by Holley Trent
“Must be alpha magic,” Willa muttered as she guided Quinn to the corridor door.
“What must be?” Quinn whispered.
Willa pinched the bridge of her nose and rolled her eyes at herself. Evidently, she’d never be able to have a private conversation with herself again. “Nothing. Wait here.” She hustled into the hall, swapped Quinn’s loaner trumpet with her personal one from the locked storage closet along with some new drumsticks she needed for class, and reengaged the lock.
When she returned to the door, Quinn—disobedient for a change—had given up her station and joined Diana by the cubby of muddy sneakers near the back of the room.
“Rained last week,” Quinn told her. “Just started pouring down when we were out doing marching drills. We figured we should bring in some old shoes to change into just in case it happens again.”
“Fascinating that the child isn’t terrified of her,” Blue murmured to Willa.
She’d been so distracted that she hadn’t sensed him edging into her periphery.
She couldn’t keep that up. Dangerous things happened when Willa couldn’t hold her focus and predict motives. So many of her scars were because she’d trusted people to behave predictably, and self-serving people rarely did.
Suddenly cold, she chafed her arms. “W-why would she be afraid of Diana?”
“All the kids in Sparks are. Could be reputation more than personality. Hard to say.”
“Are they afraid of you?”
“Yep.”
“Do they have a reason to be?”
He shrugged.
Weary to her bones, she sighed. “I want both of you to leave.”
Quinn wrapped her arm around Diana’s and tugged her across the room to the trumpet cubbies. “Ms. Matheson said I can help her paint the cubbies this summer.”
“Ooh, I love painting,” Diana said, following along. “It’s so relaxing.”
Blue snorted. “Nah. Not going anywhere.”
“Do my requests mean nothing to you?” Willa asked.
“Nah. Not the kneejerk ones. Try me with something you’ve actually thought about.” His lips curved up at one corner, and the creases at the outside corners of his eyes deepened.
He was teasing her. She hated being diminished. Apollo could make her feel small and unimportant with just a blink. She didn’t need any reminders of him.
“Maybe I’ll oblige.”
That statement from Blue snapped something wild loose in her. “And maybe I’ll—” As three more students strode into the room, her mouth snapped shut and her hands reflexively tugged at the bottom of her untucked shirt.
Oh no.
In that moment of tense uncertainty, Willa pondered oblivion. Oblivion seemed easier than what was probably going to escalate into a supernatural feud. Parents of middle schoolers had an even more robust grapevine than little old ladies in country churches. There were no secrets, and she was going to find out just how quickly news passed. Another Coyote, one Cougar, and one witch paused on the rubber entry mat. The supernatural kids all knew what Willa was, but she was a nobody in the scheme of things. Her special guests, on the other hand, were definitely worth mentioning.
Willa held her breath as the witch Sarah—a tell-it-like-it-is sort of witch—squinted at Blue for several seconds.
Then she tossed her hair with a “Hmm,” and took her seat at first flute’s position.
The Cougar boy backed slowly out of the room, cell phone to ear, eyes wide.
Oh no.
The other Coyote, another girl, looked from Willa, to Blue, to Diana. She set her backpack and clarinet case beneath her chair and shuffled meekly to Quinn and Diana.
“I believe what you’re currently witnessing,” Blue whispered with a laugh, “is the Coyote phenomenon of latching.”
“Never heard of it,” she said distractedly. If she were the betting type, she would have put her lunch money on a wager that Ben Dane was either calling his father or a Foye about there being a dominant Coyote in the classroom.
“Of course you wouldn’t with the pack being how it is. Latching is normal. Never expected to see it happening to Diana, though.”
Willa could see the top of Ben’s brown hair at the base of the far window. She let out a breath and smoothed the shirt she’d badly wrinkled.
Most people didn’t worry about problems until they actually materialized. Willa wasn’t most people. She was going to be anxious until the whole mess passed over, if it even did.
She dragged her tongue across her lips, took a breath, and turned to him. Most of the time, she did a decent job of being a functional adult in front of the children. “What is latching?”
“Natural tendency for kids to gravitate to strong females and bond with them in case there’s ever a disaster. She’d keep them all straight.”
“Huh.”
“It’s a pack feature,” he said, grinning again as if it wasn’t perfectly obvious Willa was overwhelmed. Her eyes certainly felt wide enough. “Not a bug. Probably wouldn’t be a good idea for you to shoo her out of here so quickly.”
Wringing her hands, Willa watched the two younger Coyotes at the counter show off their instruments to a Diana, who was doing a fantastic job of at least pretending she cared. “Of course I didn’t want to do that if Diana being there was good for the girls,” Willa said in a rushed whisper and then forced her gaze to his. Dark eyes with a savage glint, so fixed and steady.
Not like the other alphas she’d watched.
The others had all been scary because they drank or liked guns too much, or enjoyed terrorizing women. Blue was an intelligent predator who not only had the power to make weaker Coyotes submit, but also to lure the women in close with his charm and winsomeness.
Willa was close. Too close. She was standing in his trap and he was going to make her submit like all the rest. She couldn’t.
Not even if she wanted to. Apollo thought her world should revolve around him, and he took offense when it was apparent it didn’t.
Staying off his radar meant being alone. Loneliness was crippling at times, but at least she didn’t spread the misery around that way.
“Y-you can leave,” she whispered and edged away from him a foot. “You’re distracting, and I have other Cougar students who aren’t going to want to be around you. Ben’s probably calling Mason right now.”
“You know that’s ridiculous,” he said in an undertone. “What does he think I’m going to do to kids?”
“He doesn’t know you. He has to make assumptions based on past pack behavior, I guess.”
“Then I guess I’d better go find that dude and have a chat.”
“M-maybe you should.” Willa pointed to the door. “Good-bye, Alpha.”
Slipping his hands into the pockets of his slacks, he looked slowly to the door and watched a stream of students queue in.
Go. Please.
She tugged at her shirt hem again and concentrated on steady breathing, on quieting the warning klaxon screaming in her head.
They were all looking at him, the imposing stranger she was terrified of but whom she really couldn’t send away. Whether she liked to admit it or not, he was integral to shapeshifter order in Maria, and they were meant to cooperate.
He was supposed to be making her life easier, but since the day he’d arrived, all she’d known was chaos.
“I’d like for things to be easy now,” she whispered, more to herself than to him.
If he heard, he didn’t respond. He gave his sister a discreet nod of farewell and left.
Willa took a breath. And then another.
Wasn’t enough, but it’d have to do.
She put all the commotion in her brain into an imaginary pot and pushed it to the backburner. She’d deal with it later.
Busy. Busy. Just keep busy.
She cleared her throat and smiled as she waved Terry Kirk over. “Do you have a practice card to turn in?” she asked the perpetually disorganized tuba player. “I really don’
t want to put a zero in my grade book for you.”
He gave his forehead a duh tap. “I forgot.”
“Use my computer and e-mail your mom. Help me out here. I’m just one lady trying to keep up with you all.”
Chapter Seven
After thanking Kenny for his tip, Blue dropped his phone into his pocket and marched into the heart of Maria in search of Mason Foye.
Blue hadn’t met the man even after six months in Maria, which seemed improbable, at best. The town was the size of a lint speck, and the entire downtown grid could be walked in less than twenty minutes if the person doing the walking was spry enough. Even if Mason lived out on a ranch somewhere out in the gods-forsaken desert, Blue figured he ought to have seen a glimpse of him at least once.
Kenny had seen him, though, and apparently he’d just gone into the Better Builders hardware store with a long list in hand. He’d be in there for a while. Blue figured he might as well tack on a little chat to the man’s errand.
Whistling as he stepped into the humid store, he gave the wizened clerk at the desk a wave and scanned the long aisles in search of an alpha shifter with red hair. Supposedly, he was good looking, but he was going on third-hand information with that, and what Blue counted as attractive probably didn’t match up well with what Tina Height thought. After all, she was a Coyote of a certain sort—smarter on four legs than on two.
His phone buzzed right as he spotted his probable suspect kneeling at the end of an aisle, digging into what looked to be a vat of washers. Alphas were always on-call, so he couldn’t ignore the phone. A glance at the screen made him wish he had.
It seemed Diana had an unsolicited scouting report for him.
Diana: Of the thirty children in this band room, four are Coyotes, three are Cougars, and two are witches.
“Huh,” Blue grunted. He couldn’t say for sure that the stats were normal for a public school. He’d gone to private school until college, and he’d been the only shifter in his graduating class.
Blue: Is there a problem?
Diana: No. These little witches, like most decent ones, are neutral. They’ll be curious, but won’t say anything untoward. Given their ages, the Cougars have to know who Willa is associated with, but they seem more concerned about me than about Willa.
He could see why that would be the case. Of all the things Willa was, dangerous wasn’t one of them. Diana, on the other hand, was the daughter of a born alpha. She was probably pinging those kids’ paranormal radars like a missile coming in hot. Plus, she couldn’t avoid showing a bit of fang when she smiled—an unfortunate genetic quirk of all Coyote shifters. Most were pretty good at keeping their lips together when they were sober.
Blue: And do I want to know what the dangerous demigoddess is doing?
Wanting to know what his nemesis and foil was up to and needing to know were two different things entirely. She’d find some way to subvert him, no matter what he did, but maybe he was a masochist who just couldn’t stop himself from picking fights with her. They weren’t even fun, and they sure as shit weren’t productive.
Diana: She’s outside walking the kids through marching drills.
Diana: Class ends in ten minutes. If I’m reading this schedule correctly, she has sixth-graders for fourth block, and school lets out at 3:35.
Blue had no idea if he had any sixth-graders in the pack. Not having kids of his own, that wasn’t information he’d ever had a reason to keep up with before, and he was pretty sure his father didn’t make an effort to know those details either.
Blue tossed the phone from hand to hand and chewed the inside of his cheek. He’d never wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father. There were as many different ways to be an alpha as there were alphas, and Blue had always thought he’d do his own thing. Yet, with every new scenario in Maria, he immediately thought about his father’s framework for the same thing. He had to break out of that compulsion, because he wasn’t anything like his father, and the worst possible outcome for him would be to act like the man in spite of his disgust for him.
He closed the text from Diana and sent one to Kenny.
Blue: Hey. Can you get me a list of all the kids in the pack along with their schools and ages? Names of their teachers, too, if the information is easy to come by.
Kenny: Yep, give me a few hours.
“That’s my boy,” Blue murmured. Unlike Willa, Kenny didn’t question every damn thing Blue did. Blue closed the text from Kenny and sent one to Diana.
Blue: I’m in the hardware store about to talk to the Cougar alpha. If you’re going to play double agent while you’re here, do me a favor and corral Willa someplace where I can find her after school. She’s good at slipping away.
Diana: I’ll do what I can . . . And I won’t say anything to OG about her. He assumes she’s got magic, and I don’t see the point of disabusing him of that notion. She’s odd in a way I can’t put a finger on. Not in a bad way, but I’m frustrated that I can’t figure out what it is about her.
“So it’s not just me, then,” he mused, putting the phone away. Willa had a way of persisting in his mind like some forgotten to-do list item. Diana may have felt the same.
He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with the woman, though, besides getting her out of the way so he could run the damned pack.
As Blue turned down the only remaining aisle, Mason Foye looked up and stood, and one of his auburn eyebrows inched up slowly as his lips peeled back and curved fangs descended from his gums.
The part of Blue that was wild dog bristled at the insult. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end, and the threatening prickles in his spine warned of an involuntary shift to his animal form.
Closing his eyes, Blue stretched his neck to one side and then the other, quietly murmuring to his inner wild thing, “Not yet.” He was an alpha. He wouldn’t let his urges control him.
“Settle down,” he said to the cat. “If you start hissing, we’re gonna have a problem.”
“The way I see things,” Mason said low, “we already have a problem.”
Blue opened his eyes at that, and found the Cougar twisting a wicked knot into the clear plastic bag he’d scooped washers into. Mason probably tried most of the time to keep his energy reined in so it didn’t suffocate the energy sensitive sorts around him. Humans probably couldn’t sense the thick magic pouring off him, but it was likely powerful enough to clench the ass of any shifter or witch in a two-block radius. Fortunately, Blue was made of sterner stuff than most supernatural weirdos. His ass was unaffected.
He rubbed down the hair on the back of his neck, though, and leaned against the nearby support column. If he didn’t look like he was on the attack, there was a chance he could keep the confrontation mellow—or as mellow as a conversation could be between two men with fangs. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” he said to Mason.
“What do you want?”
“Didn’t it maybe cross your mind that we’re overdue for a proper introduction?”
“A proper introduction would have been you making an effort to meet with me before right now, in the fucking hardware store, in a place owned by people who have no clue what kind of beasts they’re harboring.”
“So, you’re just assuming this is going to get ugly.”
Nostrils flaring, Mason knocked his hair back from his eyes and swallowed loud enough for Blue to hear.
It was usually never a good thing if a man had to slow himself before speaking. If Blue had been a lesser Coyote, he might have taken a step or two back to give Mason some space, but if they were going to have a pissing contest, Blue was going to be up close and personal with it. He sure as shit wasn’t about to make himself Mason Foye’s punk. Blue was probably riding a bike without training wheels when Mason was still in diapers.
“When I heard that the last alpha disappeared,” Mason said through clenched teeth, “I said a little prayer to whichever god gave a damn that the pack wouldn’t get another.”
“And w
hy the hell would you do that?”
“I find it hard to believe that you’re as clueless about what you’ve acquired as you make out. That either means you’re a liar—and makes you dangerous—or you’re stupid.” Mason shrugged. “Being stupid would make you dangerous, too, I guess.”
“Apparently, your reputation isn’t overblown. You’re definitely an asshole, and I’ve got three degrees that say I’m not stupid. That’s book smarts, but I do okay on common sense, too. Common sense is why I’m having this conversation with you in public.” Blue smiled and didn’t care if there was fang showing. There was no way in hell the cashier could see them through the security monitor, even if he zoomed in tight. “If we’re gonna fight, we can fight. Not here, though. Not in public. Name the time and date, and we can do it properly and with an audience if you’d like.” He shrugged. “No holds barred. I’ll even let you have first swing.”
Mason’s narrowed eyes had turned a feline shade of green and the pupils had narrowed into nearly invisible filaments.
Blue couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so close to a Cougar. He was charting new territory and should have been more careful, but it was too late for him to retreat. He’d crossed paths with all sorts of people in Vegas, but folks there tended to leave each other the hell alone as a matter of course. Maria was too small a place for two alphas to keep to their respective corners.
“The best thing for me, and my Cougars,” Mason said tightly, “would be for you to go away and for the rest of your dogs to follow you.”
Clucking his tongue, Blue shook his head. “Well. Unfortunately for you, I don’t see that happening. Coyotes have been here a long time.”
“The Cougars have been here for longer, and unlike you, we don’t make trouble.”
“You want to blame me for shit that happened before I came?” Blue put up his hands. “Fine. I can see how a small mind would immediately leap to that conclusion, so I’m not going to argue with you. I just wanted you to see my face. I wanted you to hear my voice. Wanted you to taste my energy so you know who you’re dealing with.”
