Otto follows the signs at the end of the lobby, takes a couple of staircases and finds his room without any trouble.
The windows overlook the main street giving him a good view of both sides, as well as a second street that runs steeply up towards the mountains.
That’ll be the road leading up to the packhouse, Otto remembers from the file, his mind supplying him with a mental map.
There’ll be vacation cabins dotted along the way with the packhouse at the top, then the road continues getting rougher as it snakes through miles of forest dotted with turn offs to various hiking spots.
Finally, right at the end of the road, off one of the turn offs, there’s a cabin belonging to the Winterstokes that they think is secret.
He wonders if it’s worth taking a drive up to familiarize himself with the route and layout of the land.
No, too risky. Even a laid backpack like the Winterstokes will be alert to any signs of interference with the summit coming up. He’ll go afterwards when they’re feeling a little more secure.
Both Callisters turn up dead on time. A knock sounds at the door the moment that the hand ticks over on Otto’s watch.
Dan Callister is tall, even for an alpha but whatever alpha genes gave him the height didn’t give him the accompanying bulk.
He’s a lanky string-bean of a man topped with sandy-colored hair and gray-green eyes that size Otto up in three seconds flat and find him wanting.
His scent is...peculiar. It’s definitely alpha, but he doesn’t smell scared in the presence of a superior, or angry the way he should be if he’s not scared.
He smells... Otto’s not sure what he smells like. Perhaps that’s the wrongness in him. He’ll have to ask Hamish if he picked it up too.
Whatever it is, Callister doesn’t smell bad, just different.
“Close the door,” Otto orders.
Elyse obeys immediately. Dan watches, his gray-green eyes cautious.
Otto folds his arms, letting his muscles bulge out and standing up that little bit straighter so his height is on display. He puts on the same slightly-pissed expression that he’s worn a thousand times when he needs to make sure someone knows he’s in charge.
Dan’s eyes narrow, then for a split second, they crinkle up at the corner as if he’s about to burst out laughing. The expression is gone almost instantly, followed by a carefully blank expression that Otto wants to wipe off his face as badly as the amusement.
Hamish was right about him. No loyalty and no respect.
“Before we get down to business,” Otto says firmly, “we’ve looked into that runaway omega from your description last night—” Dan’s eyes flicker to Elyse and back to Otto in a microsecond. Interesting, Otto thinks. There’s a disagreement there. “—and we’ve identified him as Caleb Sherwood. He’s on the run from the River Beach pack.”
Elyse nods, but Dan’s body stiffens slightly.
Now, is that the disagreement or is it because you know who runs River Beach?
“Your orders are to leave it for now but keep an eye on him. If anything new develops, let me know immediately. Is that clear?”
Elyse nods again, but Dan doesn’t. His eyes remain fixed on Otto’s face.
“I said, is that clear?” Otto says again.
This time Dan nods. “Yes, sir.”
You’ll have to watch him. His heart’s not in it, Hamish had said. That’d be obvious to a blind man. The only thing that Otto doesn’t quite understand is why Dan isn’t at least pretending to care.
Otto makes a split-second decision. He needs to get this man under control now. He can’t risk Dan Callister screwing this up for him. Besides, he’s not going to hurt the guy. Not unless he has to.
He turns to Elyse, “Leave us.”
Confusion crosses her eyes.
“Now.”
“Yes, of course. Let me know if you need me,” Elyse says as she leaves, shutting the door behind her.
Otto turns back from her to Dan. The tall alpha is leaning against the wall on the far side of room, superficially casual but there’s a hint of uncertainty in his eyes, even if his scent hasn’t changed.
Whatever he’s feeling, it’s not fear. Otto’s never taken pleasure in scaring people, but a lot of the time, it’s what gets the job done.
“Why do I get the feeling you’re not completely on board?” he says, walking over to the sheriff. Otto keeps his back straight and his arms folded, letting his bulk speak for him.
It’s not as easy to physically intimidate another alpha, especially when he’s got a couple of inches on you in height, but that’s not to say it can’t be done.
Dan should try to move back. He doesn’t. Instead, he just stands taller.
Otto feels a flush of irritation.
“Because I’m not,” the soft alpha replies. He looks Otto right in the eye when he says it. “You already know that and I know that you know that. You’ll have read my file. You’ll have talked to Hamish. You know what I am. You want me to pretend I’m fine with being blackmailed? You wouldn’t believe me anyway.”
“So, tell me why I shouldn’t kill you right now? That’s the price Ronmin demands for disloyalty. We both know that too.”
This is Otto’s first assignment outside of being Ronmin’s muscle. If he gets it wrong, Ronmin will kill both of them.
Better one of them dead than both.
Otto’s gun is the bottom of his backpack. He could have it out and up against the man’s temple in under thirty seconds.
Dan shrugs casually as if Otto hadn’t been talking about his murder seconds before. “Because I am doing as I’m told. I’m just not smiling about it. Look, I get it. You’re the new guy. You need to assert your authority. I get that and I’m not going to challenge it. I’m just not going to lie to you or me that I like it.”
Otto is standing far too close now, almost chest to chest. Otto can hear the sound of Dan’s breathing, but Dan still isn’t backing away like he’s supposed to be.
He should be leaning his body back further back against the wall, practically pushing himself through the plaster to get away from Otto’s presence.
Instead, he doesn’t. He just stands there solidly, letting Otto do his best to loom over him.
His eyes aren’t meeting Otto’s though. The sheriff is staring at the other side of the room as if he’s found something of endless fascination there.
“Look at me,” Otto orders.
Dan’s gaze flicks to Otto’s then away again.
Is that...? It is. There’s that flash of amusement in his eyes again as if the sheriff finds Otto’s attempts to intimidate him funny.
Fury sears through his veins in a micro-second, turning his muscles white-hot with rage.
Otto shoves Dan hard, feeling the other man’s body thump up against the wall, and is finally rewarded with a reaction.
The man’s eyes widen and the scent of fear pumps out of him.
Good.
Otto brings his hand up, forearm against Dan’s chest and lays his hand across the man’s throat. He’s not squeezing but they both know that he could.
“You are not going to fuck this up for me,” Otto hisses. “So yeah, you better lie. Lie to me hard enough that you believe it.”
Dan says nothing, but his breath hitches. He’s close enough that Otto can feel the warmth of it against his cheek, and under Otto’s forearm, the man’s heart is rabbiting in his chest.
A feeling of surrealness falls over him as he stands there, body pressed against the soft alpha’s and Otto realizes that he would never do this to an omega. It would feel entirely too intimate.
Dan’s gray-green eyes meet his and there’s a vulnerability in there that transforms his fury to shame.
This time, Otto’s the one to look away. He steps back, trying to seem calm even though his own heart is racing now.
“Get out. I’ll deal with you later.”
Dan peels himself away from the wall as casually as if they’d been talking
about the weather, and leaves, closing the door with a soft click.
Otto resists the urge to throw something at it. He’s not even been in Aylewood an hour and everything’s already unravelling.
Callister said the right words, his body didn’t follow. He should have backed down, backed away. He didn’t.
Otto should kill him. Kill him and replace him with a more biddable beta who’d do as he was told.
He’s never murdered anyone before and he doesn’t want to now, but he’s always known it was coming. If he stays in the Fort Gosford pack, sooner or later that it going to be the price of staying alive. Him or someone else.
Just do as you’re told, Callister. None of us has to get hurt as long as you do as you’re told.
He sits heavily on the bed and puts his head in his hands. He breathes in deeply, steadying himself, then reaches over for the backpack he’d dumped on the bed only moments earlier.
He tips it out, and then rummages around at the bottom for the secret compartment sewn into the lining. The phone at the bottom of the bag cost him almost a month’s salary. It’s small and slim: a top-of-the-range security model with a battery that lasts forever.
Otto presses in the button to turn it on, then goes through the security procedures. A few minutes later, he’s staring at the balance in his secret bank account.
It hasn’t changed. It wouldn’t have, but this is what he needs to focus on: those five figures. As soon as they get high enough, he’ll have enough to get out and stay out.
And if he plays his cards right, he’ll be able to get out before he’s forced to do something really bad.
DAN
runaways and the urge to pee
“Why not just leave the guy alone?” Dan says through gritted teeth. “I don’t see what difference it makes.”
They’re parked in a rest area just past the Foresters Inn listening to the audio feed from the bug Dan planted earlier in the day.
“The difference,” Otto replies in a too-patient tone that makes Dan want to scream, “is chaos. Chaos creates opportunity.”
“Caleb Sherwood’s got nothing to do with this,” Dan says. “You know it’s a dick move.”
“Watch your mouth. You’re getting dangerously close to subordination,” Otto says but there’s no anger to it. In fact, he hardly seems to be paying attention.
Instead, he doodles on the legal pad in front of him, making notes as he eavesdrops on the summit. “Besides, your Winterstoke boys haven’t even bothered to do anything with the information I sent them. Are you sure they got it?”
“I’m sure I gave you the right email address. How am I going to ask without raising suspicion?”
Otto grunts. Dan risks a side-long glance at him. He’s a weird one. Dan still hasn’t got a handle on him.
Hamish never used to stay around this long. The old man would check in on them occasionally, make sure that he asked enough questions to check every box in case someone asked, and was usually on his way home within twenty-four hours. Dan has already spent more time with Otto than he ever did with Hamish.
Dan wishes he’d go create his chaos somewhere else. Otto has been in town for all of six days and Dan has been biting the inside of his cheek to stop himself from telling the man to go fuck himself for every single minute of it.
He’s met alphas like this before. They all want to beat their chests and show they’re the big man in town. Otto hasn’t laid a hand on Dan, not since that first day but the threat is still there.
That first day with Otto pressed right up against Dan’s chest so close that Dan could feel the heat of his skin, Dan had wondered for the briefest instant if Otto was like him: wrong.
Ronmin will have something on Otto. Ronmin has something on everyone. It’s the way he operates. Maybe that’s Otto’s thing.
Dan’s been thinking about that moment a lot, returning to it over and over again like poking a loose tooth.
Otto had pushed him up against the wall, pure alpha dominance rolling off of him and for a moment, it felt like... well, it felt like a moment.
It wasn’t. It can’t have been, and the only reason that Dan thinks so is because he hasn’t gotten any in years.
The Aylewood pack leader summit is almost over and that should be it. The man will go back to where he came from and not bother them again until the next summit. Or so Dan hopes.
They’ve been here for an hour and Otto is already shifting uncomfortably in his seat. The brute is too big for the passenger seat of Dan’s car. His knees knock against the dashboard and he has to dip his head to stop it from hitting the ceiling.
Dan’s taking a certain amount of pleasure in holding back the trick to working the seat controls in his creaky old sedan.
If the thug wants to sell out runaway omegas for nothing other than ‘chaos’, he can at least have uncomfortable knees.
The voice of Isaiah, leader of the wild wolves, sounds over the speakers. He’s ten minutes into a rant about the necessity of the other packs keeping out of his territory.
So far, absolutely nothing of importance has been mentioned by any of the Aylewood packs, something Dan could have told Otto and he had, but the big man just insisted on coming along like the big brutish lump he is.
And that just brings him back to the mystery that is Otto McInnes. The man has brute written all over him and Dan doesn’t want to think about what kinds of thing that Ronmin’s had doing for him. The kind of thing that results in a man getting a broken nose or a thick roped scar at the back of his shaved head.
Yet there’s been nothing like that first display of force on the first day, almost as if Otto tried a method, found it didn’t work and discarded it.
Now he seems to be shadowing Dan’s every spare moment as if he can simply annoy him into giving something up.
He comes across like nothing other than a man doing a job. A job that involves selling out omegas and killing people.
Yeah, Dan definitely doesn’t understand him. Not one bit.
The voices over the speakers have changed. Isaiah has been satisfied and now they’re getting onto the admin of the day.
Otto listens with his head cocked, his pen scratching on the pad.
Dan sighs and leans back in the seat. It’s freezing outside but he really wants to crack a window. They’ve been in here for over an hour and it’s getting a bit close. Otto’s alpha scent isn’t bad, but it is strong and the close quarters are starting to make Dan jittery.
He reaches over for the window handle.
“Leave it,” Otto states without looking up.
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
Dan leaves it, his stomach tight with irritation. He finished his coffee half an hour ago and his bladder is starting to nudge at him.
He reaches for the handle again.
“I said leave it.”
“I need to pee.”
“Hold it in,” Otto says. He’s still not looking up from the pad. Over the speakers, Adam Winterstoke’s voice reads out the legalese on the pack agreements.
“Seriously? What for?”
“The Winterstokes might pick up your scent.”
“No, they won’t. And even if they did, so what? I’d just say I was patrolling. They know I’m around.”
“I said no.”
Dan clenches his fists in irritation. Is this some kind of test? Is Otto trying to work out how far he can push him? What for?
“You are being a real asshole,” Dan says through gritted teeth.
“I know,” Otto says as he doodles. The sun is going down through the trees. It glints through the glass of the window and paints his face in black and gold, leaving half of his broken nose in shadow, the other half lit up. It makes him look like a demented hawk.
“Why?”
Otto finally looks up from his legal pad. His eyes are a deep soft brown that look out of place in his rough face.
“Just do as you’re told.”
Before Dan can
argue any further, Otto’s phone rings, the ringtone an electronic burbling makes Dan’s ears itch.
Otto puts the phone up to his ear as he answers. Dan picks up the sound of Elyse’s voice but it’s too muffled to hear the words.
“Why’s he running?” Otto asks.
Elyse gives another muffled answer.
“Call the Winterstokes and tell them,” Otto says and hangs up.
“What was that about?”
“Your runaway’s on the run. Elyse just saw him shift and run like the hounds of hell were after him.”
“What did you do?” The runaway was safe or thought he was. He wasn’t going to run for no good reason. Otto did something.
For the first time in days, a flush of anger crosses Otto’s face. “I did nothing. I’m not responsible for everything that goes wrong in this town. Now be quiet. I need to listen.”
The phone rings in the summit room, and a minute later Luke Winterstoke’s voice sounds over the speakers, his tone furious.
Dan’s heart sinks. Dan had popped into the bookstore a handful of times in the last week and Caleb Sherwood, or whatever he was calling himself, seemed like a decent guy.
He deserved better. Dan also doesn’t believe a word that Otto just said. Of course, he did something. Why else would a runaway who was otherwise safe suddenly make a run for it?
“Fuck you,” Dan says suddenly, the words just spilling out before he has the chance to bite his tongue.
The big man suddenly stills, his pen pausing in mid-scribble. He looks straight ahead when he answers. “Excuse me? You want to repeat that? And you better think very carefully before you answer.”
Dan does. The hurt in Luke Winterstoke’s voice is still ringing in his ears, and here is this brute of a man, responsible for all of it just sitting there like ruining people’s lives is nothing more than a job.
Dan thinks about it very carefully. And makes his choice.
“Fuck you,” he says again.
“You want to start a fight me? Are you insane?”
“No, but I am pissed off.” Also, maybe insane. “I’m going to pee.”
He doesn’t wait for Otto to give permission or to punch him in the face. He just opens the car door and walks off toward the tree line, heart racing.
Winterstoke Wolves Collection : An MM Mpreg Shifter Romance Bundle Page 69
