Hunter, Hunter, Hunter.
Whether my mate bond was stretching or breaking, I didn’t know. But something was happening, and I could barely open my mouth without releasing the bile that was climbing from my nauseous stomach up my throat. “Okay,” I forced out.
My vision flashed dark and light, spinning stars invading my sight. I reached out to grab hold of the banister behind me.
“You need to be in bed.” Then my slight human mother had her shoulder beneath my armpit as she led me up the stairs. I closed my eyes and felt rather than saw the soft quilt, the crisp sheets, the wooden headboard.
“I promise I’ll check all the windows and doors. And I’ll wake you in time to get to work,” Celia whispered in my ear, her cool hand settling on my hot forehead. “Everything will feel better after a good night’s sleep.”
Mommy, my wolf whispered. Then I drifted into dreamland.
I WOKE IN LUPINE FORM an hour before sunrise. The barest hint of light filtered through filmy curtains as dense darkness turned into nautical twilight. Birds were just beginning to sing and cool air hissed through floor vents, but otherwise the world was silent and serene.
I knew I should have shifted back to human form immediately rather than risking being seen four-legged. But I couldn’t resist wriggling out of the tangle of clothing first and padding through the house, taking advantage of pointy ears and wide wolf nostrils. I had to make sure last night’s danger had passed before I returned to weak two-legger senses.
I found Celia sound asleep in her bed two doors down from where I’d collapsed the night before. Her scent permeated the entire house, but other rooms were empty. There were no signs of intruders, so I sighed upward into humanity.
First order of business—track down something to wear. Upon walking back into my room, I discovered that my mother had been way ahead of me there. Because a stack of carefully folded clothes waited atop the bureau, the offerings apparently having been drawn from Celia’s own closet. They were business-like work clothes, a little short in the arms and legs but just right around the waist.
Appropriate for substitute teaching? I had no clue. But Celia knew human mores far better than I did, so I pulled the gifted clothing on without complaint.
Still, I dug my own cell phone out of yesterday’s pant pockets. I had work to do before dealing with a human mother, a rogue bloodling, and untold numbers of unruly one-body teenagers. Work to do while my head was clear and before I collapsed into a pitiful heap the way I had the night before.
First, the easy part. Robert was the only lead I’d come up with thus far in the case of motherly intimidation. I hadn’t smelled the one-body last night when I felt eyes on the back of my neck, but his presence at the end of the drive during the bomb threat was unlikely to have been a coincidence. Tack on my memory of the same type of SUV following me down the highway that morning and I had means if not motive pointing toward Robert as the aggressor.
Good thing the human had given me his card, making him easy to track down.
“Dinner tonight?” I texted. I hoped our subtle flirtation the day before made my request look like a date, not like the information-gathering session I planned for it to become.
Either way, though, the one-body was unlikely to be awake at this pre-dawn hour. So I moved on down my list, my finger hovering over number one on speed dial.
But before I could force my unwilling appendage to move, the phone chirped quietly as an answer popped up on the screen. “Yes. When and where?”
So Robert was awake and willing after all. Interesting. Picking a restaurant on the fly, I firmed up details then turned my mind to the other unknown.
The worse unknown. The frustrating, maddening, hair-rending unknown. Who was Meeshi and why wasn’t my mate willing to give me the time of day?
I tried to clamp down on my overactive imagination, but hypothetical scenarios still flashed in front of my eyes. A strange woman waking beside my mate and reaching for his cell, seeing my name and smirking smugly. I could jerk her rudely from her beauty sleep at the butt crack of dawn, but she was the one who knew where Hunter was hiding.
No matter how you sliced it, Meeshi won that round.
Clutching my suddenly aching stomach, I dropped the phone before managing to hit a single button. The device clattered loudly in the still house and I held my breath, hoping Celia was a sound sleeper.
There was no rustle of movement, though. No scent of alertness or alarm in the air. So, before I could chicken out again, I scooped up the phone, hit speed dial, and held my breath while the endless waiting began.
But this time around, the phone only rang half a dozen times before Meeshi picked up. “I wondered when you’d call me back, duckie.” Her voice was no more gravelly than usual, as if she’d been wide awake and waiting for my call. And here I’d hoped to catch the woman off guard.
I forced myself not to growl out my frustration. Instead, poking my finger at the numbered list I’d scrawled on the back of a piece of Celia’s junk mail, I began the inquisition. “What’s your relationship with my mate?”
“Your mate, eh?” The woman seemed more pleased than alarmed at the word and I could almost hear her filing it away for future reference. “What if I said I was his mother?”
“Then I’d say you were lying. Hunter’s mother is dead.”
“He told you that, did he?”
I hated the way phone lines made it difficult to scent out the true meaning of words. But I got the distinct impression that Meeshi was excited by what I’d thought was a clever comeback. Not at all the response that I expected.
Before I could dig deeper into that line of reasoning, though, the woman on the other end of the line continued speaking. “I guess I’ll have to tell you I’m his secretary then.”
“Fair enough.” That I could accept...for now. I sensed a deeper relationship than that found between an employer and his employee, but Meeshi’s comment about Hunter’s mother made me feel like the bond wasn’t a sexual one.
I paused, eyes scanning down the list to question number two. “You said Hunter told you not to forward my calls. What do I have to do before he’ll speak with me again?”
I should have waited for her to answer. After all, everyone knows the best interrogation tactic is silence, shifters and one-bodies alike seeming to possess an innate need to fill up empty air space with words.
But just saying my mate’s name made tears well up behind my eyes. As my headache yesterday had attested, our separation came with physical consequences. Worse, Hunter’s abandonment shook my already tenuous belief in trust and friendship to its core.
So before I could stop them, words poured out of my mouth and turned this so-called inquisition into a round of begging instead. “I’m in my mother’s house. I tracked her down. I talked to her. I’m coming back here tonight after work to get to know her better. Surely that’s enough to make Hunter happy.”
“Oh, duckie.”
The pity in Meeshi’s voice almost had me hanging up the phone. Instead, I scraped one fingernail in a long, hard line beneath the second item on my list, underlining the words through sheer force of rage. “Does that mean you won’t answer my question?”
“It means I can’t answer your question, duckie. I don’t know any better than you do what Hunter needs. He’s never given a woman this number before.”
Chapter 12
THE SECRETARY’S WORDS didn’t explain Hunter’s absence, but the tense knot in my stomach abruptly eased anyway. My mate was still evading both my calls and my presence, but Meeshi’s suggestion that I wasn’t just one girl in a long string of love ‘em and leave ‘em encounters helped. I had to trust Hunter to come back to me if and when he became ready.
Trust. I definitely needed to work on that.
With Hunter’s absence dealt with as much as it could be, I only had one question left. This final query had far less potential to tear me apart than the others had, but just asking about the rogue bloodling could
toss the kid into hot water if I wasn’t careful. So I eased into the last round of the inquisition slowly and sideways. “You’re Hunter’s secretary,” I said. “Does that mean he’s your boss? Or do you work for the Tribunal?”
“Hmmm,” Meeshi answered without answering, her voice far more guarded than it had been moments earlier. “What an odd question coming from someone who merely misses her mate.”
Translation: I work for the Tribunal. Be careful what you tell me.
Well, that changed things. Because—Hunter aside—the stories I’d heard about the shifters’ regional governing body gave me nightmares. The males—they were all males—who possessed ultimate authority over each pack’s alpha and underlings were the strongest of the strong in our nine-state region. In the past, they’d changed the law whenever they saw fit and had ruled by the mantra Might makes right.
Which was all good and well if weak werewolves like myself could simply abide by the rules and slide under their radar. The trouble was, I couldn’t exactly check a Tribunal guidebook out of the local library or look up answers online. So I had no way of knowing which rules pertained to the rogue bloodling I planned to spend the rest of the day hunting down.
It went without saying that the girl was already in deep doo-doo for transforming in front of an unwitting one-body. But if I managed to sweep that transgression under the rug, where would the bloodling end up after being brought back into the fold? And what would her punishment be in the worst-case scenario in which she shifted again—much more publicly—in front of strangers? The girl knew the rules even less thoroughly than I did, so I had a sinking suspicion she was currently breaking them with blithe, uneducated abandon.
“Hypothetically,” I said carefully, “if I were to ask you a question about werewolf law, would you have to pass that request on to your bosses?”
Meeshi hummed on the other end of the line for a moment, considering. “Hypothetically,” she answered at last, “I’d have to report any question or information that I also passed on to your mate. But if you and I were just shooting the breeze since we’re such good girlfriends. No, of course I wouldn’t have to pass that along.”
So I couldn’t count on Hunter riding to the rescue, but at least Meeshi wouldn’t feel obligated to rat me out just for asking. Or at least I hoped I was reading the other woman’s personality right and she didn’t plan to turn around and stab me in the back as soon as I hung up the phone.
Ah, trust again. Not my best subject. Despite serious trepidation, I sighed and asked anyway. “Hypothetically, if there was a teenager who didn’t belong to a pack and who didn’t understand werewolf society, what would happen to her?”
I could almost see Meeshi’s ears pricking up and I hoped I hadn’t made a major blunder. “Interesting scenario. If the girl could shift, she wouldn’t belong to her parents or to her clan any longer. But on the flip side, if she broke our laws, she’d be punished as an adult with no leniency given due to ignorance.”
Meeshi paused, and I could tell she was trying to decide how much to tell me. My mate’s secretary had no more reason to trust me than I had to trust her, and she’d gone out on a limb by giving away even as much information as she had already. So I was pleasantly surprised when the other female tacked on one last sentence.
“And, hypothetically,” she finished, “the Tribunal would likely bring such a girl in preemptively just because there are so many important laws she could break.”
Bring her in and deal with her. Meeshi didn’t say it, but I could hear the words between the lines. And while I’d helped Hunter punish several shifters who’d earned every bite and scratch they’d been dealt over the last month, I was already willing to attest that the lost bloodling currently on my radar didn’t deserve Tribunal justice.
She deserved Miranda rights and innocent until proven guilty. She deserved the best of both the one-body and the werewolf worlds. She deserved time and safety to forget being raised as a guard dog in a meth lab while the seamy underbelly of human nature swirled all around her.
I pursed my lips as I thought Meeshi’s words through. None of the secretary’s answers had been quite what I’d hoped for. But knowledge was power, and I was glad I’d asked.
So I thanked the not-quite-stranger with much more tact than I’d used at the onset of our conversation, then I hung up the phone and peered across a room that had grown significantly brighter during the intervening moments.
In the new light of day, in fact, I saw that my temporary abode had been decorated like a pampered child’s room, with unicorns and rainbows dancing along a band around the bottom of each wall. Filmy curtains on the window matched a canopy draping from the ceiling that could be drawn princess-like around the bed.
And on the bookshelf in one corner sat several of my favorite books. Robin McKinley’s Outlaws of Sherwood, S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. The assortment seemed too spot-on to be a coincidence and I was left with the distinct impression that this room had been designed not just for a child...but for me.
That, plus the scent of fresh cinnamon buns rising up from the kitchen, eliminated my earlier urge to delay. I was finally ready to speak to my mother from the point of view of a grown woman rather than as a wounded child.
I guess Celia had been right after all when she said everything would look brighter after a good night’s sleep.
“COFFEE?”
“No thanks.” And thus the evasions began. Caffeine was contraindicated for a female werewolf out on her own in the human world, the stimulant having a nasty tendency to force unwanted shifts. My inner beast was on the weak side and unlikely to grab the reins in her teeth, but I still didn’t want to risk it.
Nor did I want to explain why I was rejecting my mother’s beverage of choice. Hopefully she’d write it off to a matter of taste.
“Oh, right,” Celia said easily, pouring me a glass of juice instead. “Werewolf no-no, huh?”
I raised my eyebrows, surprised at both her knowledge and her easy acceptance of shifter secrets. Not that I should have been, of course, since the one-body had lived with Harbor for another dozen years after leaving me behind.
Had lived with my father for a grand total of twenty-two years and yet barely seemed to mourn him after he was gone. Despite my intention to give my mother the benefit of the doubt, my eyebrows drew together and I opened my mouth to challenge her apparent lack of bond with her mate.
But before I could speak, the lights flickered...and went out.
Immediately, my right hand flew to my boot sheathes, only to find them unaccountably empty. Right. I’d wandered down to the kitchen without a care in the world, smile on my face and safety assumed. As a result, I’d donned neither weapon nor wolf teeth to aid me.
And that right there is the downside of trust.
Luckily, I could fix one of those oversights at least. Wolf? I called, and my animal half rose up within my mind. The dark room abruptly grew brighter as the beast took over our shared senses, making me wonder if she’d shifted our rods and cones a bit in the process.
Whatever my lupine partner’s secret for achieving the feat, I was now able to discern the outline of my mother’s body beside me despite the heavy shades that blocked the kitchen’s windows. Dim hints of light seeping in from the hallway meant nothing to humans but were plenty for my wolf to go on.
I reached out to touch Celia’s shoulder, whispering “It’s me” at the same time since I was sure her eyes wouldn’t yet have adjusted to the darkness. The one-body didn’t flinch as I slipped the steaming mug of coffee out of her hand and set it on the counter then gave her a quick once-over. Celia was dressed and ready for work as far as I could tell, so I pulled her down the hallway behind me as quickly as I could without tripping her up.
Knives, cell phone, Celia’s purse, then we’re out of this death trap of a house.
My mother strode along in my wake obediently enough, but she didn’t go quietly. “Fen, it’s no big deal. O
ur electric company is substandard and the lights go out all the time after storms. We’ll just call them and get in the queue to be dealt with when there are workers available.”
I clenched my teeth, wanting to shush the one-body...or at least to challenge the normality of electricity disappearing now when rain and wind were only a distant memory. But, instead, I focused on assembling my gear without releasing her hand then pulling her back down the stairs we’d so recently climbed. Once we reached the front door at last, I finally felt safe enough to speak.
“You’re right, I’m probably overreacting. But humor me, okay? I’ll drop you off at work, then you can call the electric company...and the cops. I’m sure Officer Lambert would be more than willing to check the place out personally once you’re ready to come home. He has to deliver your car anyway.”
I could feel more than see Celia’s back going up, our shared stubbornness getting ready to bust out into the open. Quirking my lips into a reluctant smile, I tossed her a verbal bone in an effort to appease. “I’ve got a date tonight, but I should be home by eight. After that, you have all weekend to show and tell whatever you want. Just do this one thing for me first, okay?”
Danger, my wolf whispered, cutting into our mother-daughter bonding session. Last night, my inner beast had been too exhausted to do more than clue me in to the watcher’s presence. But now she teased apart the odors wafting through the door that I was slowly easing open. One-body. Male.
Human aromas were far more difficult for me to tell apart than those of shifters, and try as I might I couldn’t narrow the current scent trail down to an individual or a location. But I knew someone was out there watching and waiting just beyond the edge of the well-groomed human yard.
First I’ll get Celia to safety, then I can track down our stalker.
“Can you run in those shoes?” I asked, taking a look at my mother’s high heels for the first time.
Alpha Underground Trilogy Page 27