Wolver's Reward

by Jacqueline Rhoades

  One leg clothed, he hopped toward the bathroom door while jamming his other leg into the jeans. He pushed, he shoved, he rammed his foot through. A pair of shorts and two mismatched socks shot from the flopping pant leg. He picked them up, ready to give them the sniff test and hoping they were clean. He was confronted with two busty, lip puckering wolves.

  "Shit," he muttered, tossing them in the pile with the others.

  "Shoot," Reb giggled behind him.

  "I hate going commando," he complained.

  As he entered the bathroom, he caught a glimpse of Reb, pillow to her face, falling back on the bed.

  Darla was in the room when he came out. Reb had the covers pulled over her head.

  The older woman looked from one to the other. "Have fun?" she asked sourly.

  River was about to tell her what she could do with her question when Reb's head popped out from beneath the covers.

  "Yes," she said with a weak attempt to hide her grin, and then hid under the covers again.

  "Well at least one of us did," Darla groused. "You ready?"

  The door had barely closed behind them before the woman started in. "Margaret says she made a deal with you."

  River grunted a noncommittal response, but Darla didn't need a verbal one.

  "She gotcha, didn't she?" She sucked in her cheeks when River's eyes flashed to hers. "Yep. She gotcha. That pretty face, those fine manners." Stubby pinkie extended, Darla arched her broad and muscled hand daintily in mimicry. "She's good." She smirked and nudged him with her elbow. "Don't feel bad. She's outsmarted wiser wolvers than you. And don't hold it against her. She did what she thought she had to do."

  "She could have asked," River groused.

  "Maybe," she shrugged, "But you'd already made it clear you were on your way. You just came to get your truck. Remember? Wait up."

  River stopped while Darla tied a shoe that didn't need to be tied.

  "Did she tell you why?" she asked.

  "He's sick. She wants him protected from a Challenge. The newbies make her nervous." The Mate never said it was a secret and, he figured, accurately, there wasn't much Darla didn't know about her Mate.

  "That's part of it." She switched to the other shoe and without looking up from the laces, said quietly, "She thinks he's going to die and she wants him to see his dream before he goes."

  Well, shit. The Alpha smelled sick. There was definitely something seriously wrong, but dying? River didn't think so.

  "What from?"

  "She won't say, but it's got something to do with that fall he took getting that stupid window." She straightened the hem of her pant leg which was turned up in a cuff. "There was this big old falling down house up the road from where we lived. All the windows were broken out but one way up at the roof peak. Margaret loved that window. She'd laugh and say someday she'd have the house to go with it. She was so upset about having to leave the valley, the Alpha thought he'd go get her that window with the promise of building her a house to fit it." She rolled her eyes.

  "He got it all right, and then the floor gave way and so did the one beneath it. He ended up in the cellar with a broken leg. That window survived, but the Alpha might not." Darla took in a breath that expanded her chest and slowly let it go. "Margaret blames herself for making a fuss. I've been watching over her since I was a cub. Came with her when she mated the Alpha. Never saw her make a fuss before. Not likely to see her make one again," she added. She sounded disappointed.

  "When did this happen?"

  "It's been over a week and before you say it, yes, the leg should have healed. It didn't." They'd reached the RV's door. Darla paused with her hand on the handle. "You be kind to the Mate." It wasn't a request. "She can't take much more."

  There were few signs of the fight that occurred in the confines of the little house on wheels. Everything had been straightened, thrown out, or put away. All the doors along the narrow passageway were closed, their contents, and Reb's former ammunition supply, hidden from view. Only one showed damage where a hinge had been torn from its mooring. A cracked and useless carafe was tucked into its place in the coffee maker on the counter. One of the burner covers on the miniature gas stove had a corner missing. Two chipped mugs were in the sink and a china teacup with a matching teapot sat in the center of the table.

  In the tiny sitting area across from the door, the Mate was a picture of calm. Only the fine lines etched across her forehead showed evidence of her stress. She returned River's nod of greeting.

  "The Alpha is in the bedroom," she said, graciously indicating the narrow carpeted passageway with her hand as if there might be some question of the direction. "Don't let him keep you. He needs his rest. And River?" She leaned in close to whisper. "He doesn't know about our arrangement."

  She meant the money, though how she planned to fork over a thousand dollars on the sly, River couldn't figure. He didn't much care. It wasn't his business as long as he got paid. He nodded again, but she stopped him with the same hand, touching him lightly as he passed.

  "You're angry with me, aren't you?"

  River glanced at the husky female standing behind the Mate before he shook his head. "No, ma'am, not anymore. I get it."

  He knew what it was like to feel responsible for someone's death.

  "I thought you might."

  The Mate, too, glanced Darla's way and then lowered her eyes to hide what was in them. "Thank you. Darla and I will be outside."

  "Ma'am," River called softly as she turned to leave. "Why don't you go over to my room and sit with Reb. She could use the company and you could get some rest. I'll come and get you when we're finished."

  For some reason, that made her smile.

  ~*~

  The Alpha was dozing, but opened his eyes when River came through the door. Upon seeing who it was, the old wolver became fully alert. There was no greeting and he didn't smile. He didn't look real good, either.

  He wasn't exactly hale and hearty looking before, but in the short time since his collapse, his skin had turned a ghastly gray and his eyes had a glassy sheen. Neither was a good sign.

  "Margaret tells me you've volunteered to join us on our journey. I will tell you that I do not approve." He smoothed the light cotton blanket that covered him, though he avoided the section over his injured leg. "I see no need for a Champion. I have no fear of a Challenge. My pack is loyal. I would know if they were not."

  He was connected with his pack. He would feel the discontent if it was there.

  "What about the new lot? Are they coming tonight? Tomorrow?"

  "We will meet them on our way."

  By the look the Alpha gave him, River knew he'd scored a point. New members were always taken in under the light of the full moon.

  "That gives you a month of not knowing. You've only met four. What about the others?"

  With a flutter of his hand, Roland brushed the question off, and then hastily balled the hand into a fist to hide the tremor. "They're eager to start this new life. Dennis assured me of it."

  The Thug probably said the same thing about his pack, but River didn't think it was a good time to point that out. "Dennis isn't here, sir," he pointed out instead.

  "I'm well aware of that," the Alpha snapped. He pounded his fist on his thigh and winced, then said with some disgust, "It's my leg that afflicts me, not my mind." After taking a calming breath, he continued in a more reasonable tone. "Dennis's unfortunate demise has engendered ramifications beyond our current situation that I would not expect someone of your position to understand."

  When he paused, River jumped in, mostly because coming from his 'position', it pissed him off. "You lost the wolver who was supposed to take care of your pack and your daughter when the time comes." He watched the Alpha's eyes widen in curious surprise. River tried to keep the satisfaction from his voice. "Yeah, I get it."

  He hadn't seen it before, but he saw it now. "This whole thing," he went on, spreading his hands to encompass it all, "You think joining two pac
ks that have nothing in common will be good for them both. Males and females, strength and stability, and the chance to start a new life together in a new place. Finding Reb a wolver who would someday take over the pack was a bonus. I get it, Alpha. Pack comes first. You want yours to survive and you don't see anyone within your pack that can do the job." From what River had seen, he wasn't even sure the current Alpha was up to it.

  Roland settled back against the headboard where pillows were arranged to prop his shoulders. He folded his arms across his chest. "And what is your role in all this? Of what benefit is this position to you?"

  River wondered what the old man would say if River told him the truth. "A thousand smackers and a week with your daughter." Instead, he tried a modified version of the truth. "My Alpha thought it would be good for me to see some of the world before I decide what I want to do with the rest my life." He shrugged. "Travelling alone isn't all I thought it would be, so why not do it with you? I'll earn my keep. Your pack is loyal, but they won't hold up if it comes to a fight. You already know that. The best way to avoid that is to make sure one doesn't start. From what I've seen of Darla, she's probably a good Second. I got no call to question that, but tough and loyal as she is, she's won't be strong enough to stand in the way of a Challenge. I am. I may not be the biggest," he added, thinking of Ben, "but I've been trained by the best. Being your Champion gives me the authority to do it."

  "I don't like the idea of a Champion. It implies that I expect a Challenge for the mantle, which I do not. The newcomers must be made to feel welcome, not viewed with suspicion." The Alpha raised his brows as if expecting a response.

  River gave him one. "The newcomers need to know that they're only welcome if they play by your rules and they need to know your rules will be enforced. You don't like the word, call me Security. That was my job at Wolf's Head. You need someone to keep the peace until you're back on your feet and can do it yourself."

  River mentally shook his head in disgust, not at the Alpha, but at himself. Why was he arguing for a job he'd been conned into applying for? It wasn't his business. It wasn't his fight.

  His wolf chuffed in amusement. "Mate," it said and River knew his wolf was right. It was Margaret that started all this.

  He raised his hands, palms outward. "With all due respect, Alpha, I didn't apply for this job. The Mate offered it to me, but you're the boss, and..."

  "So you would think." For the first time, the Alpha smiled. "My Margaret is a worrier. She sees things differently than I and in some things, she is wiser than I. She foresees problems where I do not and in this, I believe she is wrong.

  "Both packs are amenable to this merger," he went on, "and I believe we are not so very different in our wants and needs. We are all wolvers under the skin. We have the same goals and we understand the implications of the failure to reach those goals. Pack is everything and without it, we fall into chaos. Every wolver knows this and feels it in his heart."

  River could have let it go. He should have let it go. It was obvious Roland was a good man and a good wolver. River had no doubt the old wolf was a good professor, too, but maybe that was the problem. He lived in books and not in the real world. All wolvers were not the same and River found himself re-entering the argument.

  "Who's the wolver in the pink golf shirt who walks around with a book under his nose?"

  "Arnold, but I fail to see how his reading habits are pertinent to the subject at hand."

  "Can you picture him and Scar becoming best buds? Because I can't. What do they have in common?"

  "Scar?"

  River traced the outline of on his face and then another in a slanted six inch line along the side of his neck.

  Recognizing the nonverbal description, Roland looked horrified. "Surely that can't be his name. No one would be so cruel as to..."

  "He earned that name," River interrupted. "He's proud of it. Those scars are proof he fought and survived. He fought a lot, and he didn't get those scars from good hearted wolvers. That's the world you're trying to blend with yours, Alpha." He held out his hands, palms up, and lifted each in turn. "Books and bloody brawls. Maybe they do want a different life, but that's the life they know and those scars run deep. That's something I wouldn't expect your pack, with their... background... to understand."

  If Roland noticed River's lightly veiled sarcasm, he didn't show it.

  "Such differences are superficial." The Alpha brushed the comment off like a piece of lint on his lapel. The movement caused his swollen leg to spasmed beneath the sheet and he grimaced. "We all have scars, River," he said when the spasm subsided.

  "Yeah, but these don't come from falling through..."

  The Alpha's face contorted with pain. His tightly sealed lips couldn't hold back the groan that came with it. Blood, rust colored and unhealthy looking, seeped through the covers. The rank odor that pervaded the small space increased in intensity.

  With a shaking hand, Roland pointed to a stack of towels sitting on the far corner of the bed. "Get me one of those towels," he ordered through clenched teeth. "Give it here."

  River already had a towel in his hand. He ignored the Alpha's word of protest and drew the cover back from the leg.

  "Fuck," he muttered when he saw the condition of the leg and the suppurating wound.

  "Quite," the Alpha agreed, "Though if you stay with my pack, I will insist you not offend our female members with your, um, more colorful terms."

  "Fuck," River said again, not to defy the Alpha but because he didn't know what to do about the mess in front of him other than to tuck the towel beneath the leg to protect the mattress.

  He stared at the swollen ball of purpled flesh that had formed below the knee. It was off to the side and right above the thickest portion of the calf. Two large and ugly blisters of the same rusty red color as the blood stood out to the side of it. The skin was split over a newly opened wound lined with blackened and dying tissue. Another, healed from above but blackened beneath, ran perpendicular to it. Below the obvious wounds, the leg was swollen to twice its normal size and showed signs of discoloration.

  Smell and sight combined to bring the long buried memory into focus.

  The Mate was worried and with good cause. The Alpha was going to die if something wasn't done and it could already be too late.

  River grabbed another towel and soaked it with water from the sink in the corner of the room. As gently as he could, he began wiping away the oozing mess.

  "You didn't get this falling through a floor."

  "Who told you I fell?"

  "Does it matter? This isn't a broken bone." River leaned in close to the leg, searching but not finding the evidence he needed.

  "I am not in the habit of lying. I've never suffered a broken bone before, but I can categorically confirm it happened. I felt it quite clearly and painfully when I landed in the rubble of that cellar."

  It could happen, River supposed; a frightening and disorienting fall, a moment of panic, a jarring and painful landing in the cellar of an old and abandoned house. "Stone cellar, dirt floor?" he asked and the Alpha confirmed it.

  "Yes, how did you know?"

  River looked up at the Alpha and caught sight of the window that caused it all. It was pretty, but not worth the price.

  "Because I was going to live in one, sir, until I lit a fire."

  He'd thought it would be a safe place to hole up. The cellar of the old and crumbling house was chilly and damp, but sheltered from the rain and wind. It was only a week after he'd grabbed up the pups and ran. He had no idea what he was doing or where he was running. They were tired, cold, and hungry and he needed a place where they could hide while he went in search of food. He needed a place that was warm and dry, a place where he could think once he had them fed.

  He'd bedded the pups down, then gathered what was burnable, and lit a small fire. It wasn't a big cellar and it wasn't long before it was warm. River never knew where it came from. His back was turned when it fell from the rafter
s or slithered from its den in the wall, seeking the heat. It landed on Skeeter, a pup not much older than Meadow who was two. River heard the pup's cry, saw him flail his little arm. He made a grab for it, but it was too late. Too tiny holes had pierced the pup's neck. River chased it to a corner and killed it and then killed another. Copperheads always seemed to travel in pairs.

  There was no way to sugar coat it. "You've been snake bit, Alpha. That's the poison in your leg. I've seen it before. I know."

  He knew because he'd watched Skeeter's neck swell up the same way. There was nothing River could do except hold the pup's hand as his air was cut off and he struggled to breathe. And then the struggle was over. The poison had reached his heart. Amazingly, the others slept through it, all except Meadow who'd watched from the corner where he'd made her bed. In silence, she watched Skeeter die, and in silence, she watched River carry him out into the cold and rainy night and return without her little friend.

  Meadow never made a sound again and never slept alone again. Each night after that, she curled her tiny body into River's, seeking his comfort and comforting him in return. Skeeter's death was one of the things he remembered and tried so hard to forget.

  At River's pronouncement, Roland lay back against the pillows and closed his eyes. His breath left him in one long hiss. For a moment, when his chest didn't rise on the intake, River thought the words were all that was needed to kill him, but the Alpha gulped in another breath and his chest rose with it.

  "That's it, then," he said without opening his eyes. "There's nothing to be done."

  River had also known a wolver who'd lost half his hand to the bite of a rattler, or so he claimed. He'd described the result in great and gory detail. He claimed he was saved by cutting the poisoned flesh away. He said it took weeks to heal. River didn't know if the story was true, but the description matched the Alpha's leg.

  "There is something you can try, sir, but there's no guarantee it'll work."

  Roland lifted his head. "Some hope is better than none at all. What is it you have in mind?"