Terry Spear’s Wolf Bundle

by Terry Spear

  He separated from her a little and gazed down at her. A hint of tears filled his eyes, and the sight of them touched her soul. He hugged her again. Wrapping her arms around him, she basked in his heated embrace, forgetting for the moment his sister was behind her, or that Nurse Godzilla would make a move on Ashton next. At least Tessa assumed she would.

  Ashton entered the kitchen and set a dead duck on her counter. What…?

  Rourke came up behind Hunter. “What the hell is the nurse from the hospital doing here? And who is she?”

  That was when Hunter saw his sister and dropped Tessa like she was a burning ember. Not expecting to be coldly thrust aside, she felt a heartbeat of rejection, but then quickly reminded herself his seeing his sister had to be quite a shock. But would he remember her? And everything about his past life?

  “Meara.” He stared at her for a long moment and then hurried to hug her. “Meara.”

  Thank god, he remembered her.

  “Dear brother. I thought I’d lost you. I’ve been looking for you for three days. Then I tracked you here. Tessa said you’d lost your memory.”

  “Hell, Meara, you’d taken off with…” He glanced back at Tessa, his eyes and face hard. “We’ll be right back.” He pulled Meara outside. “Who the hell were they and where the hell did you go?” He slammed the door closed.

  So he did remember more.

  Figuring the family reunion would go a lot better than that if her own brother had been returned to her, Tessa’s mouth gaped in surprise. Apparently Hunter’s seeing his sister did bring back memories, but that didn’t seem to be a good thing.

  Hunter escorted his sister far enough away from the house that no one could hear them. He glowered at her, waiting for Meara to tell him what had happened, the notion of her disappearing from the house in the company of the three gray males hitting him like an icy avalanche of bad memories.

  “Quit looking at me like the devil’s possessed me, Hunter!” She looked out to the ocean.

  She was beautiful and any one of a number of males would want her, but her reluctance to choose a mate from the alphas she’d seen fit to date was one thing—running off with a bunch of horny betas quite another.

  “I’m sorry,” she finally said under her breath. “I…I came right home after the idiots talked me into running with them for a while. It didn’t take much time for me to appreciate none of them would interest me for very long. I…I didn’t realize someone would have tried to kill you in the meantime.” She glanced up at him, her body shuddering in the cold wind.

  He took her arm and pulled her into his embrace. “We’ve got to stick together, Meara. No matter what else happens with the pack, we’re family.”

  “I looked everywhere for you, and then thought about this Tessa Anderson woman and how she’d intrigued you. I thought maybe you’d come here to be with her. I smelled your scent here, and sat on the back patio, hoping you’d look out and see me. But Tessa peered out the window instead. I figured you’d succumbed to her charms. I’d considered howling to let you know I was out back, but I was afraid the men I’d run off from might locate me. So I returned home. The next morning I drove here, but no one was here. I had no way of knowing you had been injured so badly.” Tears glistened in Meara’s eyes, and as much as she tried to hide her feelings, he knew she felt badly that her irresponsibility could have gotten him killed. But worse, she would have been left alone to fend for herself, and that made his stomach clench even tighter.

  “Tell me what happened,” she said.

  He explained about the three brothers, the mess Tessa was in, and the problem with the two newly turned lupus garous. Meara had been quiet, taking everything in, until he came to Rourke’s story. And then she laughed out loud.

  “I never expected to find you—the great Hunter—in such a quandary.”

  “Yeah, well, hell, if you hadn’t run off…” He said the harsh words before he could stop himself.

  She focused on his chest, and he was afraid she was going to dissolve into tears. But then she raised her gaze, cast him an irritated look, and tried to put the blame on him again. Knowing her, she couldn’t deal with the guilt.

  “You know how important it is to keep our situation secret from humans. Isn’t that what’s drummed into us? Kill them if they get wind of the truth. Or change them only if the situation truly warrants it. What a mess. How are you going to fix all this, Hunter?”

  “I should have been getting the cabins ready to rent out, waiting on the pack to tire of the city and join us.” But even thinking of that, he couldn’t believe how all the memories flooded back to him so quickly. The fire, losing their home, Uncle Basil’s warning him to take “care” of Tessa Anderson, and the subsequent fight he’d had with the gray wolves when he’d gone in search of his wayward sister. He was certain his uncle hadn’t quite had this scenario in mind when he gifted the properties to Hunter though.

  “None of our people have returned yet.” Meara pushed her windswept hair out of her eyes.

  “I’m surprised Leidolf, the red pack leader in Portland, hasn’t chased them off yet. Maybe our pack members are behaving themselves for a change.” He shook his head. “I don’t believe it for a second.” He took a deep breath. “As soon as I resolve this situation with the gray who’s stalking Tessa, I’ll make the trip to Portland and force the pack to return.”

  “You can’t stay here. You can’t get involved with her.”

  “I am involved.” He wondered if other pack leaders had this much trouble. “No more running after men I don’t approve of.” He tilted her chin up with the tip of his finger and looked directly into her eyes, warning her to mind him this time.

  She nodded, her look angry, but then it softened a hair with a hint of a smile. “Can’t afford to. You’ll change half the population of Oregon if I leave you alone again.”

  He grunted and moved her toward the house. “You’re staying with me until I take care of the gray.”

  She growled, and he knew the fight had only just begun.

  “Family feud,” Cara said, motioning to Hunter and Meara outside, then turned her attention to Ashton. “Went hunting, I see. I like duck, too.”

  Rourke rolled his eyes. “I’m getting a shower before supper.” He looked at the clean kitchen. “You are fixing it soon, aren’t you?”

  “We just ate a little over three hours ago!” Tessa declared.

  “That’s long enough. I’m starving. So is Ashton.” Rourke waved at the dead duck.

  “Hunter, too, after all the exercise we had.” He stalked down the hall.

  “I didn’t have a chance to have lunch,” Cara said.

  Well, Tessa wasn’t hungry. She glanced out the kitchen window. “Looks like we’re going to get snowed in. You might want to leave before that happens,” she said to Cara. Tessa had no idea why she would want to save Ashton’s butt. Although he cast her a grateful look.

  “I’ll hang around. I haven’t been with…a lot of people…on a more social basis for a number of years. This is the most fun I’ve had in eons,” Cara said.

  Tessa couldn’t understand what the woman was talking about. No one seemed enthusiastic about seeing her even. Why would she think anyone wanted to be around her?

  “Did you lose your bandages, Ashton?” Cara asked, her voice sultry and sexy as she took hold of his injured hand. “Tessa, do you have some new ones? I’ll fix him right up.”

  “Sure, I’ll get them and the antibiotics.” Tessa glanced at Ashton’s hand, but Cara was holding it so that she couldn’t see the bite wound.

  When Tessa returned to the kitchen, Hunter and Meara had come back inside. For being reunited after losing her brother, and considering the ordeal he had been through, they scowled at each other and didn’t appear grateful in the least. But worse, gone was Hunter’s lustful interest in Tessa. At once she felt she was the center of the controversy and wasn’t good enough for the family.

  Well, he had said he couldn’t promise her anyth
ing. Just that he would help her find Bethany’s murderer and set her brother free. Tessa should have known when his memory came back, she would be history. But no matter how she tried to reconcile herself with the notion, she couldn’t squash the dismal feeling he would soon abandon her.

  “Here, Cara.” Tessa handed her the bandages. “I guess everyone’s staying for dinner?” She cast Hunter a questioning glance. She halfway expected him to say he was leaving with his sister for good now.

  His brows still furrowed, his lips grim, he nodded. He gave Meara a hard look. She folded her arms and looked doubly cross at Tessa. So much for a lovely dinner when she wasn’t even hungry. Cara was the only one who seemed to be pleased to be here, and the one Tessa really wanted to see leave.

  Tessa pulled out a package of hot links. “Can everyone manage spaghetti with hot sausage, bell peppers, and onions?”

  “Hmm, sounds good to me,” Cara said, licking her lips while she bandaged Ashton’s hand with tender loving care. He tried to jerk his hand away, but she held on tight and tsked.

  “Anything you fix is fine with us.” Hunter’s tone of voice was terse.

  Meara didn’t have a choice?

  Wearing a towel, Rourke came out of the bathroom and hollered from the hallway, “Fine with me.”

  How had he heard what she’d asked? She stared after him as he slipped into Michael’s room to grab some clothes. What had gotten into him? She’d never thought he’d dress so scantily in front of a bunch of women.

  “The snow’s bound to make the road impassable again. Is anyone leaving soon?” She directed the question at Cara and Meara. “The food won’t take long to fix so we can eat and let you get on your way.”

  “No work for me tonight,” Cara said cheerfully.

  Hunter grunted. “Meara’s staying here with me for as long as I need to be here.”

  For as long as he needed to be here. Well, that said it all. Once he was done helping her, Hunter was out of here.

  Fine with Tessa. “I guess you’ll want to sleep with your sister then, and—”

  Cara laughed. “A macho male like Hunter sleeping with his sister? That would be the day.”

  Tessa sure wasn’t sleeping with Hunter under the current circumstances. “Okay, well, you and Meara can sleep together and—”

  “I’ll stay with Ashton,” Cara announced, her eyes flashing with humor. “He might need medical attention during the night. Look at how pale the poor man is.”

  He had been, but now his face flushed crimson. Tessa had never seen him blush. She expected some objection from Lord Hunter, but he didn’t say anything. She was really surprised Ashton wouldn’t have nixed Cara’s suggestion himself.

  Tessa threw the fajita bell pepper and onion mix into the saucepan, added the sausage links, and then the tomato sauce. “Okay, then Hunter and Rourke can take the spare bedroom and Meara and I—”

  “I sleep alone,” Meara said, fire burning in her eyes.

  Wearing a clean pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, Rourke walked into the room. More casual than she had ever seen him. In fact, the sweatshirt belonged to her brother.

  “I don’t mind sleeping by the fire. I can watch the rest of the house that way in the event anyone plans to break in,” he said.

  Tessa considered Hunter’s expression, but it was still dark as ever. About the sleeping arrangements? Or something else?

  She coyly smiled. “Hunter, you can sleep with Rourke by the fire and keep him company.”

  Meara laughed, a catty, annoyed kind of laugh. She stalked into the kitchen and began opening drawers. When she found the silverware, she set it on the table.

  Guess she could be a little bit of help. Maybe Meara was mad at Hunter and not at her. Still, Tessa had every intention of cooling her relationship with Hunter because when he left, she didn’t want to be upset over it for days, weeks, months afterward. Best to end this insane infatuation now.

  Life had been so simple for Hunter after Tessa had found him on the beach: discover his identity, learn what had happened to him, deal with Tessa’s stalker, and find Bethany’s murderer so Michael could be released from prison.

  Now he had to deal with two freshly turned lupus garous. And Meara. Unfortunately, she had been right concerning everything they had fought about.. All that mattered was the lupus garous’ safety and secrecy. He knew that. As pack leader, he sure as hell didn’t want his sister reminding him of the fact. He should have taken Meara, Rourke, and Ashton back to his cabin resort up north once he learned that’s where he lived and pretended Tessa and her problems didn’t exist.

  Any other alpha leader would not have allow himself to be dragged into human affairs.

  But he couldn’t and wouldn’t abandon her. Not yet. Tessa had taken him in and cared for him when she didn’t have a clue as to who he was. If he left her alone, the stalker would change her against her will. Hunter wouldn’t let him. Another alpha leader, given the same scenario, would take the gray to task also, if he had been in his territory, but beyond that, she would be on her own. For now, Tessa’s property was in Hunter’s territory—newly franchised.

  He couldn’t let her brother stay in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. No other wolf would feel obligated to help out in a case like this—except in the event one of their kind did the killing. Dealing with the lupus garou would be the end of it though. No lupus garou would try to release an innocent human. In fact, he would serve to keep the lupus garous out of the limelight. But Hunter couldn’t allow it, although how he was going to get Michael out of his incarceration eluded him. First of course, he had to prove the grays had committed the crime.

  To complicate matters, Hunter had to force Meara to stay with him and keep her out of trouble. Her first wolf heat was making her crotchety and difficult to handle. Thank heavens he didn’t have any more sisters and that none of the three wolves she had taken off with had forced a mating. She needed an alpha to spar with and keep her in line.

  Tessa placed the spaghetti in the pan of boiling water, her back rigid. He took a ragged breath. His shoulder was killing him after running in the woods for so many miles as a wolf today, and all he could think about was making love to the woman who heated his blood as hot as the raging fires they’d left behind in California.

  Sleep with his sister? That would be the day. And have Rourke sleep with Meara? She would bite him for sure and not in a playful way. Hunter was glad Cara was targeting Ashton as her love interest. He needed to remind him, though, if he mated her, it was a onetime deal. No fooling around a few nights, and then parting ways, although if she did mate him, that might be the solution to one of his problems. She would teach Ashton the ways of being a lupus garou and take him off Hunter’s hands.

  If Tessa thought Hunter was sleeping with Rourke in the living room, she could think again. For one, he didn’t trust that the gray might not attempt to break her window and get in while she was alone. All he would do was bite her, and then come back to claim her later once she was a lupus garou. Hunter assumed the gray had intended to kill Ashton, and then bite Tessa, but when she brought out the rifle and started shooting, he gave that notion up in a hurry.

  “Hunter,” Meara said. “Gathering wool? We’re all sitting down to eat.”

  Tessa had moved her plate to the foot of the table and had seated Meara next to him in her place. He smiled at Tessa’s tenacity. Still, he was angry with himself for feeling more than he should toward Tessa and that Meara had to remind him of his duty to their pack, but most of all to their kind. Yet, he couldn’t help but admire the spunky human female.

  “They’re getting married in the spring,” Cara said, as the tension escalated in the dining room as thick as the snow was getting outside. “Won’t they make a cute couple?”

  Meara choked on her water. Tessa avoided looking at Hunter and cut up her sausage.

  “She just said that so she could get in to see Hunter at the hospital.” Rourke glowered at Cara. “Why are you here anyway?”
<
br />   “To bring the hospital release forms for Hunter. So what do we do after dinner? Do you have any board games? Cards? Anyone want to play strip poker?”

  “After we finish here, I need a word with Ashton, and then we’re all going to bed. We’ve had quite a day of it. And we’ve got a lot of work to do tomorrow,” Hunter said.

  “Can I be in on this little adventure?” Cara asked.

  “You can keep Tessa company. Both you and Meara. Rourke and I have some hunting to do.”

  “Can I go, too?” Ashton asked, looking chagrined.

  Cara patted his arm. “We need you to protect us.”

  “Are you going to Bethany’s place? They’ve removed the police locks, and I have a key if you need one,” Tessa said.

  “Yeah, we’ll need a key.”

  Tessa’s eyes filled with tears and Hunter couldn’t tell if she was happy he was still looking into this situation for her brother, or was worried they wouldn’t discover who really murdered Bethany.

  Meara cleared her throat and patted Hunter’s hand. “And if you see those three guys I was with while you’re at it, don’t kill them, okay, Hunter? We were just having some fun. Nothing more.”

  Hunter gave her a dark look. He wanted to bang those guys’ heads together for stealing an alpha leader’s sister right out from under his nose. They had to be some of the dumbest betas around. He thought his sister would have had better sense. He was surprised neither Ashton nor Rourke showed any interest in her. But maybe they were afraid of how Hunter might react—and for good reason.

  After dinner, Cara and Meara helped Tessa with the dishes. Rourke and Ashton went with Hunter to get another load of firewood in case the electricity went out again. The wind was gusting higher and the waves were growing more violent. If the weather got much worse, the increasing storm would flood the beach, and they wouldn’t be able to forage for firewood.

  “Remember how I told the two of you that mating is for life? That’s something that can’t be broken except by death. It might be a hard concept for you to understand since you’ve always been human, but it’s the wolf way and the lupus garou way.”