By “Josephine,” Logan assumed MacDuff referred to Honor’s cousin Joey. She had introduced herself that way when Logan first arrived, and as far as he could tell, she seemed to spend most of her time doing domestic chores. Of course, there could be another female in the pack with the same name.
He decided to be cautious. “Josephine?”
MacDuff grunted, scraping up the last crumbs of pie with the edge of his fork. “Josephine Tate. Honor’s first cousin. Girl can cook like nobody’s business. If you ask me, she ought to spend more time at it, and less at watching what everyone else is doing. Takes after her mother that way, if you ask me.”
The old man pushed aside his plate with a sigh, and Logan observed him with renewed interest. He looked to be in his late sixties, at least—easily one of the pack elders. That could make him a valuable source of information, if he proved willing to share.
Logan finished his pie and slid the plate to the side to join the chili bowl. “Let’s say I did ask you, MacDuff. What exactly would you tell me?”
The Lupine’s hazel-blue eyes glinted with appreciation, as if he’d been waiting for just that question. “I’d tell you that Josephine isn’t half as big a problem for you as Honor is, son. And, I’d tell you that in spite of that story she just tried to spoon-feed us, I’ve been around in the world long enough to know that you didn’t just come to tell her the Silverback Clan says ‘hello.’ I know it’s not exactly Manhattan around here, but you could probably figure out we’ve got mailboxes and telephones, and Internet service, same as you, if that’s all you boys had to say.”
“We probably could.”
“Which means that you were sent here because Graham Winters isn’t exactly sure whether he approves of the White Paw Clan having a female alpha.”
MacDuff delivered his summary of the situation, then sat back in his chair, folded his arms across his stocky chest, and waited for Logan to make the next move. The younger Lupine had to admire the man’s ability to cut right to the heart of the matter.
“And let’s say that’s true. What would your reaction be?”
“Hell, say it or not, we both know it’s true, son. No need to dance around it. I’m not saying the rest of the pack see it, but you might not want to lump me in with the rest of the pack.”
“Why not? Because you’re older than the rest of them?”
“Barney Andrews is closing in on me pretty fast. He turned sixty-eight last month. This ain’t just about me being an elder. The years tell me a thing or two about how packs operate, but that’s not what tells me about how our girl is going to react if you try to hand this pack over to someone else.”
“No one said that’s what’s going to happen,” Logan explained, for what felt like the hundredth time in the past twenty-four hours.
MacDuff snorted. “You can’t fool me, son, and I don’t imagine you got away with fooling my niece, either.”
“Niece?”
“Yup. Sadie, Honor’s mama, was my little sister. That makes me ‘Uncle Hamish.’”
“And you didn’t think to mention that when you told me how Honor and Josephine are related?”
“Wasn’t talking about me back then. Josephine is Joseph Tate’s daughter. Joseph mated with one of Jim Pritcher’s daughters. The girl is no blood relation to me. Joseph and Marie died before either girl even started school, and the Pritchers brought up Josephine. Honor, of course, stayed with Ethan, not that he paid her much mind. Sadie died giving birth to Honor, and Ethan didn’t make much secret of the fact that he’d have grieved less if Honor had been born a son. When Joseph died, it was another blow. Joe was Ethan’s beta, and everyone assumed he’d take over when Ethan kicked the bucket.”
“What about you? Why weren’t you in line for the job?”
“I’m not a Tate.” Hamish’s lip curled. “My brother-in-law was big on family. Plus, I’m no submissive wolf, but I don’t have the drive it takes to lead a pack. Never have. I’m not much for politics, and most of the time, I’d rather keep to myself. Loners don’t rise too far in a pack, you know.”
Logan digested that information, trying to put together the pieces of a puzzle still made up mostly of blank space. “Honor said she became her father’s beta when she was fifteen.”
“Yup.”
“So who took over after Ethan’s brother died?”
The old man’s bushy brows pulled together. “Why? You think that might be someone you can look to as alpha instead of Honor?”
“I never said that.” But apparently, no one in this pack was ready to give him the benefit of the doubt when it came to the decision he still had to make. “Obviously, if Honor took his place, either she’s stronger than he was, he left the pack, or he’s dead. I just want to know which it is.”
“He’s dead. Got drunk and fell through the ice on the lake about fifteen years ago.”
Just when Honor had become the beta. “So Ethan appointed Honor in his place.”
MacDuff guffawed. There was just no other word for the belly laugh that surged from his mouth on a gust of breath. “Hell, no! That right there tells me you never met Ethan Tate before he died and brought you here. Might as well have written it out for me.” He dropped his hands to his knees and leaned into the table. “Ethan Tate was just about the biggest bastard the Goddess ever whelped, Hunter. He never gave anything to anybody without making sure they went through hell to get it. He tried naming three young males to the beta spot before Honor. She had to hand each and every one of them their asses, and do it while her father watched, before she could claim that position. And even then, he made her go a round with him before he gave in. Whipped the ass of his own daughter on the pack’s ceremonial ground. If she weren’t so fast, he’d have killed her, too. The fact that she survived longer than any of the boys she’d beaten is the only thing that saved her.”
Logan tried to picture the scene. He couldn’t imagine any father treating his own young that way. Even when a son unseated his own father for the alpha position, it was usually more of a show than a real battle. Graham and his father had nearly laughed themselves silly at their ceremonial challenge. The elder Winters had been more than ready to hand over his position, but most important, he had loved his son.
How had Ethan Tate felt about Honor? If that was how he demonstrated it, Logan hated to even speculate.
“So, you’re trying to tell me that Honor has already paid her dues, and I need to just rubber-stamp her turn as alpha. Is that what the pie was about? Usually when someone is trying to tell me what to do, they find threats more effective than desserts.”
“No, the pie was because you looked so sour when Honor walked out on you, I thought you could use sweetening up.” MacDuff laughed. “I’m not threatening you, Hunter, or telling you how to do your job. I don’t know you, but you strike me as the sort of man that even if I tried, you’d still go ahead and do things exactly the way you intended all along. I don’t believe in wasting my breath that way. I imagine you plan to take the next couple of days to check this pack out for yourself. You’ll probably talk to the females and the pups to see what they think of the new alpha, and then you’ll likely go check out each of our males in the prime age group and see whether you believe any of them looks like he’d make a better alpha than my niece.”
It was like having someone read Logan the contents of his own day planner. That was exactly what he planned to do between now and the Howl. It was the logical course of action. So why did Hamish MacDuff manage to make it sound like such a mindless exercise in futility?
“You seem to know just what I have planned, MacDuff,” he managed, carefully keeping his voice level and lacking in snarl. “Would you also like to tell me what I’m going to find?”
“What? And spoil all your fun?” The elder laughed and rose from his chair. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Hunter. You’ll find what you find, after all. I don’t claim to be a mind reader, but I do know a thing or two about being a young, unmated male, and I do know my niece.
Which means I also know that it looks like it’s going to be a long, chilly night for you, son. You might want to raid the linen closet at the top of the stairs for an extra blanket before bed. Seems to me, you’re going to need it.”
Eight
The winter sunlight reflected off the snow shortly after dawn the following morning and pierced straight through Logan’s closed eyelids. Cursing the end of a night of precious little sleep, he snarled and threw back his purloined blanket. Damn Hamish MacDuff, anyway. It was like the man was some sort of prophet of doom who had cursed Logan with the long, lonely night of his prediction. A night spent without his cranky, contrary erstwhile mate.
The bastard.
Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, Logan sat up and scrubbed his hands over his face. He really had slept for shit, and the hours of tossing and turning—after quite a long and exhausting search of the grounds around the meeting hall and the main house for the elusive Honor Tate—had left him with a piss-poor attitude and the nagging shadow of a headache behind his brow. Nice way to start the morning, right?
Good thing he had plenty to do. Maybe concentrating on his job and sticking to his plan to interview members of the pack today would keep his mind sufficiently occupied. Otherwise, he predicted he would see himself spending every waking minute obsessing over his mate.
Cursing, he stumbled into the shower and cranked the water up high and hot. The pounding stream washed away the remaining fog of sleep, but it did little to turn his mind in another direction. He had mate brain, and for the first time, he felt a surge of sympathy for all the friends and pack mates he had harassed over the years for turning into salivating idiots the moment they scented the female that fate had picked out for them. Unfortunately, he now knew exactly how they felt. The part that astonished him was how different the experience was from what he’d expected.
Mating had taken him by surprise.
Oh, he supposed that was how it always worked. After all, among his kind, men and women didn’t meet at a bar or a party or off an Internet site, date for a while, and gradually develop feelings for each other. He knew that was what humans expected, but he was Lupine. He’d always known that one day he’d be at a bar or a party or meeting another Lupine in person for the first time, her scent would hit him, and he would recognize his mate. That was just the way it happened, but he’d be damned if he’d expected it to happen here.
First off, he’d still been hung up on Missy, or so he’d thought. He wanted to laugh about it now, but just a couple of days ago, he hadn’t been able to imagine any woman smelling as good to him as Missy Winters. Every time he’d caught the honey-and-vanilla scent of her, he’d felt his dick twitch, and when she’d started to scent of warm milk as well, he’d thought he’d go out of his mind. Intellectually, he’d known she couldn’t be his mate because she’d already mated with Graham, and he didn’t believe the Goddess could be so cruel as to make the one perfect woman for him belong to another male, not when Lupines mated once and remained mated to the same partner for life. The Moon would never curse him like that; but he’d still wondered. He’d still thought Missy smelled better than any woman on earth.
Until he’d gotten close enough to Honor Tate to detect the true scent of her beneath those cloying bath salts. Now, he realized that she must have used the fragrance in her bath to camouflage the smell of her heat. It might have worked with the members of her pack, especially if she didn’t allow anyone close enough to scent her skin directly, but they hadn’t been able to fool her mate. He’d recognized her through the distraction, sweet pea and clover spiced with the exotic musk of her coming heat. Just the memory of it affected him in a way the biggest snoutful of Missy’s scent never had. Honor’s fragrance was like a drug for him, addicting him, making him crave another breath, another taste, another chance to feel her smooth skin and taut curves pressing hard against him.
Goddamn it! If he didn’t get ahold of himself, he was going to come right here in the shower, without so much as the pump of his own fist around his cock. That was how his mate affected him, and it went so far beyond what he’d felt for his friend’s mate, he finally understood why she had disappeared from his mind so quickly after his arrival in Connecticut. She had never been right for him at all. The only woman he could ever be content with was Honor Tate, but how in the name of the blue Moon was he supposed to make that happen?
The only things haunting him more persistently than Honor’s scent were her words from the previous evening. The picture she had painted of their future was starkly engraved on his mind. She had predicted that the only possible outcomes of his presence in her territory were their permanent separation, her death, or a life of intolerable indignity for him. How was he supposed to make that kind of choice? Every one of his instincts told him he couldn’t live without her. Even though he hadn’t bitten her—nor she him—to formalize their mate bond, he already knew it would send him over the edge to lose her. If she died, he would kill every single Lupine who had touched her, and every single Lupine who had stood aside and let it happen. He would wipe out the entire White Paw Clan, if that was what it took to avenge her, so the idea of him just turning his back and trotting merrily back to New York without her didn’t even merit consideration. No way was he going anywhere without his mate.
But could he honestly stay here and pretend that every moment as a powerless pack mascot didn’t twist a double-edged knife through his gut? Logan accepted being Graham’s beta because he loved his pack mate like a brother, and even then, there were times when it grated to defer to the other Lupine. If he were relegated to the role of Honor’s Sol, how long would it be before he resented the very thought of her? He knew his strengths and his weaknesses, and his dominance tendencies, in this case, ranked at the top of both lists.
So, what was he going to do? Cut off his left hand, or his right? Because that was what the choices felt like to him. Either way, he’d walk away from this situation half a man. Which half did he want to lose first?
Logan twisted the water off with a sharp jerk of his hand and reached for a towel. Unless he wanted to turn the dial all the way to cold, the shower had done him as much good as it was able. Hadn’t his plan for the day been not to obsess over Honor Tate? Time to suit action to words.
Leaping to a decision now wouldn’t do him any good. He didn’t have enough information to know if Honor’s assessment of the situation was the right one. Maybe all his choices did suck like a brand-new vacuum, but if there was another option, any option that would allow him to have Honor and keep his pride, the only way to find it was to look. He’d start by looking into the pack, and go from there. Two birds, one stone.
And one very determined Lupine male.
* * *
Honor couldn’t remember a more exhausting day in her life. Who knew eluding one determined Lupine could take so much out of a girl?
After that incident in the stone yard yesterday, she’d devoted her entire afternoon to being wherever Logan Hunter was not. Well, there had been that forty-five minutes she’d spent leaning up against a tree, trying to remember how her legs worked, immediately after stalking away from him. But she wasn’t counting that. Or the way it had taken a good two hours for the pleasant ache between her legs to fade to the point where she wasn’t constantly having to press them together to ease the fluttering there.
She wasn’t counting that, either.
No, what she counted were the hours she’d spent running errands in town that could have waited another week but that kept her off the pack’s property until it was time for supper. The meal itself, she was trying hard to forget. Neither the reaction of her inner wolf every time she got close to Logan Hunter, nor the hard truths she’d slapped him down with before running away from him—again—counted among her finer moments. She’d headed straight from the meeting hall to the house and up to her bedroom, but it had taken all of thirty seconds after she’d gotten there for her to realize it wouldn’t take her mate half that long
to find her if that was where she stayed. She had thrown a toothbrush and a change of clothes into a duffel and retreated to the remotest empty cabin on the property—one she was almost certain no one would have thought to mention to their guest that it even existed. There she had spent a long, cold, restless night trying to persuade herself that maybe her hormones were lying to her and Logan Hunter wasn’t really the mate fate had destined for her.
When that had failed, she’d switched to persuading herself that while he might be her mate, she had survived without him for twenty-four years before now, and she could survive another fifty after he left. No problem.
That had failed, too.
Which pretty much left her right where she’d started—alone, angry, and trapped between a rock and a hard Lupine. Gee, would the fun ever start?
Her secret hideout had protected her from Logan for the night, but the chilly cabin and the lack of sleep had left her feeling stiff and cranky when she finally managed to drag herself into the office for a day of paperwork and monotony. Yes, she was hiding behind a desk, but only because she didn’t think anyone had showed Logan her office yet, and when they eventually did, at least she’d have gotten in a few hours with the coffeemaker before he found her. That might be enough to get her through their next confrontation.
That, plus a whip, a chair, and a tranquilizer gun.
Sighing, Honor banished her nemesis from her mind and forced herself to concentrate on the monotony of the responsibilities she’d inherited from her father. She needed to send several boys back to the stone yard to finish off the fire pit that she’d abandoned after the Incident yesterday (her mind seemed determined to refer to their sexual escapades in capital letters, and frankly, Honor couldn’t really find a reasonable argument against it).
Settling into her father’s chair with her third cup of coffee, Honor dragged out Ethan’s dog-eared old appointment calendar. He’d been meticulous about his business, and every scheduled task and due invoice had been neatly noted in the pages of the calendar.
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