Samuel stood and waited for the strangers to enter the camp. He didn’t go to meet them or greet them.
Of the strangers, one stepped forward while the five others formed a semicircle behind him. The lead man seemed to grow larger and waves of power rolled off of him. Tommie had seen Bull do this and wondered how it was done.
She saw Samuel’s head bow and struggle against the submissive gesture. Cora and the woman with her looked terror stricken. Behind her, she heard Molly stiffen and whimper, and then Tommie felt it too, or rather, her wolf did. The creature wanted her to bow before this guy.
The pull was strong, but Tommie was stronger. If she didn’t bow to Bull’s show of power, she’d be damned if she bowed to this clown.
“What? No greeting for your Alpha?” the leader asked and then for Tommie, the pieces of the puzzle slid together.
This was the wolver they’d run from. This was the Alpha of their former pack.
Samuel’s voice was meek and he sounded as if he was asking rather than telling. “We’ve chosen to go rogue, Alpha. You don’t need the likes of us anyway. You’ve said it yourself. We’re omegas and we eat more than we’re worth. We’ll stay out of your way. Nothing we do will take away from the pack.”
The Alpha laughed as if Samuel had said something funny. “You don’t get a choice or decide what’s in my way and what isn’t. I do. Your income, meager as it is, is a loss and the pack suffers for it, so you’ve already hurt the pack.”
They couldn’t be suffering too badly. The SUVs were fairly new and top of the line. Tommie ought to know. There was one much like them sitting in her garage at home. It had belonged to her father and now it was hers, though she rarely drove it. Parked on the street near Harbor House, it would most likely be stolen by someone like the guy standing in the middle of camp or more likely, by one of the thugs-in-black that surrounded him. This guy didn’t need the money. The bastard was just flexing his muscle and making Samuel squirm.
“Where are the others,” he suddenly demanded.
Samuel jumped and began to stutter. “S-six of them t-took off on us last week. I thought they were heading b-back to the pack. The rest have gone to t-town to pick up supplies.” Samuel’s whole body was quaking by the time he finished delivering the news.
“Some dogs know where they’re supposed to lie.”
Tommie recognized that for the insult it was. Reinforcing what Bull had told her, little Sammy had shared what she assumed was a bit of life experience.
“Don’t ever, ever, ever call a wolver a dog,” he’d warned her with all the seriousness a four year old could muster. It even came with a finger wag. “You do, and Mommy will whup your bottom for sure.”
“Then we’ll just have to wait until they all get back,” the Alpha continued. “Unless I get what I came for before then.”
Samuel straightened as if the Alpha’s words shocked him. There was a noise behind the bus and all intruders’ eyes followed it. The men surrounding the Alpha all dipped their right hands into their leather jackets in perfectly choreographed intimidation.
“Come on out,” the Alpha ordered the noisemaker. “Now. Unless you’d like to see the old cripple die.”
The boy, still holding his awkward bundle of sticks, came from behind the bus. Samuel motioned him over and wrapped a comforting arm around him.
“He’s no threat. He’s just a cub,” Samuel said.
To Tommie, something felt very contrived about this whole scene. The Alpha and his henchmen were real enough, but the rest of it felt staged. Samuel was lying. Where was everyone and why hadn’t the cub dropped his bundle of sticks and run for the safety of the woods when the SUVs first arrived.
The Alpha shrugged. “Omegas breed omegas. Nits grow into lice. You never know when one might jump.” He stomped his foot and laughed when the cub jumped. Then he got back to business. “I’m willing to let all this go.” Alpha Magnanimous waved his hand, willing to make the great and superficial sacrifice of two rusted out vehicles and a half a dozen decrepit tents. “But you took something from me and I want it back.”
The bastard was talking about Macey! Tommie heard Molly’s frightened gasp behind her. She looked around the camp to see if the others, too, understood the import of the Alpha’s words. Her eyes stopped at Cora whose own eyes begged her to move on. Above Cora’s head, Tommie saw why.
Macey stood just beyond the edge of the trees where she watched and waited. She didn’t run forward, but she didn’t step back into the shadows of the trees. She was either undecided or wanted to see how far her dream man was willing to go to get her back.
Tommie went with undecided and she knew that if Alpha Shitass looked up, Macey’s decision would be made for her. Tommie couldn’t let that happen. Before Molly could hold her back, she stepped forward, away from the shelter of the tents and into Alpha Shitass’s line of sight.
He turned away from Macey’s direction and toward Tommie. “Well, well, well, what have we here?”
Tommie walked forward. “What is it that you want, Alpha? Maybe I can help.”
“Who the hell are you?” he asked as if she was something to be scraped off the bottom of his shoe.
“Nobody. She’s from a pack up north,” Cora interrupted, keeping her head down. “They don’t have much of nothing either, so we thought they might take us in. She’s got pack coming later tonight.”
“You’re lying, and so are you,” he said to Samuel.
The Alpha stared at Tommie a moment, eyes rudely speculating and then he sniffed audibly.
Her wolf took offense to the gesture. She snarled and curled her body as if responding to the threat, while urging Tommie to back away.
But this guy was a bully and backing away gave bullies power. She’d learned that in first grade. “What is it you want?”
“I want the ten thousand dollars they stole from me and I want what’s rightfully mine.” The Alpha looked directly at Macey standing at the edge of the trees and then back at Tommie. He smiled and that smile sent a shiver of revulsion down Tommie’s spine. “I want you,” he said so quietly only Tommie heard.
“Run!”
The Alpha made a grab for her hand just as she heard her wolf’s warning and stepped back to turn and flee. Her hand slipped from his grasp, but that slight contact made the bile rise in her throat. Tommie stumbled to her knees and all hell broke loose.
Scrambling to her feet, she heard the blast of a shotgun roar and dropped back to the ground. She saw one of the missing wolvers emerge from her tent, rifle raised. Another wolver stepped from Molly’s tent with the weapon hidden in the woman’s laundry basket cocked and ready. Yet another wolver came from the rear of the bus. Samuel, who’d fired the shotgun into the ground close to the Alpha, pumped it single handedly and this time aimed it directly at the Alpha’s chest. The cub’s bundle of branches lay scattered at his feet. The boy at the woodpile held a handgun as did Cora and her neighbor at the table.
The Alpha and his men were effectively surrounded.
Samuel was no longer stuttering. Bracing the shotgun on his arm, he followed the line of men. “Lay your weapons on the ground and kick them over this way. And kick ‘em hard or you won’t be kicking much of anything again. We took what was ours and we’ll keep it.”
“If you took what was yours, you’d have taken nothing and you’ll end up with less than nothing by the time this is done,” the Alpha snarled. “How long do you think you’ll survive without protection? You’re not rogues. You’re omegas, a worthless bunch of cripples and half-wits. How are you going to earn your keep without someone telling you what to do? Your females’ll end up as truckstop whores and you’ll end up as dog meat for another band of rogues.”
“That’s our worry now, not yours. All we want is to be left alone. The money’s mostly gone, but that doesn’t matter. You don’t think we’re worth that money, but I’ll bet you think you and your men are, so we’ll call it even. You gave us that money and we gave you your lives. S
wear on it and you can get back in those vehicles and head on home. Drive fast and hard and you’ll get there in time for moonrise.”
The Alpha curled his lip and nodded his head. “Get back in the car,” he told his men.
~*~
When Bull and Boris returned, the celebration was well under way. Bull was greeted with cheers and claps on the back as he carried a box of supplies to the bus.
“We did it! We won! It worked!”
Everyone wanted to tell him their part in the drama. He wanted to tell them they were lucky it wasn’t a massacre. Theirs.
Samuel’s smile was the widest of all. “Worked just like you said it would, Bull. Wish you could have been there to see it. We were all shaking like leaves in a good wind, but that fool Alpha thought it was fear of him. Scared hell out of me when Tommie stepped up, I can tell you that. Looked the Alpha right in the eye she did. No fear in that one, and with all eyes on her and the Alpha, it was easy to give the signal and get the drop on ‘em. Though I might have felt a little more comfortable if you’d told me when you changed the plan.”
“I didn’t change the plan.” Bull’s eyes went directly to Tommie who was pouring freshly popped corn into a bowl. “Sorry, Samuel, we’ll talk later. There’s someone else I need to talk to first.”
Samuel touched his arm. “Now Bull, don’t be too hasty. She maybe misunderstood. She has a lot to learn.”
“Damn right she does and it’s going to start right now.”
“Well hi there.” She greeted his approach, smiling as if all was right with the world. She reached under the table and came up with a bottle. “You missed all the fun, but I saved you a beer.”
“Fun? Fun?” Bull grabbed the bottle and handed it to the woman standing next to her. “Excuse us.”
He grabbed Tommie’s hand and, pulling her behind him, strode off into the woods. She had to run to keep up. He didn’t care.
“Bull. Wait. Stop. What’s wrong? You’re hurting me.”
That stopped him. He let her hand go and gripped her shoulders, bending low until they were nose to nose.
“Hurting you? God damn it, spitfire, you could have gotten yourself killed back there. You could have gotten someone else killed or hurt.”
“No one got hurt,” she argued.
She always argued, but this time the last word would be his.
“You put yourself in the middle of what could have been a gun battle. If one of his men got off a shot or if one of our wolvers got nervous and fired, you would have been the first to fall. You knew we hadn’t practiced this. You knew they had no experience with guns and you had to know how important it was that everyone played their part exactly as planned. But no, you had to do it your way. Did you even bother to look at the plan?”
“But Bull...”
“No ‘but Bull’. I put you with those pups for a reason. Their safety was in your hands and you let Sarah and Macey do it alone. What if the plan had gone south? Who would have been there to take care of them? Sarah’s a good woman, but she wouldn’t last ten minutes on her own never mind with those pups in tow. Pack comes first. Not Tommie, not Bull, not any individual. Pack. And while this may not be a real pack, it’s the closest thing we’ve got and until I find you a real pack or they find a real Alpha, I’m also the best thing you’ve got and you’d better do what you’re told.”
To keep himself from shaking her, Bull pulled her into his chest, his hand holding her head over his heart. He was so angry his hands were shaking. She could have been killed and he wasn’t there. He should have been there.
Her arms slipped around his waist. “Bull?”
“Just shut up and let me hold you for a minute.”
“So you can catch your breath and yell at me some more?”
“I wasn’t yelling.” He was calmer now that she was in his arms, but she had to know how serious her offense was. She had to learn if she was going to survive in the wolver world.
“Yes you were. It wasn’t loud, but it was yelling.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed his chin. “You were worried about me.”
“Someone has to be,” he said and sighed. Finding a comfortable place in the sun to sit, he pulled her to the ground with him. She shifted her hips slightly and landed in his lap.
“I’m glad it’s you,” she said and snuggled against him.
How was he supposed to argue with that? Still, he tried.
“Consider yourself lucky. If this was a real pack, you would have been brought before the Alpha when he held Court. All this would have been said in front of the entire pack and it would have been followed by punishment. Something like this would be taken as a betrayal of the pack and that’s never taken lightly.”
“But I didn’t know. No one told me. I never saw a plan.”
Bull held her away from him. “What do you mean you never saw a plan?”
“I swear it. I never saw a plan. I saw Macey.” She told him what had happened beginning with her following Molly into the woods and ending with Macey standing at the edge of the trees. “They had guns, Bull, and that Alpha has something really creepy and sadistic going for him. I had to give her a chance.”
Bull felt his jaw harden as his previous anger was redirected at Macey. “She was to sketch out copies of the plan for everyone, including you. She volunteered for it,” he told Tommie when he could speak without snarling. “It was a map of the campsite showing everyone where they were supposed to be when the watch sounded the alarm.
“It was a simple plan. I spent my time with the cubs who’d be standing watch and carrying the weapons hidden in the wood. Your job didn’t need explanation so I left it to her. I wonder who else she left in the dark.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s over and done and no one got hurt. Macey’s young. Maybe she forgot. It doesn’t matter now.”
“That’s where your wrong, spitfire. Young doesn’t cut it in a group this size. Everyone has to pull their weight. I had cubs out there a whole lot younger than her and they were doing the job. They were scared shitless, but they did it and she could have gotten them killed and she didn’t ‘fess up once she saw what happened. She needs to learn the lesson.”
Tommie snuggled a little closer. “Maybe this is a lesson for us, too. Maybe we shouldn’t give that kind of responsibility to children, I mean cubs, that young.”
“Maybe you should stop saying we when you mean me. Maybe you should trust me since I’ve been a wolver a lot longer than you.” He kissed her nose to take the sting from his words. “We, however, need to get back. We have a few hours before the moon rises and I need to get them ready for their Alpha’s next move. He will be back. I guarantee it.”
“How did you know he was coming today? How did you know he’d come after them at all?”
“I didn’t know it would be today. That was sheer bad luck. They should have known he would be coming from the very beginning, but they ignored it. They managed to keep moving, stay one step ahead, but with Samuel and Eli captured, they stayed close. Until Gantnor kindly loaned them his weapons, they didn’t have any way to fight back and with them, they didn’t know how. They don’t have the ability to outthink an Alpha.”
“They’re not stupid,” Tommie defended her new found friends. She clenched her fist and looked like she was ready to fight him on their behalf.
He folded her fist in his. “I didn’t say they were, but there isn’t an alpha among them. They’re omegas, bottom of the pack. They’ve spent most of their lives being shown what to do and then told when to do it. They haven’t learned to think for themselves or think things through. I don’t know whether they thought they could run forever or they hoped he’d give up because they would have. Either way, they were wrong. It was only a matter of time before he caught up with them. You don’t steal from an Alpha and expect him to take it gracefully.”
“You’re siding with the Alpha?”
“About the way he runs his pack? No. About stealing from his pack? Yes. He has every right to go af
ter the thieves. I would.”
“I don’t understand you,” she said. “If you think he’s right, why are you helping them?”
“Because he’s the one that made them thieves.”
Her brow furrowed and she pursed her lips like she was trying to understand his logic.
Bull thought he wouldn’t mind sitting with Tommie in this sunny spot for a little bit longer. Every time she readjusted her seat, his body sat up and took notice. Her body was warm, she smelled like chocolate, and with her mouth all puckered up, she looked like she needed to be kissed.
Through the trees, he heard a shout of laughter that pulled him back to the business at hand. The troops were high on their victory. He needed to tell them it was only a battle and they still had to win the war. He wasn’t sure they could. He couldn’t hang around forever and he sure as hell didn’t think they would be the best teachers for Tommie.
“Come on, spitfire. I need to talk to the wolvers. They’ve had their time to celebrate and now it’s time for cold, hard facts.” He sighed. “And I need to have it out with Macey.”
They were halfway back when she ran ahead and turned to face him, walking backward while she spoke.
“You talk to the pack, and I’ll take care of Macey.” She placed her hand on his chest. “I can do that Bull, and not to put too fine a point on it, I’ll be better at it than you.” She laughed at the look her gave her. “I know, I know, no one is better than you, but in this case I think you’re wrong. I’m betting I have more experience with surly teenaged girls than you do and I won’t get all huffy-puffy when I talk to her.”
“Huffy-puffy?” he asked with a great deal of twitching at the corners of his mouth. He’d been called a lot of things, but never that.
“Yes, huffy-puffy. You know, that thing where you make yourself big and scary. You did it with Eli and you do it every time someone in the pack asks you a question. I mean, not...” She hunched her shoulders and spoke in a deep, growly voice. “... big and scary,” and followed in her normal voice, “like that nasty Alpha, but it’s there and it makes everyone drop their eyes like they’re afraid to look at you.”
Wolver's Rescue Page 16
