“Fen, is this really necessary?” my companion retorted. Her face was pinched, as if she was regretting letting another werewolf into her life after finally getting shed of the lot of us. I’d be the first to admit that we nearly always brought danger in our wakes, so Celia’s gut reaction was probably wise.
On the other hand, the current threat was already present and waiting in the wings to pounce upon us. Shutting our eyes and pretending the world was full of rainbows and roses wasn’t going to send the lurker away. So I squashed my urge to apologize and instead faced my mother square on, staring her down until she finally caved.
“Yes, I can run in these shoes,” Celia said at last with an aggrieved sigh. She grabbed her purse off the antique credenza in the entranceway and clutched the handbag up under one arm as if she planned to protect it with her life.
“Thank you,” I told her honestly. Then, in one smooth motion, I pushed the door all the way open with my shoulder, hit the button on the key fob to unlock the car, and raced to catch up with my mother as she sprinted across the gravel.
Because Celia was right. She was quite capable of running in those heels.
Chapter 13
TO MY DISMAY, I DIDN’T have time to swing back around and track down the lurker after all. Celia refused to let me leave her presence until she’d treated me to breakfast at the corner diner, and I refused to let her leave my presence until she’d called Officer Lambert to set up an after-work escort home. By the time our joint badgering session concluded, I had to put the pedal to the metal to ensure I wouldn’t be late for my first day of work.
One-body life isn’t as simple as it seems, I thought, pulling into the school’s parking area. On the plus side, the lot was nearly empty, attesting to a local lack of interest in summer education. On the minus side, a bell ringing within the building itself promised that I would be marked tardy at my first one-body job despite my speed-demon ways.
Oh well, I don’t need to keep this gig. Just use it to find that rogue shifter before she attracts the wrong sort of attention from the Tribunal.
Who was I kidding? Any sort of attention from the Tribunal was the wrong sort of attention.
Well, with the distinct exception of catching the eye of my favorite enforcer. That I could do with quite a bit more of.
Hunter, where are you? I called into the ether. Unsurprisingly, no reply came back.
With a sigh, I returned my attention to the matter at hand. After making sure no pesky weapons were in view and locking the car doors, I took a moment to sniff the air. No werewolf scent, which meant the foundling hadn’t yet come this way after last night’s rain washed away earlier odors. But I could see the very pregnant teacher I’d talked to the day before smiling at me through a nearby window.
“Sorry I’m late,” I mouthed up at her, and she brushed my apology aside with an airy wave before returning her attention to the class.
Only then did I realize that the teacher shouldn’t have been present in the first place. Wasn’t I supposed to be the one-body’s replacement so she could go on maternity leave?
Perhaps I’d been fired after all.
But no. The human whose name I couldn’t remember greeted me with a guilty smile as I slipped in through the back door of her classroom. “And this is my replacement, class,” she said to the five bored-looking teenagers slumped over their desks. “Ms. Young, these are Gregg, Andrew, Scott, Angelica, and Christy. And we’ve got one other student who really promised she wouldn’t be late coming in right behind you.”
Werewolf.
For the second time that morning, hairs rose on the back of my neck. My wolf tried to growl through human lips and I had to force myself not to spin around in an entirely inhuman show of aggression.
Because the bloodling wasn’t glad to be reunited with another member of shifter-kind. I couldn’t yet see the girl but I could feel her eyes sliding down my spine, seeping into my body and taking in my weak but present wolf.
The rogue’s scent burned my nostrils with that almost overwhelming aroma of ammonia, the mitigating rose-petal undertone distinctly absent. The intensity of her signature scent proved that this bloodling was as powerful as Hunter, able to compel most shifters with a single word or stare. She’d have no problem barking my own weak beast into line.
But the rogue didn’t know that yet. Instead, she was terrified. Scared to meet another werewolf for the first time. Scared of being forced out of the territory she’d worked so hard to build. Scared to lose her place in her human pack.
Human pack? Strangely, the bloodling appeared to have created a clan out of thin air using the materials at hand. When a brain-numbingly slow human swivel finally allowed me to take in the scene filling the classroom’s doorway, I saw not only a rogue—who looked more like a twenty-year-old woman than like a kid boasting only thirteen years of life—but also three one-body males flanking her curvy form.
The rogue’s companions were built like tanks, were dressed like gang members, and were glaring like I’d run over their grandmother’s favorite dog. Without a single word, the bloodling had transferred her own aggressions to her human pack mates, and her minions now appeared to be as erratic and angry as she was.
I hesitated, torn. On the one hand, I wanted to shush my wolf and stand tall, to act like the alpha this rogue needed if she was to be brought safely into the shifter fold. On the other hand, the girl was balancing on the balls of her feet, torn between fight and flight. I had a feeling that one burst of authoritarianism from me was all it would take to force a choice, and either option would be a disaster in front of the current audience of one-bodies.
Before I could figure out what I wanted to do, the human teacher made the decision for me. “Come on in, Lupe, and leave your entourage at the door. We need to get a lot done today if we want to be caught up by the time fall rolls around.”
And just like that, the rogue’s alpha dominance disappeared. “Later,” Lupe muttered at her friends before sidling past me with nostrils flaring. She settled into a seat at the catty-corner opposite side of the room from where I now stood, which meant the girl would be within arm’s reach when I took my place at the head of the class. Someone wasn’t thinking ahead.
“Sorry I’m late, Mrs. Sawyer,” the bloodling said with far less sass than I’d expected. She graced the teacher with a slight smile, but then her glance slid back in my direction and her tone turned cold. “What’s she doing here?”
“If you’d been on time,” the one-body said with only a hint of censure in her voice, “you’d know that Ms. Young will be taking over as your teacher for the rest of the term. I couldn’t quite talk myself into staying home today, but after this last class you’re all on your own. Fen?”
Taking a deep breath, I pasted on that fake smile one-bodies seemed to like so much. “Thanks,” I answered, hoping Mrs. Sawyer didn’t notice that I still hadn’t caught her first name. Then, striding down the same aisle Lupe had so recently marked with her territorial scent just by passing through, I slid into the empty chair behind the teacher’s desk. “Let’s start by getting an idea where you’re all at with your studies....”
TEACHING ONE-BODIES wasn’t so bad. The five human teenagers weren’t much different from the yahoos I’d wrangled back in my old pack or the young adults I’d led during my ill-fated foray as alpha. You won their trust with just the right blend of authority and camaraderie, you listened to what they didn’t tell you as much as what they did, and you proved you had their best interests at heart. After that, it was just a matter of reading Mrs. Sawyer’s obsessively detailed lesson plans and remembering not to exhibit any extra-human abilities.
Handling Lupe was another matter. For the first two hours, the rogue bloodling kept her eyes trained on her desk and refused to open her mouth...which would have looked like submissive behavior if I hadn’t known better. Instead, I figured the teenager was biding her time and waiting to strike when the teacher she respected was out of the picture.
I could almost see the girl’s hackles rising as she considered whether to disobey. After all, werewolf instincts were bound to tell her that acceding to a stranger’s wishes was yet another strike against her dominance display. But the rogue’s curiosity was beginning to overwhelm her fear, so she only dragged her heels a little as she followed me out into the echoing hallway.
As soon as the door snicked closed behind us, though, Lupe lit into me with a vengeance. “This is my territory. Get out!”
Her words should have sent my feet scurrying for the nearest exit, but I’d prepared for the inevitable alpha compulsion by sending my wolf to sleep. So instead of being pushed to take action against my will, I merely cocked my head to one side in feigned curiosity and leveled Lupe with what I hoped was an unconcerned gaze. Gotta reel her in slowly. “You really have no clue how to be a werewolf, do you?”
The rogue growled out her anger, and I half expected a four-legged beast to materialize right in front of me in the hallway. Shooting quick glances in both directions, I pondered my options. Could I usher a raging wolf outside without either being seen by one-bodies or torn apart by strong lupine jaws?
Probably not. So I took a chance and used the fake alpha compulsion that often did the trick against lesser shifters. “You won’t shift around one-bodies,” I commanded.
“One-bodies?” Lupe hadn’t allowed my feigned authority to sway her, but at least I’d snagged her interest by using the unfamiliar term. She leaned in closer, nose to my collarbone, and sniffed in a totally inhuman show of consideration. “You’re like me, aren’t you?”
I wanted to take advantage of the girl’s softening posture, but the flush of a toilet from five doors down proved we were already out of time. “We can’t talk about this here,” I said quickly. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know...but only when there are no humans present. Can you stay after school?”
Lupe’s eyes narrowed in consideration. “I can’t,” she said after what felt like an eternity. “The group home is still pissed that I haven’t coughed up my social security number and last name, so they only let me out during school hours. If I’m not back by 12:15, I get a demerit, and that means dishes duty for a week.”
You don’t need those one-body authority figures, I wanted to tell her. Rules are different in the werewolf world. Just let me show you what a real clan is like and you’ll never look back.
But it was too much too soon. Even my simple flicker of changing facial expression was enough to bring Lupe’s wolf back up behind her human eyes once again. The momentary hint of rose petals that had wafted through the air seconds earlier was gone and ammonia once again overwhelmed the hallway. “I’m fine the way I am,” the rogue muttered. “You need to get out of my face and mind your own business.”
The girl ran as hot and cold as springtime in Virginia, and I wanted to pound my head against the wall in frustration. For a moment, I’d thought I was getting through to her. Then our inkling of understanding was gone as quickly as it had come.
“I’m not going anywhere until we talk,” I said simply, hoping my frustration wouldn’t carry through in the words. “Surely you can get away sometime. What if you had a teacher’s note requesting a tutoring session?”
Lupe eyed me for what felt like an eternity. Then we both heard the bathroom door close with a bang, our window of confrontation closing right along with it. “Sunday, under the bleachers,” the rogue said quickly. “11 am. I don’t need a note.”
Then Mrs. Sawyer was waddling up behind us. “Everything okay out here?” she asked cheerfully, her gaze drifting back and forth between my stiff posture and Lupe’s hunched shoulders. Despite our barely suppressed aggressions, the teacher seemed as pleased as if the two of us had become bosom buddies during our hallway debate.
For a split second, I wished that I could be as oblivious to the undercurrents swirling around us as the one-body was. All I saw in Mrs. Sawyer’s blue eyes was motherly concern, and I realized she’d taken me under her wing every bit as thoroughly as she’d accepted Lupe into the fold. The human wanted me to make it as a teacher and she wanted Lupe to get her reading skills up to snuff. Werewolf turf battles were vastly beyond her ken.
But, naive or not, Mrs. Sawyer’s gentle coercion was effective. “Yeah,” Lupe said, her posture dramatically changing in those few short seconds. Now the teenager’s head was bowed as she scuffed the toe of one shoe against scratched tiles. In lupine form, the rogue would have been rolling over to show her belly, accepting whatever lumps a stronger wolf wanted to dish out.
It made no sense. The teacher had no inner beast and didn’t seem to possess an ounce of authoritarianism in her entire round body. But whatever Mrs. Sawyer did was working because Lupe merely shot one last glare in my direction before slipping back into the classroom we’d all so recently left behind.
“She’s a bit of a handful,” the teacher said once the door shut behind her student. The human’s lips quirked to one side in a show of unabashed determination that somehow also managed to look cute. “But don’t let the tough act fool you. Lupe’s a marshmallow underneath.”
Yeah, right. A marshmallow who’d as soon rip my throat out as talk to me.
But I’d set up a date with the werewolf, so I could smile and nod and pretend we were all one-bodies for the rest of the class.
Chapter 14
ONE DARE-DEVIL DATE down, one dare-devil date to go.
While waiting for my afternoon appointment, I spent a few hours nosing around Arborville. I figured I might as well see if anyone other than Robert had a motive for running my mother out of town on a rail, but the consensus seemed to be that the townies loved Celia.
Good thing I had an obvious suspect just waiting to join me for dinner so I could feel him out about his not-so-hidden agenda.
Hunter wouldn’t approve, my wolf said in an unusual full sentence as we pulled up in front of the restaurant I’d chosen for our pseudo-date. The place had been hopping when I passed it by the day before, but now the establishment was approximately as dead as the meat being served inside. Seemed like the Friday after-work crowd had more entertaining places to hang out and celebrate the end of another long week than the local pizza joint.
Hunter wouldn’t approve of me meeting a potential criminal without backup or of me going on a date with another guy? I countered, checking both boot sheathes to make sure I was fully armed. Throwing knives accounted for, I felt confident I could get myself out of any altercation with a single one-body unscathed. I had to admit, though, that the date part made me a bit queasy.
Still, Hunter was the one who’d ditched me rather than vice versa. And it wasn’t as if I was planning on forming a romantic attachment to my dinner companion. Instead, my goal was to pump the one-body for information as quickly and thoroughly as possible.
Robert is a stalker, remember, I told my wolf. Rather than answering, the loyal beast maintained a judgmental silence that made her point excessively clear. Boyfriend material or not, my inner wolf thought it was entirely inappropriate for me to be dining alone with a man other than my mate.
She did, however, deign to point out a wisp of scent as we opened the restaurant door. Robert’s cologne? she suggested.
For a moment, I thought the wolf had nailed it. But she turned out to have been mistaken because there wasn’t another customer in the place. In fact, even the server appeared to be missing in action.
If I’d been looking for food, I probably would have taken the emptiness as a sign and gone elsewhere. But the lack of audience actually turned out to be a good thing. Because as soon as my butt hit a seat, my vision dimmed and I was abruptly looking out through someo
ne else’s eyes.
THE SCENE BEFORE ME wasn’t a repressed memory. Surely I would have recalled facing down an irate circus performer in an effort to steal his prize possession—a half-grown wolf.
I could smell the dung of caged elephants, though, and could almost taste the sickly sweetness of cotton candy melted onto the pavement. In front of my eyes, the collared beast growled menacingly, baring his teeth in a display of solidarity with his owner.
Or rather, in solidarity with his captor. Because the one-body facing off against me kept a tight hold on the animal’s leash. And the animal wasn’t an animal after all, but a bloodling werewolf.
Hunter?
I breathed the word into our joint mind as soon as I realized where I must be—back inside the shared consciousness that I hadn’t been able to call upon for the last few weeks. Stretching those cramped mental muscles also helped me realize that our recent lack of rapport had been entirely of my own choosing. I’d pulled away from our ever-increasing intimacy and our mate bond had suffered as a result.
Perhaps my strange weakness last night came from Hunter trying to tune into that bond without my permission? The hypothesis made perfect sense. After all, I could tell I was affecting my mate’s physical body now, his vision dimming slightly before he jolted himself back into his present.
“Fen?” Hunter asked aloud. Startled, his head—my head—swiveled to look over one shoulder. And in that instant, the wolf lunged.
Quicker than I would have imagined possible, Hunter had shrugged out of his sports coat, bunching the fabric around one forearm. So when the wolf’s teeth closed around his limb, it met cloth rather than flesh.
Still, the pain from the vise-like jaw clenching shut around his forearm was excruciating. And the danger was far from over since the animal’s eyes nearly glowed with rage and with a hint of madness. This rogue bloodling was even more messed up than the one I currently hunted in a one-body classroom, and he wasn’t planning to release his grip anytime soon.
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