Apparently, the bastard had a sick streak after all. He wanted Wes’s death for himself.
Or so Wes thought.
Maverick dropped the blade into the dead grass beneath his feet. He held Wes’s gaze as he spoke. “No,” he said. “This would be a gross miscarriage of justice. I’ve made a mistake. I’ve made several mistakes, and packmaster or not, I’m man enough to admit them.”
Wes stared at Maverick in confusion.
“You did what you did to protect the Grey Wolves, to force me to see reason when I wouldn’t see it. You disobeyed me in service to this pack. A service I intend to repay, not punish.”
“What’s going on?” Blaze and several others raised their voices in a chorus of shouts, demanding explanation.
“There will be no blood spilled here tonight,” Maverick announced. “Wes Calhoun is guilty as charged, but he has also done a great service to this pack.”
Malcolm stepped forward then. “Maverick, what are you talking about?”
“The Wild Eight have partnered with the vampires. They plan to attack us, and soon.”
“Then we’ll defeat them as we always have.” Travis, tried-and-true warrior that he was, lifted his fist into the air, and his sentiment was echoed by a chorus of shouts and battle cries from the surrounding woods.
Maverick shook his head. “Not this time. The vampires are half-turned. They’re stronger than ever, and they’re changing faster. They’ll outnumber us. We must prepare.”
Colt stood still, a ghost of a smile tugging at his face as his alpha rallied. Wes had to wonder if this had been his plan from the start.
Austin cleared his throat. “Maverick, how do you know this?”
“Because Wes brought proof. That’s why he defied me. He tried to tell me, but I refused to listen. He did what he did to protect this pack. We must call a meeting of the Seven Range Pact at once if we expect to survive. This will mean war.”
Another round of hushed murmurs ignited through the crowd.
Maverick turned back toward Wes, a meaningful glint in his eye. “Someone wiser than me once told me that obedience isn’t everything. That great men will be disobedient when it’s the right thing to do. You are a great man, Wes Calhoun, whether you see it in yourself or not. You challenged me when I was wrong, put your life on the line for me, for this pack. I’m sorry I didn’t see it sooner, and for that, I owe you a great debt.” Maverick dropped to his knee in a bow that silenced every sound within and surrounding the clearing. “I would be honored to have a wolf like you serve at my side.” He lowered his head in submission as he said, “As my second-in-command.”
There were few times in his life when Wes had considered himself at a loss for words. Seeing Maverick on bent knee, bowed before him, made this one of them. One by one, the members of the tribunal dropped on bended knee. When Wes’s eyes sought Colt to protest, to apologize, the noble wolf was gone. Slowly, the packmembers emerged from the trees, falling to their knees. Wes stood there in the middle of the clearing—where twice, Maverick, once his sworn enemy, could have taken his life—with the entire Grey Wolf Pack bowed before him.
In the distance, his eyes found Naomi standing among the trees. Though she didn’t kneel, she tipped her head toward him. A smile glinted on her lips, as if to say she’d seen all along the great man that he was.
“Do you accept the position?” Maverick asked, rising to stand before him.
Wes nodded, his eyes never leaving Naomi’s. “I accept.”
With that, a massive cheer rattled the mountains, the energy of the Grey Wolf Pack shifting at once from eagerness for Wes’s death to celebration of his victory. Werewolves were an unpredictable bunch, quick to anger and easy to sway.
Maverick lowered his voice so only Wes could hear. “We need to call a meeting of the Seven Range Pact at once.” Maverick’s gaze followed Wes’s over to Naomi. “You have it bad,” he said to Wes quietly. “Don’t let it become a problem. You know pack law.”
Wes did, but much as he wanted it, Naomi couldn’t be his. He’d known this all along of course, pack laws or not. As soon as this was over, she would return to her normal life, to her ranch. He’d be little more than a distant memory, perhaps a dream she relived fondly. A great love story to share with her children, her grandchildren.
Human children that would never be his.
He wasn’t entirely certain how he had existed prior to her, to her touch and forgiveness. He’d been a shell of a man. He knew that now, and that’s why he had accepted his death—because he knew if he continued to live, he would face a far graver fate…
Life after her.
“I know what it’s like.” Maverick placed a hand on Wes’s shoulder. His tone softened and a hint of longing filled the packmaster’s eyes. He spoke of his mate loved and lost. “It’s all consuming and temporary, even when it isn’t supposed to be. Make the most of it, because it will have to end.” He cleared his throat. “But for tonight…”
Wes tore away from Maverick’s hold before the packmaster had even finished his sentence. This was one order that Wes didn’t need to be told twice.
* * *
Wes’s hand cupped Naomi’s as he tugged her into the darkness of the woods. The cold night wind blew on her face, chilling her to the bone, but with the warmth that radiated at the center of her chest, she failed to care.
A wave of relief washed through her as they walked hand in hand through the woods. Yet her heart pounded in her chest, still racing from the scare. Wes had escaped the executioner’s blade. The thought alone was enough to make her stomach churn. She paled to think what would have happened if Maverick hadn’t changed his mind. She’d never felt so helpless, so scared as when she had stood among the Grey Wolves, sworn to silence and immobility. The pain was so sharp and fierce that it felt like losing her father all over again.
After several minutes of hiking, they reached a small clearing where one of the remaining patches of long grass had been left unclaimed by the autumn winds. One final tug of her hand, and Wes caught her in his arms, claiming her lips on a low growl that only served to warm her insides further.
“You had something to do with this,” he grumbled as he teased her mouth. He nipped at her lower lip and then swept his tongue over the seam of her lips until she allowed him entry. He tasted of all things male and delicious.
She broke the contact between them long enough to whisper, “I let your actions speak for you.”
Wes chuckled, the closest Naomi had heard him come to a laugh. Sweeping her into his arms, he cupped her behind as she wrapped her legs around his waist.
“Don’t lie to me, Miss Kitty,” he whispered against her lips.
The nickname from when they had been no more than enemies sent a wave of heat straight to her core. Even as enemies, the fire between them had crackled.
“This has you written all over it,” he said.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and shrugged a single shoulder. “I just gave Maverick the dressing-down he deserved.”
Even in the dim light of the moon, she watched his eyebrow quirk. “Dressing-down?”
“I told him why you disobeyed him and then informed him that if he was half the man you were, he’d spare you.”
Wes shook his head. “I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again. You’re a recipe for trouble.”
“I’m rather pleased with the results of this particular recipe,” she said.
That familiar smirk crossed his lips. “Me too.”
“I can’t even begin to think what would have happened if—”
Tears poured down her cheeks, icy cold against the night air. They were tears of joy, of relief, of fear for the fate he’d narrowly avoided, for the trials they still had ahead of them.
“Shhh.” Wes swiped away her tears. “Don’t cry.” The words were tender in a way she’d neve
r heard from him before.
Lowering them both to the ground, he lay beside her in the cold grass, pulling her in to him. She rested her head on the hard expanse of his chest, curling into him as they both stared up at the night sky. Stars peppered its vast expanse, white bursts swirling against the deep, dark blue. It was as if the sky stretched on forever. Naomi wrapped her hand around Wes’s and squeezed.
The tears welled anew. She wanted to tell him that he’d never have to lose her, that she would be right here by his side forever if he’d have her, because she loved him, but with the emotions of the evening still running high, now didn’t seem the time. Or maybe she was scared. Scared of what he would say in return.
“And what will happen when…?” Her voice trailed off.
When all this is over…
She couldn’t force the words across her lips. What about them? What about her? Would he forget her?
“Shhh.” He hushed her again. His thumb traced the curve of her cheekbone. He wiped away tears she hadn’t even realized she’d been crying. Tears for him, for what could be. For what she feared would never be.
They lived in separate worlds, light-years apart. The chances of their worlds colliding again once all was said and done seemed more far-fetched than the distance to the heavens sprawled above them, so close that she felt she could touch them, yet never farther from reach.
Nudging her chin toward him, he rested his forehead on hers, their noses brushing together.
“Don’t think,” he whispered. “Don’t think of anything but tonight.”
Gently, she nodded. “Tonight,” she whispered back.
Pulling her deeper into his arms, he kissed her there beneath the stars with every bit of that wild abandon that captured her, thrilled her, his intent to make love to her right there in the cold autumn grass as clear as the night sky. The passion in his kiss billowed through her until it swept her heart away with all the force of the wind in her hair as she rode across the mountainside—strong, exhilarating, but fleeting.
But for tonight…
Chapter 18
If Wes had expected acceptance upon Maverick’s announcement, he’d been sorely mistaken. The following morning, he sat in the Grey Wolf conference room beneath the alarmed gazes of the leaders of the Seven Range Shifter clans, feeling every bit the monster he’d always known himself to be. Grey Wolf, Grizzly Bear, Black Bear, Bobcat, Canadian Lynx, Coyote, and Mountain Lion shifters alike were represented at the table. One clan for each of the seven mountain ranges surrounding Billings, and displeasure twisted every one of the shifters’ faces. As if the battle they were about to propose wasn’t enough to stop the hearts of the elder members among the clans—a battle with the potential to escalate to full-blown war, the first of its kind in nearly a century—announcing that the nefarious Wes Calhoun, former packmaster of the Wild Eight, was now the Grey Wolf second-in-command hadn’t gone entirely as Maverick had planned.
“Maverick, are you sure about this?” The question came from Wayne, the leader of the Grizzly Bears, as if Wes wasn’t sitting only a few feet across the table from him. By shifter standards, the old bear was ancient, having lived to the ripe old age of one hundred and sixty, but in human form, he appeared only a few years past prime, in the peak of his fifties. If you asked Wes, it was well past time for Wayne to cede power to Butch, his second-in-command, a much younger, more virile bear who wasn’t so steeped in tradition.
“Do you question my judgment?” A hint of a challenge entered Maverick’s tone.
Butch cleared his throat. “I think what Wayne means to say is it’s…” He searched for the right word.
Insane, outrageous, ludicrous: Wes read the thoughts clearly painted across Wayne’s face.
Butch finally settled on “…unprecedented.”
More diplomatic, but just as disapproving.
Butch continued on, “It’s unheard of to have a non–Grey Wolf as second in line for the Grey Wolf pack leadership…”
Non–Grey Wolf? Wes fought back a snort. The Calhoun bloodline had been a part of the original Grey Wolves, which meant in terms of blood alone, he was as Grey Wolf as Maverick himself. His bloodline wasn’t the issue. He was the issue.
“Especially considering the recent turn of events,” Amos, the leader of the Black Bear shifters, chimed in. Never mind that Amos had considered collaboration with the Wild Eight at one point while Wes had been leader—going behind the Grey Wolves’ backs to do so. He and Wes had built a personal working relationship, but the deal had fallen through. The bear was lucky Wes didn’t intend to reveal that inclination before all the Pact leaders and Maverick himself. Business was business, and the two bear shifter packs always aligned with each other. Shared-species-loyalty bullshit that it was.
If Maverick got killed in battle, the Seven Range Shifter packs would be stuck with Wes as their de facto leader. Though each of the shifter clans held their own territories and had complete control within their individual packs, the Grey Wolves maintained unfettered leadership. The Grey Wolves were the farthest east and the only pack with a foothold in Billings and the eastern regions of the state. As the purest blooded among their kind, they guarded the entryway into the western mountain ranges containing dozens of smaller wolf packs. They were one of many, and if the bear shifters thought their species loyalty tied them together, they had yet to experience the pack mentality of wolves. Threatening one wolf pack threatened them all.
Maverick bristled at Amos’s words. “What I choose to do within my pack is no one’s concern but my own.”
“Which is why we need to focus on the issue at hand.” Clementine’s quiet feminine tone worked as the voice of reason.
At the far end of the table from Wes, the leader of the Bobcat shifters sat beside her cousin, Josephine, the leader of their sister clan, a small pride of Canadian lynx. As the larger apex predator of the two small groups, Clementine often spoke on behalf of both species.
With a voice and name that belonged more to a wood nymph than a small predatory cat, Clementine should have been the least threatening among them, even in shifter form, but since the shifter gene carried solely among the females of the sister Lynx clans, the women had trained themselves to be strong, fierce warriors. In human form, they were as formidable as any other shifter at the table, perhaps more so considering how they had had to fight and earn their place in the male-dominated shifter hierarchy.
From outside their shifter clans, they appeared to have no problem doing so. It was Wes’s understanding that the males among their species did not shift and were used for mating purposes only, leaving the lion’s share—or lynx’s share, as it were—to the females, who ruled their packs with an iron fist. Size of the shifter be damned.
“We’re still left with the question of what to do regarding the threat of the Wild Eight.” Clementine’s long lashes fell on Wes, as if he somehow still represented the eighth and only illegitimate shifter pack. Once upon a lifetime ago…
Clay, the leader of the Mountain Lion pride, sat forward in his chair. He crossed his arms over the expanse of his wide chest and scowled. Until then, he’d been silent throughout the meeting. “I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again. The Wild Eight are the Grey Wolves’ problem and their problem alone.”
For the first time during the meeting, Wes couldn’t hold his tongue. “When they unleash an army of half-turned vampires and obliterate the shifter population, they’ll be your problem,” he snapped.
The conference room fell so silent that Wes could have heard a pin drop…on the carpeting.
“Vampires?” Clementine squeaked.
“Half-turned?” Josephine echoed.
“What the hell is he talking about, Maverick?” Logan, the Coyote packmaster, growled.
Wes’s eyes shot to Maverick beside him, who murmured out of the corner of his mouth, “I hadn’t sprung that gem on them just yet.
”
Of course he hadn’t, because Maverick knew the art of restraint, something Wes had never mastered—and didn’t really care to. He shook his head. When he’d been the Wild Eight’s packmaster, pack politics had never been the name of the game. He’d answered to no one and cooperated with no one—at least no one who didn’t serve his purpose. He’d warned Maverick this morning that he wasn’t cut out for this side of being the Grey Wolf second-in-command.
As Maverick launched into an immediate explanation interlaced with damage control, Wes sat back in his chair. From the corner of his eye, he watched the Mountain Lion packmaster. If the dark expression and the tense line of the cougar’s shoulders provided any indication, Wes expected the mountain lions to vote no against the Seven Range Pact involving themselves in the battle. Such a vote would leave the Grey Wolves’ already strained relationship with them tenuous at best.
At this point, Maverick was finishing his explanation with, “You can see why Wes is naturally the best choice to help lead our armies against the Wild Eight. He will be able to anticipate their movements and actions better than anyone.”
Amos was shaking his head. “Why can’t the Grey Wolves call in reinforcements from the other wolf packs from the west for this, Maverick?”
A feral snarl sounded from the other side of the table. Logan. “This is your problem, too, bear.”
The coyote often aligned his pack with the Grey Wolves, if for no other reason than to keep the peace, as his pack was the farthest north of its kind, far removed from their central leaders in Texas.
Maverick nodded. “As Logan mentioned, this affects all of us, and we don’t have much time. The intel our technician, Blaze, gathered anticipates the Wild Eight launching their attack within the next seventy-two hours. The western packs will be waiting in the wings as backup. They’re on alert. I can’t relocate eleven other packs for a problem that can easily be solved within the east if we band together as the Pact calls for.”
Wayne shifted in his chair as if the seat were making him uncomfortable. “I call for a vote then.”
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