Bite Back Box Set 2

by Mark Henwick

  “He just looked out the window,” Zane said. “That was fifty-five seconds. Told you.”

  “He couldn’t help himself,” Rita crowed. “Deal done.”

  Cameron moved abruptly to open her door, but Rita had been watching. She launched herself over the back of the seat and grabbed her hands.

  “Alpha, no,” she said.

  Cameron was growling. Her eyes had gone completely wolf.

  Rita didn’t back off. She rubbed her head against Cameron’s neck and chest, keeping her eyes down and her movements slow and gentle.

  “Let’s go, Amber,” Zane said. “Quickly.”

  I floored it.

  Dirt spat out behind the Hill Bitch as I fishtailed her onto the road and drove away.

  We were a mile down the road before Rita let go and sat back slowly, watchfully. A little distance seemed to have calmed Cameron, who was sitting still, staring into the distance and breathing deeply. Her eyes were still wolf. Her hand came up, and she clicked her fingers.

  Rita immediately leaned forward over the seats again. Not to hold Cameron, but to offer her neck.

  Cameron’s face flowed; black-furred wolf jaws stretched out and closed on Rita’s neck. The were-cougar didn’t move, didn’t blink.

  Zane’s hand rested on my shoulder. Leave it alone.

  I sort-of understood. Whatever the reason, Rita had laid hands on Cameron.

  There needed to be some pack communication to make sure everyone knew where they stood.

  Cameron’s jaws opened and her face flowed back, minus the gold paint.

  I breathed again and slowed the truck.

  Cameron patted Rita’s shoulder and stared out the front. Her eyes were still more wolf than woman.

  “What the hell was she going to do back at the ranch?” I asked quietly.

  Rita smiled as she sat back in her seat. “Oh, piss on the gateposts, probably. Mark her claim. Maybe strip off and invite him for a roll in the barn. Not a bad move, necessarily, but just for safety, they both need to get a little used to the idea before their wolves take over.”

  I snorted. “Used to what idea? Can someone tell me what the hell just happened?”

  For ten long seconds there was no sound but the engine churning and the road under the tires. Rita and Zane exchanged looks.

  “We think Felix accepted the proposal, obviously,” Zane said finally. “But it’s much more. They’ve gone beyond the marriage-for-strategy. Way beyond. I think we’re about to see what a real super-pack looks like, with a pair of mated alphas stronger than anything else in the country. Full merger of packs.”

  “Mated? That was it?” I said. Shit! Merged packs? “That was what it took? A screaming argument in the yard?”

  “Not quite.” Cameron’s voice was back to its rich, chocolate best. She kept staring ahead as she spoke. “He’ll call me. Soon. And we’re big, bad alphas, so we’ll yell and snap and snarl at each other a few more times. Right up until the time we jump each other. But we already know. We have, as they say, the whole enchilada with added benefits. Great, searing lumps of hot, smoking benefits. Oh, yes.”

  “Alex and I are alphas, and we never—”

  “You had a long wait for sex?” Rita raised an eyebrow. “With that hunk in LA?”

  “Well, no—”

  “You batted eyelids at him? Agreed with everything he said? He came around in a suit and tie, and introduced himself politely to your mother?”

  I shut up. Within a week of meeting Alex, he’d thrown me over his naked shoulder and taken me up to his bedroom. I’d squawked and complained and loved every throbbing second of it.

  But we hadn’t argued. Not exactly.

  “Alphas are like this when they mate,” Zane said. He’d leaned forward and he was speaking softly right into my ear. “The bigger and louder the conflict at the start, the more profound the initial refusals, the quicker and more passionate the progress.”

  His breath stroked my neck.

  The air in the truck was heavy with pheromones. Not purely Zane’s fault. He and Rita were responding to their alpha.

  “Alphas know, deep down, almost right away,” he murmured. “The moment they come to trust their gut decision, the mating bond is complete. It’s quite…beautiful.”

  I chuckled, partly to cover the shiver of desire that raced down me. I needed to get back to LA, or I needed Alex and Jen back in Denver.

  But Alex had held himself back, early on, before the over-the-shoulder bit. Not because he lacked anything as an alpha wolf. Because he was Alex, my alpha mate, who sensed me perfectly. My mate, with all the craziness that meant.

  Zane could keep up his seduction attempts—I was actually enjoying them—but he wasn’t going to get anywhere. Not with Alex waiting for me. Werewolves could mate with two partners, but I had that already—Jen not being Were was irrelevant to me.

  Zane’s lips feather-kissed my neck.

  Rita punched him and shoved him back in his seat.

  “She’s driving, culero. Leave her alone.”

  He snarled, and then laughed it off. He’d try again, I guaranteed it.

  He had seemed to take her reprimand okay, but I was sure Rita would have to submit to him later, the same way she’d had to submit to Cameron for bucking authority.

  I didn’t want her having to do that for me, but she didn’t seem concerned.

  “So, is Larimer old-fashioned?” she said.

  “I don’t know. Does it make a difference?”

  She snorted. “He might want the mating ceremony to end four-legged in front of the whole pack. Some of the old ones are kinky like that.”

  Cameron smiled at that, but stayed silent.

  We came off the snaking road that ran down from Coykuti and onto the blacktop. I eased on more gas and the Hill Bitch surged forward.

  “What does the man do for sex?” Zane asked bluntly.

  “I don’t know. I don’t pry.”

  “But you’ve got an idea.”

  Was it a pack secret? I didn’t think so.

  Was it an acceptable thing for his fiancé’s pack to know? Probably. What was right and wrong for Were was screwing with my head.

  “I think that his lieutenant, Ursula, may have shared his bed,” I said cautiously.

  Alphas varied. Some regarded the pack as their property, and the pack members weren’t allowed an option, not even if they were mated. Some, like Zane, didn’t assume the right, but would seduce anyone they could.

  Beautiful mating bonds, my ass.

  I suspected Felix worked on the basis that getting involved with any lower pack members would only cause problems. All the unranked females in the Denver pack were mated, many with two males, given the proportions in the pack. Messing with that was a sure way to cause trouble.

  Ursula hadn’t been mated, ever. And the way Felix had spoken of her made me suspect they’d been intimate. Now I’d introduced Nick into the mix, and I still wasn’t sure where that relationship had ended up. Which was a hell of a thing to admit, given that Ursula and Nick were sort-of in my pack and I was sort-of their alpha.

  Regardless of all that, I had to admit to myself that Felix might have been more open to a proposal than I’d thought earlier.

  Hell, maybe he’d welcome it. Maybe I would end up in his good books again.

  “He was mated before?” Rita interrupted my musing.

  For a Were, mated was different from married—I needed to make that distinction.

  “First wife, Candace. She was an alpha. Donna, his second wife, she didn’t make the change.”

  The horror of that silenced them for a while—to lose a mate was bad enough, and then a second wife that way. No Were was unfamiliar with the death that came to those who couldn’t change. It was unimaginable, what Felix had gone through.

  Had we ridden roughshod over those buried griefs, or had we offered him a new start?

  Eventually, it was Cameron who spoke. “How did Candace die?”

  “In a
fight with Basilikos, back in 1918. There’s a little cemetery behind the ranch, behind a yew hedge. It’s so beautiful, so peaceful.” I blinked. “His sister, Martha, used to keep it tidy. She died at Carson Park.”

  Cameron spoke again, very quietly. “They live in the pack, Martha and Candace. Even Donna.”

  I recalled Martha’s words to me at the cemetery. They seemed right, so I spoke them again now, more or less as I remembered them: “The pack makes itself new from all it's ever been, all it's ever done; all its loves and hates, its desires and fears, its triumphs and failures. You're gathered into that song, and the pack holds you in their heart, so you never die.”

  Cameron’s nose flared. “Yes.” She nodded slowly. “That cemetery will be my labor now, my gift of love to my mate, to my sister-wives, and to my sister-in-law.” There was no doubt in her voice—as far as she was concerned, Felix was her mate; Candy, Donna and Martha were alive to her.

  “I think Felix would like that,” I said.

  The feel of Hope’s cold kiss at Bitter Hooks seemed to touch my cheeks again. Sister-wife. The pack is now. It is all that it has ever been, just as she is part of me because I hold her in my heart.

  We were silent then, until we pulled into the empty parking lot near 470, where Yelena was waiting impatiently.

  Chapter 42

  Cameron still looked distracted. Rita and Zane wanted her back on home ground. We hugged all around and they headed out.

  “Elizabetta called,” Yelena said as they moved off.

  I asked Yelena to make a brief report to Skylur on where we were and what had happened. I’d expected some reaction, and here it was.

  “Skylur says congratulations on the ritual. However, some of Huang’s Adepts have booked a flight to Denver tomorrow.”

  That gave me pause. “Looking for Tullah? Or looking for me?”

  Yelena shrugged. “They haven’t said. Just because they’re traveling with Altau security doesn’t mean they tell them anything. But Skylur doesn’t want to take the chance of them getting inside your head. He wants you back in LA. There’s a session where they want you as syndesmon.”

  I sighed. There was still so much to do here, but Skylur had made me uncomfortably aware of the possible consequences of being seen to defy him.

  “When is he expecting us?” I asked.

  “I’ve called the airfield and the Pilatus will be ready tonight. We could time it to be back at Van Nuys at about 5 a.m.” She smiled. “That would leave us some time to check out Forsythe’s house.”

  “It’s too early to go breaking and entering,” I said, and gathered up my courage. “I better go see Mom.”

  Mom’s little blue Honda was in the drive, under the winter-bare branches of the Siberian elm, so I parked the Hill Bitch on the road.

  In the streetlight, I could see that my stepfather, John, had pruned the elm carefully in the fall. Come spring, it would shade the drive well without hanging low enough to catch your head as you walked to the door. The edges of the flowerbeds had been tidied to clean lines. Any weeds were long gone, and Mom’s flowers had been cut back for winter. One or two of the weaker ones were under little clear plastic bells. Everything neat and well looked after.

  Mom could rely on John. Not like me. Or my sister Kath, for that matter.

  I sighed.

  As much as I missed her and loved her, I was reluctant to go in.

  What do I say?

  I knew Jen and Alex, and even Agent Ingram, had spoken to her while I was in therapy. That wasn’t the same. Diana’s subtle compulsion to prevent me from worrying about everything else while I recovered had robbed me of the urge to call Mom.

  Or had it? What if that was just an excuse I was telling myself?

  That was the kicker about having someone mess with your head—you lost certainty about yourself.

  It’d been a mixed visit to my home town. No useful leads on Fay, Dante going AWOL, a good result at Coykuti. Good news from LA on the negotiations and the Belles. A good start with Ingram. A huge high from all the Athanate biting at Manassah and the feeling of my House forming itself around me.

  And now, Mom.

  Which side would this be on? Positive or negative?

  “Go on,” Yelena said, expertly pickpocketing my cell. “I’ll stay out here and answer calls.”

  Mom must have been watching and waiting. She opened the door before I knocked and rushed out to hug me.

  I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t speak, even after we got inside.

  It wasn’t until she’d gotten me sitting in the living room, with a mug of John’s fresh-brewed coffee and a plate of her very own chocolate and cinnamon cookies, that she even let me talk.

  There were worry lines on her face that hadn’t been there before. They tugged at my heart.

  “How are you?” she said. “No one was able to tell me exactly what was the matter.”

  I sighed. “That’s because it’s all secret,” I said. “But I’m fine, Mom. See?” I got up and spun around.

  “Well…” She wasn’t convinced, but eventually we moved on to news about her friends, the Quinns. I’d helped them out with a burglary insurance claim in the fall and it had finally come good. They’d come around earlier to pass on the news.

  John snorted. “And for Ruth to dig up any gossip about you,” he said. He sniffed and hid a smile. “I have some letters to write. I’ll leave you to it.”

  He’d judged that Mom and I would find it easier to talk without him.

  I didn’t deserve my mom, or my stepfather.

  As the door closed quietly behind him, Mom inspected her hands. “Ruth didn’t really come for gossip. It’s just that she’s…naturally interested in what’s happening.”

  Naturally.

  “It was thoughtful of Alex and Jen to call me,” Mom said. “They’ve both been so pleasant.”

  Her hands slipped over each other as if she were washing them. She caught herself and stopped, laced her fingers together.

  “I assume from the fact that both of them called, several times in fact, that, well, there’s been no resolution?” she said.

  As hard as Mom tried to understand my love life, she hadn’t quite accepted that I could love two people equally at the same time.

  “It is what it was,” I said.

  “And they are both somehow part of all this FBI case you’re caught up in?”

  “Yes.” We were getting near things I couldn’t explain.

  “Hmm.” She unlaced her fingers to take a sip of coffee. “Has Agent Ingram been in touch?”

  I got a little pulse of worry. Why was she asking about him?

  “We’ve spoken recently,” I said truthfully.

  “It’s funny. When I was last speaking to him, I was sure he didn’t actually know where you were, but of course, he had to, if you’re all part of the same investigation, surely?”

  Who needs Adept Truth Sensors?

  “Well, not necessarily.” I had to get Mom off this topic, and I knew I should be asking about my sister as well. “How’s Kath?”

  Mom’s face fell. The hand that reached for her coffee trembled.

  “She quit her job.”

  “What?”

  Kath loved her work as a lawyer. I understood she hadn’t made partner, which she blamed me for, but she lived for that job.

  Mom sat back and wouldn’t look at me. “She was having problems.”

  Yeah. The drinking type.

  I couldn’t say that to Mom, but I didn’t need to. She knew what I was thinking.

  “It’s not alcohol, Amber.” She waved her hand. “Oh, she gets drunk, but that’s not the real problem.”

  “Then what is?”

  “I don’t know. She won’t talk to me.”

  I laughed, without humor. “Then there’s no chance she’ll talk to me.”

  Mom shook her head. “There’s just…something there. A hunch. I told you about before—”

  “Yeah. She went off the rails for
a while, after I left for the army.”

  Mom frowned and shook her head again. “I’m not blaming you. It’s just this feeling I have that it’s something you’ll be able to help her with. You were so close before you left. It’s somehow all part of the same thing: your leaving, her troubles. I just don’t know. She won’t talk to anyone else. Not even Taylor.”

  “He’s still around?” I said, surprised.

  Kath’s fiancé, Taylor, was a slick, super-smart lawyer in the same firm Kath had worked for. He was a nice enough guy, but I hadn’t warmed to him. To be frank, I’d expected him to drop her as soon as he realized what a mess she’d become.

  “Yes. And not just around when he can be. He’s taken a sabbatical to take care of her,” Mom said.

  My mouth opened, but nothing came out. In the pressure-cooker careers of large legal firms, that was astonishing. He might as well have resigned.

  I’d underestimated Taylor badly.

  “I know now,” Mom started, and paused to press her hand against her lips briefly. “I know that some of the things Kathleen did were very wrong—”

  “Mom.” I held up my hands to stop her. I’d never forgive Kath. What she’d done hadn’t been wrong so much as inexcusable. But I’d do anything to ease my mother’s burdens. “It’s Christmas soon. I’ll make sure I can come back, and I’ll try what I can with Kath then.”

  “I was hoping maybe now that you’re back, you could go see her,” she said. “Maybe today. She really needs you, Amber.”

  “I can’t, Mom. I’m sorry. I just got word before I arrived that they need me back in LA as soon as possible.”

  Her lips tightened. “Of course. I’m sure that’s more important.”

  I hated the guilt trip, even though I probably deserved it. I’d broken my word too many times. Disappeared too many times, with no adequate explanations.

  “I have to go now, Mom,” I said. “I promise to be back for Christmas.”

  There—said it. Now I have to make it so.

  It surprised me that she didn’t make more fuss about my leaving. She seemed resigned, which in a way bothered me more than nagging or guilt. As if she’d given up on me being there for them.

  We hugged in the hallway. John came and put an awkward hand on my shoulder.