Whatever it was, I braced myself for utter chaos. Better to be pleasantly surprised than surprisingly disappointed.
41
Julian Matz strolled through the living room as though he owned the place, his sister, Nora, hanging from his arm.
“Is your father here?” I asked Sarah.
Surprise, or was it shock, puckered her brow. “My father had a falling-out with my uncle some years ago. He’s no longer welcomed to pack gatherings.”
“Your parents are divorced?”
“No, but they lead separate lives.”
“Oh.”
Julian advanced toward us. “Miss Clark, it has been too long.” He let go of his sister and picked up my hand, bringing it to his pouty lips, the diamond on his pinky ring glittering wildly. “Much too long.” His breath, like his kiss, skated over my knuckles.
I snatched my hand away. I wasn’t afraid of Julian, but he still unsettled me. “Good evening, Mr. Matz. Mrs . . . ” What was I supposed to call her?
“Matz,” Nora supplied. She offered me a smile that gleamed as brightly as the sapphire hoops speared through her earlobes. “Ooh, Robbie and Margaux have arrived. I’ll be right back.”
She tottered in her sky-high heels toward her son and his wife. Both were dapperly dressed. Unlike my pack. I resembled a Pine more than a Boulder tonight, and that didn’t feel right, but it wasn’t Sarah’s fault. She couldn’t have guessed my pack would make no effort.
Once Julian had gone off to greet some more arrivals, I asked, “Why is your mom’s last name Matz?”
“Because Dad’s not a wolf,” Sarah said, as though it were obvious. “Last names are pack names. If you ever married outside the pack, you keep your wolf name, and your kids get your last name. It makes tracing bloodlines easier.”
I raised a brow. “Huh.”
She rolled her kohl-lined eyes. “Babe, you’re such a newb.”
Lucas, who was standing beside us, smirked.
“What are you smirking about, Mason?” Sarah shot him a little glare. It was more playful than vicious though. She was probably stockpiling the vicious ones for when the Creeks arrived.
“Your hair. What’s wrong with it?”
Color rose to her cheeks. “I straightened it.”
I became distracted by Julian and Liam walking toward one end of the terrace, heads bent in conversation, two burly Pines in tow. Matt and Cole strode closer too, dividing their attention between Liam and Julian’s bodyguards. I watched the two Alphas for a long moment, wondering what they could be discussing, hoping they had a strategy to get us out of here safely if the Creeks attacked or set fire to the inn.
My heart juddered. Where had that contemplation even come from? From the logs burning in the massive stone fireplace beyond the sliding glass doors? I glanced toward the staircase at the side of the terrace. It was wide, but if everyone suddenly started running for it, it would clog up. I peered over the railing. I’d survive the two-story fall, but it would surely break some of my bones.
“What are you thinking about?” August asked, stealing me out of my dire musings.
He’d gone over to see his father and the elders but had come back without my noticing and was now standing with his hip propped against the wooden handrail and his arms crossed. I needed to be more aware of my surroundings.
“Fire,” I whispered, gripping the smooth log.
He cocked up a dark brow.
“What if they’re not here because they want to set fire to the inn?” I murmured.
I wanted August to tell me that was crazy-talk, that they’d come in peace, but he didn’t.
“We’ll jump and make a run for it,” he said.
I swallowed.
“I won’t let anything happen to you, kid.” He tendered me a strained smile.
Kid? I’d take Dimples over kid any day. I clutched my elbows and turned to face the forest.
“Ness?” August asked.
Why did it even bother me that he thought of me as a kid? I made no sense to myself. It was the link. The link was screwing with my emotions.
I didn’t say anything, just concentrated on the woods.
And that’s when I heard them.
The distant sound of hearts pounding in unison, of paws stamping the earth.
August had sensed them, too. “They’re here,” he whispered.
Every single Pine and Boulder had sensed them because every face turned toward the woods.
42
The Creeks came, pounding our land underneath their giant paws, breaking our blades of grass, ploughing our soil with their claws, stealing our air and lacing it with the scent of their damp, furred bodies. They raced toward us, moving like columns of soldiers with a wolf larger than all the others up front.
Their Alpha.
Morgan.
The light-brown wolf led her wolves toward us with a determination that made me step back from the railing, that made many of us retreat from the balustrade.
Silly since there was no way her shifters could leap onto it.
When she stopped and let out a long howl, the fine hair on my arms thickened.
No one shift, Liam ordered.
My skin felt uncomfortably tight, but I reined my wolf back.
Julian must’ve given the same order to his pack, because everyone stayed in skin.
On the great expanse of grass below us, the Creeks began to rise onto two legs, their fur vanishing into human pores, their pointed ears migrating to the sides of their faces, their muzzles shrinking into noses. Breasts developed on certain bodies, and chest hair on others. The smaller bodies had no body hair and no breasts.
I moved my attention off the sea of naked bodies and onto the woman at the helm. Her hair was short like a man’s, but her face was thin and feminine, just like the rest of her body. She had muscle, but nothing like the bulk of some of the wolves crowding her. I kept my gaze fixed to their faces, or attempted to. It was a feat when appendages swung each time someone so much as twitched. Clearly, the Creeks weren’t prudes . . .
I wondered if anyone else was bothered by their nudity. Some Pines were grimacing, but I didn’t think it was for the same reason. I checked Liam’s face. What was he thinking? How I wished he would speak to us through the mind link, because I wasn’t sure how to take the display beneath the balustrade. His features were hard-set, his gaze amber and glowing, his shoulders pulled tight.
Julian spoke, breaking the thick silence, “You have accomplished a great feat tonight, dearest Cassandra.”
So Morgan was her last name.
Small wrinkles bracketed the Alpha’s pale eyes as she carefully examined the rows of faces looking down at her.
“You have accomplished the feat of making me feel overdressed.” Julian guffawed, and so did many other Pines.
With bated breath, I scrutinized Cassandra’s face, waiting on her reaction to Julian’s comments. When her lips bent with a smile, a collective exhale of breaths whooshed around me.
“I apologize, Julian,” she said, her voice making me blink and blink.
She skimmed the row of faces again until she found mine.
Until her eyes settled on mine.
“I’ve heard great things about the woods in these parts.” She smiled, baring shiny teeth that overlapped.
Heart hurtling against my ribs, I backed up, and one of my heels caught. I windmilled my arms. Lucas caught me before I could fall.
After steadying me, he muttered, “Can you let a Pine wipe out first?”
Don’t show fear, Ness, Liam said through our mind link.
How could I not show fear?
I gaped at him, and then I gaped at all of the Pines and Boulders who’d turned to look at me, and then finally I gaped back down at the Creek Alpha.
Aidan Michaels crossed the lawn, coming to a stop next to her, and then, like her, he smiled up at me.
43
“What is it?” August asked, the only person who was still staring at me.
Everyone else was peering downward as Cassandra pressed her cheek into Aidan Michaels’s, as though marking him, as though he were a wolf instead of a hunter.
August stepped in front of me, blocking my view of the Creeks so I would focus on him. “Ness? Why are you so freaked out?”
I blinked up at him. “Cassandra . . . she’s . . . I . . . ”
He placed a hand on my shoulder, leaking warmth into my frozen skin, not enough to thaw me out of my stupor though. “What is Cassandra?”
“Her voice,” I whispered.
“What about her voice?”
“IknowitIknowher.” I whipped the words out so fast they blended into one another.
He frowned. “How?”
“She’s . . . she’s the woman who . . . who operates . . . Red Creek Escorts. Called herself . . . Sandra.” I slammed the back of my hand over my mouth. “Oh my God. I’m going to be sick.”
“Shh.” He pulled me into his chest while I dry-heaved.
Thankfully my lunch didn’t come up. Just my anxieties. They rose and rose like steam from a pressure cooker. I was going to blow. I pressed away from August and rushed back to the guardrail.
“You!” I yelled at her, at Aidan, my voice ringing through the night, quieting all the others.
Gasps arose.
“Hi, Candy.”
“Candy?” Sarah echoed.
“Probably some Creek-way of saying sweetie,” the girl next to her said.
For a long moment, the woman I’d come to know as Sandra stared at me, and I stared back at her, and the rest of the world faded around us.
Had she manipulated Everest into working for her the same way she’d manipulated me into going on a date with Aidan? I turned my searing gaze onto Aidan, who was thumbing his ear. What connection existed between the hunter and the Alpha?
“Get dressed!” the Creek Alpha bellowed, shattering the silence.
“What was that about?” Liam asked me.
I was still too rattled to talk, so I let August explain.
The Creeks poured past her, trickling into the inn by the doors beneath the terrace, the ones that led to the pool. A moment later, the first clothed ones reemerged. One of them, a young girl with hair the color of Cassandra’s fur, returned toward the Creek Alpha, brandishing a light-blue shift, which Cassandra pulled over her head. It settled shapelessly above the Alpha’s ankles.
“Thank you, Lori.”
Lori craned her neck to look at us. Her face was thin like Cassandra’s, eyebrows thick and curved like the Alpha’s. I bet they were related. Mother and daughter perhaps? I wished I’d studied the Creeks. It would’ve spared me the shock of finding out that I’d been casually conversing with their Alpha.
Cassandra Morgan. I shivered.
She’d barely even bothered to disguise her identity. Had she wanted me to figure it out? Both women and Aidan started toward the terrace stairs, making their unhurried way onto the deck.
Liam and Julian waded through the throng of Pines and Boulders, positioning themselves in front of their packs.
“Cassandra,” Julian said.
“Julian.” She didn’t smile at him. She turned toward Liam, looked him up and down as though sizing him up. She was slightly shorter than he was, but that could’ve been because she was barefoot, whereas he wore boots. “Your resemblance to Heath is simply alarming.” She didn’t smile at him either.
Tendons shifted like windblown branches in the back of Liam’s neck, the only part of him I could see from my vantage point.
Lori, who was standing just behind her Alpha, regarded Liam, but unlike her Alpha, she seemed to like what she saw because her pink lips lilted into a seductive smile.
“Aidan Michaels abhors wolves, Cassandra,” Julian said, just as more of her pack walked up the porch steps, creating a thick wall behind Cassandra.
“You must be mistaken,” she said, wrapping one of her hands around Aidan’s wrist. “Aidan’s a great animal lover.”
“He might love dogs and his fellow rats, but he has no love for wolves,” Liam said.
“Aidan!” She released his wrist to clap a hand over her chest. “What am I hearin’?”
A smile tugged at Aidan’s thin lips. A matching one clung to the lips of many a Creek.
I stepped around Sarah and the girl from her pack to better see the Alphas, but something tugged on me, stopping me from moving any closer. I looked around me, wondering who’d grabbed onto my dress, but no one had. When I met August’s green gaze, I realized it wasn’t a hand that had held me back, but a tether. He shook his head, as though warning me from going closer. I bit my lip, turning back toward the Alphas.
“Grandma’s bones must be rattlin’ around in her grave,” Cassandra said.
I frowned.
“Why would your grandmother’s bones be rattlin’?” Julian asked, accenting the last word to match her diction.
Cassandra smiled. “’Cause Grandma was staunchly opposed to wolves hatin’ their own.”
I inhaled so fast white dots danced on the edge of my vision. Was she saying Aidan Michaels was a . . . a—
Julian gasped. “Aidan Michaels is a wolf?”
“Yes.” Cassandra cast Aidan an affectionate glance. “My cousin.”
No one spoke, but a couple of the Creeks snickered.
“He doesn’t smell like a wolf,” Liam said.
She stuck her nose in the crook of Aidan’s neck. “It’s slight, I’ll admit. The Sillin he’s been ingestin’ during all the years he’s lived amongst you has weakened his scent.”
Aidan Michaels is one of us.
It made absolutely no sense. Why would he threaten to reveal the existence of werewolves to the public if he was one himself?
Everyone turned to me, and I realized I’d spoken this out loud. I was so shocked I didn’t even flinch from the onslaught of attention.
“It enhanced my cover story,” Aidan said.
“So you don’t have files on us?” I asked.
“Oh, I have files on each one of you, or rather Sandy does.”
“But not your lawyers?”
He took off his wire-rimmed glasses and cleaned them on the hem of his blue dress shirt, then placed them back on his nose and peered at me through them. “I know what you’re getting at, Miss Clark. You’re thinking nothing’s standing in your way of killing me.”
I held his gaze. “Isn’t a life for a life the law of all packs? Or do the Creeks play by different rules?”
Cassandra was the one to answer me. “We play by the same rules, Ness, but I strongly discourage you from killin’ my cousin.”
“Why is that, Mrs. Morgan?”
“’Cause then this whole terrace would turn into a bloodbath, and we honest to goodness came in peace.”
“But he killed my father.”
“And Julian Matz killed mine!” Her voice rang out shrilly over the terrace. “Yet you don’t see me lungin’ for his neck. We’ve all lost people, Ness. Which is the reason I’m here. Because I think it’s time we unite instead of fight. But first, I’d really appreciate seein’ my son.”
“He’s indisposed tonight, but you’ll see him in the morning,” Liam said.
She glared at him a long moment. “He better be alive and well, Kolane.”
“He’s alive.” Liam said nothing about his condition.
She turned her attention to her cousin. “Aidan, you said there would be food.”
Aidan clapped, looking through the crowd until his gaze set on Lucy’s. He nodded to her, and she scurried inside. I didn’t have time to see her expression, see if she shared my shock in learning that the hunter was a wolf. Did anyone have suspicions about him, or had he really flown underneath every single Boulder and Pine’s radar?
44
Servers spilled onto the terrace, as well as music. I recognized Emmy and Skylar but not the others. They weaved through the mismatched crowd, platters bobbing from their fingertips. Had they heard anything that had be
en said? Did they know what we were? Emmy caught my eye, but then her gaze lowered to the tray of mini sandwiches in her hands, her face uncharacteristically pale.
She’d heard.
She knew.
Would they tell more people? Or had Aidan Michaels somehow bought their silence?
“What a fucking fuck-fest,” Lucas muttered behind me.
“Couldn’t agree with you more, Mason,” Sarah said.
“You’re agreeing with me? Shit, can I get that in writing?”
“Shut the hell up.”
Their banter unfortunately didn’t ease my stress. I wondered if it eased theirs?
When Cassandra started toward me, I stood my ground even though I wanted to leap over the railing and run far away from the inn, from Boulder, from this woman who was a stranger, and yet who wasn’t.
But I wanted answers. And I sensed she had many of them.
Stay calm, Liam whispered through the mind link, making his way back to me. Whatever she says, stay calm.
That was easy for him to say, harder for me to do. She’d manipulated me. I liked being manipulated as much as I liked slicing my finger on a kitchen knife.
Suddenly, Cassandra was standing right in front of me. She was so tall that even in my heels I had to tip my head up. I hated having to tip my head up to her.
“I understand why your pack’s been going through such an upheaval since your return.”
I disregarded her bizarre compliment. If that’s what it was. “Was it you who hacked my phone?”
“Not me personally.”
“But someone from your pack?”
“We tried to warn Everest ourselves, but he didn’t believe us. We were just trying to help him.”
“You mean, get him off your land before the Boulders arrived and realized your connection to him.”
When her gaze grinded into mine, I realized I’d struck a nerve. Well, I was about to strike a whole bunch more, because I wasn’t done with her.
A Pack of Vows and Tears Page 24
