There were all kinds of weird issues with the various types of shifters that had been created, including mutant strains of psychic powers in some families. But one thing that was consistent with all of them was the need to spend time with others of their own kind.
Because of the danger posed by shifters gone feral, the council required their Alphas or pride leaders to report in regularly, with proof that their unmated pack or pride members had been spending at least five days out of seven, every week, with their pack.
Pack members with mates could get away with as little as two or three days a week, but Marcus didn’t have a mate.
Marcus regularly broke the rules when it came to socializing. He pushed it more than anyone in Roman’s pack. And they were not a pack which could stand up to scrutiny. They were like the French Foreign Legion of shifters. They had ugly pasts. Some of them were probably hiding out from the law and living under fake names. Some of them, God help them, might have had pasts like Marcus’.
Images flashed through his mind again.
He was in the cage before a fight, and his tormenters were jabbing at him with the shock stick. They screamed and jeered at him. Sizzling agony seared through his body.
He did now what he’d always done back then – threw back his head and laughed, a harsh, angry sound laced with madness.
“That all you got?” he shouted at the ghosts in his mind.
Just like ten years ago.
“That all you got?” he would shout at the guard. The look of shock and rage on the guard’s face always made him laugh even harder. The other prisoners screamed and threatened. Some begged. Not Marcus. He wouldn’t give them that.
Chapter Three
Tuesday morning
Eileen sat bolt upright, feeling disoriented and wondering why the air smelled so clean and crisp. Then she remembered where she was. She wasn’t in New York, where each breath tasted like grit and car exhaust fumes, even in her family’s rarefied neighborhood. She was in Silver Peak, Montana, sleeping under a down pillow that was as soft as a cloud.
She kicked the blanket off and instinctively glanced over at the sofa where, at home, her assistant Marisol would have laid out today’s outfit for her, complete with shoes, accessories and purse. Marisol would have selected the outfit from one of hundreds put together for her by Eileen’s stylist, Ambrose.
Of course, there was no outfit laid out for her, since she’d snuck away and come here alone. Her suitcases were stacked up next to the sofa.
She was going to be in town for two or three days; she’d brought four suitcases. It wasn’t like her to pack so light, but since she didn’t have her usual staff to help her, she had decided she’d just have a bare-bones, understated weekend. No more than three clothing changes a day. Maybe four, tops, if she could find a place to do some shopping.
She didn’t mind the inconvenience. It would be like camping, really. That went along with the whole atmosphere up here. Silver Peak was a tiny, remote town, nestled among towering pines and firs on a sub-Alpine mountainside. Like most shifter towns, the town had been plopped down in the middle of a vast, sprawling wilderness.
Eileen’s family was different. They didn’t live like that. They didn’t even refer to themselves as a pack.
Back in the 1930s, they’d been eminently respectable members of high society. Then the terrorist attack had changed their lives forever – but the Pennyroyals had spent the last eighty years pretending that nothing was different.
They’d never wanted to be shifters. Like tens of thousands of others, they’d made the terrible mistake of drinking tap water. And then they’d started to change. Into animals. This had been horrifying to them. It just wasn’t done.
It turned out that saboteurs had broken into the secret government lab where different strains of shifters were being created, stolen the compounds, manufactured mass amounts of them and dumped them into the water supply in cities all over America.
The Pennyroyals had done what their type always did – pretended the problem didn’t exist. They strove mightily to deny their animal nature.
Since shifters need to change regularly, they joined with several other wealthy families in spending scheduled visits at a Connecticut estate, where they would discretely change form and stroll through the woods for a few hours a couple of weekends a month. Howling and loping were frowned upon.
Like all wolf shifters, they’d found themselves instinctively drawn to form groups – with others of the same station, of course. After all, they were Pennyroyals. Over the decades they’d finally admitted that each “group” had an Alpha, which was about as close as they got to admitting what they had become. Eileen’s father was the Alpha of their group, and she was expected to marry someone of the same station. Specifically the vain, arrogant prig of an Alpha’s son named Beacham Haversham, of the Connecticut Havershams.
Hell would freeze over first.
Eileen walked over to the suitcase and opened it. She should have organized it better; she’d never packed for herself before.
Well, she was a big girl, she could certainly dress herself. How hard could it be?
Half an hour later, the room looked like a bomb had exploded as she dug through every suitcase. She was getting rattled. This was the trip on which she was supposed to prove to her father that she was a competent, modern woman who could take care of herself and did not need to be married off.
But she was finding out just how pathetic she was on her own. For instance, she was a terrible packer.
Proof?
She’d brought one bra and twenty pairs of underwear.
She’d packed four toothbrushes and forgotten toothpaste. Good thing the hotel had toothpaste.
She’d only packed high-heeled shoes and boots, which, now that she thought of it, had not been the best choice for a visit to a tiny, rural community.
But she could do this.
She summoned up her mother’s voice again.
You can do this, baby.
“Easy for you to say,” she muttered rebelliously. “What do you need to color-coordinate these days? Your harp with your halo?”
She found herself getting teary-eyed at the thought, and blinked hard. It wasn’t her mother’s fault that she’d left Eileen. She hadn’t wanted to. She’d told Eileen that.
I can do this.
She settled on a cream-colored silk jumpsuit. That way she wouldn’t have to color-coordinate two things. Shoes? What the hell, cream was a neutral, right? Should go with anything… She picked a pair of purple suede pumps.
Purse?
Damn it, this was so much work. She hadn’t brought a purple purse with her.
But it was either succeed here or marry Beacham.
She pictured the way he cut all his food into tiny little bites before he started eating, and the looks of disapproval he shot her as she tucked into her food with enthusiasm. The way he’d tell her sharply “That’s enough” when he thought she’d eaten too much.
She winced when she thought of the perfect golden waves of his hair, shellacked into place, and how he gently patted his hair and smirked when he thought nobody was looking.
She’d get that damned contract if it killed her. And everyone in the vicinity.
She went with a brown leather Coach bag. She grabbed a pearl necklace and matching bracelet, slapped on some makeup and was ready to go.
She headed out of her hotel. The hotel had been booked solid; she’d had to slip the manager a hefty bribe to find her a room. These days, people were flocking to Silver Peak because of the miraculous healing power of the mineral springs that had opened up on pack lands after an earthquake.
She headed out of her room with her map stuffed in her purse. She’d stopped and bought it at a gas station the day before.
Gas stations were fascinating places. She’d never been in one before.
She’d spent the day before doing recon, finding out everything she could about the area and the Kincaid Pack.
&nbs
p; The town was one of the rare shifter towns located near human territory; there was a small human town called Juniper about ten miles away. A couple of years ago, an earthquake had rattled the area, and mineral springs had burst forth from the earth, located on both the Silver Peak pack’s land and the humans’ land. It turned out the mineral springs helped ease the symptoms of dementia and arthritis in humans.
The Kincaid Pack had settled there after the healing properties of the springs had been discovered. They’d been given a portion of the territory. It didn’t include land that contained any of the springs, but it was adjacent to that land, and they still benefited.
They worked in construction, and with the huge construction boom in Silver Peak, they were busy all the time these days.
Unfortunately, they were a notoriously private, reclusive bunch, even when it came to other shifters.
Her father had repeatedly tried to reach out to them, wanting to build a road through their pack property. It would be on the very outskirts of their land – it wouldn’t affect them at all – but they’d refused. He’d offered to pay them a lot of money, but they’d turned him down.
She knew how her father was. He was used to getting his own way. That worked in Manhattan, where he could intimidate people with his reputation and his fancy lawyers. That would not work somewhere like Silver Peak, Montana, where people were not wowed by the Pennyroyal name and were not easy to scare. They were very different from the types of shifters she was used to; much more macho and manly.
Images of the rude, handsome shifter flitted through her mind, and she banished them instantly.
Anyway – she’d go talk to them personally. She’d use her charm. That was the only thing she was good at; her father reminded her of that constantly. And charm was not a quality that he valued. He was more a fan of threats and brute force.
As she was headed out of the hotel, the concierge called out to her. “Miss Pennyroyal? You’ve got a phone call.”
Her heart sank. She hadn’t told anybody she was coming here. Then again, she’d booked the room on her credit card, which was on her father’s account, so she wouldn’t have been too hard to track down. A mistake, perhaps, but it wasn’t as if she had any money of her own. She worked in the marketing department of her father’s company, but she’d never saved up her paycheck before. There had been no reason to.
Grimacing, she walked over to the hotel desk and accepted the phone extended to her.
“Eileen, what are you doing going on vacation? And without me?” Marisol sounded irritated and mortally offended. That was pretty much the way all the staff sounded when Eileen made an attempt to do anything for herself. When she tried to learn how to cook. When she tried to hang up a picture by herself. It was like she was insulting them, or trying to put them out of a job. She wasn’t; it was just that she was twenty-two, a college graduate with a marketing degree, and she still didn’t know how to boil water. She felt like that might be a useful skill to have someday.
“I’m not on vacation. I’ve got to get going, Marisol, I’m late.”
“Late for what?” Marisol said huffily. “You need to be here for the dress fitting. I’m going to call the airline and see if I can get you back here by tonight. We can send a private jet if necessary, but I’ll tell you, this is quite an inconvenience.”
“I’m not leaving here tonight. What dress fitting?” Eileen felt a chill run through her veins.
“For the wedding? Obviously? We’re running the announcement in tomorrow’s paper.”
Most shifters referred to it as a “mating ceremony”, and they used the term “life-mate” more often than husband or wife, Eileen knew, but the Pennyroyals felt that the term “mating” was crude and animalistic.
Wait. They were going to run a wedding announcement? For her?
“Don’t you dare run the announcement,” Eileen said, furious. “I am not marrying Beacham. I’ve already told my father that.”
“Eileen, what do you think you’re playing at?” her father’s voice barked at her, and she started. So he’d been with Marisol, listening in on the conversation. Of course he had. “Do not speak to Marisol in that fashion. You’ll be back here tonight if I have to send my men to get you.”
She felt fear flaring inside her, but tried to sound calm and in control. “That would be called kidnapping.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. The Pennyroyals do not kidnap. We relocate. I am simply looking out for your best interests.”
“You think it’s in my best interests for you to force me to marry a man I loathe?”
“Eileen, you are utterly incapable of taking care of yourself. The Havershams are wealthy and highly respected, and an alliance between our groups will benefit all concerned.”
Eileen had promised herself she’d stand up to her father. Distance made her bold.
“I came here to convince the Kincaid Pack to allow your company to build that road through their land,” she said firmly. “I am fully capable of working, and contributing to your company, and doing more than making copies and pouring cups of coffee.” They didn’t even let her make the coffee.
“The Kincaid Pack! Ha. They would chew you up and spit you out. My men will be there for you at seven p.m. Don’t keep them waiting.”
Panic clutched at her. “I already made the deal,” she lied quickly.
“What?” Her father’s voice rose in dismay. It was the first time she’d ever heard her father rattled, and she felt a surge of pride.
“And now, if you will excuse me, I have to go finalize the details.” She quickly slammed the phone down into its cradle and fled the hotel, heart pounding in her chest.
Now she had absolutely no choice but to get that agreement.
Chapter Four
Tuesday morning
Roman stood on the front porch of the log cabin style building that served as the pack’s headquarters, struggling to keep his wolf contained. He was so pissed off that his fur kept shooting through his skin and his claws were curving out of his fingertips, and he didn’t give a damn.
The rest of the crew was on the construction site, and he was stuck here, dealing with one unnecessary crisis after another.
Including the fact that Marcus had missed the van to work.
Roman had sent Zeke to check on him; he’d found Marcus fast asleep, grumbling something about being up all night. Said he’d drive himself to work.
Zeke had mentioned that he had glimpsed broken furniture lying in piles on the floor inside Marcus’ cabin. Was Marcus going feral? What other explanation could there be for his increasingly irritable and antisocial behavior?
To top it all off, a representative from the Council for Shifter Affairs had showed up and was waiting in his office, with two big, burly shifter “advisors”. Advisors, his furry tail. They were Enforcers. She’d looked down her nose at him and told him this was just a random pack audit, standard procedure, and the first person she needed to interview was…Marcus.
And now this annoying city girl was yammering in his face, looking like she was about to cry.
“But if you’d just listen to my offer—”
“No,” he barked at the skinny blonde city shifter, anger boiling up inside him. “I already told you people, no.”
She seemed extremely distressed by this news. “But our company—”
“Your company tried to march in here and demand that you be allowed to build a road through this property. Your father actually had the nerve to start out his quote-unquote ‘offer’ with a threat. Informed me that they’d be building the road on our land, told me when they’d be starting, told me what he’d pay me, and said he hoped he wouldn’t have to bring his lawyers in, because if we caused him any construction delays, it would come out of our hides.”
He flashed a grin that was more of a snarl and showed a lot of teeth. “I made him an alternative offer. A death challenge if he or anyone who works for him sets one paw on our property. He tucked his tail between his legs. His la
wyers tried to contact the council. Didn’t work out so well for him, obviously.”
She winced. “I am sincerely sorry about that. My father, ah…”
“Is a flaming asshole. No deal.”
Roman turned and walked away rapidly, ignoring her plaintive cries of, “But wait! Wait! I can make you a very attractive offer!”
Roman was literally about to bite someone’s head off.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t shred the flesh of the person he really wanted to murder – Verity Farragut, the pinch-faced, frowning representative from the Council for Shifter Affairs.
The problem was, she had the legal right to be there, and she had the legal right to demand to see Marcus, immediately. And she wasn’t entirely wrong. Marcus had spent so much time alone that he might risk turning feral, which was a danger not just to the pack but to the entire shifter race.
Every time a shifter went feral and word of it leaked, humans freaked out and there was the risk of backlash. More restrictive laws. Mobs and rioting and shifters being murdered. There were humans out there who wanted all shifters strictly confined to their territories, kept there under guard like animals in a zoo, forbidden from travel or interaction with humans.
The fact that Verity had brought two Enforcers meant that she wanted to do more than talk. She wanted to take Marcus into custody and take him back to the closest Council for Shifter Affairs facility for evaluation.
Roman knew Marcus well enough to know that the big, surly shifter would die before he let that happen.
Which was why Roman needed to stall her.
As if he didn’t have better things to worry about. His lovely mate Chelsea was going to give birth to their cub in a few months, and she was still working way too hard at the bakery she’d opened recently. He needed to convince her to cut back on her hours and relax.
Also, she was oddly fond of Marcus. Well, Chelsea saw the good in everybody. She’d even seen the good in Roman, and it had been buried very, very deep. Chelsea would be upset if these people tried to take Marcus. He was not going to let anyone upset his pregnant mate.
Shifters of Silver Peak: Mate For A Month Page 2
