Green's Hill Werewolves, Volume 2

by Amy Lane

  Jack watched as Katy went willingly. The older vampire’s freckled cheeks scrunched up in sympathy, and she tucked his lover into her embrace as though Katy was her own daughter recovering from a broken heart. If nothing else in the rest of the day proved to be an education, this was. Jack might have thought they lived in a vacuum, but Teague and Katy—who had been torn so badly in their lives one would think they were almost beyond repair—had been engaged and active in a community that cared about them.

  As Katy sniffled a little and Grace said soft things about how Teague wouldn’t be gone for long, Jack had to wonder at his hubris. He’d wanted to be their everything. How could he be their everything when he didn’t even know the world they walked in?

  Eventually Grace left, taking Teague’s dirty clothes with her, and Katy made plates and sat with Jack so they could eat.

  “I’m a fool,” Jack said quietly, taking a bite of lasagna like a chastised child.

  “Yeah, Jacky, we know. What are you foolish about now?” Katy took a bite of garlic bread with relish. It occurred to Jack that Grace had a sense of humor about being a cook who couldn’t eat her own food.

  “This is a family. I thought… I thought I was the only family you guys had. This place, it’s bigger than me.”

  Katy looked at him with big eyes. “You really are stupid, aren’t you?”

  Jack grimaced. “Let’s hope I’ve wised up enough to do the smart thing tomorrow.” He took another glum bite.

  Katy reached across the arms of their chairs and took his hand to her lips and kissed it. “Oh, don’t you worry about that. All you’ve got to do tomorrow is love him. I think it could be the only thing you’re good at.”

  Her lips were warm and a little buttery on the back of his hand, and he turned the hand around to cup her cheek. “Now look at who’s all optimistic and shit.”

  Katy gave him a watery grin and pressed his palm to her skin. “Grace said he fell apart like a little baby, Jack. I got to believe he’ll forgive you for anything. Now you just got to make sure ‘anything’ doesn’t happen again, right?”

  Jack’s food lost all appeal whatsoever, and he reclaimed his hand. Fell apart like a little baby. God, Goddess, whoever, he prayed. Let me be the sort of man Teague needs. Please, let me not fuck this up again.

  They slept curled up together, in their pajamas. Jack wondered—would they make love without Teague? Would they want to? Would it be comforting?

  Maybe, if they knew he’d be gone forever, they could have. Maybe.

  But now they didn’t want sex. They wanted their mate. Touching skin was comfort, but without their mate, it wasn’t sex.

  They woke up late, and as soon as they’d showered, Jack sent Katy out into the were room to get the buzz. She came back in short order, carrying some sandwiches and some milk, and with a resigned expression.

  “After the students get home and the vampires wake up, in the banquet room by the dance floor. You and me get front row seats. He’s downstairs now, helping to clear out the room and get it ready. We can go to the common room if we want.”

  “But what if he….” God, this was stupid. But it was becoming like seeing the bride before the wedding day. They didn’t want to see him until he’d done this thing, until they could prove to him that they—Jacky—wouldn’t let him down again.

  Katy shook her head, positive. “Green told me. He said we could go to the common room or we could go outside. Green would keep him busy down there or on the running trail. Don’t worry, Jacky. We won’t do anything to fuck this up, okay?”

  “Speak for yourself,” Jack said with an air of resignation.

  Katy’s look was pointed. “Umm, no, Jacky. You don’t get to do that. We get enough from Teague. You take your lumps, you be a little bit humble, but you don’t get to hate yourself, ’kay?”

  Jack had to smile. “’Kay. Katy?” He took a bite of sandwich and chewed thoughtfully.

  “Yeah?”

  “How come neither of us are worried that Teague will lose?”

  Katy’s harrumph was almost comical. “He’s the meanest bastard in the pack, Jacky. I’ve been telling you that since we met.”

  The meanest bastard in the pack. Well, he had to be, didn’t he? He’d been saving his own ass, saving Jack’s ass, and keeping people alive and well who had no business being alive and well, and he’d been doing it for years.

  For the first time, Jack felt a sense of pride in the fact. It meant he didn’t have to worry. Teague wouldn’t die. Not today. He was the meanest bastard in the pack.

  A few hours later, Jack wasn’t so sure.

  The banquet room had been completely cleared. All the hand-planed banquet tables were stacked up against the far wall near the stairs, and the chairs had been shoved over there and stacked as well. The walls were a burnished combination of earth and tree roots, with occasional spots of paneling, and the far wall from the stairs opened up into a wider area. There had been a band there after everyone had eaten on Thanksgiving, but now it was roped off. Thick, wiry hemp ropes, tied to wooden rings screwed into the wood of the tree roots, blocked one end. The three rounded, asymmetrical walls on the other side of the rope marked the other boundaries of the ring.

  As Jack and Katy walked through the crowd, they were ushered to the very front of the ropes. Green, Cory, Nicky, and Bracken were already there, as well as Grace and her sidhe lover, Arturo.

  Cory was vibrating with tension.

  “This is so fucking barbaric,” she announced to no one in particular. “And unnecessary. I could have killed him yesterday.”

  “Teague needs this,” Green said mildly.

  “Yeah, well, Goddess save me from macho assholes,” she snapped.

  Green leaned forward to say softly, “So far, she’s done a very nice job indeed, you think, beloved?”

  Cory put her hands over her eyes, growl/screamed, and kicked fruitlessly at the floor under her feet.

  “She doesn’t look happy,” Katy observed quietly, and Jack shrugged. Yeah. It looked like she was concerned for Teague. Bully for her. The guy had taken a knife for her the day before.

  Katy stomped on his foot. Hard.

  “Nobody wants anybody getting hurt here. That concern is for our boy. You be fucking grateful, you hear me?”

  Jack sighed. So much for resolutions—it was time to pony up. “You’re right,” he said softly. “I’m just nervous.”

  At that moment the other werewolf entered the room, flanked by two vampires Jack vaguely recognized as Marcus and Phillip. The captive’s hands were tied in front of him, and he was wearing a pair of brown jeans and nothing else. His hair fell in lank black strings around his face, and his expression was pure hatred. Jack started to see why the man had to be put down—there was no reason in him. It was all unadulterated animosity, and it was obviously something that couldn’t be allowed to prosper here.

  The werewolf stood in the corner looking angry and rabid—and alone. When his opponent walked in, he raised his head for a moment. His eyes were flat and unintelligent, and Jack thought he was more beast than man in that moment.

  Teague was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt with no shoes, and for a moment Jack wondered why a guy who wore long-sleeved henleys in the summer would be that stripped down, before the reason smacked him in the face. This was as close to naked in public as Teague would get, and since Teague might have to turn wolf, he had stripped down to make it easier. Although, Jack thought sourly, Teague seemed to avoid getting tangled up in his clothes so far. It was almost like a magic superpower or something.

  Teague didn’t look at Jacky or Katy, but he didn’t look at Green or Cory either. His attention was all business. The guy in the corner got the up, down, and sideways, and Jack had a sudden déjà vu.

  “I know that look,” he said softly to Katy. “That’s his fighting look.” The thing was, until this very moment, Jack hadn’t known it was his fighting look. He’d thought of it as Teague’s “game face,” because Teague g
ot it under certain tense situations. But now Jack realized something—Teague really had been covering his ass for a year and a half. He’d known when violence was pending; he’d known when someone was going to throw a punch. He only wore that face when he was going to have to draw blood.

  Jack had never known. Fighting had always been an unpleasant surprise. To Teague it had been a violent charge in the air, like the smell of a storm on the wind.

  Teague liked storms.

  “He likes this,” Katy said with surprise and a little awe, and Jack nodded. How could he have worked with the man for a year and a half without seeing that Teague’s flat, assessing eyes and taut face hid a boundless wealth of sheer, violent joy? Teague had been born in violence. The fact that he had forged a gentle man from that material was nothing short of a miracle, but it didn’t change the fact that violence was in his blood. Of course it would give him some satisfaction to turn this… this terrible gift, this blood-soaked legacy, to something productive, something he believed in.

  Teague nodded to Green and Cory. Cory gave him an irritated, narrow-eyed glare that Jack was willing to concede held mostly concern, and Green nodded his head with gentle nobility. Then Teague grinned and winked at Cory, who flipped him off in turn, and that was apparently his signal to proceed.

  One of the vampires had a steel knife, and he used that to cut the bonds at the werewolf’s hands. Then it was just the two of them, one desperate and the other deadly, in the ring.

  Bad Guy rushed Teague first.

  It wasn’t a gather or a charge—it was hardly a rush. The guy didn’t pull in his resources or gauge his speed. He just ran, his body tilting dangerously out of balance, and Teague gave the move the attention it deserved. He sidestepped and let the guy go crashing headfirst into the wall.

  He came back snapping and feral, growling even in his human form, and Teague stepped out of his way again at the next charge. The trip to the wall was a little longer this time but no less painful when he hit.

  The werewolf sat back on his human haunches and shook his head, and Teague walked up to him and spoke.

  “Look, man, your heart’s not in this. If you just give it up and let us help—”

  The fucker turned his head and sank his very human teeth into the flesh of Teague’s arm. Teague grunted. He didn’t even flinch. And then Teague grabbed the guy’s throat with his free hand, pressed him to the floor, and changed into a wolf, leaving his clothes in a puddle on the floor.

  Jack felt the change. It sizzled in the air and pulled at his skin, and he and Katy clasped their human hands to resist it. Teague’s power—his personality, his personal strength—exerted enough force over the shape-changers to call their own changes. Every shape-shifter in the room felt it. Most of them simply shifted their weight from leg to leg, like a child who had to go to the bathroom, but the younger ones, the ones with less discipline, changed with their leader.

  Wolves, cougars, avians, coyotes, giant cats. It would have been total chaos, but Teague—his two front paws on the throat of the mangy-looking red wolf at his feet—barked once commandingly, and every shape-shifter in the room, both those who had changed and those who hadn’t, stood absolutely still.

  This was Jack’s mate. This was the man Jack loved. Jack had seen this in him from the very beginning, but now Jack could see it was a thing, a quality, that was never meant to be Jack’s alone.

  Teague backed off the wolf under his paws and stood warily, growling in his throat, waiting to see what the other animal would do.

  The foreign werewolf stood up, snarled, and leaped at Teague, his jaws open to snap, but he never made it. Teague caught his enemy’s throat in his teeth and ripped, pulling the entire thing out—larynx, jugular, everything—in midleap. The wolf’s body continued its original trajectory and landed, twitching, yards away.

  Teague trotted over and waited to see if the young man would heal. It looked like it. Shape-shifters in general could take an incredible amount of punishment, and this particular one appeared to be too mean to kill. He lay there, his body changing back into a frightened, angry, rabid young man, and suddenly, as though a switch had been flipped, he was in a naked fighting crouch, snarling like a wolf without a wolf’s innate intelligence behind the savagery.

  Teague backed up and changed quicker than breath, but not quick enough. His opponent rushed him, landing on him just as Teague’s human legs started to bear his weight, and Jack clamped his teeth together in an effort not to shout at Cory to do something. He glanced at them and saw that Green had his arms wrapped securely around Cory’s shoulders—she had the same idea. Jack looked back at the man he loved more than life and saw why Green was stopping her—apparently they all needed to have a little faith.

  Teague grabbed his opponent’s shoulders in hard human hands and shoved him back against the wall, shouting, “Give up, goddammit! You can walk away from this!” The man was struggling, but Teague had him pinned securely. The only way he was getting out of it was to yield or die.

  “Fuck. You.” The enemy hawked spit in Teague’s face, and Teague’s eyes went flat and grim. Then he used his werewolf strength to do something truly horrific.

  He punched his arm under the guy’s ribcage, thrusting into the flesh itself. As the man screamed blood and spittle and death in his face, Teague grabbed hold of his heart and ripped it out of his body.

  The audience gave a shocked gasp, and Teague’s opponent went limp, his eyes dying even as he saw his own heart beating in his enemy’s hand.

  Teague took a step back as the body slid to the floor. He was a little dazed—he looked at the quivering thing in his gore-soaked hands and just sort of dropped it on the body of his kill. His face was crusted with blood from ripping his enemy’s throat, and his chest was heaving back and forth as though he’d sprinted for miles. His scarred chest was smeared with blood and viscera and sweat, and his body—his battered, wiry, bantam body—was bare and barbaric, naked and bloody and victorious for all the world to see.

  He looked up at Green automatically and then to Cory. It was almost shocking for Jack to see the little college student suddenly appear regal and queenly, not in the way of Jack’s dream, but in the way of a real person whose confidence had been hard-won. Together, in concert, they nodded back, and then Green looked over at Jack and gave a little jerk of his chin.

  The message was clear—he’s all yours, mate.

  Teague didn’t seem to think so. He managed one half-panicked, half-resigned look at Jack before he turned back toward Cory. Cory looked at him with no sympathy and actually said something out loud, which was a relief for Jack, who was getting tired of all of this tacit discussion.

  “I’ve got cleanup, Teague. Go deal with the hard shit.”

  Teague looked at her miserably. “It’s my mess—”

  “Nope. Not gonna fly. Now get out of here. I’ve got to cook something, and if I don’t do it quick and don’t do it clean, Green’s gonna make me ask Lambent, and that would really suck!” She pitched her voice loud on purpose just to get the fire elf’s attention, and he cast a sour look her way.

  “By all means, my liege, show us that your dick is as big as every other bloke’s here.”

  Cory grinned sweetly at the ruddy-faced elf. “It’s not bigger than everyone’s, darling. Just yours.” Then she turned back and met Teague’s miserable expression, giving him a stern shooing with her two hands. “Go, Teague. You can’t be happy if you’re just good with the one and forsake the other.”

  Teague had no choice, and Jack was, for once, profoundly grateful for the lady of the house. Teague turned to Jack defiantly, and Jack grinned at him and advanced. Damned if he wasn’t going to kiss that man within an inch of his life.

  Teague put his hands behind his back, remembered he was naked and put them in front of his crotch, and then trotted to where his jeans lay in a puddle and picked them up to hold in front of his vulnerable bits. Jack made sure he was looming over his lover before Teague even stood up.


  They regarded each other for a moment so fraught with tension that Jack could actually smell the blush traveling over Teague’s skin. If Jack had looked, he could have seen it start at Teague’s chest and then work its way across his shoulders and neck and even down to his thighs, but Jack had seen all that—if only once or twice—in bed. Right now he was more interested in what was going on behind Teague’s depthless hazel eyes.

  He looked horrified—probably at himself. And ashamed.

  “Give it up,” Jack commanded after a moment. “I’m going to kiss you. I’m going to hold you. And if you think you’re ever going to spend another night in another bed, you’re completely off your rocker.”

  Teague’s lips quirked even as he ducked his head shyly. “Don’t want to touch you all covered in blood and shit, Jacky.”

  Jack met Katy’s eyes over Teague’s shoulders. She grimaced because she knew what he was going to do, but she nodded anyway. Jack put his hands behind his back like a good boy. “No hands involved, I swear,” he promised—and then, because he would have died if he didn’t, he lowered his head as Teague just gazed at him, all starry-eyed and dumb struck, and touched lips with his beloved.

  Teague gasped, and Jack used the opportunity to slip his tongue in. Teague tasted like blood, and sweat, and a little like fur, and Jack didn’t care. He swept Teague’s mouth with his tongue and licked at his palate and teeth and lips deliberately. He wanted no ambiguity in the kiss. I love you, right down to the blood on your hands, you dumb Irish motherfucker. It couldn’t have been clearer if he’d used Cory’s power to burn the message into the burnished, root-tangled walls.

  Teague groaned at Jack’s invasion, his acceptance, his benediction. Jack lifted his hands up to Teague’s shoulders, pushed him up against the gnarled wooden wall, and kissed him and kissed him and kissed him until Teague broke away, panting and clutching his clothes to his groin with a little more force.

  “Let me shower,” he gasped, and Jack nodded with a little smile.

  “As long as I can brush my teeth,” Jack panted, and Teague actually grinned.