawing at the scruff of my neck in his effort to capture me. I yowled and yipped. He pinned me to the floor, and I rolled, raking his arm with my back paws.
“Will you stop that?” he ordered. I felt his wolf’s presence lurking over me, preparing to put me in my place for my resistance.
My human didn’t like when I submitted. Although I knew I should, although I wanted to lower my eyes and bow to the other Fenerec, I latched my teeth onto Desmond’s wrist instead and kept paddling at him. I didn’t press my fangs down hard into his frail human skin.
There were limits to how far I would go for my human, and I had already learned my lesson. Mouthing at Desmond with a nip of teeth was forgivable. Drawing blood wasn’t.
“Holy shit, he’s actually biting you,” Sanders said, and once again, he pointed the box at me. It made a snapping noise.
“If you keep taking photos instead of helping, I’m going to bite you,” Desmond snapped.
“Fifteen pounds soaking wet. Can’t handle him on your own?” the Alpha taunted.
Desmond was so distracted by Sanders I took advantage of the opportunity, twisted, and rolled free, my claws scraping the slick floor as I gained purchase to race across the den.
“Damn it, Dad! Pay attention,” my mate shrieked.
“Shit. Slippery little runt,” Desmond grumbled.
I paused long enough to pose for them, dancing on my paws. Sanders took another photo with his box. Our mate scowled at me, and I fed my enjoyment of her attention to my human.
“How hard can he be to catch?” Sanders once again taunted, following after our mate and her father at a sedate pace.
“‘Let me have a puppy,’ you said. ‘How hard can it be to take care of a puppy,’ you said,” Desmond complained, glaring at our mate with his hands on his knees. Then he turned his attention to me. “Do not make me change and come after you, Ri
chard. I will, and you won’t like it.”
I flicked the tip of my tail at him before trotting deeper into his den.
Sanders’s howled laughter followed in my wake. “Why don’t you go change, Desmond. Nicolina can keep him occupied. We’ll let him outside, and he can run himself exhausted. He won’t be able to get far with you on his heels.”
“We are not letting him outside,” Desmond growled.
“So you’re going to chase him in your house instead? Do you like replacing all your furniture?”
Desmond straightened, slapping his hands together. “It’s due to be replaced anyway. I already had to do the living room, so why not the rest of it?”
“You mean I had to do the living room,” our mate grumbled.
“Your puppy,” Desmond replied with a smirk. “I’m pretty sure that means you have to fix anything he breaks.” With a yellow gleam in his eye, Desmond stalked our mate, put his finger under her chin, and lifted her head. He kissed her brow. “I own you for years, little one. You’ll be working off your debt until you’re at least thirty.”
“Dad,” our mate wailed. “That’s not fair.”
“Better catch your puppy quick then, darling. Off you go.”
When Desmond retreated deeper into his den, closing the door behind him, I ran off. Our mate was too busy yelling at her father to watch where I went. I explored, pausing when I found a place where my scent lingered. Like Desmond’s den, it had a box. I checked over my shoulder, and when I was certain neither our mate, Sanders, or Desmond was behind me, I headed deeper inside.
My human stirred enough to teach me the secret of the boxes within the box. I pawed one open, snuffling as it slid easily at my command. It was dark inside, empty, and perfect for denning. At his suggestion, I hopped inside. It moved beneath me, and when it clicked closed, my human once again slumbered, content in the enclosed darkness.
I curled up, resting my nose on my paws. Draping my tail over my eyes, I settled in to wait.
Our mate was close.