by D. M. Turner
Tanya studied him for a moment. “You’re afraid.”
“Yes.” He buried his nose in her hair. “A mountain lion killed my mother. I don’t want to lose you the same way.”
A soft gasp escaped her lips, then her arms slipped around his waist. She buried her face in his neck and shoulder. “I had no idea. I’ll stay in the house until you tell me otherwise.”
“Thank you.” Tension uncoiled inside him. He eased back and released her to frame her face with both hands. “I love you.”
A warm, bright smile curved her lips. “I love you, too.”
* * *
Conversation drifted around the table and over Tanya’s head. Something Ian had asked Kelly had struck her, rather belatedly since it hadn’t seeped through her consciousness until they were partway through the meal. What had Ian meant about Kelly having gone through eight or nine heats? Wasn’t that an animal thing? She had to have misunderstood his question.
Near the end of dinner, Colin’s shoulder brushed hers as he leaned close enough to whisper in her ear. “Are you alright?”
She smiled and nodded.
“Sure?”
“Yeah. It’s just….” Probably not something to bring up at the dinner table. “It’ll keep for later.”
He studied her for a moment then scooted his chair back from the table. “Will you excuse us, please? We’re going out on the deck.”
“Don’t forget jackets.”
“We won’t.” Colin shot her a grin and rolled his eyes when his father couldn’t see his face. He leaned in to whisper, “You’d think I was still six.”
She chuckled then waited at the sliding glass door in the living room for him to return with her coat out of the closet off the entryway. While he held it, she shrugged into it and zipped it closed. He pushed open the door then followed her out.
Ian hadn’t been kidding about the jackets. The sun had gone down, and the evening air already had a chilly bite.
Tanya shoved her hands into the pockets of her coat and scrunched her shoulders to keep her neck warm.
“Alright. What’s on your mind?” He pointed to one of the Adirondack chairs.
She plopped into it and scooted over so he could join her.
He drew her against him, wrapping both arms around her. “Does it have something to do with our visitor? Or did something happen at school today?”
“You mean, have I eaten a student or professor yet?” She shot him a teasing grin.
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Nope. No human kills, much less any flesh eaten.” She shuddered theatrically.
He chuckled. “Alright. That narrows it down to Kelly. She’s pretty… dominant.”
“Is that what it was? I thought it was fear running amok as bravado.” Certainly smelled like it.
“Yeah, well some of that, too. She was unsettled being in the den of strange wolves, but it definitely goes beyond that. Did you notice how hard it was for Brett to make her lower her gaze?”
“I noticed that at the university when I introduced them. I’ve never seen anyone brave or stupid enough to challenge him. I figured she didn’t know any better, because she doesn’t know him.”
“It wasn’t a matter of brave or stupid. She’s simply that dominant. She’d make a fine mate for him actually.”
“I thought so, too!” She smiled big. “I thought maybe it was just me, wanting everyone content like we are. Even Brett.”
Colin chuckled again and kissed the end of her nose. “It’s not you, but I love that sentiment. Could you imagine a whole pack of mated wolves? I don’t think that’s ever been accomplished before. Too few female werewolves, and too few human females willing and able to love a wolf.” He studied her. “I doubt Brett’s prospects for mating with Kelly bothered you, though. You seemed troubled about something.”
“I’m not sure ‘troubled’ is the word. Confused maybe. Something your dad said.” The cold penetrated her jeans, making her shiver. She drew her knees up as close to her chest as she could without letting go of Colin. “That thing about her having gone through heats.”
He frowned. “I didn’t really catch that, other than to be horrified he’d be so nosy.” A slow grin crept over his face. “I was too busy resisting the urge to nibble on you to pay more than cursory attention to my father interrogating an unmated female I have zero interest in.”
Tanya laughed softly then swatted him lightly on one arm. “Colin, I’m serious. I want to know what they were talking about.”
With a theatrical, put-upon sigh, he rolled his eyes. “Fine, but we’ll have to ask them. I don’t know anything about it.”
“Really?” He’d been a fount of information from the first day they’d met.
“Don’t look so shocked.” He half-grinned. “I may be an expert on tracking and hunting, but until you came along, I didn’t know much at all about female wolves. I’ve relied very heavily on Dad and Brett for input.”
“Well, then, I guess we should go back inside and ask them.” She moved to get up then settled back against him. “Hey, wait a minute. I almost forget. You promised me a surprise.”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“That’s just plain mean.” She shot him a mock dirty look and pulled away to climb to her feet. “You shouldn’t tell a person about a surprise to torture them for twenty-four hours before you even give it to them.”
Colin chuckled, looking entirely unrepentant, and led her back into the house.
The warm air inside brought an exaggerated shiver to the surface. She shrugged out of her coat and handed it to Colin.
“Why don’t you have a seat on the couch?” He motioned in that direction. “I’ll get a fire going and see if the others will join us. I’m sure they’ve finished eating by now.”
She nodded and tucked herself into a corner of the leather couch.
Colin returned shortly and went to work building a fire in the fireplace.
About the time the fire blazed up and sent heat into the room, Brett, Ian, and Kelly wandered in from the dining room.
Colin sat on the couch beside Tanya, with Ian on the other side of him. Brett and Kelly took up station in the chairs, facing each other but barely looking at one another. Tanya bit back a grin at their obvious reluctance to make eye contact.
The silence lengthened.
“Dad?” Colin put an arm over her drawn up knees that lay partway across his lap. “Tanya has a wolf question I can’t answer.”
“Oh, what might that be?”
“You made a comment to Kelly about heats. I don’t know anything more about it than Tanya does, so what were you talking about?”
Kelly snorted a laugh then pinned Brett and Ian, each in turn, with an incredulous look. “She’s been a wolf four months and you haven’t told her that stuff?”
“It hasn’t come up.” Brett’s growly tone matched the dark look in his eyes as he glared at her.
“You should’ve told her right away. Good grief. Stupid males.” She shook her head then dismissed them to focus on Tanya. “Haven’t you noticed you aren’t having monthly cycles anymore?”
“No, I haven’t really thought about it.” She forced herself not to think about the fact there were men in the room, two of whom were not her husband. “I’ve never been regular, and with the stress of the past few months and the drastic weight loss I initially sustained, the fact I haven’t had one didn’t strike me as odd.”
“You’re too thin now. You were worse before?”
“The men who Turned me decided I was a lost cause and wouldn’t feed me. They were going to let me starve to death.”
“Sounds familiar,” Kelly muttered to no one in particular. Then she sighed. “I’m glad this bunch isn’t responsible for the fact you’re too skinny.”
Colin scowled, his grip tightening on Tanya’s leg. “We’ve tried to feed her up since she got here.”
“It’s my fault.” Tanya laid a hand over his.
He immediately
loosened his hold and shot her an apologetic look.
“I’ve struggled with all of this, and my appetite comes and goes. Mostly goes. They’ve done what they can, but it’s hard for me to eat sometimes.”
“You haven’t fully accepted the wolf yet, have you?” Though put in the form of a question, it came out sounding like a statement of fact.
“Maybe not. I’m trying though. If I had more information and better understood it all, I think it’d be easier.”
Kelly nodded. “We female wolves don’t have human reproductive cycles. We have annual heats like our wild counterparts. That’s the only time each year we can potentially get pregnant.”
“Potentially?” That seemed like an odd word to throw in there.
“We have unreliable fertility for some reason no one knows, so every heat doesn’t result in pregnancy, no matter how…”—she glanced at the various men in the room, a faint blush coloring her neck—“active we and our mates are.”
Oh. Tanya kept her gaze steady on Kelly, unwilling to so much as glance at any of the men. If the heat in her face was any indication, she’d turned fire engine red.
“My parents had seven live births and two stillbirths over the course of about forty years. Females tend to be less common than males. Of the seven live births, I’m one of only two females. One of the stillbirths was female, the other male. The rest of my siblings are male. Apparently that’s normal for our species.”
The couch leather groaned as Ian leaned forward to see around Colin to ask, “Have all of them survived their first Shift?”
“My older sister and two brothers have. The two youngest aren’t old enough yet. One of my brothers died making the attempt. I barely remember him.”
“Four successes and one failure to date. That’s not a bad ratio. And your sister? Has she had children?”
“Only two live births so far in almost twenty years, both males. She’s even less fertile than our mother was.”
Tanya cocked her head. “Was?”
“Mom died last year.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Kelly shrugged. “It was inevitable. She could only take my father for so long.”
Did she mean…? No, she had to be misinterpreting what had been said. “Did she… kill herself?”
“Yes.” The woman snorted. “If you knew my father, you’d understand why. That was the only way to escape him.”
Ian leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his gaze suddenly much more intense. “Will your father come after you?”
“If the pack can find me, yes.” Kelly lowered her gaze to her lap. “I tried to cover my tracks, but I’m not counting on being able to hide from them forever. My father won’t be happy that one of his belongings has slipped through his fingers.”
“Great,” Ian grumbled. “If they come for you, they’ll be in our territory and probably cause problems. If you’re part of our pack, we’ll protect you. If not, you’re on your own. We can’t interfere unless you’re part of my pack.”
“Even if they invade our territory to get her?” Tanya asked. Surely there was some sort of loophole to the rule.
“Even then.”
“Can’t we do anything to help her?”
“Not unless she joins this pack. Lone wolves don’t get the protection of the pack. We don’t endanger our own to protect those who aren’t committed to us.”
“But, you did it for me.”
“That was different.” Colin momentarily tightened his grip on her leg. “We were trying to stop the men who Turned you and freed you from that prison they had you in. That made you our responsibility until you could make a choice about joining the pack or going lone wolf.”
“So if her father comes or sends someone after her, we can’t help?”
“Afraid not. She’ll either fight them off on her own, or they’ll reclaim her by force.” Ian growled softly. “That’s just how it is sometimes.”
“It’s wrong.” Tanya couldn’t help the snap in the words and kept her gaze on her lap.
“I didn’t say I agree with it.”
“Then change it. Make it right.”
“How is it right for me to endanger the members of our pack for the life of a wolf who has rejected us?” He shook his head. “I might make that choice for myself, depending on the circumstances, but I won’t endanger those I’m responsible for to protect someone who cares nothing about us and is unwilling to commit to caring for our pack as much as we do.”
Kelly studied him with such confusion that Tanya looked from one to the other and back again, trying to figure out what was so puzzling.
Finally, the other woman shook her in amazement. “You really are different, aren’t you?”
Ian frowned. “I don’t understand. Different from what?”
“My father. He doesn’t tolerate wolves in his pack that could even think about challenging him, much less could overthrow him. He’s killed those he thought might be strong enough to take him on.” She glanced briefly at Brett before continuing. “Also, he doesn’t care about those under him. He would certainly never put himself at risk to protect them. He demands obedience, and they do his bidding out of fear, not respect. Just now, Tanya disagreed with you, and you did nothing but respond verbally. My father would’ve beaten her.”
All three men scowled. Colin shifted closer to Tanya.
“Such a man doesn’t deserve a family or a pack,” Brett growled. “He should be taken out and shot.”
“Some have tried,” Kelly muttered. “All of them are dead.” A solemn look passed over her face, then she met Ian’s gaze. “Would you really protect me if I was part of your pack?”
“With our lives.”
“I’d have to take a mate.”
“Yes. The last time we had an unmated female here during the full moon, we had bloodshed, and she was almost killed. I won’t put my people at risk for that again.”
Tanya winced, remembering that mess. She’d been that unmated female. Graham had almost killed her, and two of the others had fought over her.
“So, I must choose a mate before the twenty-seventh.”
“Yes.”
A long moment passed before Kelly spoke again. “Tanya mentioned that you have several unmated males in your pack.”
“We do. Six to be exact. Brett and I are two of those.”
“And the other four? Where are they in the pack structure?”
“Four of the five lowest ranking of eleven wolves.”
She didn’t say anything, but that answer apparently displeased her. At least, the scowl on her face suggested as much. “I can’t marry someone who’s intimidated by me. Those four would probably wet their shoes if I got mad at them. I most certainly don’t want to be the alpha bitch. I don’t need that responsibility.” She glanced at Brett and snorted a soft laugh. “And I very much doubt he and I could live together without bloodshed.”
Brett’s answering half-grin and look was condescending. He laughed softly. “Too scared of me, huh?”
“I didn’t say that.” She glared at him.
“Sure sounded like it to me.” He snorted. “So much for the brave little warrior.”
Kelly surged to her feet, hands going to her hips. “You don’t scare me! I simply prefer not to live with someone I might want to kill.”
Brett climbed lazily to his feet. If not for the intensity of his gaze, his body language might actually convince people he was bored. That superior smile appeared again. “Maybe you’re afraid you’d like living with me, sharing my bed. I might tame the little shrew.”
Her jaw tightened, and her breathing came in short, shallow pants. Anger rolled off of her thick enough to make everyone go perfectly still.
Tanya held her breath and waited to see what happened. Would they kill each other right there in the living room? The need for oxygen made her inhale. That’s when she noticed something. The air. It was… arousal. From both Kelly and Brett. They weren’t angry anymore.
“You are an insensitive, domineering, blustering clod!”
“And you’re nothing but a whiny, sniveling little pup hiding behind bravado so obviously faked that you look like a child playing dress-up in military garb.”
Kelly took a swing at him.
He easily caught her wrist and grinned. “When you take a swing at a man, you better mean it. Otherwise, your father will have you back in chains in no time flat.”
She tried to pull away, but he held firm. Her eyes narrowed. “I won’t go back.”
“That’s entirely up to you, sweetheart.” He leaned down to look into her eyes.
“I’m not your sweetheart.” She moved close enough that her nose almost touched his.
Ian cleared his throat. “Do you two need use of a bedroom?”
Brett startled, glanced around at the three on the couch, and abruptly released Kelly, who stumbled backwards, falling into her chair.
Since Brett clearly hadn’t pushed her, Tanya could only assume Kelly’s legs had given out. Wow. Talk about drama.
Ian got to his feet and turned his gaze on Kelly, who was still barely breathing. “I’ll expect your decision before the full moon.”
She nodded without looking at him.
He glanced at Brett, grinned, and headed for his office.
Brett stared at the woman he’d just argued with then pulled keys out of a pocket of his slacks. “I should head home.” He didn’t wait for a response.
Tanya watched him go with some amusement. If he’d moved any faster, someone would’ve accused him of running away.
The door slammed behind him, making Kelly jump.
“I should go, too.” She got unsteadily to her feet and walked slowly to the door. “I’ll probably see you soon.”
“Sure.” Tanya smiled.
The door closed much more gently than it had behind Brett.
“Wow.”
Colin shook his head. “Tell me about it. I’ve never seen Brett so passionate about anything in my life.”
“No pun intended?” She grinned.
He chuckled. “They did give me an idea though.”
“Oh?”