“A pleasure,” Ronmin replies. His lips curve up in a smile at the corners as if he’s amused and not in the least taken in by their display. Adam gives him a moment, but Jax’s first call was correct. The muscle aren’t worthy of being introduced.
Jax returns his eyes to the book, but he pays attention to the proceedings under shuttered lashes.
“Drink?” Adam asks, picking up the whiskey bottle. He pours out a shot without asking. There’s the slightest tremor to his leg as he moves.
“Please accept my apologies for the attack on your omega,” Adam continues, offering the glass to the city alpha. “My boys are out in the mountains now. We’ll have the culprit dealt with before long.”
Ronmin takes the glass, giving it a sniff before he takes a long slug. He swallows, then cocks his head.
“I’m told it was one of the wild wolves. The pack leader, in fact.”
Jax suppresses a jolt. How did Ronmin know that? A wild wolf, yes. Leader, no, but it’s the undercurrent to his words that sends a jolt up Jax’s spine: it was one of your allies who did this.
Adam shrugs and stretches, his great shoulder muscles roiling back.
If they were gorillas, they’d be beating their chests, Jax thinks. The thought would be funny if the situation wasn’t so serious.
“He’s new,” Adam says casually. “Throwing his weight around. You know how it goes.”
Jax sneaks a look at Ronmin from under his eyelashes. The city alpha doesn’t appear bothered at all. Instead, he seems amused, a single corner of his mouth turned up as if he’s thoroughly enjoying himself.
“Oh yes,” Ronmin says, amusement in his eyes. “There’s always some yokel bigging himself up to look more threatening than he is.”
“Sure is,” Adam says, reaching over behind the bar and grabbing himself a beer. Non-alcoholic. He’d given it up some years back, and it was one of the lines he didn’t cross.
Ronmin gives him a friendly smile as Adam waves at the chairs by the fire. “Seat?”
“Sure.” Ronmin takes the one Adam had been sitting in minutes earlier, and Jax thinks that’s deliberate too.
Alphas. He wants to roll his eyes, but that would be pushing the casual play too far.
“How’s your leg?” Ronmin asks, nodding towards Adam as the oldest Winterstoke walks steadily across and takes the chair opposite.
Translation: I know you’re injured.
Jax half-wishes they’d just quit all the innuendo and just be open about it, but then knowing alphas, that would just mean going for it tooth and claw, and blood over the carpet.
Adam shrugs again. “Well enough. Twinges a bit. You heard about us taking down Reed, then.”
“Yes, of course. I heard that you did that.” There’s a subtle accent on you and Jax curses inwardly. “The man was a bit of a problem,” Ronmin continues, “but the new pack leader seems to have everything well in hand.”
Translation: I know you didn’t land the killing blow.
“Yes, I think so. We’ve been in touch, on and off.”
Jax gives him a sharp look at that before he can help himself. He hadn’t known that. Reed had been the worst of the River Beach wolves by far, but the others had still stood by and watched while Reed had kidnapped and imprisoned omegas, two of whom Jax now counted as some of his best friends.
Stupid. Ronmin scents dissent immediately and takes his chance.
“How’s your book, Jason Winterstoke? It doesn’t seem very engaging.”
Jax kicks himself. He’s supposed to be turning pages. No one spends this long on a single paragraph. “It’s fine,” he says quickly.
“Perhaps your mind is elsewhere,” Ronmin says.
Jax is paying attention to the city alpha, not wanting to take his eyes off him, but he can sense his brothers bristling, their alpha natures going into protective mode.
Ronmin flares his nostrils ostentatiously. “You smell like wild wolf, little omega. Why is that?” He seems genuinely curious, but the undercurrent of threat is clear. For once in his life, Jax isn’t sure what to say.
‘None of your business’ seems unnecessarily provocative, and ‘because I’ve been cuddling a naked one who may have PTSD’ is going to encourage more questions than it answers.
Jax takes the cowards’ way out. He looks to Adam as if he were any other alpha-dominated omega who can’t speak for himself.
“We have one staying with us,” Adam says. “He was injured during the run.”
It’s true if misleading. Jax waits for Ronmin to call him out on it, or display some magical understanding of what had really happened out there on the mountain.
“Ah, that’s a shame. Runs can be so dangerous,” Ronmin replies. He swallows the remainder of his whiskey and stands up stretching. “Your fellow at the clinic said you had some spare rooms here. I hope you don’t mind if we stay here rather than at a hotel? It’s far better to build up a relationship with the local pack when you travel, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, of course. I’m sure you won’t mind the ones in the tower.” Adam beckons at Luke. “My second will be happy to show you around.”
Luke nods and steps forward. It always amazes Jax how his brothers can go from cuddly teddy bear to threat in an instant. It’s an alpha thing, he thinks, but he’s still not used to it.
If he were Ronmin, he’d be quaking in his socks. But he’s not, and Ronmin shows no sign of quaking. Instead, he just stands there with that irritating little half smile as if he finds them all so very amusing.
Just go already. Jax is beginning to cramp and it’s hard to keep his face schooled to calmness.
Ronmin saunters after Luke as if he has all the time in the world. Perhaps he has. His deputies follow like hulking dogs.
The moment he’s out of the room, and the door is shut behind them, Jax bolts.
EARLIER
GRAY
glass and rabbits
Gray is sitting huddled in the bottom of Jax’s shower when another piece of the human puzzle drops into place: the reason that humans have doors is to stop the scents of strangers from becoming overwhelming.
There are four closed doors between him and the city alphas, including the glass shower door, but it’s still not enough to block the ‘fight me’ pheromone reek of six alphas all trying to get the upper hand.
The doors help but not much. The scents drift underneath. It’s not like the forest where you can run away from a scent. Here, there is nothing but hard brick walls and the fallible doors.
He’s trying to let his human brain take control and be sensible about this, but it feels like waking up in the den all over again. The wolf in him is howling that any minute, the stink of threat will be submerged under the overwhelming metallic scent of hot blood and tearing flesh.
Gray shakes his head like he’s seen Jax do when he appears to be thinking too many thoughts. It doesn’t shake the fears away. All it does is make them run through his head even faster.
He wants to try sniff out the calming scent of Jax amongst the klaxon of menace, but it’s too hard, and he doesn’t want to breathe in any deeper than he already has to. The shower smells of Jax and that is going to have to be enough.
Cold splices into his skin at the murmur of one of the city alpha’s voices. It has an undercurrent of menace, despite its casual tone. Gray hasn’t heard Jax’s voice yet and he doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad one.
Adam’s voice replies. The alphas are too far and there are too many doors for Gray to make out the words, but he sounds the same as the stranger. The same deep threat underlies the mellow tone of his words. The sound sends a spike of panic stabbing into Gray’s stomach.
Adam’s threat isn’t aimed at him, but he’s not Winterstoke pack, and it hits him in the gut just the same.
And even if he were their pack, he has just learned the hard way that being pack means nothing at all. Anyone can turn on you. Anyone.
The shower head is dripping. Gray has turned
it so it drips into the corner, but every now and then a small cold splash hits his legs and makes him shudder.
The water smells wrong. It’s missing the life of the river or the freshness of the rain. Every single splash of wrong-scent makes it harder for him to concentrate.
The sound of Jax’s voice breaks through the fog in his head, a tremor in its usual caramel smoothness.
He’s on his feet before he even thinks further and pushing open the glass shower door. The removal of a single barrier flushes his nostrils with alpha scent and he stops where he stands quivering.
If he weren’t broken, he could be there too, bristling beside Jax and making sure that no one came near him. If he were a wolf, he could run away, but he is neither of those things. He is reduced to a broken human shivering in a glass box.
This is a human world with human customs and Gray still hasn’t worked out even the basics of how it works yet. Running in there to protect Jax will only make the situation worse.
Stay, Adam had said.
Gray’s legs quiver with the effort of keeping them still. He forces himself back down into a crouch in the shower, using his good arm to hug his legs in place.
The human thoughts are good at telling me what to do, Gray thinks, but they can’t do a thing about feelings.
His heart is still racing as fast as it ever was, and his stomach is still clenched tight.
Fight or flight, Gray thinks. That’s what Isaiah used to call it. He said it was the one good wolf concept that the humans ever worked out.
Gray had always thought it made sense too, even if he’d not had much experience with the idea.
Until Ash attacked him in the den, his single experience of ‘flight’ had been unexpectedly coming across a bear and her cub two years previously, and that had just been common sense.
It was the same with the ‘fight’ portion. The occasional play scrap with his brother didn’t count.
Now, he knows both intimately, and it no longer makes any sense. There are both urges, certainly, but there’s no ‘or’ about it. He wants to do both at the same time and it’s tearing him apart.
He wants to shift, and then run so fast that his front legs meet his back ones on every second step.
Gray makes a decision. He can’t stay here hovering on the cusp of both options, not if there is any chance that ‘fight’ will win out and he will ruin everything for Jax by behaving like a dumb wolf.
The window is big enough to climb out of. He does it before the human thoughts can make him change his mind and do something stupid.
Human limbs are what’s stupid, Gray grumbles to himself as he awkwardly clambers onto the toilet in order to reach the window. The wolf could jump this in seconds.
The grass below the window is dry and soft, and smells like heaven. Gray lets himself fall, then turns and lies flat on his stomach for a moment, his nose pressed flat against the blades.
Relief floods his brain along with the scent of the soil and greenery, finally overtaking the stink of angry alphas.
He raises his head reluctantly and gets awkwardly to his feet. The meadow is fenced off but only by wooden beams, nothing that can’t be clambered over. There’s a small wood hut on the far side.
It’s the forest that he’s focused on. It won’t be free of alphas or alpha scents, but their scents won’t be all encompassing and smothering the way it is in the packhouse, no matter how many doors he puts between them.
The long grass tickles against his legs as he walks. The panic in his belly has subsided, and for a split second, he considers climbing back through the window so he can at least pretend he had stayed for Jax, but the thought of climbing back into a fog of alpha pheromones puts paid to that idea very quickly.
Besides, Gray is sick of running and fighting and being confused. He’s done more of that in the past week than he has in his entire life.
He’s not familiar with this part of the forest. It’s as civilized as the houses on the streets in the town below. He can still smell the town, and the trees are fewer and further between. There are also fewer mice and rabbits in the undergrowth, by the lack of scuttling sounds.
There are more birds though. Gray guesses that’s because the humans leave their food everywhere. He saw a lot of them on the streets, pecking in the gutters and trashcans.
He heads upwards, moving slower than he’d like on his human feet. Frequently, the scents of omegas and alphas drift in on the wind, some paired, others still running and chasing. He gives them all a wide berth and keeps going.
The forest smells right, even with humans playing at a mating run. It smells like home.
It’s not until he picks up the scent of his brother on the wind that he lets himself acknowledge where he is heading.
The scent crisscrosses all over the forest, some only hours old, others’ days and a week. By the sniff of it, the ash-scented wolf followed him down and hasn’t gone back up since.
Ash. The human habit of giving names to everything is sticking.
He finds his brother lying on top of a boulder in the middle of a clearing, deep into the forest, head on his paws. The blue-eyed wolf watches him as he approaches.
Gray has had a lifetime of communicating with his litter-mate non-verbally, and he doesn’t miss the disdain in his brother’s eyes at the sight of Gray in human clothes.
Gray ignores it. He stands up straighter, another habit he’s picked up in his short time among men. Their mannerisms are incredibly catchy.
Ash cocks his head. What do you want?
“I want to talk to you.”
Ash doesn’t move, his head and body still, eyes watchful. So what?
“You need to leave the humans alone.”
The disdain in Ash’s eyes deepens.
“If you want to challenge them, you need to do it properly,” Gray says. “If you want to get an omega mate, you need to court them.”
He hopes Ash doesn’t ask him what ‘court’ means.
Ash gives out a bark that sounds eerily like a human laugh. Again, his meaning is clear. Challenges are for wolves, not humans.
“This won’t be good for the pack.”
Ash cocks his head again. Anger shows in his eyes, but there’s an element of sadness there too, and the message in them strikes a dart into Gray’s heart. You are no longer pack. It’s not your concern.
The blue-eyed wolf stands suddenly from his lying position on the rock. The hackles on the back of his neck rise, and he growls, deep and low. Leave. You were defeated.
His gaze dips to the injured arm and runs over the still-healing weals and scratches on Gray’s skin. His meaning is clear. Gray is in no position for a fight. Ash can kill him now if he wants.
Ash growls again. This not the dominance they played at when they were cubs. This is my territory. I won.
“Not this territory. This doesn’t belong to you.” He meets Ash’s eyes head on.
The blue-eyed wolf growls again.
“Don’t be stupid. You can take on one human or even a pack. You can’t fight all the packs. And they do that. They ally with each other. You’d have to defeat all three mountain packs to win.” It’s the longest sentence Gray has said in a long time. Maybe ever.
Curiosity shows for the first time in Ash’s eyes. He gives a deep long sniff, dark nose shivering. He cocks his head. Eyes like summer sky meet Gray’s. You’ve mated.
Gray bows his head. “Yes.”
He wants to explain it. He wants to tell his brother all about Jax and introduce them. He wants Jax to be part of the wild pack. He wants Jax to meet his father. And with that thought, the impossibility of what he wants falls as heavily as a rock.
Ash killed their father. That is the part that Gray finds the most inexplicable. Isaiah was dying anyway. There was no need to kill him.
Ash leaps from the rock, powerful shoulders launching him off in one easy movement. He lands gracefully on heavy paws. He’s a big wolf. His head rises almost as high as Gray’s chest.
His teeth are bared as he pads across the forest floor, but this is not an attack. Not yet.
He sniffs Gray’s stomach and thighs, circling him, nose cool and ticklish against Gray’s warm human skin. Gray stands completely still, letting him do it.
Finally, satisfied, Ash stands back. Then he does something Gray doesn’t expect.
He shifts.
The blue-eyed man is taller than Gray, chestnut-colored hair and beard still tangled and wild. The healing remains of their fight are drawn across bare skin.
Gray notes with some humiliation that he hadn’t given anything like as hard as he’d got.
“You killed our father,” Gray says. Gray was one thing. Isaiah was something else.
“He was hurting. Wolves don’t die like that” The blue-eyed man cocks his head and bares his teeth. “You must leave now. You don’t belong here anymore.”
“This isn’t your territory,” Gray says but his mind is reeling. Had Ash killed their father to stop him from dying badly? Maybe. But he’d still tried to kill Gray in his sleep.
“Not your territory either,” Ash snarls.
“It belongs to the Winterstokes,” Gray says, shaking away the thoughts of his father.
“They’re weak.”
And just like that, Gray sees the full problem. It’s not just Gray. It’s the Winterstokes too.
Ash has seen Adam Winterstoke limping through the forest, struggling with his cane, and yet somehow and inexplicably still in charge of the Winterstoke pack.
Gray could easily challenge Adam and win once he is healed. Easily. Especially if he plays dirty and takes Adam by surprise like Ash did to Gray.
And if Gray has mated into the Winterstoke pack and already been accepted by them, the other mountain packs will have to accept his leadership.
It’s what Ash would do in his position.
It’s what he believes Gray will do. Gray, fully healed, with the Winterstokes at his back will be able to take back leadership of the wild wolves.
For a moment, he considers it. It would solve all his problems. He’d have both packs. He’d have his family back and he’d have Jax.
Winterstoke Wolves Collection : An MM Mpreg Shifter Romance Bundle Page 30
