Pack of Freaks: Beasts Among Us - Book 2

by Jennifer Zamboni

  A teenager, not a small, helpless child. I was not equipped to take on a teenager. If I was going to have pups, I wanted to start with small ones.

  Mara turned to face her children. “Evangeline, come here.” She used a motion that Percy had been using to train my wolf with, an open palm brought to her chest.

  What the hell?

  The girl was obviously reluctant to obey. She clung to her brother’s hand, though he didn’t attempt to help. He dropped her hand like it was made of hot coals. Wide-eyed, she approached her mother and sat at her feet, her gaze fixed on the ground.

  “This is my daughter, Evangeline. I’m sorry that she’s not very talkative. She’s deaf, you see. Her brother came out normal, but I guess changing back and forth was too much for her while I was pregnant.

  Evangeline’s eyes remained focused on the dirt.

  Mara stomped once, and the girl looked up. “Evangeline, say hello to alphas Gretchen and Doug.”

  The girl remained silent.

  “You will speak when spoken to,” the alpha snapped. I’d still not had a formal introduction with the guy, and I didn’t like him.

  Evangeline snarled and turned her face towards her brother, avoiding both her parents’ faces, perhaps so she wouldn’t have to read either of their lips. None of them signed, which I thought was the normal course of things when there was a deaf member in a family.

  “The girl is my responsibility only,” the alpha turned his attention to me. “I will not have her turned loose on the world.”

  I’d had enough.

  “She is a child. She needs an education, she needs love. She needs clothing. None of her needs are being met, that I can see. She isn’t even wearing shoes for God sakes. What is the matter with you?” My full attention focused on the alpha.

  “She is a monster. She doesn’t have the mental capacity to survive as a were. She will learn to mind, or she will die.”

  “I beg to differ. I will be taking her home with me. You will not follow us. You will not have anything else to do with her. She will become my responsibility.”

  “I think not.” He stepped towards me, his arms coming out from his sides, his fingers clenched into fists, his muscles tensed. He was trying to look bigger, tougher, just like a real wolf would.

  I did my best to stand passively, with my arms relaxed by my side, but it was taking every ounce of self-control that I possessed to keep my wolf leashed.

  Doug turned and stood behind me, his focus no longer on me, but at the imminent threat stalking in our direction. He was turning me loose. He didn’t like the looks of that poor girl any more than I did.

  A growl escaped the alpha’s throat.

  I remained still, but my muscles tensed in anticipation.

  I watched as he slowly began to change. With his enormous pack’s support, it appeared painless.

  I’d have to change in a hurry, and Doug needed to remain furless to back me up. I threw off clothes in a hurry, jeans flying this way, bra that way, headless of direction. I pushed the change as best as I could. The pain was sudden and intense, but then there was some numbing going on like someone had dipped me in aloe then froze me. I could feel Doug willing me to relax, to ease into the change. My fur shoved its way out my pores as my muscles bunched and stretched. The headache hit me when my teeth grew. I roared out in pain, then landed on my front feet. My glazed eyes focused, and I found myself snout to snout with a gray wolf, perhaps fifty pounds lighter than I. Lighter didn’t necessarily mean less dominant, or less skilled a fighter, so I merely showed my fangs, giving him the chance to back off.

  He didn’t. Instead he lunged for the kill, straight at my throat. I twisted, and latched my teeth into his scruff, and attempted to shake him. He grabbed onto one of my legs instead and bit down.

  I tried not to make a sound, or loosen my grip, intensifying my shake by throwing my whole body into it. His jaws ripped loose from my leg, and I threw him as hard as I could, like a fox might with a mouse. I didn’t give him a chance to recover, just pounced, wrapped my jaws around his throat, and squeezed. I hoped that he’d pass out or that he’d submit, I didn’t want to have to kill him.

  He was struggling, snapping, and trying to kick at me with his hind legs. He obviously wasn’t going to submit, so I aimed for consciousness instead. It took a couple of minutes as I strengthened the pressure on his windpipe, but eventually, he went limp.

  I knew I only had a minute or two before he woke up, so I turned on Mara next.

  “She’s yours!” She threw her hands up. “Just take her and go, I’ll deal with him when he wakes up. Please just take my child and leave.”

  I turned to Doug, who was retrieving all my clothes. I looked at him, then at the terrified girl, who was still sitting on the ground, with probably no idea what exactly was going on.

  “She doesn’t own anything, just go!” Mara yanked the girl to her feet and thrust her towards us.

  Doug nodded and scooped Evangeline up in his arms. I snatched my clothes from the ground with my teeth where Doug had dropped them.

  Immediately upon feeling Doug’s hands on her, the girl shrieked. An eerie sound coming out of the girl who couldn’t even hear her own noises. She turned, attempting to bite Doug with her very human teeth. He clamped his arms around her, then tossed her over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold like a sack of grain, heedless of the fact that she was actually drawing blood.

  “Emery!” she screamed in her odd voice. “Emery, they’re taking me away. Emery, help me!”

  Her brother stood rooted to the ground, but his face betrayed him. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he otherwise remained stoic.

  He was the very picture of his mother, who also had a crumpled, tear-washed face.

  We didn’t have time to stop to let them grieve, to say goodbye. The alpha was starting to move, and we had to get out of there.

  Doug began to run, and I followed, keeping guard, knowing that I stood a better chance in wolf form, than he did on two legs.

  There was a rumbling bark, giving us a split second to realize that the alpha and his top dogs were after us. I snapped at Doug’s heels, urging him to put on the afterburners, which he did, his stride eating the ground, the girl in his hold still keening wildly. Had she the presence of mind to change, we would have been in real trouble. Her eyes held a look that was less than human as if her wolf was in more control than she was, her teeth sharper than they should have been, her face somewhat longer around the snout region as if she was stuck partially through the change.

  I could hear the Montana pack crashing through the underbrush. We needed to find running water, and quickly. I knew the wolves wouldn’t be far from water, so I wasn’t particularly worried about finding some. We just had to do it before the others caught up. I honed my senses to my ears, searching for that sound.

  It was a faint trickling noise, then a babbling, then we were on a small stream, maybe 5 feet across. It was large enough. I herded Doug and his human burden in that direction, then splashed in behind him.

  We were all too large to swim, so running down the middle of it was difficult, and noisy, but at least there would be no strong scents left behind. The farther down we went, the faster the water coursed, which worked in our favor. The noise covered up all the splashing we were making. Finally, we got to deep enough water to swim, and we were headed towards the river. As soon as we were in the river, we let it carry us to Yellowstone Lake—and our motorcycles.

  How we were going to carry a very unhappy teenager all the way to Maine on motorcycles was a little beyond me. I was just happy at the rapid pace we were being carried away from the pack.

  Their barks, howls, and crashes faded, covered by the sound of the river and distance. The wetter my little group got the further away from harm we came. As soon as we reached the shore of the lake, I urged them towards dry land and ran for what seemed like forever. It was effortless on my part. After all, I still had four feet to carry me, but I could hear Doug h
uffing and puffing behind me. It probably would really have helped if we could trust the girl to run on her own, but we couldn’t take that chance, so she continued being a sack-of-potatoes-style burden. After what seemed like an eternity, we came upon the place where we had hidden the bikes.

  I gave a little yip, then hid behind a bush with my clothes, and repeated the painful morphing process. I yanked damp clothes over clammy skin, then joined my new pack while yanking up the zipper on my pants.

  “I think we’ve got a pretty good lead on them, but we better get a move on.”

  Doug nodded and put Evangeline down.

  The girl collapsed in a heap and stared in the opposite direction of her rescuers, back towards her former pack and her probable death.

  “Hey, kid, you hungry?” I dug around in my pack and located one of the last Clif bars.

  Evangeline continued staring and added rocking to her repertoire.

  “Oh, this is going to be a blast, I can tell already.” I hopped around her, pulling on my boots, then squatted in her field of vision when I got the boot on and regained my balance. I unwrapped the bar and waved it under her nose. “Hello? Hungry?” I was careful to enunciate my words, even if I was being less than pleasant otherwise. I didn’t know how well she read lips.

  Quick fingers snatched the energy bar from me, and it was gone within seconds. I was left holding an empty wrapper before I even had the chance to react.

  “All right then. You’re coming with us, do you understand?” I remained at her level.

  She nodded once, then looked away from me. Her eyes held tears, but she was carefully keeping them from spilling down her gaunt cheeks.

  “We’re on motorcycles, would you rather ride with me or Doug? I’ve got the one with purple flames.”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “With him. I don’t like you.”

  “Well, that’s just fantastic. Saddle up, kid, we’ve got a long journey ahead of us, and we need to get some serious calories in you before we get too far.”

  Another blank stare pointed at me.

  “Right, a blast.” I turned my back on her, and threw a leg over my bike, and called the engine to life. Ah, the sweet noise of an uncomplicated machine.

  “We should get her a helmet too,” Doug said, calling me out of my revelry.

  I gave him a look, one eyebrow raised. “Why?”

  “Uh, kids should wear helmets, it’s a safety thing.”

  “Were. Wolf.” I drew the simple explanation out thoroughly.

  “Safety. First,” Doug shot back, then shook his head at me. He climbed aboard his own bike and waited as Evangeline climbed on back.

  We didn’t have time to argue, so off we went, heading back along the mistaken directions I’d followed before, not wanting to cross back into Montana territory.

  “I swear to you, Percy, he’s not taking care of his pack. I mean, look at that girl eat. It’s like she’s never seen the food before, and she ate like that the whole way home.”

  Percy, Evangeline, and I were sitting in the kitchen eating breakfast our first day back. Percy was getting an eyeful of exactly how much a starving teenage werewolf could eat in one sitting. And let me tell you, table manners were not a phrase that Evangeline had ever come upon before.

  She ate everything with her fingers, practically swallowing every bite whole. I had my doubts she tasted anything at all.

  “Gretch, I think all teenagers eat like that, all the time. She’s a growing girl.” Percy set another plate of eggs and sausage in front of me, along with a nice cold protein shake.

  “Teenage boys,” I said.

  “Maybe. I haven’t had a teenager in the house before. But she is a werewolf, high metabolism, and growing? I bet she can pack it away better than you can.”

  “Hey.” I scowled at her over a forkful of meaty goodness.

  Percy threw up her hands. “I’m just saying, high-metabolized immortal creatures need extra sustenance. And you’re right, she was just about starving. Even for a growing girl, there are way too many bones showing on her. I think I should keep snacks on hand at all times until she gets some meat on those bones.”

  I nodded in agreement. I would never complain about extra snacks!

  Evangeline continued gobbling her breakfast, either oblivious to the conversation going on about her, or just plain ignoring us.

  I let the runny yolks of my farm fresh eggs slide over my tongue and sighed my satisfaction. “You’re a goddess, Percy.”

  “I’m aware. Eat up. What are you planning on doing today? You don’t exactly have any clients on your books.”

  “My books are empty, Percy, and you know it. I’ve shit on my business, and I don’t know how to recover it, besides move somewhere where no one has heard of me and my shenanigans. Anyway, that wasn’t your question. I have something to talk to you about.” I hesitated to continue, so Percy prompted me.

  “Well, what would that be, dear?”

  “Doug and I are going down to the town hall today. We were wondering if you and Hades would be witnesses for us? I’m going to ask Amanda too.”

  Percy threw her perfect arms around me. “Of course I will! Absolutely! And I think Hades will have no issue with that either. You’re getting married. Finally! I’m so happy for you!”

  I shrugged myself out of her embrace. “Easy there, killer. Yeah, we’re getting hitched. And it’s not like we’ve been together forever. It’s just easier if we can, you know, get some sort of forged adoption underway with us as a married couple, you know, make it legitimate.”

  “Well, of course, that makes sense.” She tried to pull me into another hug.

  I held up a hand and stepped back. “Will you help with the adoption papers?”

  “Of course.” The grin on her face couldn’t split any wider.

  “You’ll glamour up adoption papers, then bribe their way to make them legal, but you won’t get Doug a fake motorcycle certification.”

  “That’s completely different,” Percy protested, her hands on her hips. “The adoption will be a forgery, not a glamour.”

  “Oh, right, of course. How silly of me not to see such blatant differences between two fake documents. How could I have been so silly?” I rolled my eyes, then straightened up again. “Can you keep an eye on the pup while I go call Amanda and get ready?”

  “Sure. And her name is Evangeline, remember?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Not that she calls me by my name, but whatever.”

  “What does she call you?”

  “Alpha.” I shuddered, then left my new charge in Percy’s capable hands.

  I climbed the long servant’s stairs up to the second floor to search for my cell phone. “Don’t give me a hard time,” I muttered at the empty hall, heading towards where my bedroom should be.

  I tried the door and was relieved that the house was behaving itself. “Thank you.”

  I tossed myself onto the bed, grabbed my phone from the nightstand, and scrolled through my contact list until I found Amanda’s number. I really should put the girl on speed dial. She was one of the few people I called on a regular basis.

  The phone rang once. “Oh my gawd, where have you been? I wanted you to come out with me the other night, and you never answered. Explain yourself, missy.” Amanda launched right in.

  “I was—” picking up a child from an abusive pack, “—getting a kid.”

  “What?! You adopted a child? Now you really have some explaining to do.”

  “That’s irrelevant right now, I called—”

  “Irrelevant? A child is not irrelevant.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not why I called you,” I interjected.

  “So why did you call me then?”

  “I want you to witness my marriage to Doug. We’re going down to the town hall this afternoon.” I spit it all out before she could interrupt with anything else.

  I was answered by delighted squeals and possibly crying.

  “Cool it, woman. If you keep that u
p, you’re uninvited.” I shouted through the phone at her.

  “Oh my gosh, I’m so excited. I’m going to change, and then I’ll be right over.” Amanda shrieked and squealed as I pressed the call end button.

  I knew better than to try to dress for this shindig, so I just sat on my bed and waited. A good hour later, I could hear Amanda downstairs, then the pounding of footsteps as she made her way to me, followed by others.

  Amanda and Percy burst through the door, followed by a sullen Evangeline.

  “Okay, do you have anything appropriate to wear?” Amanda asked as she headed for my closet. The woman had a homing beacon for clothes, I swear.

  She flicked the light switch and gathered in the sight of my enormous closet. She made her way to the hangers and ran her hand over some dresses. “Why don’t you ever wear any of these?” She pulled a dark purple one off the rack and inspected it.

  “Feel free to steal it. I’m never going to wear it.” I lounged against the door frame.

  “Do you have anything white?” she asked, replacing the dress with a sigh.

  I felt like telling her that I wasn’t the sort of person that would be allowed to wear white at my wedding, but instead I said, “I don’t own any white. Gets dirty too quick.”

  “Anything light colored?” She persisted.

  Percy laughed at that. “I’ll get her something appropriate from my closet.”

  Amanda looked over Percy’s Greek lady glamour with an incredulous expression.

  I kept forgetting how much Amanda didn’t know about us. As far as she was concerned we were all perfectly normal hairdressers. Or at least as normal as hairdressers went.

  “Oh no you don’t!” I grabbed Percy by the sleeve and tugged her into my closet. “The last time you forced me into one of your dresses it had no back, and barely a front. I’m wearing something of my own. Help Amanda look through my crap.”

  Percy rolled her eyes at me, then tugged Evangeline in as well.

  The two adults pulled several dresses out and debated on the best option. Finally, they chose the purple one that Amanda had originally pulled out.