He swore under his breath and kept walking. Speaking of complications he didn’t need, this had to be the biggest. Adjudicating the right of an alpha to lead his—or, in this case, her—pack was a touchy subject to begin with. Not many people appreciated an outsider settling pack business, as Darin Major had so kindly pointed out. Heaven knew Logan would have bitten the face off anyone who tried it with the Silverback Clan. Yet here he stood, ready to do it to the White Paw. He didn’t blame Honor for being a bit miffed with him.
From the little bit of information he’d managed to pry out of her cousin—and from the tenor of Major’s recent greeting—Honor’s brief tenure as alpha had not been a peaceful one. At the pack meeting she’d called to announce her father’s death, she’d received her first challenge from a young male who thought a female beta could be overlooked, but a female alpha should be overstepped.
Honor taught him the error of his ways, fairly bloodlessly, by accepting the alpha challenge and pinning him by the throat in less than five minutes of combat. She had thought a swift display of strength would cement her position and demonstrate to the pack that she intended to keep the title that had come to her. No such luck.
Two days later, the second challenger had stepped forward. According to Joey, Honor had almost welcomed it. The Lupine who called her leadership into question was a bad apple in the pack. Less intelligent than he was brawny, Chet had needed to be taken down a peg or two, and if Honor had to be the one to do it, so be it.
The fight hadn’t been a quick one. While Honor had been fighting to the surrender, Chet had been fighting to the death. They had wrestled across the pack’s ceremonial grounds, the stone yard, for almost two hours before Honor had admitted to herself that Chet would not surrender unless forced. She had applied that force to his hind legs, slicing through his hamstrings with razor-sharp teeth and leaving him alive, but crippled. The injuries would heal, though not quickly, and Chet would remember the bite of both an alpha and humiliation for a long time to come.
The final challenge had apparently been the worst for Honor, and it was the one about which Joey had said the least. It had occurred just the night before, only a few hours prior to Logan’s arrival on White Paw lands. The challenger, he gathered, had been one of Honor’s childhood friends, and his bid for alpha had shocked her. Even more shocking to her had been Paul’s insistence on turning their challenge into a death match.
She hadn’t killed him, Logan knew. Joey hadn’t given him any specifics, but it sounded as if Honor had again gone for a crippling wound instead of taking her challenger’s life. It didn’t speak well for her in terms of her ability to lead the pack. Logan admired compassion from a theoretical point of view, but he knew it had little place in the hierarchy of a Lupine pack.
For all the veneer of civilization their human forms lent them, at their core, a Lupine pack functioned in much the same way as a wolf pack. The strongest led, the others followed, and the weakest either made themselves useful, or they didn’t live to see another winter. To humans it sounded brutal; to Lupines it was the way things worked. They didn’t make the rules out of cruelty. They simply knew that the survival of the pack was more important than the survival of any one pack member, and a hell of a lot more important than manners.
Given the three challenges Honor had had, Logan wondered why Major hadn’t followed—or even preceded—any of them with a challenge of his own. He clearly thought he would make a better alpha than a female, no matter how wrong he might be, so what was he waiting for? Did he think the others would wear her down and make her more vulnerable, or did he have some other sort of scheme in mind? Logan’s curiosity had been piqued.
He made no effort to silence his footsteps as he strode toward the stone yard, and he wasn’t surprised to break through the tree line into the clearing to find Honor and two teenaged males staring at him.
Honor thrust the tip of her shovel into the dirt at her feet and pointed toward the west. “Town is that way.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He smiled pleasantly and walked toward her and the fire pit she and the teens looked to be repairing. “For when I’m ready to leave.”
“You’re ready now.”
“Not true. You’re ready for me to leave, but me? I prefer to stay a while.” He turned toward the two boys who watched the interplay avidly. “You guys might want to go now.”
Both boys turned to look at Honor, who scowled but nodded curtly. “Go. Head up to the offices and tell Mike I want you to go along when he looks at that pipe work we want to replace in cabin twelve. I can finish here.”
This time the boys nodded and moved off, heading back along the same path Logan had used. At least the young ones knew enough to take orders only from their alpha. But teenaged boys were one thing. He still wasn’t sure about her qualifications for leading the entire pack. Just because the one challenger he’d met was a puffed-up windbag didn’t mean every adult male in the pack would be the same. There could still be a serious claimant to the title waiting in the background.
As soon as the sound of the boys’ footsteps had faded from their sharp ears, Honor turned on Logan with a snarl. “What the hell are you still doing on my land? I thought I made myself pretty damned clear last night. I want you gone.”
“Oh, you were clear. And so was I.” He met her gaze squarely, not bowing to anyone else’s alpha. “I’m not leaving until I finish the job I was sent to do. That means I’m not leaving until I see for myself whether or not you have what it takes to run this pack.”
She threw down her shovel and planted her hands on her hips. “Who the hell are you to tell me if I have what it takes? I grew up in this pack, and I’ve been its beta since I was fifteen years old. I know the way things work around here a hell of a lot better than you do, so who the hell do you think you are to give me orders?”
“I’m the man who intends to see them carried out.”
She laughed at him. Literally threw her head back and laughed, but when her eyes met his again, the look in them had very little to do with humor. “You go right on thinking that, city boy, and I’ll tell you what my father told me. ‘A White Paw leads the White Paw, and everyone else can go fuck themselves.’ You can make any damned decision you want, and you can go carry your news to your boss back in New York. But I am telling you right now, what you two think won’t make one bit of difference to this pack. We do things the way we do them, and to hell with you both.”
Logan smiled, which was the only way he could think of to keep from snarling. Not that he disagreed with what she was saying, because it made sense—although in the end it wouldn’t make any difference to his decision or Graham’s—but he did have to exercise every iota of self-control he possessed not to jump her where she stood. In the heat of her anger, her scent had intensified. It trailed across the space between them and teased his senses. The spicy note seemed even stronger today, confirmation of how close she was to her heat. He wanted to lick that fragrance from her skin and nibble his way up the insides of her thighs until he could feast on her, unimpeded.
Shit. Why the hell had he decided to wear button-fly jeans?
Dragging his mind off his crotch for a good five seconds, he imagined his feet nailed to the ground beneath him. And if that didn’t work, he’d have to try real nails. “I understand your feelings, Honor, but they don’t change the fact that I am not leaving until my job here is done.”
“Just what sort of job do you think you get to do on our land, city boy?”
The crunch of snow underfoot had both Honor and Logan turning instinctively toward the path to the main house even before the first words were spoken. Out of the corner of his eye, Logan could see the annoyance that tightened Honor’s features, but he kept most of his attention centered on the two men who entered the stone yard.
The one who had spoken stood an inch or two less than six feet tall, but he had the stocky, beefy look of a brawler and wore an expression just short of challenging on his bearded face
. His clean-shaven friend was a little taller, but less muscular, and his face wore an impassive mask belied by the way his pale eyes darted around the clearing, cataloging every detail. Logan didn’t even bother to stiffen at their insulting entrance, but neither did he take his eyes off them. He hadn’t gotten to be beta without watching his back.
“Bill. Dave. I thought you two were working on fences today.” Honor’s tight tone and rigid expression made the male Lupines glance her way, but their gazes turned just as quickly back to Logan. The low rumble in her chest indicated the female alpha didn’t like that much.
“We are,” the burly one drawled, hooking his thumbs in the front pockets of his blue jeans. “But just before we headed out, we ran into Darin, and he told us there was some stranger come sniffing around the pack. We hadn’t heard nothing about it from you, so me and Dave figured we might come take a look.”
Huh. Major worked fast. And appeared not to be the only male in this pack with more testosterone than brains.
“Really. You figured.”
Logan might not have known Honor Tate for very long, but even he knew enough to recognize that her total lack of inflection boded ill for her pack mates. The question was, how would she handle them? Could she handle them?
He stood his ground, his hands hanging loose at his sides. If Honor couldn’t deal with the situation, Logan had no doubt that he could. He had even less doubt that if he felt it necessary to step in, the female would make him pay, one way or another.
But she wouldn’t be doing it as alpha of the White Paw clan. An alpha that weak couldn’t be allowed to stand.
“What’s your name, city?” the burly one asked, jerking his chin up and narrowing his eyes at Logan.
And that was about as close to a challenge as Logan had ever let slip past him, but before he could express his generosity, Honor shouldered him aside and planted herself in front of her obnoxious pack mates.
“His name is none of your business, Billy. And neither is what he might be doing here. So you ‘figured’ wrong.”
Her voice had deepened to a growling register that tightened Logan’s pants, not that she was paying any attention to him or his fly. Or would have appreciated the gesture if she had been. Her dark eyes had begun to glint with feral flecks of gold, and he could almost see her alpha energy seeping from her pores. He doubted the other men had missed it, either, but they weren’t backing down, not just yet. That wasn’t a good sign for Honor’s desire to keep her spot at the top of the pack.
“You know as well as we do that we got a right to defend our territory when a strange wolf come into it—”
“You don’t know shit, William Petrey. That right belongs to the alpha, and last time I looked, you were nowhere near being the alpha of this pack.”
Bill’s eyes narrowed, and he crossed his thick arms over his chest, mumbling, “Female ain’t all that near it, either.”
Uh-oh. Those were fighting words.
Under Logan’s watchful eye, Honor shifted her weight onto the balls of her feet and began to stretch. Or rather, her body began to stretch, growing a couple of inches taller, muscles beginning to thicken and layer on top of each other. It wasn’t quite a change, since her features remained human, and she didn’t seem to be sprouting any fur that he could see, but her wolf was definitely rising to the surface, and he could feel the air thicken with the almost magical wash of energy.
Honor’s lip curled in a snarl, revealing long, white canine fangs that looked more than capable of rearranging her pack mate’s vocal chords. From the inside out. “Would you care to repeat that, William?”
The force of an alpha’s authority began to press down on the atmosphere in the clearing, making both Bill and Dave fidget in distress. Logan could feel it like a weight in the air, but he withstood it easily, maybe because Honor wasn’t his alpha, and maybe because she just wasn’t alpha enough. Wasn’t that what he’d come here to decide?
Bill, though, had started to look uncomfortable. His mouth tightened and his chin dipped, and he broke his gaze away from Honor’s, fixing it instead on the ground near her feet. Dave had already stepped back and dropped to one knee. Bill stood his ground, but he said nothing.
Honor moved in a blur of aggressive intensity. One moment she stood just in front of Logan, and when his lids rose from a blink she had reached her challenger and wrapped a dainty, clawed hand around her pack mate’s throat.
“If you have something to say to me, say it,” she snarled, pressing close until Logan was sure Bill felt the heat of her breath on his face. Thin rivulets of blood trickled down the sides of the White Paw’s throat where her claws bit into his skin. “If you question my authority to lead this pack, then challenge me. Otherwise, keep your mouth shut and your muzzle out of things that don’t concern you.”
She punctuated the question with a rough shake of the throat she continued to grip. The rest of the man’s body followed along like the hand of a metronome. He had gone limp in her grasp, finally surrendering. His head dropped to the side, his gaze fixed firmly on the ground, and he bared his throat in submission to his alpha.
Honor accepted the victory with something less than enthusiasm in evidence. Logan could see her fingers flex in the flesh of her subordinate, could see new drops of blood well around her claws, and could hear the tenor of her rumbling growl. She sounded not satisfied but angry. Frustrated. As if she wanted to exact retribution from the Lupine who had defied her. Logan couldn’t let that happen. A cruel alpha would be just as unacceptable to the Silverbacks as a weak one. An alpha had to lead a pack with power and strength, mental as well as physical. A leader who ruled with fear could only foster instability in the pack, which was exactly what he’d come here to prevent.
An instant before he stepped forward, Honor released her grip and sent her erstwhile challenger crumpling to the ground at her feet.
“Get back to working fences,” she spat, clenching her fists at her sides and taking a measured step backward. “Next time you hear something you think concerns the security of the pack, you check with me. Understand?”
Both men nodded and scrambled hastily to their feet.
“Go.”
The men went.
Logan watched while the female alpha struggled to tamp down the wild aggression surging through her. Her entire body vibrated with that feral energy, and he was curious to see her contain it. The mark of an alpha often showed itself not in how he or she controlled others, but in how they controlled themselves.
She took a long, deep breath, and when she blew it out, her body had stilled. Well, all except for her hands. Her fingers still betrayed a fine tremor; at least until she clenched her fists and turned to face him. The golden light of the wolf still shone in her dark eyes, but her face was a mask of hard, cool marble.
“Enjoy the show?” she demanded.
He brushed aside the note of challenge in her tone, chalking it up to the aftermath of adrenaline. “That’s not quite the word I’d use, but it was interesting. I’ll say that.”
Her lip curled at the edge. “I’m surprised you didn’t take notes so you could report back to your boss on my obvious incompetence.”
“I’ve got a pretty good memory.”
“I’m less worried about your memory than your powers of deductive reasoning. You might be stupid enough to figure that one idiot with too much testosterone and not enough work to do constitutes evidence of my incompetence.”
“I never called you incompetent.”
“Then you’re admitting I can run this pack perfectly well without the interference of the Silverback alpha.”
“Nice try, but you’re not getting rid of me before this weekend. I won’t be making any final determinations before then.”
He saw the flash of annoyance flicker across her expression, but then, she didn’t exactly do much to disguise it. He figured she didn’t care if he knew he was pissing her off. She’d certainly told him enough times already.
“Whatever
,” she growled, reaching for the shovel she had dropped when Bill and Dave had decided to ask for their asskicking. “At this point, I couldn’t give a shit. Like I said, it doesn’t make much difference what you decide. This is my pack, and the Silverback will put someone else in charge of it over my dead body.”
Logan’s wolf snarled at the idea of this woman lying in a pool of her own blood, a victim of her own stubbornness and another wolf’s teeth. “That is what I’m here to prevent. No one wants this to end with your death, Honor, least of all me or Graham.”
She snorted, but didn’t even bother to contradict him. Instead, she resumed her work on the huge fire pit, using the shovel to lever stones back into position along the edges and her hands to restack the ones that had fallen. The barrier they comprised was necessary to contain the flames of the enormous bonfire customary during a rural Howl. The Manhattan pack had long since been forced to abandon the tradition. Fires that size weren’t just illegal in Central Park; they were also pretty hard to miss and tended to attract the attention of humans at the most inopportune moments.
“Honor, look—”
She cut him off, straightening to glare at him and burying the blade of the shovel into the packed earth with an angry thrust. “No. You know what? I’ve already looked, and I sure as hell don’t like what I see. We’ve each laid our cards on the table. I have no intention of surrendering my pack to anyone, least of all someone appointed to the job by a wolf who can’t even be bothered to pay us a visit himself. That’s my hand. And you? You’re wedded to your little role of judge and jury and alpha’s errand boy, and you have no intention of doing the right thing and running back to your boss to tell him that the White Paw Clan is doing just fine without him. That’s your hand.”
He opened his mouth, but the little she wolf refused to let him get a word in edgewise. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had taken that tone with him, all bossy and pissy and arrogant. Not even Graham did such a good job of goading his wolf as this bundle of anger and oncoming heat. His eyes narrowed as her emotions intensified her scent.
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