by Holley Trent
Esther pushed her hair back from her face and shoved her hands into the pockets of her robe.
Michael March. Dead man had a name.
“I take it you know of him,” she said quietly.
“How’d you end up with him?”
“You know how things go in the old packs, Anton. He was next in line to get a mate, and Daddy didn’t have anything else to barter.” She laughed, but the sound was a dry crackle—more like the precursor to a sob than a display of actual mirth. Mirth was for children. She hadn’t felt anything resembling joy in years. “He could have bought me some more time, but you know how Alpha was. He did his best to make sure no one had any money. If he thought you had a penny to spare, he made the accountant assess higher dues.”
“Michael, of all people, though. He wasn’t for you.”
Vic scoffed. “I doubt any man there would have been for her. The gene pool is only so large, and Madeira was doing everything he could to ensure that the wolves descended from the Eurasian pack didn’t pair off anymore.”
“Are there any males like them left?” Nixon asked.
When no one else answered, Esther pulled her gaze up and found his liquid brown one locked on her. He’d been talking to her—asking her a question like what she said mattered.
Apparently, that’s a normal thing in some circles.
She sucked in a bracing breath to answer. “More like who?”
He crooked his thumb toward Anton and Vic.
“Just my father and a couple of older, dues-paying wolves who aren’t a threat to anyone anymore. A few other women, though.”
Miserable, depressed, and stuck.
Guilt pulled a knot into Esther’s gut, followed immediately by shame and fear. She’d felt guilty about leaving those women behind and then had remembered the circumstances of having been able to. She’d killed her husband, and she was still afraid. She couldn’t be anyone’s rescuer.
“I guess yours wasn’t a good match.” A comment from Nixon, not a question.
His gaze tracked down from her burning cheeks to her neck and the scars on her chest. The claw marks and the bites.
Michael never did anything in moderation. He never drank a shot of vodka when a whole bottle would have gone down just as smoothly. He never talked if he could yell instead.
Of course he’d been the sort of man who wouldn’t just bite her to claim her. A bite hadn’t been disfiguring enough.
The screen door slammed shut, and Christina padded in on the heels of another dark-haired woman. Young and pretty. Smiling.
Happy? Shame I can’t recognize that anymore.
“I was about to head to the greenhouses,” the stranger said. “Almost missed me.”
“We won’t hold you up,” Aunt Lil said. She turned to Esther and chuckled. “That’s Graciella. The Modesto sisters were kind of a three-for-one for us. We got Lisa, and she finagled getting her sisters here before they got parceled out to mates they didn’t want.”
Obviously, the very young Graciella had gotten a mate anyway, if the wedding ring she wore was any indication.
Esther wouldn’t pry about that, though. But she was curious about something else. “Your sister got you out? How?”
Graciella grinned. “Cunning and lies. Half Lisa’s, half Colt’s. Still working on getting the rest of our family out of our old pack, but we have to be careful. There are still two generations left there, and we’d have to pull them all out at once.”
“Yeah. I understand that. I tried to bring my mother, but…” Esther stared at the floor again. Counted the specks in the clay tiles. Wriggled her toes to distract herself.
She closed her eyes and willed the tears back to their ducts.
Too many little triggers.
Aunt Lil pulled her into her arms and made a shushing sound. “It’s all right. You’ll start feeling better soon enough. Once you get into a routine here.”
Once I get over the guilt.
Esther wanted to open her mouth and let out the words—that she’d pushed Michael over that railing. That she’d snapped.
But her tongue was leaden and lungs constricted too tight for her to force the words out of her body.
“Routines are easy to come by here,” Graciella said.
She must have moved, because her voice was closer and there was an extra hand on Esther’s back, rubbing gently.
Esther’s anxiety seemed to swirl around Graciella’s fingers, like iron filings being moved around by a strong magnet. And then the tension dissipated when she withdrew her hand.
Wolf’s magic.
Esther felt emptier, but somehow better.
Empty isn’t the same as happy, but I’ll take it.
“Speaking of routines,” Nixon said, “I need to go get medical clearance so I can start work. Got an appointment in an hour and have to go into town. If you want someone to show you around later, I’m sure I’ll be twiddling my thumbs this afternoon.”
Esther pulled away from her aunt and dragged the sleeve of her robe across her eyes. Most wolves didn’t have the spirit of volunteerism anywhere in them, so she didn’t know how to answer.
She looked to Anton for clues as to how she should respond to the query, but he was fiddling with his phone. Vic had turned on his barstool and was staring at the television on the other side of the great room.
A male wolf had volunteered to escort her. As male representatives of her family, they should have been interceding.
Why aren’t they interceding?
She thought she knew.
They didn’t care anymore. She was used goods—had already had a mate, so her honor wasn’t at stake anymore. It was too late for her to be anyone’s whore. She was a matron no man would look at in that way ever again.
“Bookstore closes early today,” Nixon said. “Just FYI. Owner’s gotta go get her hair done or something. Ran into her this morning at the post office. Man, that woman can talk up a storm.”
Anton snorted. “Be nice. Christina likes her.”
Nixon smirked and put up his hands. “Hey, I don’t mean nothin’ by it. I just know some folks need to get their minds right before they find themselves in the company of chatterboxes. Personally, I can’t keep up with the chitchat. I don’t understand how people can pull stuff to talk about out of thin air and keep flapping their jaws for—”
“She’s interesting!” Christina said.
Esther sucked in a bracing breath, waiting for the fallout.
Christina had interrupted a male wolf, and one with alpha energy, at that.
But Nixon didn’t respond immediately. No one did, at least not in any particularly obvious ways.
But, Anton was, in fact, choking back chuckles. Vic was pinching the bridge of his nose and grinning.
Nixon just blinked at Christina.
Esther kept holding her breath.
“Seriously?” he said after a minute, and then guffawed.
He even smiled—a smiling wolf because he thought a woman was funny, and not because he had some sadistic plan on the brain.
Esther didn’t know what to make of Norseton, not even a little bit.
Christina shrugged. “She is. Maybe she can’t tell a story in a straight line, but she’s been really helpful when I go into the shop looking for stuff for work. She always takes a few minutes out of her day to chat and catch up on what the wolves are doing.”
“Hell,” Aunt Lil said, “can’t expect any of you men to go out and set good examples in the communities, so you better be glad your mates are. You’re all hopeless cases, but I guess you can’t help not having home training.”
“All things considered,” Nixon said, “I think I’m doing pretty good. I’ve never once been in jail, and I’ve never had a lady smack me.”
“That’s a pretty low standard, Nix.”
“I promise to do better. How ’bout that?”
Aunt Lil narrowed her eyes with suspicion. “I don’t think you have it in you.” Then she turned to Esther. �
�You’d better take him up on his offer to go. I think just like the rest of the boys, this one needs supervision.”
“Boy?” Nixon snorted and ruffled Kevin’s wet hair when he squeezed into the kitchen looking for who-knew-what. “I’ll have you know I’ve already earned a nickname in the pack. Ain’t that cute? I’m the old man of the bunch, so they’re calling me ‘Elder.’”
Aunt Lil rolled her eyes and handed Kevin the asthma inhaler he’d obviously come out looking for. “Adam’s got some years on you, but I guess that’ll fit just as well as anyone else’s nicknames.”
“What are you all called?” Esther wasn’t asking any person in particular, but she happened to be looking at Nixon. She could barely stop looking at him. He’d touched Kevin playfully—reflexively, and Kevin hadn’t minded.
Anton let out a sputtering breath. “From the top, we’ve got Alpha, Beast, Loner, Idler, Scion, Maker, and this guy.” He crooked his thumb toward Nixon, who winked at Esther.
She suppressed a yip and looked at her feet again.
“Still haven’t given Jim a nickname.”
“Nah,” Vic said. “He’s being careful to keep himself very boring so we don’t pin anything on him that’ll stick.”
“He’s not boring,” Christina said. “He’s just smart.”
“Anyone would be around you fools!” Ashley shouted from the back out of the house. “I wouldn’t want a nickname, ether. I’ve finally gotten used to folks actually calling me by my first name and not just, ‘hey, you.’”
Esther knew that feeling all too well. On many days, she hadn’t been certain if her own husband knew her name. He’d rarely used it. “Bitch” had one less syllable, and was apparently easier to say when he was drunk.
“Can you pick out clothes for me?” Kevin asked.
Esther needed a moment to realize the question had been directed to her. She was his mother, after all, and having been passed out for six days, had to make up for the time she’d lost.
“You’ll meet me in town later?” Nixon called after her.
She stopped halfway to the hallway.
He’d meant that?
“I should be done at around two, but if you get too busy, don’t worry about it.”
She looked over her shoulder to Anton again for clues, but he wasn’t looking. He didn’t seem to care at all about the discussion.
So it was up to Esther to decide if she cared.
She dragged her tongue across her dry lips and looked at Nixon.
He raised one eyebrow and then the other. His expression was open and friendly, and she wasn’t used to that. Usually, wolves smiled only as warnings. Apparently, she had a lot to learn about life on the outside of her old pack. Nixon seemed a safe place to start her education.
“Um. Okay. Just tell me where to go.”
CHAPTER SIX
Nixon didn’t particularly like seeing Adam grind his teeth, because in his experience, the action usually preceded the dude yelling at him or throwing something in his direction. The former was more likely, seeing as how they were in an exam room at the Norseton clinic, being watched by a very enthusiastic young visiting prosthetist. He’d been brought in especially for Nixon.
“Explain this to me again in plain language, so when my wife asks me why I’m kicking his ass, I can be specific,” Adam said to the guy.
Nixon rolled his eyes. “Come on, Adam. There wasn’t anything to be done about my leg, and I figured if I told you—”
“That I’d do what? Tell you not to come? Even after Anton damn near lost his eye? I didn’t put him out, so why would you think I’d tell you good riddance because you went and fucked up your leg?”
“Because that’s what wolves do. Cull the sick, injured, and old.” And those assholes are calling me Elder.
“I’m sure some wolves eat their young, too, but we don’t do that here, either.” Adam turned to the prosthetist, crossed his arms over his chest, and leaned against the counter. “Lay it out for me. How much will replacing the prosthesis cost the pack?”
“Now wait one—”
“Shh.”
Alpha said shush, so Nixon shushed. Begrudgingly. He didn’t expect the pack to pony up funds to cover his medical bills. He’d never spread that burden around to anyone else.
Dr. Just-Call-Me-Terrence shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry about the cost. If he’s in the pack and working for the Afótama, Queen Tess or her grandmother, Muriel, would insist on covering the expense.”
“Assuming I get hired.” Nixon leaned back on his elbows on the exam table and cut a look toward Adam.
Adam ground his teeth some more. “I certainly plan on putting you through your paces, but don’t assume that just because you can’t keep up with Anton or Vic in a mile run that you’re automatically disqualified for what I brought you here to do.”
“I can hardly walk a damned block without cringing.”
“New prosthesis should help with that,” Just-Call-Me-Terrence said. “And physical therapy, of course. I’m sure Bettina would love to get her hands on a wolf.”
The nurse, who had her back turned and was typing some exam info into the computer, scoffed quietly and muttered, “I bet she would.”
Adam chuckled. “Unless she’s looking to get her hands on him solely for therapeutic purposes, she’s gonna have to do her giggling and groping with someone else.”
The nurse stopped typing and turned her head toward Adam. “Mated off already? He hasn’t even been here a week.”
Nixon flopped back onto the hard-ass table and fixed his gaze on the drop ceiling.
He hadn’t had a choice but to be upfront with Adam and Anton about his intentions to pursue Esther, but they were already acting like them getting together was a sure thing. It wasn’t. There was the strong possibility that Esther wouldn’t want a broken wolf as a mate, and also? Her smell made him sick to his stomach. Mated women’s scents were so strong and repellant, there was no wonder extramarital affairs were out of the question for a lady, unless the woman’s lover was non-wolf and couldn’t smell her.
Nixon had always hated that women had gotten saddled with that evolutionary quirk. They walked around reeking of their husbands, but wolf men could put their dicks into pretty much whoever would spread their legs. Didn’t seem fair to him.
But, he was going to try. If she let him get close enough, he was going to bite her, if only to cover up that foul hormonal taint with his own.
“Lil likes the idea, and she’s usually right about stuff,” Adam said after a minute.
“I thought you were the pack matchmaker,” the nurse said with a laugh. She turned back to the computer and resumed her typing.
“Usually, the wolves I get to work with have never been attached, and our goddess takes a special interest in them. This is a unique situation.”
“Unique enough for your goddess to have an opinion?” Terrence asked.
Nixon raised his head in time to see Adam rub his chin. “Maybe.”
Oh hell.
“Wanna share that opinion?” Nixon asked.
“Nah. I’ll let you squirm. You wanna keep secrets? So will I.”
“That’s hardly the same thing. I didn’t tell you about my leg. You’re holding back about your niece.”
Adam turned to Terrence. “So, you checked in with the doc who gave him the physical? Leg shit aside, Nixon’s otherwise cleared to work?”
Terrence bobbed his eyebrows. “I think he transferred the approval over to the mansion just before you got here.”
“I’ll make sure before you go,” the nurse said.
Adam walked over and clapped Nixon on the shoulder. “Super. Fantastic. Put your leg on so you can do some of that paperwork the folks at the mansion insist we drop some bullshit upon for their files.”
“I’m supposed to meet Esther.”
“No reason she can’t tag along—if you can stand her smell.” Adam’s grin was more shark than wolf.
“Get your chuckles in now, ass
hole. I’ll remember this one day when you need a favor.” Nixon turned his legs over the edge of the table and carefully put his good foot on the floor. “Be glad you can’t smell her. You must be absolutely nose-blind. It’s the foulest scent I’ve ever encountered coming off a living creature.”
“My nose works just fine. The reason her scent’s not so offensive to me is because I’m not interested in her that way. Besides the fact that she’s my niece through marriage, I love my wife a lot. I imagine that of all the male wolves in the pack, the only folks her scent would potentially bother are you and Jim, and I suspect Jim is waiting on Jailbait to come of age.”
“Jailbait?” Terrence asked.
“Leticia Modesto. They came into the pack at the same time. I’d bet money that she imprinted on him, but he’s been behaving himself admirably well for such an ill-mannered schmuck.”
“Probably helps that he’s never around.” The nurse pushed back her rolling chair, strode to the door, and pulled the handle. She furrowed her brow as she looked at Adam. “I don’t see him as much as I see the other wolves.”
Adam grunted. “For good reason. He spends most of his time tracking outside threats.”
The nurse and Terrence left the room.
Nixon got his clothes back on and followed Adam to the front of the office to check out.
He glanced at the clock over the receptionist’s head and grunted at the late hour. The day had run away from him. It was already after two. “She’s gonna think I stood her up.”
“Tell her to blame me,” Adam said. He tucked the appointment card the receptionist gave him into his pocket. He was likely going to invite himself to every exam in the foreseeable future to be sure Nixon wasn’t skipping out on them.
Nixon laughed and shook his head.
Adam was a good alpha because he was nothing like most alphas.
Out on the street, they rounded the corner onto Main.
Esther was sitting on a bench, alone, in front of the haberdasher. She stood as they approached.
“Where are the kiddos?” Nixon asked.
She let out a sharp breath. “Abandoned me.”
“Come on, now,” Adam said.