While the roadies and stage crew were setting up for the next band, Eggie took Darla’s hand and led her away from the stage.
As they walked, Darla said, “Stop glaring at everyone, Eggie Ray.”
“I’m not. I’m only glaring at the men staring at your legs.” She had on denim cutoffs, a tight Jimi Hendrix shirt, and no shoes. Her long hair was loose around her shoulders and she looked as happy and comfortable as any woman could. But Eggie could see what he was guessing Darla couldn’t. The type of people who had come to this concert. Some of them were just average good ol’ local boys who’d only be a problem if they drank too much ’shine in this heat, some out-of-towners looking for a good time . . . and some others. It was the “others” that Eggie kept his eyes on.
Darla leaned into Eggie, her fingers intertwined with his. Unlike her sisters, whom Eggie had watched off and on over the past few years with his brothers, Darla was openly affectionate. She held his hand, put her arm around his waist, hugged if she felt in the mood. And, to Eggie’s great surprise, he liked it. He liked that she not only felt comfortable touching him whenever she wanted, but that she seemed proud to be with him. Proud to claim him as her own.
Eggie stopped and slowly turned his head, scanning the crowd. It took a moment, but he caught sight of McMartin first. The bear nodded at him and Eggie nodded back.
“Who’s that?” Darla asked.
“A friend of mine.”
“A Marine?”
“Yep.”
“Well, go on and talk to him.”
“Come with me.”
“Eggie, I’ll be fine.” She pointed to a small group. “I think I know one of those girls over there.”
“Which one?”
“The coyote. We used to work together.”
“I don’t like coyotes.”
Darla laughed. “Go on with your Marine buddies so y’all don’t have to speak in code so I won’t understand what’s going on. ”
Damn, the woman was smart.
“I wanna look around anyway.” She went up on her toes and kissed his cheek. “Go on now. I’ll be fine. Maybe I’ll get something to drink.”
“Only unopened bottles and cans, Darla.”
“Uh . . . okay.” She headed off, looking over her shoulder at him and giving a little wave.
Eggie watched her for a bit until his teammates surrounded him.
“That’s her?” Taschen asked.
“Yep.”
“She’s cute.”
“She’s mine.”
“Told ya,” McMartin said to Taschen. “Saw it in his eyes when she was being treated by the doc.”
“And how does she feel about it?” Lloyd asked.
Eggie faced the three shifters. “What do I always say?”
“You hate chitchat?” McMartin guessed.
“Then why are you motherfuckers giving me goddamn chitchat?”
Darla had been right. She knew the coyote. She was a former Van Holtz restaurant sous-chef. Of course, after five minutes, Darla also remembered that she’d never liked the coyote that much. She was kind of annoying. Like now.
“Egbert Smith? You’re involved with Egbert Smith?”
Darla nodded while sipping her Coca-Cola. It was wonderfully refreshing.
Barbie Klein, currently covered in body paint and a bikini, grabbed Darla’s arm and nodded at her full-human friends. “I’ll be back.”
She pulled Darla off to the edge of the crowd and faced her. “Is there something wrong with you?” Barbie demanded.
“You’re covered in pink, green, and yellow body paint, and you’re asking me that?”
“Look, sweetie, I get it. I’ve been there. There is something about the Smith males that can be . . . enticing. Even I can admit that. But you’re not me and Egbert Smith is a . . . a . . .”
“Really nice guy?”
“He is not a nice guy, Darla. He’s a . . . a . . .”
“If you can’t say it, maybe you shouldn’t.”
“Sweetie, every canine from here to Istanbul knows about Eggie Smith and avoids him.”
“He’s misunderstood. Besides, you just don’t like Smiths.”
“No one likes Smiths, Darla, except other Smiths. They’re like the wolf version of the Manson family.”
“I can tell you for a fact that’s not funny and it’s not true.”
“They’re not a Pack, they’re a hillbilly cult filled with criminals and ’shine runners. You have to be careful.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about and I’m not going to stand here and listen to another word of this utter bull-crap.”
Angry, Darla turned to go but stopped when she saw a full-human man standing in front of her. He wore a leather jacket with emblems and things on it.
“Sorry,” she said, distracted, and took a step to walk around the man. He took a step, too, blocking her.
She looked at him again and the man smiled, which only made things worse. A smile like that never boded well for anyone. She glanced back to look at Barbie but typical coyote that she was, the little deserter had run off and left her!
Darla also realized that she’d quickly become surrounded and now had males and females in front and behind her. Most of them wearing the same leather jacket as the first. And wearing them in this heat meant they were sending a message.
No . . . this probably wasn’t a good situation.
Eggie stared at Lloyd. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. And they’re pushing hard to find her. Her boss knew, too. That’s why he sent her home. Although I don’t think he meant for her to hitchhike there.”
Eggie blinked. “She hitchhiked from San Francisco to North Carolina?”
“Apparently she does it all the time.”
Eyes crossing, Eggie realized he’d be working very hard to keep this She-wolf safe just from herself.
“All right, all right.” He let out a big breath. “What I’ll need you to do is . . .”
Eggie’s words tapered off when he realized none of his team was paying attention to him. He looked next to him and saw why. A female coyote in a bikini and body paint stood nearby, staring at him. The one that Darla had pointed out to him earlier. But where was Darla?
“What’s wrong?” he immediately asked.
“Darla needs you.”
Eggie spun around, his gaze searching the area. When that didn’t work fast enough, he sniffed the air, caught her scent. He motioned to his team and they vanished into the crowd. Then he went after his woman.
“Come on, baby,” one of the men coaxed and Darla remembered how much she hated when men called her baby, “can’t you be a little friendly to our buddy Will?”
Will must be the one standing right in front of her, staring at her in a way she found wholly inappropriate and uncomfortable.
“Move, Will,” Darla suggested.
Will just smiled. She knew what they were planning. To drag her off into the surrounding woods, have what bikers liked to call “a little party” with her.
But Darla had been traveling around the States for a long time, and she had a lot of friends. Even friends she wasn’t really supposed to have.
“Darla Mae,” a voice called from the woods before about fifty of them walked out and slowly surrounded the full-humans.
Like the full-human bikers, the ones from the woods wore leather jackets, but they had no colors, no emblems sewn into the leather. They didn’t need them because they were not a biker club. They were a wolf Pack who just happened to like motorcycles. The Magnus Pack specifically, and the ones who’d arranged this concert and hired the bands, including, it was rumored, the surprise addition of Lynyrd Skynyrd, which was why Darla had pushed for her and Eggie to come. She knew he was a fan, as were most of the Smiths.
Although the Magnus Pack was much bigger than these fifty wolves, expanding into Europe and Asia, the Pack was run by one Alpha couple who lived in Northern California. The wolf walking toward Darla, though, was the
ir only son, Bruce Morrighan, and he had his arm around a female Darla didn’t recognize. Must be one of his new girls.
He smiled down at her. He was a handsome wolf. Tall, powerful. And fair. He’d make a good Alpha Male one day. “Hi, Darla.”
“Hi, Bruce.”
“You all right?”
“I’m fine.”
He nodded at the She-wolf next to him. “This is Kylie Redwolf. My mate.”
Darla grinned. “Congratulations.” But when Darla focused on the She-wolf, her genuine smile faded, and she had to force a fake, safe one instead.
Darla’s sisters never believed her. They never believed that, like their Great Aunt Bernice, she could look at a person and just know what she was dealing with. Now, sometimes, like with Eggie, she had to look long and deep before she was sure. With others, like Bruce, she could see it after only a bit of time getting to know the person.
Yet with this She-wolf, with Kylie, Darla had to look into those eyes for only a split second before she knew. Before she knew something was very wrong. It had happened when she met the Alpha Male of the Víga-Feilan Pack three weeks before he turned on his own adult pups. It had happened when she’d met Charles Manson, and the Lord knew she’d been right about that. And it was happening now, with Bruce’s mate.
“Kylie. Nice to meet ya.”
“Nice to meet you.” The She-wolf looked like she belonged to one of the Indian shifter tribes Darla had met when she went to Texas to work at the Van Holtz restaurant there one winter. Kylie was a beautiful woman, but cold. So very, very cold.
“So what’s going on here?”
“I was trying to leave,” Darla told Bruce, her focus on him rather than his mate. “They weren’t making it easy.”
Bruce looked back at the head of the biker club. He’d talk to him but Darla moved her gaze on Will. Will was her problem. Amazing how Eggie’s lack of conversation didn’t bother her, but Will’s definitely did.
Arms stretched out from his body in open challenge, the full-human leader said to Bruce, “You got something to say to me, rich boy?” He looked at Bruce’s mate. “You and your red-skinned whore.”
And that’s when Bruce’s mate swung, her fist ramming into the full-human and dropping him to the ground. He covered his face, blood pouring from between his fingers.
“You crazy bitch!”
Darla snorted a little. If he expected a lot of yelling and chest beating before a real fight, he shouldn’t have said anything to Bruce’s She-wolf. One look at her and Darla could tell there would never be a warning, there would never be words, there would never be anything but pain and blood and someone calling her a crazy bitch.
Watching her own back now that the two groups were going at each other, Darla looked for Will. She knew that with everyone distracted, it would be the perfect time for him to try something really stup . . .
Darla stepped away from the escalating battle and looked around. There was no Will. Nor any sign of the couple of his friends who’d been standing by him. They were gone. Darla sniffed the air.
“Oh, no!”
She charged away from the growing fight and into the woods. After about two minutes, she jumped up onto a boulder and snarled, “Egbert Ray!”
The wolf looked up from the bloody and battered man that he had kneeling on the ground before him. Eggie was holding onto Will’s hair with one hand, his hunting knife in the other pressed against the man’s throat.
The other two men who’d been with Will were being held by Eggie’s friends and had also been beaten within inches of their lives. After less than five minutes. Damn. She couldn’t help cussing about this. She just had to say it. Damn.
“Go on back, Darla,” Eggie growled at her. “Now.”
“Let them go.”
He looked up at her and she saw that his wolf eyes were slightly dilated, his fangs out.
“Go back, Darla.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not gonna let you do this.”
“Darla—”
“I’m not going to let you ruin our beautiful day by killing three men and burying them in the woods. I won’t allow it.”
Eggie stared at her and she stared back, unwilling to look away.
Look, she wasn’t a saint. She really didn’t mind the beating these men had taken. They’d deserved it and it would be a good lesson for them so that hopefully some other girl never had to face a similar threat. At least not from them. But Darla couldn’t escape the fact that when it was all said and done, they hadn’t actually done anything to her. Maybe they’d wanted to try. Or maybe they’d hoped to scare her into cooperating. Or maybe they’d planned to just harass her until she’d run off into the crowd. She’d never know and that was why she couldn’t allow this. She knew for Smiths there was no question about this sort of thing, but she wasn’t a Smith. Never would be. She would always be a Lewis and, more importantly, she’d always be Darla Mae.
“Come on, Eggie,” she urged, softening her voice and holding out her hand to him. “I heard Lynyrd Skynyrd might be playing later tonight.”
“I hate Lynyrd Skynyrd. It’s my Alabama cousins who like ’em.”
“Oh.” She shrugged, gave him a little smile. “Ooops.”
He looked away but she knew that was because he didn’t want to be relieved of his anger. She understood that. She got that way about her sisters. But she kept her hand out and her eyes on his face.
“Smith?” a black bear prompted, his foot now on the back of the neck of one of those men. One push of that enormous foot and that full-human’s spine would be snapped like a dry twig.
Growling, Eggie slammed his knife back into the holster on his thigh, grabbed the full-human by the throat and lifted him up. He rammed him into a tree and held him there. The full-human tried to fight him off but he might as well not have bothered. Eggie leaned in and whispered something to the male. Darla cocked her head, trying to hear him but she couldn’t make out a word, the pitch too low and Eggie too far away for her wolf ears to catch anything but muttering.
When the man literally pissed himself and then, based on the smell, crapped his pants, Darla was relieved she hadn’t heard anything. She didn’t want to know.
Eggie stepped back and dropped the man to the ground. He glowered down at him a little longer until he turned away—she knew he didn’t want to, knew how hard it was for him to do that—and walked over to Darla.
Darla still held her hand out and she wiggled her fingers at him, but Eggie shook his head. “Got blood on my hands.”
But Darla realized something about Eggie . . . he’d always have blood on his hands. Whether physically or metaphorically, he would always have blood on his hands or paws for the rest of his life. She knew that now. Understood it. And, as she reached down and grasped his blood-covered hand with her own, slightly calloused and scarred from baking and cooking over the years, Darla accepted that about him.
She had to because she knew now that she was in love with him. Whether she wanted to be or not, she loved him.
Of course, her sisters would call her foolish. Not because it was Egbert Ray Smith or because he was one of the Smith boys, but because he was her first. Because for Darla, there was no separating love and sex. They were one and the same for her, always would be.
She smiled into Eggie’s angry face, knowing his fury wasn’t directed at her, knowing without doubt or concern that she was safe with this dangerous, deadly wolf.
“Come on,” she said. “I’m starvin’.”
They came out of the woods after using a rag that Lloyd had on him to wipe their hands free of blood. It didn’t help with the scrapes and cuts they had from beating the men but that was all right. Maybe, if Eggie was lucky, no one would find the three and they’d die of their wounds. He knew why Darla had stopped him but he also knew men like that. Predator full-humans were, in Eggie’s estimation, the worst. Because food or survival had nothing to do with why they hunted. Absolutely nothing. But if there was ju
st one female who could rein in Eggie’s love of putting down useless humans, it was Darla Mae Lewis and only Darla Mae.
As they cleared the woods, a large group of wolves suddenly stalked up to them and, going on training rather than instinct, Eggie and his teammates pulled their Smith & Wesson Model 59 semi-automatic pistols and aimed them at the wolves. The Pack skidded to a halt except for a darker-skinned She-wolf who kept coming anyway, but a tall male caught her arm and yanked her back, keeping her at his side.
“Darla?” the male demanded.
“Egbert Ray,” Darla sighed. “They’re my friends.”
Eggie sniffed the air and growled out, “Magnus Pack wolves are your friends?”
“I have lots of friends. Weapons down, gentlemen,” Darla ordered.
Eggie nodded at his team and he tucked his gun in the back of his jeans, under his denim jacket.
“Are you all right, Darla?” one of the Magnus Wolves asked.
“I’m fine. Just fine.”
Another one of the wolves pushed through the Pack, and stepped forward. And, with one look and a nod, Eggie recognized him as one of the Navy engineers who helped his team blow up shit when necessary. “Thorpe.”
“Smith.”
Ezra Thorpe had been part of the Magnus Pack since he was sixteen but he’d joined the Navy when he was twenty. He was, from what Eggie could tell, one of the best demolition experts he’d known. The wolf could take down an entire block with only a couple of strategically placed sticks of weak dynamite. He wasn’t real friendly but that’s why Eggie tolerated him. He hated real friendly.
“Smith?” the Pack leader of the young wolves snarled. “Egbert Ray Smith?”
Darla smiled and nodded. “It sure is.”
Eggie could be wrong, but it sounded like he heard pride in her response.
“Egbert Ray,” she went on, “this is Bruce Morrighan of the Magnus Pack.”
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