“I promise you,” Troy said with such conviction that Jack burst out with a laugh of relief and wrapped his arms around Angel’s shimmering, white neck.
She nuzzled against him then licked his cheek, and Troy wondered if she could understand the conversation. If she’d been turned properly, then she would be able to. But who knew how she was turned?
In a discrete tone, Shane warned, “Don’t make promises you can’t back up, brother.”
“I’m the king now. The leader of the pack. I can do it.”
It sounded like pure hubris, even to his own ears, but he believed it. He wasn’t sure it was possible, but if he believed it, then he’d make it so.
“Well,” Dean said, rubbing his hands together and shifting gears. “Let’s get her back onto two legs, shall we?”
It wasn’t easy.
They tried every trick in the werewolf book. Had she been your typical, run-of-the-mill Younger, it would’ve been a challenge, because the spirit of a Younger was wild and rebellious. But there was nothing about Angel, or this situation, that was typical.
Troy tried using his Royally-imbued energy to compel her to shift. She didn’t.
Jack tried his wolf-howling cry, which quickly turned contagious, Angel howling right along with him, but she didn’t shift.
Conor and Kaleb tried the massage technique to stimulate her dormant human parts, but she only panted happily and rolled on her side, hoping for a long belly scratch.
It wasn’t until Shane got really furious that they were able to make some progress. Like some kind of borderline-abusive drill sergeant hellbent on whipping a potential police K-9 into shape, he barked orders and poked and prodded her until she began to whine and look to Jack for answers.
“That’s enough!” Jack cried, defending her. Kneeling down on the tiles and holding her wolf head, he stared deeply into her eyes and with a firm edge of conviction stronger than any Troy had ever heard in his life, out of Jack or even his own father, Jack commanded, “Rise. Up. Angel.”
It had been Shane’s firm work that had loosened her, and Jack’s tender nudge that got her there.
Slowly, magically, Angel lifted, rising up and shifting back into her human form, as Jack rose to his feet right alongside her, never once letting go of her pretty face.
Dean broke out in applause and Jack began laughing with tears of relief, as Angel stood before all of them, naked as the day she was born. She looked confused and lost, as Conor quickly grabbed a bath towel from the rack to cover her up.
“Angel?” asked Jack, as he took over the task of wrapping the towel around her. “Are you okay?”
Bewildered, she stared at him with eyes as wide as saucers and asked, “What are you doing in my bathroom? How did you all get in here?”
Damn. She clearly had no memory of the conversations they’d had. Did she even remember being a wolf?
“You got sick,” Jack lied to protect her fragile mind from shattering. “I asked the Quinns to come help me so that you wouldn’t have to go back to the hospital.”
“Oh,” she murmured in a far-away voice. Her hand floated up to her head and she said, “I’m exhausted. I feel like my head is splitting.”
“I’m going to tuck her into bed,” Jack told them before protectively shepherding her out of the bathroom and down the hallway.
Troy heard the sounds of Jack steering her into her bedroom. When the door clicked shut, he closed the bathroom door as well so that she wouldn’t be able to overhear what he was about to tell his brothers.
“This is a serious situation.”
“Ya think?” Shane blurted out sarcastically. “He finally thinks so.”
“Calm down,” Troy barked right back. “I’m still your leader and you’ll respect me and follow my orders.”
It was just the command Shane needed. His inner soldier darted out and he stood at intense attention.
“I’m going to instruct Jack to stay on her,” he told them.
But Conor raised an important point. “They have opposite schedules. Angel gets in to the diner at the crack of dawn, and Jack has to run Libations until the wee hours of the night.”
“Jack has employees and so does Angel. If Angel gets stubborn about needing to be at Angel’s Food, then so be it. Jack will stay on her.”
“That’s going to pose a threat,” Dean warned. “If she doesn’t have control of herself, and Christ, we know she won’t, then she runs the risk of shifting right there in the diner for all eyes to see.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Troy asserted.
“I don’t want to even come close to that bridge,” said Kaleb, which Troy would’ve expected Shane to say, but he was in subordinate, obedient mode.
“No one does,” Troy allowed. “None of us has ever dealt with anything like this our entire lives. We’ll take it one day at a time. Hell, we’ll take it one minute at a time, and if Jack can convince Angel to just stay here, at home, until she gets some control of herself, of course that would be ideal. But she doesn’t even remember shifting into her wolf form. She doesn’t remember what happened to her out in those woods. And we all know Angel. She lives and dies for that diner. We can anticipate that she’s going to be there.”
All of them were in agreement about that.
“I’ve got Reece in the pickup,” he went on, running his large hand down his face in exasperation. He hoped like hell she hadn’t heard all the howling and commotion, but if she did… well, at least he’d already told her they were werewolves. He’d shown her. She hadn’t run scared.
Maybe she really was his one true mate…
“Tell me one thing, Troy,” said Shane. He was too calm to fully trust, but Troy gave him his full attention. “Did you tell Reece?”
Troy felt all eyes on him. This might not have been the right place and time to tell them the truth, but it certainly wasn’t the right moment to lie to their faces.
“Yes.”
A tense hush fell over the airless bathroom.
“This thing is going to snowball out of control,” said Shane. He wasn’t blameful this time, just gravely concerned for all of them.
“Between the sheriff looking for a ‘rabid wolf’ and Angel’s disappearance and the fact that Reece now knows that werewolves exist in the Fist…” Dean summarized. “The fact that Angel is going to soon know exactly what she is now, the fact that she’s not going to be able to control herself, at least for a little while…”
“I know,” Troy agreed.
Ever the voice to think things through to their farthest and most detrimental conclusion, Shane told him, “You told Reece about the pack. If she isn’t your one true mate, man…”
As Shane began shaking his head, unable to finish the terrifying thought, Dean stepped in and did on his behalf. “If she isn’t your one true mate and word really does get out, you’ll be stripped of the werewolf crown, dethroned. You’ll be exiled, brother.”
Conor added, “If not killed by the pack.”
Troy knew. He knew. And he’d never been more terrified in all his life.
Chapter Twelve
REECE
The following morning, Reece tucked herself into one of the red, vinyl booths at Angel’s Food. It was a bit dreary out and her hair felt damp. A drizzle of light rain misted and ticked against the large, picture window she was seated next to. She shook out her brown hair, wriggled her rainslicker off her shoulders, and pulled her red-frame glasses from her face to clear the condensation off of the lenses with the hem of her taupe cardigan sweater.
The diner was bustling with the early-bird rush. There was a constant hum of voices in the air and the clinks and clatters of plates and utensils. She glanced around the restaurant, placing her glasses back on. So many familiar faces. It was calming, but she had to wonder, how many of these people were who she thought they were? How many of them, on the other hand, were werewolves?
Troy had implied that his pack was substantial, and Devil’s F
ist wasn’t that big a town. What had the population gotten up to? Three hundred? Maybe three-fifteen with the slight surge of the little baby boom that had emerged last spring? What if a third of the town was made up of shifters? What if it was so much as half? It made her uneasy. Very uneasy. But she couldn’t deny that in all the years she’d lived in the Fist—her whole life—she’d never heard of a single incident. Not until Holly van Dyke, that was. Maybe living in a town chalk-full of werewolves wasn’t so bad, she reasoned. Maybe it wouldn’t be so dangerous, because it hadn’t been up until this point, right?
Or maybe, the danger was about to hit in. Maybe this was the beginning of the end, and maybe Devil’s Fist was about to truly earn its name.
Outside, Troy was standing in front of his pickup truck, where they’d parked curbside directly in front of the diner. He’d suggested to her that she go on in, dry off, warm up, and order him the usual if the waitress came to her table right away.
He was talking to Curt Wilson, the owner of the autobody repair shop, Damned Repair, out in the drizzling mist. Curt was standing with shoulders hunched, his grease-stained hands shoved deep into the front pockets of his old jeans. He wore a jean jacket as well, and looked every bit the mechanic he’d been his entire life.
Was he also a werewolf?
Judging the intensity of their conversation, Reece had to assume so. What other business would a mechanic have to speak so intimately with a military-trained bodyguard in rural Wyoming?
As she perused the giant, laminated menu for absolutely no reason—Reece had a pretty strong feeling she’d get a toasted blueberry muffin with melty butter and a large cup of coffee, but wanted to be sure something else wouldn’t sound better—her mind began wandering.
Last night, she’d waited in Troy’s truck for what had seemed like an eternity outside of Angel Mercer’s house. He hadn’t given her any details when he’d finally emerged from the quaint, two-story house and climbed in behind the steering wheel. She’d heard arguing, though their voices had been muffled thickly, and she’d also heard howling, which had been far more pronounced. What had happened to Angel? She’d returned from the hospital with Jack Quagmire, that much she knew. Angel had been inside her house with him. But what, specifically, had been the emergency that had warranted all five Quinn brothers to race on over to Jack’s aid?
Troy had been tight-lipped about it to say the least. The only thing he told Reece as they’d taken off through the dark, foggy landscape was that Angel would be okay. That’s what everyone was saying, that she’d be okay, but if that was the case, then where was she? Because she wasn’t here at the diner.
Troy had tried to quell her curiosity by taking her hand as they drove. It had calmed her when he’d laced his fingers through hers and squeezed tightly, but it hadn’t put all the questions that had been shooting through her worried mind to rest. She’d stopped asking him, though. She’d felt like she’d had no choice, and when they returned to her little cottage on the northeast side of town, he’d quietly proceeded to make up the pull-out couch for himself, and that had been that.
“Now, I know it’ll be a muffin,” said Lucy in a folksy manner, having breezed over with a carafe of steaming coffee in her hand. As she turned Reece and Troy’s mugs right-side up and filled each to the brim, she continued, “The only question is which one? We got strawberry rhubarb this morning.”
“You don’t say? That sounds delicious!”
“So, one strawberry rhubarb muffin toasted with two pats of butter?”
“And the usual for Troy,” Reece added. “You’re looking much better this morning,” she commented, because it was true. The last time she’d seen Lucy here, the girl had been all shook up about Angel having gone missing.
“If I do, it’s because I’m getting real good at containing my emotions,” she explained, her perky expression growing long.
“Angel’s back, safely resting at home,” Reece reminded her.
“That may be,” she said, gravely eluding to far more disturbing aspects that Reece couldn’t even begin to guess. “But something’s going on in this town…”
“What do you mean?” asked Reece, intrigued. Of course, she agreed wholeheartedly, but Lucy wouldn’t know a thing about any of that… or would she?
After glancing over her shoulder and scanning the diner for any co-worker who might object, she slid into the vinyl booth opposite Reece, placed the coffee carafe on the table, and leaned in.
“Something happened to me when I was out with Whitney on Eagle’s Pass,” she confided in a hushed, mysterious whisper.
Reece leaned in, cupping both of her clammy hands around her mug of coffee to warm up, and asked, “At Yellowstone?”
“That’s right,” said the angelic blonde across from her. Her ethereal blue eyes widened a touch. “I was nearly attacked by a wolf on the trail.”
“You don’t say.”
Reece leaned in a little further as Lucy elaborated, “And, hand to God, Reece, I’m telling you, it was no wolf.”
Now Reece’s eyes were wide as saucers. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” She trailed off for a moment, collecting her thoughts, and Reece could almost see the harrowing memory that was now taking over Lucy’s mind. The waitress shook it off, locked eyes with her, and said with the utmost conviction, “It was a werewolf.”
As soon as she’d uttered the words, she glanced around the diner once again to be certain no one had overheard her.
How in the hell did Lucy encounter a werewolf out in Yellowstone?
“It was half-man,” she went on, speaking at such a low volume that Reece was practically reading her lips, “and half-wolf. A mangled, monstrous thing. I told the sheriff it was the thing that killed poor Holly van Dyke, but he didn’t believe me. Not at first. Maybe not at all.”
Shocked, Reece blurted, “You told the sheriff?”
“I was with Whitney,” she stated as though that was more than enough of an explanation. “I was in a real fog about it. Stunned and staring off into space. I didn’t even realize that Whitney had called her father from the Trail Office until Rick started through the door of the place.”
“And you told him?”
“Reece,” she said, deadly serious, “that werewolf spared me, I believe, so that I could warn the town.”
Reece snapped back into her fast-working mind and knew that a warning wasn’t what the werewolf would’ve wanted. He didn’t want to warn or spare anyone. He wanted word to spread and for all of the Fist to launch into a fit of terror.
“My God,” Reece breathed.
“I know it sounds crazy. I know that things like werewolves are supposed to be fiction, and I promise you right here and now that I always thought they were. But now I know otherwise. They’re real, Reece. And they’re out there.”
Reece was concerned that Lucy was speaking in the plural. Yes, Troy had indicated as much last night when he’d told her that he was a werewolf and his pack was hidden right here in the Fist, but Lucy wouldn’t know that. She shouldn’t know that, if she only encountered one singular wolf.
“What did the sheriff say?” she asked quickly. “Did he believe you?”
Lucy sat back on her side of the booth and let out a disturbed sigh, shaking her head, as a mile-long stare came over her. When she snapped-to, she told her, “I really don’t know.”
“Ladies,” said Troy as he neared the booth.
Lucy beamed a big, friendly smile up at him and immediately slid out of the booth, her coffee carafe in hand, so that Troy could take her place.
As she topped off Troy’s mug just to be certain his coffee would be piping hot for him, she confirmed, “The usual, if I’m not mistaken?”
“Thank you,” he told her before shifting his gaze to Reece.
Reece tried to fix her horrified expression so that he wouldn’t be too alarmed, but when Lucy padded off to relay their breakfast order to the kitchen, whatever semblance of calm she’d managed was quickly re
placed by grave concern.
“The sheriff knows.”
“Knows what?” he said easily. He didn’t get it and was futzing with his coffee.
She took firm hold of his muscular forearm from across the table, leaned in as far as the table between them would allow, and in a confidential whisper, stated, “Lucy and Whitney encountered a werewolf in Yellowstone. They told the sheriff. Rick knows.”
It looked as though every muscle that made up Troy’s tremendous, tattooed body stiffened with tension, as he froze in a motionless stare, his coffee mug halfway between the table and his mouth. She’d never seen a man go pale in the way that the blood had drained from Troy’s face in an instant.
“Is that so…?” he tried to ask calmly as he set his mug down.
“What does this mean? What are you going to do?”
He ran his large hand down over his mouth and Reece could see his jaw clenching behind it.
Finally, he said, “Rick’s a skeptical man. He would be reluctant to believe it was raining outside based on the word of a woman. He’d have to see for himself first.”
That was true, she had to admit.
“Let’s hope,” Troy went on, “that he proceeds with the same logic.”
They would need a lot more than hope, Reece thought. Sheriff Rick Abernathy might be as sexist as Wyoming was beautiful, but he was also a man of action, and when Rick got an idea in his head, he investigated, tenaciously, until he learned the truth.
***
Sniffing around the dumpsters behind Angel’s Food diner, he almost wished he hadn’t put it on Angel quite so hard as to cripple her. He knew she was at home, having returned from the hospital. He also knew that Jack Quagmire had been sticking to her like glue, as if his presence could actually protect her. Jack didn’t have a clue as to who he was dealing with.
None of them did.
The rain was ticking down, and as the hazy sun inched up the broad, cloudy sky, the chill in the air warmed gradually, kicking up all kinds of offensive odors from the trash.
With each day that had passed since the full moon, he’d been able to lift more and more out of his wolf form. He was practically human. Just a few more hours and the thick fur that spanned his sweaty back would be gone. His fangs would shrink back down to incisors. And he’d be able to walk freely and undetected among the residents of Devil’s Fist.
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