by Holley Trent
She didn’t say anything and didn’t move, and he just endured.
He pressed his face against the top of her silky hair and, breathing through his mouth, closed his eyes. He wanted more than anything to bite her so they could get the confusion and upheaval over with. She’d become his, and her kids would become his, too. He’d move into her space and claim every inch. He’d never want to leave her, and she’d break his heart if she tried to get him to go. That would have meant he wasn’t enough.
He preferred getting the rejection over with upfront.
“Nixon?”
“Hmm?” He opened his eyes and forced himself to pull in a breath through his nose, hoping her hands off scent would un-muddle his brain and bolster his resolve.
The tactic didn’t work. He was more incited than ever to sink his fangs into some bit of her unbroken flesh and to keep them there until he was sure his scent chased away the other—Michael’s claim.
She wasn’t Michael’s. Shouldn’t have been given to him in the first place, but Nixon couldn’t change the past. If he could have, he’d never have taken that last oilrig job.
“Bite me,” she said. “Please. Don’t make me beg. Not for this. I can’t get settled until you do this. That’s all I know. The wolf won’t let me stand down, and the part of me that’s lady agrees with her. I don’t want to leave things undone.”
She was going to have to.
His fangs had already extended unbidden, and his mouth watered in anticipation of tasting her flesh.
Bite her, you stupid asshole.
But he moved away from her. Off the sofa. Out of arm’s reach.
She looked at him as if he’d slapped her hard and not just put some space between them.
“This isn’t me rejecting you, honey. Not in the least. I just want you to step back from the hormones a little bit. Sleep on things. Let me know in the morning if you feel the same way. If you do, I’ll have my teeth in you so fast, you won’t even have seen me move.”
“You don’t think I’m able to make good decisions.”
“That not the issue at all.” He pulled her to her feet and edged her around the back of the coffee table. “I just don’t want to be arguing with you a year from now about whether the bite was my idea or yours. I don’t want you to feel like you had to comply with my will because you read me as the dominant wolf in the room and were afraid to tell me no.”
“I haven’t thought of telling you no.”
He cringed. “And that’s what bugs me.”
He led her to the front door and, sighing, leaned against the frame. “Just sleep on what I said. Please. I’ll feel a little stupid tomorrow if you yell at me for having made you wait, but I prefer that to the alternative. I dropped some heavy shit on you. Give the dust time to settle. Give yourself time to understand what me being an amputee means, okay?”
She rolled her eyes and started for her house. “Unbelievable.”
“Trust me,” he called after her. “I’m more shocked than anyone at the things coming out of my mouth.”
He had to believe he was doing the right thing, though. He couldn’t bear the thought of Esther being like those women in his old pack, who were more like structures than people. They had no roles except for the ones assigned to them, and he didn’t want that sort of life for Esther. There was a brightness in her, and she could carve her own little niche into the world—she could be recognized for her own worth and abilities, and not just be known as “Nixon’s mate.”
“I’ll wash the plate and bring it to you tomorrow,” he called after her.
“No need to rush,” she said flatly. Her screen door slammed. “You obviously need some space. Have as much as you’d like.”
He pressed his forehead against the door, and pounded it.
“Fuck.”
CHAPTER NINE
Anger was usually an emotion Esther couldn’t afford to carry. Anger got female wolves in trouble with their men. Women were supposed to suffer in cheerful silence. Esther had always been good about the silent part. The cheerful part was harder.
Sitting in the living room of her little house with Aunt Lilith and Ashley looking on, Esther found the silent part impossible, too.
“Who does your father think he is?” she hissed at Ashley. “He can’t do that. Not after telling me I could go.” Esther tried to keep her voice low. The children were asleep after their afternoon of aggressive socializing, but there was no place else to have the discussion. Not at Aunt Lilith’s, because Uncle Adam still didn’t know what Esther had done. Not at Vic’s, because he didn’t know either, and once he found out, he’d tell Anton and Anton would certainly tell Uncle Adam. Esther wasn’t ready for them to know yet—wasn’t ready for their overprotective urges to kick in and not in her favor. They’d want to protect the pack, not Esther.
“Honestly,” Ashley said, “when he finds out whose pack you’re in now—and he’ll find out eventually—he’s not going to do anything that’ll break any rules. He understands Adam knows them all and that Adam will fight him on any dirty dealings. But, he he’ll never leave an advantage on the table. He wouldn’t have said such a thing unless he thought he had one.”
“Do you think they know more than they’re letting on? Do you think they found out I pushed Michael?”
“Calm down,” Aunt Lilith said. “I think if your mother knew she was going to agitate you this much with that throwaway comment she made, she would have kept her mouth shut. I don’t think she meant to get you upset. She was just telling you the news as fast as she could before she had to hang up.”
Ashley had facilitated the call to Esther’s mother. Ashley had a number that couldn’t be traced, and had insisted Esther make the call so she could put the older woman’s mind at ease as to whether or not she’d arrived at Anton’s safely. Her mother had started spewing news faster than Esther had been able to keep up, including the fact that her old alpha was entertaining the idea of forcing Darla and Kevin to return to Jersey. He’d turned up at the Denis house to antagonize, as he sometimes did at dues-collection time, and had suggested that the kids belonged to Michael’s family and not to Esther. Esther would have rather died than to let the Marches have them. They weren’t warm people, and she didn’t want to uproot her children from a place where they’d already started to bond with the residents. She’d never seen them so openly happy before.
“Knowing my father as I do,” Ashley said, “I guess he could force the issue. There’s certainly some precedent.”
“For taking a woman’s children away?”
“You’re not thinking like a possession,” Ashley said. “They’re not your children. They’re property, the same way as the rest of Michael’s things—transferable from one owner to the next.”
“No.”
Aunt Lilith laced her fingers, unlaced them, the repeated the actions. She often did that when she was thinking, or trying to order her words. “Esther, I wish you’d told me sooner what happened.”
“So that you could have told me not to come?”
“I would never tell you not to come, but if you’d told us before you left Jersey, we could have tried to get the rest of the family out before mean-old Madeira started to regret letting you leave. Whether or not he’s blowing smoke right now, I think from this point on, the folks who are left there won’t even be able to breathe in peace, much less stage a move.”
“At the time I was leaving, I wasn’t thinking clearly. I had a chance to go, so I packed up Kevin and Darla and got the hell out.”
Ashley crossed her arms over her chest and slouched against the sofa’s back. “We’ll figure something out. I’m sure we will, but we can’t make plans with just the three of us. You have to tell other people. I seriously doubt anyone here will think you have a single malicious bone in your body. No one’s going to hate you for putting out your hands to defend yourself. It was always going to come down to him or you. Most of the time, the lady is the one who suffers, and as much as I hate to
say such a thing—much less think it—the world needs you more than it needs Michael.”
“Do you think they’re really going to press for me to return the children?”
Ashley scoffed. “My father is good at finding ‘legal’ ways to wriggle out of his mistakes. He probably thought no other wolf in his pack would want you, but regretted letting you leave the moment he realized the kids were leverage. They were two more heads for him to levy dues on, and also bargaining chips for whomever he needed to impress or recruit at the time. There are some wolves who have no problem at all absorbing other men’s children into their households, especially the little girls.”
“So they can be bartered away later.” Esther rolled her eyes, thinking back on her own so-called “transfer” to Michael’s family’s household soon after she’d turned eighteen. “Not gonna let that happen to Darla. She’s a person, not a thing, and I don’t want to risk Kevin being disposed of after puberty if he grows too big and too fast and turns into a threat for some weak alpha.”
Ashley scoffed again. “You keep forgetting that my father isn’t technically a natural alpha, not the way the guys here are. Almost all of the male wolves here could be pack alphas, and that’s why they all got kicked out of theirs. Technically speaking, Adam should have been the alpha of the pack in Jersey, but he’d never expressed interest in the job.”
“We just wanted to be left to live in peace,” Aunt Lilith said. “That wasn’t good enough for your father.”
Ashley nodded slowly. “He’s always been good at putting the right people or the right number of people around him. He manufactures strength in numbers rather than possessing natural power.”
“You’re in the right place,” Aunt Lilith said to Esther. “I just wish we’d had more time to strategize.”
“I couldn’t call you from there. Almost everything I did was being watched.”
“We’ll get everything smoothed over. For the time being, the best thing you can do is try to order your life here, for the kids’ sake.”
“I’m not going to be able to stop fretting that the Marches will recall them.”
Ashley shrugged. “Don’t let the Marches recall them.”
“You say that as if I have a choice.”
“You do. In spite of his dirty tricks on occasion, my father knows there are inter-pack policies, and he obeys them for the most part because he can’t afford to start a war. Adam does the same. He obeys the rules and does his best to work around the ones he finds abhorrent. That’s why Graciella and Leticia are here. They were brought to Norseton to be ready for mates that didn’t technically exist. Adam knew bringing them here was a risk. If he couldn’t prove to their old alpha they’d been matched up after eighteen, their alpha could recall them. Adam hoped the cards would fall the right way, and I guess they did. Graciella found a true mate in Finn, and we all pretend that we don’t know what Jim’s waiting for.”
“There isn’t any such transfer request I could do for my parents, or the rest of the family left in the pack.” If Esther had her way, all the wolves like the Carbones and Denises would just leave. She was becoming increasingly more certain that they’d all be welcome in Norseton.
“We’ll worry about your parents later,” Aunt Lilith said. “Adam may know of some rule we can exploit. The more pressing consideration right now is getting Kevin and Darla off the stock exchange.” She rolled her eyes.
Esther didn’t think she’d ever seen her aunt roll her eyes.
Ashley twirled a length of her hair around her fingers and narrowed her eyes, looking at nothing in particular. “They can’t be recalled if they already belong to someone else.”
“I don’t like the idea of them belonging to anyone except me,” Esther said.
Ashley put up her hands. “The language is shitty, but we have to think like they do. We’re playing by their disgusting rulebook, but if we’re going to play the game, we’re gonna win.” She looked to Aunt Lilith. “They can’t be recalled to Michael’s family if they already belong to another wolf’s family, right?”
Aunt Lilith grunted softly. “Right. Your father’s flaw in logic is that no other man would want Esther because she carries Michael’s scent, but he doesn’t understand fated matches. He’s never facilitated one, as far as I know, and likely has never happened upon a fated pair who found their ways to each other without help.”
“Wait—” Esther put her hands up. “What are you implying?”
Aunt Lilith canted her head. “Adam didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
She pulled some air between her teeth and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Must have slipped his mind.”
“What must have?”
“I’ll explain,” Ashley said. “Alphas are supposed to come equipped with these psychic hotlines to the wolf goddess, right?”
Esther shrugged. “Supposedly.”
“Well, most pack alphas aren’t true alphas. They pretend they have the goddess’s favor, but the truth is, she doesn’t speak to them. Adam, on the other hand, is a favored alpha. The goddess helped the pack find this place to settle down in, and she also sorted Christina, Lisa, Stephanie and me when we got here so we were attached to the right wolves. She did that through Adam.”
“I understand how mate matches are supposed to work, in theory, but I’ve never seen where the matches your father made were at all sensible.”
“Because he doesn’t facilitate fated matches,” Aunt Lilith said. “He’s just moving pawns on the game board, transferring bodies from household to household.” She leaned forward and put her elbows on her thighs. “Adam didn’t put up any resistance to Nixon potentially courting you. Unlike with Anton’s easy acceptance of Nixon, Adam’s wasn’t just because he knew Nixon and trusted him, but because the goddess had already told him the match was a good one.”
“I—get a fated match?”
Esther couldn’t believe that was true. She’d never been granted any sort of favor before, and wouldn’t even know how to recognize it. She trusted Ashley and her Aunt Lilith, though, and knew they were intelligent women. They believed Adam had the gift, so she’d trust that he did.
I’m Nixon’s…
“That explains some things,” she whispered.
“Why being around him is so easy?” Ashley asked.
Esther nodded.
“Be grateful,” Aunt Lilith said.
“Oh! I am. Don’t mistake my shock for ungraciousness. After what happened, I just don’t see how anyone would think I was deserving of such a match.”
“Our mates are supposed to fill in our gaps,” Ashley said. “Together, we’re more whole. We’re not perfect. No one expects to be born that way. But we’re not supposed to move alone through life, either. We’re not supposed to do things the way our culture has fostered for the past couple of centuries. What wolves do now isn’t natural.”
Esther didn’t know about natural, but she could vouch for the fact that the status quo wasn’t working. She didn’t want that to be the world her children would be set loose into one day. She wanted better for them than what she’d had, but she wasn’t in a position to change the world yet. For once, she had to take care of herself.
“You need to talk to Nixon,” Aunt Lilith said. “Ask him to set aside his courtship timeline so he could claim—” She let out a ragged breath. “Possession of the children.”
“Demand he bites me, you mean.”
“You could ask sweetly, or you could be nasty. I doubt your tone will matter to him. He’ll want to do the right thing. You just need to tell him what that thing is.” She chuckled.
Esther didn’t have a problem telling the man to do the right thing. She’d already tried, and he’d derailed the process with protestations about his leg.
She scoffed. She didn’t give a damn about what his leg looked like. The fact that he was alive at all after what had happened to him was impressive enough.
“What?” Ashley asked.
“
Nothing. I’m just thinking about something Nixon said.”
“You know what to do,” Aunt Lilith said. “Any other time, I would insist that you go slowly, but with the situation being what it is…” She gave Esther’s chin a gentle chuck and then started toward the door. “Don’t be put off by speed if the connection feels right. Don’t let speed scare you away. We haven’t made a mistake yet in this pack, and I don’t imagine we’re going to start with you.”
Ashley followed Aunt Lilith out the door and shut it behind her.
Esther sat still to think for a while. The enormity of the situation was too much to process in one chunk.
“Me,” she whispered. “I get a true mate.”
The honor filled her up inside and made her want to float.
“Finally, something good.”
She wasn’t going to let herself get too attached to the idea of her and Nixon cozy and domestic just yet, though. She had a bomb to drop on him first. Getting near her was already hard enough for him given her scent, but he was also going to have to, for the rest of his life, combat the knowledge that Esther wasn’t a safe bet. She wasn’t a female wolf who’d quietly endure.
She was a wolf who fought back when she’d had too much, and wolves with alpha potential like Nixon generally didn’t like that quality in their mates.
CHAPTER TEN
Nixon wasn’t a deep sleeper—most wolves weren’t—so he was sitting up and reaching for his gun at the first click to his house’s front entrance.
He had the firearm pointed to his bedroom doorway before the person making those quiet steps made her way all the way down the hall.
In the dark, his nose was far better than his eyes, so he recognized the intruder from her scent before his gaze focused on her slight form and the familiar clenches of her fists.
“Sorry!” Esther said in a rushed whisper. “The door was unlocked, so I didn’t knock.”