by Holley Trent
“Why is that so easy for you to say?”
“Because I’m with Blue.” She imagined Kenny shrugging. “I lived in Vegas long enough to know what a safe bet looks like, and Blue’s it.”
She hoped so. Even with as long as she’d been alive and everything she’d seen, she was convinced that sure bets and unicorns were in the very same league. Her luck wouldn’t have won her even a dollar in Vegas.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Blue hated having the taste of other people’s blood in his mouth, but as he chased Erwin Donner into the desert about five miles outside of Maria, he was ready to take another chunk out of the guy. Erwin had obviously thought that Blue was going to go along with the game of chicken he and his friends were playing, but Blue didn’t have time for games.
Much to the chagrin of his animal half, he’d bounced out of Willa’s—Safya’s—house as though his fucking feet were on fire to nip a problem in the bud before he’d even had a cup of coffee.
He hated that shit. He hated when people couldn’t be assholes during banker’s hours.
Slowing enough to catch glimpses of Kenny and Lance at either side of him, he let out a howl of warning to Erwin.
Last warning he’ll get.
One more burst of speed and a leap, and he was on Erwin’s back, fangs in his scruff, rolling him through thorny foliage and hard desert dirt.
Erwin scrambled beneath him, trying to wriggle his wiry body out from beneath the pin, but Blue’s latch was set too deep. Erwin’s choices were to either bleed to death or capitulate.
Blue wasn’t going to make any bets on how stupid Erwin was. People had a way of surprising him when it came to that.
Erwin went still and whimpered his defeat, so Blue got off him, immediately pushing his bones back into their human configuration, stretching his muscles, letting the fur recede. He needed to be able to speak, and being on two legs didn’t make him weaker—just slower.
He looped an arm around Erwin’s neck and waited for Lance and Kenny to drag their catches over.
Lance shifted back first, muttering, “Son of a bitch,” under his breath as he worked the kinks out of his neck. Sighing, he put his foot on top of Jeff Egan’s head, looking something like a naked pirate with his hands on his hips and scowl on his face.
Kenny returned to his natural form last, rolled his eyes, and grabbed Mac around the neck. One hard shake. Then another. One more.
Mac’s thorn-matted fur began to shiver with his rippling skin. His unceasing howl turned into a human scream as he was yanked out of his dog’s body.
As Mac panted to catch his breath, Lance folded his arms over his chest and clucked his tongue. “Use some fuckin’ finesse, Ken.” Lance gave Jeff’s haunches a swift kick, triggering a shift equally as violent as the one Kenny had.
Kenny glared at his cousin. Or in his general direction, anyway. The effect was more severe when he was wearing his glasses. His focus was a bit off.
Blue didn’t bother forcing Erwin to shift back. He’d heal faster in his canine form, anyway, and Blue’s bite had been deep. He could say what he needed to say without Erwin having human ears.
“The three of you have until the end of the day to get out of town. Your families have forty-eight hours. Kenny’ll forward your pack transfer letters to wherever they need to go. I’d pitch your asses out without them if it weren’t for the fact some bottom-scraping asshole would pick you up anyway just to spite me.”
Probably even someone from Sparks.
Blue wouldn’t put it past his father to try to snap up any fleeing Coyotes and recruit them to the cause of making Blue miserable enough to change his mind.
“You can’t do this,” Jeff murmured into the dirt. “Can’t come in here taking over shit like you own the place.”
“Want me to kick him again?” Lance asked.
“Nah. I don’t think you need to.” Blue squatted in front of the prone dog and looked into his watery, bloodshot eyes. “But I reserve the right to change my mind. I gave you all six months to get with the program. It wasn’t that hard. I didn’t ask for much, just to keep your business out of the streets so the humans who don’t know about us continue not knowing about us. We tried to help you. Offered our energy to whoever needed it.”
“Keep your energy, punk,” Mac said.
Blue looked to the sky and said a prayer to whichever deity was responsible for maintaining the eternal fountain of self-restraint. They seemed to be asleep on the job. He was itching to put a fist through Mac’s face.
“Have you noticed that the people who are following the rules now are socially acclimatizing?” Blue asked him through his clenched teeth, curbing his bloodier impulses. “That they’re showing up for work more often and taking home more pay to their families? That they’re taking care of their homes and setting goals for the future?”
“That ain’t the Coyote way.”
“Maybe it’s not what you’re used to, but it is the Coyote way in places where the alphas saw the tides changing a hundred years ago. That’s the way it is in Nevada, Utah, California, and all over the Midwest.” Oklahoma, as always, excluded. The pack in Oklahoma may have been even more backward than the one in Maria had been six months ago. “You’ve decided you want to swim against the current here?” Blue shrugged. “I’m not going to let you because you’d be disrupting the folks who play by the rules. So get the hell out and take the rest of your posse of miscreants with you. We know who they are. Tell them today to go so I don’t have to shame them in front of their neighbors and force them out. Go where everyone else is going the same way as you, and I give you my best wishes.”
Or they could go fuck themselves, for all he cared. As long as they did it outside of Maria.
The men got up and staggered away in the general direction of town. Erwin shambled after them in his four-legged form.
When they were out of earshot, Blue dragged his hand down his face and murmured, “Timing for Mac’s little stunt this morning seems suspicious to me.”
“How so?” Kenny asked.
“Coyotes don’t do shit like that first thing in the morning. They knew I was preoccupied.”
“Who wouldn’t be preoccupied at seven a.m.?” Lance asked.
They all started moving toward Maria. Running in their coyote forms would have been faster, but they couldn’t skip the conference. As much as Blue preferred to keep people out of his personal business, he had to let his lieutenants in the loop about Willa. He wasn’t going to be able to hide what she was to him for long. Being honest up front would show he still trusted them, and trust was the most valuable currency he had.
“Willa called you, Ken, because I told her to when I was walking out of her house.”
Kenny narrowly missed stepping over a thorny bush. The guy needed LASIK ASAP. “What were you doing coming out of Willa’s house at coffee o’clock?”
“Putting my clothes back on.”
They walked in pondering silence for a little while, both lieutenants probably running down the usual mental checklist of possibilities, both probably asking and answering their own questions until they ran out of them.
Then they both stopped walking at once and stared at Blue.
Blue kept moving. He didn’t want to be out in the desert at midday. Skin cancer was a real thing, even for shapeshifters. It wouldn’t kill them—their immune systems mostly obliterated any rogue cells in their bodies—but it certainly contributed to the ugly for as long as it lasted.
“Uh, Blue?” Kenny caught up to him. “I know there’s a fine line between secrecy and kissing and telling, but—”
“I’m not doing that. Understand?” Blue didn’t want Willa and thoughts of nakedness anywhere near each other in anyone’s head except his and hers.
“Yeah, I understand. But I need to know if the two of you are just . . . negotiating the terms of your pack management agreement or if her house is your house now.”
“The latter.” Even if she didn’t know it.
Blue would be a much nicer person if he knew where she was most of the time. That was a problem easily solved by being in the same place she was outside of work hours.
“Okay, so,” Lance started, “what’s normally the protocol for this? I doubt it’s the same as for any other Coyote taking a partner.”
“Not just a partner,” Blue said. “The coyote in me wants her. The man agrees. That makes her my mate.”
“Which makes you more dangerous in matters concerning her.”
“Only to people who want to push their luck.”
“Should you tell your father?” Kenny asked.
Kenny had always had a knack for drilling down to the core of a problem fast. That was one of the reasons Blue had agreed to hire him. He didn’t waste time with bullshit.
“If I thought it’d make a positive difference,” Blue said, “I would. With the way she is, he’ll consider her a liability to me. He’s going to try to exploit that and force his will on all of us.”
“In spite of the certainty of you staying in Maria?”
“Nothing’s certain yet. He could try to take this from me. He doesn’t give a damn about me, only the deals he makes.” His words were cynical, but for the first time in longer than he could remember, he let himself harbor a tiny kernel of optimism. A hell of a lot of luck would have to come into play, but things might actually unfold in everyone’s favor. Blue not only got a mate, but also her pack, which would give him unimpeachable autonomy from his father once the dust settled and all the feuds played out.
Once word got around to Bruno that Blue had defected, there would certainly be some. Blue wasn’t going to wait for his father. He was going to tell Bruno the news himself so OG wouldn’t be able to demand that Blue and his lieutenants return to Sparks. He wouldn’t be able to recall his “spy,” Diana, if she didn’t want to return.
And Blue wouldn’t have to marry some woman he didn’t know, didn’t want, and most certainly didn’t love, all for the sake of paying off his father’s debts. He wasn’t a pawn to be traded at some other person’s whim, even if that person thought he was a king who knew best.
OG didn’t know Blue at all. Had never tried to know him any more than the wife he’d run off.
New pack. New rules. Blue’s rules. Somehow, he was going to fix everything. He just needed some time.
“Just make this easy for her, okay?” Blue said as they padded across a dry creek bed. “She’s getting a whole lot of new problems with me, and she had enough before I got here.”
“Does she know that yet?” Kenny asked.
“No.” Blue grimaced. “I’m going to tell her as soon as I think she’ll believe me, and that probably won’t be until I know we’re secure here and that anyone we’re related to in Sparks isn’t going to be retaliated against.”
Kenny nodded in agreement. Lance gave an assenting grunt.
He didn’t have to explain consequences to them. They knew. They understood. They were always ready to back Blue even when there were easier choices.
They were the best lieutenants and alpha could have.
“Gotta use some finesse,” Blue continued. “She’s not a Coyote, so our magical connection isn’t necessarily going to go both ways. She still has the choice of telling me to fuck off and to experience no pain from it.”
He hoped like hell she didn’t send him away. He hoped she’d let him stay and fight.
He hadn’t been waiting for a woman like her, and that was only because his imagination hadn’t been good enough.
Now that he knew what he could have, no one else would do.
He wasn’t going to settle.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Although the strategy had never worked any other time she attempted it, Willa closed her e-mail inbox at work and hoped the action items would resolve themselves.
Her sigh must have been peculiarly loud because Diana pranced over to the desk from the opposite end of the band room, cordless drill in tow. “Oh, hell. What’s wrong now?”
“Any day I can go without hearing from Paul is a good day.”
“And I take it today’s not a good day.”
Rubbing the bridge of her nose, Willa shook her head and pushed her stool back from the desk.
“Want me to go put the fear of Willa into him?” Diana squeezed the trigger of her drill and grinned.
Willa snorted. “No. He’ll just make himself the martyr, and he’s insufferable enough already.”
“What’d he say?”
Willa glided past her to the windows so she could see the parking lot. Hank was supposed to show up sometime in the next fifteen or twenty minutes, if he’d been honest in his last e-mail. The kids she’d handpicked for extra instruction were already there. She’d sent them outside beneath the portico with drum pads and simple cadences to memorize. Already, a few of the kids she’d nudged toward percussion had already fallen off. Drama and band in high school were scheduled in the same block, and two had chosen drama. One had decided to go out for JV football.
Paul was an ogre about extracurricular activities. Even if JV and varsity game nights didn’t interfere with each other, he wanted his marchers to do one thing. Willa thought his dictatorial style was over-the-top, but it was his program. She couldn’t really critique what she hadn’t wanted to run herself.
“He sent me a list of all the kids leaving the program this year,” Willa said. “The numbers were composed of graduating seniors and also a few who fell off due to interest attrition. He listed the instruments they played and put in a little asterisk and footnote saying the flute section is closed.”
Diana made a moue of disgust. “Ugh, he’s such a jerk.”
“He is, but I’ve never been able to figure out what to do with guys like him. Logic doesn’t work, and neither does appealing to their sense of compassion.” Willa added in a mutter, “I’m not sure he has one.”
Willa didn’t see Hank’s truck yet, but she propped the door open anyway so she could both hear the kids and his vehicle when it entered the lot. “Also got an e-mail from the band boosters asking if I knew the ticket price for the concert yet so they know how many we have to sell for the summer camp fund-raising. The way I see it, if no one shows up, it doesn’t matter how much they cost.”
“Oh, that’s pessimistic. Come on,” Diana said encouragingly. “We’ll put butts in seats.”
“How?”
“With everything you’ve done for the Coyotes, you don’t think you could ask them to cough up three bucks each and sit in that gym for an hour?”
“I hate to ask them. The patronage is supposed to go in the other direction. I’m supposed to be supporting them, not the other way around.”
“I see your point, but I think you’re overthinking this.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I am. Chronic failure of mine.” Willa retreated to the podium, lifted the hem of her long skirt, and stepped up onto the dais. She took a peek at her phone. No messages.
It’d only been a few hours since Blue had torn out of her house on the hunt. He was probably fine. Kenny had expressed the ultimate confidence in him but that didn’t lessen her worry.
What if he doesn’t come back tonight?
She wouldn’t be able to sleep. She wouldn’t know want to do except worry, and her worries had a habit of quickly multiplying.
With a furrowed brow and eyes narrowed curiously, Diana leaned in closer, nostrils flaring.
“What?” Willa turned and gave each armpit a discreet sniff. She’d been on autopilot during her morning ablutions, thinking too much about what Blue was doing with the pack.
“I’m not one to hash my words,” Diana said.
“That preface doesn’t bode well in any statement.”
Diana shrugged and set the drill on the dais. “You’ve got an odd smell.”
“Odd as in . . . ”
“As in contaminated.”
“I took out the trash before I left the house.” She peered down at her skirt’s hem, looking
for stains. “I might have gotten some dog food broth on my clothes or something.”
“Nah.” Diana gave her head an emphatic shake. “I don’t mean like that. It’s a chemical change. Hormonal, rather.”
Willa raised a brow. “You can tell when I’m having PMS?” Willa had heard of some shapeshifters having extraordinarily sensitive noses, but none of the Coyotes under her purview had ever demonstrated any particular talent.
“Actually, yes, but I don’t think you’re there in your cycle.”
Heat crept up Willa’s neck and cheeks.
Shouldn’t have asked.
Now she knew.
Sometimes, not knowing was better for her peace of mind.
Diana shrugged. “Told ya I didn’t hash words. I’ll just be blunt. You smell like my brother.”
“Oh?” Although she was feeling nauseated and had a sense of foreboding, as casually as she could manage, Willa pulled her wrap sweater more tightly closed around her neck and put her broach back into place. “How strange.”
He was probably going to say she’d entrapped him, but that wasn’t the case. She certainly hadn’t gone looking for a lover. In fact, she’d been purposefully avoiding connecting with people. She hadn’t trusted her judgment. Immortality wasn’t a gift she could easily revoke from her partner. If she’d chosen wrong, he could still reap the benefits even after she drifted away from him. She didn’t want to end up like her mother, constantly antagonized and harassed by someone more powerful.
“There’s only a couple of ways to absorb a Coyote’s scent,” Diana said flatly and counted off on her fingers. “Either he bites you or—”
The loud rumble of a custom pickup truck reverberated into the room, and Willa bolted toward the door as though she were a starving cat and someone had shaken a bag of kibble.
She was immediately startled back by a large crow swooping down the breezeway, but once she caught her breath and got her wits back about her, she hustled into the parking lot, picking up her skirt as she went. Every year, she had to reacclimatize to skirts and dresses. She tried to hold out as long as she could, but there was no getting around the fact that New Mexico was hot and her body needed to breathe.
